Why Caller ID Blocking is Dumb

Does this sound familar? You are in the middle of a great movie. Your cellphone or landline rings. Your muscle memory kicks in, you glance at the screen to see who's calling, and observe the following:

"Private"

Quickly, you think to yourself, "My God, it could be anyone!" Your reaction to this paltry dilemma will most likely be:

A. "Wow, someone who doesn't want me to know their number. It could be important! I'll take the call."

B. "It could be a telemarketer, or someone I really don't want to talk to. I'll err on the side of caution and let it go. Besides, they can leave a voicemail, and if it's important, I'll call them back after the movie is over."

C. "There's a 'special place' in my heart for people who have the nerve to use caller ID blocking.... And it's not the one that encourages me to answer calls."

If you ask most people, the answer will NOT be A. If you choose to employ caller ID blocking on your outgoing phone calls, you should be aware that, in today's society, you are basically signing up for what amounts to "voluntary call blacklisting." Here's some of the things you can look forward to dealing with, in exchange for a supposed measure of added privacy:

• Be prepared to, at least, go to voicemail a measurable percentage more often than everyone else. At most, you may just plain not be able to reach people.

• Get used to writing down your phone number for your friends, as they will have to manually enter your number into their phones.

It's possible to make the argument that your circle of friends will know that it's you calling (since so few people choose to add this "feature" to their lines). However, the reality is that there is a chance someone else they receive calls from has a line with blocking, and unless you both happen to be that person's favorite callers, you can bet that they won't be answering your calls. A lot.

Host Your Own Domain's Mail? Here's Your Spam Filter.

Something positive for a change. I thought I'd take a moment to sing the praises of (possibly the only) service that I have dealt with for the last 3 years, without a single reason to complain.

A company that I maintain the e-mail server for has been using PeertoPeer.net for off-site anti-spam, virus scanning and anti-phishing protection. Don't be put off by the sleazy marketing approaches on their website. After 3 years of use, I'm happy to report that the only experiences I've had with them have been:

• 100% uptime
• Friendly, prompt, and technically adept tech support, U.S. based, not off-shored
  
• Effective filtering that has not required any interaction for tuning, false positives, etc.
• Affordable service - $19.95 per domain

Setting up the service is easy- point your MX record to the service, supply them the IP of your mail host(s) and lock down your incoming traffic at the firewall. Some people believe it is a bad idea to contract out filtering to an outside server. I have arrived at the conclusion that it is the best choice under most circumstances, as long as you choose the right service. PeerToPeer.net has been the right choice for us, and here are the factors:

• Their filters have an excellent cross section of sample data with which to recognize malicious e-mail, which makes them very effective. I don't remember having any false positives in 3 years (and yes, I check the spam quarantine regularly).
  

• It reduces your drive space, processor, memory, and bandwidth consumption - bad mail that is filtered never hits your mail host.
  

• It makes for a leaner security profile - at your firewall, you can lock down the hosts allowed to connect to your mail host to only peertopeer.net servers. This is a huge benefit in terms of protecting your server from the badness of the open internet.
  

• It works with any MTA server, not just Exchange (a major cost savings right there).
  

• Only one proven, robust protocol, SMTP, is employed for mail to come into your server. Not POP3, IMAP, or strange proprietary protocols for mail retrieval to your MTA, a function for which they are not designed.
  

• The cost of $19.95/mo per domain is slightly higher than a subscription to mail host plugin service, such as GFI mailessentials, for a domain. However, this minor premium is quickly nullified the first time someone doesn't spend hours fixing a broken Exchange plugin when it breaks (not to mention the mail downtime). As for the individual spam viewers available for $49.95/mo, I have not found these to be necessary, as after 3 years, there are never any false positives.
  

• Probably the most important, and unsung feature: They queue your mail when your host goes down. This shields outside servers from any mail server outages due to maintenance, etc. on the customer's mail server. Believe it or not, these days, a deferred /failed message can have a considerable impact on the professional reputation of an organization.
  

There are lots of ways to deal with spam, virus, and phishing e-mails, but after 3 years of analysis, I'm settled on the best, most cost effective way to deal with it. For my money, it's peertopeer.net

Broadvoice Sets Us "Up the Bomb"

So Broadvoice now requires that customers (even ones that have been signed up for years, such as myself) send them a copy of their driver's license, and credit card they use to pay. A notice "requesting" such is triggered when you make any modifications to your payment info (such as changing the credit card on file). I don't think it's Federal regulation, as it seems Broadvoice is the only one doing this, but I'm sure it's some sort of CYA move.

Now, a lot of people complain about Broadvoice, but I personally have had a pretty good experience with them. They have reasonable pricing, excellent tech support, and I have not had a problem with their uptime. The only issue I've ever had is that Verizon Wireless likes to drop Broadvoice exchanges from their routing tables once in a while, which Broadvoice can hardly be blamed for. However, I have not had the pleasure of dealing with their administrative folks until now.

So...

I did some Google searching around, and it seems that they are serious. If you don't send it in within 5 days, they suspend your service. I also learned that they tend to ignore the fact that you have SENT IT IN. Sure enough, when I sent it in on the 4th day, they suspended my service later that day anyway. I called them, and they re enabled my account, saying "it probably just hasn't been processed yet".

This morning, a few days later, I received an e-mail:
"Dear Scott McGrath,

This is a friendly reminder that we have not received the Service Authorization form that was sent to you."

I'm in hell.

What We're Doing Wrong with Biofuels

My friend sent me this article on how biofuels are responsible for a 75% increase in world food prices.

http://www.carectomy.com/index.php/Politics/Biofuels-Are-Starving-Us

My response: This is what happens when you live in denial for 100 years, and establish an infrastructure around a fuel source that doesn't really "exist" (the sun is the only "real" energy source we have, but that's another discussion). When it starts to run out, everything destabilizes, which is what we are seeing. The obvious choice, which is not always the best choice, is to look for the most accessible, drop-in renewable alternative .

What are doing wrong with biofuels?

1. We're making the wrong fuels.

Ethanol has been the biofuel of choice by many, which is a ridiculous fuel. It takes a lot of energy to distill it, and the resulting fuel has a miserable energy density. There are far better ways to get fuel from plants, unfortunately most are not usable by gasoline cars (see #3)

2. We're making them in a reactive and irresponsible way.
Since we haven't built up an infrastructure that produces biofuels in a responsible and distributive way, the only alternative is to utilize the same resources that have been devoted to producing food. The government is now throwing tons of money at farmers to produce ethanol. If anything, it's easier for them because there are fewer regulations.

3. We're using them incorrectly.
Cars that carry their own power plants (gas/diesel engines) are only about 7% efficient. "Real" energy sources can't be held responsible for producing the amount of energy we traditionally waste. We need electric cars and trucks. Electric vehicles leave the energy conversion process to centralized power plants, where it makes sense to invest the money to make very efficient processing. Furthermore, a wide variety of energy sources can be brought into play, and even mixed, at a powerplant (solar, hydro, petroleum, wind, etc.). This gives you a more flexible infrastructure, so we can be opportunists as different energy sources rise and fall in their availability.

VW Bluemotion Golf for 2009

What do you get when you combine the winning combination of a smaller (1.6L) common-rail turbodiesel engine with a revised ratio 5 speed transmission, and a particulate filter? 74 MPG, and only 99g/km of CO2, thanks to the 2009 VW Golf Bluemotion. This car still has 104 HP (184lb/ft), which is more torque than some gas compact cars have now- and you can bet that those numbers will all but double with a few basic fuel and air mods.


In terms of mileage and emissions, this car puts some hybrids to shame- yet with its simplistic design, it will remain much more affordable (£15,500 starting) than cars with complicated hybrid technology. There is no word as to when this car will be brought to the U.S. (as usual), especially with oil prices dropping again, but at least we can have the comfort of knowing it's out there.

Got a Small Car? Drive Carefully.

If you are the owner of a small, fuel efficient vehicle, here's something you may not have thought about. If you are involved in an accident that ends up totaling your car, you may not get enough insurance money to replace it.

Here's why: When the insurance company "totals" your car (decides it's cheaper to replace it than repair it), they will cut a check for the Blue Book value of the car. But, as the demand for these cars continues to rapidly increase, so does the "street" value (the amount the car is selling for today, on Ebay, for example). Since the Blue Book value of these cars is assessed using a fairly bureaucratic process, this value hasn't been calculated recently enough, and is therefore under the actual cost involved in acquiring an exact replacement.

Cost is only the beginning. The headaches of purchasing a fuel efficient vehicle are many- if you are in the market for a new car, you'll probably end up on a waiting list. When you do finally get your car, you'd better hope it comes the way you like it- because your other option is to wait some more.

If you're buying a used car, watch out. There are plenty of snakes out there who realize the inflated prices of fuel is the opportunity to fleece the public. They'll sell any small car they can get their hands on, knowing that SUV owners are bailing out and looking for something small to drive to work. They will gladly sell a car on its last legs for a few thousand dollars.

The worst case scenario is that you are driving a "banned" car. This includes highly efficient, diesel passenger cars such as the Volkswagen TDI. Despite their ability to achieve mileage in excess of 50 mpg, most of these cars have been banned from new sales due to high nitrous oxide and smog emissions. Replacing these cars will surely be a chore, as they are being retired from the road every day. On top of that, replacement parts are expensive, and knowledgeable labor is extremely hard to find.

The bottom line: drive carefully. Your car may not be insured to the extent you think it is, and even if it is, replacement can be more complicated due to our rapidly changing transportation economy.

Got a Samsung SCH-i760? Don't use an external antenna!

If you have a Samsung smartphone, such as the SCH-i730 or SCH-i760, you may or may not be aware that there is an external antenna jack on the back of this phone (you have to pop off a small round cap to see it).

It is possible to use this jack to plug in an external cell phone antenna - an incredibly convenient option for road warriors who can't afford to drop calls when traveling through spotty areas, etc. However, I have this cautionary tale to share with you.

This is the 3rd time I have had my cell phone replaced because the internal antenna performance degrade to almost nothing. It started with my Samsung SCH-i730, and then when I upgraded to the SCH-i760, it happened twice. I have decided that the issue is likely one of the following:

1. Samsung makes a flaky and weak connector, which breaks the internal antenna connection when used (doesn't really make sense, as the external antenna still works)

2. I have been unlucky enough to get 3 defective phones (yeah, right.)

3. The external antenna is BURNING OUT the internal antenna, due to a design problem with the Samsung phones.

4. The internal antenna is BURNING OUT, due to a design problem with the external antenna.

In circumstance 3 & 4, a little bit of radio theory applies here: When you plug in an external antenna, it doesn't take the internal one out of the circuit. Rather, the 2 antennae are in parallel, and untuned. This creates a high SWR (standing wave ratio) situation that the fragile internal antenna (probably a just a "coil" drawing on a circuit board) can't handle.

If this is the case, Verizon should do a better job of notifying users that this jack is for the testing bench only, and not for use with an external antenna. After all, it's pretty easy to come by an aftermarket adapter that fits this jack, advertised for use with an external antenna. Verizon sales people will not warn you against using this jack with an external antenna.

It could be a problem specific to my external antenna, but when searching I found 2 posts indicating others have had this problem:

Post #1
Post #2

Finally, I just found a blog post with a definitive link to a faq on Samsung's website about this. The jack is not for use with an external antenna!