Lies! I refuse to believe it!

Sm:)e.

Fast. Good. Cheap.

Choose any two.

I would suggest Tor. (Good and Cheap.)

--Pathway

You want a SIP phone. Have an iPhone 3GS or 4G? I'm sure there is a paid for app that will allow you to make SIP calls. Hopefully there will be one that is iOS4 compatible that allows you to receive calls, too. The free LinPhone app works well enough, but only while the app is open.

Have an Android phone? I think there are SIP clients for Android as well.

Don't have either, just want something that's a WIFI SIP phone? Check out VoipSupply.com. They have a WIFI phone section. I'd either go cheap with the QuickPhones GA-342 or spend a little more for the Hitachi IP3000.

You'll need a SIP VOIP service. Check out Voip-Info.

Of course, test before you commit to something! There are free "toll-free-only" sip providers, which will allow you to test to see if it really works.

--Pathway

When the Apple iPhone was released, Apple managed to get a carrier to provide internet access to it's users for a flat rate of $20 a month. As Apple/AT&T moved to 3G, that rate "upgraded" $30 a month. Admittedly, there were plenty of slashdotter's here who felt this was completely unfair at the time, but I'm sure many of them do enjoy the speed difference from EDGE to 3G... (I'm curious if there are any $20 Unlimited EDGE plan users still out there?)

Now, AT&T is looking at this model and realizing that they are backing themselves into a corner: Users are using more and more bandwidth for the same $30 a month. This is a natural occurrence in all uses of the Internet. Unlike a wired network, the Cell network can easily be over-saturated, and if they can't compensate for users who download huge chunks of data they will begin to falter on delivering reasonable data rates to the rest of their customers.

Metering is the answer. Is this the right price? We will have to wait and see. I for one just checked my "Cellular Network Data" usage, and I have downloaded 1.0 GB, uploaded 200 MB. Last Reset: Never. I've owned this iPhone for 6 months. So 2 GB a month doesn't sound unreasonable. In fact, I think most of my downloads come over WiFi. I bet most of yours do too.

--Pathway

When I think of Nintendo, I think of their tier 1 titles. That's not to say there aren't any good 3rd party titles, but Zelda, Mario, Metriod... These games are a driving force which the big-N uses to drive sales. And the strategy has worked for them for the past 25 years. Now, who is Nintendo marketing for? The answer is simple:

Everyone. Let me do a little hypothetical for you:

Think of your favorite game on an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Got that game in your head? Now, imagine you were playing that game at Thanksgiving time in front of your whole family, including your Grandma. 9 games out of 10, I'm thinking that at best your grandma will simply not understand, or at worst be offended.

Now do the same thing with the Wii. 9 times out of 10, it's a game you and everybody you know can at least appreciate, if not be interested in.

That, and the revolutionary easy to use controls (which are now being emulated), make the Wii a killer social platform focused on games and having fun. That's why it's been a big success.

And the idea that "The CPU is too slow" is the reason for the Wii not making yet-another-year-of-record-sales... That doesn't make sense. As we all know, Super Mario Brothers (the original one for the NES) is fun despite having ugly graphics. It's not how the game looks, it's how the game _plays_.

--Pathway

It might not be exactly what you're looking for, but check out http://whynot.net/ for idea exchange.

Less important: It appears that Google Docs does support SSL. See the Following: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=100181

More important. If Google sold an appliance, much like the Google Search Appliance, that allowed you to run Google Docs from your own network... or anywhere on the internet, that's bringing the cloud to your business. I see things going that way.

Google already does something like this with Google gears, but I haven't tried it yet.

--Pathway

No, I did not RTFA... but about Cloud Computing and all the conserns that come with it:

First, let's define the Cloud. If you have your backups "In the Cloud", my understanding is that you have your data hosted by somebody other than you. You reach them over the internet. You're using the internet to access the services. Because you're receiving this service from an outside network, you're getting it from the "Cloud".

Traditionally, you would be doing this yourself, within your own network. This is defiantly not from the "Cloud".

But what if you were running a business with multiple offices? What if the services you want are only at HQ? If you allow access to these services over the internet, isn't this "In the Cloud" for branch offices? Isn't that just a self-hosted cloud?

Hopefully, for anything you wish to keep private, you encrypt your data.

--Pathway

All I can say is...

Totally cool real life superhero origin story!

Okay, I'll stop geeking out now.

--Pathway

Ah, you're not following the MACK(TM) Truck Rule.

The MACK Truck Rule (MTR for short) is a measuring stick which we use do determine if a solution is good for us. Basically, it's an objective measurement of the level of expertiese required to do something. Basically, the MTR has you ask yourself (Or your team) the following question:

If the person(s) responsible for a task was suddenly hit by a MACK(TM) truck, How much time would it take for somebody else, untrained, to complete that task if needed?

If that amount of time is unreasonable*, It doesn't follow the MTR. Notice the caveat for unreasonable; this is the subjective part. What' unreasonable for one may be reasonable for another. This needs to be decided for yourselves.

Documentation always helps difficult tasks pass the MTR. So can good support. I try to leave a readme in the place where the installer is for a difficult program. I'm now begining to use FreeMind to map out networks and servers. I have a good ticket system for all our repairs. Hopefully these things will make things easier the day I want to take a vacation.

--Pathway

I'd like to point out something I've observed over the years I've used my DVR: I watch the commercials.

I'll be watching my show, and I'll be using the 30-second skip feature to skip commercials during the show... but in the act of flipping through the commercials, If I see something that looks interesting to me, I'll actually go back and see what the commercial is about.

Reasons I skip commercials include: The commercial is annoying, I've seen it several times, or I am defiantly not the target audience.

I've also experienced where I am watching with somebody else, I skip a commercial, and the other party asks to go back to see it because they were interested in it.

I'm sure I'm not alone in this observation. So, I think all commercials get a fair showing in most cases with DVR.

Take the entire transcript and replace the following words:

Microsoft -> Chevorlet
XP -> Malabu
Vista -> Volt

So if the sentence "We are not going to upgrade to Microsoft Vista, because XP is running fine and we've heard that there are problems with Vista." read as "We are not going to update to Chevy Volts, because our Malibus are running fine and we've heard there are problems with the Volt." ... Would it be fair for Chevy to complain?

I don't think so.

And, no, I did not RTFA.

--Pathway

OpenDNS - This is the easiest to configure. Setup your internet connection to use the OpenDNS servers, and then do some base filtering on the really bad stuff. Block specific domains if you want, and/or use the built in blacklists.

Squid - This is a proxy filter. It can do a lot of things, but mostly it is use by the next few things to do what you want:

DansGuardian - A truly excellent content filter, with weighted lists if you like. Want to allow "Brest Cancer" but not just "Brest"? It can do that. Very powerful, but also takes some work to do.

AdZapper - Does what it sounds like: It stops Advertisements. Truly a great way to trim the net of the waste. ... and to do all these things, I recommend ...

ClarkConnect. It's a linux based firewall which can do all this and a whole lot more. Free and Paid versions available. Others will suggest different programs, this is just the one I'm using.

I'm using the Windows 7 Beta right now, and previously I've been using Windows Vista.

Is it really that much better? Here are the points I can think of it being better than Vista:

* Faster on Less Hardware - They did make it work better on older slower hardware with less memory.
* Less Annoying User Account Control - It doesn't freak out every time I want to run a program from the desktop. This should be included into Vista with a service pack, imho.
* New Starbar - I like it. Good Job Microsoft. But is it worth the upgrade?

Other than these things... why would anybody upgrade?

Oh... yeah, that's right... Everybody says it's "So much better." Right.

--Pathway

Remember what's important: That the students learn. Every thing you do should prompt you to ask this one simple question:

How does this benefit the students learning?

Computers are great, but there is nothing that a computer alone can do to teach a child. It requires people to do the hard work of actually setting up the computers to be used as tools in the teaching of Math, Science, Reading, History, Music, Art... all the things that are completely doable without a computer.

Where computers can be the most beneficial is with composition, collaboration, and as a tool of learning. Remembering this, you should be able to find the best way to help your students.

--Pathway