Email from Regular MD Listener: Dear Doctor Shurtz, I originate many phone calls daily from my home office. Today, in mid afternoon, I called several MD numbers ( I live in MD ) and the party answering could not hear me, though I could hear them fine. They kept saying ‘hello, …" while I talked, and then hung up. One person said she could only hear every third word I was saying. Vonage says the problem is caused by my ISP. How best do I troubleshoot this? Vonage is going to have a tech support person (not in the Philippines, per my request) call me back to ‘troubleshoot’ this…My experience with that varies, depending on who calls me…Thanks regular MD listener
Tech Talk Responds: Bandwidth will cause dropped packets and latency. Checking your ISP is the first thing. You can check your upload and download bandwidth by getting an Internet speed test. (www.broadbandreports.com). You voice needs a good upload speed.
Email from Lauren: Dr. Richard Shurtz, I use Outlook Express and a Verizon.net email account to send most of my business & work related emails. I currently work from home and have a wireless network connection for my Dell laptop.
On Dec 29th I sent 3 separate emails to three employees at a Federal agency in Washington, DC. All three had the same page Word document attached. I sent each one with a read receipt request. I got back a read receipt from two employees very shortly after I sent their emails on Dec 29th. The one says he did not see my email. Can you please help me understand why this happens and what I can do to avoid it going forward? Is it possible that someone is intentionally blocking my email at the agency? I know there have been times when a "never read" receipt comes back, but, those typically come back many days after sending the email that was never read. I don’t believe I always get them so don’t understand why I do and sometimes do not get those "not read receipts". Thanks, Lauren
Tech Talk Responds: The email could have gone into spam. The return receipt can be blocked by the person reading the email, so it is not a reliable indicator of receipt.
Email from Robert: Dear Dr. Shurtz: I was recently reading an article on the Internet about IPv4.that we are about to run out IPv4 addresses next year. The article stated that the internet will eventually have to switch to IPv6 and the sooner the better because we are rapidly running out of the IPv4 addresses. Could you explain these terms and will my wireless router, which I just bought, have to be replaced because of the switch to IPv6. Thank you for such a entertaining and informative show. I listen to the show via itunes podcast every week. Robert Tyler
Tech Talk Responds: IP v4 has 32 bit address space. IPv6 has 128 bit address space. The newer version also has more built-in security and quality-of-service features. Most new equipment sold now is IPv6 ready. You should not have to buy new equipment.
Profiles in IT: Amar Gopal Bose
Amar Gopal Bose is founder and chairman of the Bose Corporation
Amar Gopal Bose was born November 2, 1929 in Philadelphia, PA.
His father was an Indian freedom revolutionary who fled Calcutta in the 1920s to avoid prosecution by the British.
During the World War II years, he enlisted school friends as co-workers in a small home business repairing model trains and home radios, to supplement his family’s income.
After the war ended, Bose used surplus radar tubes and an oil-burner transformer to build the neighborhood’s first television.
In 1947, his father borrowed $10,000 so that Bose could attend MIT.
Bose earned a BS in Electrical Engineering in the early 1950s.
He spent a in the Netherlands at the NV Philips Electronics Research Labs and a year in New Delhi as a Fulbright research student.
He then completed his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT, writing a thesis on non-linear systems.
Following graduation, Bose took a position at MIT as an Assistant Professor.
He was a innovative teacher who encouraged his students to ask tough questions and to understand the problem-solving process.
During his early years as a professor, Bose bought a high-end stereo speaker system in 1956 and was reportedly underwhelmed by the performance of his purchase.
His research would focus on improving speaker technology through psychoacoustics.
He founded the Bose Corporation in 1964 using capital from angel investors, including his MIT thesis advisor and mentor, Dr. Y. W. Lee.
He invented a stereo loudspeaker that would reproduce concert sound using the dominantly reflected sound. This speaker was released in 1964 but not embraced.
He his second speaker, the Bose 901, was a huge success when released in 1968.
In 1978, he invented Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphones to block noise.
In 1982, he developed audio systems for the automobile.
In the late 1980s, he released the Bose suspension system for automobiles after 24 years of research. He spent the first five years mathematically analyzing what could be done without the hardware constraints of conventional suspension.
In 1993, he released the Bose Wave Radio, based on waveguide speaker technology.
According to Bose, “The future isn’t solving the problems to which we already know the answers. It is in learning how to work through the problems you’ll experience in life, in any subject.”
According to his students, the value of Amar Bose isn’t so much in the things he has invented, but in the sense of possibility he inspires.
He defines his innovative success by two words: Insatiable Curiosity.
The company slogan is: Better Products through Research.
Bose Corporation, as a privately held company with more than 12,000 employees, does not publish its financial records.
Bose remained a professor at MIT until 2000.
Bose says that his best ideas usually come to him in a flash. "These innovations are not the result of rational thought; it’s an intuitive idea."
Net Neutrality Debate
FCC Net Neutrality Decision
On December 21, 2010, The FCC adopts a set of rules that require all broadband providers to publicly disclose network management practices, restrict broadband providers from blocking Internet content and applications, and bar fixed broadband providers from engaging in unreasonable discrimination in transmitting lawful network traffic.
Passed on a vote of 3 (Democrats) to 2 (Republicans)
Link to decision: http://www.fcc.gov
Reasons for Decision according to FCC.
Reasons given by FCC are the Internet should be an open, level playing ground. It is designed to make all content equally available to the consumer regardless of bandwidth requirements.
FCC Lacks Legal Authority
FCC does not have legal authority over the Internet. This was established when the FCC Comcast/BitTorrent ruling was thrown out by the courts.
Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is improperly interpreted. This provision directs the FCC to “encourage the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis” of “advanced telecommunications capability” to all Americans. They have expanded this to include the Internet.
Reason Against Decision
Internet governance continues to work. There are sufficient laws in place to protect the consumer. Ruling will have a chilling effect on capital formation and innovation required to deploy faster broadband service.
Internet is global. Restrictive actions such as this by the US Government will prompt other government to interfere in other more onerous ways.
Regulation will lead ultimately to taxes for data services.
Comcast/Level 3 Peering Lawsuit
Level 3 blasted Comcast for charging it more money to deliver traffic to the cable company’s customers.
Level 3argued this violated network neutrality, and since it had recently started delivering traffic from Netflix’s streaming video service, people in power started taking a long look.
Level 3 accused Comcast of setting up a “toll road” to deliver content to consumers who subscribe to Comcast’s service, but Comcast pointed out that Level 3 was suddenly trying to deliver double the traffic it normally sent to Comcast.
Comcast claimed this violated its peering agreements, which are deals struck between network providers to let each other’s traffic pass at no cost on their networks, with the idea being that the traffic is reciprocal.
This suit should help define the way traffic is regulated on the Net.
What Is Next?
FCC will be challenged in court….and lose again.
This type of regulation needs Congressional approval (unlikely).
Let the Internet Society and the Courts deal with the governance issue.
iPhone App of the Week: World Lens
Word Lens is an app for your iPhone or iPod touch that translates any Spanish or English text your camera can see. And it does it on the fly.
What it does is very simple: you point your iPhone’s camera at some text you want translated, and it shows you the translation in real time.
Although Word Lens appears to be free when you get to the iTunes App Store, you’ll find that it only proves that it works by reversing the order of words or erasing them from your screen.
You can add languages through in-app purchases, but currently only Spanish and English are available. Each will cost you $5.