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ENUM Protocol in Australia?
Master Kai writes "Looks like Australia's thinking about implementing ENUM, an internet protocol that will convert a simple phone number into a URI. The benefits are obvious, use one number to contact you on any communications medium. Your website, fixed phone, fax, mobile (cell) and email address. But at what cost to our privacy? I know that personally I prefer to give out my email address, because I can change it at the click of a button. And what about spam? Not only would spamers have your email address, but your contact numbers too. Eeeep!
Anyway. It looks good nonetheless. Check out the news article , and for the Australian Communications Authority Discussion Paper. "
get phone calls from spammers anyway.
I think we can ALL agree that any form of "wonder number" is a bad thing.
Any number/ID that ties YOU into everything that you ever sign up for and every communication device you own is never a good thing. Some things you just want to keep private.
I can see where this would be good in a business world, where instead of saying "my fax is: ###-####, my phone is ###-#### my email is..." etc. they can just give out one number.
The threat of spam will keep this from ever becoming a reality. However this will probaly not increase telemarketing "spam" too much because there is already a public listing where they can get your number, its called a phonebook. The reason email spam will be a problem with this is simply because email is practically no cost to spammers.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
I think it'd be okay if it was an opt-in decision (like unlisted numbers).
Assuming Telstra doesn't mess it up (like they did this year, printing some unlisted numbers in the phone book).
I'm sure it'll just become another "feature" they try and charge people for.
-- Shaun "Blessed are the geeks, for they shall Internet the earth"
"Sure you can. It's www.555-6789.com"
*Later*
"Yowzer, that mama was hot,hot,hot... Hang on... 555 (dawning on him) GODDAMMIT!!!"
A little inconvenience to try and maintain my privacy is a small price to pay.
;)
I'd rather not be spammed on every device I own.
Fears of it being a single ID number are pointless anyway. We already have that.
We defaeated the "Australia Card" by referendum, but the government of the day (Labour I believe) snuck in the Tax File Number, which is in effect the exact same thing.
We've all got a bar code already.
Well, You have a domain: http://kaimarna.com/
You're privacy isn't that great anyway if you have a way to contact you via a domain... Just do a whois...
Gmanske.
I used to put my work phone number in my emails until a stupid guy from a mail list started to call me to discuss some topic that he disagreed... what a pain in the neck!!!
I'm pretty sure theres a cost involved with doing that. Also, a phone number is a lot more personal and long term than an e-mail address. The reason people change numbers when they move is because they want to keep that number, as it is closely associated with them. You can always just ignore a certain e-mail address by just not checking it. Its a lot more difficult to ignore your phone ringing off the hook.
I.O.U One Sig.
There is a hierarchy of communications media, each one with it's role, and the idea of merging them all into some super number is a bad idea. It reminds me of the car Homer Simpson designed with all the bells and whistles; on paper it looked good but when he put it all together it BANKRUPTED HIS BROTHER. OK maybe that wasn't the best analogy but you get the picture.
Universal Resource Inibitor?
;-)
Thanks.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
RFC2396 goes into great detail about URI's and URL's. It covers the (minor for most of us) differences between them.
In Australia there is one overwhelmingly dominant phone carrier - Telstra.
If you have a single number to dial to also send someone e-mail, then they will no doubt try to charge people for a phone call, whereas you can currently send as many e-mails as you want once you have an internet connection. This will mean that get more revenue. After all, their last profits were down to a few hundred million.
Do the aussies have a national Do Not Call list? If they did I wouldn't see a problem in using your phone number for your website url.
And hey, you can always become a hermit if the spam ever gets to you.
Request for Comments doc:
This document updates and merges "Uniform Resource Locators"
[RFC1738] and "Relative Uniform Resource Locators" [RFC1808] in order
to define a single, generic syntax for all URI.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Great.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
At it's heart this is a product of the Telstra cultural malignancy whereby they actually believe that eight plus digit numbers define the pinnacle of usability.
I really should write a book on the sad quarter century of Telstra struggling and failing to turn online information into an income stream without ever coming to terms with the fundamental dynamics of the information age, so I shouldn't try to squeeze too many details into a SlashDot post before I run the facts past a libel lawyer.
As Australia's public telecomms carrier, Telstra's world view continues to blinker policy debate, even more so since our reactionary federal governement installed the even more reactionary Senator Richard Alston on top of the information and communications policy bureacracy, basically as an offshoot of his dabblings with the arts.
How amusing that Telstra has been thrown a lifeline by the rise of mobile (cellular) phone usage. They still don't have a clue that the biggest plus for mobile phones is that they enable you to stop addressing people by their numbers.
But it's still far and away the best place to live, even if the numbers don't always add up.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Personally, I think they should match it to your license plate number. That way, you can call people who are driving horribly and then email them about how badly they were driving via your PDA. We could turn road rage into its own medium.
So if you don't have a phone number because you're one of the few people on the planet that doesn't have a phone, would you be unknown to the Australian government?
This space for rent.
I would simply stop checking my regular e-mail. I would have a personel website. To contact me, you would have to visit the website and fill out the online form. This would be used to stop clutter from any mass mailing. Those wishing a personal contact would have to do a personal vist to the site. My home phone would get an automated voicemail system. I would not be in easy reach of the mass marketers.
The truth shall set you free!
Why is this modded funny? It's not, URI is the correct term.
http://www.foo.com/ is a URL
mailto:bob@smith.com.au is a URI
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Probably better not to, if you have a weak heart.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If I wanted to pick a single identifier (which, like many others who have commented, I don't), I wouldn't want it to be a 10 digit number. Maybe I should start giving out my IP address instead of my named web site address, too. You don't see people rushing out to register domain names like 2139812309.com because they suck compared to even a ridiculous name like slashdot.org. I thought we were past using meaningless numbers for electronic addresses. Am I the only one who thinks they are doing this backwards? - Russ
I don't see the problem--if you don't want it, just don't use it.
The Raven
The Raven
actually, numbers are great. they are terse, they work on any keyboard in the world (including telephone keyboards), and they are language-independent. and when you think about it, phone numbers really aren't much less mnemonic than the local-part of a typical big-ISP email address.
of course, nobody's suggesting that we use numbers instead of email addresses or URLs, but addresses that consist of nothing but digits are in fact quite useful.
and anyway, enum is only half of the picture - there's also a proposal for mapping URLs to other information from the rescap working group. The basic idea is that an identifier should not be inherently tied to one single kind of resource - given either a phone number or a URL (and the latter includes email addresses), you should be able to find out additional information about that resource if the owner of that number/URL wants to provide it. phone number to web page? easy.
email address to phone number? sure, if I want to provide it. or maybe you have my voice # and want to send me email. again, no problem.
Great! This makes life much simpler.
According to the ENUM spec my new easy-to-remember all-purpose address will be:
7.2.4.8.7.5.3.2.2.6.8.8.e164.arpa
No longer will I have to use that impossible to remember email address (1st name)@(surname).org
- hotmail email
- work email
- work email 2
- mobile
- home number
- work number
Naturally I give these out to different people for different contexts. There is no way I'd want everyone to know all of them!My question is, What problem are they trying to solve?
here in Melbourne it seems as though there exists a national Do Call list. in fact I wouldn't be surprised if my government were using their extensive wiretaps to ensure that telemarketing quotas were being met!
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
Just out of curiousity, do you really think the slashdot crowd is going to want to "get paid to read bulk email"?
That's like going into the Vatican and asking if anyone wants to come sacrifice some goats to Baal.
--
pants ahoy
In Japan all the mobiles had a mail address based in the telephone number, like :
0901234678@telcom.ne.jp
But they had change it because the indiscriminate mail spam. You only need to send the spam from
09000000001 to 0909999999999 @telecom.ne.jp
and everybody gets your spam!.
The reverse of this would be even more useful to me - a mapping from DNS to phone number.
That way I could give out my stable, unchanging domain name, instead of my phone number - which changes depending on where I am and who I'm buying phone service from.
Maybe you could store a phone number in a special type of DNS record. Then you'd pay a small fee to a company that provides a toll-free number. People who want to get in touch with me call the toll-free number, type in the domain name, and the call connects. Computer-based phones or future stand-alone phones could let you type the DNS name instead of the phone number.
I mean, if some headless quadriplegic is reading the article, he certainly doesn't expect anyone to consider his situation representative of of the world population's. Therefore, he doesn't post a reply saying, "Sadly, I cannot even dial a phone, being without arms, legs, or a head. Until advances in remote stump-controlled robotic monkeys allow me to dial a phone, nothing in this article possibly applies to me as an individual, and therefore it is wrong for Slashdot to have ever posted it."
You're almost as bad as those idiots who complain about Slashdot being too "US-centric." No fucking shit, it's an American website started in America by Americans hosted at an American datacenter and read primarily by Americans living in America. If you want the local news, turn on the "tele" or read the newspaper or take a donkey down to the general store or do whatever you normally do to hear region-specific news. The Web has not yet reached the point of idiocy where all American websites are required to post US-centric disclaimers lest some pale splay-toothed goat-faced layabout living in a hovel in some has-been Eurotrash country of no international consequence (besides UN/NATO membership, tee hee) be offended and be forced to post a whiny complaint along the lines of "Hear hear, chaps, I don't think it's very sporting of you to post news related to America, because I'm not an American. How dare you remind me of my country's complete lack of significance in the realms technology and entertainment! If you continue, I may be forced to wet myself."
In conclusion: you are a loser. If you have nothing to contribute to the conversation except some bitchy little reminder that some people are forced to change their phone numbers every five minutes, you should stop posting, you brainless attention-starved fucktard. Please, never post again. Or, better yet, kill yourself. Or, better yet, kill yourself, and your entire family, and your entire circle of frien -- oops, nevermind. Just kill your family to ensure that further defecation in the genepool is kept to a minimum. And remember to kill your family before killing yourself, brainiac.
Fuckers.
--
I like to watch.
See http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/about/presentations/ri pencc-ietf-ec/ for a presentation about ENUM. The interesting part is that it lets you take a phone number and map it to one or more URLs of the form mailto:foo@example.com, sip:foo@example.com (for VoIP and conferencing), http://blah, etc.
Since the phone number space is relatively constrained in many countries and cities (e.g. London in the UK has changed its number space twice in the last decade), phone numbers are not an ideal solution to 'throwaway' numbers to give to potential telemarketers, but ENUM could help in theory.
My idea was that you would have a number of email and SIP addresses, some only given to friends/family, some published on websites, and some given to companies that may resell these addresses without your permission. This last set of addresses can be dropped rapidly as and when spammers get hold of them, exactly as some people do today with email addresses.
ENUM comes in as a way of mapping phone numbers to these more flexible email/SIP addresses - you have a 'private' ENUMed phone number, ideally ex directory, that maps to the friends/family address, and another for companies, and so on. You can change this mapping quite rapidly.
Where ENUM is weak is that it discloses the actual SIP and email addresses used (as it has to). So anybody who caches the old addresses can continue to spam you, which is why you need to have more then one ENUM phone number.
Overall, ENUM makes it easier to spam people (no surprise), but I thought I would at least explore if it could be used for anti-spam purposes... The weakness is that the number-to-address translation is made available to the client - this is the virtually unavoidable result of using a directory service to implement this mapping. Something like a forwarding service for SIP and email would be much more useful - i.e. it gateways from a public SIP/email address into a secret address, meaning that when the mapping changes the spammer is left with a useless address.
Overall, I think ENUM is primarily useful for legacy reasons, since so many people know about phone numbers (ditto for equipment). What would be more useful is to enable phones to understand SIP URLs and email addresses (latter is already happening with mobile phones, and SIP will arrive in later versions of UMTS 3G mobile phones in Europe/Asia), and have a forwarding service as mentioned.
According to the Australian Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk E-Mail, Australia currently has mild opt-out spamming provisions, most of which are based on a voluntary code of conduct rather than legislation. Perhaps you were thinking of Europe, where there are opt-in rules which could be considered a sufficient deterrent to spammers.
Even so, would Australian laws apply if the spam originated from outside of Australia?
Nowadays most offices run some kind of FAX-server, which enables people to "print to FAX-number" from their PC (instead of printing a document and then put that paper in a conventional FAX-machine) and receive FAX as tiff-attachments in Email.
Usually, these FAX-servers are 24x7 online on the internet as well.
With ENUM, one could implement the following: When the local FAX-server is asked to send some pages to +43662123456, it will look into the ENUM dns tree to check if the destination has registered an Internet-based method of transfering FAXes (e.g. FAX-G3/4 over TCP, or RFC822/MIME/SMTP). If yes, it uses its Internet-connection to transfer the document. If not, it falls back to G3 over PSTN.
While this does not affect the work-habits of end-users (e.g officedroids), it has the potential to save businesses a fortune in long distance phone-charges.
Or: Consider two companies who switched to VoIP for their intra-office phones and both use a gateway to call "normal" PSTN numbers. For calls between these companies, VoIP might work if the users use the right SIP urls when initiating the connection. With ENUM, users don't have to know whether the other side is VoIP-enabled and if yes, what their SIP-addresses look like. The caller will dial the number as usual; it's his phone (or gateway) which can query ENUM and then decide whether to route the call via VoIP to the other side, or to route the call through the PSTN.
Ohhh, did we miss our Thorazine, did we?
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Put simply:
URLs are a (proper) subset of URIs
URIs are the union of URLs and URNs
URLs are names for resources whose name is sufficient to resolve the resource. Eg nntp:<some server>/<message id>. To resolve it look at the URL. You have the protocol, server, and message id so you can just ask that server for the message named by the URL.
URNs aren't URLs. Eg news:<message id>. Resolving this requires knowing, say, a news server and its protocol.
So (as another poster said) mailto:<blah> is a URN since resolving to the actual mailbox <blah> requires more knowledge than the URI gives. http:<blah>, by contrast, is a URL. Resolving that is trivial given this URI.
Probably not entirely correct, but you get the idea. See the RFC above for tortuous detail.
Now IRIs, well...
Slashdot looked deep within my soul and assigned
me a number based on the order in which I joined
You know, I've often wondered what the effect of communication between cars would be.
Man, I'm glad to hear you say that. I thought I was alone on that. Put a micro-power transceiver in every car on the road, all tuned to the same frequency... It'd be chaos. *chuckle*
But then again, I also think that there ought to be a cutout circuit installed in car stereos that responds to a signal transmitted by emergency vehicles...
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Maybe I don't want my real voice number to be advertised all over the net????
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Richard, it is unfortunate your most informative post doesn't seam to have been widely noticed before this thread had slid into quiessence the way of most all Slashdot stories.
Slashdot isn't much of a place for reasoned debate, let alone conclusive debate, but it is just about the best place on the Internet to get the temperature of knowledgable people's feelings, so the most useful thing you could do is listen to what some of us have been saying with passion: E.164 (telephone) numbers provide a much less satisfactory human interface than does the DNS.
I write this sharing a flat with a colleague who is in the middle of half a year coding a voice over IP system, having myself posted above about Telstra's historic blindness to these issues, which I've been following closely for more than 20 years, and having gone looking for your "article on ENUM in Communications Convergence" only to find the article credited to "Geoff Huston, Telstra".
While Geoff has certainly proved to be politically adroit, he has never demonstrated that he has a clue as to what actually goes on in the real world where the real actions of real people ultimately determine the fate of everybody's best intentions.
I also know from first hand experience how easy it can be to get caught up with what you are sure is a great answer to the point where you can no longer ask yourself whether you are actually addressing a valid question. I think we could all happily name more than one arm of W3C, by way of familiar example, which has run off with the best of intentions in a direction the world will never follow.
So do what you must to facilitate the graceful deprecation of E.164 numbers as the IP network takes over the routing of more and more voice traffic, but please spare us the embarrassment of any more suggestions that humans might ever willingly use 8-10 digit strings in place of familiar user names and domain names.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
That's Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Canada. When I lived there the MT&T company was not providing per-minute toll numbers in that area code. Normal long distance charges would apply, of course.