:: MIS Insights ::

if you look at it, a lot of people are trained to look at the faults rather than the merits of something, somewhere or someone. this post was inspired by my broadband internet experience with the top telco company here in the philippines ~ pldt.

last week, pldt was *upgrading* their lines. they were trying to push through with the 2mbps upgrades for the 768kbps users (that’s me!). but of course, such setup requires load testing and a lot of configuring. i guess they were asking, “will our pipeline and servers be able to handle such load from the consumers?”

the good

so they gave it a run last thursday and i got a taste of 2mbps connection ~ which they promised to give me a good two months ago. so, my 80 kilobytes per sec was upped to 200 kbytes/sec. if we translate it to the metric system, my 200mb per hour download tripled into roughly 600mb per hour!

*azureus statistics were crammed to make it fit the width of the page

the bad

only to take it away for the whole weekend and my 768kbps connection to boot. i’m pretty much surfing the net as if i were in dial-up but worse ~ some pages don’t even load at all after waiting forever. talk about retribution for maxing out pldt’s service.

as i thought about it, maybe it will be out for the weekend to make way for the businesses who need the internet more than the home users. i don’t mind waiting, weekend’s the time for relaxation anyway.

however, it’s already monday and i still can’t get a decent ftp connection to my different web servers. what the H???!! and oh, getting redundant internet connections from different and several providers is out of the question. that would be very expen$ive.

but i’m not really complaining:

• one weekend does not spoil the entire four years that i’ve been using pldt mydsl (though pldt seems to do this once in a while)
• providing internet for so many people requires a lot of crap to pull together
• one doesn’t really have a choice in the monopoly-driven industry

the ugly

it just got me into reflecting: why do people forget the good things in something - whether it be a relationship, a person, a product, a service, or whatever? why is something bad highly publicized or more noticed rather than what’s good in something? why are there so many blogs about how pldt sux rather than how well they’ve improved over the past few years?

training

i guess it’s all about training. ever since we were kids, society has been training people to look at the bad things in life.

if you go to school, how good you are is dependent on how few mistakes you make ~ rarely on how much good you can do. schools have grading systems that rarely record how well a student performs but it can record how badly a student does perform. every mistake eats away your excellent pristine grade.

if you watch the news, most clips will be about how something *bad* happened elsewhere. *who was responsible for the fire? who murdered el presidente? who stole the pizza pie?* rather than *it was a heroic rescue by the firemen in pink; we could have prevented the assassination if we posted more guards; the stolen pizza must have quenched the hunger of someone out there and that’s alright, as long as it helps*

if you surf the net, most discussions, articles and forums about pldt will be about how lousy their service is rather than how well they’ve been pioneering broadband telco for the past few years. if one would take a look at their history lessons, this state of technology has developed fast considering we just started a few years ago. if one would look over neighboring countries, our country is not really at the bottom of the pile when it comes to the telco industry.

as my father told me, people need to start looking at the good rather than the bad. everything will have their bad points, that’s true, but that’s no reason to focus on it. everything will always have a good side that one must always strive to look at.

yes, even PLDT.

a lot of my new clients recently have had to rethink their domain names. it seems that the internet is overly populated that decent domain names are hard to find nowadays. or is it?

cybersquatting

as i mentioned in the other day, this is the practice of occupying a domain name in the hopes of reselling it in the future for a bigger price tag. pipboy.com. enough said.

all your identites are belong to us

i really don’t know how to call this variant but i’ve come across this several times already: several dudes out there go out and register domain names based on family names or company names. then, they offer e-mail or sub-domain hosting at a non-marxist price. check out net-identity.com. lolz, i frown upon such practice for now, but i have to admit, i admire their business plan.

typosquatting

this is when people register domain names that are spelled or typed like another domain name. for example, wal-mart and walll-mart

what’s in it for these typosquatters? if they’re not selling the domains for a bigger price, then they’re offering it as a service where pay-per-click advertisers can dump their ads. every time that someone clicks an ad from their typosquatted sites, they earn!

domain kiting

and the most recent form of domain name hogging is what bob parsons, godaddy’s big daddy, calls domain kiting. it seems that some registrars allow a 5-day trial period for domain names. that is, one can register a domain name and return it on the 5th day to get a full refund. over the course of the five days, a simple website full of pay-per-click ads are setup. and like typosquatting, these websites earn when users click on these ads. all for the low and affordable price of zero dollar$.

with all these forms of domain name hogging, it’s getting harder and harder to come up with a cool and easy to remember domain name.

if there’s anything that startups must also consider when formulating their business plans, it’s a stricter brand management regimen. in the end, it’s all about having a name that stands out and is descriptive of your business. not like any domain name that other dudes out there can also think of.

pipboy v3.0 ~ that is this website’s title. v3.0 because this is my third attempt at the documentation of my adventurous mishaps. well, not anymore it is. i’m dropping v3.0 from now on.

you see, the internet can be a very dangerous place if one is not careful with their identity. there will always be people out there who ready to take advantage of one’s identity.

phishing

Wikiwikiwiki-wild-wild-west-pedia says:

In computing, phishing is a form of criminal activity using social engineering techniques. It is characterized by attempts to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an apparently official electronic communication.

my mentor william wrote an article about this one a few days ago. he shows how some spoofing bastards out there were trying to fake customers into giving out their personal banking information by sending them to a site that looked like metrobank.

but i’m not saying someone was copying my site. it’s more of a branding issue. for instance, most 80s babies know about street fighter. subsequently, almost everyone who knows street fighter will know that street fighter super mega alpha omega ultimate edition is better than street fighter super mega alpha omega edition sans ultimate. that’s how it also is in the internet. by virtue of the decimal counting system, wouldn’t you agree that v4.0 should be better than v3.0? so, i’d like to protect myself from myself, where i can accidentally imply that my site is good or bad at any given time or another site is better or not. if you’re gunning for a first-page google result based from your site keywords or website title, such branding issue is very important.

having said that, let’s talk about other identity concerns over the internet.

Web Address

Web addresses, Domain Names or URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) are the real estates of the web. Businesses try their best to have their web addresses identical to their company names. Example: Ayala ~ http://ayala.com.ph.

There are cases when a company gets beaten to such web addresses by early birds though. This means settling for a different Domain Name or something similar. For instance, some guy beat PLDT to the PLDT domain name when the internet age began. He owned it for several years, spoofing the philippine telecommunications company until … they decided to reach an $amicable$ settlement.

business idea!

light bulb please with matching *ding*

such real estate hogging is actually a big business over the internet. lots of freaking domain name tycoons out there do nothing but buy and buy domains everyday. after getting hold of such domain names, these companies then sell it at auctions with a fat tag price or sell it with a fatter tag price to interested entities ~ whichever comes first. so if you’ve got a credit card and a few thousand bucks to spare, drop me an e-mail for the whole business plan. we’ll be rich in no time like this guy i read from the internet. just a few months ago, sex.com was sold for 14 million us dollars! these are the times when one would say, “hey, why didn’t i think of that?!”

anyway, from now on, say hello to pipboy and say goodbye to v3.0.

when you’re tired of reading books, it’s probably time to write your own book.

when you’re tired of studying in school, it’s probably time to start your own school.

when you’re tired of being bored, it’s probably time to start doing what you have to do.

when you’re tired, it’s probably time to get some rest.

It is rare to find people who have little or no biases when it comes to attire. People have become quick to judge people on how they look. A young man entering a computer shop like CPXpress, for example, will not be served or given as much attention as an older customer.

can’t we all wear comfortable and decent clothes and get the same customer-satisfying-finger-licking-good quality type of service? i suppose businesses don’t even know how much they’re losing because of such practices. if they did, they’d send their employees in an annual training camp and audit workplaces regularly to make sure everything is A-O-K.

however, i am not saying that we should throw away half of our wardrobe because…

it makes one presentable and pleasing to the eyes. for most people who are vulnerable to psychological suggestion based on their neuro-perception configuration, if they get what they like and you should work hard to make sure they like what they see.

all i’m saying is…

How I look is irrelevant to how I perform. unlike jordan who has to wear his college basketball shorts under his nba shorts all the time, dressing otherwise doesn’t make me feel any more omnipotent. it’s still the same pipboy with a different peeling. (lolz)

Life is a Game

Had my first real game of basketball this afternoon. after a year without playing the game, i was huffing and puffing for the last 20 minutes of the 30-minute game. the 4 on 4 was no contest. we got beaten by 2 points in a race to 15, thanks to my standing-tiger, slowpoke-dragon tactics where i was useless for most of the game.

not even all the theories and moves that i knew from my varsity days could make me perform any better in the game earlier.

no practice + no juice = you lose.

looking at the bright side of such demoralizing loss, i had lots of fun with the belly-buster game. i’ve forgotten how good it felt to push and get pushed by people in the court ~ complete with all the positioning tactics and hidden jabs. think Malone. then think Rodman.

i got pulled in by tammy, a village friend from my high school days. turns out that his family left the village for three years and recently moved back. with him around, i think i’ll be playing more games during the afternoons. so, for the sake of my teammates and the coke 1.5 that comes with every game, i think i better shape up for the coming games.

Get Ready to Lose

which is just like life, don’t you think? you might be the smartest, wisest and most buffed of them all, but if you can’t use your talents well, you’re not going to get anywhere. the first step is usually about taking a look at your skills, knowing yourself and identifying your potential. after that, it’s just a matter of leveraging your competencies or strengthening your weak areas.

life is a game wherein if you’re not ready to play, you’ll lose. i just realized this as our team got beaten by kanto boys [street kids]. imho, they can be the best opponents that one can ever ask for on any given day. fast to think and never running out of energy. i hope to be like them someday. with nothing to lose and an attitude of a winner. you cannot go anywhere but up with that kind of combination.

free software can be very profitable. it doesn’t matter whether it’s free legally or illegally. if we take a look at the business models that software has gone through, we can see that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

BBS ~ Shareware and Freeware

in the golden age of Bulletin Board Systems, people used these systems to share files - most of which were freeware, shareware and drivers. eleven summers ago, i could still remember getting all the freeware and shareware games that i could lay my hands on. i could still remember the popular DOS games such as Commander Keen, Duke Nuke’m and yes, Doom 1!

For those that didn’t experience shareware and made the evolutionary leap towards Captain Hook’s software, shareware were fully working programs whose functions were limited to a certain extent. For instance, Doom 1 had three episodes. The shareware version only had the first episode. If you wanted the other two episodes, you could buy the full and registered version. As another example, some mp3 rippers wouldn’t allow you to rip faster than 2x from CDs or some picture viewers had a nasty text in the middle of the page “Please Register!” (hex-edit, anyone?)

Freeware is free. Fully functional programs that didn’t require royalties. Just a reminder once in a while how you could help the college student who wrote the program get by with his measly weekly allowance. What do these “college students” get out of writing free software? Nothing much but experience, exposure and a chance to start your own company.

Internet ~ Registered and Activated Programs

As the internet became more available, shareware as a product took on a different light. Shareware now became a service. For products that could use updating, the registration scheme was the profitable way to go. If you want updates to the your anti-virus, you’ll have to register to receive critical updates. Think Norton, Symantec or McAfee. Register and you’ll get X years worth of critical updates from our server.

Well, of course these programs were functional. They just weren’t as useful with old antivirus definition files. However, another program i know is pushing the envelope even further. Grisoft. They provide functional software and free updates without extra features that could enhance your sysad life. Of course, for those bells and whistles, you have to … register and pay up.

From a free simple AV software, such business tactic has allowed grisoft to come up with a rich and feature-packed software. What did they get by providing free software? Testing. Testing is one of the most important and expensive steps in a software’s development life cycle. Grisoft was able to skip this by letting the users use the program themselves - and there is no better testing method than that.

With the evolution of technology, particularly the internet, software once again took a different path. Several applications and operating systems needed activation for them to run properly and indefinitely.

*nix ~ Free and Open Source Software

Now, when there’s a fully capable software alternative, why would you bother with software that you have to pay for?

Well, for one, it’s because people don’t like to read manuals. People aren’t really paying for the updates, they are paying for that button in the software that says “Click Here to Get Updates.” Yeah, i know, FOSS also has those functional buttons that say “Click Here to Get Updates.” It wouldn’t be right to pit FOSS and Paid Software against each other by virtue of capabilities.

This brings us to the other point. The profitability of hardware is determined by paid software. Microsoft invests millions in R&D to make sure that their OSes and applications will work in every popular harware out there - wherein part of those R&D funding goes to the hardware manufacturer themselves too. People just wouldn’t buy an OS or application which won’t run on their hardware out of the box. While most people might be at home with tweaking their configuration files to make the hardware and software run, not everyone is.

So, if there’s *no* money involved in FOSS, why do people bother? Don’t FOSS developers need to earn and feed themselves? Actually, there is a lot of money in FOSS. Where Original OSes, Licensed DBMSs and Registered Applications on Production servers can easily cost thousands of dollars, such FOSS alternatives can cost but a fraction of it. This is where FOSS developers come in with their technical support fees. Many large companies are willing to pay a lot for developers and sysads who can make FOSS run because it will be cheaper for them in the long run.

The internet would grind to a halt if an anti-FOSS meteor hit the earth and exterminated all FOSS. Most web apps run with Linux, PHP, Python, Perl or Java - to name a few. Extinction of such technologies wouldn’t be a good proposition for many people concerned.

Captain Hook’s Software ~ Cracked and Downloads

Lastly, we come across the kind of software that you have to pay for to use, but you don’t pay for it and still use it. Yes, we’re talking about Captain Hook’s Software.

Most people might get away with using pirated software at their homes. Most of which are available for download using peer-to-peer file sharing networks. But what does this mean for software companies who lose a lot of money from these pirates? If people use cracked versions of their programs that don’t make them pay for it, what do software companies get?

Familiarity.

If people don’t know how to use any other kind of software besides the pirated version they have at home, business employers will most probably use the original version at the work place to save on time and tutorial expenses. In the end, these companies still get the $moolah$. In this world of high-speed internet that we are now living in, familiarity is a small price that software companies are learning to live with.

In Conclusion

I thought about this as i came across MMORPGs that were free to play but whose enjoyment level would only increase if you bought the premium items available in the real world. It’s a good business model and profitable one by theory and actual results.

Think about it as we venture deeper into Web2.0 where web apps are getting richer and more functional by the day. I’m sure you’ll find a way to earn a buck or two.

[this is not a glorification of any company or software, i did not receive anything for writing this ~ focus on the business model, please]

why is everyone so eight-to-five? i mean, what happened to the philippines that it became an offices-here-have-an-eight-to-five-schedule nation?

is it because people have no choice?

is it because it’s part of a company’s rulz and regulationz? employees cannot not follow the system - unless they are ready to face dire consequences. for example, companies have in their contracts a “work hours” clause stating how many hours an employee should log in for every normal workday. an example would be “to complete eight hours of work during the eight and a half hour stay of the employee in the company premises.” as part of a legal contract, any breach would merit punishment : salary deduction, cancellation of certain benefits, added work hours, or at worst, termination. (though i know some people out there would love to get fired from their current jobs)

is it because of foreign influence?

some companies might be pressured to set an 8-to-5 policy because of investors - foreign investors who are used to the 8-t0-5 setting working for them and investors who wouldn’t feel good if their investments didn’t conform to the tried-and-tested norm.

the 8-to-5 work hours for the corporate setting might work like a charm with western countries like the US and Europe. primarily because the US and Europe have their countries divided into 3 and 2 time zones, respectively.

imagine this. at 5pm in new york, it is just 2pm in los angeles. that means while one part of the US is already taking a break, another part is still working. those 3 time zones effectively give US an 11-hour work-shift sans the overtime every day! this might not make sense much in paper, but when a country has more work hours over other countries, it means that it is able to interact with other countries more - more business opportuinities for them!

so is it their fault that their geography forced them to adapt more than one time zone? nopez. it only means that the 8-to-5 setting provides an advantage for them not available in single time-zone countries.

so how is this relevant to the philippine setting? for a country that has a shorter work time, the eight to five corporate model will not do. i think we should work less hours but work on more jobs at a time. rather than sit at one job for eight hours, we should work on two jobs with four hours apiece.

compressing work and taking additional responsibility will teach us how efficient we can be. shorter hours doesn’t necessarily mean lost quality as long as we really work. i doubt if filipinos actually work every minute of that 8 hour shift. unless close supervision is present or strict work ethics are enforced, the watered-down eight-hour shifts that supervisors see are really just four hours worth of efficient work.

now some might argue that this will lead to a very stressful environment where everyone is on the move. well, i don’t think the alternative has done our country much good. i believe filipinos can benefit a lot from this, being efficient, hard-working and resourceful that most people are. despite having limited access to all the good stuffs in life.

i know of someone. he’s one of those financially challenged people, feeding a family of six with no education to get him a cool-paying job. but that never brought him down. at 6am, i would see him going around villages, delivering hot pan de sal. by 10 am, he’d be going around again the villages, looking for newspapers and bottles that he could re-sell. and if ever he gets lucky, he’s out again under the sun by 2pm, mowing grass of empty lots for nearby occupants. he is one of those filipinos who have shown me that nothing is impossible.

But we really not that 40-man-hours-per-week schedule!

a year ago, 2005, the Philippine government tried a four-day-work-week. government employees didn’t have to work during fridays. i don’t think it did much good to boost the productivity of the offices. i heard no reports on the media (or at least I was not able to read / hear anything about it) detailing the results of the experiment. i have to assume the lack of praise or good points regarding the experiment meant … that that media had other better things to talk about.

if we are going to get into a 4-day work week or a 4 hour schedule (4 is just an arbitrary number, change it as you like, as long as it’s not 8 for the purpose of this discussion), proper mental preparation must be in place. while employees had a 4-day work-week, they had a 5-day work-week perspective. there is no urgency in this. i am not saying this goes for ALL offices or that employees slack off - that’s not the point. that said, we cannot think of a four-hour work schedule with our current eight-hour work schedule in mind. it simply does tally out. 8 is not equal to 4.

some companies, most of them manufacturing, won’t make it with a 4-day work week or shortened production time. and there’s not much we can do about it. maximum asset utilization is not equal to shorter work hours… unless one can setup a factory whose manual labor is replaced by robotics…

but that would be expensi– unethical, right?

our priorities are our stakeholders and inves– employees, right?

that wouldn’t sound right on a public press confere– to the families involved, right?

before you companies tell me that it can’t be done, think about your priorities and perspective first. much can be solved if you think about it even before you speak or none can be solved if you don’t think about it even if we talk all day about it.

so how do we go about it? that’s where management *cough* information *ahem* systems come into the picture. with the advent of technology, work these days no longer take as long to finish as they did before. we can set up support systems to help automate and eliminate manual tasks that would otherwise be prone to error. we could also invest on newer machineries that are more efficient, effective and environment-friendly from the ones that we used to have. sounds like a plan eh? a pretty expensive one too.

well, i’m not here to promote buying stuff that can do work better when the current stack of assets can do work fine as it is. for some companies that are just concerned with making things work, the last thought bubble is not an option. but for those who are looking for ways to improve despite the damage it can do to the company’s profit, be my guest.

IMHO

personally, i would rather work from 9am to 12noon everyday and spread additional work throughout the day whenever it’s convenient or needed - allowing me to play, exercise and indulge myself in my other interests. stress, anyone?

i am not against the system though. i respect and follow systems whenever i find the underlying principles, motivation and goals appropriate and beneficial to everyone concerned. for instance, when an officer says that i have to wear an ID, by virtue of security concerns, i will wear an ID. no questions asked.

if i am going to work from 8-to-5 straight, as long as the principles, motivation and goals behind such rule are made clear to me, i will work that eight-hour-shift. however, right now i have several questions that prevent me from doing so.

wow, i got read from outside the philippines! lolz! hello to my father in singapore and my mother in hong kong!

hehe today asia, tomorrow the world!! can’t wait to show up at google.

Lag has killed more online game players than any other player or entity on earth. Not even the addicted or professional gamers can outscore the frags that lag has played a part in. Ever since the beginning, people have always found themselves lacking in bandwidth. It doesn’t matter whether you’re surfing the net over dial-up, playing MMORPGs over dsl or ripping ISOs over your fat 6mbps pipes. you will always feel that lag (or delay) that would make you wish that you had more.

however, if you think that there will be a day when you can have more than sufficient bandwidth at cost-effective prices, you’re wrong.

ISPs won’t allow this

in the utopic world that i envision, ISPs would have uber-cool facilities that should be able to serve every household with 15mbps connections. these connections should allow people to copy dvds over the net as if they were on a lan (or close to it). beautiful isn’t it?

but ISPs won’s allow that. not everyone needs a 15mbps pipeline. there is no need to upgrade due to the lack of demand from customers who are willing to pay for such quality / quantity of service. if we have to convince the major ISPs to upgrade their system because it is technically feasible, we would get a big No because it is not economically feasible.

Application Service Providers should work on this

even though online games and file transfer activities have become so popular to make the user net experience suck, there is little pressure on the ISP bigwigs to upgrade. people might want that extra bandwidth for their wonderful net experience, but people do not want to pay for such services. that is why dsl has become so popular in the philippines only recently with the cost-effective (read between the lines) dsl connections.

until online applications are able to max out the supplied bandwidths, upgrading facilities to make the user experience enjoyable sometimes isn’t good for business. if the facilities will be used thoroughly for only half a day (eg daytime), the other half of the day would leave such assets / resources idle and unprofitable. charging the users for the machine idle time drives the costs up and the marketing team nuts.

unfortunately, very few people complain in such a situation. the closest thing one can ever hear as a protest would be the bold and outrageous cost-effective (read between the lines) services of competitors. think dsl (globe and pldt). think mobile (sun and globe/smart).

the politechs can drive you too

oh, and until IPTV, IPphone and IPwhatever-hogs-your-bandwidth becomes widely available, fat and cheap net connections are still wishlists for santa’s next visit. unfortunately, as i read somewhere from the net, such technologies face stiff competition from government-backed brick-and-mortar establishments that stand to lose market share from the same line of service. enough said.

Lag == Money

so if you have to think about it, everytime that you experience lag / delays, think about money. an online game that lags is a happy game because its servers are working double-time (the company is currently profitable, assuming their hardware doesn’t just suck). a surfing experience that sucks means that your isp is happy (their bandwidth is being consumed, realizing their max-bandwidth-consumption-means-max-profit projections). a frag from your friend that was caused by a lag means you blame the lag (everyone knows you’re better than the others, right?).

until then, stay connected.