They simply want to be able to collect more information (read evidences) about you and me, information that can be useful during investigations, or in a court.
Let's say you declare a very little income to your government, but at the same time you keep posting travel pictures, photo of your new Porsche, etc...
There are already companies which specialize in tracking and profiling people online. It's just a matter of time before police follows this trend.
Either implicite or explicit, there's always a cap on any ressource. Now it depends on the cap:)
Like everybody, I also don't like caps. When I started using cable back in Paris in late 90's, my stupid provider imposed very low limits, like max 500mb upload / month. And at the same time, they had no problem advertising their service as "Unlimited Internet access" on every wall in the street.
300gb seems to be high enough. In July I downloaded a lot of via Bittorrent (HD stuff), and total trafic for that month was 74.70gb, as reported by my Linksys router running Tomato firmware (http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato/). Normally, I would use from 12 to 25gb/month (2 persons, with lot of streaming radio).
Living not far from the country where this conference will take place, I wanted to attend and apply for a pass. But to my great diception, the ticket is about 4000 ringits, or 900 euros, or 1200 USD. This is simply ridiculous! I will not go, unless I can convince my employer to send me there.
And I was very surprised to see that Microsoft is one of the sponsors.
That's the power of voice over IP, and it must be scary enough for big/old telcos when people can bypass them.
I just installed Asterisk (http://www.asterisk.org/) on a server, and created a SIP account for my mobile and my fix phone on it. Additionally, I connected Asterisk to different VOIP providers like FWD, Free, Gizmo, Pfingo...
For outbound calls, and depending on the price of each provider, I can configure Asterisk dialplan like let's say:
Singapore +65XXXXXXXX route to Pfingo (0$/min)
France +33XXXXXXXX route to Free (0$/min)
UK +44XXXXXXX and US +1XXXXXXX route to Gizmo 0.02$/min
etc...
For inbound calls, when a call is received from Pfingo or Gizmo telephone numbers, Asterisk rings both my fix and mobile phones through SIP. If my mobile is not connected to Asterisk (eg when 3G connection is down), Asterisk last attempt is to place a call to my "real" mobile number. When this also fail, Asterisk will redirect the call to the voicemail application, and I will get an email containing the sound file of the message.
Personally I hate receiving bills every month, or pay premium for making oversea calls. I really like to buy prepaid minutes online from VOIP providers, and spend them when and how I want.
I suggest you read "Asterisk, the future of Telephony" http://downloads.oreilly.com/books/9780596510480.pdf which is available for free. Also you can check different VOIP providers websites and see what they can offer to you. I've been playing with Gizmo since long time, service is great, and you can buy numbers in many countries. Minutes are cheap. Sound quality is good, but I remember few times where it was bad (toward China in particular).
I can give feed back on my own experience here in Singapore. I just switched to mobile broadband with M1. For 22sing$ a month (about 10 euros, 15 usd) I get:
- 6 month contract only
- 512kbps in / 384kbps out, the cheapest plan, but I don't need more. They also have 1.8 and 3.6mbps.
- Really unlimited traffic (no ridiculous monthly cap like in some countries)
- A free 3.5g usb modem (Huawei e220) working fine on my Linux Thinkpad. But then I have to swap the simcard between phone and modem...
The very good thing is that I don't need my expensive voice plan anymore. Now I'm using VOIP on my N95 and it's almost free to call everywhere in the world with cheap prepaid minutes from Gizmo, or Pfingo. The sound quality is OK, comparable with normal gsm. But I had to use a low bandwidth codec (G729) between the Nokia N95 and my Asterisk server. It seems the 3G connection didn't provide enough bandwitdh for "uncompressed" G711, and I got poor results (5s lag) most of the time with G711. But G729 is perfect.
I got local Singapore phone number from Pfingo (http://www.pfingo.com) so people can call me from real phones. Here they even have a range of numbers dedicated to VOIP (+653xxxxxxx). And these are real numbers, reachable from other phones, unlike unassigned/invalid numbers used by providers sometime. For my friends and family in France I bought a +33 number from Gizmo. Both numbers rings my mobile and fix phone at home (Siemens S450 IP, also connected to my Asterisk server)
For normal Internet use (ie web, mail, IM) 3G is fine, but it's true that it feels slower and more laggy than my cable access at home. But on the other side I can connect from anywhere and it's ok with me to sacrifice a bit of speed for that! Personally, I think it's good to keep both mobile broadband and DSL/cable for heavy downloads.
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How many libraries of congress is that?
Diesel engines work without spark plugs -- they compress the air before injecting fuel; the compressed air is so hot that the fuel ignites by itself.
My truck has spark plugs, and every "consumer grade" diesel engine I have ever seen has them. So where did you hear of this non-sparking engine?
These are pre-heating sparks used for warming air in cylinders before starting the engine
They are obviously not targeting terrorists.
They simply want to be able to collect more information (read evidences) about you and me, information that can be useful during investigations, or in a court.
Let's say you declare a very little income to your government, but at the same time you keep posting travel pictures, photo of your new Porsche, etc...
There are already companies which specialize in tracking and profiling people online. It's just a matter of time before police follows this trend.
I've been using Evolution and the Exchange plugin to connect to my company's Exchange server.
I can access mail and online calendar with not much problem. There are some annoyances, but I can live with them.
I would prefer OpenChange and Evolution work together in improving the already existing stack instead of creating a new one...
Either implicite or explicit, there's always a cap on any ressource. Now it depends on the cap :)
Like everybody, I also don't like caps. When I started using cable back in Paris in late 90's, my stupid provider imposed very low limits, like max 500mb upload / month. And at the same time, they had no problem advertising their service as "Unlimited Internet access" on every wall in the street.
300gb seems to be high enough. In July I downloaded a lot of via Bittorrent (HD stuff), and total trafic for that month was 74.70gb, as reported by my Linksys router running Tomato firmware (http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato/). Normally, I would use from 12 to 25gb/month (2 persons, with lot of streaming radio).
Living not far from the country where this conference will take place, I wanted to attend and apply for a pass. But to my great diception, the ticket is about 4000 ringits, or 900 euros, or 1200 USD. This is simply ridiculous! I will not go, unless I can convince my employer to send me there. And I was very surprised to see that Microsoft is one of the sponsors.
How about M-x tetris
That's the power of voice over IP, and it must be scary enough for big/old telcos when people can bypass them.
I just installed Asterisk (http://www.asterisk.org/) on a server, and created a SIP account for my mobile and my fix phone on it. Additionally, I connected Asterisk to different VOIP providers like FWD, Free, Gizmo, Pfingo...
For outbound calls, and depending on the price of each provider, I can configure Asterisk dialplan like let's say:
Singapore +65XXXXXXXX route to Pfingo (0$/min)
France +33XXXXXXXX route to Free (0$/min)
UK +44XXXXXXX and US +1XXXXXXX route to Gizmo 0.02$/min
etc...
For inbound calls, when a call is received from Pfingo or Gizmo telephone numbers, Asterisk rings both my fix and mobile phones through SIP. If my mobile is not connected to Asterisk (eg when 3G connection is down), Asterisk last attempt is to place a call to my "real" mobile number. When this also fail, Asterisk will redirect the call to the voicemail application, and I will get an email containing the sound file of the message.
Personally I hate receiving bills every month, or pay premium for making oversea calls. I really like to buy prepaid minutes online from VOIP providers, and spend them when and how I want.
I suggest you read "Asterisk, the future of Telephony" http://downloads.oreilly.com/books/9780596510480.pdf which is available for free. Also you can check different VOIP providers websites and see what they can offer to you. I've been playing with Gizmo since long time, service is great, and you can buy numbers in many countries. Minutes are cheap. Sound quality is good, but I remember few times where it was bad (toward China in particular).
I can give feed back on my own experience here in Singapore. I just switched to mobile broadband with M1. For 22sing$ a month (about 10 euros, 15 usd) I get:
- 6 month contract only
- 512kbps in / 384kbps out, the cheapest plan, but I don't need more. They also have 1.8 and 3.6mbps.
- Really unlimited traffic (no ridiculous monthly cap like in some countries)
- A free 3.5g usb modem (Huawei e220) working fine on my Linux Thinkpad. But then I have to swap the simcard between phone and modem...
The very good thing is that I don't need my expensive voice plan anymore. Now I'm using VOIP on my N95 and it's almost free to call everywhere in the world with cheap prepaid minutes from Gizmo, or Pfingo. The sound quality is OK, comparable with normal gsm. But I had to use a low bandwidth codec (G729) between the Nokia N95 and my Asterisk server. It seems the 3G connection didn't provide enough bandwitdh for "uncompressed" G711, and I got poor results (5s lag) most of the time with G711. But G729 is perfect.
I got local Singapore phone number from Pfingo (http://www.pfingo.com) so people can call me from real phones. Here they even have a range of numbers dedicated to VOIP (+653xxxxxxx). And these are real numbers, reachable from other phones, unlike unassigned/invalid numbers used by providers sometime. For my friends and family in France I bought a +33 number from Gizmo. Both numbers rings my mobile and fix phone at home (Siemens S450 IP, also connected to my Asterisk server)
For normal Internet use (ie web, mail, IM) 3G is fine, but it's true that it feels slower and more laggy than my cable access at home. But on the other side I can connect from anywhere and it's ok with me to sacrifice a bit of speed for that! Personally, I think it's good to keep both mobile broadband and DSL/cable for heavy downloads.