New "terms" in the telephony business

I can't remember where I read this, but now that VoIP is a pretty common technology offering and that more and more of the common man is aware of what it is and what it does, it's fair that new terms are coming to the forefront...

• "Fuzzing" is essentially a denial-of-service attack against a VoIP system.
  
• "Footprinting" is using a search engine to find things like extension listings on the open Internet.
  
• "SIP Enumeration" means probing ports on a network to find one that isn't tightly locked down.

Nothing really new here as far as content, these security issues have been discussed before, what's new is the "catchy" terms themselves.

Railroads, Watches, and Sears

Catching the listener feedback for Technorama show 170, timezones and watches, well – it made me think about Richard Sears, who founded, with Alvah Roebuck, the whole Sears, Roebuck & Company mail order catalog industry.

Richard Sears was a station agent for the Railroad that ran through North Redwood, MN, not far from where I grew up. In the 1880’s, when he was in his 20’s, he was intrigued with the idea of products manufactured in one part of the country and sold (and delivered) to people in another part of the country. After all, his job as a station agent was somewhat in a value chain similar to this, in that farmers brought their grain to the railroad (no elevator companies existed right next to the railroad at that time; the grainery elevator's eventual purpose was to “cache” the grain for bulk transport at a later time). Among other things, Sears helped to get that grain shipped by rail to the mill, where it was processed into other grain products, like flour and cereals.

Many give him credit for observing other products being shipped via rail, through his station, and him getting the idea that if people could look at a product on a piece of paper, order it, have it delivered to them, well then such a company could revolutionize commerce. While this is somewhat true in hindsight, my father, who also was a small businessman in Minnesota, often talked about stories his grandmother had talked about when Richard Sears was doing his “thing” a few miles to the north of where I grew up.

Farmers had to get their harvested grain to the railroad, where someone loaded it onto a railroad car, and off it went. Railroads ran on a schedule, farmers ran by the sun, and as this was before cars/trucks; grain arrived via horse drawn cart. Sears had seen companies that were trying to sell pocket watches to the stores along the railway line, but the problem he was trying to solve was making sure the farmers got their grain to the railroad station on time. These watches were the answer, but he couldn’t afford any inventory, no money… so he got this idea of putting pictures of watches, along with a marked up price, in a loose leaf sort of book, which he planned to show to the farmers when they came to the station.

About this same time, a wholesaler had shipped an un-ordered consignment of pocket watches to a local retailer. This was a common practice at the time; wholesalers would then “offer” to sell the goods to a local retailer at a lower price, rather than have the goods shipped back. In this particular case, the retailer refused the entire consignment of pocket watches and Sears stepped in, offering to sell the watches for the wholesaler, but without having to pay for the consignment up-front.

Since he was a railroad station agent and when all the watches were sold, the farmers would look at his pictures of watches, trust him with taking an order, give him the money for the pocket watch, which he, in turn, used to purchase the watches, which were delivered by the railroad to him, and he delivered to the farmer.

He pocketed a profit of about $5,000 (good money at the time) from this consignment business and had these “orders” for more. Eventually, he moved to Minneapolis to start his company, which initially was putting advertisements in farm publications and ultimately developed a standalone publication, the Sears, Roebuck & Company catalog itself.

During this time, merchandising transactions in the United States were very risky (think unscrupulous sellers trying to fleece prospective buyers, ala the eBay issue of today). Bartering was the normal transaction and banks were just starting to come to rural parts of the country to handle larger money transaction exchanges (as escrow services do today).

I think that because of his railroad association, the “Eureka moment” of acting as the middle man between the watch maker and the farmer, and solving a common problem between the railroad and the farmer, this was the impetus for the mail order business becoming launched, indeed almost all commerce where money changes hands first, and goods later. The “deferred transaction” in commerce, where there is a time delay between money and merchandise changing hands, I believe started with Sears. (Of course, the refused consignment and his success at selling those pocket watches first, helped greatly because it gave him a financial "seed".) I have never heard of an earlier example of the deferred transaction model, and I have looked. As you probably know, Sears, Roebuck & Company eventually sold just about everything, including houses.

The famous Sears guarantee and a Cash-On-Delivery option helped to sway those who might be suspicious of unscrupulous merchants. Reputation still counts, after all… Indeed, Sears hired Roebuck at the very beginning in order to repair watches (so the guarantee could be met). Roebuck, of course, later became one of the company founders.

And all this from watches, being on-time, and the railroad.

Those who have ears - ABC Radio National

Excellent program on auditory processing for educators.

So much about science and nature (including the nature of us) is misunderstood. This was a refreshing program outlining work being done in this area.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2007/1913317.htm

Brisbane educator Jennifer Riggs discusses children who have serious problems with auditory processing. Studies have shown that a third of us are strongly visual-spatial learners and many children cannot learn through being talked at, but will learn better by seeing and doing. The fundamentals of learning are the five senses, but how many of them do we use in teaching?

Download audio

New Horizons program on Discovery

Last weekend I saw a program on the New Horizons Spacecraft on the Discovery Channel, and while this was a great program and very informative, I was disappointed about one fact that continued to be misrepresented. I cannot find a link to the show itself on the Discovery Channel website, because I'd like to view the whole program again.

I found the artwork of the spacecraft itself by Mike Derer.

I wrote about the subject matter I was disappointed in back in September, 2006 (here and here) when the whole Pluto is a planet or not stuff was going on. Journalism has a duty to inform the public, but when poor diagrams are utilized, the facts are misinterpreted.

New Horizons lifted off on 1/19/2006 and after a little more than a year, just had a Jupiter flyby in order to gain a speed boost, but trading the increase in speed for a little loss of Jupiter's rotational momentum. It's speed after launch was 16.21 km/s (36,260 mph) making it the fastest spacecraft so far, but as it approached Jupiter at 23 km/s (51,449 mph) relative to the sun. After the Jupiter flyby, on 2/28/2007, the gravity assist increased the spacecraft's speed by nearly 4 km/s (8,947 mph).

Even with the increase in speed, New Horizons will not get to the Pluto flyby until 7/14/2015, a little more than 8 years from now. The program mentioned this, but only stating these facts in passing, sort of letting the viewer figure it out. In fact, the pictures they showed were very similar to the inaccurate ones you used to see in text books, or similar to the planet models your kids make in school.

• one year to get to Jupiter
• 8 more years to get to Pluto
• without the gravity assist from Jupiter, it would have been 10-12 years to get to Pluto

Gee, it must be pretty big distances involved out there...

Well, as a matter of fact, yes they are very big distances... So here was an opportunity to inform the public, be a little more descriptive with the facts, but they didn't quite put the facts out there in the right manner.

Vonage hanging on?

On Monday, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in KSR vs. Teleflex, finding that the "combination of two commonly known elements into something obvious" is not patentable. While on it's surface this is a good thing, eliminating lots of expense in litigating bogus patents or patents that do not really enhance, as might be expected the next piece of news was:

From FierceVOIP: Vonage has seized on the ruling, asking an appellate court to throw out the verdict against it and order a new trial. Verizon, of course, is opposed. Vonage is already appealing its loss at trial; the appellate court has set a June 25 hearing on that appeal. Vonage wants the appeal to be put on hold pending the results of the new trial. If it loses that second trial, Vonage wants the existing appeals process to resume. Even though Vonage was convicted of infringing three patents, the courts are letting the company operate pretty much as normal while the appeals are being heard.

I need a playbook.

Let's see,

• I've lost,
  
• I'm appealing, but
  
• I want my appeal on hold and I want a new trial,
  
• but if I lose at that trial, I want my appeal to start again

Public Service Msg for the Deaf

At this link is a PR regarding AOL and Sprint supporting Deaf people by extending the Sprint IP Relay to AIM users. I've noticed this in the past, since I was working some deaf related issues having to do with supporting TTY in voice mail, but this appears to be another public notice about the availability of this service.

I salute the efforts of both companies to get the word out about this service. I hope each and every deaf person with a computer uses it. Since there are IM clients for mobile phones as well, this just further extends the capabilities...

... Oh, I use Yahoo, I am deaf, I don't want to use AIM ???? For those people, don't forget that there are number of IM programs that support multiple IM services. Check out GAIM (small footprint version at here) and Trillian (here). It's easy to sign up for the extra account on AIM and you won't miss out on much at Yahoo or MSN, either.

Sprint has more than 15 years of experience in providing relay services to persons who are deaf, hard of hearing or deaf-blind, or who have a speech disability to communicate with hearing persons on the phone. Sprint offers relay services through an intelligent platform in 32 states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, New Zealand and to the federal government.

April 18 - On This Day in History

Albert Einstein (b. 1879, died 1955)

1906 - SF earthquake and the fire afterwards, destroyed much of San Francisco.

(Sorry, should have posted this last week)

SPAM

I know you all get your share of spam, but I had an observation for one piece I got today.

Subject: approach on parachute
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:38:43 -0800

Our loan officers is seriously happy to obtain your house refinancing requisition affirmation that we accepted nearly 4 days ago

Were pushing through your finance query
Please if you would this minute you need to finish up your last details at our form

"approach on parachute"????
"Our loan officers is seriously"

Seriously, even if they had received a req from me "nearly 4 days ago" (is that, like, 3.9 days ago? or 3.8 days ago?) because of the bad English, I certainly wouldn't respond to this. I guess they get what they pay for, the bottom of the Internet barrel responding to this junk. It's too bad that there are so many illiterate people that all have computers and driver's licences now...

BTW, this idiot didn't even bother to include a form or link to click, completely wasted spam, no way to harvest anyone.

I mean, they are not even trying anymore, it's like, jeez, copy the dictionary, man, at least that would be more interesting...

Spyware

A decent radio broadcast, available via podcast or direct download, is available in this link. Look slightly to the right of the text in the middle column, you'll see to links, one for Real Audio, the other for Windows media player. Most people reading this will probably have the Microsoft media player due to it being preinstalled on their PCs. You can download and listen in one click, and keep on working on your computer while it's playing.

Kojo's show, as do a number of NPR radio stations now, is available as a podcast as well. Just look for the orange POD button, and paste the link there into your podcatcher software.

Kojo does a decent job of hosting a weekly technical show, this week Spyware was the discussion topic, and it includes decent advise and I really "feel" for the call-ins, who are having trouble because of Spyware.

From Kojo's website:

Spyware and viruses cost Americans nearly $8 billion in the last two years, and experts say online attacks are getting more insidious and harder to fix. We'll look at the evolving nature of spyware and assess federal efforts to prosecute online wrongdoers.

Intel: Advancing Multi-Core Technology into the Tera-scale Era

From Intel:

ASCI Red was the first computer to benchmark at a teraflops (1996). That system used nearly 10,000 Pentium® Pro processors running at 200MHz and consumed 500kW of power plus an additional 500kW just to cool the room that housed it. Although not a general purpose computing device, this Teraflops Research Chip delivers 1.0 teraflops of performance and 1.6 terabits aggregate core to core communication bandwidth, while dissipating only 62W.

Wow! - from 1 teraflop requiring a 1,000,000 watts to 1 teraflop requiring 62 watts. Pretty soon, there will be a computer for a $1,000 with AI software that will probably be smarter than most everyone...

It was only 5-6 months ago that quad core were being announced.

Home Entertainment

Some in the UK say that "no one" reads the Daily Mail. But from the perspective of how technology impacts, say home entertainment, well--- many of us, wouldn't believe that from a human factors perspective this has any chance of catching on.



the link is here

Ex-Official at Monster.com Admits to Backdating Options

I try to write about Technology here in this blog, but I noticed this today and had to speak out. I guess everyone needs to speak out. This behaviour is unacceptable. I'm glad Mr. Myron F. Olesnyckyj is facing some stiff penalties and perhaps some jail time. It's about time these people were shown the door AND punished.

It's hard enough to do good things in a company, even harder in the bigger ones. When the executives are cooking the books, it makes the engineer and the rest of people on the front lines want to just give up.

Good companies, they need to set the example. Instead, we have so many examples of bad behavior. I mean, "What were you thinking? That you could get away with it and it wouldn't hurt anyone?"

Thought provoking piece

Here is a great video at YouTube by Michael Wesch (Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State university). Arjun Roychowdhury and Sunil Veluvali of CorporateRat and ElusiveCheese fame is where I noticed it first. Evidently also on Alec Saunders weblog.

This is a great piece from Professor Wesch and his group at KSU.

keep your speakers on




Currently Wesch is launching the Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State University to examine the impacts of digital technology on human interaction.

Vista and DRM - *updated*

Recently, Steve Gibson, Leo Laporte, and Peter Gutmann talked extensively about what Microsoft put in the base of the Vista OS.

• For an introduction on the issue, click here or listen to a podcast by clicking here.
• The next week, they get into the Vista details here or listen here.
• In the 3rd week, they wrap it up here or listen here.
• ** Microsoft later responded in a blog post, read about it here or listen here
  

I've just reviewed all of these sessions, and I agree with the speakers:

Two questions do come to mind after digesting all of this.

1. Why did Microsoft do this? I mean, I wouldn't think they would be "beholding" to Hollywood for anything, heck the other way around, Hollywood would be interested in getting to 95% of the personal computing screens.
2. Considering all of the issues around SPAM, and related issues of identify theft, zombie PCs, etc., one would think that the same amount of effort in these latter issues would improve the situation for a very large number of users.

This work appears to do nothing except make users very unhappy, at least once they find out about it and are faced with real issues like the inability to "RIP" legally procured content that you have "fair use rights" to. Or perhaps your display manufacturer went on the "cheap" and didn't include the licensing keys for the crypto involved. Vista supposedly will not play the HD content on a display that doesn't "abide" by these rules. The policy that sets this thing is not in the display card or even Vista, it's in the content itself. People are reporting in forums this simple fact: I'm putting in an HD-DVD and it's not playing. It's still beta, so anything might happen between now and February.

As I say, we are left with the basic issue of Why?

** Update 1/21/2007
found via boingboing, click here

"...misses the larger issue: the stark demarcation that will arise between legal vs. pirated movies. On Windows Vista, the only way to get true HD movie and TV content from your $2000 home-theater PC will be to download illegal pirated content!

I cannot believe Microsoft/Hollywood haven't seen this coming ... Blu-Ray and HD-DVD protection schemes are likely to be completely broken in a matter of months, and once that happens, the various crippled features in Vista will only affect one type of user - the law-abiding ones who would never pirate a movie. Those users will suffer, while the pirates will party on. What's the point, Microsoft?"

300th Birthday

Did you know that Ben Franklin is/would have been 300 years old?

You might know about that electricity thing with the kite and perhaps bi-focals, but did you know about the rest of his contributions to medical science and technology?

Click the title above or the link here

Courtesy of ABC Radio National in Australia (Ockham's Razor Program)

Broadband Wireless - Now with WiFi!!

This week the NYTimes noted in the technology section that a company by the name of AutoNet had struck a deal with Avis to provide a wifi experience "in your rental car."

While aimed at the business person renting a car (and perhaps specifically targeted at the person with a wifi laptop but not yet having a broadband wireless access card or tethered phone, the concept is interesting (notwithstanding the safety and legal issues involved). Interesting, because it provides local access to a "router" - this is the wifi part - and wireless "wide area network" access to the Internet.

This isn't the first time this has been around, Kyocera has marketed a similar device for some time to the public (Link to rfwel website). People on InternetbyCellPhone (groups.yahoo.com) have been talking for quite awhile about how to do this with the basic laptop and Window's Internet sharing feature.

More players probably means this is starting to get real. Safety issues aside, the more connected we get, the easier it will be to travel with those "connected" kids of ours.

One point... the NYT article notes Autonet as the company involved with Avis. Autonet's website notes a Skype application of the technology (i.e. travel with your Skype client on the laptop or a Skype standalone wireless phone) make calls all day long on the wireless "data" network... This is something that the wireless carriers TOU spell out as something "not good" - not for technology reasons - really - but rather because the pricing for data plans is all messed up. Today's plans are designed for the "occasional" data user, not a cable modem user... Perhaps more pricing plans are headed our way?

What the future will bring

I was having lunch with some of my previous work associates yesterday. We got to talking about mobile phones, the “bricks” of yesterday and the “razor” thin ones of today, and also about VoIP services (since half of us had it). This reminded me, since I’d read it sometime ago, but no longer remember who exactly coined it, that in the past, there were 3 ways to get information into your home:

1. the phone line (which was bi-directional),
2. over-the-air broadcast (one way) radio and
3. broadcast TV
4. well, maybe 4 if you count the newspaper or a magazine
   

Today, we still may have

1. a phone line,
2. the radio
3. plus possibly also satellite radio
4. broadcast TV may be completely replaced
5. via cable (or satellite)
6. but also there is a high-speed digital line that may be DSL (with the phone) or might come over the cable (with the cable TV)
7. plus, in some areas optical fiber for the TV.
8. Now we also have mobile cellular telephone service that's more or less been for voice,
9. but is also increasing being used for data as the bandwidth increases (this is where I’m working in the industry now)
10. A few years ago there where smatterings, then rivers, now floods of WiFi and now WiMAX, or metro broadband wireless (there used to be a company just down the street that was heavily involved in just this thing in South America, because it’s cheaper to “wire” households up this way than with copper).
11. There are plenty more fixed and mobile communications options than I can think of right now. My sisters, in rural Minnesota, get a slower speed version of broadband that’s built off antennas on top of granary elevators and mini-pizzabox sized antenna’s on their houses or in their yards. The distribution antenna works for distances up to 15-20 miles. That and power are the reasons why it’s slower speed. This was put in place because the local telco switch was running out of ports for dial-up and basic voice, back 10-15 years ago, and an enterprising young man saw an opportunity and worked it, when the REA type telco couldn’t possibly move fast enough.
12. And there's a chance you're still getting a newspaper delivered, too.
    
    

The point is, the source of bandwidth pretty much does not matter any more. You'll get your telephone service from somewhere in a network cloud, or maybe from some other network cloud if you move around. If you’re like me, you have application services that tie the endpoints together so that people calling you in one cloud don’t know that you’re answering in the other cloud.

This is largely going to be the same for your TV service. Our soldiers in Iraq, I’m told, have versions of IPTV that are more modern versions of the "triple play" that interworking of the broadband/phone/TV service, which is of course, carried on a military backbone or perhaps a leased facility back to their families here in the states. I don’t begrudge them a bit for a service such as this, but it sure heralds the future for us, doesn’t it?

Content is changing, too, newspapers are still around, but increasingly they have to pay attention to the online world. Oh, the basics of reporting and fact gathering is still largely the same, the tools are different and faster to use. Just lots more amateurs out there…

Radio, and now TV, are putting broadcasts (with and without commercials) out there for distribution via RSS or maybe forcing the website experience. Some media outlets are not getting “it” trying to force users to watch live (Nielson still has clout) in order to keep the same old revenue sources. Others ARE getting it, and that’s why there are DVD’s of whole season of TV shows, or in some forward looking markets, downloads or even feeds of shows. So, distribution models change and with it, the revenue dynamics. I freely admit I don’t have time to listen to that radio or TV show anymore in “real-time”. I want my “time-shifting” rights! So, podcasts and TiVo/MythTV – I think these are good things. Once bitten, “don’t take my TiVo away!”

In the future, it really won't matter if the pipe is

• FIOS (Fiber to the curb ala Verizon landline or my Dad’s cable company in rural MN),
• EVDO Rev. A (VerizonWireless and Sprint),
• HFC (CATV company), or
• copper wires (traditional telco).
  
  

Telco infrastructure is getting to the point where we don’t care what it is, as long as it’s there when we want it and it’s economical enough to fit into our lives without making us think about it. Content and basic service models are increasingly looking for alternative revenue sources, rather than the basic Alfred Hitchcock “word from our sponsor” model which really just shifts costs from minutes of use (MOU) into a bundled cost of an advertised product. MOU will still be there for a while, thanks to the telcos and more importantly, the mobile phone era. But something better than the current draconian measures envisioned with DRM and lawsuits is needed.

We’ve come a long way since when I would travel and my mother used to ask me to call collect and ask for Uncle Arvin, who was never there; it was just a pre-arranged signal that I had arrived at my destination. Let’s hope the coming years see as much of a change for the better as the last few years.

Happy Holidays.

DECT News

Previously, link here, I had posted regarding DECT, or Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications technology, as something that was going to come to the U.S. in a bigger way.

If you’ve been in a computer store lately, you may have seen this wireless phone using the DECT standard. Earlier this month, there was news (link here) that some suppliers of those phones are now building wireless VoIP into them. So it’s beginning to look like (quoting the article)

• computers still do intensive work on the Net, but
• people will use wireless DECT phones to

1. make IP phone calls,
2. listen to Internet radio or
3. check a phone directory.

These enhancements are at most a year away; streaming audio will be coming after that in 2008.

NEW ACROYMN: “CAT-iq” - Cordless Advanced Technology-internet and quality.

Gads, more and more technology – what’s a person to do… Seriously, this may have value though, if you’d rather not “boot up” the PC to do these sorts of things. If you keep the PC on all the time, well maybe not so much… On the other hand, if you have a choice between a dumb wireless phone and one that has more intelligence, without a lot of cost differential, then duh

Power Outage

This morning, we suffered a 1.5 hour power outage. It reminds me how sensitive technology is to the basics, such as electricity.

I have a UPS battery backup for my router and cable modem, since for convenience I might want to use the VoIP phone line for an hour or so, during the early part of an outage. This VoIP line is used throughout the house, but as I say - it's a convenient to keep it running.

My burglar alarm has it's own battery backup, so it will still work for a couple of days, dialing out on the land line.

The laptop(s) have a battery, but then they are only good for a hour or 2.

Reminds me that about a year ago, I spec'd out what it would take to go totally solar. The answer was $75k, about $20-25k out of pocket.

Oh, and Murphy was alive and kicking this morning as well. Since we have well water here, without electricity, there isn't much water pressure to do an entire shower. I called my neighbor to hook up a garden hose to his house (something I've done in the past) since he has city water. But he wasn't home.

Hey, I used to be a Boy Scout, right? Some water in the sink, boil some water on the stove (I am civilized, ok) combine in the sink and tah dah... I can at least sponge bathe and wash my hair... Water done, combined, all set to apply lather...

the power comes on.

NTP gets sued - Business Week

The company that initiated a patent battle with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is now being sued over credit for its patents.

Oren Tavory, a software developer, says he did it first. Tavory says he did much of the work developing the technology behind NTP's patents.

Time will tell if this has any effect on things or not.