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Okay, so I realize that this contest was for kids...but not only is the selection ridiculous looking, it's bordering on socially irresponsible:

1) FIRST OF ALL, the seagull looks like it's on drugs (and loving it might i add) with his "Drugs are A OK" hand signal

2) SECONDLY, he's holding a fish that everyone who saw it knows is gonna be devoured by this bird with a bad case of the munchies, and the fish's smile is disturbing (side note: if the fish looked more like Bill Gates, then you might be getting somewhere)

3) THIRDLY, the gull and the fish look a hell of a lot like that little Disney movie, and the Disney Law trolls might come after you. And even if they didn't, with plagiarism running rampant in our school systems, promoting such a blatant rip-off is negligent at best.

Okay, so let's recap...this mascot is endorsing drug usage, plagiarism...and savage consumption of your smiling prey...yep, sounds like an education program to me...OOooo...perfect.

Visit www.DailyWireless.com for wireless industry news, research, insight, and analysis.

That's a pretty in-depth study, with over 1,000,000 scans, makes the results fairly strong. It's good to see all this combatting of spyware.

It really doesn't surprise me to hear that the average computer has 27.8 instances of spyware on it. Most users have no idea what they're doing; I constantly remove that kind of junk from my family's computers.

Earthlink has been doing a good job of fighting spam and spyware on the internet. I think it's a valiant effort.

Can you even begin to think about the privacy implications of something like this? I know that I will never buy a car with RFID tracking capabilities built into it! What happens when the government agencies that don't care so much about your rights--CIA, FBI, NSA, police, whatever--decide that this system can be very useful for them? There's a million things that could go wrong

This is the article that I originally posted to slashdot.

From this link:

Nokia's Patent Department is collecting signatures from CTOs for this letter in support the "working document" of the EU Council "Working Party on Intellectual Property", a group of patent administrators who run the European Patent Office. The letter portrays this document as a "balanced compromise" which "takes the Parliament's concerns into account" and says that this is needed in order to assure that electric household applicances, medical technology etc do not become unpatentable. Thereby the letter drafters deceive both their signatories (CTOs who usually do not read the directive proposals) as well as their readers.

It disturbs me to see Nokia taking taking the role that they have been. Their statements seem to be quite misleading, and it is clear that they will have significant gain from software patents. With all the heat they've been getting lately, you would think that they might try to take it easy on such controversial issues. Either way, I am fully against software patents.

As others have posted, the 800Mhz band is far more valuable to operators than the 1900 band. This is due to building penetration benefits that the 800 spectrum provides...

The reason that Verizon, et al, is so upset, is that they are offering new frequency to Nextel. From Daily Wireless: "Verizon Wireless remains ready to participate in an immediate auction of a nationwide license for the 10 megahertz (specifically the 1910-1915/1990-1995 MHz)."

According to the FCC Website: "Broadband PCS is allocated spectrum ranging from 1850-1910 MHz and 1930-1990 MHz. "

This would be a new subblock of the PCS band, that could be used _nationwide_, which is why Verizon has said it is worth 5 billion. Also, every time the FCC has released new spectrum for phone services, they've auctioned off those new services to the highest bidder.

I think the issue is pretty straightforward, and if their service is interfering with emergency bands then it needs to be reallocated. The good question is, what's fair for them afterwards? It doesn't seem like such a move should put them out of business, but some are trying to do so.

The FCC couldn't make up their minds at the last meeting, will things change at the next? I have a feeling this could get pushed around for a while.

This sounds like the way news should be to me, I know I'd rather hear news straight then with the media's crooked twist. I'll be interested to see how this plays out into the future, when I can stream uncensored news to my wrist watch. 2010 though... I hope it happens sooner.