"The enemy is not the American marines. It is the "insurgent" lackey doing the work for Baathists masters"
The enemy are those who kill innocents for the wrong reasons, for any reasons.
I had to cluster bomb you to free you does not ring true. You comments is a cheap simplification of the roots of the problem.
For your information I spent a lot of time in Afghanistan and yes while I was there I felt free to utter an opinion. What have you done lately? But the truth is to speak freely requires no credentials of risk, any citizen in the US may speak and be listened to.
Hosting dubious elections in Afghanistan and Iraq does not forgive our Empire by Proxy strategy.
Well you could always put me in a camp if I refuse to move? Your posting a comment under the label "Anonymous Coward" says it all. Healthy democracies demand debate and even dissention.
I do not like what people like you have done to my country.
and guess what? I have the right to disagree with you. Without having to move.
Read a book about the meaning of democracy and freedom and freedom of speech. You missed a few days at school.
In theory you are right. But labor requires constant or consistant investment. we witness flights of capital leaving the labor destitute. No money invested - no job.
Ask some South Americans about capital flight.
Labor wants to move to areas where capital investment is consistant and predictable and constant.
Also note the involvement of China in joint ventures in the oil industry. When asked about the French revolution, a Chinese diplomat replied - too soon to tell.
200,000 barrels a day os not worth attacking/controlling/freeing. We want to be in the heart of oil production.
Our resources are OUR resources, their resouces must be used to maintain OUR wealth.
"Me, I will stick with the USA and what we stand for."
You have no idea what the US stands for. I hve a better idea, why do you not leave as you seem to want a facist utopia where force and ignorance rules ( Your post effectively makes my point ).
Your willingness to fight - to attack other nations - to ensure American wealth is interesting. They hung Nazi camp guards who also were willing to "perform" for their nation.
There is a difference between defence and attack that you fail to see.
"It is not the US's job to police the world. "
Oh? Then why are we in Iraq? Why does the US have more miltary bases in more countries than any other nation?
You contradict yourself. Perhaps too much gun oil from stroking your weapons?
We Americans are the main bleaters about peace. The rest of the world understands that freedom spoken by an American os code word for control by American Companies. The US is also the number one user of Security Council vetos. The UN only functions at the agreement of the security council.
The point here is not that the rest of the world fails Sudan ( they do ). The point here is that the US bleats freedom selectively.
If it makes you feel better about what is happening, feel free. Anyone can construct their own reality.
Or take time to read the study.
Of the whole range, 100,000 was the most likely figure.
My reality is differnt to yours.
My morality is different to yours.
Find a mortuary. Walk in. Find a dead body. Think about the nature of death. Take a deep breath. Try to empathize with the pain the dead went through, and the pain the living suffer. Read about what democracy really means. Read about History. Then pick any number that makes YOU feel good.
And when will the good American people who were solid with Bush bring freedom to Sudan and Zimbabwe?
You see in the macro position, your position makes no sense. Millions have died in the Sudan but there is no Oil. Zimbabwe has much death and repesssion but there is no Oil. Both were/are worse in terms of human suffering than Iraq was.
The Sudan was not threatening to sell products in Euros ( not thet they have that much to sell). Your current living standard depends on the world using the Dollar as a reserve currency. Oil is denominated in Dollars. Iraq threatened the US not with Weapons but with ripping asunder the preeminent position where Saudis sell Oil in Dollars not Euros or Rubles.
We are not in Iraq for Democracy. That is the fig leaf you choose to buy into.
You rambling about democracy and war are that....ramblings. We as Americans have a fine history of using war to impose our desires on other nations.
When it became clear that Ho Chi Mhin would win a democratic vote in Vietnam, we pulled out of supporting any vote and forced the division of the country and propped up a corrupt leader (Diem ) and called this abberation democracy. We then killed millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians to prop up our distortion of democracy.
You need some new history books.
India and China are using trade to defeat us. If we are threatened with economic defeat we will use military force.
We have promoted the freedom of money to move here and there with no friction, move in, profit, move on to the next market.
I say this is fine if the labor that the capital requires can also move freely across borders with no friction or with as little friction as the money.
Are you always so elequent? Or is Blah Blah the sound you hear when someone disagrees with you
We are trying to cling on to a position that is untenable and serious questions need to be asked about out futile use of military power to try to cling on to power in the steady erosion of our economic might.
But in the interim, I look at pictures of dead killed in horror and terror by terrorists and I look at pictures of dead killed to bring "democracy" and I wonder did it matter, did the dead killed by use go in rapture knowing an american bomb ripped them asunder?
Research? We need to research our fragile hold on the nature of reality.
"In fact, intentionally or otherwise, that's pretty much what The Lancet did. Most of the clusters had no deaths whatsoever. But here's the real bombshell: "Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja," the journal reported. That's it; game over; report worthless."
This guy quotes out of context. The researchers noted Fallujah but excluded Fallujah from the study and death estimate.
Of course you did not download the Lancet study and read it yourself or investigate how medical studies are done or how the Lancet peer reviews.
Thus we can dismiss this article as not factual but political.
It does go with the theme of US inward looking blindness. We will duck and dive and scramble and distort reality to prove we are better then them. How many die is irrelevent in the face of how you feel. If you feel good and can find a politically slanted article that allows you to maintain your reality of good, then all is well.
meanwhile those scarred by the death and mayhem deal with their reality and wonder why Americans can't look the reality of their moral corruption in the mirror.....
That Johhny robbed 10 banks does not make a defense when you are charged with robbing one bank.
I myself am not cheering any killing but if it makes you feel better to believe that go ahead.
My statement stands, we have no moral high ground to lecture or comment on other nations as they move towards our standard of living.
A crime is a crime. Others might have killed more, but I am not them I am American so I am entitled to protest killings done in my name and dressed up as "freedom" and "democracy" when in reality it is just greed to ensure you can drive to the store and buy cheap crap and fill your car with cheap energy.
That the police are not beating me HERE does not preclude me commenting on injustice THERE. But hey, get your neck deeper in the sand. Try this: US is about freedom? Wear a TShirt to a Bush appearance stating "Bush Sucks". Lets see if they beat you.
You need to study how medical studies are done. The Lancet has very high standards and rigorous peer review.
The most likely range was 100,000. Yes it could have been 8000 or 194,000, but it was statistically most likely to be in the middle at 100,000.
And yes they excluded Fallujah.
Explain in detail why this is flawed?
Ah. it is flawed because it cracks the self image you want to have.
We were supposed to be the good guys.
It is time that citizens of this nation ( US ) start to get in sync with what reality is and how we can continue to have 5% of the worlds population yet consume 50% of the worlds energy.
Believe what you wish. Reality is just around the corner.
You make the typical mistake of allowing PR tripe about elections to cloud over the means and methods on the road to those elections.
The Process? Was a the destruction of Fallujah part of the process. Learn to lok deeper than shallow banners such as "freedom" and "elections" and "democracy".
I myself do not need any time to corelate that a dead baby killed by US desires and needs (proxied by cluster bombs and poor US marines) has nothing to do with freedom.
Nothing that shall unfold in the future shall alter the fact that Americans blind eye to misguided foreign adventues is that.....misguided. Misguided is a very kind word.
We are better to look inwards and contemplate our past sins and how they could inform us to our ability to harvest many future crops of "sins".
Our wealth and success today is built upon a sordid past. This is not unique, this is how nations grow. Our failure to acknowledge our past while pointing fingers does not grow respect for the US.
Having worked with Indian CMM level 5 companies, what I find is there is an impedence mismatch. The Indian companies have tons of process to be fed before the works starts......so the work never starts.
Usually the company looking to outsource just wants cheap smart programmers, and ignores the internal lack of process. If they could fix their bad organization they might not need to outsource.
One Indian company get the rating and used it to get business and then the rest jumped on the bandwagon.
Make sure if you outsource, you partner with a compnay that gives you what you need. If you want cheap programming stay away from CMM organizations. If you have deadlines stay away....
Well we dropped cluster bombs and destroyed Fallujah and killed ( estimated by Lancet study) 100,000 Iraqis.
This is slightly worse than Tianamen Square.
Was this prudent? Different countries evolve at different paces. We in the US have a fine history of enslavement, genocide ( Indians ), child labor,dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, firebombing civlians etc etc etc.
At the time it was felt nessasary to enslave Africans to lower labor costs. Prudent business practice?
We are in no position ever to judge other nations.
Our President only now speaks to invited supporters with no protesters allowed near. The police brutally beat and suppress dissent. Is this prudent?
The BSA accuses confustion between Open Standards and Open Source. They are not confused"
"Open Source Software (OSS) tends to use and help define open standards and publicly available specifications. OSS products are, by their nature, publicly available specifications, and the availability of their source code promotes open, democratic debate around the specifications, making them both more robust and interoperable. As such, OSS corresponds to the objectives of this Framework and should be assessed and considered favourably alongside proprietary alternatives. of a single solution that is developed once and fits the needs of all. "
Nothing confusing about that statement. They do not exclude closed software, simply state that standards should be unencumbered and that open source should be considered.
No need for panic here. Microsoft would not be rejected because of a preference to Open Source but would be in hot water bacause they will never use truly open standards.
The BSA is trying to spread FUD because Joe Public will not read the EU document. Joe Public is busy ridding his MS PC from spyware and viruses.
In this case it is not up to the compay but up to the GSM organization, since in a encrpted cnversation the stream transits many manufactures equipment, it is not just the SIM or the phone....
Of course governments are listening if they choose. Our only security of the vast amounts of raw data that they have to sift.
My mother is a left wing protester, so when I call het I always use nasty keywords to attract the keyword searches ( Ossama Ossama Bomb Bomb etc).
I remember a case where a couple wanted to "fix" their car, and in a private exchange refered to "lets do the bitch tonight". This was intercepted by their employer and he called the police and they were arrested falsely.
Sadly nothing is private anymore unless you are a mute who lives in a Faraday cage ( so they can't listen to your thoughts)
Not a handheld scanner. Note the size of the disks - you will accumulate a lot of data. Yes you can break ANYTHING with enough time, but my point here is that GSM traffic is not easily intercetpted by script kiddies.
Note that first you need a certain amount of data to retreive the key. This leads to post processing not real time.
Many people suspect that past releases of Princess Diana mobile phones conversations were done by MI5. There is not much eveidence I have seen of people building GSM "scanners". But yes it can be done.
Of course governments and script writers for "24" have such scanners.
Yes you can break the encryption, but it is not totally trivial. Can the government do it? Yes. Could you build a scanner to do this ? Possibly. I suspect that governments DO NOT want strong encryption on mobile calls.
Soooooo........how does your digital scanner breal the encryption?
Encryption in the GSM network utilizes a Challenge/Response mechanism.
The Mobile Station (MS) signs into the network. The Mobile Services Switching Center (MSC) requests 5 triples from the Home Location Register (HLR). The Home Location Register creates five triples utilizing the A8 algorithm. These five triples each contain: A 128-bit random challenge (RAND) A 32-bit matching Signed Response (SRES) A 64-bit ciphering key used as a Session Key (Kc).
The Home Location Register sends the Mobile Services Switching Center the five triples. The Mobile Services Switching Center sends the random challenge from the first triple to the Base Transceiver Station (BTS). The Base Transceiver Station sends the random challenge from the first triple to the Mobile Station. The Mobile Station receives the random challenge from the Base Transceiver Station and encrypts it with the Individual Subscriber Authentication Key (Ki) assigned to the Mobile Station utilizing the A3 algorithm. The Mobile Station sends the Signed Response to the Base Transceiver Station. The Base Transceiver Station sends the Signed Response to the Mobile Services Switching Center. The Mobile Services Switching Center verifies the Signed Response. The Mobile Station generates a Session Key (Kc) utilizing the A8 algorithm, the Individual Subscriber Authentication Key (Ki) assigned to the Mobile Station, and the random challenge received from the Base Transceiver Station. The Mobile Station sends the Session Key (Kc) to the Base Transceiver Station. The Mobile Services Switching Center sends the Session Key (Kc) to the Base Transceiver Station. The Base Transceiver Station receives the Session Key (Kc) from the Mobile Services Switching Center. The Base Transceiver Station receives the Session Key (Kc) from the Mobile Station. The Base Transceiver Station verifies the Session Keys from the Mobile Station and the Mobile Services switching Center. The A5 algorithm is initialized with the Session Key (Kc) and the number of the frame to be encrypted. Over-the-air communication channel between the Mobile Station and Base Transceiver Station can now be encrypted utilizing the A5 algorithm.
My house ( France ) to Kabul via sat:
[dhcp-10:~] root# ping 82.205.192.2
PING 82.205.192.2 (82.205.192.2): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 82.205.192.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=242 time=649.001 ms
64 bytes from 82.205.192.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=242 time=645.946 ms
64 bytes from 82.205.192.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=242 time=633.322 ms
64 bytes from 82.205.192.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=242 time=633.409 ms
64 bytes from 82.205.192.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=242 time=629.281 ms
64 bytes from 82.205.192.2: icmp_seq=5 ttl=242 time=630.383 ms
Lots of Calls go through Sat. I spent time in Aghanistan, where ALL "landline" links are via Satellite. All voice traffic is via Sat. Most expats use Internet VOIP every dau quite happily. The Sat phones you see use a technology called BGAN which is a SMALL terminal with either 64 or 128K links. If you have 4-10 Megabytes up, Voice is fine, just a bit "laggy".
With small bandwidth, you start dropping lots of packets.....
Undersea cables are fine......as long as you are near the sea.
Never saw a beach in Afghanistan.
Slashdot Mirror
The enemy are those who kill innocents for the wrong reasons, for any reasons.
I had to cluster bomb you to free you does not ring true. You comments is a cheap simplification of the roots of the problem.
For your information I spent a lot of time in Afghanistan and yes while I was there I felt free to utter an opinion. What have you done lately? But the truth is to speak freely requires no credentials of risk, any citizen in the US may speak and be listened to.
Hosting dubious elections in Afghanistan and Iraq does not forgive our Empire by Proxy strategy.
Your argument is cheap and nasty.
I do not like what people like you have done to my country.
and guess what? I have the right to disagree with you. Without having to move.
Read a book about the meaning of democracy and freedom and freedom of speech. You missed a few days at school.
Ask some South Americans about capital flight.
Labor wants to move to areas where capital investment is consistant and predictable and constant.
200,000 barrels a day os not worth attacking/controlling/freeing. We want to be in the heart of oil production.
Our resources are OUR resources, their resouces must be used to maintain OUR wealth.
You have no idea what the US stands for. I hve a better idea, why do you not leave as you seem to want a facist utopia where force and ignorance rules ( Your post effectively makes my point ).
Your willingness to fight - to attack other nations - to ensure American wealth is interesting. They hung Nazi camp guards who also were willing to "perform" for their nation.
There is a difference between defence and attack that you fail to see.
"It is not the US's job to police the world. "
Oh? Then why are we in Iraq? Why does the US have more miltary bases in more countries than any other nation?
You contradict yourself. Perhaps too much gun oil from stroking your weapons?
The point here is not that the rest of the world fails Sudan ( they do ). The point here is that the US bleats freedom selectively.
Or take time to read the study.
Of the whole range, 100,000 was the most likely figure.
My reality is differnt to yours.
My morality is different to yours.
Find a mortuary. Walk in. Find a dead body. Think about the nature of death. Take a deep breath. Try to empathize with the pain the dead went through, and the pain the living suffer. Read about what democracy really means. Read about History. Then pick any number that makes YOU feel good.
You see in the macro position, your position makes no sense. Millions have died in the Sudan but there is no Oil. Zimbabwe has much death and repesssion but there is no Oil. Both were/are worse in terms of human suffering than Iraq was.
The Sudan was not threatening to sell products in Euros ( not thet they have that much to sell). Your current living standard depends on the world using the Dollar as a reserve currency. Oil is denominated in Dollars. Iraq threatened the US not with Weapons but with ripping asunder the preeminent position where Saudis sell Oil in Dollars not Euros or Rubles.
We are not in Iraq for Democracy. That is the fig leaf you choose to buy into.
You rambling about democracy and war are that....ramblings. We as Americans have a fine history of using war to impose our desires on other nations.
When it became clear that Ho Chi Mhin would win a democratic vote in Vietnam, we pulled out of supporting any vote and forced the division of the country and propped up a corrupt leader (Diem ) and called this abberation democracy. We then killed millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians to prop up our distortion of democracy.
You need some new history books.
India and China are using trade to defeat us. If we are threatened with economic defeat we will use military force.
I say this is fine if the labor that the capital requires can also move freely across borders with no friction or with as little friction as the money.
Then free markets will have more meaning.
We are trying to cling on to a position that is untenable and serious questions need to be asked about out futile use of military power to try to cling on to power in the steady erosion of our economic might.
But in the interim, I look at pictures of dead killed in horror and terror by terrorists and I look at pictures of dead killed to bring "democracy" and I wonder did it matter, did the dead killed by use go in rapture knowing an american bomb ripped them asunder?
Research? We need to research our fragile hold on the nature of reality.
"In fact, intentionally or otherwise, that's pretty much what The Lancet did. Most of the clusters had no deaths whatsoever. But here's the real bombshell: "Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja," the journal reported. That's it; game over; report worthless."
This guy quotes out of context. The researchers noted Fallujah but excluded Fallujah from the study and death estimate.
Of course you did not download the Lancet study and read it yourself or investigate how medical studies are done or how the Lancet peer reviews.
Thus we can dismiss this article as not factual but political.
It does go with the theme of US inward looking blindness. We will duck and dive and scramble and distort reality to prove we are better then them. How many die is irrelevent in the face of how you feel. If you feel good and can find a politically slanted article that allows you to maintain your reality of good, then all is well.
meanwhile those scarred by the death and mayhem deal with their reality and wonder why Americans can't look the reality of their moral corruption in the mirror.....
I myself am not cheering any killing but if it makes you feel better to believe that go ahead.
My statement stands, we have no moral high ground to lecture or comment on other nations as they move towards our standard of living.
A crime is a crime. Others might have killed more, but I am not them I am American so I am entitled to protest killings done in my name and dressed up as "freedom" and "democracy" when in reality it is just greed to ensure you can drive to the store and buy cheap crap and fill your car with cheap energy.
That the police are not beating me HERE does not preclude me commenting on injustice THERE. But hey, get your neck deeper in the sand. Try this: US is about freedom? Wear a TShirt to a Bush appearance stating "Bush Sucks". Lets see if they beat you.
The most likely range was 100,000. Yes it could have been 8000 or 194,000, but it was statistically most likely to be in the middle at 100,000.
And yes they excluded Fallujah.
Explain in detail why this is flawed?
Ah. it is flawed because it cracks the self image you want to have.
We were supposed to be the good guys.
It is time that citizens of this nation ( US ) start to get in sync with what reality is and how we can continue to have 5% of the worlds population yet consume 50% of the worlds energy.
Believe what you wish. Reality is just around the corner.
The Process? Was a the destruction of Fallujah part of the process. Learn to lok deeper than shallow banners such as "freedom" and "elections" and "democracy".
I myself do not need any time to corelate that a dead baby killed by US desires and needs (proxied by cluster bombs and poor US marines) has nothing to do with freedom.
Nothing that shall unfold in the future shall alter the fact that Americans blind eye to misguided foreign adventues is that .....misguided. Misguided is a very kind word.
We are better to look inwards and contemplate our past sins and how they could inform us to our ability to harvest many future crops of "sins".
Our wealth and success today is built upon a sordid past. This is not unique, this is how nations grow. Our failure to acknowledge our past while pointing fingers does not grow respect for the US.
Usually the company looking to outsource just wants cheap smart programmers, and ignores the internal lack of process. If they could fix their bad organization they might not need to outsource.
One Indian company get the rating and used it to get business and then the rest jumped on the bandwagon.
Make sure if you outsource, you partner with a compnay that gives you what you need. If you want cheap programming stay away from CMM organizations. If you have deadlines stay away....
50% of all CMM Level 5 companies are in India. It is prized perhaps more than in the US.
This is slightly worse than Tianamen Square.
Was this prudent? Different countries evolve at different paces. We in the US have a fine history of enslavement, genocide ( Indians ), child labor,dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, firebombing civlians etc etc etc.
At the time it was felt nessasary to enslave Africans to lower labor costs. Prudent business practice?
We are in no position ever to judge other nations.
Our President only now speaks to invited supporters with no protesters allowed near. The police brutally beat and suppress dissent. Is this prudent?
The BSA accuses confustion between Open Standards and Open Source. They are not confused" "Open Source Software (OSS) tends to use and help define open standards and publicly available specifications. OSS products are, by their nature, publicly available specifications, and the availability of their source code promotes open, democratic debate around the specifications, making them both more robust and interoperable. As such, OSS corresponds to the objectives of this Framework and should be assessed and considered favourably alongside proprietary alternatives. of a single solution that is developed once and fits the needs of all. " Nothing confusing about that statement. They do not exclude closed software, simply state that standards should be unencumbered and that open source should be considered. No need for panic here. Microsoft would not be rejected because of a preference to Open Source but would be in hot water bacause they will never use truly open standards. The BSA is trying to spread FUD because Joe Public will not read the EU document. Joe Public is busy ridding his MS PC from spyware and viruses.
In this case it is not up to the compay but up to the GSM organization, since in a encrpted cnversation the stream transits many manufactures equipment, it is not just the SIM or the phone.... Of course governments are listening if they choose. Our only security of the vast amounts of raw data that they have to sift. My mother is a left wing protester, so when I call het I always use nasty keywords to attract the keyword searches ( Ossama Ossama Bomb Bomb etc). I remember a case where a couple wanted to "fix" their car, and in a private exchange refered to "lets do the bitch tonight". This was intercepted by their employer and he called the police and they were arrested falsely. Sadly nothing is private anymore unless you are a mute who lives in a Faraday cage ( so they can't listen to your thoughts)
Thankfully Europe has no AMPS. Only GSM.
Not a handheld scanner. Note the size of the disks - you will accumulate a lot of data. Yes you can break ANYTHING with enough time, but my point here is that GSM traffic is not easily intercetpted by script kiddies. Note that first you need a certain amount of data to retreive the key. This leads to post processing not real time. Many people suspect that past releases of Princess Diana mobile phones conversations were done by MI5. There is not much eveidence I have seen of people building GSM "scanners". But yes it can be done. Of course governments and script writers for "24" have such scanners.
Yes you can break the encryption, but it is not totally trivial. Can the government do it? Yes. Could you build a scanner to do this ? Possibly. I suspect that governments DO NOT want strong encryption on mobile calls.
T-Mobile use GSM.
Soooooo........how does your digital scanner breal the encryption?
Encryption in the GSM network utilizes a Challenge/Response mechanism.
The Mobile Station (MS) signs into the network.
The Mobile Services Switching Center (MSC) requests 5 triples from the Home Location Register (HLR).
The Home Location Register creates five triples utilizing the A8 algorithm. These five triples each contain:
A 128-bit random challenge (RAND)
A 32-bit matching Signed Response (SRES)
A 64-bit ciphering key used as a Session Key (Kc).
The Home Location Register sends the Mobile Services Switching Center the five triples.
The Mobile Services Switching Center sends the random challenge from the first triple to the Base Transceiver Station (BTS).
The Base Transceiver Station sends the random challenge from the first triple to the Mobile Station.
The Mobile Station receives the random challenge from the Base Transceiver Station and encrypts it with the Individual Subscriber Authentication Key (Ki) assigned to the Mobile Station utilizing the A3 algorithm.
The Mobile Station sends the Signed Response to the Base Transceiver Station.
The Base Transceiver Station sends the Signed Response to the Mobile Services Switching Center.
The Mobile Services Switching Center verifies the Signed Response.
The Mobile Station generates a Session Key (Kc) utilizing the A8 algorithm, the Individual Subscriber Authentication Key (Ki) assigned to the Mobile Station, and the random challenge received from the Base Transceiver Station.
The Mobile Station sends the Session Key (Kc) to the Base Transceiver Station.
The Mobile Services Switching Center sends the Session Key (Kc) to the Base Transceiver Station.
The Base Transceiver Station receives the Session Key (Kc) from the Mobile Services Switching Center.
The Base Transceiver Station receives the Session Key (Kc) from the Mobile Station.
The Base Transceiver Station verifies the Session Keys from the Mobile Station and the Mobile Services switching Center.
The A5 algorithm is initialized with the Session Key (Kc) and the number of the frame to be encrypted.
Over-the-air communication channel between the Mobile Station and Base Transceiver Station can now be encrypted utilizing the A5 algorithm.
My house ( France ) to Kabul via sat: [dhcp-10:~] root# ping 82.205.192.2 PING 82.205.192.2 (82.205.192.2): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 82.205.192.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=242 time=649.001 ms 64 bytes from 82.205.192.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=242 time=645.946 ms 64 bytes from 82.205.192.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=242 time=633.322 ms 64 bytes from 82.205.192.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=242 time=633.409 ms 64 bytes from 82.205.192.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=242 time=629.281 ms 64 bytes from 82.205.192.2: icmp_seq=5 ttl=242 time=630.383 ms
Lots of Calls go through Sat. I spent time in Aghanistan, where ALL "landline" links are via Satellite. All voice traffic is via Sat. Most expats use Internet VOIP every dau quite happily. The Sat phones you see use a technology called BGAN which is a SMALL terminal with either 64 or 128K links. If you have 4-10 Megabytes up, Voice is fine, just a bit "laggy". With small bandwidth, you start dropping lots of packets..... Undersea cables are fine......as long as you are near the sea. Never saw a beach in Afghanistan.