Last night I was running Skype on a publicly routable IP address, which probably made my machine a supernode candidate. I noticed a lot of idle traffic between my Skype client and quite a few IP addresses within the Amazon EC2 compute cloud. I'd never seen that before. Usually my background traffic is to random cable and DSL addresses. My guess is that Amazon is where Skype brought up their "extra mega-supernodes". EC2 is handy for things like that.

I'm a big Mac and OSX fan. OSX is a good UNIX system that also makes a good development front end for Linux and BSD. But I have absolutely no interest in developing or even owning an iPhone. First, it doesn't work with CDMA networks like Verizon and Sprint. Second, it's not really your phone if you have to get Apple's permission to run a program on it. People really should avoid locked-down platforms like the iPhone. They're simply not worth it. Buy a small netbook instead.

You're exactly right, Zn-air batteries have been around for a long time. Larger Zn-air batteries have also been under development for some time. So it REALLY bugs me when I see a Slashdot title like this one that's just flat-out wrong. Any battery's theoretical energy/weight ratio is determined by its reactants. Not only do you want a lot of energy from each atom or molecule in the reaction, you also want a high ratio of valence number to atomic weight. The nuclei in the reactants are just dead weight to balance the charge on the electrons that do the work. The ideal reactant would be cheap, nontoxic, easy to handle and electrically conductive. Nothing fits them all so you have to compromise. Good battery fuels are easier to find than good battery oxidizers. You can't beat lithium as a fuel if you want a metal at standard temperature and pressure. The oxidizer is the big problem. In current use are MnO2, LnxCoO2, LiFePO4, AgO, PbO2, NiOOH, SO2, SOCl2, SO2Cl2, FeS, CF(n), HgO, S and lots and lots of others. They're all heavy, expensive, toxic, and/or non-conductive. So using O2 from the air as an oxidizer is a really big win if you can do it. Zinc-air batteries and automotive fuel cells already do this. (Fuel cells for space use have to carry both H2 and O2.) So it seems to me that if you can make a rechargeable battery with Li as the fuel and atmospheric O2 as the oxidizer, you'd really have something.

So this asks the obvious question: is Skype still secure?

Obviously it can be broken by planting malware in the target's computer, but what are the other ways? Last we heard, independent reviews of the crypto protocols said they were pretty good.

But I am quite sure there are exploitable weaknesses in the login server and protocol. Skype operates that server, so we can assume that it either is or soon will be compromised.

Consider the following simple observations. I can install Skype on another computer, sign in with my existing user name and password, and talk to any of my existing contacts without any of them noticing anything unusual. I transferred nothing from my old installation, so my new installation cannot have any of its existing secrets. It knows only one long term secret: my account password, and I use that only to authenticate myself to the Skype login server.

Furthermore, unlike most IM programs, I can sign in from multiple computers and switch between them during chat sessions. All will get copies of all that is said.

This seems to demonstrate quite clearly that with the cooperation of the operator of the Skype login server, you can impersonate any Skype user and conduct either a man-in-the-middle attack or a conferencing attack.

The weakness here is that you're relying on the login server to authenticate your correspondents instead of doing it yourself on an end-to-end basis. Without authentication, encryption is meaningless.

You could probably add packet-level authentication mechanisms to Skype traffic to protect against this attack, but if you're going that far you might as well use something completely different that you can fully trust.

There are other versions of TECO.

Where's TECO? Screen editors are for wimps with poor memories and the inability to write their own screen editor as a TECO macro.

In 1963, the FCC made almost all land mobile (two-way FM radio) radio equipment obsolete when they mandated new channel spacing and FM deviation standards to make more efficient use of the radio spectrum. Users had to buy new radios that complied with the new standards, at their own expense.

The FCC computer models for coverage assume that the receiving antenna is on a 30' mast. Rabbit ears are not going to work in fringe areas.

Digital TV was invented in the USA. It's the implementation that has taken forever.

The government didn't take anything away from you. It has no obligation to compensate anyone for hardware that has become obsolete or useless due to new laws and regulations. This isn't the first time that this sort of thing has happened.

Much of it is just greed. Auto mechanics have been ripping people off for many decades. It's just too easy to feed the average customer some bullshit and make some quick and easy money.

You can save a lot of money by switching to an economy plan, instead of the normal local unlimited plan. The optional calling features are a complete rip-off.

Right, the "Vast Western Conspiracy" to talk trash about China. That's the sort of thing I hear from Chinese students who have little experience with other societies.

The sad part is all the people who get crippled by playing high school and college sports, motivated by the very unlikely prospect of a professional career. They are cannon fodder for a system that makes big profits for the schools and TV networks, and does little for the athlete.

There's a big difference between historical facts and predictions of the future.