People seem to have no problem doing this attempting to have a convo on a busy street (times square for example), whats the big deal other than people complaining as if they have some logical reasoning? Sure, you don't want to hear about someone's gonorrhea, I get that. People don't tend to scream at the top of their lungs in an airplane, plus it is pressurized to reduce the need to scream further.
If everyone has small chatter it actually creates a bit of a whitenoise effect = sleep.
I assume you've never actually been on an airplane, then.
There is perfect white noise coming from the engines and ventilation systems. Anything else disrupts the beautiful harmony of it.
And sadly, there's some effect whereby earplugs actually magnify nearby talkers rather than quieting them; I think it's because they are more effective against the speech-frequency range of the ambient white noise, so your ears acclimatize and boost that range in "software".
Cheap phone calls on airplanes would be hell. I would spend any amount on in-flight internet access just so I could nc/dev/random the entire flight and crowd all the Skypers off the air.
Once you have the above example, you know that the search problem is solvable, and you can certainly go looking for other solutions.
It is intrinsic to the nature of substitution ciphers that the same encrypted text will map to the same plaintext. This aspect is what allows your proposal (submitting encrypted search keywords) to function. Take away that aspect of the cipher and you're back at square one.
I'm curious - why would you post a comment claiming that this can't even be done in theory, when the submitter included links in the summary to a paper that shows that it can?
Because the paper doesn't propose any solution that is practical, or which even leads to a practical solution.
In theory I can cure all forms of cancer - all I have to do is go through each cell in the victim's body and pluck out the cancerous ones.
I use Asterisk for forwarding business calls to my mobile as well but I have to SSH in to change it when I'm abroad. That's not a huge problem as I have SSH+keyboard on my phone, but I'd love to be able to have control via SMS. Could you give me a rough outline of how you do it and which services you use?
I cheat! One of my clients has a clickatell.com inbound SMS number in the UK. It costs 25 euro a month which is more than I'd want to spend just to use once every few weeks. I wrote the software that processes the inbound SMSes, and with their permission I have it set up so that messages that start with a certain sequence of characters get relayed to my server.
I wonder if it would be worth setting up some sort of cooperative or even a business that allows people to share an inbound SMS number. Messages that start with "AAA" could be sent to one person's server, those that start with "AAB" could be sent to someone else's, and so on. Each user would be responsible for securing their own application so that it only accepted properly authenticated messages. Share a number across 100 people and the cost becomes minuscule.
Before I had the SMS working, I had to either scratch around for a wifi hotspot (not always easy) or pay sometimes-exorbitant data rates. In some countries (e.g. Syria) neither one is much of an option, or at least I never figured out how to get GPRS working with my Syrian SIM card. The SMS approach has proven to be a lot quicker. I send the SMS, which takes no time at all, and receive a confirmation callback within a few seconds if it worked (which it almost always does).
Originally I set up Asterisk from source code and did everything the hard way, but about a year ago I switched to FreePBX which has simplified my life considerably. I have a few hand-coded scripts (for the SMS stuff) but otherwise it's all managed through the web interface now.
Interfacing with my clients' phone systems was a matter of getting configuration info from the phone systems' managers, then editing the XML file that tells my phone where to connect to.
Definitely none of it is a smooth and easy as getting Skype up and running. But in the long run, the extra effort has paid for itself countless times over.
I guess my question is really what do VoIP applications like Quetcom or Twinkle have that Skype does not? Give me a good OS-X-vs-Windows-Vista reason why they are superior. I'm genuinely curious and would switch if there's a good reason to do so.
I've been using SIP-based VoIP for about 8 years, including leading some decent-sized deployments around the world, and I have never heard of Quetcom or Twinkle. So this tells you one thing already: there's a tremendous diversity of software out there in the standards-based VoIP world (an alternative theory is that it's just telling you that I'm somewhat ignorant). Diversity means you have a better chance of finding something that more closely meets your needs.
But let me tell you some of the reasons I think SIP-based VoIP would appeal to a home user who's at least a tiny bit technically inclined:
1. Vastly superior hardware. Even halfway-decent SIP phones make the best Skype-compatible hardware look like absolute garbage. A mid-range Polycom will give you a full-duplex speakerphone that will rock your world. I'm using one from here in Malaysia to connect with co-workers in Europe and the USA, and the sound is perfect. 100%-effective echo cancellation, even with my 250ms other-side-of-the-planet latency. With Skype, echo always seems to become a problem at long distances (I'm not talking about feedback you get when using your PC speakers).
2. Vastly cheaper calls. The SIP ecosystem has a huge number of competitive suppliers, many of them with rates that leave Skype in the dust. My per-minute cost for most calls is 1/3 to 1/2 of what Skype charges (and I get comparable or superior audio quality).
3. Far more customisability. With a bit of tinkering, you can set up call handling/routing to do anything you can dream of. Calls from my parents ring on my mobile at any time no matter where I'm traveling, while calls from clients are handled differently depending on where I am and what time it is. Despite traveling to 20+ countries a year, I never pay roaming fees because I can route my calls to a new prepaid SIM card minutes after buying it, just by sending my server an SMS. With Skype you can only do what Skype, and a handful of bolt-on plug-in vendors that require your PC to be on all the time, think will make them money.
4. Interoperability. I'm a freelancer, and the SIP phone on my desk integrates directly with the PBXes of three of my main clients. I'm just a 3- or 4-digit extension in their phone system, with full abilities to do whatever people sitting in the office can do on their phones. My 4th line button connects to my own Asterisk server, which in turn bridges to a bunch of other systems.
You missed out two crucial features of the series: they mostly take place on dingy cramped (or weird robotic) spaceships, and they wanted a documentary feel with 'natural' lighting. Whinging about the stupidity of this aesthetic is kind of ironic.
The dark lighting made it hard to see, and surely was not the only possible way to create a documentary feel. There are plenty of concessions made to accessibility and practicality; do you think the humans of the time actually spoke contemporary American English (with a few British and Antipodean accents thrown in for unknown reasons)?
I hated the ending. The unilateral decision to get rid of all technology for everybody was both absurd, short-sighted, and just plain stupid.
Not so. By starting over, humanity shed the cultural baggage that for so many cycles had them pointlessly cutting the corners off all their sheets of paper. It was the Final Perfection: In our current Cycle, we at last use rectangular paper, just as the Gods intended. Once we get our dancing robots working to their satisfaction, we will Ascend into the heavens and sitteth at the right hand of our Creators where we will join them in meddling capriciously in the petty affairs of less enlightened species for all eternity.
Joe Average doesn't complain about Firefox's speed or memory usage, only geeks do because they have 2000 tabs open and leave Firefox running for 4 years.
You make a good point. My gf always insists on quitting any program whenever she's not using it, even if she might be back in there in half an hour, because she feels it's nicer to the computer. This even after I quadrupled her RAM.
The really funny part is that it's the geeks, who actually know how software is made and therefore should know better, who even think it's reasonable to expect a browser to run well for 4 years with 2000 tabs open. I know I'm guilty of it myself; I've got 4 windows with about 50 tabs in total, Firefox has been running since my last system update a few weeks ago, and when it inevitably starts to get weird and stop loading pages I will be cursing the developers' ancestors. Meanwhile she has her three tabs from when she launched Firefox about 20 minutes ago and it will always work fine for her.
Who wants video phones? There are really only two times that I use (or want to use) video calling:
1. Very occasionally, for remote meetings with colleagues that I know well and like, mainly because it is amusing and allows us to connect after not working side-by-side for a long time.
2. When dealing with tiny kids at a long distance.
Other than that, it's awful. I hate it for ordinary business calls because I can't read email, munch on raisins, pick my nose, stare out the window, or whatever else I'd normally do. And I've never felt like I want to see my friends when calling them.
Assuming I'm not too terribly odd in this regard, the market for video is probably limited.
because I didn't hand out the number to anyone, I would freak out when once in a blue moon someone would call that number by accident and both my phones would ring at once. I don't know if this stuff has been addressed since google took over
Yes, Google has addressed this. They now send someone to your house to inject you with valium just before the phone rings, so you don't freak out.
I have a few different accounts with a European VoIP provider that I use for calls to the USA. I can customize the CID but they all send the same ANI (some random out-of-service number, but it's the same every time). So in this case (which I am sure is not unique), the CID is actually more informative. It doesn't say anything useful about my location but at least it identifies me in some way, rather than only identifying my telephone company.
I'd love to be able to use any computer with a headset as a phone, much as I already do, but with a phone number for incoming calls. Will this be possible?
Been doing this for many years, using a SIP client and my laptop. Someone also sells a USB device that includes software so you can quickly install on any Windows PC.
Consumers are allowed to buy VoIP equipment and use it as they please. Broadband quality isn't all that great, and latency to the USA (where most providers are homed) is 250+ms, so takeup has not been huge. Skype is popular though, and USB Skype accessories are ubiquitous in computer malls and shops.
Equipment that connects physically to the telephone network requires approval from SIRIM, a regulatory agency. I have seen SIRIM-approved stickers on Digium cards, so in principle they are amenable to that sort of thing. I know of one shop that sells SPA-3000 series devices but I haven't checked whether those are officially approved or just grey-market imports.
A licence is required in order to interconnect with the PSTN and provide services to the public. However, many of the inbound international phone calls I receive here in Malaysia arrive with dubious local caller-ID, so I suspect there are a lot of termination providers doing things on the cheap, which in these parts usually means skipping the licence stuff.
In general, the government's attitude has been open or at least tolerant, and the market is slowly picking up speed. All of the major ISPs offer or plan to offer consumer VoIP service, and a small but growing number of independent operators are starting to reach out to consumers. For large businesses it has been standard practice for years.
One factor slowing the adoption of VoIP has probably been the already-low price for international calls via other means. Wholesale inbound termination is under US$0.01/minute for fixed lines, and around US$0.03/minute for mobiles. The retail cost of phone calls from Malaysia to fixed lines in US/Europe/Australia etc on my mobile is around US$0.04/minute (Digi @ RM0.13-0.18). In most countries you can't even call next door for that price; here I can call the other side of the planet.
May I ask what bad experiences did you have here?
I'm a local Australian and I've seen some of the most racist, spiteful and uncivilized behaviour from my fellow countrymen over the years.
I'm of mixed (and hence ambiguous) ethnicity and for some reason was frequently mistaken for an Aboriginal Australian there. I had a number of really shocking encounters, the general gist of which was like this: A bunch of 20-something guys surround me while I'm walking at night, confront me, maybe with a little bit of "accidental" shoulder-knocking, and ask in a threatening tone where I'm going or what I'm doing. On occasion they'd pepper their queries with various anti-Aboriginal slurs (Abo, Boong, what have you). I respond. They hear my accent and my posh slashdot-honed diction and then mumble something about mistaking me for someone else, and melt back into the shadows.
The fact that this goes on often enough that even I - who you'd really have to be fairly ignorant to mistake for an Aboriginal - experienced it on a somewhat regular basis means that there must be some serious unpleasantness going on out there.
I hope you are much happier in your new home.
Thanks, I am. I now live in Asia, and while there's no shortage of racism, it comes without the pervasive undercurrent of aggressive hostility that I experienced in Australia.
My shake-to-charge LED flashlight cost US$5 at the shop down the street. It's lasted for about 2 years so far as well, and has the advantage of working even if I didn't remember to leave it somewhere sunny all day.
I actually use it every day: As my conservation-geekiness has increased, I now use it whenever I have to go in another room at night to get something, pee, etc.
Until my gf moved in, I had my total energy bill (power + gas) down to about $8/month. She can't sleep without A/C so it's shot up again, sadly.
Dude? I'm assuming he's American, would you stroll around Afghanistan, as an American, to find a local iCafe? I don't care how big your gun is!
As a civilian, I am always amused by the military people who are convinced that I am putting myself in mortal danger every time I stroll out without body armor and 4 guys carrying giant guns.
There's two ways to move around:
You can take serious and overt physical security measures, attracting attention but dissuading casual aggressors.
Or, you can blend in, get to know people in the neighbourhoods, and keep a low profile.
The first approach has its merits, for example when you have large numbers of people, or people who aren't well acclimated to local culture and behaviours. But after long experience I'm highly skeptical that it's the safer of the two in situations where the second option is reasonably available.
Who in their right mind would pay $5/minute when drastically cheaper alternatives are so readily available, unless they were only in town on a 48-hour flyby? Just pop into your local chicken-and-tire shop and pick up a SIM card.
My WISP gives me about 50ms more latency than ADSL and otherwise functions exactly the same (actually it's more reliable). It is perfectly suitable for VoIP and similar applications. I don't think that compares to satellite at all.
In which case satellite covers their needs pretty well. You won't get the mobility, but since these are localized areas, you don't have too much mobility in the first place.
Have you actually used satellite? It sucks donkey balls for anything other than web surfing and email. Interactive applications, like ssh and remote screen, are painful at best. VoIP is delayed so long you might as well use smoke signals.
Slashdot Mirror
I assume you've never actually been on an airplane, then.
There is perfect white noise coming from the engines and ventilation systems. Anything else disrupts the beautiful harmony of it.
And sadly, there's some effect whereby earplugs actually magnify nearby talkers rather than quieting them; I think it's because they are more effective against the speech-frequency range of the ambient white noise, so your ears acclimatize and boost that range in "software".
Cheap phone calls on airplanes would be hell. I would spend any amount on in-flight internet access just so I could nc /dev/random the entire flight and crowd all the Skypers off the air.
It is intrinsic to the nature of substitution ciphers that the same encrypted text will map to the same plaintext. This aspect is what allows your proposal (submitting encrypted search keywords) to function. Take away that aspect of the cipher and you're back at square one.
Because the paper doesn't propose any solution that is practical, or which even leads to a practical solution.
In theory I can cure all forms of cancer - all I have to do is go through each cell in the victim's body and pluck out the cancerous ones.
I cheat! One of my clients has a clickatell.com inbound SMS number in the UK. It costs 25 euro a month which is more than I'd want to spend just to use once every few weeks. I wrote the software that processes the inbound SMSes, and with their permission I have it set up so that messages that start with a certain sequence of characters get relayed to my server.
I wonder if it would be worth setting up some sort of cooperative or even a business that allows people to share an inbound SMS number. Messages that start with "AAA" could be sent to one person's server, those that start with "AAB" could be sent to someone else's, and so on. Each user would be responsible for securing their own application so that it only accepted properly authenticated messages. Share a number across 100 people and the cost becomes minuscule.
Before I had the SMS working, I had to either scratch around for a wifi hotspot (not always easy) or pay sometimes-exorbitant data rates. In some countries (e.g. Syria) neither one is much of an option, or at least I never figured out how to get GPRS working with my Syrian SIM card. The SMS approach has proven to be a lot quicker. I send the SMS, which takes no time at all, and receive a confirmation callback within a few seconds if it worked (which it almost always does).
Originally I set up Asterisk from source code and did everything the hard way, but about a year ago I switched to FreePBX which has simplified my life considerably. I have a few hand-coded scripts (for the SMS stuff) but otherwise it's all managed through the web interface now.
Interfacing with my clients' phone systems was a matter of getting configuration info from the phone systems' managers, then editing the XML file that tells my phone where to connect to.
Definitely none of it is a smooth and easy as getting Skype up and running. But in the long run, the extra effort has paid for itself countless times over.
I've been using SIP-based VoIP for about 8 years, including leading some decent-sized deployments around the world, and I have never heard of Quetcom or Twinkle. So this tells you one thing already: there's a tremendous diversity of software out there in the standards-based VoIP world (an alternative theory is that it's just telling you that I'm somewhat ignorant). Diversity means you have a better chance of finding something that more closely meets your needs.
But let me tell you some of the reasons I think SIP-based VoIP would appeal to a home user who's at least a tiny bit technically inclined:
1. Vastly superior hardware. Even halfway-decent SIP phones make the best Skype-compatible hardware look like absolute garbage. A mid-range Polycom will give you a full-duplex speakerphone that will rock your world. I'm using one from here in Malaysia to connect with co-workers in Europe and the USA, and the sound is perfect. 100%-effective echo cancellation, even with my 250ms other-side-of-the-planet latency. With Skype, echo always seems to become a problem at long distances (I'm not talking about feedback you get when using your PC speakers).
2. Vastly cheaper calls. The SIP ecosystem has a huge number of competitive suppliers, many of them with rates that leave Skype in the dust. My per-minute cost for most calls is 1/3 to 1/2 of what Skype charges (and I get comparable or superior audio quality).
3. Far more customisability. With a bit of tinkering, you can set up call handling/routing to do anything you can dream of. Calls from my parents ring on my mobile at any time no matter where I'm traveling, while calls from clients are handled differently depending on where I am and what time it is. Despite traveling to 20+ countries a year, I never pay roaming fees because I can route my calls to a new prepaid SIM card minutes after buying it, just by sending my server an SMS. With Skype you can only do what Skype, and a handful of bolt-on plug-in vendors that require your PC to be on all the time, think will make them money.
4. Interoperability. I'm a freelancer, and the SIP phone on my desk integrates directly with the PBXes of three of my main clients. I'm just a 3- or 4-digit extension in their phone system, with full abilities to do whatever people sitting in the office can do on their phones. My 4th line button connects to my own Asterisk server, which in turn bridges to a bunch of other systems.
The dark lighting made it hard to see, and surely was not the only possible way to create a documentary feel. There are plenty of concessions made to accessibility and practicality; do you think the humans of the time actually spoke contemporary American English (with a few British and Antipodean accents thrown in for unknown reasons)?
Not so. By starting over, humanity shed the cultural baggage that for so many cycles had them pointlessly cutting the corners off all their sheets of paper. It was the Final Perfection: In our current Cycle, we at last use rectangular paper, just as the Gods intended. Once we get our dancing robots working to their satisfaction, we will Ascend into the heavens and sitteth at the right hand of our Creators where we will join them in meddling capriciously in the petty affairs of less enlightened species for all eternity.
You were hoping for a 12-hour season finale?
You make a good point. My gf always insists on quitting any program whenever she's not using it, even if she might be back in there in half an hour, because she feels it's nicer to the computer. This even after I quadrupled her RAM.
The really funny part is that it's the geeks, who actually know how software is made and therefore should know better, who even think it's reasonable to expect a browser to run well for 4 years with 2000 tabs open. I know I'm guilty of it myself; I've got 4 windows with about 50 tabs in total, Firefox has been running since my last system update a few weeks ago, and when it inevitably starts to get weird and stop loading pages I will be cursing the developers' ancestors. Meanwhile she has her three tabs from when she launched Firefox about 20 minutes ago and it will always work fine for her.
Who wants video phones? There are really only two times that I use (or want to use) video calling:
1. Very occasionally, for remote meetings with colleagues that I know well and like, mainly because it is amusing and allows us to connect after not working side-by-side for a long time.
2. When dealing with tiny kids at a long distance.
Other than that, it's awful. I hate it for ordinary business calls because I can't read email, munch on raisins, pick my nose, stare out the window, or whatever else I'd normally do. And I've never felt like I want to see my friends when calling them.
Assuming I'm not too terribly odd in this regard, the market for video is probably limited.
Yes, Google has addressed this. They now send someone to your house to inject you with valium just before the phone rings, so you don't freak out.
I have a few different accounts with a European VoIP provider that I use for calls to the USA. I can customize the CID but they all send the same ANI (some random out-of-service number, but it's the same every time). So in this case (which I am sure is not unique), the CID is actually more informative. It doesn't say anything useful about my location but at least it identifies me in some way, rather than only identifying my telephone company.
In bulk they are almost nothing, in the cents-per-month range.
Been doing this for many years, using a SIP client and my laptop. Someone also sells a USB device that includes software so you can quickly install on any Windows PC.
Consumers are allowed to buy VoIP equipment and use it as they please. Broadband quality isn't all that great, and latency to the USA (where most providers are homed) is 250+ms, so takeup has not been huge. Skype is popular though, and USB Skype accessories are ubiquitous in computer malls and shops.
Equipment that connects physically to the telephone network requires approval from SIRIM, a regulatory agency. I have seen SIRIM-approved stickers on Digium cards, so in principle they are amenable to that sort of thing. I know of one shop that sells SPA-3000 series devices but I haven't checked whether those are officially approved or just grey-market imports.
A licence is required in order to interconnect with the PSTN and provide services to the public. However, many of the inbound international phone calls I receive here in Malaysia arrive with dubious local caller-ID, so I suspect there are a lot of termination providers doing things on the cheap, which in these parts usually means skipping the licence stuff.
In general, the government's attitude has been open or at least tolerant, and the market is slowly picking up speed. All of the major ISPs offer or plan to offer consumer VoIP service, and a small but growing number of independent operators are starting to reach out to consumers. For large businesses it has been standard practice for years.
One factor slowing the adoption of VoIP has probably been the already-low price for international calls via other means. Wholesale inbound termination is under US$0.01/minute for fixed lines, and around US$0.03/minute for mobiles. The retail cost of phone calls from Malaysia to fixed lines in US/Europe/Australia etc on my mobile is around US$0.04/minute (Digi @ RM0.13-0.18). In most countries you can't even call next door for that price; here I can call the other side of the planet.
Get over yourself. As subversive and cyberpunk as you think you're being, your ISP doesn't give a rat's ass.
I'm of mixed (and hence ambiguous) ethnicity and for some reason was frequently mistaken for an Aboriginal Australian there. I had a number of really shocking encounters, the general gist of which was like this: A bunch of 20-something guys surround me while I'm walking at night, confront me, maybe with a little bit of "accidental" shoulder-knocking, and ask in a threatening tone where I'm going or what I'm doing. On occasion they'd pepper their queries with various anti-Aboriginal slurs (Abo, Boong, what have you). I respond. They hear my accent and my posh slashdot-honed diction and then mumble something about mistaking me for someone else, and melt back into the shadows.
The fact that this goes on often enough that even I - who you'd really have to be fairly ignorant to mistake for an Aboriginal - experienced it on a somewhat regular basis means that there must be some serious unpleasantness going on out there.
Thanks, I am. I now live in Asia, and while there's no shortage of racism, it comes without the pervasive undercurrent of aggressive hostility that I experienced in Australia.
That, sir, is a very clever idea. If I lived down under, I'd help you write it.
Then again, I've already lived there in the past, and you couldn't force me at gunpoint to make that mistake again.
How can it be "your choice" what to have for dessert if the gubmint won't allow you to have pot brownies?
My shake-to-charge LED flashlight cost US$5 at the shop down the street. It's lasted for about 2 years so far as well, and has the advantage of working even if I didn't remember to leave it somewhere sunny all day.
I actually use it every day: As my conservation-geekiness has increased, I now use it whenever I have to go in another room at night to get something, pee, etc.
Until my gf moved in, I had my total energy bill (power + gas) down to about $8/month. She can't sleep without A/C so it's shot up again, sadly.
As a civilian, I am always amused by the military people who are convinced that I am putting myself in mortal danger every time I stroll out without body armor and 4 guys carrying giant guns.
There's two ways to move around:
You can take serious and overt physical security measures, attracting attention but dissuading casual aggressors.
Or, you can blend in, get to know people in the neighbourhoods, and keep a low profile.
The first approach has its merits, for example when you have large numbers of people, or people who aren't well acclimated to local culture and behaviours. But after long experience I'm highly skeptical that it's the safer of the two in situations where the second option is reasonably available.
Who in their right mind would pay $5/minute when drastically cheaper alternatives are so readily available, unless they were only in town on a 48-hour flyby? Just pop into your local chicken-and-tire shop and pick up a SIM card.
My WISP gives me about 50ms more latency than ADSL and otherwise functions exactly the same (actually it's more reliable). It is perfectly suitable for VoIP and similar applications. I don't think that compares to satellite at all.
Have you actually used satellite? It sucks donkey balls for anything other than web surfing and email. Interactive applications, like ssh and remote screen, are painful at best. VoIP is delayed so long you might as well use smoke signals.