There were a number of critical security updates released by Microsoft this week covering Windows vulnerabilities in web browsing, TCP (necessary to connected to the Internet), and wireless connectivity. The wireless vulnerability seems to apply to any computer with a W-Fi network adapter it basically affects all notebooks, netbooks, and even some desktop or server systems. The TCP vulnerabilities affect every implementation of TCP across all hardware and software devices that connect to the Internet or use TCP and it affects products from all companies.

Much attention has been devoted to the story “Customers angered as iPhones overload AT&T” but unfortunately, everyone seems to be conflating data congestion with spotty cell phone service. This is a popular misconception but the truth is that these two issues have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

It is true that iPhones with their innovative mobile web browser are putting a lot of data load on AT&T’s 3G network, but cell phone calls run over dedicated circuits. These circuits are essentially dedicated time slots within the same wireless spectrum that also handles 3G data.

To be perfectly honest, I’ve never personally liked metered Internet service or usage caps.  While I’ve come to the conclusion that some level of usage caps are necessary because broadband networks are shared and affordable, and that intelligently managed networks can operate with far less restrictive caps, I still hate the more restrictive usage caps [...]

Craig Labovitz of Arbor Networks put out this conspiracy theory that there was wide spread effort to “manipulate P2P traffic” using some flawed statistical analysis. The story made it to the front page of Slashdot yesterday as some sort of evidence of wide scale global sabotage of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications. But the analysis relied on some very questionable use of statistics and methodology.

When Congress returns after the Labor Day weekend, a lot of attention will be focused on President Obama’s proposed health insurance reform.  But tax issues are going to arise very soon – how could they not (see: cost of health insurance reform + existing deficits) – and you can expect it to have some potentially [...]