"The author was probably aware of these issues, but he didn't include them because don't factor into the consumer decision."
Really? If that were the case, almost zero hybrids would have been sold. The math in this article is not rocket-science, he is stating the obvious, and I imagine 98+% of the people buying them are full aware of the simple economics. I think your point may be valid for many, but certainly not all. Many, many people have bought hybrids (or are considering one), paying a definite premium, solely because they believe they are doing the right thing for the environment and the next generations of earth inhabitants.
It definitely does factor into many (not all) consumer's decisions.
"How would anybody feel about an Internet "Security Council" to oversee the 'net?"
That is probably the most palatable solution I have heard yet. I am not "anti-UN", but I think that a full UN control thing would screw it up.
Perhaps the US should be proactive and get several other countries involved without being "forced" into it one way or another. If it is done that way, the US will retain some control over the result, and avoid a showdown. The US has the leverage now to shape the process, they could lose a lot of that leverage if some group of countries actually has the cajones to make a move.
It is much easier for a group of countries to make a move if it is the US against everyone else, than it would be to make a move against a consortium of the US, Canada, France, UK, Germany, Russia and China for example.
Of course, in a utopian world, the geeks would run the show, and leave the politicians out of it.
From what I understand of Haiti, if it's edible or burnable, it's been eaten or burned - so there's virtually no tree cover left in some places. The wind isn't the problem; I worry that the rainfall will bring flooding, mudslides and mass death.
Look at the bright side, at least falling trees won't be a problem. That seems to be one of the big killers for storms that hit the states.
The current administration is only conservative in the sense of social and military. They do not seek smaller government, and the size of government has expanded under their watch. Check some of Bush's campaign promises (he promised to sign any gun control legislation that crossed his desk) and facts from the congressional budget office.
Agreed. And all the "State's Rights" stuff is BS also. Only when it suits their agenda. Take a few issues recently:
- Medicinal Marijuana. The State of California enacted laws to allow it. The feds went in and arrested folks growing it. Had the feds followed their mantra of "states know better" this would have never gone to the Supreme Court.
- Right to die. The State of Oregon passed laws to allow it. John Asscroft made a unilateral decision to bar doctors from prescribing drugs for this purpose, effectively squashing it. Even though Asscroft is gone, there has been no attempt to reverse that decision.
- Gay marriage. A few states have passed laws to allow it. The feds are doing whatever they can to circumvent them or at least ignore them. No federal tax advantages of marriage, no ability to get a same-sex spouse citizenship, etc. No attempt to enforce the constitutional requirement that states recognize the public acts of other states.
If a state passed a law to do something in their agenda (read: Christian Fundamentalist or their fellow rich guy's view) that conflicted with Federal law I am sure we would see a very different reaction from this administration.
Spending 311 million dollars without knowing what happens next doesnt seem a very nice idea.
I am sure there is military research aspect in this project too. The ability to hit a comet with a bathtub-sized hunk of metal is probably good practice for hitting an adversary's satellite with a bar of soap-sized hunk of metal.
I highly doubt this is purely civilian science in action.
I certainly agree, but why would they need a "wet Smithsonian"? Get it close on a ship and truck it to the site.
Here in Chicago we have a big-ass WWII German submarine on land in a museum. Yes, it is near Lake Michigan (several hundred meters), but it is definitely on land, now indoors.
I have no idea how it got from the lake to the museum, but this was done 50 years ago, and it is much, much larger than Alvin. I am quite confident Alvin could be dropped on a flatbed and trucked to the main Smithsonian (or whatever museum) quite easily (at least relatively easy compared to the German sub). It is definitely a "wide load", but not much more than one of those pre-fab houses you see on the highway occasionally, and D.C. is accessible to the ocean via the Potomac so you can get darn close by ship and truck it the last several kilometers.
My guess is you are mostly right, the mass consumption of RSS will be a PC browser embedded function. My guess is the hardcore will use other apps, such as feedreader, feeddemon, etc. They are far more refined for the purpose.
I think it will be very intesting how all this shakes out, and what clever ideas people come up with to use RSS (I have seen very innovative ideas already). The beatuy of RSS, is it's flexibility and generic nature, leaving the display to the whims of the users.
Also remember, the applications will go well beyond traditional PCs. I worked on a fairly infamous product (spectacular failure, mostly an idea before it's time that cost too much) called Audrey from 3Com. It was a small Internet Appliance (aimed for the kitchen, family room, etc.) that could browse and check email, but it's really cool feature was programmable "channels" for content, selected by a rotary knob on the front. You would program in what you wanted each channel to be (say Chicago Weather, football news, etc.) for each channel. You can "change the channel" like a TV.
What was behind all this? RSS (or a close cousin, at least, it was early in the game). Had we had all the RSS content there is now, that would have made the feature that much more compelling (we had a hell of a time getting content at the time).
Other, non-PC apps could be customized news on a mobile phone, driving electronic marquees (think Times Square). Yeah, these things are done now, but mostly manually, with limited selection of content. RSS opens up this kind of application to the little guy (think Main Street in East Bumfsck, Iowa), and opens up custom content on mobile phones (rather than the small selection of canned feeds available now).
Anyway, don't restrict the application to traditional PCs, and don't restrict the application to just traditional web content. RSS has potential to do what the web has done on a larger scale, provide access to non-web outlets (phones, etc.) only the big guys could access before.
True, but their format is well documented and nicely structured. Any of the competition, including MS, can implement it with accuracy, no reverse engineering (or licensing) necessary to interoperate. Doc format remains a partial mystery, and what is understood to date took a whole lot of reverse engineering work.
Very few MS Office users use RTF, they use DOC. I might note, my employees are one big exception (if they want to keep the boss happy).
I never understood why cross subsidization was a problem.
Cross-subsidization is one of the core items of anti-trust regulations, as it is used to maintain monopolies and screw the consumer.
Let's go back in history to the 1950s. Standard Oil (split up into Amooco, Exxon, and many others long ago) owned the gas station market in the US. If you were foolish enough to open a gas station near a Standard Oil station they would reduce their prices to below cost until you went out of business, then raise them again and rip the customers off. They could afford to do that, and ended up with little competition.
Go back another 40-50 years or so. Before refrigerators there were ice boxes. You got ice delivered to keep your beer (and other food) cold. There were ice trusts that owned the ice delivery market. If you tried to compete, same thing, they would price you out (or send Bubba and Louie to take care of you physically, things were rougher then). As soon as you were gone, prices went back up. Again, competition eliminated, so carte blance to screw the customer as they have no viable alternative, the competition has been squashed.
This is all the same now with Microsoft. You try to compete, they squeeze you out of the market in one way or another. The big pie is at risk, so they take a loss in that little area until you are dead and they dominate. They just use different tactics. Next thing you know, you are locked into a $300 OS.
Take Wordperfect. Once they squashed them (arguably with a better product in this case) they dumped the documented RTF format, and used the ever changing, proprietary, doc format. They could get away with a proprietary format as they ruled the roost. Problem is, competition is essentially locked out due to format issues.
Anyway, cross-subsidization is evil. The big guys use this to crush competition wherever it rears up. End result, few can compete, the monopolist remains the owner and screws their customers. This is why monopolies are split up or regulated. To remove this ability to screw the consumer by crushing competition. It is at the core of any capitalist system, to keep things in check.
I had a similar situation when in the UK and my hosts suggested I dress up a bit for meeting with a large customer. I said "no problem, I packed some nice pants and suspenders that I can wear". They died laughing and I was not sure why. They were quite pleased when I showed up with "nice trousers with braces".
I guess "pants" are underwear and "suspenders" hold up your socks in the UK. They had a completely different image in mind when I said that;)
I think Phish lets you do this also...and others. But then again, this may be a thing of the past.
Nothing "in the past" about it. Phish, and many other bands in the jam band genre still sell "tapers tickets" and allow recording. These are usually the obstructed vies seats right behind the sound board that suck for viewing, but near perfect for recording.
Note Phish, and others, are now competing with the tapers by selling sound board recordings on the web. They have clearly stated it is still OK to record on your own. They usually are selling a far superior product, but are OK with the competition as they realize the marketing potential. I know I have been introduced to almost all my favorite bands through the free live recordings and gone on to spend tons of money on these bands going to their shows, buying their CDs, shirts, etc..
As far as I am concerned, the Dead, Phish, etc. are decades ahead of the rest of the music industry in dealing with likes of P2P, etc. The rest of the industry should study their business model seriously, as it is far superior to the doomed "litigate your way to success" strategy they are taking now. It doesn't seem like the Dead or Phish are having money troubles;)
No, the issue, as I understand and observe it is two-fold:
- The.doc format was never documented. The translation is flawed.
- They have applied for a patent on their new XML format. I imagine they intend to use this patent to control how their format is used (and by whom it is used).
Personally, what I would really like to see this time around is them forcing MS to open up their file formats. If there is one thing I see them using to maintain their monopoly in Office software is the fact the competitors need to reverse engineer the file formats to even begin to compete. The reverse engineering is not perfect, therefore there are problems. If they totally documented.doc (and the new XML format), and are not allowed to "patent" (or copyright or whatever) it, that would open up the Office software industry quite a bit and allow everyone to compete on functionality and features, rather than who has the keys to make files flow seemlessly between users. This clearly goes to the heart of the effects of having a monopoly.
Microsoft has demonstrated time and time again that it will not play nicely with open formats, because their entire marketing strategy is to remove choice. Their actions speak louder than their words. But the way to level the playing field is to enforce compatability with standards.
So right. I often wondered why this sanction was not mentioned in the recent US-based MS anti-trust case. It would have gone a very long way in opening up competition. I hope the EU does consider this as a course of action. File compatibility has to be the #1 reason that no one else can get a serious foothold in the market.
If making phone calls internationally is too expensive, why are so many companies moving their call centers offshore - to places like India?
As you might have guessed, it is not much more expensive. VoIP termination companies in the US provide very inexpensive calls into the US. It is no more expensive to call the US from India than it is from Omaha if you have decent enough volume (not much) to negotiate a direct deal with a VoIP provider. The only increase in cost is the Internet Access is likely a bit pricier in India. That is vastly offset by the lower cost of labor.
Same goes for calls to Europe, and from anywhere with decent Internet infrastructure. Actually, no big concern on the Internet infrasture either, as they will just use cheap satellite connections.
I feel that as institutions they are hardly outdated at all, because free is good.
Free? You must still be a student. I have this sizable line item on my very large property tax bill titled "Library District". Not free at all. If you rent, you are paying it indirectly through your landlord's tax bill. Same goes for school libraries, it is a sizable part of your tuition and/or the taxes paid for school subsidies.
Not to dilute your point though, it is a tax I have no problem with. Though I don't visit the library much, I did as a child and I am glad it is there for others (and me when I want it).
What I assume will happen is some enterprising company like Port (now owned by Targus) will come up with a generic external variety fuel cell battery with interchangeable power tips (tm). This would allow folks to retrofit their existing laptops (and mobile phones, etc.) with this technology.
I know I would gladly buy a couple, one for the car, one for my laptop bag, with the power tips (tm) to cover my critical devices. Use them only in an emergency (like 10 minutes to go in your DVD movie and the battery dies). They will have to figure out the different voltage issue, but that seems very solvable.
I sort of agree, installing using the CPAN tool is pretty easy. But, I maintain some custom install RedHat CDs that need some PMs not installed by RedHat. I have the user install them using the MCPAN tool, but it sure would be easier just adding them to the list of RPMS for anaconda to install at system creation time.
I guess it would also be easier for perl developers creating RPMs to bundle these in with their RPMs for a single RPM based install rather than adding instructions for MCPAN.
I think it is a good thing to do this to make Linux one (albeit very small) step easier. Every little bit helps.
Actually, the vast majority of CAS (non-ISDN, in-band tone signaled) trunks in US/Canada use DTMF, not MF. The most notable exception is FGD trunks, but those are not what the original poster was referring to (as those actually do have ANI/CallerID transmission capability). FGD trunks are becoming more and more rare as SS7 is normally used where they were previously used (Inter-carrier connectivity).
Though I have seen MF in use on some CAS trunks, it is not common. T1s from LECs to businesses use DTMF as a rule. FGD applications need KP and ST for handling the break between INFO, DNIS and ANI, normal PBX/business apps do not as all they transmit is DNIS/DID. Take a peek around the PBX mfg sites, you will find many PBXs don't even support MF, just DTMF.
I guess one thing I disagree with is the use of MF (or, in North America, usually DTMF to be precise). Not necessary, this is done all the time with ISDN trunks from CLECs (or even ILECs). You get the same effect on a PRI by not providing a CallING Party IE (CallerID in Q.931-speak) in the SETUP message, it will just assign the billing number as CallerID if it is not provided (or if they validate CID and what is provided is not valid for that trunk).
These calling card operators order up PRIs in all the major markets, as if they were a local business user. They bring in the calls via VoIP, then terminate them using their network of local PRIs. The terminating gateways either strip, or fudge to their local directory number, the CallING Party IE. As far as the ILEC (or CLEC for that matter) is concerned, the call is a locally originated call by a legit local business.
Most (all?) of the VoIP termination gear has extensive features to spoof CallerID for this very reason (and for telemarketers, of course). I have even seen folks "randomize" CallerID.
Anyway, did not intend to debunk your explanation, it was quite accurate. Just know that this same concept is done all the time with very simple spoofing in ISDN. ISDN can be obtained very cheaply from any desperate CLEC, is more reliable, shorter connect time (PDD), requires less DSPs in the termination gear (reduces capital costs), and is TRIVIAL to spoof in almost exactly the same way as non-FGD tone-based protocols as you described.
Now that is the US (and Canada, Australia, Western Europe, etc.). I am constantly surprised by the crazy shit they do to get calls into places like India, Bangladesh, Africa, etc.;) It is like a telecom variation on the movie "Catch me if you can".
The quality bar has been lowered by mobile phones
on
VoIP Booming in Africa
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
With the proliferation of mobile phones, the bar has been lowered for call quality, people are used to poor connections, dropped calls, etc. VoIP, even on a poor connection is often preferable to a mobile call.
I use VoIP all day (I have a nice commercial Quintum gateway at home, and at each of our offices). I will get calls from co-workers on my cell, and if I get frustrated (often) I will call them back over VoIP with MUCH better performance. All of our inter-office voice traffic is VoIP.
Your problem with your call center sounds like one of poor IP connectivity, not a problem with VoIP itself. With decent IP connectivity, VoIP call quality, even with compressed codecs, ranges from near-toll quality to far better than your average cell phone call.
You need pps support which sends a pulse at the time the second actually changes.
Thanks for the added info. That is what I was referring to with "time pulses" in my post. Doesn't NMEA support assume "PPS" support, or is that an optional part of the spec. Just wondering as I assumed any GPS with NMEA support was OK for NTP.
What I'm wondering is... Will any GPS work, or is this is a specific feature of your GPS?
It needs "NMEA" support. NMEA is just a standard for how to spit timestamp and time-pulses out the serial port in a consistent way. Many (most?) recent models do, some super-cheap and many older GPS models do not. You also need to get (or make) a cable to connect to your serial port and almost certainly will want to run this off a power supply and not batteries (and AC PSUs are generally not a normal accessory for a cheap GPS).
But simply handing it back to the US government won't do much to solve the problems. Maybe it's time to start treating DNS domains as being analagous to telephone numbers, thus have the ITU handle all TLDs.
I think you are correct, or at least on the right path. I am not so sure I trust the UN (the ITU is a UN entity) anymore than I trust the US gov't or the EU for that matter, but this is at least putting it in the right scope. I am surprised this is the first post I have seen with a UN entity mentioned. The logic certainly stands that such an important international system (the Internet, DNS in particular) should be operated by an international governance body.
The ITU certainly has the credibility, and the ability to put together the technical competence, to tackle this job. Don't get me wrong, the ITU has politics, and the UN has politics, but I think avoiding politics totally is not possible.
I am sure this was considered (at least casually) at one point, I wonder why it did not happen? In theory this seems like the right entity to handle it.
Slashdot Mirror
"The author was probably aware of these issues, but he didn't include them because don't factor into the consumer decision."
Really? If that were the case, almost zero hybrids would have been sold. The math in this article is not rocket-science, he is stating the obvious, and I imagine 98+% of the people buying them are full aware of the simple economics. I think your point may be valid for many, but certainly not all. Many, many people have bought hybrids (or are considering one), paying a definite premium, solely because they believe they are doing the right thing for the environment and the next generations of earth inhabitants.
It definitely does factor into many (not all) consumer's decisions.
"How would anybody feel about an Internet "Security Council" to oversee the 'net?"
That is probably the most palatable solution I have heard yet. I am not "anti-UN", but I think that a full UN control thing would screw it up.
Perhaps the US should be proactive and get several other countries involved without being "forced" into it one way or another. If it is done that way, the US will retain some control over the result, and avoid a showdown. The US has the leverage now to shape the process, they could lose a lot of that leverage if some group of countries actually has the cajones to make a move.
It is much easier for a group of countries to make a move if it is the US against everyone else, than it would be to make a move against a consortium of the US, Canada, France, UK, Germany, Russia and China for example.
Of course, in a utopian world, the geeks would run the show, and leave the politicians out of it.
From what I understand of Haiti, if it's edible or burnable, it's been eaten or burned - so there's virtually no tree cover left in some places. The wind isn't the problem; I worry that the rainfall will bring flooding, mudslides and mass death.
Look at the bright side, at least falling trees won't be a problem. That seems to be one of the big killers for storms that hit the states.
The current administration is only conservative in the sense of social and military. They do not seek smaller government, and the size of government has expanded under their watch. Check some of Bush's campaign promises (he promised to sign any gun control legislation that crossed his desk) and facts from the congressional budget office.
Agreed. And all the "State's Rights" stuff is BS also. Only when it suits their agenda. Take a few issues recently:
- Medicinal Marijuana. The State of California enacted laws to allow it. The feds went in and arrested folks growing it. Had the feds followed their mantra of "states know better" this would have never gone to the Supreme Court.
- Right to die. The State of Oregon passed laws to allow it. John Asscroft made a unilateral decision to bar doctors from prescribing drugs for this purpose, effectively squashing it. Even though Asscroft is gone, there has been no attempt to reverse that decision.
- Gay marriage. A few states have passed laws to allow it. The feds are doing whatever they can to circumvent them or at least ignore them. No federal tax advantages of marriage, no ability to get a same-sex spouse citizenship, etc. No attempt to enforce the constitutional requirement that states recognize the public acts of other states.
If a state passed a law to do something in their agenda (read: Christian Fundamentalist or their fellow rich guy's view) that conflicted with Federal law I am sure we would see a very different reaction from this administration.
Pretty sad state of affairs.
Spending 311 million dollars without knowing what happens next doesnt seem a very nice idea.
I am sure there is military research aspect in this project too. The ability to hit a comet with a bathtub-sized hunk of metal is probably good practice for hitting an adversary's satellite with a bar of soap-sized hunk of metal.
I highly doubt this is purely civilian science in action.
Is there a "wet smythsonian"?
I certainly agree, but why would they need a "wet Smithsonian"? Get it close on a ship and truck it to the site.
Here in Chicago we have a big-ass WWII German submarine on land in a museum. Yes, it is near Lake Michigan (several hundred meters), but it is definitely on land, now indoors.
I have no idea how it got from the lake to the museum, but this was done 50 years ago, and it is much, much larger than Alvin. I am quite confident Alvin could be dropped on a flatbed and trucked to the main Smithsonian (or whatever museum) quite easily (at least relatively easy compared to the German sub). It is definitely a "wide load", but not much more than one of those pre-fab houses you see on the highway occasionally, and D.C. is accessible to the ocean via the Potomac so you can get darn close by ship and truck it the last several kilometers.
Eventually, most RSS programs are going to get folded into the browser anyway, so it's good to take the important pieces.
First, you might want to checkout the sage extension for Firefox as opposed to the builtin live bookmarks. It is very nice.
My guess is you are mostly right, the mass consumption of RSS will be a PC browser embedded function. My guess is the hardcore will use other apps, such as feedreader, feeddemon, etc. They are far more refined for the purpose.
I think it will be very intesting how all this shakes out, and what clever ideas people come up with to use RSS (I have seen very innovative ideas already). The beatuy of RSS, is it's flexibility and generic nature, leaving the display to the whims of the users.
Also remember, the applications will go well beyond traditional PCs. I worked on a fairly infamous product (spectacular failure, mostly an idea before it's time that cost too much) called Audrey from 3Com. It was a small Internet Appliance (aimed for the kitchen, family room, etc.) that could browse and check email, but it's really cool feature was programmable "channels" for content, selected by a rotary knob on the front. You would program in what you wanted each channel to be (say Chicago Weather, football news, etc.) for each channel. You can "change the channel" like a TV.
What was behind all this? RSS (or a close cousin, at least, it was early in the game). Had we had all the RSS content there is now, that would have made the feature that much more compelling (we had a hell of a time getting content at the time).
Other, non-PC apps could be customized news on a mobile phone, driving electronic marquees (think Times Square). Yeah, these things are done now, but mostly manually, with limited selection of content. RSS opens up this kind of application to the little guy (think Main Street in East Bumfsck, Iowa), and opens up custom content on mobile phones (rather than the small selection of canned feeds available now).
Anyway, don't restrict the application to traditional PCs, and don't restrict the application to just traditional web content. RSS has potential to do what the web has done on a larger scale, provide access to non-web outlets (phones, etc.) only the big guys could access before.
It's not the default filetype in OO.o, either.
True, but their format is well documented and nicely structured. Any of the competition, including MS, can implement it with accuracy, no reverse engineering (or licensing) necessary to interoperate. Doc format remains a partial mystery, and what is understood to date took a whole lot of reverse engineering work.
Very few MS Office users use RTF, they use DOC. I might note, my employees are one big exception (if they want to keep the boss happy).
I never understood why cross subsidization was a problem.
Cross-subsidization is one of the core items of anti-trust regulations, as it is used to maintain monopolies and screw the consumer.
Let's go back in history to the 1950s. Standard Oil (split up into Amooco, Exxon, and many others long ago) owned the gas station market in the US. If you were foolish enough to open a gas station near a Standard Oil station they would reduce their prices to below cost until you went out of business, then raise them again and rip the customers off. They could afford to do that, and ended up with little competition.
Go back another 40-50 years or so. Before refrigerators there were ice boxes. You got ice delivered to keep your beer (and other food) cold. There were ice trusts that owned the ice delivery market. If you tried to compete, same thing, they would price you out (or send Bubba and Louie to take care of you physically, things were rougher then). As soon as you were gone, prices went back up. Again, competition eliminated, so carte blance to screw the customer as they have no viable alternative, the competition has been squashed.
This is all the same now with Microsoft. You try to compete, they squeeze you out of the market in one way or another. The big pie is at risk, so they take a loss in that little area until you are dead and they dominate. They just use different tactics. Next thing you know, you are locked into a $300 OS.
Take Wordperfect. Once they squashed them (arguably with a better product in this case) they dumped the documented RTF format, and used the ever changing, proprietary, doc format. They could get away with a proprietary format as they ruled the roost. Problem is, competition is essentially locked out due to format issues.
Anyway, cross-subsidization is evil. The big guys use this to crush competition wherever it rears up. End result, few can compete, the monopolist remains the owner and screws their customers. This is why monopolies are split up or regulated. To remove this ability to screw the consumer by crushing competition. It is at the core of any capitalist system, to keep things in check.
I had a similar situation when in the UK and my hosts suggested I dress up a bit for meeting with a large customer. I said "no problem, I packed some nice pants and suspenders that I can wear". They died laughing and I was not sure why. They were quite pleased when I showed up with "nice trousers with braces".
;)
I guess "pants" are underwear and "suspenders" hold up your socks in the UK. They had a completely different image in mind when I said that
I think Phish lets you do this also...and others. But then again, this may be a thing of the past.
;)
Nothing "in the past" about it. Phish, and many other bands in the jam band genre still sell "tapers tickets" and allow recording. These are usually the obstructed vies seats right behind the sound board that suck for viewing, but near perfect for recording.
Note Phish, and others, are now competing with the tapers by selling sound board recordings on the web. They have clearly stated it is still OK to record on your own. They usually are selling a far superior product, but are OK with the competition as they realize the marketing potential. I know I have been introduced to almost all my favorite bands through the free live recordings and gone on to spend tons of money on these bands going to their shows, buying their CDs, shirts, etc..
As far as I am concerned, the Dead, Phish, etc. are decades ahead of the rest of the music industry in dealing with likes of P2P, etc. The rest of the industry should study their business model seriously, as it is far superior to the doomed "litigate your way to success" strategy they are taking now. It doesn't seem like the Dead or Phish are having money troubles
We're sorry, but the number you have dialed, 9-1-1, is no longer in service. Please check the number and try your call again.
No, the issue, as I understand and observe it is two-fold:
.doc format was never documented. The translation is flawed.
- The
- They have applied for a patent on their new XML format. I imagine they intend to use this patent to control how their format is used (and by whom it is used).
I have not heard of any APIs, or whatever.
Personally, what I would really like to see this time around is them forcing MS to open up their file formats. If there is one thing I see them using to maintain their monopoly in Office software is the fact the competitors need to reverse engineer the file formats to even begin to compete. The reverse engineering is not perfect, therefore there are problems. If they totally documented .doc (and the new XML format), and are not allowed to "patent" (or copyright or whatever) it, that would open up the Office software industry quite a bit and allow everyone to compete on functionality and features, rather than who has the keys to make files flow seemlessly between users. This clearly goes to the heart of the effects of having a monopoly.
Microsoft has demonstrated time and time again that it will not play nicely with open formats, because their entire marketing strategy is to remove choice. Their actions speak louder than their words. But the way to level the playing field is to enforce compatability with standards.
So right. I often wondered why this sanction was not mentioned in the recent US-based MS anti-trust case. It would have gone a very long way in opening up competition. I hope the EU does consider this as a course of action. File compatibility has to be the #1 reason that no one else can get a serious foothold in the market.
If making phone calls internationally is too expensive, why are so many companies moving their call centers offshore - to places like India?
As you might have guessed, it is not much more expensive. VoIP termination companies in the US provide very inexpensive calls into the US. It is no more expensive to call the US from India than it is from Omaha if you have decent enough volume (not much) to negotiate a direct deal with a VoIP provider. The only increase in cost is the Internet Access is likely a bit pricier in India. That is vastly offset by the lower cost of labor.
Same goes for calls to Europe, and from anywhere with decent Internet infrastructure. Actually, no big concern on the Internet infrasture either, as they will just use cheap satellite connections.
I feel that as institutions they are hardly outdated at all, because free is good.
Free? You must still be a student. I have this sizable line item on my very large property tax bill titled "Library District". Not free at all. If you rent, you are paying it indirectly through your landlord's tax bill. Same goes for school libraries, it is a sizable part of your tuition and/or the taxes paid for school subsidies.
Not to dilute your point though, it is a tax I have no problem with. Though I don't visit the library much, I did as a child and I am glad it is there for others (and me when I want it).
What I assume will happen is some enterprising company like Port (now owned by Targus) will come up with a generic external variety fuel cell battery with interchangeable power tips (tm). This would allow folks to retrofit their existing laptops (and mobile phones, etc.) with this technology.
I know I would gladly buy a couple, one for the car, one for my laptop bag, with the power tips (tm) to cover my critical devices. Use them only in an emergency (like 10 minutes to go in your DVD movie and the battery dies). They will have to figure out the different voltage issue, but that seems very solvable.
I sort of agree, installing using the CPAN tool is pretty easy. But, I maintain some custom install RedHat CDs that need some PMs not installed by RedHat. I have the user install them using the MCPAN tool, but it sure would be easier just adding them to the list of RPMS for anaconda to install at system creation time.
I guess it would also be easier for perl developers creating RPMs to bundle these in with their RPMs for a single RPM based install rather than adding instructions for MCPAN.
I think it is a good thing to do this to make Linux one (albeit very small) step easier. Every little bit helps.
No, to be precise, it is MF, not DTMF.
Actually, the vast majority of CAS (non-ISDN, in-band tone signaled) trunks in US/Canada use DTMF, not MF. The most notable exception is FGD trunks, but those are not what the original poster was referring to (as those actually do have ANI/CallerID transmission capability). FGD trunks are becoming more and more rare as SS7 is normally used where they were previously used (Inter-carrier connectivity).
Though I have seen MF in use on some CAS trunks, it is not common. T1s from LECs to businesses use DTMF as a rule. FGD applications need KP and ST for handling the break between INFO, DNIS and ANI, normal PBX/business apps do not as all they transmit is DNIS/DID. Take a peek around the PBX mfg sites, you will find many PBXs don't even support MF, just DTMF.
Nice post, you do cover the scam well.
;) It is like a telecom variation on the movie "Catch me if you can".
I guess one thing I disagree with is the use of MF (or, in North America, usually DTMF to be precise). Not necessary, this is done all the time with ISDN trunks from CLECs (or even ILECs). You get the same effect on a PRI by not providing a CallING Party IE (CallerID in Q.931-speak) in the SETUP message, it will just assign the billing number as CallerID if it is not provided (or if they validate CID and what is provided is not valid for that trunk).
These calling card operators order up PRIs in all the major markets, as if they were a local business user. They bring in the calls via VoIP, then terminate them using their network of local PRIs. The terminating gateways either strip, or fudge to their local directory number, the CallING Party IE. As far as the ILEC (or CLEC for that matter) is concerned, the call is a locally originated call by a legit local business.
Most (all?) of the VoIP termination gear has extensive features to spoof CallerID for this very reason (and for telemarketers, of course). I have even seen folks "randomize" CallerID.
Anyway, did not intend to debunk your explanation, it was quite accurate. Just know that this same concept is done all the time with very simple spoofing in ISDN. ISDN can be obtained very cheaply from any desperate CLEC, is more reliable, shorter connect time (PDD), requires less DSPs in the termination gear (reduces capital costs), and is TRIVIAL to spoof in almost exactly the same way as non-FGD tone-based protocols as you described.
Now that is the US (and Canada, Australia, Western Europe, etc.). I am constantly surprised by the crazy shit they do to get calls into places like India, Bangladesh, Africa, etc.
With the proliferation of mobile phones, the bar has been lowered for call quality, people are used to poor connections, dropped calls, etc. VoIP, even on a poor connection is often preferable to a mobile call.
I use VoIP all day (I have a nice commercial Quintum gateway at home, and at each of our offices). I will get calls from co-workers on my cell, and if I get frustrated (often) I will call them back over VoIP with MUCH better performance. All of our inter-office voice traffic is VoIP.
Your problem with your call center sounds like one of poor IP connectivity, not a problem with VoIP itself. With decent IP connectivity, VoIP call quality, even with compressed codecs, ranges from near-toll quality to far better than your average cell phone call.
You need pps support which sends a pulse at the time the second actually changes.
Thanks for the added info. That is what I was referring to with "time pulses" in my post. Doesn't NMEA support assume "PPS" support, or is that an optional part of the spec. Just wondering as I assumed any GPS with NMEA support was OK for NTP.
What I'm wondering is... Will any GPS work, or is this is a specific feature of your GPS?
It needs "NMEA" support. NMEA is just a standard for how to spit timestamp and time-pulses out the serial port in a consistent way. Many (most?) recent models do, some super-cheap and many older GPS models do not. You also need to get (or make) a cable to connect to your serial port and almost certainly will want to run this off a power supply and not batteries (and AC PSUs are generally not a normal accessory for a cheap GPS).
But simply handing it back to the US government won't do much to solve the problems. Maybe it's time to start treating DNS domains as being analagous to telephone numbers, thus have the ITU handle all TLDs.
I think you are correct, or at least on the right path. I am not so sure I trust the UN (the ITU is a UN entity) anymore than I trust the US gov't or the EU for that matter, but this is at least putting it in the right scope. I am surprised this is the first post I have seen with a UN entity mentioned. The logic certainly stands that such an important international system (the Internet, DNS in particular) should be operated by an international governance body.
The ITU certainly has the credibility, and the ability to put together the technical competence, to tackle this job. Don't get me wrong, the ITU has politics, and the UN has politics, but I think avoiding politics totally is not possible.
I am sure this was considered (at least casually) at one point, I wonder why it did not happen? In theory this seems like the right entity to handle it.