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I signed up with Vonage as I figured I'd give them a shot in my search for reasonably priced telephony. Overall, the service isn't terrible, although it's hardly stellar either. About one out of every 20 calls gets one-way voice, and it's a bit choppy. Really on-par for what you'd expect from a cheap VOIP service. Problem is, Vonage isn't really a cheap VOIP service. $25/month is cheap for a decent phone service, but it's pretty spendy in the world of VOIP.

As a side-note, I should add that the hardware device they provided is placed between your internet device (cable modem or whatever) and your router so as to bypass any firewall-related issues. A good idea, except the device has a tendency to die under load. Torrent transfers will cause it to reset.

In any case, I was disappointed with Vonage, but not terribly unhappy with them. In the end I decided they simply weren't what I was looking for, so I decided to cancel and try another service. Today I called them to cancel, and after jumping through a number of hoops to get to an agent, I was set to terminate my service on friendly terms.

Unfortunately, Vonage has apparently decided that customers who terminate probably won't be back (I'd agree with them in this assessment, by the way), so they might as well gouge them for what they can before they get out the door.

I was informed that because I terminated before a year's worth of service (I've been using it since February), I'd need to pay $79.99 for the hardware device. When I protested that they'd sold me a reconditioned device which was advertised on the site as costing $10, they told me that this cost was "shipping charges" and that I was given a "rebate" for the full cost of a new device that required that I as well as an early termination fee of $39.99 that makes the total cost come to around $120.

Now, the early termination fee is indeed in their terms of service. I did scan the terms when I signed up, but apparently I didn't read the pages of boilerplate closely enough. Fine. I resent them for not being more upfront about it, but I'm willing to accept blame for being duped.

What is pissing me off is the $80 they want to charge me for the hardware device. When I signed up, I had a choice of getting a new device or a reconditioned device. The new device cost $79.99. The reconditioned device cost $9.99. I've never had many issues with reconditioned devices and the price was right, so I chose the latter. Now they inform me that the $9.99 was for shipping (it wasn't) and that I was given a $79.99 rebate that was contingent on my using their service for a full year. This simply isn't true. This would mean that the new device and the reconditioned device essentially cost the same. When I spoke to the manager, she insisted that this was acceptable because the reconditioned device was "as good as a new one". Huh? I'm sure it is. That isn't the point. The point is that it isn't a new one. The second point is that I was charged $9.99 for it, not $79.99. Further adding to my aggravation here is that they no longer offer this particular device as reconditioned so I cannot confirm it on the website.

In any case, Vonage is crap service for the price they charge and I just wanted to save some other poor sucker from getting sucked into their little scam.

Design... is an attempt to make a contribution through change. When no contribution is made or can be made, the only process available for giving the illusion of change is 'styling.'

—George Nelson

I read this in the intro to the Revised Report on the Kernel Programming Language:

Programming languages should be designed not by piling feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and restrictions that make additional features appear necessary.

It seems obvious, but so few languages in common use today give more than lip service to this philosophy.

As a corollary, I'd add that if you feel especially clever about some twisting of data structures to solve a programming problem, chances are good that you've uncovered a weakness in your programming language.

This is the gut feeling I left Python with. The Python object model has become disproportionately powerful (with many complex subtleties and subtle complexities) to help overcome weaknesses elsewhere in the language. Interesting problems invariably end up being solved via class magic as there are few other powerful constructs in the language.

If you're considering an Asterisk installation, take an extra few minutes to consider Freeswitch instead. You won't be sorry.

I decided to release the new Nginx wiki early as it is working great and I'm tired of trying to manage spam in MoinMoin (must every action take a dozen clicks and page loads to complete?)

I shouldn't have been surprised, but MediaWiki is quite small and fast. The new wiki only uses around ~96MB of the 256MB RAM available in the VPS (that includes all userspace processes: Nginx, PostgreSQL, PHP/MediaWiki, etc). That's a refreshing change from the hundreds of megabytes MoinMoin would suck down (although I blame much of that on Python 2.4).

Anyway, the new wiki is here. Enjoy!