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Your own London phone number on your mobile

Anglosphere

Modern technology has brought me a step closer to the Anglosphere. UK friends and readers can now call me at a London number (see contact details on this site) at landline rates. US friends and readers can call me at a San Francisco number. I'll get the call right on my mobile. I can call UK landlines and any US/Canada number for less than a pence a minute (peak-rate) and UK mobiles for less than 10 pence a minute (peak-rate). But.. I live in the Netherlands, so how do I do it?

It's simple, really. My new Nokia N82 phone, for free with contract renewal, has built-in WLAN. This means it can connect to wireless networks. It also has built-in SIP/VOIP support, which means it can make and receive Internet calls.

VoIPtalk is the VOIP service I'm using. If you have a modern WLAN and VOIP compatible phone such as the Nokia N82 (or N95) S60 models or some Sony Ericsson UIQ models, you can enjoy all this:

Sure, it's not entirely free. But for the price of one international text message it is now possible to have two up to fifteen minutes of international airtime! If this is what Anglosphere globalism brought us, I love it!

Network oddness

Software

Most of my friends and probably most people I have worked with would call me an Internet expert. That doesn't necessarily mean I know everything about it, but usually I do have a clue what's going on.

Well, not this week. I'm currently in Austria for a skiing trip. The wireless network in the hotel works fine (hence this post), however there are some hosts I cannot access. There seems to be some correlation with the network location: US hosted sites have most problems, including.. Capsi. Argh! (I could easily forego checking my own site and e-mail for a week if I didn't have the opportunity, but when I do have a network connection and I still can't, that's just annoying.)

So far so good, though. I don't like it much but there are some reasonable explanations for the situation, such as a broken proxy server at the hotel or its provider. But I just set up dad's wireless connection - and he has no problems whatsoever connecting to the sites I have problems with. This I do not get.

Network oddness

Software

Most of my friends and probably most people I have worked with would call me an Internet expert. That doesn't necessarily mean I know everything about it, but usually I do have a clue what's going on.

Well, not this week. I'm currently in Austria for a skiing trip. The wireless network in the hotel works fine (hence this post), however there are some hosts I cannot access. There seems to be some correlation with the network location: US hosted sites have most problems, including.. Capsi. Argh! (I could easily forego checking my own site and e-mail for a week if I didn't have the opportunity, but when I do have a network connection and I still can't, that's just annoying.)

So far so good, though. I don't like it much but there are some reasonable explanations for the situation, such as a broken proxy server at the hotel or its provider. But I just set up dad's wireless connection - and he has no problems whatsoever connecting to the sites I have problems with. This I do not get.

On-line safety through common sense

Software

Please put down that webcam for a while and while you're at it, put those boobs back where they belong as well. Profile sites such as MySpace are dangerous. Join any such network and you will soon end up in some pervert's basement. Raped and prostituted if you're lucky, dismembered in all other cases.

Or that's the impression one would get by reading The Dead Kids of Myspace for a while. It doesn't even matter whether you are the stereotypical 14-year-old inexperienced virgin (as if!) or not:

Two girls - 14- and 15-years-old - chatted on MySpace with a man for two weeks, claiming to be an 18-year-old named "Natalia." When the man showed up for a tryst at Natalia's supposed apartment, the two girls robbed him at gunpoint!

Scott Granneman's defense of social networks quotes heavily from the list of MySpace victims, but then fortunately makes the same point I've been making for the past eleven years, when I first started to meet people "from the Internet" in real life:

Look, I know there are really bad people using MySpace to do really bad things. If its criminal, they should be caught and punished. But I also know that there are really bad people in the grocery stores, at the movie theaters, in parks, and even on the other end of the phone.

Dead on. I'm also sick of the "Internet is dangerous" hype. The majority of MySpace's 87 million users know and apply the decades-old common sense rule to never meet in private and on your own, so why can't most policy makers, columnists and parents? Follow common sense and MySpace offers long weekends full of consensual sex yet void of dismemberment. No amount of parental guidance or law expansion necessary whatsoever.

Theocratic prudes and nice guys

Anglosphere

George Bush is an evil theocratic prude stepping on our freedoms in the name of family values and religion. Or at least, that's how some people would describe the man. In my experience there is a tendency amongst those people to then add how Bill Clinton was such a decent, honourable President. What a nice guy!

Fair enough, under the Bush administration Congress did regulate porn with USC 2257's record-keeping requirements to make sure minors would not enter the industry. Never mind that ten years ago under the Clinton administration, Congress actually passed the Communications Decency Act in an attempt to outright ban not just obscene but also "indecent" speech on the Internet. Excuse my language, but shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits fart turd and twat that!

Also fair enough, the Bush administration does frequently express conservative family values which often derive from Christianity. Never mind that the cartoon wars resulted in Bill Clinton attacking blasphemy as we speak (while we still can). Andrew Stuttaford points out on The Corner:

Clinton embarrasses himself in Pakistan: "I strongly disagreed with both the creation and the publication of cartoons that were considered blasphemous to devout Muslims around the world because they depicted the Prophet."

Leaving aside the fact that the prohibition on depiction of Mohammed is by no means as clear-cut as Clinton pretends to think, we have to deal with the fact that Clinton believes that images that "offend" the beliefs of one religious faith should not even be created, let alone published.

...

That's wrong, wrong, wrong. No collection of beliefs, even if they do involve a deity, should be given special privileges and protections. And, Bill, if my free speech is your blasphemy, that's just tough.

Unfortunately these words will probably not prevent that the urban legend where Bill Clinton is a nice guy will live on for ever. Nor that special privileges for religions already exist.

© Copyright 1995-2008 Robert John Kaper. All rights reserved.

Tom has more friends but mine are prettier! (#1/1)