“But the gap where the economic rationale for privatising council houses should be becomes a window through which it becomes possible to see beyond the individual privatisations to the meta-privatisation, and its one indisputable success: that it put more money into the hands of a small number of the very wealthiest people, at the expense of the elderly, the sick, the jobless and the working poor.” In an article that should be regarded as compulsory reading for citizens everywhere, James Meek looks back at 35 years of privatising UK industries.
Tag: cost
Edward Snowden: the untold story
“The question for us is not what new story will come out next. The question is, what are we going to do about it?” James Bamford interviews Edward Snowden, who regards the use of strong encryption in your everyday communication as a viable means to end mass surveillance.
Also watch United States of Secrets, a two-part series detailing how the US government came to monitor and collect the communications of millions around the world.
David McCoy on The Lancet Commission
“In contrast to the easy cross-border flow of capital, commodities and profits, the Commission notes the lack of freedom for ordinary people to migrate in pursuit of a safe and secure life, and it deplores the plight of undocumented migrants who are denied essential health care in spite of international treaties that are supposed to guarantee universal rights and entitlements.” After correctly identifying the undemocratic and unequal distribution of power as an underlying cause of health inequities, David McCoy sees The Lancet-UiO Commission on Global Governance For Health Commissioners falling disappointingly short in its recommendations.
What the fluck!
“I think there is an equally diffuse malaise today—waiting for a new kind of journalism to bring it into focus. Like with McClure’s it won’t be just a catalogue of shocking facts—it will be an imaginative leap that pulls all the scandals together and shows how they are part of some new system of power that we don’t fully comprehend.” Adam Curtis attempts to define the point at which journalism fails and modern power begins.
NSA surveillance: a guide to staying secure
“The NSA has turned the fabric of the internet into a vast surveillance platform, but they are not magical. They’re limited by the same economic realities as the rest of us, and our best defense is to make surveillance of us as expensive as possible.” Bruce Schneier works on the assumption that the NSA is able to decrypt most of the Internet.
How much is an astronaut’s life worth?
“It needs to be a finite number, for to set an infinite value on the life of an astronaut is to set both the goals of the space exploration effort and the needs of the rest of humanity at naught.” Robert Zubrin explains how NASA’s approach to risk undermines its mission and costs thousands of lives.
DNA sequencing is caught in deluge of data
“We are going to have to come up with really clever ways to throw away data so we can see new stuff.” Andrew Pollack reports on how the recent plunge in the cost of DNA sequencing is presenting scientist with new, as yet unresolved, challenges of a different kind.
Introduction to VoIP
“Clearly, the future of telephony is the Internet, for which geographic location and distance don’t matter.”
Andrew Sheppard
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) enables you to use the Internet for making phone calls. Calls from one VoIP phone to another are free and long-distance calls to a landline can typically be made for the price of a local call. VoIP also enables you to receive calls anywhere you connect to the Internet.
What Do You Need?
VoIP telephony requires reliable broadband connection to the Internet with a speed of at least 128 Kbps in the upload direction. In addition, there are three different types of hardware to chose from:
1) Peripherals, such as USB handsets, are relatively cheap to buy and plug straight into your computer. Used in conjunction with suitable software, they instantly turn your computer into a VoIP telephone. The most obvious drawback to such a solution is that your computer needs to be switched on to receive incoming calls.
2) Dedicated IP telephones are generally more expensive and function as independent devices on the network. However, setting up an IP telephone behind a router/firewall with Network Address Translation (NAT) can present you with additional configuration challenges.
3) Analog telephone adapters (ATAs) connect your existing telephones to VoIP services. ATAs usually have built-in ADSL modems (Annex A or Annex B, depending on your country) and, in addition to VoIP telephony, are capable of providing the computers in your home with broadband-access to the Internet. In Europe, and probably elsewhere, the ATA currently is the best tool for Voice over IP.
Session Initiation Protocol
Like any other application on the Internet, telephony services need to communicate by an established protocol. VoIP services that use the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) benefit from the fact that SIP was designed as an open standard. As a result, any SIP-capable device should be able to link up with any other. What this means is that everybody can call anybody else and for free.
Why Not Use Skype?
Skype is a VoIP service with more than 663 million users as of 2011. It helped start the VoIP revolution. However, Skype uses a proprietary protocol that is subject to a number of security concerns and prevents free calls to and from anyone outside of the network.
What about Vonage?
Up until 2007, Vonage held on to the top spot as the largest provider of Internet-based telephony services in the US. Unlike Skype, Vonage does employ SIP to connect your calls. But it is still very much a closed system, because Vonage require you to use their own proprietary hardware and prevent direct connections to and from other SIP-based providers.
Service Providers
Connecting a call over the Internet is the basic task of an Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP). Additional services, such as voicemail and incoming numbers that can be dialled from normal telephones, are often available at no extra cost.
Skype and Vonage are by no means the only culprits when it comes to selling their customers short. The fact that a service provider is using SIP to connect your calls does not always equate to a service that is open and free from artificial restrictions. In particular, beware of providers that proclaim to offer a SIP-based service but then disable the facility to call users on other networks for free.
Because dedicated SIP devices can manage up to ten different accounts simultaneously, there is no need to limit yourself to just one provider. Pick and choose to create a mix of services that best suits your telephony requirements.
Expect No Less
So what should you be looking for in a good SIP provider? The first thing to bear in mind is that when it comes to setting things up, SIP is very much like email. On signing up, a provider should issue you with a username, a password, a SIP address and information about their SIP registrar. If any of these are missing or not documented, for whatever reason, just find another provider who does not keep this information from you.
Your SIP provider should offer a gateway to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), enabling you to make calls from your internet telephone to regular landlines and mobiles. Not all providers charge the same rates, so compare their respective tariffs. Billing should be by the second, and not the nearest minute.
Often there is a telephone number that others can use to call you on your internet phone. Be sure to find out what rates apply to calls to such a number. True geographical numbers are best, as they will always be charged at the same rate as regular numbers with the same area code.
Your SIP address should work exactly as you would expect, in that anyone with a SIP device or compatible software should be able to use the Internet to call you for free. Otherwise, you might as well be using Skype or Vonage and never really experience the power of true Voice over IP telephony.