Hawaii

I really like it here in Hawaii.

Was in San Jose area last week and it was cold!

I forgot how much I hated putting on cold deoderant. By the 3rd day I remember to bring it into the shower so the shower water heats it up.

80 degrees and sunny...gotta love it.

-M

Ashlee Simpson

All of those people can't sing. Maybe she can date Milli Vanilli. They were ruined after that, I bet she will bounce back. What a lame excuse, my band started to play the right song. I can't beleive that was the best tey could come up with. If I would have bought a record of hers I would want a refund.

I'm afraid to say that Cristina Agulara can actully sing.

Here is a link to the video.

You gotta see it

-M

My man Dan

Marino headlines '05 Hall of Fame nominations

Red Sox

I hope they lose in the World Series.

See previous post.

-M

VoIP Opinions

Alistair: had hoped that a comment that the company was cash flow positive before customer acquisition cost might inspire a Sage of Omaha type put down. Here's mine; my car costs nothing to run before petrol (gas), insurance, servicing and depreciation. If your business involves acquiring customers then stripping out the cost is at best duplicitous.
Fred Wilson: don't like the "get big fast" business plan. It, by definition, assumes if you don't get big fast, you aren't going to get big at all. I've seen this movie end badly many more times than I've seen a happy ending. And I've invested in VOIP as well. It's a price commoditizing business if I've ever seen one. There are very few differentiating factors in VOIP service today. If Vonage isn't working too well, you just swap it out and put in ATT CallVantage.
University of Maryland, Economics Class: The 1990’s showed that being the first mover in an undifferentiated products market does little for the bottom line. With it’s per customer cost of acquisition, Vontage will do little more than educate the public on VoIP.
Bill Burnham: However, unlike the online trading space, Vonage faces two factors that online trading firms did not. The first factor is government regulation and the second is competition from access providers. In terms of government regulation, while online brokers were subjected to standard industry regulations, the overall “regulatory risk” they faced was quite manageable. Not so for Vonage and the other VOIP start-ups. Vonage will have to compete with the very companies that it relies on to provide it with access to its customers. A very awkward situation at best and, as many independent DSL providers found out, a very difficult battle to win.
Paul Kedrosky: onage will almost certainly not matter. Incumbent phone companies are nowhere near as dumb as they are painted by pundits. Said companies already see VoIP for what it is -- a lower-cost backbone -- and they are moving quickly to blunt the attack from firms like Vonage. Sure, it is impressive that Vonage has accumulated a quarter-million customers, but it is only a quarter-million customers.

VoIP Issues

By Annalee Newitz Phone phun
TELEPHONES ARE STARTING to be cool again. When I was first getting into computers, there were a whole bunch of dorks in the not-so-illustrious cracker scene who liked to "phreak" – which mostly meant they figured out ways to finagle free long distance out of phone companies. Either they used a piece of technology that emitted the precise tone required to get a long-distance connection in a phone booth, or they went online and stole phone company codes for free long-distance calling.
Sadly, the phone system has changed a lot since I was 14; it's more highly regulated in several ways, and a lot harder to hack. Plus, the Internet became such an obvious target for hackers that the whole phreaking thing seemed beside the point.
But now phones are part of the Internet. The latest evolution in phone technology is something called "Voice-over Internet Protocol" (VoIP for short), which refers to a bunch of hardware and software that send phone calls over the Internet. You can use a VoIP phone, which means your call is sent over the Internet from end to end (and, by the way, is completely free of all long-distance and out-of-country charges, mwah ha ha). Or you can use VoIP to create a bridge between a VoIP phone and a regular phone – software already exists to bridge the gap between the phone network and the Internet.
Of course, Congress is already waging battles over how the damn things will be regulated. The problem is VoIP straddles the line between two realms the Federal Communications Commission never believed would meet: the realm of "information services" and that of "telecommunications services." These two areas are regulated quite differently – indeed, there's a question about whether information services should fall under the FCC's purview. And VoIP is a telecommunications service that uses an information service (the Internet) to do its thing. Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) has proposed a bill, the VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act, that would bar states from taxing and regulating VoIP – presumably so policy makers could come up with an overarching federal standard for these bastard children of telecom and information technologies. Sununu's bill is in committee and could hit the Senate floor before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, the feds are freaked out about VoIP because (start the sad violins) it's just so darn hard to wiretap. Several law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration, recently petitioned the FCC to add VoIP to an already existing law called the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act. Currently CALEA forces telecom companies to comply with a set of regulations that make it quite simple for law enforcement agents to tap telephones. The law mandates that phone companies build backdoors into the telephone system so that listening in on your conversations is as easy as flipping a switch.
But if you're talking over VoIP, flipping that switch is a lot harder. It's not impossible, mind you; it just means Jane Fed will have to exercise her techno-brain a little bit more to listen in on your conversations. One VoIP provider, a European company called Skype, does end-to-end Internet phone calls that don't interact with telecom networks at all. Phone calls done with Skype are routed peer-to-peer-style across the Net and are also completely encrypted. Good luck trying to intercept a Skype phone call and figure out what the people are saying without spending a few weeks working on it. Other providers, such as Vonage, route calls from the phone network to Internet routers and back. Their system might be a bit easier to tap.
The same old players, of course, are ponying up their own Internet telephony crap: über-ISP Earthlink is working on a VoIP service, as is über-telco AT&T. I'm guessing these guys, already accustomed to working with the feds, are going to figure out a way to make VoIP into a surveillance-friendly system.
But in the meantime, everybody's coming out to play! A phreaker calling himself Lucky 225 has a nifty little device that allows him to use VoIP to spoof phone numbers. He can make caller ID programs think he's calling from anywhere; he can also unmask the phone numbers people try to hide with caller ID blocking. One use for such a device, aside from personal amusement, is to activate someone else's credit card. Since most credit card companies authenticate your identity by requiring you to call from your home number to activate a card, Lucky's trick could turn out to be quite tricky indeed.
Bruce Schneier, a computer security expert, recently wrote an article in which he worried that VoIP spoofing might lead to attackers hijacking phone calls and sending them to the wrong place. Or it could lead to denial-of-service attacks in which somebody cuts off all your incoming calls without your knowledge. Yup, the phreakers are back in town. Crank calls are about to go cyber on your ass.
Annalee Newitz (superphreaky@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who could really use some free long distance. Her column also appears in Metro, Silicon Valley's weekly newspaper.

Leaving for the mainland...talk to some VC's

This will be a 'fun' experience.

We'll see.

-M

I hope the Red Sox lose

Look what happens when the Red Sox lose:

1. Gives the fans something to grip about
2. Gives the sports writers something to write about
3. It allows people to talk about the curse of the bambino
4. A winner of a team, the Yankees, will win
5. More "Who's your mamma" shirts will be sold
6. More NY world champ stuff will be bought

In general it is good for sports and good for the eceonomy.

-M

3-11...Man I got creamed!

Miami +12.5 Loss
Cleveland +6 Loss
Colts -9 Win
Atlanta - 6.5 Loss
Saints -3 Loss
Dallas -3.5 Loss
Minnesota -4 Win
Jets -6.5 Loss
Chargers +2.5 Win
Denver -5.5 Loss
Seattle -7 Loss
Cardinals +1 Loss
Redskins -1 Loss
Monday: Packers -3 Loss

-M

Picks don't look so good

Oofffff!

Glad I didn't bet those picks - Would have been brutal.

Guess that's what I get for only taking 30 seconds.

-M

My NFL picks for the weekend

I am picking all the games....Of course you would never bet ALL the games

Miami +12.5
Cleveland +6
Colts -9
Atlanta - 6.5
Saints -3
Dallas -3.5
Minnesota -4
Jets -6.5
Chargers +2.5
Denver -5.5
Seattle -7
Cardinals +1
Redskins -1
Monday: Packers -3

Next week I will do some research. I picked all these games in about 45 seconds...took longer to type

-M

Still looking at the iMac

Whoaaa, I love the interface. I w0uld need a windows mouse....how can people survive with only one mouse button. Me needs two buttons and a scroll wheel.

Now....how do I convince my wife I really really really need it?

-M

1-3 Fantasy Football Record

Oh well, so much for this season.

I was hoping Michael Vick and Quinten Griffen would really perform.

I had a chance to trade Griffin for Curtis Martin & turned it down. I really thought Griffen would be a stud. He kicked it week one, but sucked since then.

There is always next year.

Still looking for the sleeper that can score me tons of points.

-M

Presidential Debate

Not sure if I will watch.

I will have it on ReplayTV.

I love my ReplayTV, it is the only way to watch. One button skips 30 seconds. You can skip the comercials.

With open source software you can download the shows to your PC.

I load up my laptop with Seinfelds when I go on trips.

-M

Life Insurance

I am buying some life insurance.

Makes me feel old!

Next thing I will be filling out my will.

-M

Didn't play any poker

Back at work this morning.

Didn't get a chance to play any poker. It was such a short trip.

I am going to SF/San Jose next week. Might treck out to Reno or Tahoe for some poker/craps.

The show I went to was awesome. More people than I expected.

Voice over IP was the amin theme. Most of the big players were there.

-M

Getting ready for a mainland trip

Leaving for LA tongiht...Going to the Conputer Telephony Expo

Should be a ton of fun...Lots of gadgets and technology.

I leave on the red eye tusday night - arrive in LA wednesday morning - go to the show all day wednesday - check into the hotel wed night - go to the show thursday - fly back to paradise thrusday night

Somehow I will try to play some poker in between

-M

Death wish

I think when I am on my death bed I will regret I never saw U2 in concert.

-M

Lt. Columbo

I just realized you never know what Lt. Columbo's first name is.

I realized a few years ago you never see his wife. He talks about her a lot.

-M

Almost bought an Apple iMac G5 yesterday

I am looking at doing DVD work and I love the OSX interface.

Making a slide show was extremely easy and burning it to DVD was extremely easy.

Here are the specs
• 256MB DDR400 SDRAM - 1 DIMM
• 80GB Serial ATA drive
• None - Bluetooth Module
• Keyboard and Mouse + Mac OS X - U.S. English
• 17-inch widescreen LCD
• 1.8GHz PowerPC G5
• SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra w/64MB video memory
Subtotal $1,499.00

Coming from the Windows world the 256MB RAM looks very shabby. The hard drive is small. The DVD drive is not +/- and I already have a 17 inch LCD panel.

Luckily they were out of stock so I didn't to really make a choice.

-M

JR rolled all the over

My son, 4 months old, rolled from his back to his stomach and then continued on to end up on his back.

That one got entered in the baby book.

You can see him at this web site
-M

Defense kept it close

The Miami defense did an outstanding job!

For us to have a chance to tie with a TD & 2 pt conversion with less than two minutes left is amazing.

I hope this isn't a sign we will go 6-10. I really want to go 2-14 or 3-13. Get a new young fresh coach, suck it up for a few years, get some great picks, and make a run at the Super Bowl.

I wonder if Ricky and David Boston were playing if it would be any different. Probably not a whole lot. The back we had in there ran for 85 yards, over 50 of those were on one run though.

-M

Miami Dolphins are really tanking this year

Jay Feidler has three interceptions already.

How the Jets have only scored 17 points so far is a mystery.

I guess we will be seeing AJ Feely pretty soon.

I hope we get a good daft pick.

-M

Going to CT Expo in LA

Making final arrangements for the CT Expo next week.

Should be a good time, staying at the Biltmore.

The focus is in SIP

-M

Friday Night

Got a new T1 card...Need to make it work

Traded Aaron Brooks for Travis Henry & Willis McGahee. I am betting the rest of my season on Vick not getting hurt.

Aloha,
Matt