Kari’s Law – Screw Phone Systems!

Clickford, Steven M.

I have been a vocal opponent against Kari’s Law and I do not oppose for any regulation from government telling private business and citizens what to do.

Kari’s law is named after a deceased Texas woman who died from a brutal murder several years back while the daughter had called “9-1-1” and was unable to get through because of the trunk access code. The media and Avaya Incorporated (nee Nortel Networks) had sensationalized the story of “A little girl who was taught in school to call 9-1-1 for emergencies couldn’t do that in a motel room”

This sensationalized message was PBX systems kill not idiotic sysadmins who didn’t properly label sets to dial emergency services.

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Review of the Art and Ethics of TV Manipulation at the NH Telephone Museum

Clickford, Steven M.

So six months has gone by, and one of my drafts was a review of the New Hampshire Telephone Museum’s “Forth Phriday” event from last year. The wonderful people at the NHTM, Laura, Graham and Paul had speakers come in on the forth Friday of the summer months. The first one was from the infamous E9-1-1 department, and the last one was some guy out west in my state, and spoke for nearly an hour about the ethics of TV editing and manipulation.

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Howie Carr – Once a Funny Man

Clickford, Steven M.

Howie Carr, has been a legend in Boston media for longer than I have been alive. Depending on your cultural tolerance or political views, you love him or you wished Whitey Bulger’s accomplices got the right house address in Somerville with that basketball with some “See Fouahh” that should’ve gone four houses up not down. Kidding aside, Howie has really past his prime. Men in media tend to have a shelf life. If you watch men for looks and alleged credibility, they’ll age like fine wine, but sometimes their brains do not age well. Anger ensues, and they become a turnoff. If you want some fairness, Dan Kennedy from WGBH has really fallen off the rails in terms of intellectual stability where he’s been so bitter and on the Beat The Press’  “Rants and Raves” tends to be on the former more and more. And he’s a liberal.

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“911onWFXT”?

Clickford, Steven M.

My favorite Fox Show got a little distracting when the station ID ran on the bottom of the screen for a few seconds.

I don’t understand why I’m seeing this more and more on local stations. I am well aware of the FCC rules, despite the rules being strict, there is leniency such as a “natural break”. Like a promo where where a stations logo and ID shows at like :57 hour the hour. It’s not that complicated. WBZ -TV earlier in the fall used to have a large “CBS 4” bug with the WBZ – TV [CBS 4 logo]  Boston  on the bottom. But time went on, and the size shrunk.

But on WFXT the following is shown

“WFXT – Boston 25”

This is a continued trend by the new owners (of over 3 years) to continue on giving Fox the middle finger in branding only because the viewers they think who are watching hate the Fox News Channel. Cox Media Group plays dirty with the viewers. For gawd’s sakes alive, they don’t even use the Fox promotional graphics for time and night of the show. I didn’t see the snappy graphics Fox uses till I went to New York and saw them on WNYW. They overlay it with the news anchors of Boston 25 News . If they do this for promos, who knows the bug may say “#911onWFXT” with a Boston 25 bug. 

This station is a disgrace. I don’t get this superimposing station IDs and a station emphasizing a local identify that never was and taking half of the station’s visual makeup.

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Are you READY FOR SOME SUPER BOWL???

Clickford, Steven M.

Just kind reminder, whether side of the fence you’re on with this whole years long drama between the Peacock Network or Sunbeam Broadcasting; NBC is no longer on WHDH, so depending on the last time you saw a football game, it’s most likely going to be on another channel.

Welcome NBC 10, or Channel 10 with a CBS O&O looking typeface from 1980?

On New Year’s, a year into NBC moving to an owned and operated license in Merrimack, NH and stick in Goffstown, they have had a hard time with ratings and viewers with a weak signal up here, and through some spectrum sales in the last year, “NBC10” Boston has been able to build a network of low powered stations.

So within the next 24 hours, and if you are wanting to know where to tune to see TB12 hopppeeffulllly make it to six rings, onnnneeee wwould hooopppe. Here are your options.

Over the air, it’s on channel 8.1. If you don’t get it on the ears, just do a “rescan”. If you live in Foxboro, you may get WJAR that other NBC 10, since Boston and Providence is such a tight market, it actually has a definition in the Harry Newton’s Telecom Dictionary on signal overlap (I think.)

For most cable channels, the HD feed is on 710 or 810, (hence the virtual channel 10 branding), some SD feeds are on Channel 10, mine (legacy Adelphia/Comcast) is on Channel 26, legacy Comcast may be on other positions.

Because the NFL is known to be the No Fun League, it’s unclear if you can stream it instead.

I know the Emily Rooneys of the world joke (or possibly are literal) about tuning to Channel 7 to see her late dad Sunday nights, but in this case, don’t turn to WHDH for the Super Bowl, “Turn to 10” instead!

This writing has been a continuation of the discussion of NBC and their historical hostile treatment to their affiliates. 

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Inside the MISDOT Operations Center

Clickford, Steven M.

After a millions of pennies spent several years ago to build a new operations center for the state of Minibrick, the project has finally came into fruition today at Noon Eastern, the Minibrick State Department of Transportation will open up their new Statewide Operations Center.

This center was in the works for the last couple of years to address concerns from the Blizzard of 2015, and more synergies between operations between the various public safety and works agencies.

The setup goes as follows, each minifigure sits at their own workstation. MISDOT, MISP, MTA, DOS head. Their role is to monitor the MISDOT cameras and respond whatever comes to them. This room gets really busy during noreasters, blizzards and hurricanes when evacuation routes must be properly coordinated.

Today, the heads of the Minibrick State Police, the Minibrick State Department of Transportation, the Miniland Transit Authority, the Statewide Fire Marshall is now housed into one operations center (similar to one of those op center war rooms).

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Peer to Peer SIP Telephony – Will it Work?

Clickford, Steven M.2 Comments

That is the question…

I’ve struggled with voice over IP Telephony because I’m so skilled in the old way, that if I brainwashed my mind with the “new way” then I would be selling myself to the devil.

I’ve discussed my frustrations with VOIP from Cisco CallManager Express, to the lousy and vague Asterisk, to the firey but easier to use IP Office from Avaya. In 2011 to 2012, I thought there had to be something easier. Something similar to the ComKey without needing much hardware.

P2P SIP Background

P2P SIP exists, there is a movement as of late, but the idea goes back a decade ago with now vintage and end of life products. Once upon a time there was the  Aastra Venture IP (an IP version of a similar named product), and Avaya’s One-X Quick Edition. These phones were mini servers, that would connect over the network via DHCP, and they would talk to one another and when they would discover each other on the network using a dummy domain that only would be used on an intranet. Configuring the phones would required using the telephone’s menu function on the telset, or using a web browser by using the phone’s IP address.

Connecting to the outside world would be done using a PSTN gateway. Avaya and Aastra sold two gateways for analog POTS and ISDN/T1 trunks. Avaya’s sets from research could be programmed into third party gateways like Cisco routers and alike if the customer had a Cisco router.

Relevant History 

These are called Key Service Unit Less phones. Key Systems were small end phone systems and by the late 1980s into the early 1990s, the advancement of electronics enabled POTS telephones to talk to other phones on the same circuit that couldn’t be done before. Using low level circuitry could do almost the same thing as a traditional phone system. There is some engineering for this to work properly, especially if you’re maxing out to the four lines and sixteen stations.

The Avaya One-X QE and Venture IP sets can only work as these specific P2p phones, so they cannot work on any other SIP switching system other their own inside the phone. If you think about it SIP is like the PC like old office telsets are to dummy terminals. It’s much better to have a phone that can support any SIP protocol outside the phones so if you do acquire some softswitch, it’s not a writeoff. (Avaya’s does have the possibility to flash out the ROM but because it’s EOL for their early VOIP sets, that will not ever happen.)

Use case:

There was a need for a SIP P2P set for a VIP-type of authority. The environment was switching to IP Telephony, and SIP is a mandatory requirement in case the ITSP or SIP PBX goes down. Especially during emergencies.

I did this in a home lab, because in 2016 I decided to use my Definity PBX as the primary telephone system; this enabled me to use some SIP sets I acquired from a buyback deal in 2016 and some Polycom sets I found off a business’s front lawn during the same time too. A couple Mitel 5220, 5224, 5330 IP sets were also tested.

Debunking myths

The theory was:

  1. How could the phones find each other when making a call?
  2. What types of settings do I tell the phones to go to (Proxy addresses, etc)?
  3. Do I need to have a proxy address?
  4. What type of benefits do I get having a basic, and a multi line telephone system?

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I’m Ashamed to Admit my Hatred to Men.

Clickford, Steven M.

I’ve posted recently being a man who hates men. Men are disgusting. Men lack compassion, men lack empathy, men like to show off their dicks when they can, they like to have power and control and abuse it without any repercussions.

Men in general lack these skills and they have been in careers where they are known to abuse vulernable people, ranging from the disabled to mostly women. Men like to blame everyone else for their lack of empathy and compassion. Men like to use manipulative practices to get what they want, often in a criminal threatening manner.

Men in power, as we can tell from the Harvey Weinstein scandals, to Matt Lauer’s sexcepades, to even hyper local issues, like the former police chief whoring international media attention for trying to capture the Groundhog that allegedly gave us 6 weeks of a rough winter in February 2015, to April where i had a personal run in with him that resulted in a disgusting social media to real world exchange where I finally found out he defamed me behind my back in a false police report. Of, that the town manager who has mannerisms of a man didn’t care and treated your’s truly like shit and the “Chairman” who may be a tranny treated me like garbage too. Both women acted like dick-flashing men who don’t care for details and want to control other people like  government officials having power over people.

Worse is in information technology. NOW I know men who are in this field and are well mannered, but many are angry Caucasian men who like to blame users for everything. They have a narrow minded bigotry like thinking, and will often verbally assault “end users” because they are not as smart or have a larger dick then them!

They say the great minds had Asperger’s Syndrome? What about Bill Gates, Larry Page, that freakjob named Eric Schmit (who probably looks like someone who shouldn’t be an elementary school teacher), Mike Bloomberg, Steve Jobs, etc? They abused women. Most likely treated them like trash, and forced their views on them, to the point where they probably took a stapler to their head. That’s what men in high technology do. High technology is on the rise. They are abusive to the most vulernable, exploit them and because they have a dick, they can get away with it. Google encourages abuse to people’s rights. Facebook think’s its OK to monitor specific users because they think they can. Do we need to talk about our current Federal administration?

For research purposes, I found this site, The Lone Sysadmin is also whose borderline anti-female, anti people, etc. Attacks “end users” like they are dumb sheep, and preaches that narrow minded bigotry called “change” and indirectly attacks users with:

Oh, change is scary, too, but that’s really just a subcategory of “people are hard.” – Bob Plankers, The Lone Sysadmin

Can I say sysadministrators are just angry ol pricks who can’t understand that not everyone is nerdy or hell even techie? And that changes is a nature of being a goddamned human race?

Men in power, especially in technology do abuse women, and they are nerds, and there’s a reason why society doesn’t accept them. THEY ARE GODDAMNED DANGEROUS!

I have to close it with this. I hate men as a man. I feel sorry for other people who are abused strictly because an Adam’s apple and a dick gives them entitlement to do whatever the hell they want.

Facebook Pages – Are You Being Screwed?

Clickford, Steven M.

On January 15th, Facebook did a major change that was announced last year to deemphasize Facebook pages and more content from your friends and family on your News Feed. For anyone who operates Facebook “pages” (the ones where you have to “Like” and/or “Follow”) had been screwed over. Especially when Facebook didn’t give Page Admins directions on getting their content to be top priority.

While Facebook Pages may mean little to some, it may be worth to others.

“Facebook pages” ofter are blurred between the lines of a fully public profile or a page where it’s not for “friends” and is used for business (meaning you can use the metrics and convoluted metering system for hits, likes, reax, etc.) For the purposes of the article, “profiles” are not “Pages” and the former is a befriend system while the latter is a “Like” and “Follow” system.

Nearly nine years ago, this was introduced for celebrities, ranging from A to C-list, to small businesses to “brands” and enterprises. Prior to there was no real way for a business to be on Facebook. In fact smaller towns and communities who lived on business on a seven-digit telephone number, that never got a website, and some refused to go on the email way, would jump into the 21st Century using Facebook pages.

If you are a page administrator to a business or a brand or use Pages for your own branding, you got screwed on January 15th.

Controversy on Facebook’s News Feed goes as far back as when Facebook became open for non university users. The reason why Facebook deemphasized Facebook pages on the News Feed may had something to do with a potential conflict in the 2016 Election, or just simply experimenting on their users. To me this is highly unethical.

And I do not want to blame the user, while some snooty Computer Scientist would probably do. Sure the writing was on the wall (no pun) and it was announced during Facebook’s developers conference last year, but small business owners and content creators ranging from old tech vlogs to cosplay models have no time to be reading on the corporate blog or page admin relations and stuff like that to be educated. For them this is a slap on the face.

For me I think out of the last eleven years I’ve been on and off Facebook, I’ve spent many as a page admin for various things. Part of it I felt at one point in my life I didn’t have a face for Facebook and I still struggle with a weak social network in real life.

I do not think this will hurt Facebook’s bottom line, the stock may not hit a bump for a few more quarters if revenues from the pages business starts to crumble. While Facebook has admitted that their fears came true of a unruly society wether it’s in the “real world” or packet-based world, I would say “guns don’t kill, people with guns do”, or fatty foods don’t kill you, the person whose eating them do. Facebook users make Facebook unattractive for many. The people on social media who are exploiting the negativity should be blamed. Where is the computer scientists when you need them to pass the buck?

I do wonder if FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) are going to be the next Railroads of the New Millennium. The Railroad industry peaked in the early 1900s or a number of reasons, disruptions in technology and plain ol stupidity. The Tech Crash of 2000 was no less than people wanting to get rich quick, and Facebook can be more valuable, if they respect our privacy if people are willing to pay for value added services to ensure your privacy because storing stuff on the Internet doesn’t come free and it isn’t created like water.

These companies are large in power and market cap so therefore, they can do whatever the hell they want. Digital companies do not play by the traditional norms of industrial companies. That’s another discussion for another day, however I would be very careful of putting capital in FAANG only because stupidity is their true disruptor.

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7 Years Ago This Holiday – Steve Jobs’ Attempt for a Holiday News Dump

Clickford, Steven M.

For politicians, if you don’t want to be on the news, you dump unpopular stories on a Friday in the summer. If you want to expose a story, you do it on a Monday or Tuesday morning.

If you don’t want to freak out investors, disclose your story on a bank holiday. In the U.S. Martin Luther King Day occurs on the 3rd Monday every January. Steve Jobs who was getting very ill, thought his PR folks at Apple dump the story that morning, and no one will notice since most Wall Streeters are not in the trading floor – even for a holiday.

Most of the cable business channels, CNBC and Bloomberg do not have staff who come in, except for European closes when there is major events that break. But in recent years, they just run whatever is set on the playout servers.

Fox Business Network, whether they had that year or did since the start, would be on every bank holiday. Even a holy day like Good Friday. FBN was on a regular scheduled Business Day programming with a ticker with Friday’s quotes and live bugs that were of the futures. The story was  Steve Jobs’ leave of absence, and if memory serves, he resigned from Apple in August and passed in October of that year.

The most ironic thing was CNBC and Bloomberg did not touch the story on cable. Their sites had the story, but not one reporter could do a live phoner with a still graphic or have someone come in and do a live shot or what. Since technology and business do go hand and hand, this was a major breaking news story in this realm. The established cable business news channels were MIA. No person did not want to be bothered at CNBC to go into Englewood Cliffs and do a five minute breakin, or Bloomberg for that matter. Bloomberg West I believe came on the air just before or after that time, though did some live program out west I believe by 6:00 Eastern. CNBC by late afternoon ET did ran a crawl of this earth shattering headline in the business world but had limited information prior to. Meanwhile FBN owned this story throughout the day and into the evening, and repeated that story every hour. I remember my mother was ether sick or got snowed in and we learned the news when Don Imus’ then show was on that network since FBN in those days had better news coverage in business.

You wouldn’t think that after a significant member of technology and business made news and a scrappy network on 1211 6th Ave would own the story, that they would have plans in the future. FBN was still a ratings challenged network for the time, but they made major improvements as time went on.

I would bet this story made them look really decent because of their continued business news despite a holiday. And today the tag had the annual “While CNBC is on reruns, we’re open for business!”

Steve Jobs was the winner for choosing to be low key, however he was naive that FBN was the domestic news agency that would ran with the story – the same day – making him not run away of burying a material news story, while the established CNBC was the looser.

Steve Jobs was a man who did transform the world’s technology and Apple was always a popular news story amongst the technical and business press, and on cable news. While I don’t think what he did was wrong, what was wrong was how the competing cable channels just was unable respond – on a holiday mostly for financial workers, and schools and government.

The egg was on CNBC’s face for sure!

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