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A really good troll makes every word in his sentence a link so that his point seems valid.

You don't even have to visit the sites, just google something like "linux vs windows", grab relevent links and include then in your post. No one will read them anyways, and believe you because you provided plenty of background Info and reputable sources (computing.net included!). They will have to believe your Pro-Windows rant.

Linux isn't a Toy OS. it's used by google. Who provided you this Informative post :)

More likely would be further IBM involvement as a company well placed to benefit from being able to sell more hardware deeper into government.

Perhaps it is on the rise because ISPs are no longer required to reveal the identities of subpoenaed customers.
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0917newbill.html
for more details

I'm sorry, but you're really going to have to provide some hard figures to back up that claim.

Here are a few figures. Most of them are comments on the direct cost (costs to block and clean up), only a few discuss the indirect costs (network congestion, bandwidth waste and expenses, accidentally lost messages, cost of personal time, frustration, etc.)

US National Debt, as of today -- $6,915,186,083,875.25.

SUMMARY OF STATISTICS BELOW -- 40% of spam management [corporate costs] are over 90,000,000,000, lost business estimated at 30,000,000,000, identity theft and successful spam scams range from several hundred million dollars to tens of billions of dollars, individual spam managemnt time, effort, and resources globally is estimated at between 100 and 200 billion USD. Combined total so far, 15-40% of the national debt, each year [depending on cost of successful scams and identity theft]. Nobody dares estimate additional damages, such as slowed-down network responses for everything else. Nor do they discuss the added infrastructure that has been purchaced by everybody from telcos and cable companies to ISPs to Universities to corporations, for handling support calls, developing in-house solutions to spam problems, educating users, and other indirect costs. [Have you ever considered the costs of training seminars, in terms of paychecks for all attendees? What about building costs, phone lines, computers, networks, desks, security, cubicles, and paychecks for all the AOL, MCI, and other companies just because of all the 'what do I do with all this spam' calls?]

Case study: Company of roughly 500 employees, roughly a half-million dollars each year, and climbing.

NYT article "the economic cost is $874 a year for every office worker with an e-mail account, which multiplied by 100 million such workers amounts to about $87 billion for the United States." ... "In total, corporations will spend $120 million this year on antispam systems, Ferris Research said. (Or $635 million, if one would rather listen to Radicati.)" [Corporate cost, almost $90 BILLION USD this year.] ... "Yet for one of the largest Internet backbone carriers, MCI, the spam explosion has more indirect costs. MCI receives a half-million complaints a month that its network is being used to transmit spam" ... " Indeed, the biggest single cost to the company is unpaid bills from the spammers it evicts. 'Spammers know they are going to be kicked off, so they won't pay their first few months' bill,' said Craig Silliman, the legal director for MCI's network and facilities operation. 'By the time you catch them, they turn into a significant net loss.'" ... "America Online now simply discards nearly 80 percent of the 2.5 billion e-mail messages sent a day to addresses at AOL.com" ... "A cost that is hard to measure is the losses from e-mail users defrauded by spammers. One rapidly growing category of e-mail fraud is what is known as phishing, in which e-mail messages purporting to be from a big company ask for credit card and bank information. When credit card numbers are stolen, account holders face the time and bother of putting things right, though most banks do not hold them responsible for losses. But if the spammer buys computer equipment from a Web site with a stolen number, the seller suffers a loss, perhaps never knowing it was an indirect victim of spam." ... "False positives have become so extensive that the research firms, which have spent so much time assessing the cost of spam and the need for spam filters, now have a new research topic. "We have a report coming out in the next two weeks," said David Ferris, who runs the research company bearing his name. "We think companie

All organizations managing critial data has a need for a robust and reliable IT practice - nothing is more important than medical records. But storing data in granite valuts doesn't mean much if you don't know what the quality of your data, and it doesn't help you if you need to recover data in near real time.

Many CIOs in the IT industry simply don't understand the need or purpose of IT. That's why some organizations have CIOs find it acceptable to "rarely lose records", or to have "occational network outage".

Long term storage can't help organizations that simply don't have a good IT practice.

I think a great example is Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. This often-told story of a four day network outage at a large hospital has been passed off as a problem caused by a lone researcher and a poorly programmed router.

Nobody looks at the bigger picture - what are the REAL potential issues with this IT system? Was there something on the magnitude of a nuclear blast taking away the hospital's IT infrastructure? Or were there simple, systemic problems within IT that were not properly addressed by the CIO and upper management? In almost every case, it is the later.

It all comes down to high level responsibilities. Most IT directors feel they are not responsible - they don't know how to see the issues with the "big picture". The "big picture" they can see is a nuclear blast! It's almost laughable.

Some CIOs would rather blame a lowly worker or the vendor of a piece of equipment instead of blaming the problem on a serious-but-mundane issue within the IT organization they are responsible for.

No wonder why IT in the USA is in such a bad state.

Once again:
CLICKABLE links, please.

SCO fined $10,800 for Linux claims, IDG

Q & A tarent v. SCO

One thing that the Review did not bring out, which I think the Book might have, is the total fixation that Ellsion has on Gates. It is almost like a fetish. The significant parts of his career can almost said to be defined more by Gates that by his ownself. Gates ain't my favorite, but Ellison is less so.

The Big Fight: Oracle vs. Microsoft "In this corner is challenger Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and the NC (Network Computer). In the opposite corner is reigning champion Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and the NetPC. The low-cost computing fight has begun. This fight between Ellison and Gates isn?t solely about low-cost computing. It also concerns who?s in charge of the computer industry and mixes in the personal animosity between the two software rivals. Referring to Microsoft, Ellison said, ?The idea the world could be controlled by one company is shocking and unacceptable.? "

There was a time when Oracle's Ellison Closer Than Ever To Richest-Man Title "Larry Ellison may spend some quality time with his calculator this week. His net worth hasn't been this close to that of rival Bill Gates since 1986--that is, figuring in only their stakes in Microsoft and Oracle. While Oracle's stock has held up well this month, Microsoft shares have fallen dramatically because of renewed speculation that the government will break up the company. As of today's market close, Microsoft Chairman Gates' stake in Microsoft is worth $49.4 billion. Oracle Chief Executive Ellison has $48 billion worth of Oracle stock."

But then it so happened Ellison was reduced to Dumpster Diving into M$ trash "Ellison maintained his company did nothing illegal in commissioning the investigation, which was revealed earlier this month after the detective agency Oracle had retained, Investigative Group International, was caught trying to buy from dustmen the office rubbish of the Association for Competitive Technology, a Microsoft-funded industry front group. To demonstrate his apparent belief that all's fair in Love, War and Corporate Public Relations, Ellison challenged Microsoft to investigate his own company in return. "We will ship them our garbage," he joked. "We will ship our garbage to Redmond, and they can go through it. We believe in full disclosure.""

Characteristically Ellison told a Forbes reporter in 1996 that he was about to purchase a T-38 Supersonic jet fighter. "Maybe I should fire a few Maverick missiles in his [Gates'] living room," he joked.

His fixation was apparent when he said ""The only software company we care about a lick ... is Microsoft Oracle is second only to Microsoft in terms of operating margin strength. And while much of Oracle's advertising is focused on its database battle with IBM, Ellison conceded that Microsoft remains his main focus. "The only software company we care about a lick ... is Microsoft," said Ellison, who also fielded questions regarding analysts' and investors' major concerns: executive departures and competition in Oracle's key database market."

In keynote speeches, informal gatherings and private interviews, "the Oracle chief slips easily into long rants on what he sees as Gates' quest to dominate everything Microsoft touches. One favorite Ellison refrain is that Gates wants a world of "Microsoft English." Ellison in recent years has built a public image around pointed attacks on his competitor Microsoft, often singling out its Chairman, rich-man Gates, as a villainous copier of technology with a misguided vision of the computer industry."

Other nice juicy Larry_Speak

That's assuming the name is the selling point.

My mistake, I actually found a better link that actually mentions Xandros licensing their core technology to Lindows.

Why not extend dns to support unicode? That way they'd be no translation or other crap to go through.

Because some total fuckhead at the patent office allowed the idea to be Patented.

Hi,

the article raises, first, the general issue of technological anticipation in the IT field.

The problem is : is it wise to make plans that are supposed to be completed in seven years ? Is the tremendous amount of money provided worth a pure credential position ?

Furthermore, it seems to me like a race to the fastest network. RoK is well-known for its quick development in that sector, but this is now turning into a craze for speed. Maybe the technological process of networking will have changed at that time ; and if not, probably only a minority will need to download at that pace.

This article is already four years old. But it underlines the fact that connectivity might not be considered the same way in 6-7 years.
Actually this paper sounds like optimistic/futuristic sci-fi, but the Korean did make the same kind of bet by enforcing such a plan.

Regards,
Jdif

10 hours after BG announced anti-spam protection in Windows something like this comes up. Now they can claim spam reduction just by patching their own crappy software.

Microsoft and Sun pay Linux I.P. license

Try and find out who their top fortune 500 customers are and demand that they not pay the LINUX I.P. license(or whatever they call it).

I know that Microsoft and SUN are the first licensees. Do any of you know and others ? We could form a list .

Sun and Microsoft first licensees

"Counsel for the Commonwealth, Paul Roberts said..... Ng had co-written an essay for his information technology law course on 'open source software licensing.'"

Hmm, who is this Paul Roberts? I decided to check him out. A little snooping around led me to an article BY a Mr.Paul Roberts about the Commonwealth of Massachusetts QUESTIONING the effectiveness of Open Source Software, as well as this link detailing Mr. Roberts life from 1841 to 1910 - a life beginning in Gates County, NC.

Finally I discovered this picture of a CD.

All coinsidence? I will let you decide.

I thought that gator was the worst until:

1) WebShots started trickling other various spyware programs onto the host PC. If you install webshots, then you will get a number of other programs eventually. One of them involves a continuous stream of popups.

2) I forget the name of this particular gem but it modified the HOSTS file to redirect websites to *other* sites. One of them was google.com. It redirected the PC to a similar looking site. The only reason that this one was discovered in the first place is that it became too successful and DoS'ed its own website. The user came in with the complaint that he couldn't get to google.com. If you get something like this, you'll need to go into the \windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (or \winnt or whatever systemroot is) and delete the entries from the hosts file (use a text editor to open it). The problem here is that most Joe's don't know the difference.

I'd literally like to shoot some of these software companies in the back of the head. This is criminal activity. It is probably microsoft's "trusted computing marketing department" at work. (sarcasm) Seriously, this will cause huge sales for Microsoft's trusted computing platform if open source doesn't address it on a free basis.

And yes - I've tried all of the blockers out there. None of them are seamless and usuable by Joe User (i.e. - they do not maintain themselves quietly). What is required is a program that will go resident upon bootup and update it self continuously without user input. Anytime a spyware program is encountered, then it needs to block it. If the home page/search function is hijacked, then it needs to be reset without prompting the user. I had been installing spyware blockers on some of the PCs that I maintain but it resulted in too many calls from the users - itis easier to let this shit happen then fix it after it builds up for a while. Answering trivial questions every 5 minutes is not worth it.

Microsoft's antivirus is going to kill the rest of the AV industry if it addresses the number of unethical bits of software floating around out there. I can't wait.

There is still a case existing: EU commissioner (competition) Mario Monti against Microsoft. Perhaps it would be better to focus on this case.

There is an article on EU Business: Microsoft faces 'final chance' in EU anti-trust probe from August. And Newsfactor thinks Don ' t bet on it.

The response of Microsoft is already very strong. They want to take the case to the US, where the justice system is probably more corrupt (home advantage). See Hindustan Times's Reuters article for more information on this issue. They present the same accusation in an more polite manner: "Microsoft Corp has been trying to drum up support among US lawmakers as part of its effort to fend off antitrust sanctions being considered by European regulators, congressional sources say.

With the European Commission weighing a fine and behavioral changes that could go beyond its US antitrust settlement, Microsoft lobbyists have taken their case to key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sources said.

While Microsft is under investigation because of its abuse of power, Microsoft propaganda requests stronger IPR law, criminal prosecution . They claim the proposed EURO DMCA++ (IP Enforcement directive) was not strong enough. Examine the horribleEU directive proposal paper by AEL Wiki (page of Association Electronic Libre, Belgium).

OK, I'll bite:
Link 1, Link 2, Link 3

Wow, remember the cost estimates MS was pushing to justify how much cheaper it was to by into their software assurance plan? Pay every 1,2 or 3 years instead of once and get "free" and immediate upgrades? Considering it will be at least 5 years between XP and Longhorn, I would say everyone who used those initial numbers of a 3 years cycle for a total cost calculation got burned pretty badly.

Here is an a piece from another page:

Software Assurance is an annuity-based licensing offering, under which subscribers pay Microsoft 29 percent of the total cost of the software per year over the life of the contract, though Wilcox noted the fee schedule can be a bit more complicated when factoring in the license plan itself (Open Value, Open or Select), or when accounting for CALs.

A Big Wheel!

San Francisco even has an annual Big Wheel race in , and we all know that San Fran is trendy, e-hip and e-happening.

Or gay and campy.

But either way, it'll help you release your inner child.

For those of you who might have burned your penis on your laptop, cool it down!
If you are a mobile traveler like me, it's one less thing to pack when your toothbrush is USB powered!
Or while you are brushing your teeth, you can find time to make some noodles or whatever the hell this thing does.
And one last one to make soup with I guess.

What about things like Voice IM?

Here's what will eventually happen (IMHO):

VoIP will be taxed by the states but, because it is fundamentally cheaper to maintain, PSTN will die and everyone will eventually find themselves talking via VoIP. Once this happens, you no longer need a "provider" for voice service because you won't need a regular phone number.

You'll be able to contact anyone in the world via their SIP address. Since you will only need an internet connection to maintain a legacy-free SIP address, there will be no way for the states to tax this unless they simply start assessing a general purpose internet tax.

The phone number is what the state is taxing.

Well here is an article about ILM's network which requires a few 10G interconnects at the core and will soon upgrade:

10G muscle

As this article states, the bandwidth required for VoIP can be huge. I would seriously hope to see some more advanced algorithms or better yet, more bandwidth installed, before these systems become more heavily adopted.

Yeah, they're scum, even Microsoft doesn't like them. OTOH, maybe their latest press release is an attempt to win Gates's heart (==money).

Come on, where do they get these figures? In August alone:
From NetworkWoldFusion

The Blaster worm - also known as MSBlast or LoveSAN - has spread rapidly since it was first noticed on Monday. It has infected an estimated 188,000 systems running Microsoft operating systems, including Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 and NT, that are unpatched for the so-called RPC vulnerability discovered last month, according to a security firm tracking the worm.

They didn't count them. Why? Most of them aren't servers, right? Well how did they differentiate Linux servers then? I bet they didn't -- did they check and only record RH Advanced Server and disregard all the RH Workstation. I doubt it. This is pure FUD by a place that has trouble with math.

Here

Signing a contract with a handwritten signature has a stronger legal standing than other means of indicating acceptance. There had to be a special law passed to make digital signatures equivalent to handwritten ones in the US.

Note that a core requirement for a digital signature to be strongly valid is that a record is made of the transaction- both parties know not just when the transaction occured, but also who the other party was. That is not the case with shrinkwrap or typical click-thru.

The scary thing is, some kids are now being taught things like PowerPoint in middle school....

With the Wireless LAN capability of this device....
War Driving (something an 11 year old can do) takes on a new meaning.

I'm off hooking gramp`s exo to quake... Hope insurance covers frags!

Perhaps this link gives a bit of credibility to my statement.

www.sco.com is running Apache, OpenSSL, PHP, and Linux...

(so does www.canopy.com)...

But who is really behind this:

Oh, look at the hosting company: nft.com

That also hosts canopy.com, next to the sco.coma and caldera.com domains.

But guess what nft.com stands for... Noorda Family Trust. Ray Noorda that is. Research his history and you'll see that he is the type of person to hold a resentment (click 'Post Anonymously'. oof this guy is way too powerful for me). Here is his bio... "Even in the early days" he kept busy with things like "combat IBM". Just a quote from his BIO...

Then here it comes from that same page "Many analysts claim Noorda overreached when he bought DR-DOS, WordPerfect Corp. and Unix in a series of costly acquisitions in the early 1990s.".

Ah... and that Unix purchase is still bothering him till this day eh?

"Noorda was pressured to retire by Novell's board after he revealed some short-term memory problems in 1993."

Yeah, like details about where Linux comes from...

"In fact, the 73-year-old still reports to work each day as head of the Noorda Family Trust"

Noorda Family trust, which owns the Canopy Group, which owns SCO.

And Darl McBride worked at Novell from 1988-1996 , and I wouldn't be surprised if he and Ray were buddies.

Nuf said.

From Groklaw

http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/


Old SCO Also Donated Code to Linux

Well, knock me over with a feather. It turns out that old SCO, The Santa Cruz Operation, also donated code to Linux. There is an article dated June 12, 2000, that tells us all about their Linux distribution and their plans, which included scaling it to the enterprise, as marketroids like to call it:

"While SCO may be rolling out its Linux distribution long after Red Hat and Caldera hit the market with theirs, SCO is no open source Johnny-come-lately. The company offers support services to Caldera and TurboLinux customers. In addition, the company's Tarantella middleware supports Linux, as will Monterey, the Intel-based version of Unix that SCO is building with IBM.

"SCO is expected to announce 32- and 64-bit versions of Linux for Intel-based servers, which will be available in the fourth quarter of this year. In early 2001, SCO plans to deliver a 32-bit Internet Infrastructure Edition that will come bundled with a Web server and other IP applications. The company is also working on a 64-bit edition for service providers, including ISPs and application service providers, which will feature special billing and management tools.

"The company is also expected to explore the following areas:

"--Building the Linux clustering capacity to be in line with SCO's NonStop Clusters technology, which scales to 12 or more boxes with advanced reliability for data and applications. Current Linux clustering technology is generally limited to two or four nodes.
--Beefing up Linux's symmetric multiprocessing capabilities. Currently the number of CPUs per Linux server is usually limited to eight; UnixWare can run on servers with up to 32 CPUs.
-- Managing multiple Linux servers as well as applications from a single console as if they were a single system.
-- Improving security and the ability of Linux to handle applications such as e-mail, including instant messaging.
-- Adding online support services and documentation."

Wait a sec. Isn't that what paragraph 85 of SCO's original complaint was talking about, and didn't they say that without IBM entering the picture, Linux could never have scaled? The complaint said:

"For example, Linux is currently capable of coordinating the simultaneous performance of 4 computer processors. UNIX, on the other hand, commonly links 16 processors and can successfully link up to 32 processors for simultaneous operation."

That wasn't accurate, but it does give me an idea. Maybe New SCO needs to sue Old SCO and leave the rest of us in peace.

One year earlier, in 1999, a press release from Old SCO described itself like this:

"We have over twenty years of experience with UNIX, Intel, and Open Source technologies. In fact, we believe that SCO has the largest staff of Open Source experts of any commercial software vendor.

"As a founding sponsor of Linux International, SCO is a strong proponent of the Open Source movement, citing it as a driving force for innovation. Over the years, SCO has contributed source code to the movement, and currently offers a free Open License Software Supplement CD that includes many Open Source technologies. SCO UnixWare 7 operating system, the fastest growing UNIX server operating system for the past two years, supports Linux applications as part of its development platform."

All the Tarantella-Linux press releases from June 1999 to February 2000 are here.All Tarantella press releases from June of '99 to July of 2000 are

Yes, SUN is the other licensee.

http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0711scodocum.h tm l (or link)

or

http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1024633.html?tag =f d_top (link)

heck, the nsa is even working on selinux (a security enhanced linux) that is open source. and the kicker is this: one of their partners is pgp secruity. (source: here

times have changed

There's a good piece in the June NetworkWorldFusion talking about MSFT, Cisco and few other large installations.

Check out this article at nwfusion.com:

here.

Seems they cover a lot of what you are asking.

>If that's not an option, you can always look into per-IP bandwidth limitting and QOS.

There is a review of QoS devices available here:

http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2002/0603rev.htm l

Rosen's quitting was announced in January. Most of the comments being made now could and maybe were made then.

Secure and auditable Instant Messaging has been something the financial industry has been wanting for a while. If you've listened to an NPR station lately, I'm sure you've heard the ad for Reuters' IM client built around SIMPLE.

Heres a link to an article written in May 2000, by the old SCO company and in it they say ...

SCO is expected to announce 32- and 64-bit versions of Linux for Intel-based servers, which will be available in the fourth quarter of this year. In early 2001, SCO plans to deliver a 32-bit Internet Infrastructure Edition that will come bundled with a Web server and other IP applications. The company is also working on a 64-bit edition for service providers, including ISPs and application service providers, which will feature special billing and management tools.

The company is also expected to explore the following areas:

* Building the Linux clustering capacity to be in line with SCO's NonStop Clusters technology, which scales to 12 or more boxes with advanced reliability for data and applications. Current Linux clustering technology is generally limited to two or four nodes.

* Beefing up Linux's symmetric multiprocessing capabilities. Currently the number of CPUs per Linux server is usually limited to eight; UnixWare can run on servers with up to 32 CPUs.

* Managing multiple Linux servers as well as applications from a single console as if they were a single system.

* Improving security and the ability of Linux to handle applications such as e-mail, including instant messaging.

* Adding online support services and documentation.

Crucial to the company's success will be ensuring that it rapidly offers adequate device drivers and APIs to let independent software vendors port existing SCO Unix applications to SCO's Linux, says David Boyes of Dimension Enterprise, a data center design and testing firm in Herndon, Va. His company runs a variety of Linux applications, mostly using TurboLinux.

Hmmm... What are Calderas claims again? Check that name :).

Ok, if SCO were hacking Linux at this point why didn't they raise the flag then? They were working on Linux, they had both sets of sources, Calderas claim is that the code is from the Early 80's and relates to NUMA? I doubt it, Ok, x86 SMP, err I doubt that too, What does that leave on a (x86) processor from the early 80's? This time period was right in the middle of 2.4 development.

And lastly back to an old quote ...

MozillaQuest Magazine: When Darl said "substantial System V code showing up in Linux", did he mean the Linux kernel, the GNU/Linux operating system, a Linux distribution(s), or Linux applications? If it is in the kernel, which kernel version(s)?

Chris Sontag: We're not talking about the Linux kernel that Linus and others have helped develop. We're talking about what's on the periphery of the Linux kernel. (Emphasis added.)

Talk about Bullshit.

For those feeling confused about all this Jabber/XMPP vs SIP/SIMPLE, here is a short article which talks about the difference between XMPP and SIMPLE.

The InfoWorld article also claims IBM is siding with SIMPLE, not with XMPP like the article in the Slashdot story suggests. Other articles also suggest IBM is siding with SIMPLE not XMPP. If you don't mind the PDF you can see for yourself that IBM's Lotus uses SIMPLE.

This is my sig, this is my gun. This is for fighting, this is for fun.

There are precedents where doing this could be plain wrong, like in the last WebDAV vulnerability in IIS, that was discovered after being actively exploited by black hats. Hiding the facts will not stop crackers to exploit something they know first, and will only make victims unaware of what could or have happened with their sites.

Wi-Fi capable laptop

Great! When I want to copy your notes, I won't need to look over your shoulder any more. I'll just eavesdrop on your wireless connection, and slurp up your Documents folder.

And if it's a really competitive class, I might just wipe your harddrive when I'm done.

So, if you're going to use wireless, don't forget to use some decent Wi-Fi security.

Here's my understanding:

As you said, the Open Group owns the Unix trademark and permits products to be called "Unix." See their page for details on their ownership of the trademark and the Single UNIX Specification. The Open Group (then the X/Open Company) got the UNIX trademark and specification from Novell in 1994.

However, the UNIX code and implementation was sold by Novell to SCO. IBM entered into a contract with AT&T way back in 1985 to produce AIX, its own version of UNIX, and SCO ended up with AT&T's interest in that contract (see here for details). IBM isn't the only licensee of UNIX from SCO; Sun and HP, for example, both have licenses from SCO for their own versions of UNIX, as do "several thousand" others.

Short but decent read without getting too technical.

http://www.nwfusion.com/research/2003/0331wpa.html ?page=1

1. This is only going to help drive down cell phone prices, helping to make land lines obsolete once again. (This was likely to happen eventually anyway, right?) If the article is right and you can forward your conversations to any IP address (at an extra cost), the primary advantage cells have are mobility, such is the case now. Until, that is, when you think about wireless solutions and VoIP. Mmmmm...DHCP + VoIP :)

2. A brief search of the web suggests VoIP can be more secure than traditional telephony. To what extent will government fight this? Effectively having an SSH tunnel to the other caller wouldn't be appreciated by the gov't given the present modus operandi of the US.

3. VoIP is certainly a logical progression, and I don't see the big telcos going out of business soon. Where I live, there are just a few DSL providers but only one company (SBC) owns all the wires into the area. Their only real competitor is cable TV whom they are fighting tooth and nail to gain marketshare. I imagine access to wireless frequencies has very little competition (think: 802.11), but will there need to be legislation to keeping it open?

Why not start by moving youre entire long distance network over to IP?

Quite simply Large monopoly Telco's have invested large amounts of cash in the already existing (and out of date) telephone network, and would rather blow up the planet than see that change. Have a look at this .

Bell , AT&T will start whining to governments for compensation or tax immediatly.

All I'd like to know is when did the government make it a priority to start protecting large corps from the consumers, instead of protecting the consumers from corps.

This spec has been out a while now... 2 years ago PowerDsine made a prototype ethernet-powered razor - here's coverage from more traditional network press

war driving lessons