Verizon has decided to allow shareholders to hold non-binding votes on executive compensation.
Verizon?? The phone company, is going for transparency and responsiveness?????
We are approaching the end of everything….when do cats start sleeping with dogs??? When does that marshmallow guy appear?
I hear this, and I want to put on sunglasses and an ear piece and take a bullet for him.
It said that the FCC ruling that no requirement for access to the list mile wiring stands.
Ma Bell has lived for years by using monopolistic techniques to ice out competition. It’s more profitable than supplying a better product, which is why the US is behind the rest of the industrialized world in broadband.
The FCC claims that this will give more competition. Why should it, when anti-competitive behavior is more profitable than competing.
Last week there was news that Comcast was blocking traffic from BitTorrent, Gnutella, and other file sharing operations, Comcast has finally responded to these reports. They say that they are not blocking these applications, they are just delaying them.
Speaking on background in a phone interview earlier today, a Comcast Internet executive admitted that reality was a little more complex. The company uses data management technologies to conserve bandwidth and allow customers to experience the Internet without delays. As part of that management process, he said, the company occasionally – but not always – delays some peer-to-peer file transfers that eat into Internet speeds for other users on the network.
Of course, some of these applications have legal uses, BitTorrent was developed to do online software releases, and almost every Linux distro these days uses it, and it is blocking crippling other applications, like Lotus Notes.
While I think that Notes is one of the worst email/groupware packages ever written, and I would not shed a tear to see it gone, it would be inappropriate for me, as an ISP, to block it.
So, not only is Comcast dishonest and hypocritical, they are also incompetent. Who would have expected that from the cable company.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation noticed the same sort of packet forging that the AP did (and that Broadband Reports readers did some time ago), and continued its testing to see if other applications are affected. The answer is a disturbing “yes.” The results of additional testing done by the EFF indicate Comcast is sending forged reset packets with some Gnutella traffic. When the EFF ran a Gnutella node on a Comcast connection, the forged reset packets disrupted communication between the nodes.
What’s particularly insidious about Comcast’s packet forging is that it’s transparent to both its customers and those on the opposite ends of the connection. Applications such as BitTorrent and Gnutella retain some of their functionality, but they’ll also appear to malfunction for no apparent reason.
Even if you accept the argument that all P2P traffic is inherently evil, and that Comcast has the right to disrupt it in order to put a stop to copyright infringement, Comcast’s traffic-shaping efforts have apparently extended beyond the realm of P2P and into good old enterprise groupware. Kevin Kanarski, who works as a Lotus Notes messaging engineer, noticed some strange behavior with Lotus Notes when hooked up to a Comcast connection last month.
When Lotus Notes users attempt to send e-mail with larger attachments over Comcast’s network, Notes will drop its connection. Instead of a successfully sent e-mail, they’re greeted with the error message, “Remote system no longer responding.” Kanarski did some digging and has managed to verify that Comcast’s reset packets are the culprit. Instead of passing the legitimate e-mail through its network, Comcast’s traffic monitoring tool (likely Sandvine) is sitting in the middle, imitating both ends of the connection, and sending reset packets to both client and server.
So there is more than some arcane issue of people wanting their free music and pr0n, through incompetence (remember, this is the cable company), they are blocking legitimate software too,
It appears now that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are demanding that anyone who gets to see the domestic sypying documents approve Telco immunity. They only gave docs to the Senate Intelligence committee after arranging a quid pro quo.
The Judiciary committee, particularly Leahy and Spector, are rightly calling bullsh%$ on this.
Someone needs to stand up to Bush and to tell him to pound sand.
While you are at it, go to my Act Blue page (upper right hand corner), and give Chris Dodd some love. Maybe that will convince the Senate Dems that being a fighting liberal is a political win.
I’m seriously thinking about printing up a bunch of T-shirts saying “Bush’s Bitches”, and giving them out to Reid, Pelosi, Rockefeller, etc., but in the absence of that, reprints of this Times OP/ED on the FISA cave in will do.
According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a review of IRS returns shows that Christofascist groups receipts skyrocketed in 2006.
Remember, just because the Democrats won congress in 2006, and look likely to win the presidency in 2008 does not mean that they are going away.
By way of example 99.8%, or 499 out of 500 complaints to the FCC in 2003 were from the Christofascist group Action for Children’s Television.
These people are still a cancer on the body politic.
I’ve been posting off and on (here, here, here, and here) about the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars, and I have not really covered what might be an increasingly likely outcome, that both formats may lose.
While I think that HD-DVD may do better in the long fun, given Sony’s (and not Disney’s) anal retentive and counter productive licensing and marketing strategies, it may very well be that these will be irrelevant in a home entertainment context, though they might still duke it out in areas like backup formats and software distribution.
Given technologies out there, I got FIOS a month ago, and one of the side benefits is a digital TV tuner which allows for on-demand content, which is about the same price as going to the Video store, I’m wondering whether online high definition will be the eventual winner.
Given that the additional resolution is hard to notice on a typical TV, and that much of the motivation for the higher definition DVD formats is content control, which from an end user perspective is basically screwing the consumer, perhaps these two formats will simply be bumps on the road to digital distribution.
While there are a lot of people on without online access, or on dialup, who have DVDs, the overwhelming majority of those who would go with a high def DVD format already have broadband, so why bother with media at all. One can go with a digital library.
Microsoft and Google, on the same side for once, are in in a tussle with commercial TV stations over “white space”, the unused channels in broadcast TV.
Basically, Microsoft sent a prototype to the FCC which was supposed to automatically detect white space, and use the spectrum for (very) high speed connectivity, but it failed because Microsoft never gets anything right the first time.
Broadcaster’s heads are exploding over this proposal, with claims of severe interference, technical problems, and that it will make your daughter date a biker.
While part of this is no doubt a result of the proprietary feelings that broadcasters have regarding “their” (it belongs to all of us) spectrum, I think that another part is that they do not want to have a competing use.
If there is a competing use, at some point regulators might give priority to that use, as opposed to broadcasting reruns of “my mother the car”.
Verizon decided not to carry text message updates sent by NARAL, though they subsequently reversed themselves.
This is why we need open access. They are using public airwaves, and as such, they should function as common carriers for all communications.
OMFG!!!! Apple® has come out with a system that is less secure than Windows.
The iPhone®, which runs an Apple® version of Unix® runs everything as root.
1) Every process runs as root. MobileSafari, MobileMail, even the Calculator, all run with full root privileges. Any security flaw in any iPhone application can lead to a complete system compromise. A rootkit takes on a whole new meaning when the attacker has access to the camera, microphone, contact list, and phone hardware. Couple this with “always-on” internet access over EDGE and you have a perfect spying device.
So, unlike your home computer, this is more vulnerable, and it can be set to listen in and photograph you with a remote compromise.
This is the NSA’s wet dream, you’ve bugged yourself.
Ya mother’s calling from Yenta Tones.
Good stuff.
A few days ago, a protype “smart radio” was sent to the FCC for testing. The idea behind such a system is that it can communicate adaptively in the “white space” between TV stations, opening up spectrum. It failed abysmally.
Well, Microsoft is now saying that they sent sent FCC a defective prototype.
So they are now saying that they are complete pratts who could not be bothered to send a working unit.
Normally, I don’t trust Microflaccid enough to throw them, but this time, it rings true to me.
History has shown that the adult entertainment industry leads the consumer electronics field in adopting new technologies.
It led the adoption of VCRs, it was probably the deciding factor in the VHS/Betamax format war, and popularized DVDs.
Well, it appears that, Blu-Ray is the format of choice for Japanese porn (HD-DVD is the format of choice in the US).
This is significant change of direction for Sony, who created Blu-Ray, as they have typically been very aggressively using licenses to keep erotica out of their formats.
They still don’t “get” it. The disks have to be produced in Taiwan, and reimported, but they appear to be having at least a bit of a clue now.
Still, despite the head start, HD DVD isn’t exactly taking the porn industry by storm. Several U.S. companies interviewed earlier this year have not made good on their plans to release titles in HD DVD, while Blu-ray Disc appears to be gaining ground with its new initiative to work with Japanese adult film makers. The result could be a shift in Blu-ray’s favor. U.S. adult film makers said they would use whatever makes sense, and only favored HD DVD early on because the format is less expensive to make movies with and they received extensive help from HD DVD backers.
A friendlier face from the Blu-ray Disc camp appears to be working with Japan’s porn industry. Perhaps it could work in the U.S. as well.
We have reports that the ‘Open access’ provision on the 700 mhz spectrum is favored by a majority of FCC commissioners.
It appears to be both of the Dems, and one Republican on the panel, the Republicans are “undecided” (translation, waiting to see who ponies up to the RNC).
This will allow people to attach to the network with whatever equipment and using whatever software that they want, like the land lines, and the Internet.
When one notes the explosion of innovation when AT&T was told to do this in the 1970s (you could get phones that weren’t black!), this is a good thing for everyone but the Baby Bells.
It appears that the olive branch that was offered by SoundExchange contained a hornet’s nest.It comes with a requirement that they use DRM (digital rights management)
Along with the myriad of software issues, particularly across operating systems, that come a DRM scheme, it also reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Internet radio.
If people want to store songs on disk, the go with P2P solutions. They tune into Internet radio because they want to listen, not rip.
The MPAA has filed comments (PDF) that suggest that they oppose net neutrality because it might make it harder for copy protection systems and spying on users more difficult.
Fundamentally, what the MPAA, RIAA, and the Baby Bells want for them to say what you can do and SAY on your net connection.
Think of your cable company, without the charm.
A company called Ooma has a new setup to make VOIP work. It will the phone lines of its subscribers to actually complete phone calls
While this is presented as reducing completion charges, the real reason for this is that it is a way of avoiding the frequently infernal machinations of the incumbent local service providers.
The baby Bells are absolutely bone headed about this, because they do not want to see real competition in their markets.
It appears that a small number of iPhones took down the routers at Duke University.
By a small number, it might have been as few as two.
The built-in 802.11b/g adapters on several iPhones periodically flood sections of the Durham, N.C. school’s pervasive wireless LAN with MAC address requests, temporarily knocking out anywhere from a dozen to 30 wireless access points at a time. The campus network staff is talking with Cisco, the main WLAN provider, and have opened a help desk ticket with Apple. But so far, the precise cause of the problem remains unknown.
That’s because the misbehaving iPhones flood the access points with up to 18,000 address requests per second, nearly 10Mbps of bandwidth, and monopolizing the AP’s airtime.
Does not play well with others.
Well, it looks like UPDATE: AT&T is threatening litigation of the any of the proposals regarding open hardware access in the 700 MHZ spectrum moves forward.
Not surprising. A lot of the Telco’s margins come directly from anti-competitive behavior.
These threats are about making it as difficult as possible for you to change carriers, or to even find a competitor in your area.