Activity for October 9

Comment - House Republicans in uncharacteristic unison over 'one-size-fits-all' net neutrality
(Oct 9, 2009 - 3:23 AM)

Here are the facts:
Only one U.S. ISP tried to block VoIP and that was Madison River Communications. The FCC even in the absence of Title II Common Carrier protection (since ISPs are defined as an information service and not telephony service) was able to stop it immediately and fine Madison River Communications $25,000.

So what are you saying about the need for more regulation?
Comment - Live coverage: FCC open hearing on national broadband plan
(Aug 27, 2009 - 7:55 PM)

First of all, those cheap examples of 100 Mbps access are for condo and apartment complexes where they just run one piece of fiber to the basement and then share that with the whole building of maybe 100 tenants. That's a very economical way to provide broadband, IPTV, and phone service using very short haul telephone wire. Verizon is primarily serving single resident homes which is very expensive to wire since each home gets its own fiber run, rather than 100 tenants sharing a single fiber run. In fact in Japan, single resident home fiber broadband is much more expensive, and it's roughly the same as Verizon FiOS.

Second, be very careful with statistics. We all know that Japan has a very advanced broadband infrastructure, yet they're ranked 17 by connections per person according to the OECD while Korea is #7. But if you measure broadband per telephone wire which is more accurate, Korea is #1 and Japan is ranked #21. However, much of that difference is due to Japan's aging population, and we all know that older people are less likely to adopt new technology. So all these stats are just a numbers game where's you're measuring demographics and not actual performance. It's just like if you measured Europe (not certain hand picked nations), they have lower average speeds than the USA yet USA averages worse than certain small nations. So again, it's a demographics game.
Comment - Apple 'has not rejected Google Voice application,' says it rejects 20% of submitted apps
(Aug 22, 2009 - 5:33 PM)

You should actually try and read Apple's response. They didn't blame AT&T for the decision. They were very concerned with Google Voice breaking the visual voice mail functionality by only storing voice mail in Google's servers. They were very concerned with Google changing the core look and feel and functionality of the iPhone. They were concerned about Google uploading users' address books and contact info without any assurance as to what Google intends to do with that information.
Comment - Is Gateway's 11.6-inch netbook not a netbook?
(Jun 23, 2009 - 10:13 PM)

The claimed battery life appears to be better for the 1.2 GHz Athlon 64 rather than the Neo processor. Of course, I would need to see some actual benchmarks.
Comment - Earth to Europe: You won. Microsoft complied. Live with it.
(Jun 19, 2009 - 5:27 PM)

Netscape had a big hand in killing themselves. By the year 2000, they had made Netscape so bloated (in memory foot print) that it was completely unusable.