This is an update to a few earlier articles concerning the status of the AT&T 3G network along the easter part of the Internet 40 Corridor in Tennessee.

It would seem AT&T is slowly filling up the gap between Knoxville, TN and Lebanon, TN along I40. A year ago AT&T put out a press release indicating that they were building out 525 additional 3G cell sites.

Within the last few weeks they have turned on towers extending west on I40 from the previous cut off at around mile marker 366 so that there is now complete 3G coverage from Knoxville west until around mile marker 339. This is the first noticeable east-west coverage expansion along I40 in the last 2 years.

For the first time EVER I had bonafide 3G AT&T coverage in Cumberland County. Granted the county line is at Exit 340, so I only had coverage for a mile on I40, but still ANY coverage at all is an improvement. Just inside the county line I pulled over and ran a speed test. I did get 1080 Kbps down and 223 Kbps up, with two bars of signal on my iPhone 3GS. I doubt that the cell site I was using was in Cumberland County. Most likely it was located on Mt. Roosevelt over looking Rockwood.

Presumably this now gives 3G coverage to the communities of Kingston, Rockwood, Harriman, and Midtown.

It still seems that AT&T hates Crossville and Cookeville. While I understand that it would have been odd to light up these cities with 3G without connecting them to the larger 3G markets, it should be noted that if you combine the total populations of  Kingston, Rockwood, Harriman, and Midtown it would be less than half that of Crossville, and one quarter that of Cookeville.

My last trip to Nashville still had 3G single in that market cutting off at around mile 243. These means that the AT&T coverage gap has dropped from 123 miles to 105 miles. I will be in Nashville on December 17, 2010 and I will test at this time if the coverage has expanded eastward anymore to coincide with the westward expansion from Knoxville.

With CDMA 3G already in Cumberland County (Verizon, Sprint, and US Cellular), and 4G (marketing term, not real 4G) in Nashville (Sprint, Wimax, and Verizon LTE) AT&T is losing ground in this area.

As of December 5, 2010 this coverage is not included in the online AT&T coverage map at http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/ however this report is based on first hand observations.

Yesterday I purchased an iPhone App called iDOS. iDOS is a DOS emulator based on DOSBOX which allows you to run Naive DOS applications from Zork all the way to Windows 3.11. Having grown up in the DOS era, my childhood is filled with memories of games ran on my IBM PS1, and later my Home Built 386.

I knew from the first moment I read the post announcing iDOS I would have to jump on the program, buying it for 99 cents. Apple has the inane and unprofessional MO of allowing a real cool/useful app on the App store, but the moment some big shot in a black turtle neck and blue jeans finds out, it’s pulled.  Needless to say iDOS was pulled down within a few hours.

(When I say “black turtle neck and blue jeans” I don’t mean Steve Jobs himself, but I have noticed that all the higher level executives at Apple all seem to dress like he does.)

I now have an orphaned app on my iPhone. My project over the next few week will be to observe how this App is treated as compared to the other apps. The first event I am looking for is wether or not my credit card will be charged. If it is charged, I’m going to follow up with Apple to ensure that the creator of iDOS receives his/her 69.5 cents.

I will also try to move the app around from my various iOS devices to see if I can install and reinstall it.

It would seem that SCOTUS has decided to take up an appeals case for Whitney Harper, a Texas college student who was accused of copyright violations by the RIAA. A Texas federal judge award the RIAA $7,400 for the infringement or $200 per file for the 37 songs cited in the case. This was much lower than the $27,750 total the RIAA was demanding, themselves pressing for the maximum $750 per file infringement. The Judge in the case reduced the amount based on Ms Harpers defense of “innocent infringement”.

Not happy with the $7,400, the RIAA themselves appealed the ruling, and a federal appeals court judge granted them the full $27,750. Now Ms Harper has filed with SCOTUS asking for a final ruling on the manner.

The RIAA has mounted a sustained and dubious litigation war on music fans for the past decade. While they have scored a few small victories in front of juries and sympathetic judges, the campaign has been a financial drain on the music industry, a Public Relations nightmare, and has done little or anything to curb piracy, especially by true criminals and counterfeiters who continue to create and sell bootleg CDs all over the US.

The problem is of course that current copyright law (as well as other Intellectual Property law) is ill-equipped to handle the demands of a modern digital world. 100 years ago Copyright law was arcane, confusing, and contradictory. This did not concerning most people as they never came into contact with copyright law. Today Copyright law is still  arcane, confusing, and contradictory however now most people can not go a single hour without coming into contact with situation that is governed by copyright law. In most cases, people are either unaware of their own personal copyright violations, or simply choose to ignore the law in favor of an expedience which they rightly assume is not harmful to the copyright holder. Examples of this include, playing music in a restaurant, inviting friends over to watch a sports event, singing campfire songs on a scouting trip, sharing with friends a home made video recording of your children dancing to a popular song, and even singing “happy birthday” to a child at a party. While most law abiding citizen may see nothing wrong with any of these activities, each and every one of them as been the subject of legal action by the recording industry within the last 10 years. These were not legal actions between large corporations, but large corporations suing middle and low income households claiming damages from the “misuse” of copyright they claim to own.

Because of the aforementioned general status of copyright law (arcane, confusing, and contradictory), the recording industry has proceeded on the belief that they hold absolute control over every aspect of of these copyrighted works with no regard for the legitimate fair and privet use by the public. There is also an effort unwary by the recording industry to undermined attempts by creators to license and distribute their own works through none traditional means. Resent statements the director of the recording industry group ASCAP suggest that the entire recording industry will viciously oppose any attempt to create new business models, license systems, or distribution networks by artists and creators that does not include existing corporate players. This is compounded by ASCAPs past attempts to create license fee payment system which would demand payment for license fees for music that ASCAP is not entitled too, trusting that ASCAP would pass those fees on to independent artists even if said artist expressly did not want fees to be charged for their work.

All of this is compounded by an irrational opposition by executives with-in the recording industry to adjust their business models to profit from this new economy. This persistent and escalating legal campaign by the recording industry seems not just to stop the minor threat of noncommercial infringement, but also an attempt to solidify their claim of exceptionalness control, and an attempt to set their current business model in legal stone.

Music on the Internet, whether streamed from a commercial site, shared privately among friends, or offered freely for others to download is another example of a situation where current copyright law does not offer clear guidance,  claims by the recording industry not withstanding. Some activities can and should be clear violations, while others should not. The case coming before SCOTUS should however address a single clear point, does noncommercial copyright infringement have the same pinaties as copyright infringement for which the infringer has a monitory benefit.

Piracy in the digital age is only sustainable if there is no viable alliterative for the market. In addition, Piracy in the digital age is not stoppable. Attempts to eliminate piracy via technological or legal means will have no effect on pirates, and will only serve to alienate and frustrate paying consumers. These paying costumers when faced with ever growing frustrations will themselves turn to piracy, thous computing the problem.

There is an even greater danger from a societal shift towards the disregard for copyright law. As outlined above, people will simply choose to ignore the law in favor of an expedience. When normal and natural human behavior becomes a violation of copyright law, as it has already stated to be, then people will not only lose respect for copyright law, but there will be a greater erosion of respect for the law in general.

This could be one of those moments in legal history that forever changes the course of litigation.

The only long term and viable solution here would be for the court to create situation which would force the recording industry to change their business model. The court needs to establish a situation where normal, natural, and harmless human practices do not become a violation of the law, but retain an economic incentive for artists to create. Ideally the embrace of new technology by creators could solve this problem. Technology now permits artist to have more direct access to the public to market their art, thus removing the need for most of the infrastructure of the recording industry.

This perhaps is the true fear of the RIAA: they are now irrelevant. Suing noncommercial copyright infringers is only part of a larger strategy to remain relevant by litigate themselves into a monopoly. If a legal framework can be established that places all music as suspect to copyright litigation, then the only “safe” method for publishing and distributing music becomes the organizations doing the threatening. In this light recording industry executives opposition to change becomes less irrational and more move evil in nature.

I just spent two days developing a new Asterisk System for the office. Asterisk is the open-source free PBX Phone system that has all the functionally of major and expensive systems from ESI, Nortel, Nokia, and AT&T.

A year ago we installed a “virtual pbx” solution with RingCentral. We’ve been pretty happy with the system, although adoption of the 800 number has been rather slow. To be honest, the 800 number is unnecessary, 90% of our clients are just in 3 local calling areas, and one one really “pays” for long distance anymore. However because of the rural nature of Crossville, it’s almost impossible to “port” our local number numbers to any major VOIP service, ergo we had no option but to get an 800 number.

RingCentral has been a good solution for us, but in the end we decided to build our own. The motivating factor was cost. Our Account at RingCentral ran $60 per-month for service. By building our own Asterisk PBX and getting a 4 line SIP Trunk we are now paying less than 1.5 Cents per minute with no additional monthly fees. At that rate we would have to be on the phone 4000 minutes a month, or 3.5 hours a day, to reach what we were paying for RingCentral.

Our own Asterisk System always allows us to “change” providers as we need to, so if our new SIP provider (VoicePulse) turns on us, we could always move to another SIP provider, or even to a local POTS line from Volfirst.

Even with all the work and “cool” features of Asterisk. Having a desktop phone with a dial pad seems like a step backwards. Way back in 2007 I wrote about Desktop Phones, and how they should improve. Sadly, 2 years on we’re still dialing numbers to make calls.

However there is a Company, Cloud Telecomputers which is claiming to release an Android powered desktop SIP phone before years end. I’ve been over their website and could not find any real technical details such as the Android version, or Google Account sync capabilities. Also, their last “blog post” was in August of 2009, not very reassuring, but they seem to be active on Twitter (at least it’s information, but again not a good sign. Twitter Only = Poor Marking) Let’s hope this isn’t vaporware. Even at a $600 price point, I would gladly outfit my entire office with these phones just to move past the dial pad.

Every year about this time I revamp my “online audio streaming” for UT Football. John Ward forever spoiled me on Radio Football, and when I was living far away from Tennessee my only source for UT games was the internet. Now, I pipe online broadcast games through my HOM (Home, Office and Mobile) media setup, so that no mater where I am, I can be assured that I have access to “Football time in Tennessee”, even if I’m on the far side of the world.

Because radio stations change, I have to update my HOM Media system periodically to make sure I have a good source for the Audio. Fortunately UT Athletics publishes a list of radio station in their “Vol Radio Network” at:

http://www.utsports.com/ot/radio.html

I start by going down this list and Googleing the call sign for each station and looking at their website. If you ever want a real tour-de-force of badly coded, web 1.0 sites, try looking up small town radio station on the Internet. Only a hand full of the station offer any form of 24/7 streaming, and of those that do, only a few offer streaming that is not tied to a web browser plugin. There is a further complication in that all these stations are supposed to “blackout” UT games from being broadcast on the Internet (stupid copyright issue). Fortunately if you peal back the web-browser plugin and get straight to the audio source, most of these stations continue to stream during the game. Their ideal of a “blackout” is to remove the link from their home page.

To be compatible with my HOM media setup, I need stations that stream in MP3. Of the stations in the list I found 3 that stream in MP3, WCRK, WKWX, WGSQ.

Only WCRK has a straight up MP3 stream located at http://216.77.168.247:85/broadwave.mp3

WKWX and WGSQ Use Live365 to broadcast. Live365 does offer MP3 Streams, but you have to dig them out of the embedded web player. I choose to use WGSQ for my primary stream source at http://www.live365.com/play/358517 and then have WCRK as a backup. WGSQ is located in nearby in Cookeville, so ancillary stuff to the broadcast will be more relevant to me.

My HOM media setup is based around iTunes, so all I needed to do was from within iTunes click on “Advanced” then “Open Audio Stream”, paste the URL http://www.live365.com/play/358517 and click “Ok”. iTunes starts playback, but it will also create an icon in the music list automatically so you can click on that icon when you want to play the stream again.

The final step was to adjust my AppleScript automation for the game dates and times for the 2010 season. Now when the pre-show starts, my HOM media setup starts piping out all that Tennessee Football goodness.

One of the things that I love about my work is that I have the opportunity to give back to Crossville via the United Fund.

I have served on the Board of Directors for the United Fund for several years, and this year I was asked to step up and be Campaign Finance Chairperson. Our fundraising goal this year is to raise $315,000 to be given away in the form of grants to local non-proffit groups. Every penny of that $3150,000 stays in Cumberland County, and the United Fund is an excellent way for donations to have a large impact on many lives in our community.

This is a video from the Chamber of Commerce series “Crossville Profiles”. It has been airing on the local community access station.

In July of 2008 The Tabor Consulting Group became involved in assisting local law enforcement and the TBI in a criminal investigation involving child pornography. On Thursday, August 19, 2010, this investigation ended with the conviction of the man responsible for the possession of more than 100 images of child pornography, a class B felony.

While I were never asked by law enforcement or the District Attorneys office to abstain from discussing the issue, I choose to make no public statements on the matter so as not to hinder the DA office or hinder the defendant’s case, as he was rightly entitled to be presumed innocent until found guilty. With the concussion of the trial, I feel that I can now share the story of my involvement.

My core business has always been, and will continue to be, outsourced IT management for small and medium sized organizations. However, I try to help all people in need, so when a person not connected with my core business comes to me, I am happy to give them the same level of quality service that I provide to all of my clients.

On July 8th 2008, a system was brought into my office that needed some data to be restored from backup after the owner had preformed a factory “system restore”. Because there is no single way that all computer manufactures handle system restores, it was necessary for us to dig into the system looking for clues at how the “system restore” had backup up data prior to restoring the system to a factory like state.

Within the first few moments I discovered several very large caches of images. Because Windows XP automatically sets directories full of images to Thumbnail or Filmstrip view, I could see at once without evening having to open the files that the images were people engaged in sex acts.

Now, me finding pornography on computer systems is nothing new. But in this case, I could see that the girls in these pictures were clearly not adults. As I said in court, I have a 30 year old wife and a 10 year old daughter; I know the difference, and I don’t confuse one for the other.

I will admit finding these images placed me in an awkward position professionally. IT people are a bit like Doctors, Lawyers, and Clergy, we have access to most of your life’s secrets because we have access to your data. While most people don’t necessarily realize this when they hand their computer over to an IT professional, I have ALWAYS understood that protecting my clients secrets is sacrosanct.

It is not my place to question the “legality” of software or media files on a clients system. Likewise my clients web histories, downloaded files, and other documents contain their private thoughts and feelings. While I may need to have access to such things to perform my work, it would be evil of me to share such knowledge. It is a right of all people to have secrets, a right I protect and foster for my clients in my business.

The abuse of children is something apart from the protection of privacy. I am not someone who feels that we should abandon privacy protections in the name of saving children. In fact, I see a great danger in overusing the justification of “child protection” to erode our civil liberties. I would be extremely opposed to any attempt by government to actively censor the Internet based on the premise that is was to “protect the children”.

Fortunately, the law as it is now offers a good balance. It does not actively censor the Internet, but gives law enforcement the tools to aggressively prosecute those that choose to break the law.

Setting aside the theoretical and political, on July 8th 2008 I was confronted with reality. That reality said that the law and my own moral foundation compels me to act when I feel that a child is in danger. To that end, I contacted my friend Officer Scott Davis with the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, and turned the mater over to them.

As a one time law student, I found the trial itself to be fascinating. Of course with the Rule in place, I could not be present in the court room until after my testimony. When I took the stand I found myself is be rather nervous, which is something I am not accustomed to. After a few moments, though, I settled in and felt calmer. Part of what I had to testify to was technical in nature and one of things I have always strived for in my business is to explain technical things in such a way as to be understood by the layperson. In this case I had to explain technical issues to 12 jurors whom I had never met, and if I botched my explanation, I could damage the District Attorney’s case and forever be a pariah in the local law enforcement community. So I was under some stress.

As I went on with my explanations, I noticed that the court stenographer seated in front of me kept nodding her head. I wasn’t sure if the gesture was automatic, or even related to what I was saying. But seeing that small gesture made me feel as if I was making sense, and that gave me a profound sense of comfort.

After my testimony, I was free to watch the rest of the proceedings from the gallery. With the passing of my nervousness, I could view the rest of the trial with a more detached and clinical eye. The TBI computer forensic expert was good, though the defense attorney really hammered her. The defense attorney kept wanting the TBI expert to admit the possibility that virus and/or hackers could have downloaded all the child porn images. She stood her ground quite well.

Part of the TBI’s testimony was the showing of the actual images to the jury. The Judge turned the viewing screens towards the jury box and moved the gallery spectators to one side of the court room so as to shield them from the images. As the DA counted off all 100+ images, many of the jury began to visibly loss their composure. Towards the end, even the DA’s voice started to crack a bit.

This, I think, sealed the verdict in the jury’s mind. From my detached view in the gallery, I could have nitpicked the presentations, and there where a few places that I felt the defense missed opportunities to asked good technical questions (even in my own testimony). But in the end, no amount of technical rebuttal could offset those images in the mind of a jury.

The defendant opted to testify in his own defense. Because I was out of the office on the morning of July 8th 2008, I had never actually seen him in person until I took the stand to testify. What stuck me, and everyone else, was how emotionally detached he seemed. The DA went after him pretty hard, but he never broke. There was some testimony that he suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome. While there was no medical evidence introduced, his demeanor did seem to be consistent with others that I know who suffer from this disorder.

In the end, the jury took only 20 minutes to convect him.

I had never been through anything like this. My technical background has prepared me for many things, however “how to deal with finding images of sexually exploited children” was never on any syllabus. The professionalism shown by the DAs, The Judge, Law Enforcement, and even the Defense Attorney was in itself something incredible to see. It has served to reenforce my respect and admiration for the law, our courts, and the people that run them.

I’m glad that I was able to help and be a small part of these events.

I am working with the TCG Legal Team (yes, we have lawyers) to draft an updated privacy policy that clearly reflects the things I have learned from this event. That document will be released in the coming days. We want to clearly spell out to our clients that we will do everything in our power to protect your privacy, but there are some things which we cannot, nor should not, protect.

English is such a difficult language. As English is my mother tong, I have the advantage of a lifetime of use to  grasp it’s nuance and innuendo. People who make English their second language often run into the problem that the language is heavily based on context.

For example, our word for “love” encompasses an enormous swath of emotional contexts, most of which are overlapping and can be insulting or embarrassing if taken in the wrong context. Saying, “I ‘love’ this cookie” is completely different seam saying “I ‘love’ my child”, which is also a wildly different context than, “I ‘loved’ my wife last night”

Having many friends for whom learning English was an ongoing process, it was often interesting to have be a part of group discussions. Often a native english speaker would say something, and while all the individual words from that dialog where understood, the English learner would still be confused. Mix in sarcasm, irony, and hyperbole, and you have a phrase that can be instantly understood by an American, but is completely mystifying to the rest of the world.

I have discovered a moment that aims to help bridge this communication gap. In English, we are limited to only a few punctuation marks. Basically a sentence can be punctuated to have 3 general contexts, a question (?), an exclamation (!), and everything else (.). This ideal is to incorporate additional punctuation marks to expand the general sentence contexts.

For example:

The percontation point ( ⸮ ) or mirrored question make is used to set the context of a rectorial question.

The Temherte slaqî  ( ¡ ) or inverted exclamation point is used to denote sarcasm and unreal phrases

More can be read at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation

http://opensarcasm.org/