Human rights; do we still have any???
Some time ago I spent a couple of days in London together with Adelina and a few good friends. Despite the fact that London is huge and most people seems to be very busy I was still impressed by the care and hospitality of the average Londoner. There was only one small detail I wasn’t quite happy with. Coming from a small country (Norway) where you can go unnoticed almost anywhere I was stunned when I discovered all the CCD cameras.
As a matter of fact, you will have a hard time finding any part of central London where you are not a “movie star”! An internal Metropolitan Police report was released in August 2009 that admitted less than 1 crime was solved per year for every 1000 CCTV cameras in London. This comes as a major blow to the UK police who spent £500 million between 1996 and 2006 installing 4 million cameras nationwide, with 1 million in London alone. Despite claims that each citizen might be seen on 300 cameras a day, perhaps half of all CCTV camera footage is unsuitable to convict criminals in court. The British public is crying foul, the police force is scrambling to access the problem, and everyone is watching to see what the worlds most recorded country is going to do next.
Some time ago I wrote about Police set to step up hacking of home PCs where the average British police officer can brake into your PC if he is suspecting that you might be doing something unlawful. He doesn’t need a court order, not even the approval of his superiors.
A couple of new laws has been passed lately, laws that force your Internet provider to monitor all traffic and keep the records for two years. They claim it is for our safety, yours and mine, to protect us from all kinds of terrible threats.
Have you ever been surfing the net utilizing the free services provided by your local coffee store or gasoline station or hotel or any other place where some friendly person want to give you free access to the rest of the world? Or maybe you stumbled over a private WiFi connection where the owner didn’t bother to secure it and thereby granted you free access? According to UK legislators this practice has be banned and the people providing free access to the Internet should be treated as criminals. According to the same legislators the unprotected WiFi hot-spots are being used by copyright pirates and therefore has to be banned! Don’t you just love those legislators who have nothing better to do than to deprive the rest of us from free access to the net?
The Norwegian police will be given a few billion kroner (local currency, 8 kroner= 1€) as funding for a new computer system. Nothing strange about that, even the cops has to be upgraded from time to time, right?
Well, not quite. This new system is not only improving the capabilities of the Norwegian police to look for criminals, it actually takes every incident where the police is involved or informed about and makes pictures and information available to every police officer in Europe! And the Norwegian police have access to the same kind of information from their colleagues throughout the European continent! According to the Norwegian Ministry of Justice the civil rights of the individual person will be better protected with this new system!?! And maybe, just maybe they will be able to capture a criminal from time to time, just in time to defend their Orwellian system!
And for once I am not talking about the size around my waist! The last couple of months I have been working on a new concept, a network of Partners all over the world. As a small company you meet all kinds of problems such as high prices, costly freight, none or very limited influence on the products that you are marketing. While the large corporations have the resources to develop fancy equipment carrying their name and logo the small companies is left with the rest. 
But guess what, we are about to change that! With the support of a lean organization handling both ordering as well as shipment to the various Partners we are able to cut cost and grow influence. We still need more members in order to have a real impact, at the moment we have Partners in Norway, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, France and USA (east coast). And another four companies is going to join within a week or so. I believe there is strength in numbers, and we will use our strength to the benefit of our customers.
Who could have known that David’s basement project would become so popular that it changed the entire price structure for large (and obsolete) PBX manufacturers and finally put the PBX within reach of even the smallest companies. From an average price of $5000 or more you can now have the same features packed in the size of an ATA for $135! 
The IP-04 is no longer alone, it has grown to an entire family of PBX’s with no end in sight. And they are 
Some important news for 
and one Server Blade. Each PBX blade has a tested capacity of more than 50 concurrent VoIP calls, and we have Blades with E1/T1, Analogue and BRI technology.
The PBX can operate with or without the Server Blade and with any combination of the PBX Blades. And more Blades are currently under development.