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Read the post -- I'd dropped Cable TV long ago -- this was Internet and telephone only.

Why didn't this guy cut his telephone service too?

He could bought an ObiHai for $40 bucks and never paid for phone again.

The ObiHai connects to your router and you can plug your regular POTS phone into it.
No fees like Ooma $3.50/mo, or MagicJack $29.99/yr, or Vonage $12-$55/mo.

The only downside is no direct 911.

ObiHai info: http://www.obihai.com/how-to-g...

Slightly out-of-date chart: http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/to...

... and these do indeed cause fires (or even explosions) on occasion.

... note that the jury also found that the patents were valid over the prior art. Cisco doesn't practice the invention in the patents, but that doesn't mean that the patents don't cover a valid invention.

Actually, what I saw in that photo makes perfect sense after I saw pictures of the other side of the capsule. It was just part of the parachute deployment stuff. Whew!!!

The funny thing is Apple basically did the same thing, except they secretly used their customers' iPhones without the owner's consent nor permission to collect MAC address/SSID/GPS coordinates to build a geolocation map.

Google made the mistake of doing The Right Thing - building the map completely on the company's dime, and publicly announcing what exactly they were doing. Then when they found they had collected wifi payload data as well, they reported themselves to the public .

Basically what's happening is the company who is being a responsible citizen and admitting to their mistakes is being punished. While the company which did the same stuff in secret and refuses to admit to it gets off scott free.

CompUSA didn't fail, Carlos Slim (the then private owner) wanted to liquidate because it wasn't improving as fast as he would have liked. In retrospect, it may have been a good choice since he's now the richest guy in the world.

Just to emphasize how bad ATM security is likely to be, most ATMs are made by Diebold. Yes, that Diebold.

And TFA suggests that Skype has never gone down before, which is BS. 'Disappeared from the Internet'? Seriously?

Yeah, I had to laugh when I read this in TFA...

I confess to having run Internet publications using Skype as an instant messaging service for over seven years now.

In all that time the service has never once failed - until today.

It's not like there were world-wide outages in 2004, 2007 and 2010, now were there? Those are just three examples - I guess Mr. Hales has a short memory.

And TFA suggests that Skype has never gone down before, which is BS. 'Disappeared from the Internet'? Seriously?

Yeah, I had to laugh when I read this in TFA...

I confess to having run Internet publications using Skype as an instant messaging service for over seven years now.

In all that time the service has never once failed - until today.

It's not like there were world-wide outages in 2004, 2007 and 2010, now were there? Those are just three examples - I guess Mr. Hales has a short memory.

And TFA suggests that Skype has never gone down before, which is BS. 'Disappeared from the Internet'? Seriously?

Yeah, I had to laugh when I read this in TFA...

I confess to having run Internet publications using Skype as an instant messaging service for over seven years now.

In all that time the service has never once failed - until today.

It's not like there were world-wide outages in 2004, 2007 and 2010, now were there? Those are just three examples - I guess Mr. Hales has a short memory.

Sprint doesn't have a data cap.

Which is why I said "virtually all".

However this new found religion at sprint is merely a marketing ploy and nothing to rely on. Remember they tried data caps in the past..

Also, roam outside their network, and things can get nasty very quickly:

Voice/Data Usage Limitation: Sprint reserves the right, without notice, to limit throughput speeds, and to deny, terminate, modify, disconnect or suspend service if off-network usage in a month exceeds: (1) voice: 800 min. or a majority of minutes; or (2) data: 300 megabytes or a majority of kilobytes. Prohibited network use rules apply. See in-store materials or sprint.com/termsandconditions for specific prohibited uses.

Also THIS Story seems to suggest that Sprint has made no long term commitment to having no data caps.

Whole disk encryption has a side-channel cracking, which is very trivial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack

http://it.tmcnet.com/news/2010/03/30/4700389.htm

ANY WHOLE HARD DRIVE ENCRYPTION IS PRONE TO A SIDE-CHANNEL ATTACK.

A cold boot attack can be prevented quite simply by 1) setting a BIOS password, and 2) disabling all boot devices but the encrypted hard drive. I believe some BIOSes also zero out all memory on boot.

There is another attack where the attacker physically cools down the RAM while the computer is still running, then takes out the RAM and puts it in another computer. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/cryogenically-frozen-ram-bypasses-all-disk-encryption-methods/900 . This is not really preiventible.

Whole disk encryption has a side-channel cracking, which is very trivial.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack
http://it.tmcnet.com/news/2010/03/30/4700389.htm
ANY WHOLE HARD DRIVE ENCRYPTION IS PRONE TO A SIDE-CHANNEL ATTACK.

You realize they AREN'T just talking about TLDs right? the NTIA is asking for the power to object to any proposed Internet address for any reason.

"I object to the internet address 124.34.2.1! Boycott!"

What is most depressing is not that the NTIA is pushing for the ability to veto domain names, but that a company that promotes itself as "The world leader in managed DNS solutions" refers to "internet addresses" when it means "domain names", and in another clinker talks about "web suffixes". http://dns.tmcnet.com/topics/dns/articles/142361-dns-world-new-web-suffixes-on-its-way.htm

Here's another source saying that Apple is selling 270,000 iphones a day and google is activating 200,000 androids a day. The original iphone sold 6.1 million units. The iphone 4 has already sold 14.1 million. While yes, the holiday season is really what will determine the fate of windows 7 mobile, they're off to a bad start, so that's another thing they have to overcome besides the tens of millions of iphones and androids that have already been sold. And they're going to do this without bringing any new functionality besides better vendor lock-in? Dream on.

According to a study commissioned by Microsoft "Nineteen percent have dropped their mobile phone in the toilet while using the phone in a restroom."

I was wondering why Microsoft would ask about that. Now I know.

you need to check the dates on your sources a little more closely. Both those stories you cite are from 2003, and in the computing world that's a loooooonnnng time.

You're right, I need to be more careful. When I got those links I restricted my search to only webpages updated in the past year. Looking at the "SD Times" article while the article was written on April 1, 2003 the webpage was last updated "As of October 26, 2010 03:59 PM"

According to more recent data from IDC, Oracle had 43.5 percent of the RDBMS market in 2008.

One of those sources you say is old, the eweek article, says that on 21 May 2003 Oracle had a 43% marketshare in RDBMSs. And though they don't have the marketshare stats ServerWatch has the article Top 10 Enterprise Database Systems to Consider. That is dated 20 May 2010.

I wonder how many enterprises are adopting NoSQL, infotech, reports about an InformationWeek Analytics report saying "Microsoft SQL Server Overtaking Oracle as Primary Database in Use" but that 39% of respondents are considering NoSQL, which Slashdot had some news about.

I'm sure there are plenty of happy Microsoft and IBM customers, but Oracle maintains a commanding lead.

I agree however my point has been that Oracle could lose its lead if it treats too many people poorly. As with operating systems applications have to offer what users want or they may go somewhere else. Because I got sick and tired of my PCs crashing a lot a few years ago I switched away from Windows. I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro and underneath my desk I have 2 PCs, a DEC Alpha running Windows NT4 and Redhat Linux, and another PC that only runs Linux. Actually the NT4 PC is the best I have used, I haven't had NT4 crash on me nor did I have hardware problems. And I've used from Windows 3.x to XP. When I can I'll replace my MBP with another one and for a server I'll upgrade my Linux PC.

Falcon

***you forget to factor in that the town HAS THE RIGHT TO DO WHATEVER THEY WANT.
  go be a communist somewhere else.***

Well, no. Actually the town does not have the right to do whatever they want. Federal law says that they can not establish restrictions that would make it impossible to provide cell phone service in the town. See http://hosted-exchange.tmcnet.com/topics/mobility/articles/104066-long-island-town-passes-restrictive-cell-tower-law.htm

If the town hasn't given some serious thought to crafting their law such that cell service is possible, they are probably headed for court.

That's more of a technical snag, isn't it? If you want to use Google apps (Maps, Nav etc.), you're going to need to use Google's geolocation service, since there's no easy way to integrate Skyhook's services - and why should there be?

They're not even actively stopping the use of Skyhook... see Layar for Android: http://satellite.tmcnet.com/topics/satellite/articles/102092-layar-adds-skyhooks-core-engine-its-android-applications.htm

Uses Skyhook, is available in the Android market, and even ships on some handsets stateside IIRC...

Don't know much about 4) per se but pertaining to your desire:

Layar

Just quickly scanned, not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for...

Check out vtiger

SugarCRM has been guilty of decepting customers with their "open source" claims in the past. They originally released under a modified Mozilla public license (the Sugar Public License), with requirements that derivatives remove any and all SugarCRM branding. A few enterprising folks forked it to form vtiger, which supposedly led to SugarCRM threatening to file suit for actually exercising their rights outlined under the license, and the CEO publicly lambasting the vtiger folks for actually taking SugarCRM up on their offer extended by the original SPL.

http://forums.vtiger.com/viewtopic.php?t=11
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/crm/sugarcrm-vs-vtiger.html
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=188554&cid=15541264
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/is-sugarcrm-open-source/867

I've posted previously about sugar vs. vtiger before:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=223770&cid=18118754 (which drew out anti-F/OSS zealots and folks who didn't bother to read the licenses fully and obviously did not compare it to the previous SPL as it was originally written and released)

Now, the SugarCRM folks may have updated their licensing to remove the restrictions about moving to the free/community edition after having used the "enterprise" edition but honestly those folks were so scummy when they threw a fit after folks actually exercised their rights to create a derivative project that I can't be bothered to check.

Does vtiger functionality stack up well against SugarCRM's enterprise version? Not exactly. However, reverse is also true; vtiger offers some bells and whistles you don't get with Sugar - but in any event, vtiger does not use a license to try to restrict using your own data in another product.

Don't get me wrong: SugarCRM is a pretty good product, but I don't like to use products made by companies which engage in deceptive practices, even when some of the product editions may be "free."

It's easy to see how one could get confused. (Video)

After reading the Wiki: Originally Cingular Wireless LLC, a joint venture between SBC Communications and BellSouth, the company acquired the old AT&T Wireless in 2004; SBC later acquired the original AT&T and re-branded as "The New AT&T". Cingular became wholly-owned by The New AT&T in December 2006 as a result of AT&T's acquisition of BellSouth.

So Cingular (a joint venture between SBC and Bell bought AT&T Wireless), but still operated as "Cingular". SBC bought AT&T. And renamed itself "The New AT&T". Cingluar (With AT&T Wireless) was still being operated by SBC and Bell.

SBC (The New AT&T) then bought out Bell South. Meaning that the joint venture of Cingular was bought by AT&T, becoming an owned subsidiary.
They then renamed Cingular to AT&T.

And remember, Bell South and SBC were both formed when AT&T was broken up for being a monopoly.

Thanks Lee, excellent point. I just spent a little time getting this set up. Fortunately I had a Gizmo5 account from when I got the first nokia tablet. I looked at this article first to get the idea of how it worked. http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/voip/google-voice-gizmo5-free-inbound-outbound-calls.asp So I used my number from gizmo5 account and this had the n900 specifics to configure with: http://superuser.com/questions/83185/configuring-gizmo5-account-on-n900 To configure the n900. I just used settings->Voip and Im, SIP account gui and it was really easy with the link above. All in all it took about 2 minutes.

www.payclick.com.au
From TFS: launched in Australia
More info: http://financial.tmcnet.com/news/2010/06/25/4869782.htm

You're lucky. Now that the FIOS rollout has ended, if you don't have FIOS now you're not likely to have it for a very long time. For those of us in the FIOS dead zone, it's pretty much a choice between cable or satellite, and a lot of people can't get satellite due to line-of-sight issues.

Can you think of a scenario they don't have covered? I can't.

If you can't think of one, it doesn't mean that no-one can think of one.

That would be why I asked if you could think of one.

Say, how about ICQ/MSN/AIM/IRC client running in background receiving messages?

There's already a way of doing that in iPhone OS 3.0. Push Notifications. See for example this app from July last year:
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/apple/ebuddy-for-iphone-supports-push-notifications.asp

It's the same neighbour, Raphaela Monribot.

My assumption is that this is intended to give the President the authority to shut down botnet controllers during DDoS attacks. Waiting for the courts in such a scenario is unreasonable.

Why is waiting for the courts unreasonable in such a scenario? We aren't talking about Jack Bauer standing over the nuclear weapon that's about to destroy New York City. We are talking about not being able to access a few portions of the internet for the duration of a DDoS attack.

Well how about the fact that we're slowly computerizing the electrical grid for remote shutoff? (And they're finding security flaws in the smart meters.)

How about those stupid management people who claim power plants unhackable but others prove them wrong.

We're becoming more and more interconnected and from a security standpoint it's not a good thing.

That said I am not in favor of the government being able to turn off a net connection or such at will even if they will "only" use it against cyber threats.

Each sector of a hard drive has a checksum. That checksum is used to verify that the data is in tact. During a write cycle, the drive reads back the values and verifies it against the checksum. If the checksum fails a certain number of times, the drive will map the sector to another physical location on the disk. You can probably find info about this by looking up S.M.A.R.T which allows you to query things like how many sectors have been reallocated as a result of bad checksums.

To combat this, Western Digital has something they call Preemptive wear leveling (more info here). I think other each drive manufacturer has their own way to deal with it.

In case anyone doesn't remember. (link) Now if I actually want to see a product in a package, I have to go to WorstBuy or Wal-Mart.

When it comes to actual fund received from the government, the telecoms got squat.

[citation needed]

$182 million
The first broadband stimulus grants and loans – about $182 million worth – finally have been awarded

There, 10 seconds on google.
Your turn.

Solar PV is roughly 20x-100x more expensive than coal or nuclear power.

Really? Did you also subtract the subsidies coal and nuclear power get? Yes, they both get subsidized as well.

If I was Obama, I'd toss a billion or so at this scientist and see if he couldn't get mass production of it up and running.

Ah if only... If I were President of the USA I'd veto all subsidies and let a freer market pick winners and losers. As it is now venture capitalists have been investing in different technologies for years, from Sergey Brin and Larry Page investing in Nanosolar to Elon Musk, founder of Paypal and CEO of SpaceX, investing in Tesla Motors.

I mean, as long as we're spending billionS keeping teachers temporarily employed (because their states can't afford them right now), right?

I hate it that the feds have to give the states the money but it was the feds who mandated a bunch of new regulations with No Child Left Behind and other laws. If the feds stayed within it's Constitutional limits federal taxes could be significantly reduced if not totally eliminate the federal income tax. States and local governments could then raise their own taxes if they so chose to. Of course that's only part of the problem. States like California went on a spending spree during the roaring '90s. Then when the economy tanked they lost a lot of revenue. Then there's CA's teachers unions. Try to fire an underperforming teacher and watch the years speed by before they are fired. About the only way to fight the unions is by allowing school choice with charter and private schools getting matching funding. Then watch as the bad public schools are emptied out so the teachers can be fired.

Falcon

The student's lawyer is asking a judge for an emergency ruling that the school not engage in despoilation of evidence, and The FBI is now involved. You know, at the point where the FBI is called in to investigate your wrong-doing, maybe you should start thinking about admitting that you actually fucked up!

No, your statistics are measuring web traffic to certain mobile websites, including those that provide J2ME apps - which would be significantly biased towards J2ME-only phones and biased towards phones with J2ME capability.

Nokia is actually losing market share, both overall and in the smartphone market. RIM and Apple's sales are growing in the smartphone market, but Apple is really close to RIM (see the third link). Nokia is losing low-end market share to Korean manufacturers in particular (Samsung and LG).

I don't trust lithium-ion technology enough to want something with that much capacity in my basement. Wouldn't want my house to look like this

I have a thousand watt-hour battery that runs my sump pum during a power failure, but it's lead-acid. They've been around for a loooong time and are pretty damn stable (even so, this one is in a concrete-walled sump room.) Lithium-ions have a ways to go before they can be considered as trustworthy, and their higher energy density just makes them that much more dangerous during a catastrophic failure. Yet another reason why I'd never buy a hybrid vehicle. The idea of sitting atop a massive lithium-ion battery pack makes me far more nervous than I've ever been about a tank of gasoline.

You can use Skype/VOIP over the AT&T 3G network now

However, being able to push something like this out to business and corporate clients may well be a viable opportunity.

Microsoft already makes it. http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/microsoft/office-communications-server-2007-public-beta-launches.asp

The phonebook syncs to Exchange/Office Communicator, and you log in via active directory on the phone.

AT&T receives goverment aids so the rural area's get supported too, and then by law they have to support them.

The Universal Service Fund is what you are thinking of. It is a tax imposed on phone companies, and some of this money does go to subsidize phone services for low-income and high-cost consumers. The USF is clearly flawed, but it does not require that wireless carriers provide rural service. Wireless carriers who get money from the USF do so as "competitive" carriers to the local telephone company...

There's no need to get snarky, mmmkay ?

"World of Ends" is one view of the network ceratainly, but if you look at wikipedia's article on the topic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality#Definitions_of_network_neutrality you'll find three definitions of network neutrality and that two of the three have to do with QoS and traffic tiering. TFA doesn't provide any details as to what specifically the FCC is referring to.

The bandwidth issue is relevant because residential ISPs engage in oversubscription and rely on the fact that most connections are idle most of the time. I can't point you to solid industry wide numbers as to the ratio (as most companies don't reveal the information) but various places on the web put it from 10:1 to 50:1. Here is an example of an ISP in the SF Bay Area called Etheric http://www.dslreports.com/reviews/2384 that advertises overbooking ratio of 3.3:1 for their "Enterprise" service all the way to 20:1 for residential usage. They claim that that DSL competitors oversubscribe at up to 80:1.

Current residential ISP pricing is based on this model. If connections were priced no the assumption that you would actually use your 3mbps continuously all month, it would cost considerably more than $10 or $20 /mo.

When Comcast and British Telecom and others have engaged in throttling thus far it has been to curb the usage of users using high amounts of bandwidth. I haven't heard yet of Comcast prioritizing their own VoIP over Vonnage VoIP or similar.

Here is a relatively extensive article on commercial ISP realities http://jobs.tmcnet.com/topics/broadband-comm/articles/22237-dismal-reality-internet-management.htm. Prices have come down some since that was written so, in a colo, you can now get quality transfer for ~$5/Mbit per month (95 percentile) if you're buying multiple gigabits, but otherwise it's right on. (I have no connection to the author, just found the post via Google).

"all packets are equal" is a nice idea, but i certainly wouldn't want to pay for it. (Actually, i currently wouldn't mind paying for it since i neither torrent nor watch much video, but i wouldn't want to pay for it if i were a heavy consumer of media delivered through the internet.)

(apologies for the bad formatting. I still can't figure out what slashcode wants me to do to make a paragraph)

Oracle will not likely make MySQL more like Oracle or make an easy migration path up to Oracle from MySQL since doing so will also create a migration path down from Oracle.

As for the MSAD/MSSQL, Sun just announced expanded interoperability between MySQL and Sun Identity Management Suite which I believe works well with MS Active Directory.

I don't know much about it but your comment brought to mind the article I saw earlier today.

Broadband penetration in rural counties is likely to plateau around 50% in the foreseeable future not for lack of supply but for lack of strong demand, especially when technical challenges will push the price considerably above dialup.

I know that /. is the wrong place to say this, but many people (myself absolutely not included) can get by with minimal internet usage. Insisting that they must secretly want to be like us is flattering, perhaps, but it's delusional and paternalistic.

Followup:

http://techliberation.com/2008/03/07/debunking-rural-broadband-myths/
http://voipservices.tmcnet.com/feature/articles/20381-rural-broadband-demand-not-supply-problem.htm

In the US, the cable companies seem pretty excited about offering VOIP these days, and Vonage is still around, despite the legal battering it has taken, even though we don't hear as much about them as we used to.

Of course Verizon doesn't like VOIP in the home. It's still losing customers because of it. I suppose they can take some solace in the fact that many of us have been replacing our land lines with mobile phones more often than with VOIP via home internet.

Firefox would be authorized right now, assuming it didn't get stuck in Apple's little black box for some stupid reason. Apple has been allowing third-party browsers on the phone for some time now (http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/23/0539240).

As far as Skype (and any other VoIP applications for that matter), it is allowed so long as it only works over the Wi-Fi connection and not the cellular network. http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/apple/voip-on-apple-iphone-a-no-go-unless-over-wifi.asp

Spoofcard is not the first to offer private call unmasking. Tom Keating had an article on his VOIP blog back in '07 about a company called The Zero Group that was doing the same thing http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/voip/private-caller-hack.asp

I doubt it. Cisco is not comparable to Microsoft in terms of market leverage. There are several sites that cite numbers far less that what M$ enjoys:

http://blog.tmcnet.com/the-hyperconnected-enterprise/business-aspects/cisco-just-at-37-market-share-in-ethernet-switching.asp

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/22780

Also, while Microsoft is dominant at home and on workstations(as well as in the Enterprise), Cisco is primarily used in medium-large businesses. Therefore it's visibility is far less that what Microsoft has. Cisco may be a household name for anyone in the IT field, but Microsoft is a household name period.

If they stopped making blade switches for HP, IBM, and Dell, they would be shooting themselves in the foot. My company saved about $60,000 by using HP switches with our HP blades rather than Cisco switches. Do you really think people would complain much if the Cisco offering disappeared? Furthermore, do you think I'm going to switch to more expensive, untested Cisco blades when I already have something that works?

Cisco needs to tread carefully. Their marketshare has been eroded by high-quality, lower cost options from Nortel, HP, and Juniper. Expanding into new markets while their primary bread-winner is getting hammered is not smart business.

Why does this story sound familiar...right, because I've heard it twice before. In 2003 it was AOL who cut them off, then in 2005 Level 3 did the same thing.

While it seems Sprint is to blame here, when I see Cogent on the bad end of this so many times I can't help but wonder how many of these problems are brought on by their own management. It's not too often you get to see a pair of N/A results on the health report, but as you can read that's exactly what happened in 2005 as well.

"Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."

Barack is completely behind net neutrality, where as McCain is not, but don't let the facts get in the way of the way you try and put FUD out there.

So your post is essentially accurate but do yourself a favor when arguing, especially if your point is valid and treat both sources equally. For instance link to the McCain site for your argument if you're going to link to Obama's. Don't link to the primary source on one and weighted blog analysis in your favor on the other. The relevant quote from the McCain site would be...

When Regulation Is Warranted, John McCain Acts. John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like "net-neutrality," but rather he believes that an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the best deterrent against unfair practices. John McCain has always believed the governmentâ(TM)s role must be rooted in protecting consumers. He championed laws that penalized fraudulent marketing practices, protected kids from harmful Internet content, secured consumer privacy, and sought to minimize spam. When businesses struggled to assess the legal role of electronic signatures, John McCain led legislative efforts to ensure that these Innovation Age signatures were legally sufficient so that e-commerce could thrive. His record reflects the careful balance between protecting the essential elements of the Internet and securing the Internet as a safe tool of commerce, education and entertainment for our citizens. Offering simple common sense solutions to real problems is at the core of the McCainâ(TM)s innovation agenda.

This can be found at his page on technology

All that said...you are more or less correct.

"Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."

Barack is completely behind net neutrality, where as McCain is not, but don't let the facts get in the way of the way you try and put FUD out there.

I found Ekiga pretty straight forward to get working. Not two clicks, for sure, but you are led through all the necessary steps by the nose.

And the network effect no longer applies if Ekiga users can call Skype users (And they can).

The complete article, accessible without NewScientist subscription, may be found here.