More on Asterisk

Technology, Uncategorized

Since I wrote about Asterisk, the Free Software PBX, a few days ago, I’ve decided to start tinkering with it. In a word, Asterisk is awesome. It has lots of features, and is free, too.

Asterisk lets you manage your phones. You can set up extensions, letting phones call each other. You can also set up routes out — connections to other offices, to the public telephone network (PSTN), or to other VOIP users. You can hook to the PSTN with either a $10 hardware device, or by using one of the many cheap VOIP providers, or whatever. And you can set up automatic call routing rules — for instance, you might route local calls over your local PSTN link, but fall back to a VOIP provider if your local link is in use.

Here are some links for Asterisk information:

  • The Asterisk wiki, an excellent resource
  • VOIP phones, hardware phones that take an Ethernet cable, or software phonse that run on a PC
  • VOIP service providers, listing some free IP-to-IP VOIP providers, as well as VOIP-to-PSTN and PSTN-to-VOIP companies.
    • FreeWorld Dialup is an excellent free VOIP-to-VOIP provider. They also have peering with many other VOIP networks; you can, for instance, call Vonage customers for free via FWD. FWD also has a free link to the PSTN for calling toll-free numbers in several countries.
    • VoipJet lets you call anywhere in the USA for 1.3 cents per minute, and LiveVOIP does the same for 1.2 cents per minute. With LiveVOIP, you can also purchase a phone number for incoming calls for $4 to $8 per month.
    • IPkall gives you a free local number in Washington state that forwards calls to your FWD account. There are some other companies that do similar things, too. Many also have very low rates on incoming toll-free calls.
  • Asterisk tips and tricks is a great page
  • Asterisk Handbook Project
  • Asterisk Documentation Project

Today’s Reading

General, Uncategorized

Two neat stories from Slashdot today:

First, an essay about fragmenting standards in the Linux world. I’m not certain yet if I think he’s on the right track, but an interesting read nonetheless.

Then, and this is really cool, an article about building your own PBX using old hardware for under $20. Basically, this can give you things like voicemail, multiple phone lines in your house, etc. Fascinating read, and I’m probably going to have to try it out :-) They are using the Asterisk project.

Next, I decided I would periodically report on the, ahem, exacting quality standards of what we see in some of the mainstream news outlets.

Today, CNN leads with Martha Stewart saying “it’s really wonderful to be back”, a story about how Jackson needed a bathroom break at his trial, the White House denying it targeted the Italian hostage, and how Clinton gave up his bed on a plane to George H. W. Bush. Real news factor: low.

MSNBC fares little better with some Pope watching, “Jackson’s private eye goes public” (whatever that means), the Jackson thing again (though sadly lacking in bathroom watching), and somebody surviving a drop from an overpass.

FOX leads off with “Boeing’s new boss talks scandal!”, a story on the “Jacko” defense, and after reading those two, I was too fed up to read any farther.

NPR leads off with “Syria vows pullback, large Hezbollah protests predicted”, a story about the new U.N. envoy, the Italian reaction to the hostage shooting, and Sony’s new CEO. Quite a bit farther down, I see a link to “‘Bring Out Your Dead’: Monty Python hits Broadway.” Hmm.

Running a Homeless Non-Profit

Uncategorized

Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI) is a fairly unique organization. It was originally created to be the legal entity that holds Debian‘s assets and can receive donations for it, though today it also has several other member projects. SPI is New York corporation, and a 501(c)3 not-for-profit.

I call it “homeless” because, like Debian, SPI has no physical home. There is no SPI office. Discussions about SPI are held online. Even the SPI board meetings and annual meetings are held online. This is a confusing concept to many people, but it makes perfect sense to us geeks. We have board members from the USA, Canada, UK, and Germany, at least. SPI maintains PO boxes for receiving mail, and that’s about as close as it gets to a real physical presence.

I’ve been on SPI’s board of directors for the last two years, and have been the SPI president since July. Sometimes this is a surreal experience.

Over its 8-year lifetime, SPI has had quite a few problems. A few years ago, SPI’s board had trouble meeting because so many members didn’t bother showing up that quorum wasn’t met. At one point, SPI was without both a president and a treasurer because both of them seemed to suddenly lose all interest in SPI, or returning e-mails. As you might imagine, most of my time on the board has been occupied, in one way or another, with trying to clean up things from the past while still keeping the present held together.

One main cause of this, and a problem still today, is lack of interest. Most of Debian’s developers are content to just ignore SPI, prefering to code instead of worry about getting stuff from the PO box to the bank, preparing tax returns, and all the other annoying things that go along with running a non-profit. So we don’t have many volunteers to do these things. That means the people that do volunteer burn out. And, to date, there hasn’t been enough support to obtain paid help.

I’m sure this isn’t a problem unique to SPI. I suspect that many non-profit organizations have had trouble finding people to handle all the details of running the organization. Our church, for instance, sometimes has trouble finding enough people to work on maintaining the building.

I wonder if being “homeless” hurts us, because it’s easier to give up on a task when there’s nobody looking at you in the face wondering why it’s not done.

So, I’d like to end with two questions:

How do you think SPI could get more people interested in helping out? Or do you think that we have a different problem entirely?

You might not live in the country if…

Humor, Society

with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy…

You might not live in the country if…

  • you ever say “depending on the traffic” when estimating how long it takes to get somewhere
  • you never say “but I can’t come if the road is muddy” when estimating how long it takes to get somewhere
  • you never say “but it’ll be later if I get stuck behind a tractor” when estimating how long it takes to get somewhere
  • you have known some of your neighbors for less than 20 years
  • no random strangers give you a (friendly!) wave as you drive down the road
  • you think “the road” is an ambiguous phrase
  • mail addressed just to “Your Name, Town” might not get to you as fast as usual
  • you can’t remember what church someone goes to
  • you’d never consider someone that lives 2 miles away to be a neighbor
  • you think an auger is something unpleasant at the dentist’s office
  • you think “imporoving your irrigation” means buying a $2 attachment for your garden hose
  • you think “your beans are weird” is probably an indecent joke
  • you wouldn’t be seriously insulted if someone told you “your beans are weird”
  • when looking for a house, it never occured to you to avoid the highway so you don’t get so many comments about whether or not your crop’s rows are straight
  • you have no idea where your nearest gravel supplier is
  • you don’t have to install anything on your roof before you can watch TV
  • you think a lagoon is something from Scooby-Doo
  • when driving down the road, you can’t identify some of the crops alongside it
  • you’ve never driven down a road with crops next to it
  • your indoor plumbing still works when the electricity is off
    alternative test for Amish: the nearest phone is less than a mile away
  • you moved to the area from out of state last week, and you haven’t met any distant relatives (or at least made any distant connections) yet
  • when people refer to “the Old Country”, you wonder which country they mean
  • families whose native language isn’t English have probably lived in the United States for less than 100 years where you live
  • something more than 30 years old would never be considered “new”
  • you know less than 10 that can remember a time when electric service wasn’t available in the area
  • you’ve never lamented the invention of touch-tone dialing, since you don’t miss getting updates on the local news from the operator
  • when doing genealogy research, you start somewhere other than the church archives
  • when someone suggests having dinner together, you ask “at which restaurant?” instead of “your place or mine?”
  • “at which restaurant” isn’t a stupid question where you live because there’s more than one good choice within 20 miles
  • less than half of the radio stations in your area have a noontime ag report
  • your high school sports teams have winning seasons periodically
  • your graduating class had more than 25 people
  • you think “the fifth grade teacher” is ambiguous because there are several 5th grade teachers at the local elementary school
  • you don’t think traffic is heavy if there’s someone ahead of you at the stop sign
  • you don’t think that the mere presence of stop signs is a scary indicator of urban sprawl
  • as you stroll through a parking lot, there’s a car you don’t recognize
  • fresh horse droppings on the road might cause the city to send out a street cleaning team
  • you have no connections with people that can give you a discount on beef because it was alive on their farm last week

And the way to tell you might not live in the country:

The waitress at a restaurant explains they’re out of chicken, and you think that means something other than your fried chicken will arrive 20 minutes late, but extra juicy.