Funny how certain things come around on an almost-yearly basis. Virtually a year to the day, I was trying to get Festival to work in AstLinux without luck (actually, trying to get AstLinux to recognise my SB Live sound card was the real challenge).

Having some spare time to myself, I was Googling around to see what other flavours of Linux were being used with Asterisk and chanced upon some Ubuntu pages. Since my hobby servers are quite low-spec, I installed Ubuntu 2.6.15-51-server.

Soundcard was detected - I heard it pop when the box booted up and went through device initialisation. I did an apt-get install of Asterisk (haven't re-configured it yet) and got the Festival package and it worked right out of the "box"!

Very easy to install, although this is another Linux distro that seems to mess around with weird video modes, causing the console login prompt to be hidden off the bottom of the screen.

The only real gripe I had, was that after unhooking my hobby box from my monitor and putting it back downstairs in the basement, I found that I couldn't SSH into it. Turns out that even if you install the server (not desktop) version of Ubuntu, SSHD is not installed by default. Seems a bit silly to me - how else is one meant to access the server? So I took the monitor downstairs, apt-get installed openssh-server from the CD and everything's fine now.

Talking CID is not much of a project anymore, since I bought a pair of Panasonic phones last year and they handle the talking CID themselves. However, now that Festival is working, all I have to do is get Asterisk up and running and those "torture menus" will be good to go!

We've had Rogers cable for our internet connection for at least 6 years.

In the beginning, it was great. I'd tell the AOL-bies to get a proper internet connection, not a Mickey Mouse one.

Then Rogers started messing around with their network. Suddenly, DNS would stop working for hours at a time; email servers wouldn't work, or would take forever to send messages; stupid re-branding to "Rogers Yahoo!" etc. So, I installed my own SMTP and caching-DNS servers. Then Rogers started blocking port 25 outbound. So now I have to use webmail. Then Rogers starts frequently moving me around their IP space. I called them 3 years ago and they said they planned to introduce static IP's "sometime in the near future". Never happened.

"Their network, their rules", you may say. True. But when their own advertising states that their service is suitable for transferring large files, then they have no business traffic-shaping my connection to throttle BitTorrent.

This was the final straw. Aside from the fact that their internet connection prices are actually expensive, even after a bundled discount, I refuse to be screwed over any longer.

So, I am moving over to Caneris, a local DSL provider that is hobby-server and BitTorrent friendly. And, unlike Rogers, who didn't get a clue when I told them I don't like to be randomly moved around their IP space every so often, Caneris offers static IP addresses.

Another advantage to moving my internet away from Todgers (not a typo) is that I have one less reason to call them whenever my internet is down and have to speak to that god-awful voice-activated IVR system. On behalf of all the Rogers customers who have to spend ages on the phone talking to a deaf computer before even getting through to one of Rogers' inept script-monkey CSR's, thank you Ted Rogers.

It seems that there is an exodus right now too.

And it's not going to stop there: the next move away from Rogers will be to port my PAYG cell account away (probably to Primus Wireless, but not decided yet).

So, perhaps my blog title is not quite correct. It's not so much "goodbye", it's more like "good riddance".

Following on from a post I made on Who Called Us, that proves my theorem of never trusting a company that uses numbers in place of words in their company name, it suddenly occurred to me that I might be able to coin a new term: "numeric homophone".

Unfortunately, someone else beat me to it, hence the unique single Google search result (or Googlewhack). Of course, by the time this blog post gets archived by Google, the term will no longer be a Googlewhack! <edit>After posting this opinion, Google archived this blog in 7 minutes!</edit>

I could've coined this term back in 2006, when I opined on the Sony Root-kit Fiasco. Oh well!

<edit>Hmmm, after looking at the Googlewhack website, it seems that the term is not a true Googlewhack if the search result is from two words enclosed in quotes. Seems like a silly rule to me, as quotes makes the search specific, as opposed to finding links that contain the words "numeric" and "homophone" in any order on the sites. As the Wikipedia article says, most Googlewhacks are nonsense words.

What's also strange is that when I removed the quotes, I actually got a search result for the words "numeric" and "homophone" right next to each other. In theory, these search results should have come back when quotes were used. In fact, this appears to be a bug, as the two words are sequential, but only inside a PDF file.</edit>

I love my VoIP service. In the bad old POTS days, we'd get 3, 4... 5 telejunk calls a day, 7 days a week, some days worse than others.

Now I can block the telespammers, my phone only rings for the occasional low-level telejunker: usually a local duct cleaner, or some 2-bit company trying to hawk windows and doors. All the toll-free numbers go straight to voicemail.

Repeat offenders get auto-forwarded to an out-of-service number. But, just as the email spammers ignore 5.5.x SMTP error messages and keep trying an email address that will never deliver, it seems the tele-spammers' autodialers ignore "number out of service" messages too:

SelectiveCallFwd   112595140000002    Unavailable 2007-10-20
SelectiveCallFwd   112595140000002    Unavailable 2007-10-27

Here are a few more parallels:

Email Spammer	Tele-Spammer
Ignores 5.5.x mailer messages.	Ignores "out-of-service" messages.
Plays numbers game: harasses millions of email users with unsolicited messages for one lousy sale.	Plays numbers game: harasses millions of phone users with unsolicited calls and voicemail messages for one lousy sale.
Sells "sucker lists" of email addresses.	Sells "sucker lists" of phone numbers.
Routinely forges "from" addresses.	Routinely forges Caller ID.
Uses rogue ISP’s to host their "bulletproof" websites.	Uses rogue SIP providers to host their VoIP systems.
Obfuscates messages to bypass spam filters.	Obfuscates Caller ID to bypass Privacy Guard.
Uses cost-shifted advertising to spam your mailbox.	Uses cost-shifted advertising to spam your cell-phone.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, including parallels between tele-junkers and fax spammers.

My personal favourite site for reporting telejunkers: Who Called Us.

Not that I particularly care about celebrities and what they are up to, but I have to admit a certain degree of schadenfreude when I heard that the horse-faced one received 45 days in the slammer.

Thinking of "Hilton" and "jail" within the same sentence, reminded me of the film Bankok Hilton. I'm sure as a segregated, high-profile prisoner, her stay will be a walk in the park.

Some anagrams of Paris Hilton:
Hi, A-List Porn
Ha, 'Til Prison
L.A. 'Ho In Strip

I'd sentence her to another 45 days for wearing those dumb-looking "Roswell" glasses.

The right tool for the right job: Windows for desktops, *nix for servers. I'm sure some *nix fanboys would disagree, but let's face it, despite the world-wide contempt for the behemoth that is Microsoft - its questionable business ethics and abuse of monopoly - Linux is never going to get a foothold in the desktop-of-choice market unless things work "out-of-the-box".

Here's an example: I'd consider myself fairly tech savvy - I code in multiple languages across multiple platforms. I've tried OpenBSD and NetBSD - my preference is still FreeBSD; tried various flavours of Linux - SUSE was sh*t (never got past the installer: it switched off the VGA card) and RedHat wasn't bad.

Bombarded with even more telejunk calls than ever, I recently decided to purchase an Asterisk PBX system from Digium. I ordered my TDM11B (a TDM400P, 1 FXS Module and 1 FXO Module) on a Sunday afternoon, Digium shipped it the next day and I received it the morning after that - very impressive! My only gripe: the FXS module required a spare 12v power cable, which didn't reach across without considerable effort/re-jigging. I put my concerns into email and 7 hours later, Digium CS acknowledged my suggestion of including one in their retail starter packs. Perhaps I've become desensitised to bad ecommerce customer service over the years - my last internet purchase before this one was from geeks.com and it took them 3 days to ship my order, plus another 2 weeks to receive it via the USPS (without any tracking numbers to check the progress). The online "purchase" before that was this sorry episode over a year ago. So, all in all, Digium exceeded my expectations. Anyway, I digress...

Although Asterisk is supposed to work on multiple *nix platforms, it's officially supported on Linux. So, I downloaded and burned the 5 Fedora C6 ISO's from Red Hat. Attempted a full install on a spare hobby server (IBM PL300, 600MHz P3, 128MB RAM, 10GB HD). Installer craps out halfway through with kryptic error messages. Tried again with a minimal install (no X windows). Success. Fedora Core 6 does not recognise my TDM400P at boot up. So then I download and burn ASTLinux. It works, but is so bare bones, I can't do anything like download and compile Pico/Nano. So I download and burn the AsteriskNOW LiveCD ISO from Digium. Boots up fine - recognises my TDM400P, but PC locks up when it gets to the main menu. So I download and burn the AsteriskNOW installation disc. 8 CD's later, it figures that the last thing I try works 100%! Some custom Linux distro called "rPath Linux". I have Asterisk up and running within 20 mins of using the config web interface.

I have an idea about how to expand the functionality. Actually, someone else had the idea before me, hence a successful search on Google for "Asterisk talking caller ID". I download and install Festival, an open source text-to-speech engine. Doesn't work, but doesn't give me any error messages - just no audio. Should've realised that audio support, despite using relatively old hardware, would be a challenge.

The rPath kernel recognises both the onboard (ESS Maestro3) and SB Live (PCI) soundcards, but there's no /dev/dsp or /dev/audio or anything that remotely looks like a sound device. So I waste a whole day (no exaggeration) visiting the ALSA website, downloading and trying to install the drivers for the Maestro3 and SB Live (AKA emu10k/emu10k1) cards. Running "./configure" works; running "make clean" appears to work; running "make install" returns dumb error messages, such as "cp: cannot stat `snd-page-alloc.ko': No such file or directory". Seems like ALSA is the only source for Linux audio drivers, yet their bull$hit configure script doesn't "make" the .ko files needed to copy to the modules directory. I can't even RPM them in, as rPath doesn't support that package manager.

Well, at least my Asterisk is working - just need to work on the config to send telejunkers to the "Torture Menus". Googling around, it appears that Asterisk works on FreeBSD, but now that I've finally got it working, I don't want to change back to FreeBSD - besides, the support appears to better for Asterisk on the Linux platform.

Some good news in today's 24hrs: "The City of Brampton is slapping big fines on those accused of causing advertising pollution. Anyone caught posting signs on public property without a permit could face a whopping $5,000 fine".

It's about time that municipalities went after the street-spamming morons who litter public property with those nasty choroplast signs and bits of paper taped to the sides of bus shelters. It's nothing but commercial graffiti.

Hopefully, the rest of the cities in the GTA will follow suit.

Decided to add a bit more to my blog customisation to gradually move away from Minima Black, one of the default Blog*Spot templates. I initially chose Minima Black, because I find pages with white backgrounds too hard on the eye.

However, I don't want my blog to look just like all the other Minima Black-based blogs out there, so I added some animated .gif's, courtesy of Flaming Text. Then I coded some JavaScript that is called when the <$BlogItemTitle$> meta-tag is used in the template, referencing either <Rant> or <Rave> in the blog title. Now I have a customised blog title, stating if the blog entry is negative (rant) and/or positive (rave).

Finally, another part of the script keeps track of how many rants and raves I have posted (in the current blog index) which is displayed over on the right-hand side-bar.

More lameness from Spike TV, this time from their Wednesday night offering, Casino Cinema, which featured John Landis' classic comedy Trading Places. Despite branding themselves "The First Network For Men", Spike aired the heavy-cut version of the film, removing any and all references to profanity and nudity.

To make matters worse, Casino Cinema stops after every 7-8 mins for a commercial break and/or feature on gambling, which totally detracts from the film. What could have taken 2½ hours (with commercials) actually ended up lasting 3 hours.

Bravo! on the other hand, screened it uncut and with limited commercial interruptions tonight. Maybe there are stricter restrictions on what American channels can show - if so, it's ironic that US channels can't show US-made films uncut.

Decided to get back into a little programming this weekend, just to keep my coding skills from going rusty.

I found a neat little Flash scrolling text banner generator (on another Blog*Spot page) from here. Great for displaying static messages, but what about something dynamic - what about my hobby server's uptime?

I wrote a little PHP script, called by the system crontab every 10 minutes, to create an external .js file that uses document.write to load the .swf file with params, all of which is executed when this page is loaded.

Initial results worked really well, but of course the plain old uptime output from my hobby server was a little boring, so I found and used a combination of nifty PHP scripts to find and parse the system uptime into another format. Then I added the ability to record the highest uptime value and report back the current and highest uptimes so far.

The end result may not be that much to most people, but very satisfying for me all the same. You can see the banner over on the right side-bar, after the Archives section.


Update 2006-01/31: looks like someone was interested enough to tag this post on blinkbits.com.