I’ll be presenting Asterisk to the Triangle Linux User Group Thursday night. It will be a general overview of the system and will include a live demonstration near the end. I’ll be giving away a few complete Asterisk servers as prizes, too.
The talk begins at 7 PM and should last until 8:30 or so. It will be held at Red Hat‘s corporate headquarters in Raleigh. See the TriLUG site above for directions.
Hope to see you there!
After a long dry spell, we finally got some decent rain. Yesterday morning the floodgates opened on us, dumping three inches of rain in just one day. Amazing.
If that wasn’t enough weather fun, could Irene be coming for a visit?
Continue reading
I struck up a conversation with a Bellsouth tech last week who regaled me with all the planned improvements Bellsouth hoped to make with its network. He was a DSL tech as well as a line installer and was quite fluent in the upcoming technology. Among the gems he threw out were a 6 Mbit download speed coming in September and video on demand coming soon afterward. The goal is 100 Mbits to the home, and will be here sooner than you think. Bellsouth has embarked on an aggressive deployment of new DSLAMs to growing neighborhoods with the goal of bringing fiber to within 5000 feet of their subscribers.
The video on demand stuff sounded appealing, as that’s where I expect things will be heading. I’ve said for a while that the television network is a dying breed. PVR’s like Tivo blaze the way for viewers to purchase their programming by the half-hour, not by the channel. Bellsouth hopes to capitalize on this with their video service, which will pipe three or four simultaneous channels into your home over their copper. Then again, those of you who were in the game in the early days will remember that ISDN was hawked for video on demand. Look how that turned out!
The tech repeated a line I’ve often heard from other telecom technicians: things aren’t fair because the phone companies are regulated and other ISPs (like Time Warner, or competing DSL providers) are not. The view from the phone companies is that their hands are unfairly tied. That all changed last week when the FCC has effectively killed DSL competition. The ruling allows incumbent carriers like Bellsouth to cut loose competiting ISPs from their DSL network. No longer are the ILECs required to offer their copper to competiting providers. As others have noted, the future doesn’t look good for Internet users.
In many other cases it would be a win for a free market. It doesn’t quite square here, though, because the phone companies owe their existence to their early days as monopolies. That fancy infrastructure the phone companies so jealously protect was bought and paid for at the expense of you, the ratepayer. AT&T executives used to brag how the government, in the name of national security (sound familiar?), paid for a large chunk of its network.
So if we want to talk about fairness, we should take that monopoly into account. We should also take steps to ensure another monopoly doesn’t grow up around broadband access. Last week the FCC opened the jailhouse door and now the robber barons are on the loose again.
If there ever was a time for home-grown, wireless neighborhood networks to show how broadband shold be, it’s now. Let’s dust off those yagis and get to work.
NASA‘s Mission Specialist Steve Robinson, the guy whose spacewalking duct-tape job made the shuttle safe for reentry, has recorded the first podcast from space. Take a listen to Steve’s personal account of the STS-114 mission.
Here’s a partial list of stupid business cliches I wish would just go away. I’m thinking of devoting a whole page at MT.Net just to stupid business cliches that should go away.
That’s all for now, though I’m sure there’ll be more. If you or anyone you know spouts any of these, please: seek help immediately!
I flew on a business trip yesterday. At the ticket counter, I gave the agent my driver license, as usual. She did the usual check-in process, then looked up.
“Mr. Turner, what is your date of birth?”
I gave her my birthdate and she continued typing.
Curiosity caught up with me. “So … I’ve never been asked for my birthdate before,” I said in a friendly tone. “What did you need that for?”
“Oh,” she replied casually, “just to clear you from the watch list.”
Very interesting, indeed.
The kids gave me a happy wake-up this morning, so I thought I’d have some fun and play some guitar while we were lounging around in our pajamas. It was the first time I played guitar since I injured my finger. I’ll be happy to note that the injury didn’t affect my playing at all: I play just as badly as I did before!
The kids didn’t seem to mind, though. I drew the line at getting out the electric guitar. Cranking up an amp at 7 AM is not a good way to keep your neighbors happy!
The only sign left of my finger injury is a small scab. In a few weeks, it will be good as new.
One thing I do is heal quickly and well.
I asked a programmer friend who’s also a musician if something existed to that would render a musical score in a web browser. Neither of us could find anything.
What I’d like is some sort of easy way to display sheet music in a browser. That way musicians could post their work and others could make clean (and correct) printouts of the music to play themselves. The format could be XML, or some HTML cousin, or perhaps the music could be in MIDI format and the browser could render that.
Does this sound useful to any musicians out there? Anyone good with Java?
Looks like hell has frozen, after all. At least hell has gotten as cool as a nice tall pint of speciality beer. The Pop The Cap initiave to bring high-alcohol speciality beers to North Carolina has gotten the bill through both legislatures. If the Gov has no objections, it will become law August 13th, or sooner.
The usual government-is-your-mommy crowd spoke up against the bill. New Government Mommies are Triangle representatives Fred Smith and former Raleigh city councilman Neal Hunt. Anyone arguing that teens wanting a buzz will somehow want to pay $6 a beer instead of drinking a 50 cent Beast is seriously fooling themselves.
Help top this one off by letting the governor know you want your high-end beer now!
Here’s to us!
I wrote our senators recently to ask that they not tie the hands of our wonderful, public weather source: the National Weather Service. I wrote an eloquent letter emphasizing the lifesaving importance of this information.
Today I got a letter from Richard Burr’s office (say what you want about the guy, but at least his staff responds to inquiries). Here’s his response:
Dear Mr. Turner:
Thank you for contacting me with your concerns about the National Weather Service (NWS) Duties Act 2005 (S. 786). I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.
I believe that the NWS provides an essential service to protect life and property. In North Carolina we rely on weather information, particularly along our coast. I am concerned about any legislation that undercuts the ability of NWS to provide essential information, such as hurricane and tornado warnings.
S. 786 was introduced in April 2005 by Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation for consideration. S. 786 allows all data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings received, collected, created, or prepared by the National Weather Service (NWS) to be issued in real time, without delay for internal use, in a manner that ensures that all members of the public have the opportunity for equal access to such data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings.
Hearings and additional study will help show us if any changes are needed to ensure the essential mission of NWS is being carried out, while not creating a mission-creep into areas that the private sector can provide information.
Again, thank you for contacting me. If you have any additional questions or comments on this issue, please feel free to contact me or visit my website at http://burr.senate.gov.
Sincerely,
(signature)
Richard Burr
United States Senator
RB: asn
So, let’s pick this apart, shall we?
“I believe that the NWS provides an essential service to protect life and property. In North Carolina we rely on weather information, particularly along our coast. I am concerned about any legislation that undercuts the ability of NWS to provide essential information, such as hurricane and tornado warnings.”
Okay, so I connected with this one. The value of the data is unquestioned. He’s with me here.
“S. 786 was introduced in April 2005 by Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation for consideration. S. 786 allows all data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings received, collected, created, or prepared by the National Weather Service (NWS) to be issued in real time, without delay for internal use, in a manner that ensures that all members of the public have the opportunity for equal access to such data, information, guidance, forecasts, and warnings.”
This paragraph is generally in agreement, too. I’ve highlighted a few key points. One of them is “all members of the public.” This is code for “businesses, too,” though generally I don’t consider a business to be a member of the public. Perhaps Certain Commercial Forecasting Companies Based In Pennsylvania (CCFCBIP), in particular. I believe the crux of the bill is that a CCFBIP didn’t think NWS was being free enough with its information. Thus, the “equal access” part. None of the sites I’ve found seem to say exactly what that information is. Thus, the “equal access” part. I seems to be some private beef which has now been taken to Congress. Anyone with further information is welcome to share.
“Hearings and additional study will help show us if any changes are needed to ensure the essential mission of NWS is being carried out, while not creating a mission-creep into areas that the private sector can provide information.”
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! Anytime someone says “it will take more study,” they mean “I’ve made up my mind and you lose.” I’m not buying for a minute that Burr’s on the fence here.
Now for the coup de grace:
“while not creating a mission-creep into areas that the private sector can provide information.”
Burr’s saying “I don’t want to tie the hands of the NWS, but … I’m going to tie the hands of the NWS!” There you go. Big business wins. We the people lose.
I’ve got nothing against commercial forecasting companies. Indeed, some of my best friends are commercial forecasting companies. If you want to compete with a free service, knock yourself out. But if your product sucks to the point that you resort to hobbling the public service, particularly one which has been around for almost one hundred and fifty years, good luck. Maybe you should fix your business plan instead, hmmm?
This should be a wake-up call to open-source advocates as well. The NWS uses a ton of open-source tools to create its forecasts. If this bill becomes law, would the NWS be prohibited from sharing these open-source tools with the public, especially if the “private sector” sells one? Or would they be prohibited from developing tools in-house to create the forecasts of commercial ones exist?
The whole thing smells fishy. Burr’s response only confirms it.
