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government

Stacked panel on municipal broadband?

Cox and BellSouth (and other big network companies) hate the idea that local governments or utilities ?? say, in Lafayette, La. -- might set up shop to offer their own fiber networks to local residents. No surprise in that. The two companies invited a panel of experts to Lafayette this week to opine on the local utility district's plans to enter the high-speed network and ?? again, big shocker ?? all three experts said it wasn't a good idea .

We've written a bit about this, and think municipal districts are a good idea. They may not be perfect, but the … Read more

Like the Net too much? No Army for you

The Finnish Army is sending recruits home for being addicted to the Internet. I guess all those online shooter games aren't as good at making people violent killers as some people think.

According to Reuters: "For people who play (Internet) games all night and don't have any friends, don't have any hobbies, to come into the army is a very big shock," said Commander-Captain Jyrki Kivela at the military conscription unit. "They get sent home for three years and after that they have to come back and we ask if they are OK. They … Read more

Doom, and the difference a decade makes

Doom 3 came out today, and was immediately purchased by everyone who hadn't already downloaded it from one of the myriad Bittorrent feeds that had it available all weekend. I checked last night, and there were about 5000 people at once downloading the game (a 1.7 gig file, I think) just in the one place I was looking.

It's different, but not that different from a decade ago. I co-wrote a book last year looking at the history of video games, and we started one chapter talking about the huge traffic jam of people in 1993 waiting … Read more

Home theater sound, online in Sweden

Turns out that Swedish Radio is ahead of everybody on broadband digital audio. Who knew? DTS, the same company that does audio for theaters and high-end home audio, has been helping the station put 5.1 surround sound downloads of broadcasts on its Web site for a while. Now the two have paired to do high-quality 5.1 sound over a streamed Internet connection.

It takes a 1.5 mbps connection, but it sounds like the video on DVDs, they say. That might be tough with the average DSL connection in the U.S, but might just squeak in over … Read more

The wireless broadband wars

Eurotel Praha in the Czech Republic is the latest carrier to jump on the "3G" wireless bandwagon. The launch of the new service is Europe's first real "3G" deployment using the EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) standard. Verizon and Sprint have already poured billions of bucks into building these networks here in the U.S.

EV-DO was developed to provide broadband connection rates to cell phone and wireless users so they can send e-mail and surf the Web on mobile devices. Now that the technology is finally gaining steam, what's it mean for other wireless … Read more

Where did all the subscribers go?

Microsoft was mysteriously silent about the performance of its MLB.com deal. In my first blog entry I pegged the MLB deal as a hallmark in online sports programming, despite its $40 million price tag over two seasons. Might I have to eat crow?

During a presentation to analysts in its Redmond-Wa. headquarters, MSN Chief Yusuf Mehdi last week remained mum about it??s the division's subscription businesses. Instead, the veteran of Microsoft's many Internet campaigns focused his presentation on search. Knowing Microsoft, any significant uptick in broadband subscriptions would make top billing to investors.

I don't … Read more

Candidates take Jibs and Jabs

For a less-partisan piece of broadband comedy, check out "This Land" from the offbeat animators at JibJab. Talking heads of Bush and Kerry sling insults at one another while singing to the tune of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land." Here's a clip.

Bush: "?? I'm a Texas tiger, you're a liberal wiener??"

Kerry: "?? I'm an intellectual, you're a stupid dumb-ass??"

The parody is a hoot. Bush and Kerry are animated like the talking Saddam Hussein in "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut." Credit … Read more

Gloomy Monday for Net phones

It's a VoIP kind of day. Or not, I guess. Vonage had an hour-long service outage that sent emails streaming into our tip boxes here at News.com. Not a good thing for a company that's trying to compete with ordinary phone service which ?? for all the phone companies' problems ?? very, very rarely goes out.

Then the New York Times publishes a big piece looking at how Net voice service is very hackable. "Tapping phones by hacking into servers and hard drives is easier than wiretapping, which requires special equipment and more effort. Now, hackers can eavesdrop … Read more

Smuggling Internet phone service across borders

Another installment in the Internet's ability to route around regulations that are inconvenient. Apparently governments in Latin America heavily tax or even ban Internet voice services like Vonage. But now people in the U.S. have taken to signing up for Vonage accounts for their relatives, and then sending the appropriate equipment south of the border to people who have broadband accounts.

Vonage says it doesn't officially sanction the practice, but didn't have any limits on how many accounts people could set up. "There are no limits on how much toothpaste you can buy, right?" … Read more