TFA is referring not to de-facto ubiquitous coverage by multiple independent access points, but by a single, centrally run mesh of access points owned and operated (at least partially) by the municipal government.
At least in the USA, this has largely been quashed by the telcos in the courts, claiming that such networks are unfair competition to their price gouging mobile data plans.
The problem is that you need jailbroken iphone...
This may be true for the moment, but now that someone is actually capitalizing on jailbroken iphones, Apple's attempts to completely restrict people from installing what they want on their devices could be construed as anti-competitive behavior by a judge. That is, if they were to secure all flaws in the phone's operating system via an update and not provide people with the availability to install software from a competing vendor, Apple could face some serious fines for effectively trying to eliminate the competition.
If this ever winds up in court, Apple might try to argue that jailbroken iphones are against the DMCA. The competing store however might argue that it was done for "compatibility" purposes, which last I recall was allowed under current copyright laws. In the end if something like this does ever happen, it'll definitely be a case worth paying attention to.
PBS had a great 1 hour segment on this not too long ago. Their segment covered the rapid decline in albatrosses due to offspring being fed the plastic from the pacific. I haven't been able to find the complete coverage of the segment I saw on my local PBS station, but I have managed to locate part of it here titled: World's Oceans Face Problem of Plastic Pollution
Transformers these days SUCK!
Maybe you should play with Transmorphers instead.
For all those interested, Scientific American has the story.
Anyone worth their salt knows nothing is stored in the cable modem.
Something tells me he hasn't heard of the mysterious black smoke.
While I agree that web based email clients may be the way of the future, it will be a long time before messaging services provided by sites like MySpace or Facebook replace traditional email services. The main problem with these services is their inability to relay messages to users of different sites.
From a technical POV, the move to web based email services could actually be considered a good thing since it abstracts the underlying system from the user. That is to say, users need not know how it works or how to make it work, only that it does what they expect it to do. If web based email were to completely replace desktop email clients, we would be free to modify and correct the shortfalls of the current system without having to conform to protocols imposed by existing desktop based email clients.
What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey
