I assume by "ETA" you mean the estimated time until their call will be answered. That is nice, but most phone systems do not support that. The ones that do usually require an additional license to enable that module.
If you haven't heard of it check out the Asterisk PBX. It's GPL licensed and comes with ETA announcements built in:). It supports VoIP (SIP protocol among others) and Analog phones, T1's, etc.
Check out the 2 port SIPura ATA to interface with 2 FXS ports which allow you to interface with normal Analog phones, or the SIPura 3000 with two FXS ports and one FXO port which allows you to interface with a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line from the telco.
Stop by and say hello in #asterisk on the irc.freenode.org IRC network (Sorry you've gotta register your nick with nickserv to get in...we've had huge problems with spambots:\)/nickserv help register
I just went out and bought my Father the XMDelphi SkyFi at Circuit City and the Car Kit (tape adapter (yuck), cigarette plug adapter, and mag mount antenna.
I'm also going to get him an adapter from Blitz Safe which gives you a muchhigher quality sound. Basically it plugs into the proprietary CD changer port on the back of the factory radio and has RCA plugs (or a 1/4" phono iirc) on the other end.
When deciding between XM and Sirius I found this page to be a good comparison between the two.
Here's the text of the article 'cause the server seems to be on the vearge of being slashdotted.
--Informative not off topic!:)
Introduction - More Hardware Next Year Please
To be deadly honest with you, the Australian Game Developers Conference which was held over this past weekend at the Melbourne Convention Center was not all that exciting for a strictly hardware junkie like myself.
However... for an Australian conference, it was very good to see large companies such as Intel, AMD, nVidia, Microsoft, Sony and Creative in your backyard all putting some dollars back into the industry for the benefit of future game development in our good country down under.
While we did not see it necessary to post any formal coverage, throughout the weekend we did learn a few things of interest for us hardware folks, obviously though much of it was focused toward the gaming industry with no ground-breaking new juicy hardware news to feed you folk with.
So without further ado, here is some of the interesting bit and pieces I found @ ADGC 2002.
Sony on PS2 - Still Pushing Hard
- PS2 Online Gaming Service
First off, at their Delegate Cocktail Party, Sony let a noisy, mostly student dominated crowd of 300 or more know that they will launch their very own online gaming service for the PS2 in Australia sometime during our winter season next year - no in-depth details were given by the speaker battling to sound himself above the crowd.
This service will compete with Microsoft's Xbox Live online gaming service which should go live in Australia around the same time, we think.
- PS2 Linux Dev Kit
Sony were also showing off their PS2 Linux Development kit with the aim of getting more up and coming game developers to learn the art behind programming PS2 games under the Linux OS.
These kits sell for around $1000 Australian (roughly $500 US).
nVidia bring beautiful Dawn to our shores!
One of the company stands I thought I would stop by was nVidia where the friendly Steve Burke, Art Director and co from the Santa Clare office in the US of A were showing off their GeForce FX graphics card (to my delight) and CG Graphics engine and development software.
- The Videos
Now most of us have seen the stunning NV30 videos floating around the Internet over the past month or so. I remember when I first saw these videos and how amazed I was. Seeing the NV30 in action personally impressed me a whole lot more with what the technology is truly capable of - somewhat refreshing my excitement over the new product.
We shot 3 or 4 minutes of our own new video footage of both the Dawn and Ogre demos for your viewing pleasure. To view these AVI files, you will need to download the latest DivX codec from the DivX website.
You can download both videos here from our servers:
After we shot the videos, I asked if we could get a closer look at the NV30 graphics card. While nVidia refused to power down their systems (fair enough - we cannot take Dawn away from fellow jaw dropped perverts) they did offer to take the sides off one of their three ASUS nForce2 Athlon XP 2700+ powered systems they were demonstrating...
[pictures here]
These shots give us a good idea of just how much space these monsters are going to take up inside our cases. As you can see, the heat pipe cooling technology is going to cover two of your first PCI slots - whether you like it or not, start to get used to the fact guys.
- Cooling
While we couldn't see it, the fan cooling the heat pipes was very loud - we are talking almost Delta-like volume levels. Possibly, as we get closer to seeing these cards in retail, nVidia may tweak the cooling systems to a more noise tolerable level - at least I hope so.
When quizzed by a gamer at the sound levels coming from the back of the card, an nVidia rep was quick to suggest that it wouldn't matter much because gamers would be using headphones during their gaming. Unless the cooling technology has thermal throttling (which it very well may, mind you) I would have to disagree with this notion.
Say you are listening to music or fragging away with your desktop speakers, the hum of the cooling fan will still be audible since we do not all use headphones.
- Retail Release Dates
I ended my discussions with Steve Burke asking when we could except to see the GeForce FX on store shelves.
He made it clear he was not 100% certain but said we may possibly see a limited supply in stores in the United States toward the very end of this year with supply coming in quantity late January / early February next year.
Please remember these dates were given to us as ESTIMATES and should be treated as such.
Conclusion
Like I said in the introduction, I didn't have a great detail of information to report here. I hope you enjoy the brief coverage I provided in this forum thread.
Feel free to post your thoughts and comments on anything discussed here.
Slashdot Mirror
If you haven't heard of it check out the Asterisk PBX. It's GPL licensed and comes with ETA announcements built in
It supports VoIP (SIP protocol among others) and Analog phones, T1's, etc.
Check out the 2 port SIPura ATA to interface with 2 FXS ports which allow you to interface with normal Analog phones, or the
SIPura 3000 with two FXS ports and one FXO port which allows you to interface with a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) line from the telco.
Stop by and say hello in #asterisk on the irc.freenode.org IRC network (Sorry you've gotta register your nick with nickserv to get in...we've had huge problems with spambots
Hopefully these spambots will go away eventually.
Drop by and say hi at #asterisk on freenode (try irc.debian.org) (if you need an irc client try mIRC for windows).
There's a good article by John Todd at o'Reilly here.
Here's a Guide to Asterisk.
There's also a Wiki
I just went out and bought my Father the XM Delphi SkyFi at Circuit City and the Car Kit (tape adapter (yuck), cigarette plug adapter, and mag mount antenna.
I'm also going to get him an adapter from Blitz Safe which gives you a muchhigher quality sound. Basically it plugs into the proprietary CD changer port on the back of the factory radio and has RCA plugs (or a 1/4" phono iirc) on the other end.
When deciding between XM and Sirius I found this page to be a good comparison between the two.
FYI: I'm getting 12.0KB/Sec from the Apple/Akamai download. and about 40 KiB/Sec from the parrents .torrent.
dang it somebody beat me to it. And I messed up the subject. :(
--Informative not off topic!
Ok so now we know how great your filtering software is. How about telling us what it is?
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) reader for linux at http://download.com.com/3000-2032-10026238.html
seems high.