At my company we use open source projects such as BIND (for an ENUM / DNS based call routing directory) around the edges of our VoiceXML / VOIP IVR hosting service, but not in our core platform.
Originally we did use early open source VOIP projects such as OpenH323. OpenH323 was great, but it needed to be replaced as we moved to SIP and required reliability beyond what OpenH323 offered.
Asterisk is in a similar place - it is a great project that has seen some great early success in voip. I have heard that Vonage, for example, uses it in their voicemail system. I also use it at home and we have several projects at work in the research phase that incorporate it.
Asterisk is not reliable enough for our production environment today - reboots every few weeks to few months are common. As a project it is similar to where Linux was 5+ years ago - plenty of momentum but not quite ready for mission critical use. I have no doubt Asterisk will become as pervasive and reliable as Linux and other leading open source projects have though. Asterisk is an extremely flexible, easy to work with project; and the people involved are also easy to work with and know telephony very well.
I've started to use Asterisk for various applications, including as a
- PSTN to VOIP gateway: combine a cheap server, asterisk, and a few $50 voicemodem cards and you've got a VOIP gateway that can connect your outside phone lines to any VOIP phone.
- VOIP to PSTN gateway: cheap server, asterisk, open VOIP provider like VoicePulse Connect, and some Digium FXS cards and you can connect every phone in your house to a VOIP network.
- PSTN/VOIP front-end to IVR gateway: cheap server, Asterisk, IVR provider like Voxeo and you can connect all of the above to custom voice recognition applications. (Asterisk has some built in IVR but its limited today.)
In summary, Asterisk is becoming an amazing "telephony widget" - it can address a variety of telephony solution requirements, depending on how you configure it.
Higher voltage enables auto manufactures to *get rid of belts completely*. Your water pump, oil pump, a/c compressor, and power steering units will all be replaced with electric driven devices. And the alternator is being replaced with integrated/hybrid starter/alternators.
2. Electric Turbos
Turbos increase engine power effeciently by pushing more air into the cylinders... and more more air = bigger explosion = more engine power.
In laymans terms, Turbos make use of turbines. Turbines are basically fancy, small, high performance fans.
Turbo cars use two turbines: The first turbine sits is inside the "exhaust pipe". Exhaust gasses rush past it and in doing so spin the first turbine. That turbine is connected mechanically to the second turbine to make the second turbine spin. The second turbine ("fancy fan") pushes air into the engines intake, which feeds air into the cylinders. Thus more air in the cylinders.
The resulting power increase makes cars with Turbos go much faster than similar cars without.
The problem with Turbo is "lag" or in geek terms "latency". When your car is going slow, less exhaust is coming out of the engine. Thus, the first turbine isn't spinning much; which means the second turbine isn't pushing much (if any) additional air into the engine. But as you speed up, your exhaust speeds up too, so the first turbine spins faster; and so the second turbine spins faster and pushes more air into your engine.
The result: Turbos only start contributing power after a few seconds of acceleration. This 1-3 second latency delivers the turbo "boost" you feel a few seconds after you press the gas pedal in a Turbo car.
Electric Turbo connects the first turbine to a generator and the second to an electrically driven motor that can take its power from the alternator/battery or the first turbine. Wired this way, the second turbine can spin up quickly or even stay spun up all the time - powered initially off of alternator/battery power, and then off of electricity created by the first turbine. The result: Turbo without lag.
3. Active suspension
Automobile suspension - and thus handling - can be significantly improved by making the suspension active instead of reactive. New electric shocks can actually use electric power to "push" one side or corner of the car up. For example, in a long left turn on a highway, the right side shocks can push up, and the left side can pull down, leaning your car to the left. This leaning makes the car much more stable in the turn.
4. Hybrid cars
Hybrid cars require higher voltage systems as they actually move the car down the road using electricity. Hybrid vehicles already use higher voltage systems, but only in the engine/drivetrain components. The rest of the car is still 12v. Chaning "the rest" to 42v saves money by simplifying design & removing excess conversion components.
5. Fuel cell cars
All of this paves the way for fuel cell cars, where *everything* will be driven by a fuel cell which converts hydrogen into electricity. The more auto manufacturers replace mechanical systems with electrical, the easier it becomes to use fuel cells. Even turbos can be used with fuel cells to push more air/hydrogen into the cell and get more electrical power out of it.
So when you think of 36/42v cars, think of all the weight that's being saved by removing excess gears and pulleys that hang on the front of your belt-driven engine systems. Think of never replacing belts again, and never having them break at the wrong time. In short, over time 36/42v components should decrease cost and increase reliability.
And also think of your 2019 Dodge Viper Extreme, with 2 mega-amp Turbo Fuel Cell that does 0 to 60 in 4.1 seconds:-)
H.323 is horribly difficult, expensive to implement - it requires ASN.1 encoding and multiple complex channels and layers of protocol - and while it may not be dead, it has very little momentum compared to SIP.
Supporting h.323 isn't bad... it's a nice feature for backwards compatability. But SIP is clearly something that should be found in a fancy new $1600 x over IP gizmo.
Their is a good description of what happens during the shuttles landing at:
http://www.x-plane.com/orbiter.html
x-plane is an amazing flight simulator that uses an amazingly realistic flight model - great "physics" in video game software speak - and can simulate shuttle landings. The shuttle is a glider. I'm a glider pilot, but certainly not anything like a shuttle pilot... however I have flown a shuttle on X-plane for what its worth.
The shuttle changes its bank during the phase of the landing it was in to reduce speed. It's not banking to try change its course, it banks to increase drag and reduce speed. The shuttle just rotates over oneo its left or right side a bit.
The shuttle switches back and forth from banking right to banking left to stay on course while performing these drag increasing maneuvers.
FYI, these maneuvers are also done with the shuttle at a very steep angle of attack - as high as 70 degrees. This angle is also used to increase drag to slow the shuttle down.
The last confirmed communication happened shortly after the shuttle made its first switch from being banked right to being banked left.
It is very possible that the switch to being banked left introduced a change in force which led to a structural failure of the wings or control surfaces which are used during the landing. Given the high drag, high angle of attack, banked flight angle the orbiter would be in at the time, the shuttle would almost immediately start spinning end over end at 12,000 mph, disintegrating almost instantly.
Nasa also reported that one of the last data events they received from the shuttle was a "loss in tire pressure". It's alternatively possible that this could happen after an internal explosion in the shuttle, with part of the explosion debris puncturing the tire.
Below is a chronology from spaceflightnow.com - Notice the change in bank angle time.
1401 GMT (9:01 a.m. EST)
Columbia is out of communications with flight controllers in Houston. Now 15 minutes from landing time.
1359 GMT (8:59 a.m. EST)
At an altitude of 40 miles, shuttle Columbia has entered Texas.
1357 GMT (8:57 a.m. EST)
The shuttle is now 43 miles over New Mexico. Columbia is now reversing its bank to the left to further reduce speed.
"I am not a vindictive person, but this calls for something beyond revenge."
I don't beleive in revenge for revenge sake; this goes beyond that. It is an obligation, a resposnbility to our way of life. Terrorists have played a shell game where they hide behind (or in) countries such as Afghanistan, and our moralistic society has respected that game and not attacked the host countries.
Clearly that does not work. It merely creates a safe haven where terrorists can focus on their long term plans without the fear of constant threat, while we get quite the opposite.
To further quote myself:
"Anything that can be done to remedy this should be done, and will."
And I do mean remedy, as in cures the disease or corrects the disorder. Something that solves the fundamental problem: Governments and countries which actively or passively support terrorism.
Although I live on the west coast now I am a child of Manhattan and New Jersey. I grew up across the Hudson from the World Trade Center. It was always over my shoulder. The World Trade Center was -- is -- my favorite place in the world.
I would go there for birthdays, all the way up to to the observation deck, and spend the day there with my Grandmother. I have more childhood memories from these buildings, by far, than anywhere else in the world.
It was an amazing place. Structured yet mysterious, metalic yet comforting, with an amazing variety of nooks, crannies, personalities, and other secrets to discover.
It was also a very social place, with people having lunch at the plaza, looking up at the building and sky
[1] or sharing time on the observation deck or in line to get there [2].
I went to the observation deck every time I could; every time I was in New York City... I've easily spent over 100 hours there throughout my life. In March, I spent the day at the observation deck on tower 2, then had dinner at Windows on the World on top of tower 1 [3].
It was a spiritual place for me, as strange as that may sound. It presented an eagle eye view of the world I grew up in; my childhood in one panoramic view [4][5]. There I could reflect on my past and look forward to tomorrow.
I would always sit at the same bench on top of the observation desk. The one closest to the Statue of Liberty. I'd stay there, looking out to the Atlantic, for hours and hours on end. I learned many things about myself and other other trade center visitors there. I would focus on that spot, on top of the building, on top of the world, one small, specific spot... yet everywhere in the universe, in an expanding stream of thought. It was my own form of meditation, on an amazing bench that no longer exists.
When my wife and I got engaged, I wanted to get married at the top of the trade center. We didn't end up doing it, but others did. [6]
I loved it for the unique place that it was, but not nearly as much as I -- or anyone -- loved all of the unique individuals who have now died there. The tragedy is unreal. The reasons absurd. The people, and their lives, invaluable. I will never forget them.
I am not a vindictive person, but this calls for something beyond revenge. This requires a defense of our way of life, about our principals and individuality. Anything that can be done to remedy this should be done, and will.
God help us all, and especially those who did this.
ENUM is simply a way to store information associated with a given phone number into a directory server.
To quote from the IETF ENUM working group:
"This working group will define a DNS-based architecture and protocols for mapping a telephone number to a set of attributes (e.g. URLs) which can be used to contact a resource associated with that number. "
ENUM is not a "US Government idea". It started in the IETF, the most open standards group around. It is now a hot item in the FCC/US Govt. because it will either (1) help centralize power for the telcos or (2) help decentralize power from the telcos. As a result, lots of folks -- big and small -- have been politicing back and forth around ENUM.
Obviously we'd like the second, decentralized, unregulated ENUM solution to happen, and initial feedback shows that the US government would like that too.
Done right, this will allow you to individually decide what published or private information to associate with your phone number, such as:
1. the IP address of an alternate Voice over IP phone for your number (bypassing the telco)
2. The URL of, say, a VoiceXML application to run if your phone is not answered
3. your email address (for phone # to email address lookup, very useful for unified messaging, internet voicemail, etc.)
4. What phone company your phone # connects via on the "traditional" telephone network, allowing you to switch phone companies without switching phone numbers (also known as "local number portability", which can be done without ENUM but is much cooler with it)
Done wrong, ENUM will allow telcos to decide when and what information is associated with your phone number, continuing their dominance (and some might claim abuse) of the telecommunications industry.
Why associate information with phone numbers? Why not use normal domain names or email addresses?
Because phone numbers are the most pervasive, portable, consumer oriented, cross platform addresses around. Unlike email addresses, they can be entered easily via keyboard, mouse & gui, telephone keypad, and even voice recognition.
Why use DNS instead of LDAP?
Sveral eprevious efforts to deliver public phone number directories in LDAP have not succeeded in an "industry wide" way.
On the other hand, DNS Servers are everywhere. Clients are even more everywhere. DNS is much simpler to deal with than LDAP. And DNS is, thank the gods of human readable text protocols, not ASN.1 encoded. But most importantly, major momentum is building behind ENUM, as the list of links below shows.
-Jonathan
IETF ENUM working group:
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/enum-charter.h tm l
NetNumber, a company leading the good variety ENUM commercialization:
http://www.netnumber.com
ENUM.ORG a NueStar project. NeuStar is the company currently contracted by the FCC to manage the allocation of real phone numbers:
http://www.enum.org
Enumworld, a general site about ENUM:
http://www.enumworld.com
The ITU enum site:
http://www.itu.int/infocom/enum/
Another good ENUM links collection:
http://www.ngi.org/enum/
IETF site for Internet voicemail standard:
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/vpim-charter.h tm l
The voxeo community site is at :
http://community.voxeo.com
The site has a bunch of open-source VoiceXML and CallXML applications, open-source, and professionally recorded open-source audio prompt libraries.
First off, I really was looking forward to getting one of the i-opener gizmos. My brother needs a small, dependable internet access device at his small business, and this seemed like the perfect solution.
I was also looking forward to buying 1-2 of the "developer" version of these whenever netpliance comes out with them. I'd be more than happy to pay $300-$600 each to get them as ready-to-go linux terminals -- say with linux in the flash and a usb to ethernet gizmo, similar to how the linux terminal server project configures them.
Unfortunately, netpliance seems to be a little too shady with the service & billing.
In addition to the ISP service charge issue, they also didn't ship the unit when they said they did; they claimed I ordered on the 14th (when I actually ordered on the 11th); and they seem to have pro-rated the ISP service starting from the 14th, even though the box didn't leave Taiwan until the 23rd.
The box finally arrived today, I refused delivery.
It's ashame really; technically it's a cool little box, but personally I don't want to deal with the variety of bullsh*t netpliance billing & service are selling.
Having played it and the rest of it's kin, I'd have to say that battlesphere is the most enjoyable space lords/star raiders/etc like space fighting game made to date.
4play/scatalogic has no intention of "making a profit" off this game. The programming of the game has actually been finished for years.
Shortly after the coding of the game was finished, atari stopped the production of the jag, and sold everything to JTS and then Hasboro. During this time, the encryption key needed to encrypt games put into jaguar cart roms was lost! Jaguar carts have to be encrypted -- this was how Atari prevented unlicensed 3rd parties from making Jaguar carts.
4play/scatalogic ran a brute-force key cracker on an array of Jaguar development systems for months in order to find the key needed to encrypt the cart. Then they went out and created packaging, a manual, etc. with as high a quality as any big game shop delivers to retail shelves. Pretty damn impressive for only 3 people and a few hundered cartridges.
They finished battlesphere and drudged through it's production and delivery because they are devoted to the art of video game making; not just the profits, and because there are a bunch of jaguar devotees who *really* wanted to see the game released -- as is evidenced by the auction price on eBay for the first commercial cart.
frankly, i wish there were more game companies as devoted to their product and as tenacious scatalogic has been -- most of them just take the money and run.
What IBM is really going for here is a way to adapt HTML information into things like WAP (www.wapforum.org) Wireless Markup Language for cell phones & wireless gizmos, and into VoiceXML (www.voicexml.org) for plane-old-telephone access.
The PacBell DSL for $50 is 1 IP address; and they do not guarantee a fixed IP.
The Concentric DSL is 8 IP addresses, and they are fixed; and they provide reverse lookup.
Let's not even get started on the reliability vs pacbell, or how PacBell wasted 3 hours of my time trying to figure out if their service was available in my area (The final answer depending on who you asked was "yes", "no", and "we can't figure it out").
Try to figure out how much a PacBell DSL line with 16 fixed IP addresses including reverse lookup is a month. They couldn't answer that one either.
Your "ripped off" is my absolute delight. In addition to all of the above, the service has been near-perfect, which is much more than I can say for my associates with PacBell DSL.
I agree -- if you want good QOS, you have to pay for it.
But that doesn't mean you have to leave DSL out.
I've got a Concentric DSL line. It's SDSL (I'm @ 384k up & down right now), great QOS, and no overbearing rules & restrictions. The service agreement basically says "don't do anything illegal". It came with 8 up addresses and I upgraded to 16 for only $4 more per month. Ping times are great, and throughput both ways has been rock solid.
As they say -- you get what you pay for. This service costs me $200/month. Yes, that's too expensive for must users, but if you expect good QOS, throughput, no restrictions, etc; it's worth every dollar, especially compared to the price of a T1 line.
Slashdot Mirror
At my company we use open source projects such as BIND (for an ENUM / DNS based call routing directory) around the edges of our VoiceXML / VOIP IVR hosting service, but not in our core platform.
Originally we did use early open source VOIP projects such as OpenH323. OpenH323 was great, but it needed to be replaced as we moved to SIP and required reliability beyond what OpenH323 offered.
Asterisk is in a similar place - it is a great project that has seen some great early success in voip. I have heard that Vonage, for example, uses it in their voicemail system. I also use it at home and we have several projects at work in the research phase that incorporate it.
Asterisk is not reliable enough for our production environment today - reboots every few weeks to few months are common. As a project it is similar to where Linux was 5+ years ago - plenty of momentum but not quite ready for mission critical use. I have no doubt Asterisk will become as pervasive and reliable as Linux and other leading open source projects have though. Asterisk is an extremely flexible, easy to work with project; and the people involved are also easy to work with and know telephony very well.
I've started to use Asterisk for various applications, including as a
- PSTN to VOIP gateway: combine a cheap server, asterisk, and a few $50 voicemodem cards and you've got a VOIP gateway that can connect your outside phone lines to any VOIP phone.
- VOIP to PSTN gateway: cheap server, asterisk, open VOIP provider like VoicePulse Connect, and some Digium FXS cards and you can connect every phone in your house to a VOIP network.
- PSTN/VOIP front-end to IVR gateway: cheap server, Asterisk, IVR provider like Voxeo and you can connect all of the above to custom voice recognition applications. (Asterisk has some built in IVR but its limited today.)
Several companies are starting to offer commercial PBX products based on Asterisk, including http://www.signate.com/ and http://www.fonality.com/.
In summary, Asterisk is becoming an amazing "telephony widget" - it can address a variety of telephony solution requirements, depending on how you configure it.
I know this post comes late in the game, but I haven't seen anyone post what I understand are the significant reasons for the upgrade to 36/42v power:
:-)
1. Replacing all belt driven systems in your car.
Modern cars have belts which drive your
- water pump (engine cooling),
- oil pump (engine lubrication)
- compressor (air conditioning)
- power steering ()
- alternator (power generation),
Higher voltage enables auto manufactures to *get rid of belts completely*. Your water pump, oil pump, a/c compressor, and power steering units will all be replaced with electric driven devices. And the alternator is being replaced with integrated/hybrid starter/alternators.
2. Electric Turbos
Turbos increase engine power effeciently by pushing more air into the cylinders... and more more air = bigger explosion = more engine power.
In laymans terms, Turbos make use of turbines. Turbines are basically fancy, small, high performance fans.
Turbo cars use two turbines: The first turbine sits is inside the "exhaust pipe". Exhaust gasses rush past it and in doing so spin the first turbine. That turbine is connected mechanically to the second turbine to make the second turbine spin. The second turbine ("fancy fan") pushes air into the engines intake, which feeds air into the cylinders. Thus more air in the cylinders.
The resulting power increase makes cars with Turbos go much faster than similar cars without.
The problem with Turbo is "lag" or in geek terms "latency". When your car is going slow, less exhaust is coming out of the engine. Thus, the first turbine isn't spinning much; which means the second turbine isn't pushing much (if any) additional air into the engine. But as you speed up, your exhaust speeds up too, so the first turbine spins faster; and so the second turbine spins faster and pushes more air into your engine.
The result: Turbos only start contributing power after a few seconds of acceleration. This 1-3 second latency delivers the turbo "boost" you feel a few seconds after you press the gas pedal in a Turbo car.
Electric Turbo connects the first turbine to a generator and the second to an electrically driven motor that can take its power from the alternator/battery or the first turbine. Wired this way, the second turbine can spin up quickly or even stay spun up all the time - powered initially off of alternator/battery power, and then off of electricity created by the first turbine. The result: Turbo without lag.
3. Active suspension
Automobile suspension - and thus handling - can be significantly improved by making the suspension active instead of reactive. New electric shocks can actually use electric power to "push" one side or corner of the car up. For example, in a long left turn on a highway, the right side shocks can push up, and the left side can pull down, leaning your car to the left. This leaning makes the car much more stable in the turn.
4. Hybrid cars
Hybrid cars require higher voltage systems as they actually move the car down the road using electricity. Hybrid vehicles already use higher voltage systems, but only in the engine/drivetrain components. The rest of the car is still 12v. Chaning "the rest" to 42v saves money by simplifying design & removing excess conversion components.
5. Fuel cell cars
All of this paves the way for fuel cell cars, where *everything* will be driven by a fuel cell which converts hydrogen into electricity. The more auto manufacturers replace mechanical systems with electrical, the easier it becomes to use fuel cells. Even turbos can be used with fuel cells to push more air/hydrogen into the cell and get more electrical power out of it.
So when you think of 36/42v cars, think of all the weight that's being saved by removing excess gears and pulleys that hang on the front of your belt-driven engine systems. Think of never replacing belts again, and never having them break at the wrong time. In short, over time 36/42v components should decrease cost and increase reliability.
And also think of your 2019 Dodge Viper Extreme, with 2 mega-amp Turbo Fuel Cell that does 0 to 60 in 4.1 seconds
As Bodin said above... it "Should be, anyway"
H.323 is horribly difficult, expensive to implement - it requires ASN.1 encoding and multiple complex channels and layers of protocol - and while it may not be dead, it has very little momentum compared to SIP.
Supporting h.323 isn't bad... it's a nice feature for backwards compatability. But SIP is clearly something that should be found in a fancy new $1600 x over IP gizmo.
Even Microsofts latest MSN messenger does SIP!
I typed a bit too fast above... a correction:
I .k shv/latest.gif
The nose is up as high as 40 degrees, not 70. The bank angle can be as high as 70 degrees.
Also this weather radar picture tells quite a tale:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/radar/images/DS.p19r0/S
Their is a good description of what happens during the shuttles landing at:
... however I have flown a shuttle on X-plane for what its worth.
http://www.x-plane.com/orbiter.html
x-plane is an amazing flight simulator that uses an amazingly realistic flight model - great "physics" in video game software speak - and can simulate shuttle landings. The shuttle is a glider. I'm a glider pilot, but certainly not anything like a shuttle pilot
The shuttle changes its bank during the phase of the landing it was in to reduce speed. It's not banking to try change its course, it banks to increase drag and reduce speed. The shuttle just rotates over oneo its left or right side a bit.
The shuttle switches back and forth from banking right to banking left to stay on course while performing these drag increasing maneuvers.
FYI, these maneuvers are also done with the shuttle at a very steep angle of attack - as high as 70 degrees. This angle is also used to increase drag to slow the shuttle down.
The last confirmed communication happened shortly after the shuttle made its first switch from being banked right to being banked left.
It is very possible that the switch to being banked left introduced a change in force which led to a structural failure of the wings or control surfaces which are used during the landing. Given the high drag, high angle of attack, banked flight angle the orbiter would be in at the time, the shuttle would almost immediately start spinning end over end at 12,000 mph, disintegrating almost instantly.
Nasa also reported that one of the last data events they received from the shuttle was a "loss in tire pressure". It's alternatively possible that this could happen after an internal explosion in the shuttle, with part of the explosion debris puncturing the tire.
Below is a chronology from spaceflightnow.com - Notice the change in bank angle time.
1401 GMT (9:01 a.m. EST)
Columbia is out of communications with flight controllers in Houston. Now 15 minutes from landing time.
1359 GMT (8:59 a.m. EST)
At an altitude of 40 miles, shuttle Columbia has entered Texas.
1357 GMT (8:57 a.m. EST)
The shuttle is now 43 miles over New Mexico. Columbia is now reversing its bank to the left to further reduce speed.
I appreciate your comments.
As I said,
"I am not a vindictive person, but this calls for something beyond revenge."
I don't beleive in revenge for revenge sake; this goes beyond that. It is an obligation, a resposnbility to our way of life. Terrorists have played a shell game where they hide behind (or in) countries such as Afghanistan, and our moralistic society has respected that game and not attacked the host countries.
Clearly that does not work. It merely creates a safe haven where terrorists can focus on their long term plans without the fear of constant threat, while we get quite the opposite.
To further quote myself:
"Anything that can be done to remedy this should be done, and will."
And I do mean remedy, as in cures the disease or corrects the disorder. Something that solves the fundamental problem: Governments and countries which actively or passively support terrorism.
I would go there for birthdays, all the way up to to the observation deck, and spend the day there with my Grandmother. I have more childhood memories from these buildings, by far, than anywhere else in the world.
It was an amazing place. Structured yet mysterious, metalic yet comforting, with an amazing variety of nooks, crannies, personalities, and other secrets to discover.
It was also a very social place, with people having lunch at the plaza, looking up at the building and sky [1] or sharing time on the observation deck or in line to get there [2].
I went to the observation deck every time I could; every time I was in New York City... I've easily spent over 100 hours there throughout my life. In March, I spent the day at the observation deck on tower 2, then had dinner at Windows on the World on top of tower 1 [3].
It was a spiritual place for me, as strange as that may sound. It presented an eagle eye view of the world I grew up in; my childhood in one panoramic view [4] [5]. There I could reflect on my past and look forward to tomorrow.
I would always sit at the same bench on top of the observation desk. The one closest to the Statue of Liberty. I'd stay there, looking out to the Atlantic, for hours and hours on end. I learned many things about myself and other other trade center visitors there. I would focus on that spot, on top of the building, on top of the world, one small, specific spot ... yet everywhere in the universe, in an expanding stream of thought. It was my own form of meditation, on an amazing bench that no longer exists.
When my wife and I got engaged, I wanted to get married at the top of the trade center. We didn't end up doing it, but others did. [6]
I loved it for the unique place that it was, but not nearly as much as I -- or anyone -- loved all of the unique individuals who have now died there. The tragedy is unreal. The reasons absurd. The people, and their lives, invaluable. I will never forget them.
I am not a vindictive person, but this calls for something beyond revenge. This requires a defense of our way of life, about our principals and individuality. Anything that can be done to remedy this should be done, and will.
God help us all, and especially those who did this.
-Jonathan ... http://www.robpatton.com/photoalbum/jontaylor/9.jp g )
( at the World Trade Center
ENUM is simply a way to store information associated with a given phone number into a directory server.
h tm l
h tm l
To quote from the IETF ENUM working group:
"This working group will define a DNS-based architecture and protocols for mapping a telephone number to a set of attributes (e.g. URLs) which can be used to contact a resource associated with that number. "
ENUM is not a "US Government idea". It started in the IETF, the most open standards group around. It is now a hot item in the FCC/US Govt. because it will either (1) help centralize power for the telcos or (2) help decentralize power from the telcos. As a result, lots of folks -- big and small -- have been politicing back and forth around ENUM.
Obviously we'd like the second, decentralized, unregulated ENUM solution to happen, and initial feedback shows that the US government would like that too.
Done right, this will allow you to individually decide what published or private information to associate with your phone number, such as:
1. the IP address of an alternate Voice over IP phone for your number (bypassing the telco)
2. The URL of, say, a VoiceXML application to run if your phone is not answered
3. your email address (for phone # to email address lookup, very useful for unified messaging, internet voicemail, etc.)
4. What phone company your phone # connects via on the "traditional" telephone network, allowing you to switch phone companies without switching phone numbers (also known as "local number portability", which can be done without ENUM but is much cooler with it)
Done wrong, ENUM will allow telcos to decide when and what information is associated with your phone number, continuing their dominance (and some might claim abuse) of the telecommunications industry.
Why associate information with phone numbers? Why not use normal domain names or email addresses?
Because phone numbers are the most pervasive, portable, consumer oriented, cross platform addresses around. Unlike email addresses, they can be entered easily via keyboard, mouse & gui, telephone keypad, and even voice recognition.
Why use DNS instead of LDAP?
Sveral eprevious efforts to deliver public phone number directories in LDAP have not succeeded in an "industry wide" way.
On the other hand, DNS Servers are everywhere. Clients are even more everywhere. DNS is much simpler to deal with than LDAP. And DNS is, thank the gods of human readable text protocols, not ASN.1 encoded. But most importantly, major momentum is building behind ENUM, as the list of links below shows.
-Jonathan
IETF ENUM working group:
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/enum-charter.
NetNumber, a company leading the good variety ENUM commercialization:
http://www.netnumber.com
ENUM.ORG a NueStar project. NeuStar is the company currently contracted by the FCC to manage the allocation of real phone numbers:
http://www.enum.org
Enumworld, a general site about ENUM:
http://www.enumworld.com
The ITU enum site:
http://www.itu.int/infocom/enum/
Another good ENUM links collection:
http://www.ngi.org/enum/
IETF site for Internet voicemail standard:
http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/vpim-charter.
VoiceXML Forum:
http://www.voicexml.org/
Voxeo, a site for VoiceXML development:
http://community.voxeo.com
Sounds like you need a new CCMF (Cisco certified mutha ........)
The voxeo community site is at : http://community.voxeo.com The site has a bunch of open-source VoiceXML and CallXML applications, open-source, and professionally recorded open-source audio prompt libraries.
The Moody article does provide the linux community with some valuable market research:
Clearly, Microsoft is the preferred operating system vendor for people who lack basic math skills.
First off, I really was looking forward to getting one of the i-opener gizmos. My brother needs a small, dependable internet access device at his small business, and this seemed like the perfect solution.
I was also looking forward to buying 1-2 of the "developer" version of these whenever netpliance comes out with them. I'd be more than happy to pay $300-$600 each to get them as ready-to-go linux terminals -- say with linux in the flash and a usb to ethernet gizmo, similar to how the linux terminal server project configures them.
Unfortunately, netpliance seems to be a little too shady with the service & billing.
In addition to the ISP service charge issue, they also didn't ship the unit when they said they did; they claimed I ordered on the 14th (when I actually ordered on the 11th); and they seem to have pro-rated the ISP service starting from the 14th, even though the box didn't leave Taiwan until the 23rd.
The box finally arrived today, I refused delivery.
It's ashame really; technically it's a cool little box, but personally I don't want to deal with the variety of bullsh*t netpliance billing & service are selling.
Having played it and the rest of it's kin, I'd have to say that battlesphere is the most enjoyable space lords/star raiders/etc like space fighting game made to date.
4play/scatalogic has no intention of "making a profit" off this game. The programming of the game has actually been finished for years.
Shortly after the coding of the game was finished, atari stopped the production of the jag, and sold everything to JTS and then Hasboro. During this time, the encryption key needed to encrypt games put into jaguar cart roms was lost! Jaguar carts have to be encrypted -- this was how Atari prevented unlicensed 3rd parties from making Jaguar carts.
4play/scatalogic ran a brute-force key cracker on an array of Jaguar development systems for months in order to find the key needed to encrypt the cart. Then they went out and created packaging, a manual, etc. with as high a quality as any big game shop delivers to retail shelves. Pretty damn impressive for only 3 people and a few hundered cartridges.
They finished battlesphere and drudged through it's production and delivery because they are devoted to the art of video game making; not just the profits, and because there are a bunch of jaguar devotees who *really* wanted to see the game released -- as is evidenced by the auction price on eBay for the first commercial cart.
frankly, i wish there were more game companies as devoted to their product and as tenacious scatalogic has been -- most of them just take the money and run.
What IBM is really going for here is a way to adapt HTML information into things like WAP (www.wapforum.org) Wireless Markup Language for cell phones & wireless gizmos, and into VoiceXML (www.voicexml.org) for plane-old-telephone access.
I just received an email from Leo Donnely at Harvard re: packetstorm saying the following:
ALL of the sites content is being returned to the owner and the owner is aware of this. A formal statement will be issued later today.
Regards,
Leo.
Should be interesting to see what they say.
"Oooooooooh, you're getting ripped off."
Your making part of my point for me.
The PacBell DSL for $50 is 1 IP address; and they do not guarantee a fixed IP.
The Concentric DSL is 8 IP addresses, and they are fixed; and they provide reverse lookup.
Let's not even get started on the reliability vs pacbell, or how PacBell wasted 3 hours of my time trying to figure out if their service was available in my area (The final answer depending on who you asked was "yes", "no", and "we can't figure it out").
Try to figure out how much a PacBell DSL line with 16 fixed IP addresses including reverse lookup is a month. They couldn't answer that one either.
Your "ripped off" is my absolute delight. In addition to all of the above, the service has been near-perfect, which is much more than I can say for my associates with PacBell DSL.
The Point? As I said -- You Get What You Pay For.
I agree -- if you want good QOS, you have to pay for it.
But that doesn't mean you have to leave DSL out.
I've got a Concentric DSL line. It's SDSL (I'm @ 384k up & down right now), great QOS, and no overbearing rules & restrictions. The service agreement basically says "don't do anything illegal". It came with 8 up addresses and I upgraded to 16 for only $4 more per month. Ping times are great, and throughput both ways has been rock solid.
As they say -- you get what you pay for. This service costs me $200/month. Yes, that's too expensive for must users, but if you expect good QOS, throughput, no restrictions, etc; it's worth every dollar, especially compared to the price of a T1 line.