Archive for September, 2007

River Marden - They continue

Friday, September 28th, 2007

The River Marden is a small tributary of the River Avon in England. It flows from the hills surrounding Calne and meets the River Avon about a mile upstream of Chippenham.

GUIDE TO THE RIVER MARDEN

(Calne to Stanley)

NAME OF RIVER: Marden (Upper section).

WHERE IS IT?: Calne, Wiltshire.

PUT-INS/ TAKE-OUTS: Get on in Somerfield carpark in Calne, take out at the A4, below the Millennium cycleway bridge. Or continue down and do the rest of the Marden.

APPROX LENGTH: 3km.

TIME NEEDED: 1 hour.

ACCESS SITUATION: No agreement but it flows through Common land for most of it. We had no complaints, even the fisherman seemed quite amused. You pass through a building site on the way, so save this for weekends (26-4-00).

WATER LEVEL INDICATORS: The higher the better but if you can paddle at the wharf in Calne you can do the rest of it.

GRADING: II, purely because of the slalom pole like trees, requiring some boat control. I for the actual water.

MAJOR HAZARDS/ FALLS: Many over-hanging trees. Bug weir (II) halfway down, a 7ft chute. Tunnel under the road is very dark

GENERAL DESCRIPTION: Get on next to the carpark, paddle down, through the building site into the section that looks like the beginnings of an artificial slalom course (unfortunately its not). The river passes under the road and turns left before emerging after 100m. Follow the wharf down over the little weirs, (about 8in each) and then go under the first foot bridge on the left. Follow the winding river down for about 1km, carefully avoiding the many fallen and overhanging trees. They can all be paddled under or round as of 26-4-00. The river widens slightly indicating Bug weir, a 7ft wide chute which can be run forwards, backwards or even sideways in a playboat. The wave at the bottom is good for 20mins entertainment, but is very shallow. Continue down much of the same till you reach the A4. Take out about 50m above where the river passes under the road. Clamber over the fence and your back with your car.

OTHER NOTES: Continue down and do the bigger section of the Marden below. Take a helmet because of the trees.

Links

  • VoIP & Gadgets Blog voip gadget blog with the latest gadget news, voip products, must have cool gadgets mobile wireless phones, product reviews.
  • VoipBuster - Free Calls Free* phone calls with the VoipBuster. Call your online friends for free as well as a special selection of popular international destinations.
  • VoIP Providers - VoIP Services - Broadband Phone Solutions Compare and Review VoIP Providers. VoIP Service Provider Search - Broadband Phone Solution - Internet Phone Provider - Digital Phone Service.
  • Voip - Free Calls - Everything Voip 1-800-TRY-VOIP; Voip.com offers Residential and Business consumers the most comprehensive calling solutions on the market. E911, Make a Call, Voicemail,

Protective security units - Security

Friday, September 28th, 2007

Protective security units typically provide policing, security, intelligence and bodyguard services for Sovereigns and Politicians. They can be contrasted with security services which provide protective security intelligence (such as the Security Service (MI5); and Guards Regiments for the defence of the Sovereign and the metropolis. Examples of these include the Household Division.

There are also distinct non-combat personal bodyguards which serve as ceremonial guards and personal attendants (such as the Gentlemen at Arms, the Yeomen of the Guard, the Royal Company of Archers, and the Company of Pikemen and Musketeers of the Honourable Artillery Company, as well as the Corps of Serjeants at Arms, the Gold Stick and Silver Stick, and the High Constables and Guard of Honour of the Palace of Holyroodhouse).

Well-known examples include the Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Department of the London Metropolitan Police, and the United States Secret Service. Typically they provide security and ceremonial effect is not per se an object.

Links

  • I-voip Skype Phones, USB Phones, Skype Phone, Skype Headset, IP Phones, VoIP Routers, Fritzbox, Wifi Phones, VoIP handsets, Cordless Dualphones, VoIP service
  • Info on VOIP Solutions for Businesses An exclusive site on Voice internet protocol. Find out the basics of Voip, information on their services, solutions and other technical information.
  • What is Internet telephony? - A Word Definition From the Webopedia Internet telephony products are sometimes called IP telephony, Voice over the Internet (VOI) or Voice over IP (VOIP) products.
  • AT&T: VoIP VoIP from AT&T converts your voice into data and uses your high speed Internet connection to send and receive calls. Connect your home or business with VoIP

Bedfordshire local elections - External link

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Bedfordshire Council is elected every four years.


Political control

No overall control 1973 - 1977

Conservative 1977 - 1981

No overall control 1981 - 1997

Conservative 1997 -


Council elections

Bedfordshire Council election 2001

Bedfordshire Council election 2005


By-election results


External links

  • Bedfordshire Council

Links

Moo Who? - External link Official site

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Moo Who? is a 2004 children’s book written by Margie Palatini and illustrated by Keith Graves. It was published by HarperCollins.


Plot

An anthropomorphic cow, Hilda Mae Heifer, who is known for her distinctive mooing, is hit on the head by a cowpie and loses her voice.

She enlists the help of other farm animals to find it.


External links

  • Official author’s site
  • Official illustrator’s site
  • Official publisher’s site

Links

ISPS code - security threats to VoIP.

Monday, September 24th, 2007

The International Ship and Port Facility Security Code is an amendment to the Safety of Life at Sea Convention, SOLAS (1974)/(1987).

It was initiated by the US Coast Guard under the direction of ADM James Loy, as part of the US government’s response to the Septermber 11th Terrorist Attacks. The US delegation to the International Maritime Organization pushed the measure and the IMO adopted it in 2002 for implementation by 1 July, 2004. It is a two-piece set of legislation describing minimum requirements for security of ships. Part A provides mandatory requirements. Part B provides guidance in implementation.

The ISPS Code is limited to ships over 500gt. The main objectives of the ISPS Code are as follows:

  • To detect security threats and implement security measures
  • To establish roles and responsibilities concerning maritime security for governments, local administrations, ship and port industries at national and international level
  • To collate and promulgate security-related information
  • To provide a methodology for security assessments so as to have in place plans and procedures to react to changing security levels

(AV, ISPS: Risk Analysis, impact and contrast across the code, Intervessel, Southampton, 2005)


See also

  • Supply Chain Security
  • Port security

Links

Rolf Schult - Voice

Monday, September 24th, 2007

Rolf Schult (born April 16, 1927) is a German synchronis speaker and actor. He continues to provide the German dub for actor Robert Redford, among many others. Until the film Hannibal he provided the voice for Anthony Hopkins before he was replaced by Joachim Kerzel, and has dubbed Patrick Stewart for much of his career.

He has also collaborated with German trance/techno music group E Nomine on a number of their albums.


External links

Links

  • VoIP for Business 2007 - Welcome to the essential business Welcome to the essential business communications experience! VoIP'08 will take place at The National Hall, Olympia, London, 9-10 April 2008.
  • I-voip Skype Phones, USB Phones, Skype Phone, Skype Headset, IP Phones, VoIP Routers, Fritzbox, Wifi Phones, VoIP handsets, Cordless Dualphones, VoIP service
  • VoIP News - VoIP for Business Keep up to date on the latest news and views about VoIP, IP PBXes, converged networks, Hosted PBXes, and other business telephony solutions.
  • Voice over IP (VoIP) Articles & Tutorials How to configure and secure a VoIP network in an Enterprise environment.
  • VoIP & Gadgets Blog voip gadget blog with the latest gadget news, voip products, must have cool gadgets mobile wireless phones, product reviews.

VoIP spam - VoIP

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

VoIP spam is an as-yet non-existent problem which has nonetheless received a great deal of attention from marketers and the trade press. Some pundits have taken to referring to it as SPIT (for “Spam over Internet Telephony”).

Voice over IP systems, like e-mail and other Internet applications, are susceptible to abuse by malicious parties who initiate unsolicited and unwanted communications. Telemarketers, prank callers, and other telephone system abusers are likely to target VoIP systems increasingly, particularly if VoIP tends to supplant conventional telephony.

The underlying technology driving this threat is SIP (Session Initiation Protocol, IETF – Internet Engineering Task Force, RFC 3261). This technology has received significant support from most major telecommunication vendors, and is showing signs of becoming the industry standard for voice, video and other interactive forms of communication such as instant messaging and gaming.

Similar rules to today’s email systems that block unsolicited email will also prevent unsolicited voice and video communication. This can also be compared to the way today’s chat applications prevent unwanted users from viewing your availability or state of presence by using “privacy” options.

SIP as the technology has been designed to support presence natively. This potentially means that incoming callers will know your availability before even attempting to call or make contact with you. So just like with e-mail today the benefits of communicating with trusted parties electronically far exceeds the pitfalls of e-mail spam, particularly when using preventative technologies to minimise the impact of the issue.


Resources

Hansen, Markus; Hansen, Marit; Moeller, Jan; Rohwer, Thomas; Tolkmit, Carsten, Waack, Henning: “Developing a Legally Compliant Reachability Management System as a Countermeasure against SPIT”, Third Annual VoIP Security Workshop, Berlin, June 2006.

Links

BattleCom - VoIP

Friday, September 21st, 2007

BattleCom is a VoIP protocol/application aimed at gamers wishing to speak to other players in online games that do not have an inbuilt speech system.
BattleCom is no longer developed and so has largely been superseded by other similar applications such as TeamSpeak and Ventrilo.

Links

  • The VoIP Weblog Today's New York Times has an interesting story on the impact VoIP services have had on the traditional phone companies. Basically, VoIP services like
  • Blueface | VoIP | Ireland's Internet Phone Service Blueface is a Dublin based VoIP, internet phone, company providing residential and business users with a phone service over an existing broadband Internet
  • Convergence & VoIP - Network World The Convergence & VoIP research center is your source for the latest convergence and VoIP news, analysis and research links from Network World.

Teleo - VoIP

Friday, September 21st, 2007

Teleo was a peer-to-peer internet telephony (VoIP) network, founded by Wendell Brown and Andy Moeck. Teleo users could speak to other Teleo users for free, call traditional telephone numbers for a fee, and receive calls from traditional phones.

Teleo was acquired by Microsoft on 31 August, 2005.

Links

  • MAKE: Blog: VoIP Archives Here's voice recognition and speech synthesis for playing Infocom games (like Zork) over the phone, this might be the coolest VoIP project ever - [via]
  • Business VoIP - Gradwell Dot Com If you have broadband at home or at work, Gradwell's VoIP services allow you to deploy all the features of office-based telephony, with a fraction of the
  • VoIP Over the years China VoIP Conference has addressed the evolution of the telecom business from PSTN to IP. Today, the telecom business is in the process of
  • VoIP & Gadgets Blog voip gadget blog with the latest gadget news, voip products, must have cool gadgets mobile wireless phones, product reviews.
  • VoIP VoIP, VoIP application developer AudioCodes produce VoIP phone, voice over DSL, and voice over ATM packet processors. IP telephony leaders, Audiocodes

SILC (semiconductors) - current

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

Stress Induced Leakage Current is an increase in the gate leakage current of a MOSFET, due to defects created in the gate oxide during electrical stressing.

Links

Reichspost - as Deutsche Telekom

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

Reichspost was the name of the postal service in the Holy Roman Empire founded by Franz von Taxis in 1495. From 1871 to 1949 it was the name of the German national postal service, formally Deutsche Reichspost. The Reichspost was succeeded by the Deutsche Bundespost (German federal post office) in West Germany and by the Deutsche Post (German Post) in East Germany. In 2000 the company changed to Deutsche Post AG (share holding company)<ref>History of Deutsche Post AG</ref>.

The German word Reich does not necessarily refer to a monarchy; it usually means “state” or “nation” in the sense of national.

There was also an Austrian daily newspaper with the same name from 1894 to 1938.


See also

  • Deutsche Post


Notes

Links

Ministry for State Security - research VoIP security

Monday, September 17th, 2007

Numerous countries and governments have or have had a Ministry for State Security or Ministry of State Security.

  • The Soviet Union’s secret police were once called the Ministry for State Security.
  • East Germany’s secret police were also officially the Ministry for State Security, but were more commonly (and infamously) known as the Stasi.
  • The People’s Republic of China has a governmental agency called the Ministry of State Security; its functions are largely the same as the above two.
  • Turkmenistan under President Niyazov also has a Ministry of State Security.


Similar sounding agencies

  • Ministry of Public Security
  • Communist Albania under Enver Hoxha had a Directorate of State Security.
  • Apartheid South Africa had the Bureau of State Security (BOSS).
  • The United States of America has a Department of Homeland Security.
    • See also: Department of Public Safety
  • Socialist Bulgaria had a Committee for State Security
  • The Soviet Union’s KGB stood for Комит́ет Госуд́арственной Безоп́асности (pronounced Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti) “Committee for State Security.”

Links

  • MyNetFone - Your VoIP Broadband Phone Service - Leading Australian Australian Money Magazine 2007 Winner for best VoIP plans - MyNetFone, Australian Broadband phone company providing residential VoIP, business VoIP and
  • VoipBuster - Free Calls Free* phone calls with the VoipBuster. Call your online friends for free as well as a special selection of popular international destinations.
  • VoIP Watch It's about Pudding Media (the start up with the dumbest name in VoIP) Dean has the same questions I have about the service.

Purple minutes - VoIP

Sunday, September 16th, 2007

Purple minutes in internet communications refers to IP network traffic that has a value-added component, e.g. voice, video etc.
Coined by Voice over IP evangelist Jeff Pulver.

Compare to standard telephony traffic which is termed black and white minutes.


External link

  • Jeff Pulver Blog reference to Purple minutes

Links

  • VoIP Watch It's about Pudding Media (the start up with the dumbest name in VoIP) Dean has the same questions I have about the service.
  • VoIP Service - cheap long distance phone solution - low global rates! VoIP Solution offers cheap long distance in the US and low global calling rates. Make crystal clear phone calls with your existing Home Phone, Office Phone,
  • VoipBuster - Free Calls Free* phone calls with the VoipBuster. Call your online friends for free as well as a special selection of popular international destinations.

X-Lite - VoIP

Saturday, September 15th, 2007

X-Lite is a proprietary freeware VoIP soft phone that uses the Session Initiation Protocol. X-Lite is developed by CounterPath. X-Lite supports SRTP and soon ZRTP.

There are currently two major releases of X-Lite with radically different interfaces. X-Lite 2.0 for Linux, which uses the old X-Pro code base, and X-Lite 3.0 for Windows and Mac OS X which uses the eyeBeam code base. X-Lite 2.0 is audio only. X-Lite 3.0 has audio, video, and instant messaging as well as being presence-capable.


See also

  • Comparison of VoIP software


External Links

  • CounterPath
  • Product page

Links

Vamming - VoIP

Friday, September 14th, 2007

Vamming is the equivalent of spamming for voice, and specifically Voice over IP. It is unwanted or unsolicited voice calling over the Internet.

Links

Reference monitor - Security

Friday, September 14th, 2007

The reference monitor concept was introduced in the Computer Security Technology Planning Study (Oct, 1972) by James Anderson & Co.

Systems evaluated at B2 and above by the TCSEC must enforce the reference monitor concept.


See also

  • Security kernel

Links

Koji Inoue - Voice over IP

Friday, September 14th, 2007

Koji Inoue is a Japanese seiyū (voice actor).


Resources

  • Koji Inoue Info by the Anime News Network

Links

Secure telephone - VoIP

Friday, September 14th, 2007

A secure telephone is a telephone that provides voice security in the form of end-to-end encryption for the telephone call, and in some cases also the mutual authentication of the call parties, protecting them against a man in the middle attack.


How Secure Telephones work

The practical availability of secure telephones is restricted by several factors; notably politics, export issues, incompatibility between different products (the devices on each side of the call have to talk the same protocol), and high (though recently decreasing) price of the devices.


Well known products

The best-known product on the US government market is the STU-III family. However, this system has now been replaced by the Secure Terminal Equipment (STE) and SCIP standards which defines specifications for the design of equipment to secure both data and voice. The SCIP standard was developed by the NSA and the US DOD to derive more interoperability between secure communication equipment.


Privacy issues

The concerns about massive growth of telephone tapping incidents lead to growing demand for secure telephones. Several companies offer their products, eg. Dutch CryptoPhone, Slovak Silentel SecureCall, SecureGSM, or the secure telephone division of Siemens AG.


VOIP vs direct connection phones

As the popularity of VoIP grows, secure telephony is becoming more of commonplace and less the lonely domain of spies and civil libertarians.

Many major hardware and software providers offer it as a standard feature. What used to only be available at high expense and to a limited number of people is now freely available.

One of the most popular softphones is Skype, providing end-to-end encryption for PC-to-PC calls, though as it is closed-source, its security cannot be definitively verified.

Other examples include the Gizmo Project and Twinkle.

There are several manufacturers of hardware Analog Telephony Adapters such as Sipura/linksys and Snom which offer easy to use secure options.


Historically significant products

Products of historical significance are PGPfone and Nautilus (designed as a non-backdoored alternative to Clipper), and now officially discontinued (but continuing living on SourceForge) SpeakFreely, and the security VoIP protocol wrapper Zfone developed by the creator of PGP.

Other historical options involved scrambling generally using a form of voice inversion. This was available from electronic hobbyist kit suppliers and is common on FRS radios.

Analog scrambling products exist to this day because some telecommunications circuits, like HF links and telephone lines in the developing world — are of very low quality.


See also

Technologies

  • Cell phone tracking
  • ZRTP

Products

  • .onion product Scatterchat


External links

  • History of Secure Telephones

Links

Cryptologic - provider of

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

Cryptologic can refer to:

  • CryptoLogic Inc, a provider of online gambling software
  • Cryptography, the study of message secrecy.

Links

  • Locating Info On The Net For Voip Info on a few of the sites for voip now available on the internet, and how to find out more.
  • Popular pages tagged with "voip" on del.icio.us Popular items tagged voip (create tag description) → view all Telephony: Get Free VoIP In-Calling Anywhere with GrandCentral and Gizmo Project
  • AT&T: VoIP VoIP from AT&T converts your voice into data and uses your high speed Internet connection to send and receive calls. Connect your home or business with VoIP
  • VoipDiscount | Free Calls and SMS Free phone calls with VoipDiscount. Call your online friends for free as well as a special selection of popular international destinations.
  • Why Voip – Learn about Voip Learn all about Voip and how it works, its history and is it right for your needs…

UTStarcom F1000 - Session Initiation Protocol

Tuesday, September 11th, 2007

The UTStarcom F1000 is a wireless (802.11b) SIP VoIP handset produced by UTStarcom. It is re-sold by several VoIP service providers, including sipgate, BroadVoice and PeopleCall.

The F1000’s features include 3-way calling, comfort noise generation (CNG), voice activity detection and echo cancellation. Supported protocols/technologies include: TFTP firmware/configuration provisioning, RTP, SDP, SAP, STUN, DHCP, RFC 2833 DTMF tones, WEP and WPA. A future firmware release is expected to provide support for authentication with wireless hot-spots. Handsets with firmware version 3.60st and above also feature a web interface which can be used for configuring the handset and upgrading firmware.


External links

  • The handset on the manufacturer’s website

Links