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1K to turn someone into a productive member of society and lead a meaningful life? It's a bargain. We're paying more than that to keep rapists alive in jails. Not to mention that as technology moves on it will either cost less or new drug will take it's place being either more effective or less expensive.

Bell's data shows that unrestricted P2P creates no congestion in better than 95% of their networks. Schemes to "filter" P2P will slow down 100% of their networks. It is obvious that either:

1. They are incompetent. They are going to create a problem to solve one that does not exist. Or
2. They are liars. Their goals and reasons are different from those stated.

My bet is on #2.

Teksavvy gets last mile copper, and DSLAM to peering location at 151 Front St, in Toronto from Bell. If they had peering at each CO and remote, then Bell really would have no justification to impose throttling. Bell is claiming that some network links between the DSLAM and edges of their network are inadequate. What's particularly greasy is that Bell negotiated transit bandwidth agreements with third party ISPs, and then pulled this throttling crap on them. So Teksavvy negotiates a multi-year agreement with Bell for X Gbps transit, so that they can serve their clients during peak hours and be prepared for anticipated growth of their subscriber base. After being locked into transit contracts, Bell starts throttling during peak hours, thus changing the bandwidth that Teksavvy would need during these hours. Further, they don't provide third party providers information about WHICH clients are throttled, putting third parties at a further disadvantage for planning bandwidth needs. The Supreme Court of Canada just cleared the way for the sale of Bell to interests which are financing the sale to the toon of 34 billion dollars of new debt for a company with annual profits of about 4 billion dollars. I'm not at all surprised that Bell is electing to spend a relatively small amount of money on throttling boxes, rather than making any real investment in infrastructure.

Or just went on a bender last night. I knew a guy who loved to tell the story of when he was consulting at a military installation that employed retinal scanners among other security measures. He went out drinking one night and the next day when he reported for work he was a little bloodshot and the scanners didn't recognize him. And the metal walls came down while the guys with shotguns were summoned...

The trouble with biometrics is that it can't be changed. Additionally, the various ways have bad flaws:

• Fingerprints are a terrible idea because you leave a copy of your private key on everything you touch.
• Voice recognition is a terrible idea because everyone within earshot can hear your private key.
• Retinal scanning would fail if someone was in an accident or had surgery or something.

As a general rule, I wouldn't use my fingerprint to protect anything that's worth more to a criminal than my finger is to me.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4396831.stm

"So, what would be the coolest and most far out thing you would do with this kind of hardware?"

Instead of pissing around with stuff that may not go anywhere other than a few giggles over lunch.

Why not just rent, or lend it out to people who don't have the funding or equipment that could use this cluster for a better purpose than "playing around"?

Just saying...

I ask why the federal government needs to provide such information. Why can't Joe Blow find this information out on his own

Because the government is the people. Joe Blow did find this information - he paid the government to do it. "The government" doesn't pay for anything, the people do. Unless there's a compelling national security reason to keep it secret, the data belongs to the people and should be made available to them. You can argue the FCC shouldn't have compiled this data. But once they do compile it, it rightfully belongs to the people.

I thought we did have a cure for cancer? The same one as the cure for Haemophilia.

You let the people predisposed to both die before reproducing.

The article summary is wrong or has a typo or something. This is not on some weird hybrid x86/ARM platform; it's just ARM.

And if you have a blackberry enterprise server, you can:

- force your users to have a password
- force the device to lock after a specified period of inactivity
- force the user to enter the password every x minutes regardless of activity
- prevent users from having a trivial password
- give users a duress password
- set the blackberries to store everything in encrypted from
- if a blackberry is lost, you can remotely lock the blackberry
- if a blackberry is lost, you can remotely wipe it

Blackberries are the best mobile platform, period.

MaineCoasts writes "The Times online reports that two years after buying Skype for 2.6 billion, Ebay yesterday warned shareholders that they may have made a mistake. In essence, they vastly overpaid for the company. ZDNet offers analysis of the announcement: 'Clearly, the current business model is not enough to satisfy eBay in light of how much the company spent on Skype. And the reason is simple. Even though Skype has done a very good job of getting users to download its software client, most people who use the service do so to make free Skype-to-Skype phone calls. The only way that Skype makes money from its subscribers is when people use its Skype-In or Skype-Out services. Skype-In allows users to pay to rent a phone number, which people on regular phones can call. Skype-Out allows users to call traditional phones or cell phones for a fee.'"

Anonymous writes "CI-Host, a large US co-location provider, is in the midst of a major outage in their Chicago facility which has now exceeded 6 hours. While their web site boasts redundant network and power, they have in the past been plagued by power issues. Earlier in 2007, their Chicago facility experienced a 9 hour power outage in some server racks.
While they are no longer answering their phones, their web site is indicating the outage should be repaired by 3PM EST. If this is repaired on schedule, the outage will have been 10 hours long, and have affected thousands of web sites."

The main site for the Chinese Internet Security Response Team (CISRT) has been serving up infrequent attacks against site visitors through the use of an injected IFRAME tag that attempts to download and install numerous pieces of malicious software.

While the source of the attack has yet to be identified, suspicion is that it might be an ARP attack being hosted by the CISRT's hosting provider. Rather than a straight up infection attempt against all site visitors (as was the case with the Bank of India hack), it is an interesting evolution to see intermittent attack attempts against site visitors.
http://www.beskerming.com/commentary/2007/10/03/279/Chinese_Internet_Security_Response_Team_Under_Attack

Filed under: Displays

Our hats go off to Sharp for this one. We wrote about this display in late August, but sometimes seeing really is believing. Today at CEATEC Sharp showed off its optical scanning LCD -- a 3.5-inch 320 x 480 portable display with an optical scanner integrated into each pixel, making the screen capable of scanning business cards and other visual information placed on its face. Unfortunately, the early version we tested couldn't read our lower contrast Engadget-blue biz cards, but clear black and white cards scanned quickly. The pixel-integrated optical scanning technique is also able to be used to enabled more robust multi-touch interfaces; instead of a touch-sensitive film (like most touchscreen phones) or a capacitive display (like on the iPhone), these future Sharp displays literally constantly scan for finger touches, enabling multi-touch input with all five fingers simultaneously.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/164226333/

Above-average hurricane activity is expected for the remaining three months of the hurricane season, the Colorado State University forecast team said September 4. The individual month of September and the two-month period of October-November are expected to experience five named storms each. In September, the forecast calls for four of the five storms to become hurricanes and two to become major hurricanes. In October-November, the team forecasts two of the five named storms to become hurricanes and one to become a major hurricane.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070904214328.htm