The first thing BSA does is pull the financial statements of said small business. If the business is turning a healthy profit they'll proceed with a case, otherwise they'll decline to follow up.
I know this because I turned in a former employer. Actually got confirmation from BSA that the business was on shaky ground and so it wasn't worth their while to pursue litigation.
Quite often I'll hear a song on last.fm that I like and go on iTunes to buy it. Come to find out it's an iTunes UK offering and my account won't let me download it.
This is the major problem with the music industry. Music is now international, not regional. The industry hasn't adapted yet.
Because microwave ovens work best by vibrating water molecules. As they vibrate friction causes them to turn to steam which is what sterilizes the sponge in the first place.
Verizon is hurting. It costs more to provide service to rural areas than it does to provide it in urban areas. Has to do with outside plant and equipment costs.
Add the fact that Verizon has lost approximately 1/3 of their urban business testifies to the fact that they're not exactly a stable company. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
I always said that Verizon et al wanted to live by their tariffs, well they can die by them too.
Sometimes if you have the right contacts, you can find out everything you need to know.
For example, someone was harassing my friends girlfriend. I have access to certain data where I can get a persons location. Another friend has access to criminal history data, and so on. From just a first name, last name and approximate YOB, we located the puke. Had to pull data from a bunch of places but it all clicked.
We just used the tools available to every law enforcement agency in the U.S.
A little over a year ago I had the first ever chance to do something right with regard to IT infrastructure. Prior to that we were based in an office where our 'server room' was a closet. The room in which the closet was located had power issues, bad air conditioning, etc. and we'd regularly have issues with heat or power.
When they looked at moving us I jumped at the chance. Got a 600 square foot room with fully independent 480V power service. That power service includes an APC Symmetra with a nominal 15 minute run time. That's backed up by a 125kW natural gas fired generator. We also extend a tendril out to the MDF in the building to power our ISP's routing gear there.
The power system is regularly exercised and tested.
Air conditioning is provided by two independent systems and the room is kept at 65F.
There are forty servers in the room. One day we decided to see what would happen if there was air conditioning failure. In the space of a half hour the temp in the room went from 65F to 85F. So we know we got the cooling system specs right.
Now I'll explain the flaw in our whole system. We depend on someone else for DNS resolution. When they go down, we go down. They're finally seeing the light and putting DNS on somewhat more robust boxes and power systems.
Just goes to show, you can plan for everything but you'll never find it all.
In my book the only good spammer is a dead spammer. It'd be pretty easy to hunt down the originators but I think if we found out who is really behind spam there would be some serious outrage.
Think about it for a minute. The spammer makes money by sending out the emails, but who makes the money on the product? Sure, mob interests get some of it, but even legitimate business interests are in on the spam game.
I've proposed setting up and finding funding for a team that does nothing but prosecute/persecute spammers and their sponsors. But we'd have to cross swords with law enforcement in various countries to do it right.
I'm glad Pogue likes Vista but I'll be honest, my next machine won't be running Windows. I'm tired of the Microsoft game, particularly with the Zero Day crap that's been running around.
I just find it awfully odd that the Word Zero Day flaw comes out the same week as general distribution of Office 2007 happened, and because 2007 used docx, it isn't affect. Riiight!
Rarely used? You should visit my office where most workstations are Windows 2000, as are most of our servers. Some places can't afford to stay on Microsoft's upgrade curve.
Fortunately all our critical stuff is hosted on open source operating systems.
If you've been in the hobby that long you know that back in the early 90's UPS made a grab for a chunk of the 220MHz band and got it, only to do nothing with it.
Not to mention that the 70cm band is also home to wind profiler radar.
You're right and I think we'll be pushed to frequencies below 6m as time goes on because right now we sit on some pretty sweet real estate with allocations in the 400MHz, 900MHz, 1.2GHz etc bands.
I go by KiloDelta - the first two letters of my amateur extra call sign. I had to do the 20WPM code and you know what, it's not that hard. In the space of one year I went from my no code tech license to full extra.
So now I get to gripe like the real old timers get to gripe when the no-code tech license came around. And I've only been licensed for 15 years.
Not in my area. Anyone can set up so long as they pay the franchise. We came damned close to a second cable carrier not too many years ago. And I think we'll see it happen sooner than later.
I'm so happy that Verizon has to ask for a franchise in every area in which they wants to supply video.
Second - my cable provider is Cox. Not a bad deal at all and I loathe Verizon like there's no tomorrow. They've been responsible for all my major headaches from drowned DS1/HDSL carrier to botched installs, etc. Cox has its problems, don't get me wrong. But at least they're responsive.
Here's what I suspect is going to happen. Verizon will roll in with nice cheap rates for voice/data/video and within a 6 to 12 month period those rates will rise sharply. Then once they know they've got you on a contract, you're up the creek without a paddle.
It's typical incumbent behavior on the part of Verizon as they still play from the Ma Bell handbook. What they don't realize is that other players in the market don't play by the same book, hence why Verizon has lost 30-40% of its customers in the last couple of years. That's a pretty big hit and they're way over extended with the expense of stringing fiber.
And they're cherry picking areas where they actually string fiber. That won't help them.
VoIP providers like Vonage advise you to cut the wire at the demarc that leads to your residence. People unfamiliar with the NID might be cutting the wrong side, not techs from Cox, etc.
I am happy to see an incumbent Bell losing business though. But one other thing astounds me. Right now for digital cable and HSI with Cox I pay $114 a month. Phoenix gets phone thrown in for $99 a month? WTF!
But knowing Cox like I know Cox that's a six month deal and after that it'll jump to $150 or $160 a month.
One thing I will attest to is the general incompetence of both Verizon and Cox. On Verizons part I've found they've disconnected one of my pairs in the MDF to use while forgetting to re-connect when they're done. Oh and lets not forget the incompetence of their switching crew, who can't tell you what features are on a specific Centrex line until you ask for something completely different at which point they tell you what the feature set was on the other lines in the hunt group.
Cox isn't innocent either. We have two VAN connections to satellite offices in the same state. One of them is rock solid, the other one flakey as all hell. Cox always sends techs to the main location and I tell them that both VANs share the same coaxial cable, that the problem is at the specific remote end and that they need to go there and fix it.
Need I mention Cox's quite little replacement of Motorola 5120 cable modems? Yes, my net speed at home dropped to
The field techs for both Cox and Verizon are pretty good guys. But install techs are mostly contractor and they suck the big one. We share the MDF with other entities in the complex and one telecom vendor threaded his fifty pair cables on top of my cross connects. Needless to say they'll be fixing that next week.
I don't recall where I read it but some time back someone had posted a long explanation that 150 was a magic number. That was the point at which everyone knew everyone else in an organization (even a company!) and anything over that meant that you had a serious disconnect going on.
There's a manufacturer in Delaware that practices this. Each factory caps at 150 people and then they open a new facility, until that too gets to 150 people and so on.
What they found was that productivity and communication improved in such circumstances. And it doesn't mean you can't have large companies, what it means is that you've broken management down into units where the so called leader now knows the employee. Makes a big difference.
When I worked for a major university, it was hard to get to know the people because there were so many staff. But then when I worked for a state agency with only 238 people it became easier. Even then, my strategy was to get to know the support people in the various groups, they'd then clue you in to other details.
If we're only 3% different from chimpanzees, then 10% between humans is significant. It would tend to indicate that evolution is at play, which is something I've long suspected. Evolution doesn't happen all at once, it starts with a positive trait and then over time spreads out among descendants.
It's up to the state. My point of reference is Rhode Island and prints are NOT kept on file when civil checks are done.
And if I recall my reading of the III manual, there is no requirement on the part of the FBI, or the ORI to keep said prints.
In the United States the only way your prints are kept on file is if you commit a crime and are charged. Otherwise civil fingerprint checks only look to see if there is a hit, they don't store the prints.
I know this because I have intimate knowledge of the system used.
If in fact it has been up for ten years, that is a pretty good lifespan for an orbiter going around one of the rocky planets.
What's really amazing are those little rovers on the surface. Those definitely have Energizer Bunny Syndrome. In reality it is a tribute to the engineering.
I had such high hopes for the Zune but Microsoft DRM'd it to death. I'm so tired of being told what I can an cannot do with music I've purchased. I know its only a 'license' but still, I paid real (ok, fictional) money for it.
The actions of the RIAA and MPAA were the prime reasons for my becoming an EFF member.
I've got my Info Sci bachelors degree. It's CS with a bunch of info theory thrown in.
Looking at graduate programs they all leave me a little cold. I could do an MBA, but I'm not that much of an asshole. I did look at an MLS, and my IS degree kind of dovetails with that. But to be honest, if the Democrats reduce the interest rates I may well go back and get my undergrad EE.
IV-VI were good enough. Episode I was horrible, II a little better and finally III came along nicely.
When does the box set come out? And unlike the author of the review, I want a REAL light saber. Oh, and I absolutely flipped over the Ryan vs. Dorkman light saber battle.
Thinking that only the IRS or FBI could botch a large project.
Here is why large projects fail. First, you need complete buy-in from management. Second you need to accurately assess the risks/failure points and plan accordingly.
The risks need to be analyzed and can be anything from a bad app, to a vendor not being able to deliver when required.
These are things that government in general does very poorly.
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The BSA - now talk about something scary - NOT!
The first thing BSA does is pull the financial statements of said small business. If the business is turning a healthy profit they'll proceed with a case, otherwise they'll decline to follow up.
I know this because I turned in a former employer. Actually got confirmation from BSA that the business was on shaky ground and so it wasn't worth their while to pursue litigation.
Quite often I'll hear a song on last.fm that I like and go on iTunes to buy it. Come to find out it's an iTunes UK offering and my account won't let me download it. This is the major problem with the music industry. Music is now international, not regional. The industry hasn't adapted yet.
Because microwave ovens work best by vibrating water molecules. As they vibrate friction causes them to turn to steam which is what sterilizes the sponge in the first place.
Verizon is hurting. It costs more to provide service to rural areas than it does to provide it in urban areas. Has to do with outside plant and equipment costs.
Add the fact that Verizon has lost approximately 1/3 of their urban business testifies to the fact that they're not exactly a stable company. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
I always said that Verizon et al wanted to live by their tariffs, well they can die by them too.
Sometimes if you have the right contacts, you can find out everything you need to know.
For example, someone was harassing my friends girlfriend. I have access to certain data where I can get a persons location. Another friend has access to criminal history data, and so on. From just a first name, last name and approximate YOB, we located the puke. Had to pull data from a bunch of places but it all clicked.
We just used the tools available to every law enforcement agency in the U.S.
The APC Symmetra includes room temp monitors too. When things get ugly we get text messaged.
A little over a year ago I had the first ever chance to do something right with regard to IT infrastructure. Prior to that we were based in an office where our 'server room' was a closet. The room in which the closet was located had power issues, bad air conditioning, etc. and we'd regularly have issues with heat or power. When they looked at moving us I jumped at the chance. Got a 600 square foot room with fully independent 480V power service. That power service includes an APC Symmetra with a nominal 15 minute run time. That's backed up by a 125kW natural gas fired generator. We also extend a tendril out to the MDF in the building to power our ISP's routing gear there. The power system is regularly exercised and tested. Air conditioning is provided by two independent systems and the room is kept at 65F. There are forty servers in the room. One day we decided to see what would happen if there was air conditioning failure. In the space of a half hour the temp in the room went from 65F to 85F. So we know we got the cooling system specs right. Now I'll explain the flaw in our whole system. We depend on someone else for DNS resolution. When they go down, we go down. They're finally seeing the light and putting DNS on somewhat more robust boxes and power systems. Just goes to show, you can plan for everything but you'll never find it all.
In my book the only good spammer is a dead spammer. It'd be pretty easy to hunt down the originators but I think if we found out who is really behind spam there would be some serious outrage. Think about it for a minute. The spammer makes money by sending out the emails, but who makes the money on the product? Sure, mob interests get some of it, but even legitimate business interests are in on the spam game. I've proposed setting up and finding funding for a team that does nothing but prosecute/persecute spammers and their sponsors. But we'd have to cross swords with law enforcement in various countries to do it right.
I'm glad Pogue likes Vista but I'll be honest, my next machine won't be running Windows. I'm tired of the Microsoft game, particularly with the Zero Day crap that's been running around.
I just find it awfully odd that the Word Zero Day flaw comes out the same week as general distribution of Office 2007 happened, and because 2007 used docx, it isn't affect. Riiight!
Rarely used? You should visit my office where most workstations are Windows 2000, as are most of our servers. Some places can't afford to stay on Microsoft's upgrade curve.
Fortunately all our critical stuff is hosted on open source operating systems.
If you've been in the hobby that long you know that back in the early 90's UPS made a grab for a chunk of the 220MHz band and got it, only to do nothing with it. Not to mention that the 70cm band is also home to wind profiler radar. You're right and I think we'll be pushed to frequencies below 6m as time goes on because right now we sit on some pretty sweet real estate with allocations in the 400MHz, 900MHz, 1.2GHz etc bands.
I go by KiloDelta - the first two letters of my amateur extra call sign. I had to do the 20WPM code and you know what, it's not that hard. In the space of one year I went from my no code tech license to full extra. So now I get to gripe like the real old timers get to gripe when the no-code tech license came around. And I've only been licensed for 15 years.
Not in my area. Anyone can set up so long as they pay the franchise. We came damned close to a second cable carrier not too many years ago. And I think we'll see it happen sooner than later.
Cable companies are not entrenched when it comes to video. You have choices.
I'm so happy that Verizon has to ask for a franchise in every area in which they wants to supply video. Second - my cable provider is Cox. Not a bad deal at all and I loathe Verizon like there's no tomorrow. They've been responsible for all my major headaches from drowned DS1/HDSL carrier to botched installs, etc. Cox has its problems, don't get me wrong. But at least they're responsive. Here's what I suspect is going to happen. Verizon will roll in with nice cheap rates for voice/data/video and within a 6 to 12 month period those rates will rise sharply. Then once they know they've got you on a contract, you're up the creek without a paddle. It's typical incumbent behavior on the part of Verizon as they still play from the Ma Bell handbook. What they don't realize is that other players in the market don't play by the same book, hence why Verizon has lost 30-40% of its customers in the last couple of years. That's a pretty big hit and they're way over extended with the expense of stringing fiber. And they're cherry picking areas where they actually string fiber. That won't help them.
VoIP providers like Vonage advise you to cut the wire at the demarc that leads to your residence. People unfamiliar with the NID might be cutting the wrong side, not techs from Cox, etc.
I am happy to see an incumbent Bell losing business though. But one other thing astounds me. Right now for digital cable and HSI with Cox I pay $114 a month. Phoenix gets phone thrown in for $99 a month? WTF!
But knowing Cox like I know Cox that's a six month deal and after that it'll jump to $150 or $160 a month.
One thing I will attest to is the general incompetence of both Verizon and Cox. On Verizons part I've found they've disconnected one of my pairs in the MDF to use while forgetting to re-connect when they're done. Oh and lets not forget the incompetence of their switching crew, who can't tell you what features are on a specific Centrex line until you ask for something completely different at which point they tell you what the feature set was on the other lines in the hunt group.
Cox isn't innocent either. We have two VAN connections to satellite offices in the same state. One of them is rock solid, the other one flakey as all hell. Cox always sends techs to the main location and I tell them that both VANs share the same coaxial cable, that the problem is at the specific remote end and that they need to go there and fix it.
Need I mention Cox's quite little replacement of Motorola 5120 cable modems? Yes, my net speed at home dropped to
The field techs for both Cox and Verizon are pretty good guys. But install techs are mostly contractor and they suck the big one. We share the MDF with other entities in the complex and one telecom vendor threaded his fifty pair cables on top of my cross connects. Needless to say they'll be fixing that next week.
I don't recall where I read it but some time back someone had posted a long explanation that 150 was a magic number. That was the point at which everyone knew everyone else in an organization (even a company!) and anything over that meant that you had a serious disconnect going on.
There's a manufacturer in Delaware that practices this. Each factory caps at 150 people and then they open a new facility, until that too gets to 150 people and so on.
What they found was that productivity and communication improved in such circumstances. And it doesn't mean you can't have large companies, what it means is that you've broken management down into units where the so called leader now knows the employee. Makes a big difference.
When I worked for a major university, it was hard to get to know the people because there were so many staff. But then when I worked for a state agency with only 238 people it became easier. Even then, my strategy was to get to know the support people in the various groups, they'd then clue you in to other details.
If we're only 3% different from chimpanzees, then 10% between humans is significant. It would tend to indicate that evolution is at play, which is something I've long suspected. Evolution doesn't happen all at once, it starts with a positive trait and then over time spreads out among descendants.
It's up to the state. My point of reference is Rhode Island and prints are NOT kept on file when civil checks are done. And if I recall my reading of the III manual, there is no requirement on the part of the FBI, or the ORI to keep said prints.
In the United States the only way your prints are kept on file is if you commit a crime and are charged. Otherwise civil fingerprint checks only look to see if there is a hit, they don't store the prints.
I know this because I have intimate knowledge of the system used.
If in fact it has been up for ten years, that is a pretty good lifespan for an orbiter going around one of the rocky planets.
What's really amazing are those little rovers on the surface. Those definitely have Energizer Bunny Syndrome. In reality it is a tribute to the engineering.
I had such high hopes for the Zune but Microsoft DRM'd it to death. I'm so tired of being told what I can an cannot do with music I've purchased. I know its only a 'license' but still, I paid real (ok, fictional) money for it.
The actions of the RIAA and MPAA were the prime reasons for my becoming an EFF member.
I've got my Info Sci bachelors degree. It's CS with a bunch of info theory thrown in.
Looking at graduate programs they all leave me a little cold. I could do an MBA, but I'm not that much of an asshole. I did look at an MLS, and my IS degree kind of dovetails with that. But to be honest, if the Democrats reduce the interest rates I may well go back and get my undergrad EE.
IV-VI were good enough. Episode I was horrible, II a little better and finally III came along nicely.
When does the box set come out? And unlike the author of the review, I want a REAL light saber. Oh, and I absolutely flipped over the Ryan vs. Dorkman light saber battle.
Thinking that only the IRS or FBI could botch a large project.
Here is why large projects fail. First, you need complete buy-in from management. Second you need to accurately assess the risks/failure points and plan accordingly.
The risks need to be analyzed and can be anything from a bad app, to a vendor not being able to deliver when required.
These are things that government in general does very poorly.