One source at the Knight Center for Digital Excellence notes, "The new network owners are supposed to have a much more sustainable business model." Supposed to. Later, "Network Acquisition Company, which acquired the network, hasn't talked publicly about the details of its new plan, but it has hinted that its strategy will differ from EarthLink's." Hasn't talked publicly. Then, "[NAC and Tropos] spokespeople said the companies would talk more about the network later this month when details of the new business plan are ready." Huh.

Reardon explains digital divide issues and looks into what Wireless Philadelphia has been up to, although doesn't note that delays in EarthLink's deployment and other factors have led to just a few hundred individuals that have been assisted by the non-profit; numbers may have changed, but that was as of a few months ago. Still, Wireless Philadelphia has apparently diversified its funding sources--Reardon cites 30 now.

I think we're still coming off the doldrums of August.

First of all, I learned the Thai alphabet nearly 20 years ago, so I have have a pretty good foundation for the Thai language.   I can read (slowly) and speak better than 99.99+ percent of all foreigners in Thailand; so, I thought it was time to redirect my career to a “new challenge” in the business climate of Thailand.   

This was no small decision.  Your career changes dramatically when you give up a successful consulting practice in the US and dive into business in a foreign land for a new challenge.  I can frankly tell you that often the challenge is sometimes overwhelming.    It is quite difficult as a foreigner to do business in Thailand.

First of all, it is not legal for foreigners to own land in Thailand.  Foreigners can ”own” land using a variety of legal loopholes, proxy owners and shell companies; but all of this is risky and not advised.  Foreigners lose a lot of money coming to Thailand and attempting to buy land.  Some get lucky, but the entire process of foreigners buying and selling land is quite risky.

Foreigners can own condos, under certain conditions, but this results in  inflated prices for condos in Thailand that are traded in an artificial market place.   Condos that are up-to-par with condos in the US can easily cost more than condos in major cities in the US.  Hence, the cost of living is not as cheap as some might believe.

Business can best be described as “protectism” where the government has placed many barriers to entry to foreigners working in Thailand.     Every foreigner must have a work permit and these work permits are expensive and time consuming to maintain.   If you own a business you must pay high professional service fees for auditors to perform annual and semiannual audits even if your business has no income yet.   Firms in Thailand charge thousands of dollars for these ”audits”.      

In addition, if you operate a business, you must have a place of business, so you are forced to lease office space.   Foreigners from the US must be paid a minimum of 50,000 Thai Baht per month, so the government will take 10 percent of that each month as their share of tax withholdings.   Therefore, to start a company, you will pay a lot of money in startup fees, permits, tax, leases, visas, etc.  The entire system is designed to secure money from you, even if you do not have a penny of incoming revenue.

Of course, generating incoming revenue can be quite difficult in a climate of protectionism.   In Thailand, it is easy when you are spending money.  When you are trying to generate income from Thailand, as a foreigner the challenge can seem overwhelming at times.   Many foreigners here give up because the barriers to business here are very high.

On top of all these challenges, which I have not described in detail, is the overall global business slowdown combined with a climate of political instability, which I am sure you have seen in the news.  

Most people I know say it is better to be a tourist here.   Being a tourist is completely different.  Money flows from you, so life in Thailand is fun and friendly, complimentary to the “Land of Smiles” you have heard about.     However, when you are working to have money flow the other direction, flow to you versus away from you, you don’t see the “Land of Smiles” as tourists experience.

Without getting into too many details, I can simply say that a foreigner doing business in Thailand experiences protectionism and, to a certain degree, discrimination, and sometimes I wonder if coming here for a “business challenge” was a good idea.    I was seeking a “new challenge” and I got more than I bargained for!

In a future post on business in Thailand I will discuss issues regarding how little value is placed in intellectual property in Thailand and how this adversely impacts professional services.    I will also touch on how this lack of regard for intellectual property impacts a consulting practice.   Also, I will touch on some cultural differences in how Thais appear to view teamwork, which is very different than in the US.

First of all, let’s ground the discussion a bit by translating “smart order routing” to “rule-based message routing” since in this application “smart”  translates to “using rules” and “order” translates to “message”.    Basically, Mark (and other “new on the routing scene” stream processing players) argue that rule-based message routing is CEP.  I will argue that routing is not even close to CEP.  Here is why,

Let’s take a look at a router on the backbone of the global Internet.   A backbone router has very sophisticated software developed over many decades.   These routers run sophisticated, mature algorithms to determine how to route messages (packets) and use these algorithms to build complex routing tables. 

In addition, these routers process messages (packets) from countless sources and route messages (packets) to countless destinations.  Using some of the terms in early posts (above), there is a great “confluence of events” processed by routers.    Futhermore, there are normally quite complex authentication, authorization and other security parameters managed in a router, all in real time.   Routers do much more, but I don’t want to get too deep into routing in this post.

My point is that, without any doubt, global Internet routers process very “cloudy” “confluence of events” with much more sophistication than order routing applications.    However, we do not call Internet routing “CEP”, regardless of how many connections are processed or how much sophisticated processing occurs.  The reason is because the “C” in “CEP” defines a complexity that is at a higher abstraction than messaging and routing.

If you study the literature on CEP, some of which I posted recently, CEP was envisioned to solve complex event processing problems “on top of the routing layer” because the routing layer is a mature technology layer.  We can route, pure and simple.  Of course, we are always seeking faster, more scaleable and more secure routing. 

I admire some of the startups in the CEP/ESP/EP space for working hard to make money and for aggressively positioning their products and attempting to build market share.   However, issues surface when these same companies seem to believe they are the first companies to work in the event processing or message routing space and that they can define whatever they want as “complex event processing” as long as it benefits their sales targets.

There is no doubt that a router does much more sophisticated event processing than the new rule-based stream processing systems running continuous queries across streaming data.  There is no doubt that a router processes a complex “confluence of events”.   However, we don’t call routers “CEP”. 

We do not call routers “CEP” because CEP is about a higher level of knowledge processing.  CEP was created to detect the “complex events” that happen above the mediation and routing layer.     The literature and original examples on CEP are quite clear on this.

Synopsis:  Blue Box Special Edition #26: Astricon 2007 presentation - "Hacking and Attacking VoIP Systems: What you need to worry about"

Welcome to Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast Special Edition #26, a 55-minute podcast  from Dan York and Jonathan Zar covering VoIP security news, comments and opinions.   

Download the show here (MP3, 6MB) or subscribe to the RSS feed to download the show automatically. 

You may also listen to this podcast right now:

Show Content:

A year ago in September 2007, I (Dan York) spoke at Astricon 2007 in Arizona, USA, about "Hacking and Attacking VoIP Systems: What You Need To Worry About" My presentation covered a lot of the typical VoIP security threats, tools and best practices but also expanded a bit into specific security issues with Asterisk.  Please do keep in mind that it has been a year since this presentation and so some of the issues I mention have been addressed. (Astricon, for those who don't know, is an annual developer conference for those who work with the Asterisk open source telephony platform. Astricon 2008 is, in fact, coming up in about 3 weeks but I will not be attending this year.)

The slides for this talk are available from Slideshare:

(And yes, at some point I'll sync the audio with the slides.)

Production assistance on this Special Edition was provided by Michael Graves who had a very tough task given the poor quality of the recording that I gave to him!  Kudos to Michael for getting it to sound as good as it does.

Comments, suggestions and feedback are welcome either as replies to this post  or via e-mail to blueboxpodcast@gmail.com.  Audio comments sent as attached MP3 files are definitely welcome and will be played in future shows.  You may also call the listener comment line at either +1-415-830-5439 or via SIP to 'bluebox@voipuser.org' to leave a comment there. 

Thank you for listening and please do let us know what you think of the show.

Synopsis:  Blue Box Special Edition #26: Astricon 2007 presentation - "Hacking and Attacking VoIP Systems: What you need to worry about"

Welcome to Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast Special Edition #26, a 55-minute podcast  from Dan York and Jonathan Zar covering VoIP security news, comments and opinions.   

Download the show here (MP3, 6MB) or subscribe to the RSS feed to download the show automatically. 

You may also listen to this podcast right now:

Show Content:

A year ago in September 2007, I (Dan York) spoke at Astricon 2007 in Arizona, USA, about "Hacking and Attacking VoIP Systems: What You Need To Worry About" My presentation covered a lot of the typical VoIP security threats, tools and best practices but also expanded a bit into specific security issues with Asterisk.  Please do keep in mind that it has been a year since this presentation and so some of the issues I mention have been addressed. (Astricon, for those who don't know, is an annual developer conference for those who work with the Asterisk open source telephony platform. Astricon 2008 is, in fact, coming up in about 3 weeks but I will not be attending this year.)

The slides for this talk are available from Slideshare:

(And yes, at some point I'll sync the audio with the slides.)

Production assistance on this Special Edition was provided by Michael Graves who had a very tough task given the poor quality of the recording that I gave to him!  Kudos to Michael for getting it to sound as good as it does.

Comments, suggestions and feedback are welcome either as replies to this post  or via e-mail to blueboxpodcast@gmail.com.  Audio comments sent as attached MP3 files are definitely welcome and will be played in future shows.  You may also call the listener comment line at either +1-415-830-5439 or via SIP to 'bluebox@voipuser.org' to leave a comment there. 

Thank you for listening and please do let us know what you think of the show.