On 11/04/2010 04:26 PM, Dan Journo wrote: > I don't like it when I ask for a recommendation on the list, > and I get a load of personal emails from guys with asterisk box on > an ADSL connection saying they can provide me with service.
Most of the commercial entities on this list are part of what might be termed the open source-focused, low-end market segment, on both the customer and the vendor side. This doesn't always mean they're bad; sometimes that's just a reflection of who they're stuck selling to for the time being. So, you're going to get a lot of that. I don't think there is much that can be done about it. It's helped along by the mass-delusion fostered by Asterisk and open-source telephony, and to some extent open-source software in general, that all you have to do is throw up a box, install some stuff, and start realising instant, thundering profits. There's no avoiding it. > My wish is a list where people give others real, valid, truthful > advice on suppliers and other business advice. Sadly, you can't make people do that. The best you can do is to judge their credibility based on your own impressions and values, and whatever value you attach to the opinions expressed by others. It's an open list, not an exclusive club, so anyone can come here and scam and bamboozle you all day long. :) In the low-end VoIP sector, this is quite common, and is especially common -- I would say more like the norm -- from certain regions of the world for a plethora of economic and cultural reasons I'm sure you yourself can work out. But in general, it's pretty easy to tell who is the real deal and who is not. There's no rule of thumb or a clean heuristic that is easily anatomised; it's just one of those things you know when you see. You can intuitively gauge the intelligence of people by the depth and thoroughness of their writing, their perspective, the detailed advice they give, the way they formulate their ideas, and the apparent consistency of the conclusions they draw. Alternately, you can judge by the professionalism and sophistication of their products and services offered. That's just how doing business in an open-source conversational venue and ecosystem goes, as you probably know. There are a lot of amateurs, fakers, scammers, indolent people, and just plain idiots, in the literal sense of the term. There are people with questionable ulterior motives. And then there are the folks you actually want to deal with. You'll find the same thing on the commercial list or forum of every large open-source project, like MySQL or PHP, and forums like WebHostingTalk and DSLReports as well. I would say there are no options other than to just keep asking questions, and hone your biases toward people that seem to know what they're doing and present a sincere, believable image in a commonsensical, intuitive kind of way. It's not a foolproof mechanism, by any means; really good scammers and bullshit artists know that this is exactly what reasonably intelligent people are looking for. But amazingly enough, most of the low end "vendors" here, and in general, are really bad at coming off in a way that would make a professional, knowledgeable English-speaking person take them seriously. I don't know if they're really trying anymore; there are plenty of low-hanging fruit for them to pick, in the form of people who are illiterate and generally undiscerning in precise proportion to the degree to which the bottom-of-the-barrel dingbats' sales paradigms are functional. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov - Principal Evariste Systems LLC 1170 Peachtree Street 12th Floor, Suite 1200 Atlanta, GA 30309 Tel: +1-678-954-0670 Fax: +1-404-961-1892 Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/ -- _____________________________________________________________________ -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com -- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
