Comments for IPUrbia

Comment on State of Illinois and Feds fight over Worker Verification Program by Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:54:00 +0000

I think clarification on your post is needed because many of your points are simply not accurate. In particular, the comment, “..90% accuracy for a database that will instantly label you a criminal and drop you from the potential employment pool, most likely without any feedback as to the source of your miseries?” is problematic and very misleading. As someone who works closely with E-Verify, I can attest that the program does not “instantly label you a criminal..” First,
there are many reasons as to why an employee’s information would cannot be confirmed immediately, including becomming a citizen and neglecting to update your information with the Social Security Administration, getting married and neglecting to update your information, etc. etc. In no way does the program make the assumption that the employee is not authorized to work in the U.S. or label the employee a ‘criminal.’ In fact, in most cases the initial non confirmation occurred because the employee neglected to update his or her own records.
Secondly, if the initial query does not result in a message stating the employee is work authorized, the employee has ample time to resolve the issue with either Social Security Administration or Dept of Homeland Security. In the majority of cases, the case is resolved within 24 hours. Since the employer is required to allow the employee to continue working during this timeframe, employees are not adversely affected whatsoever, other than being inconvenienced with going to the local Social Security office to update their records (which they are required to do regardless of whether their employer uses E-Verify).
Third, the employee does indeed receive ‘feedback’ on why E-Verify could not confirm his or her status – within seconds of the query, the program transmits a message stating either ‘work authorized’ or ‘tentative non-confirmation, SSA unable to confirm’ or ‘tentative non-confirmatin, DHS unable to confirm,’ and instructs the employee on how to resolve it. Thus, the employer instantly knows which agency was not able to verify employment authorization and provides the employee with this information so the employee can resolve the issue. I realize that many are not familiar with E-Verify, and as a result misconceptions abound, but I believe that one should know the facts before casting criticism, or he or she risks the unfortunate circumstance of making false claims.

Comment on Small Business Mystique by Ben Stoker

Ben Stoker — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 05:46:00 +0000

I am completely guilty of #1 (haven’t had the chance to be guilty of #2). The problem is that there isn’t any realy way for someone who is COMPLETELY new to business to cut their teeth without making those mistakes.

Comment on Whither Telecom? by Alex

Alex — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:40:00 +0000

Supreme irony here, apropos of that: link.

Comment on Invention versus Innovation by Alex

Alex — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:38:00 +0000

Wholeheartedly agreed. It really is all about the execution.

There is little controversy from our various sources of inside perspective (”information – the jet fuel of innovation”) that all parts of our product line have great potential for market acceptance and objective appeal as transformative business intelligence enhancements that save money, improve cashflow, increase holistic information visibility, enable business decisions, and automate banalities.

It’s creating them getting them out the door that’s the problem.

Comment on Ooma oomph by Alex

Alex — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:36:00 +0000

Clarification: This is an inside joke. We had some smug company startup execs cancel lunch on us a half hour before it was supposed to start, so ever since then we’ve been mulling over the idea of building a business model entirely based around canceling lunches and other species of appointment.

Comment on Ooma oomph by Kelly Storm

Kelly Storm — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 21:37:00 +0000

“Now, it does give me inspiration for a new startup idea that needs to happen: imagine a site where you wager how long it takes various web 2.0 startups to crash and burn. It’s kinda like being able to sell short on bad IPOs (Vonage, anyone?)”

Could we pair that with our business model to cancel lunches? I think there’s a large cross-section of people who want to bootstrap ridiculous startups *and* cancel lunches on a regular basis.

We could even thank them for their business.

Comment on MuniFI Fallout and the Race to the Bottom by Alex

Alex — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 19:17:00 +0000

You have some ideas for how an independent can offer triple play? By this I mean independent without some aspects of a big franchised incumbent.

How do you get the content? Don’t you have to build head-ends?

I don’t know anything about cable, clue me in. Also, what are your thoughts on the viability of doing this using telco access media at this point, i.e. ADSL2?

Comment on Ooma oomph by Alex

Alex — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 19:14:00 +0000

This is an abysmal idea. Of all the possible business models that might lend themselves to something like this, this is absolutely not one of them.

It reminds me of what some people tried to do with dialup back in the day, which had the same basic cost structure impediments. When I first got to Athens in August 1999, we bought dialup from a company called webCOMBO, which advertised unlimited dialup forever for a one-time $150 charge. And just resold Level3 managed modem from there.

It was nice for the six months before bankruptcy.

Comment on Death of the Carrier??? by Alex

Alex — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 20:05:00 +0000

Sorry if I’m being thick – how is any of this necessarily evocative of any ‘death’ of any carrier?

Comment on Telcos to deliver software as a service? by Alex

Alex — Wed, 23 May 2007 17:04:00 +0000

Speaking of great software for telcos, I have nothing but good things to say about TransNexus's
Least Cost Routing and VoIP OSS/BSS products.