Broadband Lobbyists Say Stimulus Plan Goes Beyond US Regulations
Posted by Michael Klurfeld | Filed under Michael
Right after the government launched its plans to expand broadband internet coverage in the US, we have an objection to it from, you guessed it, the lobbyists. USTelecom, which represents the likes of Verizon and AT&T, is arguing that the Bill somehow contradicts FFC rules, specifically the section which allows for public and private entities to apply to build the infrastructure which will deliver bandwidth to underserved areas.
We’re always a little incredulous when it comes to lobbyists, and we suggest you do the same until USTelecom presents something a bit more concrete than their concerns. The bill itself is a very good thing: it’s $7.2 billion committed to getting more Americans onto broadband connections. Simply saying that “some of the new mandates seem to go well beyond current laws and FCC rules” is vague at best, to the point that it’s very hard to believe that USTelecom has a real point.
Of course, USTelecom could very well have a real point. We’d just like to see some evidence along with the claim.
Is a Worn-Oleophobic Screen Covered by the iPhone Warranty?
Posted by Michael Klurfeld | Filed under Michael
So this is a scary piece of news for iPhone 3GS owners. It seems that the nifty oleophobic coating over the iPhone screen which retards fingerprints is in some cases starting to wear off. The picture we have is from a a user who plays a game called “Flick Fishing” a lot, which is a possible explanation for the centralized damage to the screen. Still, this is potentially very bad for Apple, consumers, or both.
If the oleophobic coating is indeed wearing out from normal use, it would be best and make the most sense if the warranty covered this not as damage from wear and tear, but as a flaw in the manufacturing of the iPhone itself. iPhone users should across the board be able to treat their screens in the same way. 3G users certainly do not have to worry about wearing out a special coating.
Knowing Apple, while they probably will not like this argument, enough of a push at tech support should get them to replace the phone should you incur this problem. Additionally, an iPhone 3GS take two will presumably be out to correct this issue.
Sony Ericsson Bringing Out an Android Phone
Posted by Michael Klurfeld | Filed under Michael
It looks like James Bond’s favorite handset company is going to be coming out with an Android-powered smartphone in the new future. The phone, codenamed Rachel, is most impressive not from its design, but from what it promises under the hood. 3D graphics and 3G up to 7.2 Mbps is there, which is a standard in most phones these days, but what really blows me away are the 1 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and an 8 MP autofocusing camera. With the latter under the hood, Rachel is set to very easily become the device of choice for smartphone lovers who want to take some high-res pictures.
What’s perhaps more interesting is that Sony Ericsson has said in the past that it would not be releasing an Android phone until the Android 2.0 OS was ready, which suggests that the successor to Android 1.5, codenamed Cupcake, could be somewhere on the horizon. Given that Android 1.5 was the first build of the OS with a soft keyboard, which made touchscreen-only Android phones possible, we might be able to expect some big things for Android 2.0.
Amazon Wants To Put Ads Into Kindle Books?
Posted by Michael Klurfeld | Filed under Michael
Ads in culture are sort of jarring (image via www.studiolo.org)
You know what my favorite part of Moby Dick was? The part where I realized I wanted a Klondike bar. That experience may be expedited in the future, courtesy of an Amazon patent for a technology which would dynamically insert ads into e-books. And get this: the ads would be context sensitive. “For instance, if a restaurant is described on page 12, [then the advertising page], either on page 11 or page 13, may include advertisements about restaurants, wine, food, etc., which are related to restaurants and dining.”
What’s so annoying about this is that Amazon presumably wants to put ads into books to be read on the Kindle, as that is the e-book market they’re desperately trying to push right now. We can probably all agree that ads in stuff we’ve paid for is quite annoying, and doubly so when we’ve gotten use to experiencing whatever it is without ads.
But Amazon isn’t stupid. It could be that Amazon is trying to use advertisements to profit off of books they would allow users to read on the Kindle for free. If they let you download a full book in Kindle format under public domain, for example, they could monetize serving up that content by inserting an ad. Though it would definitely make the reading experience somewhat annoying, ads would be a negligible price to pay for millions of free reads at one’s fingertips.
British Cops Told To Use Wikipedia as a Source In Trials
Posted by Michael Klurfeld | Filed under Michael
Lawyers from the UK firm Crown Prosecution Service have been “advising officers to source information” from Wikipedia for use in trials. The result of this are anecdotal incidents in which the information presented against the defendant at trial are just plain wrong.
As cool as Wikipedia is, it should not be used as a source for something which can be literally life or death, which trials frequently are. Wikipedia should be allowed as a source in things like primary and secondary school essays and for crash courses in various scientific topics, but if you’re doing something serious, such as building a bridge, don’t rely on the site’s articles about engineering.
All of that being said, news items like this only work to set back Wikipedia. Most of the the site contains correct information, which is why people use it. The scientific articles, such as those on engineering, are often better maintained than even textbooks (though again, for situations which have far-reaching ramifications, you want to verify the information you get). Many people who need to get quick facts on topics online have learned to bypass the search engines and go straight to the Wiki because it is such a fantastic resource. If you want ridiculous information that’s completely incorrect, try a Wikipedia knockoff.
iPhone is Big In Japan
Posted by Michael Klurfeld | Filed under Michael
Even if this were just a joke, it’d still be fun to publish. But no, the iPhone 3G’s 8 GB model is the most popular smartphone in Japan at retail, and the 16 GB version holds the number two position. What’s more impressive than the iPhone’s Japanese dominance is its carrier, Softbank, which “adjusted its plans to make the product cheaper in terms of fees and hardware.” This is such a smart tactic as it gets the iPhone into the hands of more people. Just think about what would happen if instead of costing around $80 a month (before taxes and inexplicable fees, of course), AT&T charged customers $50 or $60 a month to use the iPhone. A lot of people look at a $200 phone and see that as the barrier to entry, but the initial cost is negligible in comparison to the amount of money paid over time. Signing that two-year contract for the iPhone in the US costs you well over $2000 in fees alone.
London Stock Exchange Moving From Windows To Linux
Posted by Michael Klurfeld | Filed under Michael
Last September, the London Stock Exchange was down for the good part of a day due to a crash in the Windows .NET framework. That a pretty big sum of money lost due to a computer crash. So now the LSE has decided to jump ship to Linux, in hopes that it will provide with better system reliability, and because the software it was running, TradElect, never achieved the performance that the LSE wanted. Quite frankly, this makes a ton of sense.
Forget that Windows is a Microsoft product, and just compare it to a car. If you need a car to get yourself to work and yours isn’t working, you’re going to go out and buy a new one. If you need your car to get millions of employees to work (yeah, that’s a big car) and the car is a lemon, you’re definitely going to get a new one. Lucky for the London Stock Exchange, they don’t have to pay for the purchase of a new car, but that’s not to say that using Linux will be free. The price will come in the form of keeping a capable IT staff trained in the open source operating system on hand.
In a way, it’s quite surprising that something as big and as public as a stock exchange was ever running Windows. With popularity comes exploits, and there are almost certainly more exploits for Windows than there are for any other system. Linux, on the other hand, is nowhere near as compromised by a rampant environment of hackers. That said, it seems like a security concern in and of itself that the LSE’s new backbone has been made so public, though it’s a lot better than having hackers know that Windows is keeping a good part of an economy afloat.
Cyberbully Involved in Suicide Acquitted – Really?
Posted by Michael Klurfeld | Filed under Michael
I’m at a loss for this one. Lori Drew, a 50 year old woman, was acquitted of misdemeanor charges stemming from her involvement in the bullying of 13-year old Megan Meier via Myspace, which resulted in Meier’s suicide. The decision hinged on the fact that the prosecutors involved seemed ot have made a pretty terrible case: they argued that Drew’s behavior violated Myspace’s terms of service, thus resulting in trying Drew for hacking. As much as I would rather see people acquitted than thrown behind bars, I’ll make an exception in this case.
If manipulating someone into committing suicide is not a crime, it really should be. And it shouldn’t matter over what medium the events leading to the person’s suicide occurred. For those who don’t know, Ms. Drew set up a fake Myspace persona where she pretended to be a boy interested in the late Megan Meier, and then after acting out a relationship with the girl online, broke the girl’s heart, leading to her suicide. We can’t argue about whether or not the suicide was part of Drew’s plan, but we can argue that treating people in a way that makes them kill themselves should be illegal. If a kid is bullied at high school every day for a year and ends up killing himself, presumably the bully would be in some sort of trouble, especially if the bully were an adult under the law. So the fact that Ms. Drew was acquitted is sort of painful to watch.
I’m not saying that Ms. Drew should be found guilty of manslaughter, but she’s certainly guilty of abuse. Last I checked, that’s a crime.
American Government Spending $7.2 Billion On Broadband Stimulus
Posted by Michael Klurfeld | Filed under Michael
As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and the Broadband Initiatives Program will be together paying a total of $7.2 billion to fund private efforts for delivering broadband to “unserved” or “underserved” areas. Unserved refers to areas where at least nine out of ten households don’t have what the government is calling the minimum requirements for broadband, and underserved refers to places where half of households do not have service of at least 3 Mbps down, or places where less than two-fifths of households do not subscribe to broadband.
We at TG are happy to see that to be eligible to receive funds, you must promise to abide by the FCC’s Internet Policy Statement, which means consumers are free to use whatever device they want to get online, and that providers can’t throttle bandwidth (so none of those application-crippling shenanigans allowed). Providers will have to deal with illegal online content (which is presumably the new PC term for child porn), but the other parts of the IPS suggest that violating net neutrality is not an acceptable way of doing this.
The only problematic part is the definition of broadband, which is at least 768 kbps down and 200 kbps up, which is a step above the old definition of 200 kbps down, but is still nothing given the high-bandwidth activities we have these days. That said, the government necessarily needed a lower standard definition for broadband. If, for example, a 3 Mbps downstream connection had been required, that would have meant that the infrastructure would go towards helping a smaller number of people, albeit with better connections than they are getting under this scheme.
So this effort, considering that parts of America still have no broadband, are a start, and a good one at that as it focuses on laying the initial infrastructure for the areas that still have dial-up if anything. The fast-talkin’ city folk may still be complaining about how Comcast is the only provider which has even made a pledge about rolling out IPv6 support, but at this point, it’s mission-critical that we get everyone online. If people do not want to use the internet, that is there choice, but they need to be in a position where they can actually choose.
(Original story via Ars Technica)
iPhone False Data Roaming Warnings Popping Up
Posted by Michael Klurfeld | Filed under Michael
So far I haven’t seen too many people having this problem, but I figured I should pass this along for anyone who may not know better. iPhones seem to be popping up warnings sporadically warning users that they have to enable data roaming while within non-roaming zones. For example, I’m from the continental US, and in Chicago I got a pop-up warning me that I need to turn on data roaming. Only I don’t. Because I’m well within my bounds of normal coverage. So know that if you see this warning, odds are it’s just a false alarm. Unless, of course, AT&T has just decided to screw over iPhone users really hard. But that seems low, even for a US mobile provider.
Update: Apparently this has been a bug since iPhone 1.0. Seems like an odd thing to keep around, though I’d imagine this is just a function of AT&T’s network.
(This new information from @lousansano).
