{"id":285,"date":"2005-02-20T22:00:10","date_gmt":"2005-02-21T03:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=285"},"modified":"2005-03-16T07:56:00","modified_gmt":"2005-03-16T12:56:00","slug":"nekkid-electronics-pr0n-ohnoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=285","title":{"rendered":"Nekkid Electronics Pr0n!  OHNOES!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/dta-external.jpg\" alt=\"dta-310\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Well, I have cancelled my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.packet8.net\">Packet8<\/a> phone service, and switched back to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vonage.com\">Vonage<\/a>.  Yeah, Packet8 is about $5 cheaper, but unfortunately, their voice quality isn&#8217;t the best, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prnewswire.com\/cgi-bin\/stories.pl?ACCT=109&#038;STORY=\/www\/story\/01-27-2005\/0002908933&#038;EDATE=\">their financials<\/a> (in a nutshell, years of straight losses and only 40,000 subscribers) have been worrying me for some time.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>To add insult to injury, a sure sign of a company in trouble is one that changes the terms of service on its customers without telling them, and forcing them to adhere to committments they never made.  Packet8 originally had a six-month service committment requirement, with a termination fee of sorts that was $59 if a customer cancelled before his or her six months were up.  However!  Even if you cancelled before your six months, you could get a refund on your $59 cancellation fee IF you returned their internet phone adapter (pictured above).  I had just come up on the end of my six month period when I decided it was time to move on.<\/p>\n<p>Wellllll&#8230; Packet8 at some point changed the TOS to <em>extend<\/em> the minimum term from six months to one year.  Further, you can no longer get a refund on that fee if you return the box&#8230; in fact, it doesn&#8217;t seem that they want their now-useless (to me, anyway) box returned at all.   So, much to my chagrin, I just bought a $60 paperweight.  And considering how light the box is, it doesn&#8217;t even do that job very well.<\/p>\n<p>So, seeing as I just bought myself a useless <strong>SIP END POINT ADAPTER<\/strong> (edited to satisfy various gutless anonymous l33t morons), and it IS mine now, I figured I would take it apart and show any curious folks what&#8217;s inside. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/images\/dta_pcbfront.jpg\">View of the inside, PCB, Front (hi res image)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/images\/dta_pcbback.jpg\">View of the inside, PCB, Back (hi res image)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Not much to look at really.  But it might satisfy the curiosity of anyone who&#8217;s wanted to see the internals, and perhaps infer how this device might be used with a different VOIP service.<\/p>\n<p>The unit, by the way, is re-assembled and appears to continue functioning, althought service is disconnected.  Packet8 MAY be willing to establish new service with this unit, but I&#8217;m not sure.  If anyone wants it, please leave a comment. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, I&#8217;m enjoying the <a href=\"\/images\/PAP2.jpg\">quite tiny new router<\/a> that Vonage is offering for free. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Packet8 DTA-310 phone adapter, dissected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets-widgits-and-whatzits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}