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Michael's notes
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What is inside the Telecoms Package?
Excuse my skepticism, but whenever there is a “market regulation” law popping out in a parliament, I always start from finding who benefits from it. And usually there is always an industry or corporation behind it which is lobbying for the new law. I don’t think it has to do something with global conspiracy but rather an obvious and logical thing. Anyway, what is there in Telecoms Package? who is going to benefit? Officially, there are two industries benefiting from it, the Entertainment industry that pushes the so called “3-strikes”or in plain words, for the ISP could disconnect you from Internet after you have been “caught” downloading accessing copyrighted materials. Think this, you go to youtube to see some funny stuff, find a link to some video, click on it and watch. That’s a copyrighted video someone has copied from TV and uploaded to youtube. You can get the first strike. Do that again and again. Boom, you are outlaw and can’t read e-mail. And don’t think this example is far from reality, youtube is constantly removing content uploaded by users AFTER they receive copyright notifications from owners. Obviously it is more complicated with peer-to-peer networks where downloading “unintentionally” is more complicated but trust my words, still possible. The other party here are telcos. These are struggling to survive now with bandwidth demand from end-users and low prices trends on the market. Just to let you know, that peer-to-peer traffic together with on-line videos makes more than a half of total data passing through a public ISP pipes. And it’s growing. Someone always has to pay for traffic, it never comes “Gratis”. Think this, your home ADSL connection in Italy that brings you about ~10Mbps/512Kbps of speed can theoretically bring you 3,240,000 MByte of data within a month. This number, 3TB, is like having 130 Blueray (HDTV movies) discs downloaded. It’s a lot. Now, check this, Amazon Elastic Cloud services calculator estimates this traffic as $1,134.000 ( AFAIK doubles the price oh a typical Tier1) if you transfer it within one month. How much did you pay for your ADSL? 30 Euros? Obviously nobody uses their home ADSL to download hundreds of HDTV movies. But rest assured, with current trends: 
it is closer than you may think and your ISP will not have the margin he has today. The above is only a part of problems ISPs experience, if you are interested in more practical examples then look at Mobile Internet providers who are more sensitive to these problems and already sell “Packages” to access specific resources on Internet. Not to mention VoIP that literally steals money from telcos. So what a telco gets from Telecoms Package? A legal possibility to sell you access to Internet content. Specific Content of specific type. Then they can control better the pricing and business models. Great. Now then, what we, consumers, users, clients, citizens will get in return? I’ll tell you that, but first, why I am telling that? I was there in Israel when broadband came in, in fact, I was in “beta testers” group of Israeli Bezeq ADSL service.And I was working for an ISP, and I was asked to block traffic, to minimize the international bandwidth utilization by users. A lot of tricks to pay less to providers and get more from customers. Proxy servers, firewalls, taps, capacity limiters … All kind of stuff. Nothing really worked. It worked for sometime but not enough for the business to be affected. A few month ago, Italy joined child pornography war and that also fails… You see, you can’t fight it, whenever some approach pops out, almost instantly people find a work around. So ok, says telco, then I will not look for how to block, I will block all and will go up opening what I want clients to use. It ain’t going to work too. If you feel fine with accessing only web pages and say it is all you need. After all, your Internet may be Google or Facebook and myspace…. Great. But will you want to chat sometimes? google talk is not going to work for you. Will you want to watch some videos on-line? like news? it’s not going to work ALWAYS. And you what? it is really disturbing when you know there is something there you can’t get when you know you should… So what you get is hours spent on the phone with their support to redefine what is included in the package…. I am a voice from inside and I know how the implementation of marketing department ideas goes. Now then, connect all of this to the Internet censorship talks, when politicians say that “Internet is like a big newspaper distributed through pipes” and it has to be controlled, licensed and approved. And you’ll see, that this kind of “collaboration” between lawmakers and corporations gives some people the power to control what you see. Literally. I do feel frustrated and impressed and lost… This is something that should not happen. Ever.
Keywords: freedom, network neutrality, telecoms package, censorship
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 12:32 | 3 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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Telecoms package
Hiding behind anti cybercrime actions, privacy issues, telecom services market blahblah. If network neutrality term doesn’t ring anything to you, think this Europeans: Do you really want to see something like this: 
on the shelf of your favorite supermarcet. Please do not allow the Internet Filtering, it is your freedom, your knowledge, your access to the information independently from corporation views or governament control. Don’t let them convert it into what they’ve done to television and press. Please act on it now, nag your Meps via email, spread it in facebook, twitter it all over the net. Don’t let it happen. It is a real treat. http://www.blackouteurope.eu/ http://www.laquadrature.net/en/tag/themes/telecom-package http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=73537262931&ref=ts http://gfdsa.gfdsa.org/2009/04/25/telecoms-package/
Keywords: freedom, network neutrality, telecoms package, censorship
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 09:30 | 0 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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dejavu
2008:
Mr. von Tetzchner said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser. back to 1998? more
Keywords: apple, iphone, monopoly, opera, safari, antitrust
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 21:17 | 1 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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Crunched? Get yourself a LinkedIn profile!
In recent days, the business sent me a very excited press release claimig that 28 million people - or "professionals" - have now signed up. And where are they coming from? You've guessed it, the finance industry. Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC's technology correspondent believes that chances are good for LinkedIn to grow the same rate as markets fall and financial institutions collapse. here
Keywords: credit crunch, linkedin, crisis
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 22:41 | 0 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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Desktop Linux?
What’s wrong with it?
… here’s what MSI’s US sales director Andy Tung told our friend Joanna at Laptop when she asked about high return rates:
We have done a lot of studies on the return rates and haven’t really talked about it much until now. Our internal research has shown that the return of netbooks is higher than regular notebooks, but the main cause of that is Linux. People would love to pay $299 or $399 but they don’t know what they get until they open the box. They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it’s not what they are used to. They don’t want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store. The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks. …. via Gizmodo just as I am always saying, don’t try to turn it into Pindows, don’t try to turn it into OS Y, don’t try to lie to your clients that this is the same but for no money. It is not! every company, even this one, should clearly get this idea, they sell a totally different software and principles. What the companies should focus at (absolutely IMHO) is how to attract the new markets. My mother in law is using GNU/Linux/KDE3 for about two months. It just works for her because she doesn’t look for Start button to Stop computer. That’s the way. Trying to sell a netbook with Linux to someone who doesn’t know what the heck it is but knows how to format disks in Windows is a terrible mistake. He returns it as soon as he finds out that the “Desktop” is not where computer is but actually Computer is where the Desktop sits. Discovering such a thing is like discovering that there is no Santa but the latest is easily accepted thanks to a child’s ability to absorbe new facts and ambiential changes. So focus on two groups, people with no previous experience and adopters, children and youth. I don’t hope my message will reach distributors but I do hope I am right so the conclusions I make will also be made by GNU/Linux sellers.
Keywords: desktop, marketing, GNU/Linux
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 19:52 | 1 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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asterisk with skype
Big news, really big this time. The company that leads the proprietary VoIP is opening the doors gates for the standards. Predictably you have to pay for entrance. Ironically, they do it with the company leading the open VoIP, Digium: GLENDALE, Ariz. (AstriCon 2008)—September 25, 2008—Digium®,
creator and primary developer of Asterisk®, the leading open source
telephony platform, and Skype™, the leading global Internet
communications company, today announced the beta version of Skype For
Asterisk, which will allow the integration of Skype functionality into
Digium’s Asterisk software and enable customers to make, receive and
transfer Skype calls from within their Asterisk phone systems. More Good? Has to be good somehow. Not impressed. We’ll see.
Keywords: asterisk, skype, VoIP, digium
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 22:53 | 4 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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Canonical in numbers
A really nice page that shows in numbers who Canonical ( the company behind Ubuntu Linux driven by Mark Richard Shuttleworth, for the rest of us ) really is. Or at least it is my last argument in hating the pathetic distribution that sucks life essence from GNU/Linux. I’ve been always saying Ubuntu is a pure damage to the free software movement, it is worse than microdoft, novell, oracle and whatever you can bring up from googling linux. The most terrible thing ever. 100 patches to kernel in 5 years. Now, who this company is? exploiter. Period. 
That is a normal tactics to catch the train in commercial world. Good job Mark. Great Business Canonical. Community? sure, scared newbies who don’t know what’s the difference between Linux and Ubuntu desperately looking for My computers icons or whatever they had on their Redmond powered boxes. PR? Popularization? give me a break. Ubuntu looks like shit, (does not) works like shit and you know what was the conclusion I’ve got to with a couple of my friends? That Canonical is either a microdoft or aple spread that is targeted to destroy Linux as desktop platform. I still hope that was a result of logics lacking facts, but it seems so true…. Please, support the contributors, support the ones who creates and not resells, not exploiters. Remove that stinky ubuntu and install something from the top of the list. Thank you for reading.
Keywords: canonical, linux, ubuntu, exploiters
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 21:45 | 0 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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Am I scared by google?
I am. Spooky. How deep the rabbit hole is? How much of your own life can be traded for the commodity of web X.0 ?
First this Chrome thing with nr. 11 statement that owns all of the data comes in and out of browser. They say it was a mistake and will be corrected. Now this name tagging in picassa…..
Until now google only owned you in text web and now they will own you on photos too. I know many people who are trying to not show their real faces associated with their real names. But I do have their photos in my picassa albums. I am a kind person so I will not tag their names. Am I an unique character? Or will someone tag their names? How long will it take then until google will find and will tag all their photos on the net? Are you sure about what photos of you are out there that you’d prefer to keep anonymous? I am pretty sure there are some I’d like to remove before my q=michael%20tabolsky in google picks them up. Having all this global community and friending all the world is fine for me, but sometimes .. sometimes I think I’d better off to the old anonymous web where I could just say “I am gfdsa” and nobody could know what’s behind it. Bottom line, I’m seriously thinking to move away from google, It will be a costly operation that will force me to pay more to hosters, but I just don’t trust this provider of free beer.
Keywords: name tagging, photo tagging, picassa, privacy, web 2.0, google
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 14:12 | 3 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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Firefox 3 release today?
Oh yes. They’ve told us June 17th. What do we get at 16:00 CET? You can bet we still have 2.0.14 as the only option. Why? Is there delay in the delivery? Some critical bug in software? Are their servers out of space for the new files? Nope. Did you note the 24h time notation? Ok, so the thing is that Firefox is released at June 17th at 10pm. PDT !!! Now you could say that it is okay, mozilla foundation is US based and can schedule the dates in their local time. Actually no, you can’t say that. It is a delivery of product. World wide delivery. Check this page’s map and tell me if there is a difference in the number of US and “rest of us” number of Mozilla Foundation customers. You bet there is. But who cares? Pathetic USA self-centristic behaivour.
Keywords: firefox, mozilla foundation, pathetic, software release, usa
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 14:54 | 2 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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lol: skype for your mobile
I did not ever like the company, but today’s news just made me laugh. Obviously the strategy is clear, take that niche and put there something later. Also “release earlier, release often” fits here. But I still think it is a step that may destroy the image of “not a telephony company” or what ever the slogan was. The thing is, that Skype for Mobile is just not a VoIP application. That’s it. Truphone is, Gizmo is, Fring is, but not the skype. Then what does this Java application do? Well, it logs into your account, updates your presence and shows your contacts. This is why you have to download it. How do you speak with contact? You dial a local access number using your cell provider. Not enough? Then take this: How do your contacts call you? right, they click you in skype. But how do you answer? you answer a traditional cell call over your mobile operator network. Hm, do you wonder who pays for the call? You do. Just like with the forwarding you skype to mobile. Whatever way the story develops further (not that I care, skype is a dying company IMO, unless it is bought by a telco) this little application is the most useless thing I’ve ever seen.
Keywords: marketing, mobile, mobile voip, skype, voip, lol
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 17:10 | 2 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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Google talk badge
A really cute widget by google. You can grab one for yourself here
p.s. sorry, you can't post it inside your blog post like I did ...
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 13:18 | 0 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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Nokia to acquire Trolltech!
In its letter to open source community they say: Nokia is committed to continue Trolltech’s current open source engagements, including
honoring the KDE Free Qt agreement, and we will seek to strengthen our support of KDE
in the future. As a first step Nokia will apply to become a Patron of KDE. Which is no doubt good news, put the Nokia into this list: Patrons of KDE and you will get pretty impressive supporting team ;)
Keywords: kde, qt, qtopia, trolltech, nokia
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 18:46 | 2 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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Nokia to acquire Trolltech?
As reported by Trolltech here Trolltech makes software (QT, Qtopia, etc.) used in embedded platforms based on Linux and their Qtopia platform is already adapted for many devices including cell phones. It is a direct competor of Symbian OS. Is Nokia going to support both? Dump one of them in favor of other? Spooky news ;)
Keywords: , nokia, qtopia, symbian, qt
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 08:36 | 0 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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dedicated hosting
Below is a message I’ve got from support of an Italian ISP which hosts one of the servers I occasionally manage….Literally it says: Dear Michael Tabolsky,
Hereby inform you, that because of the errors suring the boot process it is not possible to bring the server online, the only solution is to reinstall the OS. Please let us know if you need to recover data from the server.
At your disposal for further clarifications Gentile Michael Tabolsky,
Le comunico che non è possibile avviare la macchina a causa degli errori in fase di boot, l’unica soluzione e reinstallare l’OS, ci faccia sapere se deve recuperare dati dal server.
Rimaniamo a disposizione per ulteriori chiarimenti.
Speechless, just … well.. yeah, what kind of … well, why do they sign their e-mail as “Staff”?!?! Should it bring me back to the Italian services question? I don’t know if it’s a normal practice in other countries, neither I know if it is a normal practice in Italy. First time I’ve been thrown such a thing into the face:( P.S. such a crash has already happen with Milan IN server, and our hoster did not behave like that .... In fact, they offered various solutions and started from READING the error messages ...
Keywords: ISP, hosting, Italian service
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 18:24 | 1 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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ClubINcall in Action 2: Lost in translations
Dear MilanIN-ers and guests!
After the first business day of ClubINcall in public has come closer to its end, I've already learnt a lot. Thanks to your questions and feedback I could fix one bug in ClubINtext and got another proof that writing non technical documents is not my strongest skill. Especially when it comes to Italian which is so beautiful, varied, multiform and non trivial that complicating the simplest things ever is not a challenge at all for me :). Therefor, I've decided to describe ClubINcall in English, hoping that if someone reads the original explanations in Italian then shakes his head and says "Ma.. .che serve questo aggeggio???" he will have a second chance ;) Or maybe someone who has succeed in extracting idea from the original will help me and will translate the English one (assuming it will be better than Italian).
Now then, what is ClubINcall? It is a service developed by me ad-hoc for Milan IN members that creates a small Contanct Center for a member profile accessible by other members and web site guests. This means that any visitor of your profile may contact you leaving a text or a voice message that will be delivered to you by e-mail.
It is really simple to use, all that is required from a visitor of your profile for leaving voice messages is to have a fixed phone line (landline) in one of the supported countries or a keyboard and creativity for typing a text message. Whenever this visitor gets to your profile or weblog, he can see a "Contact" link above your photo, clicking on it will open a small panel where he should enter his phone number (not your number, his number) and by clicking on the green button he will ask the Milan IN server to call him on the phone and record a voice message for you (the profile owner). This is absolutely gratis for both profile visitor and you since the phone call is offered by Milan IN. If the profile visitor does not have a phone line, or his country is not supported, he still can drop you a text note.
So, how to start using it, or how to make this thing to appear on your profile? Simple!
- login first, then go to your profile editor
- scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will see two options ClubINcall and ClubINtext, which respectively refer to the Voice Messages and Text Messages.
- check these boxes to enable it and verify the desired access rights, just like all the profile details your contact centre can be seen by either anybody (PUBLIC), Club Members (LOGGEDIN) or nobody but you (PRIVATE).
- click on the "save" and you have "Contact" above you profile picture!
Follow my blog for updates and news!
Keywords: ClubINcall
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 14:23 | 0 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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ClubInCall in Action
Cari Soci,
Questo post è una presentazione tecnica di ClubINcall, in realtà è cosi semplice ad usare che basta un paragrafo solo per spiegare come funziona:
Update here: ClubINcall in Action 2: Lost in translations
In qualsiasi momento un netizen (cittadino del Internet) arriva ai vostri profili o blog su www.milanin.com vedrà
sopra la vostra foto il quadratino "Contact" (potete già vedere adesso sulla destra, sopra la mia faccia)
cliccando può inserire il suo numero della linea fissa e cliccare sulla cornetta verde. Il Server Milanin lo contatterà sul numero fisso che ha inserito e il visitatore potrà
così lasciare il messaggio vocale che vi arriverà con posta elettronica. (a costo 0 per voi e per visitatore perché è MilanIN che lo contatta).
Un paio dei step semplicissimi per abilitare:
- Effettuare login
- Andare allo vostro profilo (è compilato in pieno,
vero?) - Cliccare su "Edit profile" sopra
- Girare la rotella di mouse ad a fine della pagina
- Abilitare il ClubINcall/ClubINtext cliccando sul checkbox e cliccare su "Go" sotto
- Sopra la vostra foto c'è il "Contact"!
Se leggete questa riga, vuol dire che sono stato proprio bravo che sono riuscito a tenere la vostra attenzione cosi tanto con la lingua terribile ;) Per sapere di piu` seguite il mio blog, qua faro avvisi dei bugfixing e di features. Se invece avete qualche problema o domanda, non esitare di scrivermi un email, chiamarmi su ClubINcall o andare sul nostro forum alla sezione di supporto tecnico. Grazie per la vostra attenzione e spero che sono stato abbastanza
chiaro e non ho fatto peggio con questi spiegazioni ;)
Alla prossima!
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 23:24 | 7 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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KDE 4.0
Awaited for a long time, very anticipated, highly provoking, heavily discussed, promisingly shiny, acceptably unstable, stunningly impressive… 
It is released.
Keywords: KDE, KDE4, event, release, Linux
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 21:33 | 4 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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Am I a magician?
Well, I am not, but another global white pages wannabe Zoominfo, think I am: 
why? I have no idea, I realy do not know any tricks. I have passed by this image just in time, there are a lot of discussions around the correctenss of spock tags, and especially the ones harvested from on-line profiles by robots. So this image above is just an example, that the contextual serach for personal data doesn't work ye. Even for someone who cares about on-line reputation. Well, I hope the things are going to improve soon ;) Will you spock?
Keywords: people search, personal information, spock
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 14:12 | 1 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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SUP acquires LiveJournal from Six Apart
If some reader does not know what LiveJournal is, it is a large blogging community with friending. SUP instead is a shadow Russian IT company that invests capitals here and there. In Russia (which is second in numbers of LiveJournal accounts after US) LiveJournal has become a synonymous of "blogging". Now then, the acquisition comes the day after Russian elections. If it still does not ring the bell, on-line community was almost the only source of information from the real people about the Russian politics. Way to go tzar, way to go.
Keywords: livejournal, politics, sup, russia
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 09:41 | 0 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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The next big thing to fear
From recently published report by McAfee Avert Labs: VoIP Attacks Speak Up VoIP attacks should increase by 50 percent in 2008. More than twice the number of VoIP-related vulnerabilities were reported in 2007 versus the previous year—several high-profile “vishing” attacks, and a criminal phreaking (or fraud) conviction—so it’s clear that VoIP threats have arrived and there’s no sign of a slowdown. Although ABI Research estimates 1.2 billion VoIP users by 2012 (with $150 billion annual service revenues), the technology is still new to many and implementing defense strategies is lagging.
which brings us to the next biggest job in VoIP technologies, security and privacy. speaking of security, here is a graph of VoIP Vulnerabilities from the same report:  As about privacy... trust me, the global providers just don't give a .... don't care about it. If I would want to spam with voice messages, it would take one day of work to develop a system with near 100% hit rate...
Will see ;)
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 20:56 | 0 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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Forum: Le critiche sulla moderazione
come era sicuramente previsto, sono arrivati i reclami. Voglio chiarire cosa ho fatto, e perche. Ho cestinato circa 20-30 messaggi nei topic di candidati che erano fuori delle regole. I messaggi che si trovano adesso sul forum sono completamente in regola. Se i nostri candidati fanno un impegno e cancellano i post di loro nei topic di loro dove rispondano a vari attachi - sarebbe meglio per i propri immagini perche adesso stanno parlando con se stessi. Vi prego ad usare vari strumenti di communicazione per domande e reclami anzi che creare messaggi nuovi sul stesso forum dove siete stati gia` moderati. Cosi` possiamo evitare la perdita del tempo vostro e mio. Grazie
Keywords: forum, moderation, elezioni
Posted by michael.tabolsky at 16:16 | 4 comment(s) | Send to a Friend
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