hitting the wire*

Be afraid, be very afraid. You'll be talking to the furniture soon!

Sanesh, one of Storm's Presales Engineers in our KZN branch sent me a mail with this link to Reuters.  Microsoft have come up with what appears to be a new touch-screen technology (or is it?).  Check out the video (if you have the bandwidth).  The fact that I'm reading Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson's third novel might have something to do with it, but I suddenly started wondering how I'll react when someone tells me Microsoft are entering the Genetic Engineering market.

I like the idea of collaborating around a coffee table (with cocktails of course - a nice excuse to refurnish my office and get a bar fridge ;) and then downloading results onto mobile phone / PDA / whatever.

At $5k or more for the screen, this is not going to be in the next fridge or coffee table I buy, but I can see an upmarket club (the Black Sun?) putting these in with drinks orders, gambling, etc on the table. 

Just don't accidentally drop your credit card on the table after your mates have drunk the bar dry! 

maybe this explains it.

This is a snapshot of the DoC's site today (2007/05/29).

Notice anything strange about the dates in the "latest" news section?

This is the department whose goal is facilitating communication in our land?

<sigh>  somebody give me something positive to say about the DoC please.

Get your SA government gazettes here... online & free.

Amazing how you can be blissfully unaware of something right under your nose!  Here I was muttering about how painful it is trying to track down a relevant Government Gazette when you want it.  Resorted once again to Dr Google, expecting frustrating results as before when... voila!

A bunch called doclog (who seem to offer various document management systems) offer a free service where they scan the gazettes into .pdf's and make them available for download!  And of course, being .pdf, they are searchable.  

Now that's a good way to win some goodwill - thanks DocLog!

Check it out.

desperately seeking the LLUC report!

If anyone reading this has access to a copy of the Local Loop Unbundling Committee's report that was handed to the Communications Minister last week and was supposed to be up on the DoC website yesterday... please let me know where to find it.

(oh, and I don't have bipolar mania Ryan... I'm permanently manic! ;)

More on "Unbundling the Local Loop" (ULL)

According to Tim (Storm's joint CEO), it was while listening to a story on bipolar mania on Cape Talk that Lindsay from Cape Talk called him to ask him if he'd be prepared to go on air with Mike Wills (no, I'm not mistaken - he really was on air - standing in for John Maytham).  Tim deftly tossed the ball to the first person he thought of... me.  So, while preparing to recount my lifelong experience with bipolar mania, I was somewhat flummoxed to have Mike Wills announce he wanted me to explain what "unbundling the local loop" was!

(ok, I jest - at least about the being flummoxed part - Tim would be quite adept at talking about mania's of any sort! ;)  More of that I am sure when his own blog goes live (oops... there goes the cat!)

Here is a copy of the interview if you're interested.

And I sincerely trust, Mr Halse, that I'm more coherent here than I was in the Business Day article!

That's me. More or less unbundled.

red sky at dawn

(taken with an aging SE-p910i)

One benefit of getting up early to miss the Cape Town traffic is watching the sun rise over the Hottentots Holland.  Rush hour is spreading earlier and earlier though.  "Leaving early" (to get a  sub 30 minute run through to Cape Town from beyond the boerewors curtain used to mean a pre-7am start 10 years ago - now, that requires pre 5.45am!)

Time to build that home office.

---

2007-05-29 - Ryan informs me that the Pretoria -> JHB rush hour starts at 05h15.  All I have to say is that if you insist on living in Pretoria and working in JHB, you only have yourself to blame! ;)

This is what the DoC define as "urgent"?!

The Minister of Communications presented her budget speech yesterday.  I had not had sight of it and had consumed a few glasses of Bloemendal red wine (not to mention sampled a good others) at the ISPA dinner when I was asked for comment by Business Day.  Needless to say, I was not very coherent. 

Much was said, and although there has been movement in certain areas - most notably the eventual promulgation of the EC Act, very little tangible progress has been made on lowering the costs of telecoms and stimulating the growth of broadband.

She uses feel-good extracts from the President's State of the Nation address, but neglects to mention that in a recent interview with the Financial Times of London he said:

"The cost of telecommunications is unbelievably high"

She focuses on unbundling of the local loop (ULL), and states that it is "urgent":

"I HAVE ALSO TAKEN THE POLICY DECISION that, given the complexity of local loop unbundling process on the one hand and the urgency for South Africa to enable all operators appropriately licensed to have access to the local loop on the other, the unbundling process in South Africa should be urgently implemented."

but then states:

"The unbundling process should be completed by 1 November 2011."

I think that sums up the problem for me.  4.5 years is considered "urgent".  What makes it more interesting, is that the process ICASA is pursuing with some uncharacteristic and laudable speed, being the definition of markets, and promulgation of regulations on interconnect and facilities leasing will effectively unbundle the local loop long before 2011 if the process is not derailed.

I wonder how "Accelerated" is defined (as in ASGISA)?  But then if you're starting from a low speed, any increase in forward movement can be defined as "acceleration".

The local loop is indeed one of the bottlenecks in introducing relatively unfettered competition into the SA market, and if the DoC have realised that, it is a positive thing.  However it is realised, it is needed now, not in 2011.

I must remember to revisit this at the end of 2007 and rate progress.

Here comes Neotel.

Actions speak louder than words.  When they blocked off the road past our offices last week for a backactor and what appeared to be a road crew to start digging a ditch, I was as grumpy as anyone else.  Until I noticed a label on the underground pipes they offloaded from a truck and piled next to the road...

I couldn't help noticing the backactor driver trying to jumpstart the backactor from a car when I took this - let's hope that is not an indication of things to come?! ;)

that's me - encouraged.

De Lille a little Mx'd up?

You just have to visit Amatomu and take a look at what topic is most talked about in the  last 24 hours AND last 7 days and read some of the posts to see what the blogging community thinks of Ms De Lille's suggestion that the blogosphere needs to be regulated.

Dene Smuts of the DA and even an anonymous spokesperson from the DoC are talking more sense at this stage. 

 

 

Yes, bloggers need to be held accountable for what they write.  I have mentioned some horrendous abuse by bloggers in a previous post.  I'm busy with my own draft code of conduct & I do weigh my words.  I'm sure there are those that don't.

Yes, bloggers who overstep the mark should be prosecuted.  Follow the law.

No, regulating the blogosphere is neither practical or a step in the right moral direction. One dog bites, so muzzle all dogs?

No, regulating the blogosphere is not going to stop people slandering other people. Sue them!

No, shooting the messenger, whether it be HTML or MXIT or any other TLA, is not going to get to the route of the problem.  Technology can be used or abused - it has no moral standpoint.

I believe Ms De Lille is misguided at best in her statements and should acquaint herself with the technologies she is commenting on.  I know she has people on her team who have a good grasp of communications technologies... maybe she should take some advice from within?

Spam - its days are numbered. Or are they?

Could it be that the IETF have finally come up with the answer to that 21st century curse, the unsolicited commercial email (spam to most)?  Am I wrong in being just that teeny bit skeptical?  You be the judge.

A silicon.com newsletter dropped (solicited ;) into my mailbox today with a heading of an article that caught my eye (as hoping mine caught yours).  Seems we're all a bit slow on the uptake as the IETF draft standard is dated February 15, 2007.

The success of DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) relies on everyone who wants to see the end of spam adopting the idea and modifying their mailservers.  That could be a while, apathy being most people's strong suit.  In essence, though the idea is not bad. 

Public Key Encryption has been around for a while - it is the basis of such mechanisms as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and involves anyone who wants to be positively identified as being who they really are on the Net registering a set of "keys" or secret codes with a "certificate authority" (think VeriSign or Thawte).  The keys are mathematically related, but the "private one" (hidden with the authority) cannot be derived from the "public" one (handed out like a electronic ID card).

With DKIM, email servers (good ones) will quietly attach "invisible" keys to all outgoing mail.  Email servers that are correctly configured will then be able to check the keys against an authority and either let the mail through unhindered, or flag it as junk.  Up to ISPs and recipients as to how they then deal with them.

Other than being an IETF initiative (not an insignificant influence in Net terms) the likes of AOL, IBM, IronPort Systems, Trend Micro and VeriSign are supporting this.

So... will you modifying your server to adopt the standard?  Will you be lobbying your ISP  to do so?  Or will you go with life, attacking the shoots of the noxious,invasive weed instead of hacking off its roots?

I reckon this has legs.... and you?