Couple of answers for you. First, it is spelled Asterisk, like the web page you liked to.:-) Most of the hardware you need is available from Digium, the company that originally wrote, and still maintains and heavily contributes to Asterisk. http://www.digium.com and there is also a link from the Asterisk page you linked to above.
One to four POTS lines? Digium's WildCard TDM400 with FXO modules will fit the bill nicely. More than that, you will want to go with a T1 into one of their T1 interface cards. If all of the lines at your building are POTS, you will need a channel bank to convert them to the T1. Some people, including myself, have had limited success using a specific modem, but they are not nearly as reliable and trouble-free as Digium's hardware.
For your office extensions, you have several options. You can use several of Digium's solutions, including the IAXy which is ethernet-to-POTS, or the TDM400 card mentioned above with FXS modules for up to 4 extensions. If you have more than 4, you have to use those IAXys or a T1 interface card to a channel bank, then all of your phones attach to that.
Of course, there are several brands of IP phones you can use instead of the adapters above, such as Cisco and Grandstream. You would still need to attach to the PSTN phone system as mentioned above, but using IP phones would eliminate any worry for your office extensions.
I can't offer much more advice without knowing your needs, but if you want, go ahead and send me an e-mail with your situation and I'll help you figure out what you need.
I would rather someone spell it out than mispronounce the common phrase. I have a friend that always says "Ahs" rather than the letters O and S when referring to an Operating System. For example "Bee-ahs" when he means BeOS. Or "What ahs are you running?" Since I know what he means, it doesn't confuse me, but if he is trying to talk to someone else, it just adds to the language barrier if he is talking to a non-techie. It is actually quite amusing to me. No matter how many times he has been corrected by every person he talks to, he still sticks to calling it an Ahs.
When is the last time you had problems when your telephone and/or ISP and/or cable company merged with or got bought by another company? That happened 3 times over the course of one year for me. Each time, I had billing problems, e-maill address changed, outtages, etc. That prompted me to register my own domain for my e-mail because I was tired of changing it. In today's world, you are not going to get away from changing companies for numerous different reasons.
As for a library card, you still have an electricity bill, natural gas/propane bill, a city water bill, a property tax notice, rent reciept, or any number of other pieces of ID that verify your address. Heck, after I moved I used my amateur radio license that still had my old address in order to renew my library card. Since the library was still closer to my new house than the one I am supposed to go to, I decided to renew it rather than get a new one. All of the libraries in my area have a giant co-op thing anyway so it really doesn't matter which local library my card is printed at, they all accept it and give me books. Next time I am in the area of the "correct" one I'll give them my address change and do it right, but in the meantime it saves me some hassle to do it that way.
Granted there are some issues that will need to be worked out, but those two are so trivial to fix that they aren't really much of a concern at all.
"Good points, but I still insist that the society should provide a modest income to everyone (a citizen's salary, so to speak) - even if you admit you're just a lazy son-of-a-bitch who doesn't feel like working. I've got such a friend. He just doesn't feel like having a job, but is perfectly OK with his minimal dole. I'm perfectly OK with that, too."
See, I am not OK with that. Why should I be *forced* to pay him to sit on his duff while I work my duff off? If you are OK with it, great, feel free to donate as much of your salary as you like to him. Sure, I know some people who are like that too, but it is their choice. Now if your friend was laid off from his high paying job, and is being forced to work at a fast food joint for minimum wage just to pay his rent, I'll gladly help support him for a *limited* amount of time until he can either get back on his feet via a better job, or reduces his expenses to match his new income. Again, that part is his choice.
"My argument is that most people simply can't handle the life of being truly lazy. Heck, over here people who've been unemployed for months are getting psychological help in order to cope with the situation of having nothing "real" to do."
I disagree with this statement. I would gladly quit my job and do nothing if I could. But I have to get my own ducks in a row to do that. I would not be comfortable doing so then expecting you to work harder to support it. It is called personal responsibility, and *everyone* needs to be held responsible for themselves. If your friend makes a million in the stock market and wants to be lazy for the rest of his life, more power to him. But since he is expecting to be lazy and expecting me to provide for him, it needs to stop.
"In other words, the financial burden of supporting the real leeches would be insignificant. It's just the people who hate their jobs, but who don't have the guts to actually admit it or the initiative to do something about it, are the ones who are having problems here."
Yep. I can't quit my job because I have the responsibility to my society to support myself, and my family. If I didn't have to pay to support your friend, I might be able to get into a situation where I could quit a lot faster. Long and short of it is, society should not have any responsibility to support the truely, self proclaimed, lazy drains on society when it causes harm to the rest of the society members.
If we support the idea that it is OK to be a lazy leech, then more and more people will become a leech. You may be correct that the number of leeches now may not be that large of a burdon to support. But the moment we condone that lifestyle, it will grow exponentially.
Now there are other ways besides a 8-5 job, like volunteering. If your friend is choosing not to work, and is willing to live on handouts, because he devotes all of his spare time to doing charity work, then I am OK with that too. In this case, he would not be a pure drain, he is actually contributing in some way.
That is also a solution for those with "nothing real to do" as you so elegantly put it. Rather than pay for them to do nothing, then pay for them to get counseling because it is stressing them out, put them to work in a soup kitchen, or roadside litter pickups, or a nursing home. The only reason these people have "nothing to do" is because they are, again as you said, lazy and only want to leech. Now they are doing what they can to get everyones' sympathy by claiming to be victims.
My whole point, is that I should not be told I have to support your friend if he is not willing to do something in return. If I choose to, that is fine, it is my choice to do so. But to be told I have to is a violation of my rights as I see it. As others have said, this does not apply to handicapped and sick, and unlucky people, only the perfectly capable people who have a choice.
Assuming this isn't just a troll post, I'll explain it as I saw it. I believe they were making fun of the change in light patterns that movies always portrayed when a ship started to go faster. For example, on Starwars when using hyper drive, the stars would extend out into lines and kind of flash away, and you'd see a big flash on screen.
From my take, "going Plaid" made a different light pattern, and that was the whole joke, making fun of the special effects in space movies.
The thing is, there will be enough competition between carriers, that if your call compression gets too high, change to another carrier that is not compressing. Or make sure in your contract that maximum call compression levels are clearly spelled out. It is no different than existing service level contracts for purchasing network connectivity (home cable/DSL does not count.) Min sustained up and down speeds, burst rates, max down time, latency, tech support wait time. Those are just a few of the items you can put into contracts. Sure some of them cost extra, but if it is an item you require, then more than likely you are willing to pay a little extra to get that level of service.
To use your Satellite example, you have to look at DirecTV's competition. Dish Network has chosen to go the opposite direction. Rather than increasing compression levels, they have chosen to launch/lease more birds. Their Dish 500 is required to get most channels above and beyond the basic set. It looks at 2 satellites at a time. The new SuperDish, required for local channel access and HDTV channels, looks at 3 bords simultaneously. That breaks down to Dish having available, and probably using, approximately 3 times the bandwidth DirecTV is using for roughly the same amount of channels.
So while one company may take the low road for the customers to profit, there will always be other companies stepping in and taking the high road.
Off topic but related to the subject, due to picture quality, price, and service levels, I wonder how long DTV would last if Dish was able to offer all of the NFL games? I personally know several people who only have DTV due to NFL, and would bail in a moment if they could get the games from another provider.
Exactly. I use Broadvoice as I am in a similar situation to the original poster. I just need unlimited local calling, and I rarely use long distance. So I have their "in-state" plan for $9.95 per month. If I need long distance, they charge 3.9 cents per minute. If you find you start to use a lot of long distance, you could easily switch to their $19.95 plan the previous poster mentioned. It would take you over 2 hours of long distance to make up the difference.
In my case I use Asterisk between Broadvoice and my telephone adapter. I have Broadvoice's in-state plan, then send long distance out NuFone (at half of BV's LD rate) or any other provider I happen to be beta testing, so my actual LD charges tend to be under a dollar per month. This is major overkill for the average "home phone replacement."
This is compared to my old Qwest land line which I decided to completely drop in June. I was paying $35 per month by the time all the taxes and fees were included, with only a basic line with CallerID and Call Waiting. Long distance was 5 cents per minute. With Broadvoice I have all of those features and more, and the long distance rates are cheaper for only $11.75 after taxes are added.
I debated between Broadvoice and Packet8 as they have very similar packages, but Packet8 would not allow me to insert Asterisk between them and the adapter, so they made the choice easy for me.
I've used asterisk since the first part of the year, and exclusively for all non-cellular telephony in my house since June. I can't be more impressed.
As far as wireless goes, it works fine. I use X-Lite on my laptop and it works well, and I just installed SJPhone on my iPAQ h4155 with Wireless. The laptop functions flawlessly, no extra delays or anything like that. The occasional dropout if the Wireless LAN gets saturated by something else, but more than managable. I'd compare it to a decent cell phone connection.
SJPhone has quite a bit more dropout on my PDA, and some added delay. I'm guessing it is a combination of the slower processor in the PDA along with the wireless connection. I installed it there more as a toy than anything else, so I'm not concerned and haven't spent much time working with it.
As for the Pulver WiSIP, I've heard they work pretty well, but you will get delay and dropout if you have WEP enabled on your AP. I have not personally used them, but from others I know that have them, that is what I've been told.
Exactly. I have a free link in my sig too. That doesn't make any difference to the point of my post, or the OP's point.
I'm actually using Asterisk for my phone system at home, and it is amazing what you can do with it. I'm running a CVS version from about 2 months ago, and had been updating it monthly up until my last update. Even running a development "non-stable" version I hardly have any issues at all. And each time I did, the people in the IRC channel have been very helpful, and most every time a CVS update has resolved my troubles.
With all the open-source talk these days, and all of the great sounding projects that end up being vaporware, a 1.0 release of such a large-scale project is truely news. It may sound like a PR advertisement, but when that is a very accurate description of the product, then what is the problem? As the saying goes, if the shoe fits....
The problem with implementing it in IM clients is firewalls and/or NAT boxes. Many IM clients already support voice, but they are a pain to get working through NAT. Now if the IM vendors wanted to host servers for the voice traffic to bounce off of, that would work great. Unfortunately, the bandwidth wouldn't be cheap if everyone used it. Some peer-to-peer scheme like Skype could solve that issue though.
I use voice chat on a daily basis as well, my entire phone setup at home is Voice over IP. I also use Teamspeak (even run the server) for my friends and I who play Everquest, and moreso lately City of Heros.
VoIP works, and it works well, but with the current players in the IM market, I can't see them implementing it any time in the near future.
That old saying applies... Place a frog in boiling water, he will jump out. Place a frog in cool water and slowly raise the temperature, he will cook to death.
Make the change overnight, and people will complain and throw a fit. Over time add a little DRM here, a little more here, require a secure PC for this premium media, then that regular media... Joe Sixpack will be cooked before he knows it.
Unfortunately, there will be so many Sixpacks out there that those of us who see it coming will be treated like Chicken Little until it is too late.
I agree with your overall point, but your closing statement is overly broad. In the case with overtime, minimum wage laws, and child labor laws, you are correct for the most part. Those laws were specifically generated to solve a problem. The people as you said didn't want 7 year old kids to work in dangerous factories for pennies per hour. The people didn't want to be forced to work 80 hour weeks without an increase in the hourly wage, in order to give the employers an incentive to hire others to reduce the levels of overtime.
However, many laws are not passed because of a need. Take the DMCA for example. That is one law that was added to the books, strictly because of corporate influence, that is absolutely not needed. The existing copyright laws provide for protection from pirating software, music, movies, books, and whatever other copyrighted materials they can pirate. The DMCA provides more confusion (how many invalid takedown notices have been sent?) and restrictions on other activities that are not needed. As an example, if I build a device to do something, say it is to measure the quality of a video stream. Someone figures out how to pirate video with it, now I have to worry that I have created an "infringing device" even though I have never used it for that purpose, intended for it to be used for that purpose, or maybe even considered it was possible for it to be used in such a way.
I'm sure there are clauses in the labor laws as well that are unnecessary, confusing, and downright backwards, but in general they were created for the good of society because of a genuine need. But be careful in making broad statements such as "If these laws were completely unnecessary, we would never have needed them in the first place." There are more unnecessary laws on the books than you can shake a fist at. The more broad the statement is, the more chances there are of having holes in it.
If you need more examples of unnecessary laws, look up some of the laws listed in those "Crazy laws" type of books. For example, in Idaho, it is illegal to fish for trout from the back of a giraffe. I'm sure there was a specific case where one person was doing that (at the zoo maybe?) and they created a law to prevent it. But how "necessary" was that law?
You are correct that, at least in theory, no laws are created without the express need of the people. In practice, however, that does not seem to hold true.
There are a lot more than 10 addresses available for each person. What I think the author unclearly stated is that each person CAN have 10 IPs if needed, not that they were limited to 10 each.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but I read in several places of an estimate of some thousands of IPs per square inch of the planet. It may not be accurate, but 10 per person is way on the low side.
Sure it is a pyramid,but it is not an illegal one as no money is exchanging hands to join. And anyone can join without even being in the pyramid below someone just by signing up on their main page without following a referral link. Sure the ones at the bottom will get left out, but that is the incentive to join now before everybody else has either discounted it as a scam or already signed up.
As for mine, I am just waiting for it to ship. I already have my 5 referrals. As soon as my referrals send me their links, I am going to rotate theirs through my sig to help them get one too.
The problem is, we have 16 year old kids (even younger sometimes) having kids. These 16 year old kids don't know how to raise kids, so they basically don't. Yes, I feel it is still the parents' responsibility to teach their kids all of these things, including not to lie, cheat, and steal. However, when the parents are too young to fully understand those concepts themselves, well you get the idea.
Back when I graduated high school, there were kids who passed their algebra class, but did not know how to count back change without a calculator. Most of those even had problems giving correct change even when the little screen said Change: 1.48.
Unfortunately, our school systems need to change some to take this into account. My Home Economics class focused almost entirely on safe sex. Shouldn't that be a small portion of what is taught in Health class? The teacher was not even qualified to discuss that matter without turning it into a big joke. It was a wasted 72 minutes every day the whole trimester.
To me, Home Economics should have been Economics. How to ballance a checkbook. How to figure out that Credit Card X at 16.99% compounding will take me Y decades to pay off. It should have been how to count change, how to make sure you were given the correct change from the kid behind the register at Drawl-Mart. It should have been about how to modify a recipe "I only have 2 tbls of butter, but the recipe calls for 3. How many cookies can I make and what amount of other ingredients need to be added?" Car insurance is Z dollars every 6 months, and I get paid X every other week. How much per paycheck do I need to put in savings each paycheck to pay that bill every 6 months?" I think you see what I mean.
My point is, schools any more are not teaching what is relevant to students that will not attend higher education. I realize it is out of "fairness" to everyone, so no student feels they are "behind." But as a result, they are not able to fully function as productive members of society, and remain "behind" the rest of their lives. Next, they raise kids who don't know the difference, and the process continues. Unfortunately we have to start teaching the students to be responsible for themselves, because their parents are not responsibile enough to do it themselves. I'm all for self-responsibility, and I hold myself to a very high degree of it. But we are now at the point that we have to start teaching it to the younger generations and break the cycle.
Try sending copies of the "Our mistake, no further action will be taken" from the other agencies to the ones still trying to collect. You may have to dig a little deeper into the laws, but if one (well, several in your case) agency acting as a "representative" of Verizon has forgiven the debt, Verizon may be required to honor that forgiveness and cease any and all further action by themselves and their current "representatives."
You may also want to write to the credit bureaus informing them of the situation and that you are contesting the mark on your credit. I know it is only a small claim against the greater whole, but you've earned your credit rating, you don't need some stupid company damaging it unjustly.
I'm sure you've already explored these avenues, but just in case you haven't you may want to give it a shot.
Yes, the laws being referred to are federal. Some states add even more restrictions to them, but those are basic rights. I no longer do, but I have worked in collection recently as an extra job. I also have helped a friend find the appropriate information to stop a big cell phone company from illegally harassing him. I won't say which one, but they sold the "debt" to an outside agency that was causing the problems.
There is the Fair Debt Collection Act which covers most of these rules, such as you can only contact a debtor once every 7 days. You can call several times a day talking to others in the household/place of employment every day until you do reach the debtor, but once you do, no more calls for 7 days.
If requested IN WRITING not to call any more, you have to honor it. Some agencies honor requests over the phone, but they are not required to. You can also ask not to be contacted by them AT ALL. Like another person already said, this does not stop court summonses or legal proceeding.
A debt collection company must act honestly. They must identify themselves when asked, and up front in some states. They can not give false information in attempt to recover the debt. I assume CallerID falls under this rule here.
A debt collector is required to give you a payment option that does not cost you to use. They can't require you to use Western Union if you have to pay the associated fee. The only "fee" they can legally ask you to pay in order to make a payment is a first class stamp in order to mail a payment in. Now, this doesn't mean if the payment is due tomorrow and you mail it in that you will be protected from the $40 late fee. It is still your responsibility to make your payment by whatever day it is required. They simply have to accept the payment when it gets there. If you CHOOSE to use Western Union to make sure the payment is recieved by the due date, that is your choice to pay the fee.
Another misconception people have is with attorneys. If I call you, and you tell me your attorney is handling the matter, I can no longer call you. However, if I call the attorney and they are not handling the matter (no retainer paid is one reson) then calls are back on your shoulders. If you honestly have an attorney handling your debt, then say so. But if not, it will not help you as you will get a call back the next day attempting to collect again.
Debt reduction services are another major gotchya. Many of them say to referr all debt collection to them. Problem is they are not attorneys, and creditors are not required, and in many cases are not allowed to by law, discuss the debt with them. Many advise not to pay until the reduction plan goes into effect. This is about the worst thing you can do, because it only damages your credit further. If you can, make even partial payments. If you are 4 months behind, at least make 1 month's payment to keep it from going to 5 months. Your credit will thank you. Another problem with debt reduction is some of them are not true Consumer Credit Counseling Services, they are simply settlement agencies. They collect your "monthly payment" until it reaches a certain sum, then offer to pay Credit Card X 50% of the debt in one lump sum. Sure it generally stops the collection, but it also marks your credit "Paid in full for less than the amount owed." Down goes your credit score even further.
And the best advice I can give is just be honest. If you can't pay the bill that week, just tell them. For example, telling them you are going to take a payment down to the department store tomorrow when you have no intention of it will only cause you to get a call back the next day when that payment doesn't show. And yes, that does allow them to call back sooner than the 7 day limit. Keep in mind once they talk to you, especially if you don't offer a payment in the meantime, they can't call you again for 7 days. Plenty of time to get a letter mailed to them to request no more calls at all.
Wrong again! At least in my state, even on the EZ form it has a box stating something similar to "$ of purchases made out of state and imported, such as magazine subs, mail order...."
In your state you may not have to worry if you don't itemize, but in others you do.
Another thing to consider, the cost of electricity is not only the money for the monthly bill. For people in coal-fired power areas, they may want to try to conserve as much as possible to help with the pollution problem. That isn't as huge a concern for my area, as we are on Hydroelectric, so the pollution has already been done. Electricity prices are just above $.06 per Kw/h so even the cost doesn't add up to much. That being said, I still try to keep my usage down as much as possible.
One of the biggest concerns for me is heat. My Smoothwall firewall (old 486 DX 166 AT system,) 2K storage and test server (old Cyrix 6x86 AT system,) and my Linux mail/web/ftp/Asterisk/whatever server (old Dual Pentium Pro 200 ATX system) all generate quite a bit of heat. Since I don't do much with Win2K any more, one of these devices with a decent sized hard drive would be great to replace that system. It would pull less power and generate less heat. One of these with a couple of USB Network adapters would make a great firewall system, angain reducing power consumption and heat production. Perhaps one of the routers would better fit that bill.
Another factor to consider with heat generation, is the cost of heat reduction. During the summer months, not only is there extra energy cost for the generated heat, there is also the added air conditioning cost to bring the ambient heat level back down. Of course, it does help reduce the natural gas bill during the winter months as it takes less heat from the furnace. However, the efficiency is not nearly as good.
Don't spoil his excuse... He said explicitly that he gets other advantages from a second IP. His wife gets wind that he can do it without, and it is game over for him. Bye-Bye second IP.
You're missing my point in a way as well. The ads on radio are targeted. You aren't going to hear Viagra commercials on your local teen-bop radio station, nor are you going to hear ads for the local teen dance hangout on your pollitical talk radio station. With television, you aren't going to see hair-restoration commercials in the middle of SpongeBob Squarepants, or the latest real baby doll in the middle of Lou Dobbs on CNN.
The only difference in web advertising is how specifically it can be targeted. Marketing companies do their best to target as specifically as they can, no matter what the medium is. The Internet simply lets them target at smaler groups (such as which site you generically advertise on) or even individuals via registration.
But on the other hand, what is the problem? If they are going to show me the ads anyway, I'd much rather see something that might be remotely interesting to me. If I were to go register and browse at CNN, I'd much rather see an ad for Vonage or Best Buy than Tampax or Mabeline Makeup. I don't know about you, but if I could tell NBC that I am a 23 year old male so they would stop showing me tampon commercials while I eat dinner, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Now there is a fine line, like Doubleclick's tracking. When the choice to register with a site or ad syndicate is not offered, and you are tracked anyway, that is where it becomes taboo. If I *voluntarily* give my demographic info, then target your ads at me utill your heart is content. If I choose not to register, then you better be showing me the ads you show every other non-registered user, regardless as to whether I've been to xyzcontroversialsite.com or not.
I think we agree with each other for the most part, just making different points from the same data.
They do have that information from regular broadcast outlets. Radio stations get rated by Arbitron. http://www.arbitron.com/ TV stations get rated by Nielsen. http://www.nielsenmedia.com/ I have worked in the radio and TV industries, and have participated in Arbitron ratings surveys after I had left the field. You should see the data that the stations get on their audiences! Nothing as to "Jane Smith listened to your station yesterday at 5:50 PM" but it does say "Your station had 5000 male listeners, aged 24-30, between 5 and 6 PM. 2000 male listeners, aged 18-24...."
Newspapers and magazines have distribution data for their subscribers as well. They may or may not have age/gender/income type of info, but they definitely have distribution info which can be compared to census data. "The higher income area of town has a 50% subscription rate of 50,000 copies daily, while the lower income area has 25% saturation at 10,000 copies daily."
That information (whether collected via outside surveys, inside subscription rates, or user registration) is vital to the advertising prices the company can charge. I would not be willing to spend as much for advertising on a radio station that has half the listeners as one that has twice as many in my target audience. It is simple bang-for-the-buck logic.
The reason why advertisers are willing to pay more for TV ads than Internet ads is simple. TV ads are pretty much captive audiences. Tivo and other PVR users excluded, most people will leave the volume up during commercials, hearing the jingle and brand name bombardment even while they go into the kitchen to get a beer. Web site ads either sit quietly in the background being ignored by the vast majority, or they get up front in your face upsetting you. Can you name, without looking, the ad on the top of the page now? How about the one on the previous page?
Another problem with Internet advertisement is the duplication of content. If you want to watch the latest Nerds game, you have to watch it on whatever local channel caries XYZ network. With online content, more than likely another source has it too. As an example, a friend sent me a link to an article on a local TV news station's web page. They require registration, so I went to the website for my local newspaper and grabbed basically the same article written by another reporter, without registration.
I hope this helps shed some light on the subject for you. One of the best forms of advertisement on the net is the viral marketing. Especially when the user has something to gain, besides the content, to give their information. To see an example, click the link in my sig.
Unless GPS coordinates are part of the record, the only real speeding data that would be reliable would be the speed on the road before you turned into the gas station. There are lots of intersections where you could turn onto a road from a different speed in each direction. It would take some serious backtracking to see if I sped anywhere on that tank of gas. What if I was driving from Boise to Portland, stopping in each little town and driving around a bit to catch the scenery, and moving on? That would be a huge nightmare to try to determine where I was at each data point.
Now if GPS was logged, they would have lat/long for each data point, which would very easily tie you down to a specific section of road. GPS coordinates only add a very small size increase to each record, at the decimal places reqired to get road-level accuracy. I get about 300 miles to the tank on my pickup, and if each record stored every second, that is a ton of records.
I drive mostly back and forth to work in my pickup, average speed 30 MPH. One mile every two minutes at 60 reads per minute is 120 reads per mile. Multiply that by 300 miles is 36,000 reads per tank.
A sample log line containing this info (CSV):
datetime,lat,long,speed,heading,brake pressure(percent), steer deviation (degrees from center),sig light status, side G force, front/back G force, tilt (degrees from level),airbag status,engine rpm
With that log, we are looking at a little under 10K of log every mile at my example speed. I am guessing that if every OSD sensor was included, it would probably be 3 times that. So we are looking at about 25K of data per mile. If I did my quick math correctly, we are only looking at about 7.5 MB per tank of gas. Want to read every 10th of a second? Multiply that by 10, so you now get 75MB per tank of gas.
With consumer USB pen drives being sub $20 for 128MB, that adds nothing to the price of a car, especially if you consider GPS and most necessary sensors being installed already because of OSD and OnStar. Even going to 256MB would be an insignificant cost.
Now go another step farther. Each person has their own key they carry car to car. The car is programmed to accept individual keys, rather than an individual key per car. The key has the storage, so every time you fill up with gas, you not only get a ticket if you sped in your current vehicle, but any vehicle you drove since the last time you filled up and read your key. Make the keys warn at 500 miles then fail to start a vehicle after 1000 miles to prevent someone from getting away with it for too long and wiping previous data out.
You could end up with a system like on the Fifth Element. You get in your car, insert your drivers license, and it tells you how many tickets you have pending. That is when it gets scarry!
I don't mind black boxes if they do as many suggest, record the last 15-60 seconds of data at the time of an accident. But the more "tin-foil-hat-like" situations are not as technically difficult or expensive as many seem to be saying.
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Couple of answers for you. First, it is spelled Asterisk, like the web page you liked to. :-) Most of the hardware you need is available from Digium, the company that originally wrote, and still maintains and heavily contributes to Asterisk. http://www.digium.com and there is also a link from the Asterisk page you linked to above.
One to four POTS lines? Digium's WildCard TDM400 with FXO modules will fit the bill nicely. More than that, you will want to go with a T1 into one of their T1 interface cards. If all of the lines at your building are POTS, you will need a channel bank to convert them to the T1. Some people, including myself, have had limited success using a specific modem, but they are not nearly as reliable and trouble-free as Digium's hardware.
For your office extensions, you have several options. You can use several of Digium's solutions, including the IAXy which is ethernet-to-POTS, or the TDM400 card mentioned above with FXS modules for up to 4 extensions. If you have more than 4, you have to use those IAXys or a T1 interface card to a channel bank, then all of your phones attach to that.
Of course, there are several brands of IP phones you can use instead of the adapters above, such as Cisco and Grandstream. You would still need to attach to the PSTN phone system as mentioned above, but using IP phones would eliminate any worry for your office extensions.
I can't offer much more advice without knowing your needs, but if you want, go ahead and send me an e-mail with your situation and I'll help you figure out what you need.
Jeremy
I would rather someone spell it out than mispronounce the common phrase. I have a friend that always says "Ahs" rather than the letters O and S when referring to an Operating System. For example "Bee-ahs" when he means BeOS. Or "What ahs are you running?" Since I know what he means, it doesn't confuse me, but if he is trying to talk to someone else, it just adds to the language barrier if he is talking to a non-techie. It is actually quite amusing to me. No matter how many times he has been corrected by every person he talks to, he still sticks to calling it an Ahs.
When is the last time you had problems when your telephone and/or ISP and/or cable company merged with or got bought by another company? That happened 3 times over the course of one year for me. Each time, I had billing problems, e-maill address changed, outtages, etc. That prompted me to register my own domain for my e-mail because I was tired of changing it. In today's world, you are not going to get away from changing companies for numerous different reasons.
As for a library card, you still have an electricity bill, natural gas/propane bill, a city water bill, a property tax notice, rent reciept, or any number of other pieces of ID that verify your address. Heck, after I moved I used my amateur radio license that still had my old address in order to renew my library card. Since the library was still closer to my new house than the one I am supposed to go to, I decided to renew it rather than get a new one. All of the libraries in my area have a giant co-op thing anyway so it really doesn't matter which local library my card is printed at, they all accept it and give me books. Next time I am in the area of the "correct" one I'll give them my address change and do it right, but in the meantime it saves me some hassle to do it that way.
Granted there are some issues that will need to be worked out, but those two are so trivial to fix that they aren't really much of a concern at all.
"Good points, but I still insist that the society should provide a modest income to everyone (a citizen's salary, so to speak) - even if you admit you're just a lazy son-of-a-bitch who doesn't feel like working. I've got such a friend. He just doesn't feel like having a job, but is perfectly OK with his minimal dole. I'm perfectly OK with that, too."
See, I am not OK with that. Why should I be *forced* to pay him to sit on his duff while I work my duff off? If you are OK with it, great, feel free to donate as much of your salary as you like to him. Sure, I know some people who are like that too, but it is their choice. Now if your friend was laid off from his high paying job, and is being forced to work at a fast food joint for minimum wage just to pay his rent, I'll gladly help support him for a *limited* amount of time until he can either get back on his feet via a better job, or reduces his expenses to match his new income. Again, that part is his choice.
"My argument is that most people simply can't handle the life of being truly lazy. Heck, over here people who've been unemployed for months are getting psychological help in order to cope with the situation of having nothing "real" to do."
I disagree with this statement. I would gladly quit my job and do nothing if I could. But I have to get my own ducks in a row to do that. I would not be comfortable doing so then expecting you to work harder to support it. It is called personal responsibility, and *everyone* needs to be held responsible for themselves. If your friend makes a million in the stock market and wants to be lazy for the rest of his life, more power to him. But since he is expecting to be lazy and expecting me to provide for him, it needs to stop.
"In other words, the financial burden of supporting the real leeches would be insignificant. It's just the people who hate their jobs, but who don't have the guts to actually admit it or the initiative to do something about it, are the ones who are having problems here."
Yep. I can't quit my job because I have the responsibility to my society to support myself, and my family. If I didn't have to pay to support your friend, I might be able to get into a situation where I could quit a lot faster. Long and short of it is, society should not have any responsibility to support the truely, self proclaimed, lazy drains on society when it causes harm to the rest of the society members.
If we support the idea that it is OK to be a lazy leech, then more and more people will become a leech. You may be correct that the number of leeches now may not be that large of a burdon to support. But the moment we condone that lifestyle, it will grow exponentially.
Now there are other ways besides a 8-5 job, like volunteering. If your friend is choosing not to work, and is willing to live on handouts, because he devotes all of his spare time to doing charity work, then I am OK with that too. In this case, he would not be a pure drain, he is actually contributing in some way.
That is also a solution for those with "nothing real to do" as you so elegantly put it. Rather than pay for them to do nothing, then pay for them to get counseling because it is stressing them out, put them to work in a soup kitchen, or roadside litter pickups, or a nursing home. The only reason these people have "nothing to do" is because they are, again as you said, lazy and only want to leech. Now they are doing what they can to get everyones' sympathy by claiming to be victims.
My whole point, is that I should not be told I have to support your friend if he is not willing to do something in return. If I choose to, that is fine, it is my choice to do so. But to be told I have to is a violation of my rights as I see it. As others have said, this does not apply to handicapped and sick, and unlucky people, only the perfectly capable people who have a choice.
Too many space movies melding together. You are probably correct about it being "light speed."
I still think it is even funnier when they drop out of "Ludicrous Speed" by pulling the emergency brake.
Definitely one of my favorite comedy movies.
Assuming this isn't just a troll post, I'll explain it as I saw it. I believe they were making fun of the change in light patterns that movies always portrayed when a ship started to go faster. For example, on Starwars when using hyper drive, the stars would extend out into lines and kind of flash away, and you'd see a big flash on screen.
From my take, "going Plaid" made a different light pattern, and that was the whole joke, making fun of the special effects in space movies.
The thing is, there will be enough competition between carriers, that if your call compression gets too high, change to another carrier that is not compressing. Or make sure in your contract that maximum call compression levels are clearly spelled out. It is no different than existing service level contracts for purchasing network connectivity (home cable/DSL does not count.) Min sustained up and down speeds, burst rates, max down time, latency, tech support wait time. Those are just a few of the items you can put into contracts. Sure some of them cost extra, but if it is an item you require, then more than likely you are willing to pay a little extra to get that level of service.
To use your Satellite example, you have to look at DirecTV's competition. Dish Network has chosen to go the opposite direction. Rather than increasing compression levels, they have chosen to launch/lease more birds. Their Dish 500 is required to get most channels above and beyond the basic set. It looks at 2 satellites at a time. The new SuperDish, required for local channel access and HDTV channels, looks at 3 bords simultaneously. That breaks down to Dish having available, and probably using, approximately 3 times the bandwidth DirecTV is using for roughly the same amount of channels.
So while one company may take the low road for the customers to profit, there will always be other companies stepping in and taking the high road.
Off topic but related to the subject, due to picture quality, price, and service levels, I wonder how long DTV would last if Dish was able to offer all of the NFL games? I personally know several people who only have DTV due to NFL, and would bail in a moment if they could get the games from another provider.
As does CableOne.
Exactly. I use Broadvoice as I am in a similar situation to the original poster. I just need unlimited local calling, and I rarely use long distance. So I have their "in-state" plan for $9.95 per month. If I need long distance, they charge 3.9 cents per minute. If you find you start to use a lot of long distance, you could easily switch to their $19.95 plan the previous poster mentioned. It would take you over 2 hours of long distance to make up the difference.
In my case I use Asterisk between Broadvoice and my telephone adapter. I have Broadvoice's in-state plan, then send long distance out NuFone (at half of BV's LD rate) or any other provider I happen to be beta testing, so my actual LD charges tend to be under a dollar per month. This is major overkill for the average "home phone replacement."
This is compared to my old Qwest land line which I decided to completely drop in June. I was paying $35 per month by the time all the taxes and fees were included, with only a basic line with CallerID and Call Waiting. Long distance was 5 cents per minute. With Broadvoice I have all of those features and more, and the long distance rates are cheaper for only $11.75 after taxes are added.
I debated between Broadvoice and Packet8 as they have very similar packages, but Packet8 would not allow me to insert Asterisk between them and the adapter, so they made the choice easy for me.
I've used asterisk since the first part of the year, and exclusively for all non-cellular telephony in my house since June. I can't be more impressed.
As far as wireless goes, it works fine. I use X-Lite on my laptop and it works well, and I just installed SJPhone on my iPAQ h4155 with Wireless. The laptop functions flawlessly, no extra delays or anything like that. The occasional dropout if the Wireless LAN gets saturated by something else, but more than managable. I'd compare it to a decent cell phone connection.
SJPhone has quite a bit more dropout on my PDA, and some added delay. I'm guessing it is a combination of the slower processor in the PDA along with the wireless connection. I installed it there more as a toy than anything else, so I'm not concerned and haven't spent much time working with it.
As for the Pulver WiSIP, I've heard they work pretty well, but you will get delay and dropout if you have WEP enabled on your AP. I have not personally used them, but from others I know that have them, that is what I've been told.
Hope this helps!
Jeremy
Exactly. I have a free link in my sig too. That doesn't make any difference to the point of my post, or the OP's point.
I'm actually using Asterisk for my phone system at home, and it is amazing what you can do with it. I'm running a CVS version from about 2 months ago, and had been updating it monthly up until my last update. Even running a development "non-stable" version I hardly have any issues at all. And each time I did, the people in the IRC channel have been very helpful, and most every time a CVS update has resolved my troubles.
With all the open-source talk these days, and all of the great sounding projects that end up being vaporware, a 1.0 release of such a large-scale project is truely news. It may sound like a PR advertisement, but when that is a very accurate description of the product, then what is the problem? As the saying goes, if the shoe fits....
The problem with implementing it in IM clients is firewalls and/or NAT boxes. Many IM clients already support voice, but they are a pain to get working through NAT. Now if the IM vendors wanted to host servers for the voice traffic to bounce off of, that would work great. Unfortunately, the bandwidth wouldn't be cheap if everyone used it. Some peer-to-peer scheme like Skype could solve that issue though.
I use voice chat on a daily basis as well, my entire phone setup at home is Voice over IP. I also use Teamspeak (even run the server) for my friends and I who play Everquest, and moreso lately City of Heros.
VoIP works, and it works well, but with the current players in the IM market, I can't see them implementing it any time in the near future.
Jeremy
That old saying applies... Place a frog in boiling water, he will jump out. Place a frog in cool water and slowly raise the temperature, he will cook to death.
Make the change overnight, and people will complain and throw a fit. Over time add a little DRM here, a little more here, require a secure PC for this premium media, then that regular media... Joe Sixpack will be cooked before he knows it.
Unfortunately, there will be so many Sixpacks out there that those of us who see it coming will be treated like Chicken Little until it is too late.
I agree with your overall point, but your closing statement is overly broad. In the case with overtime, minimum wage laws, and child labor laws, you are correct for the most part. Those laws were specifically generated to solve a problem. The people as you said didn't want 7 year old kids to work in dangerous factories for pennies per hour. The people didn't want to be forced to work 80 hour weeks without an increase in the hourly wage, in order to give the employers an incentive to hire others to reduce the levels of overtime.
However, many laws are not passed because of a need. Take the DMCA for example. That is one law that was added to the books, strictly because of corporate influence, that is absolutely not needed. The existing copyright laws provide for protection from pirating software, music, movies, books, and whatever other copyrighted materials they can pirate. The DMCA provides more confusion (how many invalid takedown notices have been sent?) and restrictions on other activities that are not needed. As an example, if I build a device to do something, say it is to measure the quality of a video stream. Someone figures out how to pirate video with it, now I have to worry that I have created an "infringing device" even though I have never used it for that purpose, intended for it to be used for that purpose, or maybe even considered it was possible for it to be used in such a way.
I'm sure there are clauses in the labor laws as well that are unnecessary, confusing, and downright backwards, but in general they were created for the good of society because of a genuine need. But be careful in making broad statements such as "If these laws were completely unnecessary, we would never have needed them in the first place." There are more unnecessary laws on the books than you can shake a fist at. The more broad the statement is, the more chances there are of having holes in it.
If you need more examples of unnecessary laws, look up some of the laws listed in those "Crazy laws" type of books. For example, in Idaho, it is illegal to fish for trout from the back of a giraffe. I'm sure there was a specific case where one person was doing that (at the zoo maybe?) and they created a law to prevent it. But how "necessary" was that law?
You are correct that, at least in theory, no laws are created without the express need of the people. In practice, however, that does not seem to hold true.
Jeremy
There are a lot more than 10 addresses available for each person. What I think the author unclearly stated is that each person CAN have 10 IPs if needed, not that they were limited to 10 each.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but I read in several places of an estimate of some thousands of IPs per square inch of the planet. It may not be accurate, but 10 per person is way on the low side.
Sure it is a pyramid,but it is not an illegal one as no money is exchanging hands to join. And anyone can join without even being in the pyramid below someone just by signing up on their main page without following a referral link. Sure the ones at the bottom will get left out, but that is the incentive to join now before everybody else has either discounted it as a scam or already signed up.
As for mine, I am just waiting for it to ship. I already have my 5 referrals. As soon as my referrals send me their links, I am going to rotate theirs through my sig to help them get one too.
The problem is, we have 16 year old kids (even younger sometimes) having kids. These 16 year old kids don't know how to raise kids, so they basically don't. Yes, I feel it is still the parents' responsibility to teach their kids all of these things, including not to lie, cheat, and steal. However, when the parents are too young to fully understand those concepts themselves, well you get the idea.
Back when I graduated high school, there were kids who passed their algebra class, but did not know how to count back change without a calculator. Most of those even had problems giving correct change even when the little screen said Change: 1.48.
Unfortunately, our school systems need to change some to take this into account. My Home Economics class focused almost entirely on safe sex. Shouldn't that be a small portion of what is taught in Health class? The teacher was not even qualified to discuss that matter without turning it into a big joke. It was a wasted 72 minutes every day the whole trimester.
To me, Home Economics should have been Economics. How to ballance a checkbook. How to figure out that Credit Card X at 16.99% compounding will take me Y decades to pay off. It should have been how to count change, how to make sure you were given the correct change from the kid behind the register at Drawl-Mart. It should have been about how to modify a recipe "I only have 2 tbls of butter, but the recipe calls for 3. How many cookies can I make and what amount of other ingredients need to be added?" Car insurance is Z dollars every 6 months, and I get paid X every other week. How much per paycheck do I need to put in savings each paycheck to pay that bill every 6 months?" I think you see what I mean.
My point is, schools any more are not teaching what is relevant to students that will not attend higher education. I realize it is out of "fairness" to everyone, so no student feels they are "behind." But as a result, they are not able to fully function as productive members of society, and remain "behind" the rest of their lives. Next, they raise kids who don't know the difference, and the process continues. Unfortunately we have to start teaching the students to be responsible for themselves, because their parents are not responsibile enough to do it themselves. I'm all for self-responsibility, and I hold myself to a very high degree of it. But we are now at the point that we have to start teaching it to the younger generations and break the cycle.
Jeremy
Try sending copies of the "Our mistake, no further action will be taken" from the other agencies to the ones still trying to collect. You may have to dig a little deeper into the laws, but if one (well, several in your case) agency acting as a "representative" of Verizon has forgiven the debt, Verizon may be required to honor that forgiveness and cease any and all further action by themselves and their current "representatives."
You may also want to write to the credit bureaus informing them of the situation and that you are contesting the mark on your credit. I know it is only a small claim against the greater whole, but you've earned your credit rating, you don't need some stupid company damaging it unjustly.
I'm sure you've already explored these avenues, but just in case you haven't you may want to give it a shot.
Jeremy
Yes, the laws being referred to are federal. Some states add even more restrictions to them, but those are basic rights. I no longer do, but I have worked in collection recently as an extra job. I also have helped a friend find the appropriate information to stop a big cell phone company from illegally harassing him. I won't say which one, but they sold the "debt" to an outside agency that was causing the problems.
There is the Fair Debt Collection Act which covers most of these rules, such as you can only contact a debtor once every 7 days. You can call several times a day talking to others in the household/place of employment every day until you do reach the debtor, but once you do, no more calls for 7 days.
If requested IN WRITING not to call any more, you have to honor it. Some agencies honor requests over the phone, but they are not required to. You can also ask not to be contacted by them AT ALL. Like another person already said, this does not stop court summonses or legal proceeding.
A debt collection company must act honestly. They must identify themselves when asked, and up front in some states. They can not give false information in attempt to recover the debt. I assume CallerID falls under this rule here.
A debt collector is required to give you a payment option that does not cost you to use. They can't require you to use Western Union if you have to pay the associated fee. The only "fee" they can legally ask you to pay in order to make a payment is a first class stamp in order to mail a payment in. Now, this doesn't mean if the payment is due tomorrow and you mail it in that you will be protected from the $40 late fee. It is still your responsibility to make your payment by whatever day it is required. They simply have to accept the payment when it gets there. If you CHOOSE to use Western Union to make sure the payment is recieved by the due date, that is your choice to pay the fee.
Another misconception people have is with attorneys. If I call you, and you tell me your attorney is handling the matter, I can no longer call you. However, if I call the attorney and they are not handling the matter (no retainer paid is one reson) then calls are back on your shoulders. If you honestly have an attorney handling your debt, then say so. But if not, it will not help you as you will get a call back the next day attempting to collect again.
Debt reduction services are another major gotchya. Many of them say to referr all debt collection to them. Problem is they are not attorneys, and creditors are not required, and in many cases are not allowed to by law, discuss the debt with them. Many advise not to pay until the reduction plan goes into effect. This is about the worst thing you can do, because it only damages your credit further. If you can, make even partial payments. If you are 4 months behind, at least make 1 month's payment to keep it from going to 5 months. Your credit will thank you. Another problem with debt reduction is some of them are not true Consumer Credit Counseling Services, they are simply settlement agencies. They collect your "monthly payment" until it reaches a certain sum, then offer to pay Credit Card X 50% of the debt in one lump sum. Sure it generally stops the collection, but it also marks your credit "Paid in full for less than the amount owed." Down goes your credit score even further.
And the best advice I can give is just be honest. If you can't pay the bill that week, just tell them. For example, telling them you are going to take a payment down to the department store tomorrow when you have no intention of it will only cause you to get a call back the next day when that payment doesn't show. And yes, that does allow them to call back sooner than the 7 day limit. Keep in mind once they talk to you, especially if you don't offer a payment in the meantime, they can't call you again for 7 days. Plenty of time to get a letter mailed to them to request no more calls at all.
Feel free to contac
Wrong again! At least in my state, even on the EZ form it has a box stating something similar to "$ of purchases made out of state and imported, such as magazine subs, mail order...."
In your state you may not have to worry if you don't itemize, but in others you do.
Another thing to consider, the cost of electricity is not only the money for the monthly bill. For people in coal-fired power areas, they may want to try to conserve as much as possible to help with the pollution problem. That isn't as huge a concern for my area, as we are on Hydroelectric, so the pollution has already been done. Electricity prices are just above $.06 per Kw/h so even the cost doesn't add up to much. That being said, I still try to keep my usage down as much as possible.
One of the biggest concerns for me is heat. My Smoothwall firewall (old 486 DX 166 AT system,) 2K storage and test server (old Cyrix 6x86 AT system,) and my Linux mail/web/ftp/Asterisk/whatever server (old Dual Pentium Pro 200 ATX system) all generate quite a bit of heat. Since I don't do much with Win2K any more, one of these devices with a decent sized hard drive would be great to replace that system. It would pull less power and generate less heat. One of these with a couple of USB Network adapters would make a great firewall system, angain reducing power consumption and heat production. Perhaps one of the routers would better fit that bill.
Another factor to consider with heat generation, is the cost of heat reduction. During the summer months, not only is there extra energy cost for the generated heat, there is also the added air conditioning cost to bring the ambient heat level back down. Of course, it does help reduce the natural gas bill during the winter months as it takes less heat from the furnace. However, the efficiency is not nearly as good.
Just some points to ponder.
Jeremy
Don't spoil his excuse... He said explicitly that he gets other advantages from a second IP. His wife gets wind that he can do it without, and it is game over for him. Bye-Bye second IP.
Jeremy
You're missing my point in a way as well. The ads on radio are targeted. You aren't going to hear Viagra commercials on your local teen-bop radio station, nor are you going to hear ads for the local teen dance hangout on your pollitical talk radio station. With television, you aren't going to see hair-restoration commercials in the middle of SpongeBob Squarepants, or the latest real baby doll in the middle of Lou Dobbs on CNN.
The only difference in web advertising is how specifically it can be targeted. Marketing companies do their best to target as specifically as they can, no matter what the medium is. The Internet simply lets them target at smaler groups (such as which site you generically advertise on) or even individuals via registration.
But on the other hand, what is the problem? If they are going to show me the ads anyway, I'd much rather see something that might be remotely interesting to me. If I were to go register and browse at CNN, I'd much rather see an ad for Vonage or Best Buy than Tampax or Mabeline Makeup. I don't know about you, but if I could tell NBC that I am a 23 year old male so they would stop showing me tampon commercials while I eat dinner, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Now there is a fine line, like Doubleclick's tracking. When the choice to register with a site or ad syndicate is not offered, and you are tracked anyway, that is where it becomes taboo. If I *voluntarily* give my demographic info, then target your ads at me utill your heart is content. If I choose not to register, then you better be showing me the ads you show every other non-registered user, regardless as to whether I've been to xyzcontroversialsite.com or not.
I think we agree with each other for the most part, just making different points from the same data.
They do have that information from regular broadcast outlets. Radio stations get rated by Arbitron. http://www.arbitron.com/ TV stations get rated by Nielsen. http://www.nielsenmedia.com/ I have worked in the radio and TV industries, and have participated in Arbitron ratings surveys after I had left the field. You should see the data that the stations get on their audiences! Nothing as to "Jane Smith listened to your station yesterday at 5:50 PM" but it does say "Your station had 5000 male listeners, aged 24-30, between 5 and 6 PM. 2000 male listeners, aged 18-24...."
Newspapers and magazines have distribution data for their subscribers as well. They may or may not have age/gender/income type of info, but they definitely have distribution info which can be compared to census data. "The higher income area of town has a 50% subscription rate of 50,000 copies daily, while the lower income area has 25% saturation at 10,000 copies daily."
That information (whether collected via outside surveys, inside subscription rates, or user registration) is vital to the advertising prices the company can charge. I would not be willing to spend as much for advertising on a radio station that has half the listeners as one that has twice as many in my target audience. It is simple bang-for-the-buck logic.
The reason why advertisers are willing to pay more for TV ads than Internet ads is simple. TV ads are pretty much captive audiences. Tivo and other PVR users excluded, most people will leave the volume up during commercials, hearing the jingle and brand name bombardment even while they go into the kitchen to get a beer. Web site ads either sit quietly in the background being ignored by the vast majority, or they get up front in your face upsetting you. Can you name, without looking, the ad on the top of the page now? How about the one on the previous page?
Another problem with Internet advertisement is the duplication of content. If you want to watch the latest Nerds game, you have to watch it on whatever local channel caries XYZ network. With online content, more than likely another source has it too. As an example, a friend sent me a link to an article on a local TV news station's web page. They require registration, so I went to the website for my local newspaper and grabbed basically the same article written by another reporter, without registration.
I hope this helps shed some light on the subject for you. One of the best forms of advertisement on the net is the viral marketing. Especially when the user has something to gain, besides the content, to give their information. To see an example, click the link in my sig.
Unless GPS coordinates are part of the record, the only real speeding data that would be reliable would be the speed on the road before you turned into the gas station. There are lots of intersections where you could turn onto a road from a different speed in each direction. It would take some serious backtracking to see if I sped anywhere on that tank of gas. What if I was driving from Boise to Portland, stopping in each little town and driving around a bit to catch the scenery, and moving on? That would be a huge nightmare to try to determine where I was at each data point.
6 ,L ,-3.5789,9.1353,-25,D,4500
Now if GPS was logged, they would have lat/long for each data point, which would very easily tie you down to a specific section of road. GPS coordinates only add a very small size increase to each record, at the decimal places reqired to get road-level accuracy. I get about 300 miles to the tank on my pickup, and if each record stored every second, that is a ton of records.
I drive mostly back and forth to work in my pickup, average speed 30 MPH. One mile every two minutes at 60 reads per minute is 120 reads per mile. Multiply that by 300 miles is 36,000 reads per tank.
A sample log line containing this info (CSV):
datetime,lat,long,speed,heading,brake pressure(percent), steer deviation (degrees from center),sig light status, side G force, front/back G force, tilt (degrees from level),airbag status,engine rpm
creates a line looking something like this:
200408031357,43N33.8055,116W31.8935,32.5,234,09
With that log, we are looking at a little under 10K of log every mile at my example speed. I am guessing that if every OSD sensor was included, it would probably be 3 times that. So we are looking at about 25K of data per mile. If I did my quick math correctly, we are only looking at about 7.5 MB per tank of gas. Want to read every 10th of a second? Multiply that by 10, so you now get 75MB per tank of gas.
With consumer USB pen drives being sub $20 for 128MB, that adds nothing to the price of a car, especially if you consider GPS and most necessary sensors being installed already because of OSD and OnStar. Even going to 256MB would be an insignificant cost.
Now go another step farther. Each person has their own key they carry car to car. The car is programmed to accept individual keys, rather than an individual key per car. The key has the storage, so every time you fill up with gas, you not only get a ticket if you sped in your current vehicle, but any vehicle you drove since the last time you filled up and read your key. Make the keys warn at 500 miles then fail to start a vehicle after 1000 miles to prevent someone from getting away with it for too long and wiping previous data out.
You could end up with a system like on the Fifth Element. You get in your car, insert your drivers license, and it tells you how many tickets you have pending. That is when it gets scarry!
I don't mind black boxes if they do as many suggest, record the last 15-60 seconds of data at the time of an accident. But the more "tin-foil-hat-like" situations are not as technically difficult or expensive as many seem to be saying.
Jeremy