@Dashrender said:

@MattSpeller said:

@scottalanmiller said:

Yeah, you take home WAY more than we do.

If you have kids, RRSP, those can hugely alter your taxes (give you back $$$$$$$)

Also remember that our sales taxes are eye watering, 13% on average for most provinces.

It's like 13% in Las Vegas..

http://tax.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/taxnvgov/Content/TaxLibrary/TPI-01.07 Sales Tax Map_07-01-12.pdf

8.1% in Clark County with no city sales taxes in Nevada.

Highest sales tax in the US is in Chicago at 10.45%, 6.25% to the state, 1.75% to Cook County, 1.25% to the city itself and another 1% for Illinois DOT. They also have a very generous non-taxable bracket, unlike Texas which is 8.25% no matter what.

@Jason said:

I don't think you can count all deducations since some of those you opt into. Mine would be really high with all the Retirmenet, Company stocks etc I do.

I Pay 18% in State Income Taxes and 28% in Federal so 46% of my pay goes to taxes.

Do you live in NYC? That's the only place that would come even close to the local taxes, and that's only 16%. And to get in at 28% effective rate you would be talking about a pretty high level nominal tax rate. So, you making half a mil?

@johnhooks said:

No one would think that's reasonable. Around here, you can figure around 80% is take home, until the next tax bracket.

Unless you plan on making triple what you make now, the "next" nominal bracket is the 28% one. And that rate is only for the money made after that threshold. I'm deep into that bracket.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/10/30/irs-announces-2015-tax-brackets-standard-deduction-amounts-and-more/#1425d2006f71

Let's break down what someone should be seeing in a paycheck. To make this simple, let's assume state income tax out of the equation, because they vary from flat 3.75% in Illinois, a progressive scheme of up to 5.25% in Oklahoma to 0% in Texas. We will also assume you work for a company, so standard W2 wages and we will assume they are cheap ass bastards who went "hurr durr obamacare" and refuse to offer health insurance. Medicare is 1.45% flat, no matter how much you make. FICA is 6.2% up to $118K, then it's nothing. Federal taxes are a progressive tax system, from 10% up to 39.6%. Consult your local tax professional for more info.

If you are making $40K flat, single, taking the standard deduction, your AGI would be ~34K. $2480 would go to SS, $580 would go to Medicare. The 34K would put you in the 15% tax bracket, 10% up to $9K then 15% on the rest, $3716, for $4638 total. If you set up your W4 correctly, you should have ~$620 a week net on $769 gross, or 19%.

These calculations change with your situation. I make a lot more than $40K, my tax deduction is 24% per paycheck with an effective rate of around 19% after all my deductions and such.

If you ever hear people quoting some crazy numbers on taxes, always break it down on them to find out exactly what they are getting. You will find that most people are talking out their ass.

@Lakshmana said:

How to cuustomise the Linux os according to the system to be used at any environment.
How to customise the Windows OS ?
What are the difference present between the customization?

How is babby formed?

@coliver said:

I think we need someone with experience to weigh in on how this works. From my knowledge they use a DHCP-esque system and do MAC reservations to set addresses. @PSX_Defector may have some inside knowledge though. Certainly TWC hasn't, at least to my knowledge, logged into the modem to set it up. They get the MAC address then plug it into the network.

There are multiple systems at play, but you are for the most part correct.

The start of everything is CMTS. Most people are using Cisco CMTS boxes nowadays, although I really only deal with TWC and Comcast for the most part. People like CableONE or Mediacomm might do things differently. But from my experience, most of the systems are fairly similar from different vendors.

The CMTS has a private VLAN'd network, 10.x or something like that, which sends traffic across for authentication and provisioning. This encompasses much of the newer environments within cable systems. It also handles things like CableCARD and set top boxes.

There are two things CMTS looks at to determine what it needs to do. The MAC and the serial. MAC address is obvious, need it to fetch an IP. The serial then determines if the device is allowed onto the network. From there, it will establish the allowed services; internet, HBO, or like at my house all the porn channels. This sends the token over to the device to allow it to descramble whatever it is accessing. Internet access is given the go-ahead to talk to the public VLAN, read if there is a lease on the MAC already, then issue an IP out.

This is usually the only thing that the ISP does. Very few actually configure the device beyond that. Many don't even have access to that side of the device. Some vendors do, like Pace or even Arris. But only very limited things.

@scottalanmiller said:

@PSX_Defector said:

Just because you haven't bought AT&T's retail service doesn't mean you don't have any dealings with AT&T. These smaller CLECs just don't get people in who can navigate the waters of the ILEC effectively.

Okay, then that implies that AT&T service is ridiculous and no one should do business with them. I was assuming AT&T weren't the crooks here. But if you are confident that they are the ones that aren't servicing the customers and can't get PRIs working... I'm not sure what your earlier statements about AT&T not being like that were about.

Nope, because most of the time, it's the CLECs that don't get their shit together. They call AT&T going "Fix it, fix it, fix it, fix it" and don't even bother telling them what the actual problem is. They put in a ticket that says "Loop down!!!!". We run MLT, show it has connectivity between the CO and smartjack, then find nothing plugged into the smartjack. There was no cuts, no bad cards, no nothing. Just lazy CLECs not hooking into the equipment correctly.

AT&T, and most ILECs are very similar, have a culture, a way of doing things. It's very ITIL-ish, somewhat cultish. CLECs had to spin up fast but didn't get all the people in line to work effectively with the ILECs. Throw a rookie at a massive company and they will get chewed up and spit out.

Like everything, learn the game well. That's why I can navigate AT&Ts bureaucracy with ease.

@scottalanmiller said:

I've had longer outages on my AT&T leased OC-192s than I have on Verison FiOS in the same relative time frames, as an example.

On a long haul circuit, there are many points of failure and stretches for 1000s of miles. A home FiOS connection is at most 1km long. Outages, like a cut trunk, can and will happen. And notice it was "days" and not "months". Which shows where the priority of the truck goes when an issue like that happens.

This is the kind of thinking that SMBs do. They conflate cheap, consumer grade stuff with enterprise thinking it's the same thing. Like the dumbshit who bitched at the phone bills for our cells (AT&T at the time) because "Why should we pay all that money to them? I can go to MetroPCS and get a phone line for $40 a month!"

@scottalanmiller said:

@PSX_Defector said:

Obviously you know everything about AT&T and their policies, so no point explaining it. Other than you being utterly wrong about AT&T's policies and procedures for outages.

Did I say AT&T? All I know is real world what customers have happen to them. AT&T is just one of many, many phone providers and not one that I see very often.

Whom do you think sells the CLEC the trunk? The POTS fairy? Everyone buys from the ILEC, be it AT&T, Verizon, CentryLink, or Windstream, then resells to others. The loop is sound, the loop is complete. What the CLEC does with it after that is completely up to them.

AT&T is the largest telecommunications company in the US. They WERE effectively the ONLY telecommunications company in the US until 1983. And every ILEC emulates their processes, well maybe not Verizon because they have gone completely insane.

Just because you haven't bought AT&T's retail service doesn't mean you don't have any dealings with AT&T. These smaller CLECs just don't get people in who can navigate the waters of the ILEC effectively.

@scottalanmiller said:

@PSX_Defector said:

And as someone who has worked in telecom, I can say a PRI is considered high priority in a outage situation. Someone cuts a trunk line, guess what the tech is gonna be doing first?

As a customer advocate, I guarantee you, this isn't true. They might say this internally, but it doesn't really happen. Bring down a power line, someone's home cable will be back up days before the PRI gets fixed.

Obviously you know everything about AT&T and their policies, so no point explaining it. Other than you being utterly wrong about AT&T's policies and procedures for outages.

@scottalanmiller said:

@PSX_Defector said:

@scottalanmiller said:

Who even provisions true PRI today?

Everyone. ISDN is still a legit product line.

http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=9448

It's definitely not everyone. Nearly no one does a physical PRI. Most vendors don't even have the product for any region, let alone most.

AT&T covers most of the US, both in their traditional regions (MOKAT, Pac/NV, Ameritech, BellSouth) and out (thank you TA96). But if you want the entirety of the US, I'm not going to find things for little co-op or one central office, but here are the big boys:

http://business.frontier.com/enterprise/pri-isdn
https://www22.verizon.com/wholesale/solutions/solution/ISDN%2BPRI.html
http://www.centurylink.com/wholesale/pcat/isdnpri.html
https://www.cincinnatibell.com/aboutus/regulatory_affairs/Tariff/CBAD/Indiana/LocalSvcs/section7.pdf
https://www.fairpoint.com/enterprise/voice/isdn-pri/
https://www.megapath.com/voice/lines-pri/

I could pull regulatory pages on it on a state by state basis. Remember also that PRI, by extension ISDN, is regulated. Even in Texas, I can get someone on shit if they f[moderated] up a line, month long outages from a previously working circuit are complete and utter farces.

https://www.puc.texas.gov/agency/rulesnlaws/subrules/telecom/26.142/26.142.pdf

@scottalanmiller said:

PRIs have single points of failure combined with low inherent incentive for vendors to be concerned. Connections are private and low priority.

You can't eliminate every SPF. You have to entrust your network to support the product as best and effectively as they can. And as someone who's worked both for and against telecom vendors, I can say from a Tier 1 provider, a PRI is very, very stable.

And as someone who has worked in telecom, I can say a PRI is considered high priority in a outage situation. Someone cuts a trunk line, guess what the tech is gonna be doing first?

@scottalanmiller said:

Who even provisions true PRI today?

Everyone. ISDN is still a legit product line.

http://www.att.com/gen/general?pid=9448

@scottalanmiller said:

@PSX_Defector said:

Of ALL the telecom technology out there, PRI is the MOST reliable service out there for voice.

T1, which is a dependency of PRI, is simply not that dependable.

Nowadays, T1's are delivered as HSDSL circuits, since at least 2004ish. On one pair versus the two pairs of PRI. Modulation is different, but it emulates a PRI fairly well.

A PRI is an ISDN product, which delivers channels down to the location. They can be voice, data, or both. A T1 can be a PRI, but a PRI is not always a T1. Don't conflate T1's and your strange bad luck with them with PRIs which deal in trunks from central offices to a location.

@scottalanmiller said:

@PSX_Defector said:

SQL Server runs on any version of Windows. I use Developer on Windows 8. I've used Standard on XP. It's not a perfect solution, but if you need to get some info into standard format of SQL and don't have interwebs access, it's great.

The OP has an office too big to be used that way though for licensing reasons.

Just pointing out that Windows Server is not a requirement for SQL Server.

There is always the use of Azure's hosted DB. Again, simple, easy, ODBC compliant, uses standard SQL Server tools to modify and access. It's got some quirks, like I couldn't use hMailServer on it without some major modification of the schema, but otherwise it's plenty easy for quick and easy DB deployment.

Given the "need" for iOS "access", seems stupid not to put it in a hosted solution. Licenses are then just a line item on the invoice.

@scottalanmiller said:

@Dashrender said:

@scottalanmiller said:

I've worked with a lot of PRIs that are far worse.

You post this all the time. I'm curious - considering that you've worked with thousands if not hundreds of thousands of PRI circuits, what percentage of them were horrible? 1%? .1? less?

I've not worked with that many, those are huge numbers.

But of what I've worked with, 1% is laughable. Probably more like 40%. It's enough that I consider it the fundamental risk to voice communications. So large that even if PRI is just 1% of the market it dwarfs the cumulative risk of VoIP of the other 99%.

WTF?

You know I worked for some large telecoms. I've put in PRIs, BRIs, T1/T3, OC-x, even worked on a few 5ESS switches in the old days. A PRI is nothing more than an extension of the central office to your own PBX, running on the worlds most reliable equipment. Of ALL the telecom technology out there, PRI is the MOST reliable service out there for voice. The circuit, not the ancillary equipment around it. PBXes fail, usually due to lazy telcom admins. I've lost all internet connections to the world over multiple pipes in a single location but the PRI was still running just fine. Like most things, 90% of "failures" are self inflicted, bad configs, bad equipment. I've seen loops need some changing and fixing, but never outright fail out the blue without any reason.

There's a reason Ma Bell setup the network the way she did. If I have to trust anyone, it's gonna be AT&T's legacy network.

@scottalanmiller said:

@Carnival-Boy said:

And Access runtime is free. So you can develop multi users solutions using Access runtime and SQL Server express for practically free.

The runtime is free? Is that true on iOS devices too (a requirement for the client in question.) What about on Linux? Can we "access" it from anywhere?

2013+ offers some fun stuff, but in a sense, no, it's not a "web" application. You can use Access, and an ACCDB, as a backend for design and the DB for IIS. I believe Apache can do it as well, but haven't bothered trying nor would it be really worth it other than a "look what I can do" thing.

SQL Server Express is free... except for the Windows Server license cost which would be required for even a tiny company and means that the cost shoots up by about $700. Not epic, but for a ten person company, not trivial either. But if you can use PostgreSQL, that would solve that piece.

SQL Server runs on any version of Windows. I use Developer on Windows 8. I've used Standard on XP. It's not a perfect solution, but if you need to get some info into standard format of SQL and don't have interwebs access, it's great.

@scottalanmiller said:

@Carnival-Boy said:

People seem to assume Access will only work with Access databases (Jet), when it works brilliantly with other databases, especially SQL server but I've written apps based on Oracle. I mostly use it with SQL Server these days. Whatever you use, the database should reside on a server not a desktop.

I'm very aware that it talks to SQL Server, that's the only way that I would ever consider using it, but was unaware that it works with other options. Will it talk to the big two: MariaDB and PostgreSQL or at least Firebird?

It's called ODBC.

I used Access to connect to my AS/400's DB2 server. As long as ODBC is presented to the client, it works just fine.

@scottalanmiller said:

And then the question is also... why not 12Gb/s SAS?

If that's the determining factor, then why not 16Gbps FC, or even the upcoming massive speeds?

http://www.networkworld.com/article/2174282/lan-wan/fibre-channel-will-come-with-32-gigabit--128-gigabit-speeds-in-2016.html

Of course, if we are talking about pure speed with regards to interconnects between machines, then Infiniband blows them all away:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfiniBand

Fibre Channel has it's place. It's much more scaleable, why do you think every multi-tenant environment uses them? SAS interconnects are good for onesie/twosie type things, but when you need to scale more and more storage, it's much easier to pop it in the FC fabric. We provision new storage in a matter of hours integrating into our already large environment. The FC storage devices tend to be much more useful than straight SAS connected storage as well, with the ability to manage the suckers without so much as a blip in downtime.

If money is no object, I would buy Infiniband infrastructure and storage. If I need lots of it on the cheap, SAS. If I need more features, Fibre Channel.

@Jason said:

@PSX_Defector said:

@Jason said:

Oh, they have competitors but they suck too. Not in customer service like Comcast does. Verizon has great customer service but the dsl speeds here only go up to 2mbits.

???

VADI has 7Mbps profiles on their legacy DSLAMs, with their standard at 3Mbps. I know of no rate that will give you 2Mbps, even the 1.5 profile locks in at 1768-ish. Getting only 2Mbps means that line really sucks ass and per their policy would reject the line or you have shitty wiring inside and they have no idea about it.

As for Comcast, check your tap and see if they actually fired it up. Comcast is one of the few cable providers that does soft disconnects from the node versus physical chokes on the pedestal. The only thing you have to do is make sure your inside wiring is fired up correctly

Verizon officially says its "1.5 - 3mbits speed"

I would but I'd have to terminate the line from the pole. It fell of the side of the house from a wind storm/fallen limb before I moved it. It's laying on the ground but spanped into. Technically I could terminate it to an F connector and then extended it on the ground to my house until they come and run a 50ft or less run from my house to the pole.

1.5-3.0 doesn't mean 2.0. They lock it at 3.0 for the vast majority of lines out there. And they offer ADSL2+, which gets you to 15Mbps. Of course, if you live in the boonies, then it will be a different issue.

So judging by the rest of your post, I would expect that Comcast did fire it up, you just don't have wiring to the inside of your house. They should be able to extend the tap out to you, or you can trench a RG6 yourself. Before screaming at Comcast for something make sure your side is 100% up.

@Dashrender said:

Right again, FB traffic does not affect our network performance. Sure we don't currently have a blazing fast internet, but it's usable for us.

Facebook itself, no, it's not a bandwidth hog. But all the things branching out from Facebook, streams of videos, scams, and security risks. I used to block MySpace because of that when I had a limited bandwidth situation. Until I got my Peplink and shuffled non-critical traffic over the cheapest pipe I could find. Yeah, enjoy productivity now when pages load using a 1.5Mbps DSL line for everyone in the office.