I think Social Media, and Big Tech is heading for a reckoning; whether you like it or not.
Tech/Biz
The Defense of Graphical User Interfaces in 2020
This may be a moot point to many, but to some like to carry their command line interface skillset card and shove it down your throats. Those people are probably as creepy as Mark Zuckerberg. I also think a Graphical User Interface, or GUI, as an acronym has to be effective too.
“Monopolies” Then vs. Now
“Monopoly” basically means a company owns one sector and sniffles any other company getting involved. In the early 1900s, Standard Oil used to own 90% of the country’s gas and oil distribution. Now basically many of those descendants had merged and some sold to global entities.
By the 1950s, the American Telephone and Telegraph company owned 90% of the US telephone lines and interconnects. AT&T was the Department of Justice’s top enemy. That same decade, they were ordered to sell off their Canadian and Asian arm; and in 1956, they were ordered not go into the data processing business (“computers”) despite Bell Labs inventing the transistor that would be the key component in all computers by the 1960s.
How to Effectively set Boundaries of Working From Home (or the Lack Thereof)
Have you been working too hard working from home?
Are people getting in your hair?
Are you concerned if you are in a non-compliant workspace?
I have been WFH before there was even a phrase; I know what can work and what shouldn’t; here are my suggestions
Defending American Norms in Writing
I am an American, therefore I will not talk global-speak to the audience.
VOIP Security in 2020 – How to Defend Your Right For a Defensive Telephony Network
When seeking for SIP Trunks, or “Cloud PBX” or “Cloud Phone systems”, they are mostly provided by an Internet Telephony Service Provider known as an ITSP, believe it or not. Some coaxial ISPs like Comcast Business, Charter/Spectrum or Cox will also bundle this for their “Business Class” offerings. SIP would not work to scale on DSL, better on bonded T1 lines. While the Internet (the data/web) is considered to be Title II of the FCC regulations, the FCC has put some conditions to VOIP service providers. Your freedoms are not well as celebrated in theory like the ol Part 68/Carterfone ruling; because of the provisions the FCC put in as well as Kari’s Law for Enhanced 9-1-1 services (let’s not touch that anymore.)
As a customer (and not a consumer); you can throw-away-the-script by using phrases like
“How are these phones going to connect with my existing network?
“What concerns should I have with security?”
“Wait, I am responsible for something right?”
“I have a SIP Proxy being implemented, and my ‘IT Manager*’ telling me we need this interconnected or we’re done!”
*he doesn’t exist because the person that’s talking, has a part time IT manager in their role!
The best way of scoring deals is to do reversed-sales tactics, and go on the offense as your best defense. Put the sales person in the call center into the fetal position (ok that’s too far) but in a way to get a higher up so then you’re holding the sales person at the ISP or ITSP accountable. This is how customer service used to be, then they went “consumer” (or dumbed-it-down) to then force the customer, the not so well versed communicated type to do anything the enterprise class ISP would tell ’em to do.
Even better, throw a Service Level Agreement to ensure if the imaginary lines go down in the packetwaves, that you can get credited in the next billing cycle for loss of potential revenue. Make sure you can reproduce the problem so you can ensure you did your part.
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VOIP Security in 2020 – More Concerning Than Ever Before
I don’t intend to scare any potential readers with my written work, however it’s something people need to be on alert. Particularly on a specific technology, not the protocol/service itself.
Voice over IP or VOIP (sometimes spelled with the tacky “VoIP”, pronounced as Vo-eye-pee) is a technology that puts mostly telephony over the open Internet Protocol (hence the IP part of the acronym.)
IP dates back to the early 1980s and it’s offspring to the original DARPAnet that began as a Defense Department project in 1969 to have some form of a communications network in case the Soviets or some other rouge country had bad intentions against America.
IP then and now is a fragmented protocol, with billions of devices traditionally tied to firewall or Network Address Translation, that is better known as a “router”, so on the wild Net, what it sees is mostly machines and rarely users; except at the application level of the OSI Layer. In reality TCP/IP is your device’s driver to interconnect with other devices like the sound driver enables you to hear things on your machines.
VOIP is mostly an application, and the IP Phones are really desktop sized streaming devices that replicate that ol telephone that was invented by either Alexander Graham Bell, or Elisha Grey or Thomas Edison.
When VOIP became popular in the enterprise in the early 2000s, the security and reliability had been a concern. “Pure IP” vendors like Cisco came from data point of view so they felt routing telephony should be routing like accessing the Web. Early on some large-scale implementations had some major failures. Some were bone-headed from the phone guy’s point of view, and some were reliant on Microsoft Windows Server (other vendors probably laughed at Cisco.)
The issue then was a lack of encryption, lack of basic controls such as binding IP addresses for specific services, etc. Earlier versions of VOIP used proprietary protocols, and vendors like Avaya, Nortel and Mitel implemented their hard-wired telephony protocols on top of the “IP stack” (again like a plugin to that driver metaphor”.) VLANs along with firewall policies ensured that VOIP networks would be seen by the IT or phone guy and not a co-worker in accounting.
If a bad guy wanted to get into the phone system, s/he would needed to know the IP address of the server, or gateways, and manipulate the system at that point.
Problem Met Another Problem Without a Simpler Solution
Within the VOIP ecosystem, there was that proprietary way known as H323 (this is a signaling protocol of how the VOIP sets talked to the routers and servers) and then there was Session Initiation Protocol or SIP.
SIP decentralized the telephony networks by putting a switching like system on every device; and took the Web playbook for signaling the servers and gateways, and streaming audio and even video through the hand or headsets. Even that, it could support instant messaging or chat services, since the devices were chatting to each other via text, why can users?
The one thing I left out with H323 vs SIP, was, either a hostname or an IP address with H323, and with SIP it requires a server for authentication, another server for “proxy” another one for an emergency (ala 9-1-1), and another for time of day, and another set of IP addresses or Domain Names for “provisioning” to send all those stuff to the sets.
It also enabled the customer to the standard 19 Custom Calling Services features that in the old consumer landline world would cost a fortune. Any “PBX” type of features has to be “extended” from the vendor, say a Cisco, or Avaya.
SIP was great for long haul trunking between the phone company and the customer, or even inter site linking, since SIP did Caller ID well, if you had played around the graphically enhanced distro of Asterisk, Free PBX, the phrase is used very liberally.
As with any technology or service, without any baseline of historical context, the only thing SIP could relate was the unrelated H323 standard. SIP is open, meaning any vendor that adheres to the Request for Comment/RFC for SIP could theoretically work. Early on in the development of the endpoints (the “phones”) the prediction was you could go to BestBuy or RadioShack and buy a phone off the shelf and bring into the office. While those places did (or does not) carry them per se, but any eBay or Amazon store you could buy a $59 single line set and plug it into a SIP controller in the office and hello to BYOD.
Improper SIP Deployments can be a Threat to Small Businesses
The issues in the early 2000s involved H323 and proprietary software and servers. A lot of what caused H323 issues then were taught later (such as admin web pages to stay local and not be exposed to the open Internet, or remote users requiring log in through VPN compared SIP could be logged in from anywhere; which is why it’s successful)
Many traditional Nortel, Avaya small end systems that serviced customers less than 30 stations have been replaced Key Phone Systems “for a little more” or “better off” going a cheaper path to “Cloud PBX” systems. Most small businesses are using store bought technology (which is a whole other issue that would be beating a dead horse); worse is that these devices, Polycoms, Grandstreams, alike are likely directly connected to the Open and Wild Interwebz. If you work in an office with over 255 PCs, typically the DNS address is going to be something like a 172.16.1.x or 10.0.x.x) and not an 8.8.8.8 because if every PC and every device had that; it would stress out the network with every device pinging Google to get onto Facebook.com that then turns into Facebook’s public IP address when using browsers or apps.
For SIP deployments, these devices are going directly on the Internet and not some middleman in the datacenter or server closet. This is how many of the VOIP Phone Spam or Prank calls on steroids occur. There needs to be some device at where the Wide Area Network, WAN or “the Internet comes in” such a enterprise class firewall or a proxy server. All SIP calls would “originate” from this box. Unlike H323 or the traditional phone system, it’s not “the brain” per se, but it controls the quality, security and the “noise” that SIP devices would talk to each other if it’s going to Comcast Business or RingCentral. These things are called SIP Proxy Servers or firewalls, they aren’t “private” per se, it’s a hybrid of a multi line phone system meets the customer premise equipment like those T1-landline adaptors, or straight up modems. They can come in various shapes and sizes. You may need more servers/devices for redundancy. Cisco’s IOS routers have some level of support. If you have virtualization like VMware, you could run this as an instance, or if you have PFsense firewall, there is built in packages to do that.
In 2020, you wouldn’t plug your computer into a modem like you used to in 2002, so why would you do this to an IP enabled phone?
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21st Century Capitalism: Those Damned Venture Capital Firms!
Continued fact-finding search if a capitalistic America disappeared when Al Gore “invented the Internet”
It was the culture of consumerism, disposable income, and the legitimization of companies hoarding cash, and following an ethos of a fictional character in a 1987 flick, Wall Street, “greed, for a lack of a better word, is good”. A recession began a couple months before that movie’s release after Black Monday, where the Dow Industrials lost 22% on an intraday basis, and never saw record highs for at least a few years.
After nearly 6 years of growth, the markets were sputtering after October 1987. In July 1990, the Dow hit 3,000 via an intraday basis, but to close past that mark, took till April of the following year! The tech industry was the worst hit, and in fact it began in the mid 1980s with the recession to the PC sector. This also stalled the growth of the Macintosh, as it broke even in 1987, 3 years after introduction. It wasn’t until 1995 where commercialization of the Internet, mixed with GUI computers like Windows based PCs and Macintoshes and standard networking equipment like Cisco, this lead to a big growth to only see it fall after the new Millennium – March of 2000.
The sector of the Information Superhighway was also legitimized capitalism but on an extreme level. Tech companies at this point weren’t “funded” by Midtown banks, but super rich firms out in the Valley called “venture capitalists”. This way of corporate financing again enabled competitive natures of businesses fighting their ideas into “profit”. For a number of years, many of the standing dot-coms didn’t return a “profit” or break-even on their bottom lines, or just their expenses. Cisco was turned down by every VC firm except for Don Valentine (a man not to write home much about.) In fact the couple who founded the Cisco used credit cards to use to build their hardware for a number of years.
Growth
Another failure of these go-go years, was the focus on “growth” and the redirecting of tolerance of risk, some companies ran themselves into the ground while “profitable” companies went defensive to protect the profits by taking risk aversive paths. At VC firms, later the Midtown banks were obsessed on “double-digit growth” originally quarter by quarter beginning in the mid 90s, than as the dot-com bubble burst, it was then annual and then the standards kept changing. Never in the history of Corporate America was there this amount of obsession to grow capital, to then accrued so much cash that so many have them hoarded in foreign accounts. Worse, is this “profit” that would originally be used to pay off debt that typically was the mainstream standard to Corporate America was completely written off by the time the new Millennium came.
The Fallout
As this obsession to the “growth sector”, this idea ultimately lead companies to have to reinstate their financials or go out of business and executives being thrown in jail, and creating an industry called corporate compliance to deal with the growing regulatory natures such as Sarbanes Oxley and Dodd-Frank law (now repealed by the Trump administration in the name of protecting “free markets”).
Another growing issue to our domestic economy is the ongoing issue of “late stage” companies that are going public on the markets later than other companies. Facebook was about to be a company of this class, but with some “shoplifting” of ideas stolen from Snap, and acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp, Facebook was able to evade from this stigma, leaving the company to be an ATM to the social media sector. Uber, Lyft and other companies who went public this year are facing issues keeping the stocks above their offering price because the demand was fading in the private markets. Going public turns these frozen assets into cold cash for anyone who invested early in these companies leaving Midtown banks and joe shomes being suckered as these investors are actually facilitating this transfer of wealth.
This lead into strange thing to occur in Northern California that the 80s or 90s couldn’t brag about.
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The Failures of 21st Century Capitalism: “The American Consumer”
In a series of posts, I really want to question our capitalistic system where it’s so top heavy to capitalism, that I like to present a honest account of what this very same system that is causing erratic economical discourse that no one who understands both the markets and the sectors that propelled a giantic bull market since the end of 1987. Also to debunk myths of monopoly and the sick delusion of “competition”. I am not a politically religious person, so I don’t believe in socialism, but I can also empathize the US enterprises that are big for a reason. In short, my view is America thrives better in a capitalistic system (meaning it favors business building, but it includes a rational view on taxation and regulations, and unlike socialism, the government shouldn’t be micro-managing the large enterprises.) Small businesses to me are dishonest, and some are are highly valued companies that didn’t scale corporate governance to the Fortune 500. (Yes I am talking about Facebook.)
I am putting a single trigger warning, if you can’t except a rational examination of our 21st Century economic system, then please avoid reading this, as you could be subjected to religious political philosophy, hearing the sermons of some “talking head” on two major cable channels that claim to be a cable “news” or “business news” operation that have Hollywood “searchlights” in their logo.
Is “The American Consumer” to blame?
The lowest level of this “free market” starts with the “consumer”, “end user”, “end customer”, etc.
Over time, pundits have tried to make America some figurative symbol, such as the “All American, Blond, Blue-Eyed” living in the deep south and listening so some country music. Another metaphoric stereotype of America is: The consumer. With a dollar in his pocket believing that if there are many choices in this country, it will drive costs down, and a dog-eat-dog culture amongst commerce will better help this American. The American consumer neglects to realize “companies” are mostly “brands” with products made in a single factory or a parent company that owns multiple “brands” but the consumer could care less because there is “more” on the shelf’; it’s “good”. It’s in reality bullshit and as a result we as a society have been brainwashed.
Let me tell you what kinds of options for say cloud services:
- Microsoft’s One Drive
- Google Drive
- iCloud Drive
- Maybe an AWS service.
Oooo choices, for real? What if one of these four consumer grade cloud services co-locate and sharing each other’s services? Where is that “choice”? And why are all these “brands” using the same noun? Google Maps, Apple Maps, Microsoft Maps (sorry fake business) Clickford Maps (opps, ditto!) So in real life: there are only two major brands to chose from? And what are the differences? They feel there’s a need to “look the same”…why not have a brand? Why even have a service? Why nix competition? Where’s the anger?
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Is your iPad becoming a touchable Mac?
I didn’t test out iOS 12 till just a couple weeks before iOS 13 became a mainstream release. I was on iOS 10 since the very last patch in summer of 2017. iOS 11 wasn’t much different from what I could tell, except for the silly “dock” area where the name of the app or group of apps disappeared and it could no longer support 32 bit iOS apps.
iOS 12 really pushes the line of making it a small Mac instead. I own an iPad mini 4, and it’s not big like my iPad 2. To have this experience, one would have to go back to the 9″ because it’s really hard to not move your finger or fingers a millimeter and have some app close out or switch to another app or some other silly gesture that-I can’t-recall-that-caused-that-effect. Not only that but all the AR and AI that is behind the OS, takes a toll on the battery life. Any simple task such as importing high res photos now can go down 10% in a matter of minutes. There is a lot of deep thinking I really don’t want my iPad to do, but I have no choice. I have to opt in, at the price of my power management.
Oh wait, Apple pioneered mobile power management before there was such a thing. With the PowerBook! Where the hell is those great folks?
A couple weeks after iOS 13 was launched, the OS update for my iPad is now iPad OS 13. This is a optimized version of iOS for iPad sized devices.
Bring on the fractured Apple operating systems!
What this means is Apple is now splitting the OSes amongst the portable or mobile devices, and the Mac OS (err “macOS” will become the more “unified” operating system.) Meaning that the “macOS” will be more alike the old iOS in terms of centralized code and compatibility. With the release of Catalina; this is really showing how the macOS is more alike an iPad without the ability to touch; limiting the user experience to app-sized applications; essentially giving users the ability to use a mouse and keyboard while in reality it’s already like using an mobile device.