Verizon boss hanks up on landline phone business
Saul Hansell, New York Times

Rep. Henry A. Waxman co-signs third Markey Net Neutrality bill
Cecilia Kang, Washington Post
This bill would outlaw reasonable network management and existing legal business models

An organic farmer Lenny Levine in Nova Scotia just blocked his rural community from having broadband access by convincing the Kings County Council to block the construction of a microwave tower several hundred meters from his farm. Levine cites his unfounded fear that the microwave radiation would mutate the DNA in his organic crops.

The BBC has this interesting interactive map of broadband around the world (via Larry Seltzer).

I’m not exactly sure why a debate over whether broadband should be capable of online gaming erupted, but it appears to be a misunderstanding in which some entertainment software executives were needlessly upset. The whole furor came about as AT&T made mention of the word “gaming” once in their FCC filing on how broadband should be defined. AT&T merely pointed out that Satellite broadband technology can’t support online gaming.

In this story at Time, Eric Bender poses the question “Is text messaging too expense?”. Bender concludes that text messages must be too expensive because it’s 98% “pure profit”, but there are some fundamental problems with analysis. For one thing, the cost estimates cited were based purely on marginal costs and not the entire cost [...]

The FCC recently solicited comments on how we should define broadband. Many comments have focused on a speed-based definition, others on access to applications or “what it enables“, others on using the definition of broadband to advance policy goals in other areas. The definition is necessarily going to be pretty subjective, so – while there’s [...]

Digital Rights Management (DRM) has seemingly become a four letter word these days, or at least it evokes some four letter words from some frustrated consumers. Jeff Vogel who is both an avid consumer and producer of video games has had some nasty things to say about DRM in the past, but he he penned a few kind words for DRM in his most recent blog.

The “Environmental Working Group” ewg.org just put out their report on the dangerous of cell phone Radio Frequency (RF) fields. The problem is that their report either relies on very small studies that show a possible correlation with increased cancer rates but they completely omit the largest studies that found no dangers with cell phone RF fields. The EWG makes several claims in their executive summary but they seem to contradict the larger body of evidence

The Windows SMBv2 zero-day vulnerability (disclosed vulnerability with no software fix) appears to be more dangerous than initially thought.  The vulnerability does not affect the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2, but it does affects Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.  The danger is no longer just a [...]

Broadband providers need a uniform standard for advertising to set realistic consumer expectations