Pros And Cons Of Getting VOIP Right Now
You have a telephone, right? You have a computer, right? You want to save money, right? BAM, you are a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) candidate. It is inevitable that VOIP will replace traditional telephone service at some point. The only question is when should you jump in?
VOIP is quickly becoming more reliable and receiving wider acceptance. In fact, phone companies are already taking advantage of the technology to provide cheaper long distance rates. Like any emerging technology, however, there are kinks in the system that are still being worked out.
Advantages VOIP has many advantages over regular phone service. One primary advantage is its low cost. If you have a fast Internet connection (DSL or cable), you can make PC-to-PC phone calls anywhere in the world FREE. PC-to-phone connections usually have a charge, but probably still cheaper than regular phone service. You can sign up with a VOIP service provider for a monthly fee and get unlimited calls within a specified geographic area. For example, some VOIP services in the United States allow connections anywhere in North America for no extra charge. International calls are charged at a modest rate.
Another advantage is its portability. You can make and receive phone calls wherever there is a broadband connection by simply signing in to your VOIP account. This makes VOIP as convenient as e-mail. When you're traveling, you simply pack a headset or Internet phone; then you can talk to family or colleagues for next to nothing.
Phone-to-phone VOIP is also portable. Internet phones are small and light enough to take anywhere. When you sign up with a VOIP service provider, the Internet phone or adaptor used by that service is assigned a unique number. This 'phone number' remains valid, even if your VOIP service is in Los Angeles and you're connected to the Internet in London. When plugged into a broadband connection, anywhere in the world, you can make and receive calls as though you were at home .
Features like call forwarding, call waiting, voicemail, caller ID and 3way-calling, are included with Internet telephone at no extra charge. While you're talking on the phone, you can send pictures and documents at the same time.
Disadvantages There are a few glitches that still interfere with the technology's broad acceptance by the public. Lack of continuous service during power outages and emergency calling are the 2 biggest hurdles.
Conventional phone service continues by the current supplied through the phone lineduring a blackout. This isn't possible with Internet phones. When the power goes, there goes VOIP service. Battery backups and power generators that provide electricity are the current solutions to this problem.
A major concern involves emergency 911 calls. For the most part, VOIP services aren't useful in emergencies. Traditional phone equipment can trace the locations of calls. Emergency calls are diverted to the nearest call center where the operator can identify your location, in the event you can't talk. With VOIP, there is no way currently to determine where Internet calls are originating. There is an emerging standard called e911 however, which is attempting to solve this limitation.
VOIP also has sound quality and reliability problems. Data sent across the Internet usually arrives at its destination scrambled. E-mail and documents can be reassembled in the correct order when it arrives. Voice data also arrives scrambled, but it's more complicated because of the real-time nature of VOIP. Some data packets may have to be dropped when they don't arrive in time, in order to make voice connections with the least delay. This can cause brief silences in the audio stream.
Distance and speed of the connection determine the amount of data lost. Some networks receive more traffic and thus are more likely to cause audio dropouts. One way to provide high quality audio connections is to create dedicated data paths.
With the incredible amount of work dedicated to VOIP, these disadvantages will no doubt be resolved withinin the next 2 years. It is expected that by then VOIP will have widespread consumer acceptance.
Why You Need a College Degree
A college degree can benefit an individual in many different ways. Some of these include higher income, greater knowledge, more potential and better job opportunities. Not all of these benefits resulting from a college degree may be immediately obvious.
Obviously, one of the main reasons that people want to have a college degree is because of the increased earnings opportunities that it brings. It is not guaranteed but, in general, a person with a college education will earn more money than a colleague without a college education. A college education tends to give a person greater knowledge and this will increase their levels of understanding of new developments in their chosen field.
Another benefit of a college education is that it develops a person's ability to think abstractly and critically as well as improves their ability to express their thoughts clearly both orally and in writing. It is also widely believed that a college education helps people become a responsible citizen by giving them a greater understanding of their community, country and global issues. If not achieving anything quite as grand as this, a college education certainly does help people become more self-sufficient.
The fact is that the processes involved in obtaining a college education are very different from those a person may have experienced in high school. Even if a person genuinely hated high school life and felt that they were unable to learn properly under those conditions they should still consider attending a college.
It is a good idea to visit colleges when the students are there or at an open day so you can chat to current students and ask about the differences between high school and college life. There are so many ways to obtain a college education these days that there really are very few excuses for people to not give themselves the opportunity.
Going away to a different area to receive a college education has a lot of benefits on its own, including teaching a person who may be away from home for the first time how to be, as mentioned before, self-sufficient. This not only gives the person the bonuses associated with having a college education, but also prepares them for the eventual move away from home.
Of course, if you are adverse to the idea of moving away from home, for whatever reason, then you can still obtain a college education by attending a college in your home town or area. If you are already working then you can attend colleges on a part-time basis. If you have problems fitting in scheduled college classes around your work or family commitments then there are a growing number of distance learning courses that can help you receive a college education by fitting it into your own routine. These can be either correspondence courses or via the internet.
Strengthened security for teachers?
"Security for teachers in far south to be strengthened, says education minister"
CLICK HERE for the complete article.
This is in response to the recent fatal attacks on teachers in the deep south. For more info, see the article in the previous post. As with any brilliant plan proposed by the ministry -- I'll believe it when I see it.
Yet another teacher victimized in southern unrest ...
Some scary things going on down south -- and I was actually once considering looking for a teaching job down there!
From
The Bangkok Post, 8-Feb-2006
Another teacher was killed in Yala yesterday, the fifth attack on a teacher in the province in less than a week, as the prime minister announced he would visit the area in the next few days. Rangsarit Dokmai, 42, of Thammawitthaya Foundation School, was travelling home from school on a motorbike when he was shot dead near a fresh market in the province's urban centre about 9.30am by two teenagers on another motorcycle.Rangsarit, who converted to Islam from Buddhism, was the fifth teacher to be killed at the school which was founded by Sapae-ing Baso, who tops a most-wanted list of separatist insurgents.Mr Sapae-ing has a 10-million-baht bounty on his head, the largest the government has offered for any alleged insurgent leader.''Rangsarit was Buddhist, then converted to Islam after he was recruited from Bangkok by Sapae-ing to teach here in 1988,'' a colleague said.Several teachers and students at Thammawitthaya, a high school of 6,000 students which teaches both Islam and general subjects, have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the insurgency, police said.Mr Sapae-ing has been named by security agencies as a leader of the BRN Coordinate, one of the groups behind the violence in the region, and they say he is believed to be hiding in Malaysia.Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday he plans to visit the restive South this week to offer moral support to the teachers.''I will go there to give the teachers moral support and inspect the situation,'' he said in Chiang Mai. It will be the prime minister's first visit to the violence-wracked southern provinces since October.Rangsarit was killed after he and other teachers took students to an anti-violence rally on Monday in Yala, where more than 130 schools suspended classes this week.On Friday, three teachers were shot and seriously injured when a pick-up they were riding in was attacked by gunmen. On Monday, a school director in Narathiwat was wounded in an ambush.There was also a rumour that militants planned to kill 40 other teachers.Sanya Suwannapho, chairman of the Yala Teachers Federation, said the federation met yesterday to discuss the murder of Rangsarit. Schools would be allowed to extend their suspension of classes until the situation returns to normal.Pol Lt-Gen Adul Saengsingkaew, commissioner of Police Region 9, said security agencies met yesterday to adjust safety plans for teachers following the first school closures in Yala.Meanwhile, a mobile phone-triggered bomb targeting a police patrol unit went off in Narathiwat's Sungai Kolok district yesterday. No injuries were reported.The bomb, hidden in a bush opposite a coffee shop, exploded shortly after three police officers left the shop.
