Automatic e-mail footers are not just annoying. They are legally useless.

From the folks at The Economist, comes a great little article about those amazingly annoying email footers. You know the ones, right? This email is intended for the sole use of yatta, yatta, yatta.

This email, its contents, and any attachments are confidential and/or copyrighted information intended only for the use of the intended recipient. If you are not the original intended recipient and, for any reason, have received this email, please delete it from your system(s) and immediately notify company

Boring and apparently as useless as they are annoying.

Here’s the link. Quick little read:

• The Economist: “Legal Disclaimers: Spare us the email yada-yada

Of course… The Economist uses this same annoying e-mail footer on their corporate mail. Ah, the bitter taste of irony.

TAM. UR Shrt hnd SMS wil mak it ezer 2 cmpt 4 jobz.

Lol.

-People Who Write in English.

P.S. It’s 2010, phones and computers both have full keyboards, and vowels are free. There is no excuse for writing like an idiot.

P.P.S. We are working to form the LOL Verification Network, where a random sample of LOL posts will be validated to ensure the poster is actually laughing out loud when posting. Those found to be claiming to have LOL’d while not actually laughing will be fined and could face punishment up to and including revocation of speaking privileges and other penalties by the cyber police.

Anyway, as we were saying… every now and then you just need to go ahead and make a change. After all, it was the greatest musical act of all time that told us:

When it’s time to change, then its time to change
Don’t fight the tide, come along for the ride, don’t you see
When it’s time to change, you’ve got to rearrange

Yes, that group was The Brady Bunch. Peter, Greg, Marsha, Bobby, Cindy, and Jan were right. When it’s time to change you’ve got to rearrange.

Today, we rearranged our site. Nothing crazy. In fact the only really crazy aspect is the homage to Mr. Ben Affleck. If Ben Franklin is the patron saint of VoIP Tech Chat (and he is) then Mr. Ben Affleck is, well he’s just the baddest man in the whole town.

Thanks for reading.

Sick of obtaining low numbers of useless visitors for your website?

This was the opening line of a spam comment on one of our posts today.

Who would be sick of not obtaining useless visitors? Is basic English grammar really in such short supply that none of the spammers can get a passable proofreader?

I am SUPER happy with the numbers of useless visitors to our website. I am also happy with the useful ones. I will sleep easier knowing someone else out there is caring about how many useless visitors we get.

Atlas heard about this venture and shrugged...(cause he had the whooooole world....)

I was introduced to a fun little “tool” today: Find the shortest route between two Wikipedia articles.

The first thing I tried was an analysis of the path from Death to VoIP, and I discovered Death to VoIP takes a direct path through my hometown of Chattanooga, TN. So then I became concerned with my own mortality, and found:

• Patrick’s path to death is via Christianity.

If I am going , I want to know about Fred:

• Fred’s path to death is via marriage.

From Patrick to Fred is just a simple set of name shuffles:

• Patrick -> Rick -> Fredrick -> Fred

Fred to Patrick is a little more complex, and involves Spongebob Squarepants.

For the wealth-minded:

• Rags to Riches requires a path through Boston, MA.

And the often inquired about connection betwen VoIP and Ben Affleck?

• VoIP -> Caribbean -> Turks and Caicos Islands -> Ben Affleck

Turns out anything can be connected via wikipedia…try it! Leave comments on the ones we might find funny!

As a follow up to our podcast last week, Fred left the teaser of a discussion of airport security this week. In (unexpected) preparation for this discussion, I took a “short” trip from my home in Chattanooga, TN to Salt Lake city, UT. The flight out was uneventful, Chattanooga is a small, 5-gate airport with a fairly simple metal detector security checkpoint.

On the trip back, things got interesting. At the Salt Lake City airport, one of their security lines has been converted to the full body scan. Had I been a terrorist, I likely would have paid more attention and just not gone through this line. Since I am not, I got my first full body scan. Research scientists have suggested that even one of these scans can cause long-term mutations in DNA and lead to the development of cancer, but I am using the George Carlin theory of more carcinogens generate more cancer, and the cancers will just eat each other.

As a matter of habit, flying five – ten times per year, when I go through security I place my driver’s license and boarding pass(es) in my back pocket. With a metal detector this is never an issue, and surprisingly my new belt that is a fabric weave with two small square hoops for the buckle does not trigger the metal detector. NOW we have full body scan technology, where it was necessary for the fairly well-humored TSA agent to grope my right butt cheek in order to ensure that I did not have explosives or weapons.

For perspective, a walk-through metal detector and wand cost well under $10,000 per unit and requires one TSA agent to oversee use. A full-body scanner costs over $100,000 per unit and requires at least three TSA agents to oversee use. One or two agents work in an unseen location viewing the passenger’s genitals and giggling, then a male and female security officer are present to do the intimate pat down of the genitals. On the upside, the female TSA agent was cute, on the down side they do not accept requests for a pat down. Lest you believe I am being sarcastic about the genital pat-down, the gentleman ahead of me in line was told, “there is an area of concern on the scan. I am going to feel across your waist, down the zipper of your pants, and across.”

So for ten times the cost, you need at least three times as many workers, and this advanced security technology can’t tell the difference between a thin plastic ID card with a magnetic strip and explosives. Additionally, no screening was done of the ID. Terrorists, take note: Driver’s License bomb.

On a side note, I must express appreciation to the Salt Lake City airport for compromising federal regulations and allowing me to take my four ounces of contraband caramel through security, and the Memphis airport (where the hiring process clearly involves rudeness training) for being oblivious to the four ounces of mystery goo in an unmarked container and wrapped in a shopping bag but stopping the belt to dispose of my twenty ounce Coke Zero (purchased at the airport twelve hours earlier.)

The more I look at the post-nine-eleven world, the more I see money and technology being dumped into solutions that are all about smoke and mirrors.  They don’t increase the detection of explosives, they don’t deter terrorism, they just route more government money into a private industry and increase the power of government agencies to disregard the constitution and bill of rights. We see it in airports, we see it in the “war on drugs”, we see it in the telecom industry with increased latitude on wiretapping and records subpoenas.

Recently, Ed started writing a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) Friday series, detailing examples and stories from the world of Public Information. The article mostly deals with the Michigan FOIA, however parallels can be drawn for other states (such as Florida’s Sunshine Laws) and the Federal government.

It’s a great read. This week, Ed discusses how to write a FOIA request. Check out the post at http://www.annarbor.com/news/government/foia-friday-how-to-write/.

The album is none other than:

Christmas in the Stars aka The Star Wars Christmas Album

From Wikipedia:

The album is notable for featuring the first professional recording of Jon Bon Jovi (credited as John Bongiovi), who sings lead vocals on the song “R2-D2 We Wish You A Merry Christmas.” Jon’s cousin Tony Bongiovi co-produced the album and ran the recording studio, where Jon was working sweeping floors at the time.

In order to “accelerate the introduction of compelling open source innovations,” Sun will be restructuring the company into new business groups:

• Application Platform Software (JAVA, MySQL, etc.)
• Systems Platforms (Solaris Virtualization, Open Storage, etc.)
• Cloud Computing & Developer Platforms (StarOffice, NetBeans, etc.)

The restructuring aims to remove costs by 700 – 800 million dollars each year. Of course, there is also a human price tag — a reduction of 15 – 18% of the workforce (about 5000 – 6000 employees).

Sun provides popular open source software and promotes itself as a leader in the open source community. Popular Free, OpenSource Sun products include:

• Java
• MySQL Database Software
• OpenSolaris OS
• OpenOffice (Compare to MS Office)

Although the FCC does not have a track record of following public opinion, it never hurts to try. Listening to one person’s voice versus a heavy lobbyist? Chances are very, very, very small that our Mr. Smith’s opinion will prevail — but then again, without voicing at all, the chance is zero.

Proposals range from taxing a flat fee of $1.00/month per telephone number to a cap of fees at $0.0007 per minute.

Our proposal is no taxes on telecommunication. Period.