[clue-talk] BerkeleyTIP Great progress VOIP November - Dec 6
= Improve VOIP
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com
Wed Dec 3 19:19:14 MST 2008
David L. Willson wrote:
>> We went from in September having no online attendees,
>> to in October having 1 person remote on IRC, to in
>> November having 7 people around the US all in a VOIP conference! It was
>> _fantastic_! I was very impressed.
>
> [...]
>
> 7 ports for something new is cool, I guess.
>
> It's somewhat, um... "Yawn" for those of us doing this commercially for
> a long time, though...
>
> Nate:
>
> 1. You're being a jerk.
Didn't mean to be. Just sharing an interest in "VoIP" systems and
sending a link to a box I work on that does "really big VoIP".
I said it was a shameless plug, sheesh!
> 2. John is celebrating meeting attendance, not technical achievement.
Thought that it said "Improve VOIP" for the December 6th topic, so I
guess I misread what his goals are for the next meeting.
Heck I got the impression that THIS meeting was spent screwing around
with VoIP more than getting the agenda done, whatever it was supposed to
be... so I pointed out that there are better (completely baked, done,
working) Linux solutions for video and audio conferencing.
Why screw around with tools that are already working when you have a
meeting to hold?
> 3. If he were celebrating technical achievement, it would be within the scope of Free software, not software overall, and your yawn/snipe would still be non sequitur.
We're allowed to celebrate Free software, but achievements outside of
that are worthless on Linux? I think I understand now.
(Saying that everything accomplished outside of Free Software is crap,
isn't going to attract too many people to the group, nor is it true. Is
CLUE promoting Linux or Free Software? I seem to recall quite a few
closed-source software vendors at the ClueFest, back when that event
happened many many years ago. And yes, I hung around the Debian booth
and brought an old iMac running Debian to let folks play with it. Back
then my goal was "hardware agnostic", now my more recent vision seems to
be "OS agnostic". Back then it was "pick the best OS that will run on
ANY hardware platform and look/behave the same". Today it's "pick the
best applications that will run on any OS and use those". Never once
during this process did I care about the LICENSE of that software. I
think I convinced myself I did and played "fanboi" of RMS/Free for a
little while, but it was quickly snuffed by needing to get real work done.)
I get into arguments with you, an otherwise nice guy, because I don't
believe or follow the Free/RMS Cult, most of the time, anymore. Why do
you care what I believe? We're both using Linux, and this is a Linux
list, isn't it? I never saw the "check your evil closed-source software
ways at the door" warning on the CLUE website.
Use whatever works, I tell folks... want to conference on Linux?
There's both open and closed tools. Some of the closed ones are pretty
nice.
Try 'em out.
http://www.skype.com/download/skype/linux/
http://www.webex.com/
Hmm, found a couple new ones I haven't tried... works on all platforms
that will run Flash. (Uh oh, more evil closed stuff I guess.)
http://www.sightspeed.com
http://www.wengomeeting.com/
The leaders in "killer apps" continue to prove that the OS platform
simply DOESN'T MATTER anymore. It's irrelevant, other than if it has
enough market share, you port to it.
The best apps now run on anything... that can keep enough users to be
big enough to worry about. Linux needs to figure out how to appeal to
more people so it can garner those closed application vendors. Wasn't
that always the complaint that drivers are hard to hack, because vendors
don't see Linux as all that big a deal? Isn't the best way to "get
there" to have applications that the other OS's have, so people can
migrate and have their old tools ... and THEN learn there's alternatives?
Call me crazy... but I see it that way...
Sorry if my comments were somehow inappropriate. I figured if I
flat-out said, "Fire up Skype and get on with the meeting. What's the
big deal?" So I decided to link to a nifty "big box" I work on instead,
that smokes even Asterisk, which is pretty interesting and good... but
can't keep up with dedicated DSP hardware for conference applications.
Asterisk wins any day in raw price tag, it doesn't win in performance or
audio quality (lack of delay).
Sometimes you want to buy the Cessna 172, and not spend the next three
years building an RV-4 in a hangar from scratch. All depends on what
you need to get done and how much money you have on hand, and what you
need to get done on what timeline.
If they have time to mess with barely baked VoIP software, cool... I
even said it was inherently cool. You learn a lot about VoIP messing
with that stuff. I don't mind at all. Been there. Done that.
Probably will again.
Just pointing out that VoIP isn't supposed to be "difficult" nowadays.
That was about 10 years ago. 800# conferencing is available for FREE
from multiple vendors, if you'll listen to a short advertisement, and
larger calls are less than $0.01/minute, per line. VoIP isn't even
necessary, just pick up the telephone... to have a nationwide meeting
these days, is CHEAP... CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. (Thanks to REALLY big
closed-source boxes with such high densities that people can afford to
almost give the service away.)
Nate
More information about the clue-talk
mailing list