Technology rants

VOIP: I am pretty excited about Voice Over IP (VOIP) and here's why:

• it is free from VOIP to VOIP SIP phone so pretty much anybody in the world with an internet connection can have free long distance calls to others with VOIP phones.
• you can plug in a VOIP adapter that makes a regular phone use the Internet instead of cables
• you can get long distance rates like 1/10th of what the semi-monopoly phone companies charge
• you can get a phone number with an area code almost anywhere in north america and a few places in europe
• VOIP phones are under a hundred bucks
• Software based VOIP PBXs for business are coming soon really cheap with voice mail, location tracking, call logging etc
• WiFi wireless VOIP phones are coming fast for cheap international urban com

Triple play networks: Mark my words, every phone, cable, sattelite and internet company is desperately trying to come up with a video, voice and internet triple play package to sell you using a single transport like DSL or WiMax wireless. Third world countries without a good wireline infrastructure like India will probably leapfrog all of us first world peeps with triple play WiMax. I WOULD BET THE FARM ON THIS PREDICTION.

WIFI Security: Scares the shit out of me, crazy insecure and it doesn't take a genius to break into an off the shelf secure wifi hotspot. Also, wifi evil twin hotspots are just too easy for hackers. They find a hotspot like Starbucks and jam the original and put in an evil twin while caching all of the client web traffic - BAD BAD NEWS MAN - don't ever do any banking or confidential stuff on a Wifi connection.

Apple: Why is it that none of the other hardware guys can make gadgets as well as Steve? Maybe he's a psycho and just rides his serfs harder. Maybe Steve had everybody at FrogDesign killed. Anyways, I still don't have a portable MP3 player. I'm holding out for a waterproof one with a gig of flash.

Media players: Dlink has a cool WiFi one (DSM 520) coming out in summer that plays windows media high def videos as well as DivX, MPG, MP3s etc. I might actually finally go wifi when I get one of those gadgets. I already have one of these wireless synch'ing media players for my car and boat (this gadget disappeared from Futureshop for some reason).