What killed copyrights

What killed copyrights was not a P2P software, nor Napster, nor Kazaa.
What killed them were:

1) Ctrl-c and Ctrl-v or more prosaic "Copy" and "paste"

2) To download click here.


Making something easy is making it possible.
Giving the right buttons is making it feasible.
Talking about it, is making it alluring.
Forbidding it, is making it more inviting.

The consistency of Bill Gates

It looks like Bill Gates has redefined the term, “the pot calling the kettle black”. Yup, good ol Bill has declared that high school is obsolete. At a high school summit, Bill was quoted as saying:


“America’s high schools are obsolete, By obsolete, I don’t just mean that they’re broken, flawed or under funded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools - even when they’re working as designed - cannot teach all our students what they need to know today.”

The first thing that came to my mind, in reading this story, is how ironic Bill is by talking about things being ‘obsolete’. I know, I know, most of you out there are totally dependant on Windows, which in itself, should be in the dictionary next to the word ‘obsolete’. Most normal Americans are a part of the large desperate flock that Bill Gates himself has helped to build, based on poor programming, shady business practices, and lovely little blue screens. Bill himself dropped out of college, so my real question is, what kind of example is Microsoft leaving for all these children?

http://www.pentecostblog.com



This whole society smells of mediocrity and stinks of stupidity.

I wonder someone like Bill Gates complains about high schools being obsolete. He is the one (not the only one) to take advantage out of it.
We say “do not spit in the soup you eat”.
If schools were better, then people would be more cultured and would automatically be more sophisticated consumers.

On the contrary, this society has to grow sick people (brainwashed) in order to have a healty economy.

Who would pay for Windows when able to use Linux? Or better, who wouldn’t be able to produce something better?
The fact is: we have the society we deserve.

And also we have the OS we deserve.

As simple as sad as that.

Patrizia





This is not Bill Gates, indeed it isn't, it's a painting of Bill Gates, or to be more accurate, the picture shown here is a photograph of a painting , or even more precisely, the reproduction of a photograph transferred off a printing plate by small inked dots.
Now i'm into this analysis I might as well keep going on, because what you really see is an upside down image flipped left to right on the back of your retina, an electrochemical hallucination in the head.

What does VoIP need to be the Best Solution?

It must offer the same functions or something better, and the same quality of the current PSTN, of course at a lower cost.
The main functions are:

Signaling

Database services

Call connect and disconnect

Codec operations.


Signaling

All devices must communicate in the Network and for doing so they need to cohordinate their components in order to make a call.
In the PSTN for doing so, we use Switches, in the VoIP world the messages are exchanged using standard protocols (SIP, H323, MGCP...)

Database Services

Under this name we list all the features related to regulation of the funcionality of the endpoints.
This can include the billing services, the network security, the calls control.
In the H323 enviroment this is done by a so called Gatekeeper.

Call Connect and disconnect

In the PSTN Network, switches connect the two endpoints in a dedicated channel.
In the VoIP world this connection is a multimedia stream (can be audio, video or both) transported in real time.
The voice is packetized and follows the stream of the Internet passively, sharing a channel.
Every packet has a target and an address and in the case of H323 has a prioritation on the data packets.

Codec Operations

The Network needs a way to convert the voice in a format that can be transported and streamed.
The process to convert voice waves into packets is done with a coder-decoder.

These ants...

The uncanny sense of purpose and direction of the ants is not apparent in the individual, nor does the group have any discernible hierarchy.
Evidently ants have a collective intelligence which acts in much the same way as cells in the human brain.
That is to say the whole is greater than its individual parts.

Indeed ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment.
They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information ceaselessly.

They do everything but watch television...

Machine Intelligence

During the 1940s Alan Turing envisaged that by the turn of the century humans would have conversations with computers.
He was optimistic. Nevertheless fifty years later there was some kind of dialogue restricted to a single topic.

Person:
Have you ever had a dry Martini?

Computer:
I drink one before dinner, sometimes during dinner. I don't like Martinis after dinner.

Person:
What about wines?

Computer:
Mostly I drink relatively young burgundies, of modest fame, such as Savigny-les-Beaunes and Pernand-Vergilesses.


If this really was machine intelligence, then it is a pretentious mechanical snob...

Artificial intelligence.

Originally the designing of artificial intelligence programs was based on logical deduction and rational response.
In consequence it was easier to mimic the thought process of a chess master concerned with determined patterns, than a child which imagines randomly and makes improbable analogies.

To be comparable to the real thing, artificial intelligence has to accommodate subjective as well as objective processes.
And that's about the unpredictable and irrational-in other words, behaving like humans.
We are overlay impressed by the ability to calculate and rationalize, and inadequately impressed by the ability to see possibilities and make connections.

And connections, as Adam and Eve discovered, are what life is about.

Composition is...

the art of arranging in a decorative manner the variuous elements at a painter's disposal for the expression of his feelings...

Blog of the day: the market rules.

The market is ruled by the demand and the offer.
That is: if the demand is huge and the offer is limited, lucky the ones who have something to offer.

That is exactly the point.
There are many more people willing to write than people willing to read.

Imagine the opposite scenario, being a blogger would mean to write a few stupid lines and count millions in his bank account...

Most bloggers have a common illness that goes under the name of Blogorrea...

Patrizia, one of them.

The importance of being born in the right place.

I would like to be born a goldfish, you turn around for all your life in the same bowl, and every turn is a new experience.

But may be I would have the problem of having the right owner (somebody who doesn't forget to feed me) Also as a fish, it would make a big difference what bowl you are born in....

I like to comment and to be provocative, it is often the only way to have a nice, good, constructive discussion...most of the Blogs I read are nothing else than a monologue, Sometimes interesting sometimes not.

There are many more people willing to write than people willing to read.
Also for that it is a matter of where you were born (or better how)!

As happy as a goldfish can be.

There are roughly 6 Billion people in the world. Imagine the worlds biggest lottery where every one of those 6 Billion people was required to draw a ticket. Printed on each ticket were the circumstances in which they would be required to live for the rest of their lives.

Printed on each ticket were the following items:

- Sex
- Race
- Place of Birth (Country, State, City, etc.)
- Type of Government
- Parents names, income levels & occupations
- IQ (a normal distribution, with a 66% chance of your IQ being 100 & a standard deviation of 20)
- Weight, height, eye color, hair color, etc.
- Personality traits, temperment, wit, sense of humor
- Health risks

Darren Johnson


Our life is always as we perceive it from the inside.
Having the best ticket wouldn't surely make you the happiest.
Not even happy.

Man is made in a funny way. He appreciates what he doesn't have. And when he has what he appreciates, it is not important anymore.

It doesn't really matter where you were born, after a few seconds you would be used to it anyhow.

The Goldfish has a memory lasting three seconds.
The way around his bowl lasts five seconds, so that before he ends the old there is always a new one to begin.

May be I wouldn't dislike being born a goldfish.

Patrizia

About Intellectual Property.

I have a feeling sometimes that all this fuss around intellectual property is a misusage of the real meaning of the word.

Reading around, ideas look similar and more than a theft I would call it something like a recycling.
You begin with a concept, somebody else reads it without fully understanding what you mean, but, as usually happens, who is not able to learn at least thinks he is able to teach, repeats what he didn't understand in the way he understood it.
So a new concept is born.
Then, if he is able to say and copy without understanding the real meaning what you wrote, you can be sure there is somebody ready to do the same, coming to something similar, but not as the original one, remix it and present it as something new.
And this goes on and on...

Think and you have the problem of disposal of ideas.

Why somebody invented VoIP?

Easy answer.
It is like the spectacles, we have them because we have a nose, otherwise we would have something else.

Something old, something new, something borrowed and a touch of Progress.

"A network is stupid when it does not know what it is carrying."


I would say a Network is useful when it reaches a stupid way to be intelligent.
A pragmatic view: the refusal of proprietary means to conform to expectations and to reach everybody.
The difference between the Internet and the Telecom Network is that the latter gives you a line out of many, the first uses the line of many.

Whereas one merely tickles the ribs, the other conveys a vivid new perception.

A sudden switch from one way of looking at something to another.

“Something old,
something new,
something borrowed
and a touch of Progress.”

"Man invented things by imposing a shape on Nature" Later he invented VoIP by imposing a shape on Numbers.

"Beast abstract not" wrote John Locke.
"Although not altogether correct, he highlighted the fact that man's use of symbols to make sense of the world distinguishes him from roughly a million species and the other hundred and ninety-two different kinds of ape and monkey.

Symbols are the instruments which convert raw intelligence into culture.
Without them, explained Lewis Mumford, man's life would be one of immediate sensations, limited to a past shorter than his own lifetime, at the mercy of a future he could never anticipate, never prepare for.
In such a world, out of hearing would be out of reach, and out of sight would be out of mind."

Whether it all happened by a slow dawning consciousness, or through a series of spontaneous mental sparks which ignited a dormant imagination, at some point the mindless became mindful.
Perhaps blankly gazing into a fire someone, somewhere, sometime, suddenly saw a face in the flickering flames.
At that moment matter became mind and man stepped through the looking glass.

Being conscious of self, man was able to invent languages to communicate thoughts, work his environment, create concepts to express ideas, and images to identify the supernatural forces which surrounded him.

Seeing God in a tree he could summon him forth in a totem pole."

The Flattening of almost everything

We used to need hierarchies because we had only primitive communication and information processing capability. Computers, electronic communication, and particularly the Internet have made it possible to flatten almost everything. Flat organizations, which is what I’m blogging about today, are necessary to deal with accelerating change.

http://blog.tomevslin.com/2005/02/the_flattening_.html



Hierarchies are intrinsic in nature.
Men are different.

"When man had reached the stage of clothing, and overcoming the danger of starving, freezing and being eaten by wild animals and these dangers ceased to be the essential factor influencing selection, an evil intra specific selection must have set in.
The factor influencing selection was now the wars between hostile neighbouring tribes and among the people belonging to the same tribe."

And hierarchies are a consequence of them.
You can create all the flat organizations you like, but after a while a hierarchy will naturally grow into them.

Patrizia

http://woip.blogspot.com
http://www.worldonip.com

The Computer Revolution.

Most businesses still operate according to a world view that hasn't changed since long.

The next revolution will be a response to changing patterns of lifestyle.
It will create new and different opportunities. The new businesses will have to adjust to these new realities.

Innovative companies are already doing just that.

As in the Industrial Revolution, new technologies (the steam engine at that time, the computer in our times) deeply changed the way of working, of producing, of living.

The steam engine meant less work to produce the same amount of goods, and consequently meant less jobs.
But that changed after a while.
More goods were consumed, because more goods became mass products, and therefore less expensive and easily reachable also to the mass.

A new working class was created by the Industrial Revolution, a new working class will be created by the Computer Revolution.

Less work to produce will mean services like the telephone at very affordable prices, lowering the cost will mean increasing the use.

That is why the business model MUST change.

No more big Monopolistic Companies, but many small entrepreneurs.
Less cost, more quality, more services.
Communication will be accessible to all, MUST become accessible to all.

The VoIP Revolution: 2005

The exact number of VoIP (SIP) over broadband service providers has grown to somewhere between 300 and 400. While the exact number is not known, one only needs to perform a Google search for VoIP service for your home town to find that there are about 3 to 4 per market. At 235 major markets in the US, the estimate seems believable.

Many of these companies are using a proxy server to interconnect to Softswitch services offered by Qwest, AT&T and Level3. These suppliers control the call state and PSTN terminations for a per call fee. These fees range between 0.53 and 1.5 cents per terminated call. Most companies charge a minimum per month that comes to around $15,000 per month regardless of the usage. Most of these VoIP over broadband service firms have no way to accurately account for completed calls. This leaves them open to whatever charges the IP delivery carriers wish to charge that month. It is rather similar to the early days of the Internet. There are methods of accurately accounting for these calls. However, these methods call for SS7 A-links and expensive equipment and software. They are by no means practical for the typical VoBB provider.

The VoBB provider is attempting to grab as many customers as possible and as soon as possible. Make no mistake; it is land grab time in the broadband world. Each acquired customer should fetch between $1000 to $1500 per customer when the VoBB service company owner finally decides to cash in. It is expected that service providers will spend all of their investment in customer acquisition at the expense of IOCs and RBOCs. The customers they gain will be sold, ostensibly, to CLECs and WiMax carriers. The CLECs and wireless carriers (read Craig McCaw’s Clearwire) will be trying to gain critical mass in their respective markets. RBOCs will use their purchases to gain entry to those pesky IOCs that are beginning to poach on the RBOCs formerly politically protected empires. The IOCs stand to lose the most in this game. They are currently valued at about $3000 per customer. That valuation will be cut to a half or a third when all of this shakes out. Sell your IOC shares now before it is too late.

The VoBB providers have another advantage: no regulation at the state level. This translates into no expensive lobbying (or other forms of compensation) of the PUCs in each state. It means no state taxes on the “Internet” based service. It means no USF and Al Gore tax that go to support government pork projects and deliver little other benefit to US citizens. RUS funds will go to DSL deployments, keeping the rural and underserved connected to the rest of the world.

This year will see the surge of VoIP deployments that will revitalize the industry from a manufacturer’s standpoint. However, the rise in VoIP service means fewer and fewer operational jobs in the telecommunications industry. VoIP service does not require the level of technical support previously necessary when DMS100s and 5ESS switches were plentiful. One only needs a couple of good IP router engineers (CCIEs need not apply) and some good systems people. A typical company with 100,000 customers will only need about 4 or 5 technical support people. Customer service is going to be Web based for the most part and billing will be directly to a credit card. No need for CIOs and expensive IT staff. With this massive shift in relative expense, the RBOCs will have to reduce their cost structure before the end of 2006. That translates into massive layoffs in customer service, IT, engineering and switch support. RBOCs will be transformed into DSL service providers over the next 3 to 5 years. This will require very little staff.

It is the Wild, Wild West out there. The revolution is here. This should be interesting at the very least.

Reality is a creation of the nervous system

"We build up whole cultural patterns based on "past facts" which are extremely selective.
When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern, we don't throw out the pattern. We throw out the Fact."

Robert Pirsing

The worth of sight is dependent more on the quality of one's vision than on the objects viewed...

"Reality is only one possible state of the Universe from an infinite range of potential states, a slender thread of the actual winding through the space of the potential"

Ian Stewart

"I am here today, but I could be in any other place.
Whatever exists is in a place, therefore places exist, therefore a place is in a place and so on ad infinitum...
I just know that I am, but I could also not be, this is getting too complicated..."

Patrizia

How could you define Digital Virtuality?

It's a place where if you take from all things their numbers, all shall perish.

Progress and discovery are "Thinking the Unthinkable"

Sometimes projects are not successful as forecasted because we approach them like trying to assemble a jigsaw without first seeing the picture on the box.
One knows a solution exists providing all the bits and pieces are put together in the right way.

The Art of doing something new (and useful) is to identify the problem, the niche of the Market and then adopt the right method of approaching it.
Easier said than done.

I often take a new idea to bed, set it up center stage in the mind, and focus on it as I'm falling asleep.
Sometimes a solution reveals itself, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes I just cannot sleep, but nevertheless it's more fun than counting sheep.

Lately I have been obsessed by the word: Network.
Everything I approach sooner or later fits in some Network pattern.
May be I am too much involved in the Internet, I probably am too enthusiastic about it.

When I get an idea, or better, when the idea gets me,I usually only see the right side of it.
Sometimes assumptions inhibit shaking out answers, or at least the right answers.
But having none is even worse.
Making mistakes is just the normal way to do whatever you want to do.

Thinking is better that not thinking as doing is better than not doing.

Blogging is the way to publish (literally speaking, making it public) you brain.
What depresses me most is why nobody clicks on that small button: Comment?

Patrizia from a World on IP

Net Work

"There is a utopian dream that the coming of the Net will bring positive social changes.
I have my doubts about that.
It is going to bring great social changes, but they won't all be positive.
At the same time, if I have a positive feeling about what's happening with digital technology and the revolution that it brings, it is because notification, computerization and digitalization, all increase choices.
That is about all that technology gives, but that is a very large thing.
For example a person born now who is interested in the Arts can paint, sculpt, make films and make music in many different spheres.
Two centuries ago, there were fewer choices.
Each time the media reinvent themselves, they expand the number of choices without excluding any of the previous ones.
On this simple level, the Net and the Literary space-the thinking space that it creates- will allow a whole new space for the Arts.
It is also a space that will allow new kinds of political and social structures.
At it will allow them as a Net Gain."

Kevin Kelly

This society creates sick people in order to have a healty economy.

The password is: Teach ignorance.
When a medium like TV was created they were talking about Educational programs, Distance learning.
What we have today is everything but educational.

The Art of looking in the other direction, that should be taught in our schools.
The art to say Why? The art to say No!

They shouldn't teach to learn, they should teach to discuss.
That is the purpose of learning.

"The mind is like an umbrella, it works best when it is open"
But if it is too open, they can throw in it every kind of garbage.

They have to create useless people in order to sell the useless things they produce.

A big revolution is on its way.
The revolution of the "Business Model"

No more big HP, no more big Coca Cola.
The dinosaurs didn't extinct, they went through a transformation.
From huge animals they became small birds, so that they could survive.

The same will have to happen to the Dinosaurs of today.
No more big companies, but an army of billions of small one man company.
That is all you need to run a business today.
A man, a computer, the Internet.

Beware the ones who oppose to it!

Patrizia more than ever from a World on IP

Freedom to connect, freedom to talk, freedom to survive.

David,

I would like so much to be there, but I live in a small town in the North of Italy, far from Rome, far from Milano, far from Florence and more than anything far from the airport.

Sometimes a free fish doesn't understand how it feels to be a hooked one.

Nevertheless, I would like to express my ideas, in the only way which is possible to me: bothering you.

You said the Telecoms will loose because they have the wrong business model.
I say our whole society has the wrong business model.
And that blocks progress and what is the most serious consequence, blocks the economy.

Take for example the Internet.
It would be a wonderful virtual market for millions of small entrepreneurs, willing to sell their products on the Net.
What could be better that a place where millions are connected, and read and look?

But the moment you want to charge, and I am talking about micropayments, let's say a sum around 1-5 dollars, which considering the audience could bring in the pocket of the small entrepreneur a nice sum monthly (of course if he produces something sellable), the moment you use a Credit Card with a bank or even pay pal, the sum the seller and the buyer have to pay sometimes makes the product too expensive.
And this is how the big Monopolistic companies, in this case the Banks, block progress and economy.

Once at least the business model worked, because they employed a lot of people, but now they only fire and use computers.
But the products they sell do not become cheaper, on the contrary, the less it costs, the more they charge.
Sometimes a click on a computer is charged more than $100.

And this model works for everything, including the Telephone Companies, all the giants of this corrupted society.

I always talked about the "Peaceful Internet revolution", but now I realize there is not such a thing as a "peaceful revolution", you cannot produce anything with peace, you have to fight.

And it surprises me to see how the people still do not understand that the number is the winner.
How could a bunch of few win against an army of billions?
Why people still accept the actual situation?
Why people like you, who can make an opinion, who can really change things, don't say:

Let's begin the revolution.

Why don't you shout?

I would be your follower number one.
Even as a hooked fish, even from the remotest town of Italy.
At least I have an Internet connection...

Patrizia

More than ever from a World on IP


PS I will not be there, but I HOPE my small virtual voice will be...

When Priority is a PRIORITY.

Protagoras:

"Man is the measure of all things"

Patrizia:

"Your own ears are the measure of VoIP."

And mine surely are. Because I cannot stand to talk to somebody without understanding what he says.
That is, without completely understanding what he says.
May be this is a chromosomal limit.
We Italians are so used to talk with our hands, our eyes, our lips, that when it comes to a communication using the plain voice we encounter big problems.

And that itself puts an end to the discussion: SIP or H323?
NO PRIORITATION no good quality.
No good quality no communication.

SIP won't have a future in Italy.

VoIP is nothing else than a new alphabet.

The letters of our alphabet are derived from a script invented, or at least developed, by the Phoenicians.
Their neighbours, the ancient Greeks, adopted this for their own use and by translating Phoenicians letters into Greek, gave the world the alphabet.

The Greeks were probably the first to marry writing with speech.
Originally they didn't separate words, then, to help pronunciation, they invented the vowels and used spaces to separate words.
Successive cultures chopped and changed the alphabet, by amending, adding and dropping letters to accommodate differing glitches and sounds. With 26 characters (but the Italians still just use 21) 403,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pronounceable words are possible.

All characters were originally signs and all signs were once images.

VoIP is just another kind of alphabet.
The letters are numbers and the codec puts together the numbers and recreate the voice.

From that the importance to use the right codec and the right protocol.
The quality can change enormously depending on them.

If you want to be clear, just use the right "alphabet".

The anchestor of the Internet

The ancestor of the Internet was a Network of people in a group, chatting and gossiping.
Their medium was the air and the protocol was ABC and so on.
22 alphabetic letters could express sentiments, feelings, opinion, disopinion, hate, love.
The expression of the face, the inflection of the voice, the gestures of the hands, all gave shape and meaning to the words.

The bandwidth was unlimited, free and good quality.
You didn't need modems or anything of that kind.
The modem was your mouth that converted impulse from your brains into words, the words reached the destined address very fast, were reconverted into impulses in the brain of your partner and the communication began, went on and stopped at your pleasure.

Then somebody found the way to transport voice through cables or through the air and somebody else understood how profitable it could be if he could invent a "spectrum" in which the wireless voice could travel and of course be nicely paid for it.
We not only had to pay for the device, but also for the "air" that notoriously and till then belonged to the people.

The same happened with wires.
You could only lease them, because it was more convenient.
And we still go on leasing them, even though we paid their cost one million times.

A smart idea was called "Monopoly" and the smart Monopoly belonged to the "Smart people".

Then somebody created the Internet, which in principle was nothing more than the same group of people, an enlarged one, where the protocol was not the voice anymore, but TCP/IP, where the air was taxed as well as the cables that transported the protocol.
Now, they found out it could be profitable to regulate not only the air or the cables, but also the content going up and down the Network.
It is like taxing the people when they open their mouth, not only for the fragment of air they occupy with their voice, but even for the words that come out of their mouth.

I think that this is really too much.

Addiction

Once there was a man that was so intrigued with calling with his phone that he became a phone calling the man he was.

Of course he used VoIP.