Hahahahaha !

SIP a single RFC? Can you imagine the number of SIP related RFCs and associated drafts? SIP WAS simple, it is now a mess. Even if we restrict to RFC 3261, if you can asnwer the following questions you are already a MASTER in SIP:

- what is the difference between request URI and the "To" header? Are they redundant?
- what is the difference between the "Contact" header, the "P-Asserted-Identity" header and the "From" header?
- what is the loose routign mechanism and what is the relationship with the "Via" headers?
- what is the need for "from tags" and 'to tags".

If we go a bit further:

- Why is SIP/SIMPLE do we need to introduce an "etag" and why not resuing the callid ?
- etc.

We are a company that is based on SIP and very in favor of this protocol mostly form market reasons but one should not be blind: this protocol has its problems like any other. At the beginning, it was sooo "simple" that it could not even support "announced transfer" or line supervision which is a must for corporate telephony then the real people jumped in and added what it takes to make it usable and added complexity.

Even the big telco that are hated so much in this forum jumped in and created the IMS standards based on SIP (under the ETSI Umbrella = European ...). They took it to the next level of complexity but they NEEDED IT because they are the guys who enable you and me to call from A to B without even thinking about how this is done (since more that 100 years).

If you imagine one second that you can only read ONE RFC to start working on the real SIP world, you are VERY WRONG (see RFC 3581, RFC2327, RFC 3264, RFC 3550 + all the RFC dedicated to packetization, SIP/SIMPLE, MESSAGING, ....)

Now if you compare SIP with H.323, I agree that initially, one can see a lot of advantages.
- H323 has a stupid protocol layering
- slow dialog establishment, etc?
and although they have improved this, this is still not perfect but they have advandages as well:

- camera control and double video streams are a reality in H.323 world wher in SIP it is still on paper only and badly documented.
- screen and application sharing are a reality on H.323 world. They are non existant in SIP
- H.323 has defined a clean standard for NAT traversal where SIP has a set of "best practices" spread in various RFC (keepalive, rport, symetric RTP, etc.).

if you cannot read the ITU standards that is basically because:
- most of them need to be bought
- they have a strong culture of separating the function and the encoding, which renders them difficult to grasp for field hackers
- ITU protocols are often based on ASN.1 BER encoding and therefore are compact an binaries and cannot be test with a simple TELNET connection, which seems to trouble a lot of Internet gurus.

Emmanuel
http://www.ives.fr/

I disagree with the previous posts. In that case, technology matters.

A good city wide network should

- handle proper user density
- have a good coverage
- handle multi-media application such as audio / video over IP
- terminal should have a good battery life and reasonable costs

Please note that

- Wifi is certainly not designed to handle user density unless the number of access point is high. Until 802.11n, all users share the same radio channel in a pseudo random way. No frequency allocation,
- the above characteristics makes current wifi standard unfit for true bidirectionnal application such as video over IP as we do not have a true two way simultaneous communications. Even with 802.n, the number of available frequency is so few that only a few people would really be able to beneficiate the proper quality. This does not match the need of high density areas.
- it is a known fact that Wifi has not been designed with battery life in mind. A lot of wifi equipped terminal makers are struggling with this issue.

When comparing the other potential tehcnologies : 802.20e (Wimax) and 4G / LTE, there is no much choice

- 4G / LTE has the expected characteristics but is so complex that it is out of reach of medium sized organisation.
- only Wimax stand a chance.

Then you have to deal with safty regulation on radio protection.

Yes, technology does matter in that case.

http://www.ives.fr/

Except that in the book, it was in base 11 and the figure was starting and ending with a line of 0 as well.

Yeah,

They produced Kazaa the mother of all malware

Then Skype which is wonderful (and they promised to to be malware free this time) but they sold it without selling the core technology so they basically screwed the buyer (eBayer)

Then they push the big red button ...

Wow ...

The're good but I dont like them. The only positive thing is that ebay can now see how it feels when having a problem with a buyer.

Exactly. Assuming that Theora is better in terms of quality, HTML5 designers and implementor need to understand that some level of backward compatibility is needed so HTML5 can reach the masses and not repain a geek feature.

Making ogg / theora mandatory is not the issue BUT

First, we need the tag to be able to render FLV in both VP6 / VP7 and H.264 contents.

Then of course support MP4 containers / 3GP2 files for mobile developments.

As a transitional phase, a plugin system would allow any codec provider to add support for a particular codec / container.

And finally, would it be good as a fight to ask for more favorable licencing terms on H.264 codec ?

Sorry to disappoint you but outskirt is the standard translation for French banlieue, which makes the whole thing less sexy.

On the other hand, if you insist on this side, I may advise you to have a look at this geek's girlfriend advise site if you read some French.

Cheers.

These are very good arguments ...

I was more or less in favor of HADOPI (not the police side of it but the fact that it was a way to punish minor offences without going the full trial / fine even prison stuff). Now I must agree more or less with the parent post.

By rejecting HADOPI, this means that copying digital music, pictures and text is legal as long as it is released to the public.

- One alternative business model proposed was the global licence.
- are they others?

You have to be aware of the very deep consequences of permitting free copy of existing work as long as it can be digitalize. What limit should we put to this new freedom?

If we do not put any limit:

1- for artist, they will be bound to make live performances to earn some money which is a good thing. However to be able to live, a large chunk of them will "sell" their services to advertisment copanies or marketing companies. Music will become either a free art or a marketing addons.

1a - iTune music store may lower the price but not disapear as it provides a distribution service but a Deezer and other free alternative will become dominant.

2- Classical music hum ... fewer symphonic orchestra

3- what about painting and photograhies? This mean that digital copies of pictures.

4- How will be movies financed if they can be legally leaked to the Web? Is a global licence enough to cover this? Does it mean that the movie producers will be directly paid by the government?

5- Software will be able to be duplicated for free. No Microsoft anymore. Great for Linux fans but what about the general public? Software product will disapear. SaaS and Open Source + paid service will become the dominant model as this will the only source of revenue.

6 - newspaper will dies more quickly. Is it a problem?

I still beleive that there must be some limit to this copy freedom. But which one?

Yes and no ...

First of all, I would agree to say that some of his former public behavior and comment are at least displaced. A person obtaining such a position should be able to control himself. Secondly, his way of locking power puy putting friends everywhere and trying to be saturate the medias and communications with his personal presence is very perverse as it gives the impression the French regime is slowly turning into an autocratic one, leaving democratic principle behind.

Despite all this, some aspects of his tenure are ignored in your post.

You might remember former government with nostalgia, I don't: Chirac might be remembered as a nice human guy that had the vision to oppose to Irak war but he was also an old style politician, channeling public monies into his political party (when he was mayor of Paris) and getting unclear counterparts. His government was prerry good at pointing some fundamental French weakness but did nothing serious to address them.

At least, Sarkozy is trying. His govt initiated major reforms regarding retirement, hostpital, uiniversty and everybody knows that it is very important for the country. Even the so despited HADOPI law has the merit to put on the table an issue that is most of the time discussed only in geek circles.

You have to recognise also that there is a poisonous atmosphere in French public opinon where Sarkozy's massive media presence (even in lefitst press) has generated a massive rejection. The problem with this is that people are unable to think clearly and discuss calmly about positive or negatve aspects of the reforms (and there are actually positive ones in my view). Your angry post is a living proof of this and a lot of people do the same. I blame Sarko directly for this reaction: it is the result of his communication strategy that leave no space for anybody.

Finally, I feel very inconfortable with the way that your post or other strong minded opinons about the French president. Political views are sided but ought to be more polite. Politness put a necessary distance that enable to have a clearer view of the real issues. And those are not related with the size of the head of state nor with the fact that he is qualified to work this toilet paper.

Finally we can see here the limits of the so called "Internet Model" were company provide services for free in return for advertisments. Maybe the entry of devevelopping world in the Web arena will promote back the old reasonnable model where you actually sell something (a good or a service) and customers buy if it meets their need with at the proper price point