JetLib News

An anonymous reader writes “The Globe & Mail has an article written in response to a recent study done by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard about how far behind the rest of the world the US and Canada are with regard to broadband internet. The refutation basically tears apart Harvard’s analysis and shows why the US and Canada are actually far ahead of most European countries. ‘Canada has a true broadband penetration rate of close to 70 per cent of households. And North Americans use the Internet somewhat more intensively than do Europeans, according to Cisco Systems data on Internet traffic. Further, business Internet traffic in North America appears to be at levels substantially higher than elsewhere in the world. Sadly, there is little systematic effort by international agencies to measure the intensity of Internet usage. Instead, we see comparisons of advertised speeds and “price per advertised megabit,” which are especially misleading. Advertised broadband speeds vary from actual speeds. In North America, this is largely a result of “network overhead,” and is quite modest. In Europe, however, the variation is often dramatic.’”

Source: Why Broadband In North America Is Not That Slow

jesgar writes “The Linux kernel would cost more than one billion EUR (about 1.4 billion USD) to develop in European Union. This is the estimate made by researchers from University of Oviedo (Spain), whereby the value annually added to this product was about 100 million EUR between 2005 and 2007 and 225 million EUR in 2008. Estimated 2008 result is comparable to 4% and 12% of Microsoft’s and Google’s R&D expenses on whole company products. Cost model ‘Intermediate COCOMO81′ is used according to parametric estimations by David Wheeler. An average annual base salary for a developer of 31,040 EUR was estimated from the EUROSTAT. Previously, similar works had been done by several authors estimating Red Hat, Debian, and Fedora distributions. The cost estimation is not of itself important, but it is an important means to and end: that commons-based innovation must receive a higher level of official recognition that would set it as an alternative to decision-makers. Ideally, legal and regulatory framework must allow companies participating on commons-based R&D to generate intangible assets for their contribution to successful projects. Otherwise, expenses must have an equitable tax treatment as a donation to social welfare.”

Source: The Billion Dollar Kernel

Several sources following the recent school webcam spying debacle are reporting that an even stranger twist has surfaced. The student in question that was disciplined for an “improper act” was apparently accused of either drug use or drug selling. Turns out he was eating Mike & Ike candy, not popping pills. While there is probably more to this story than has made it to the general public the officials involved have done a particularly bad job of actually managing the events.

Source: School Spying Scandal Gets Even More Bizarre

eihab writes “I’ve been a fanatic about my online privacy for the last few years. I’ve been using NoScript and blocking Google Analytics, disabling third-party cookies, encrypting IM and doing everything in my power to keep data-miners at bay. Recently, I’ve been feeling like I’m just doing too much and still losing! No matter what I do, I know that there’s a weak link somewhere, be it my ISP, Flash cookies, etc. I’ve recently gotten AT&T U-Verse, who, according to their privacy statement, will be monitoring my TV watching habits for advertisement purposes. I’m extremely annoyed by that, yet I love the service so much and I don’t think I can cancel it. I just can’t take this anymore. I have nothing to hide, but I do not want to be profiled and become member #5534289 in a database somewhere that records everything I do. I know I’m not that interesting to anyone, but the idea of someone being able to pull up everything about me with a simple SQL SELECT statement and a couple of JOINS makes me cringe. One of the reasons I hate data mining is that data security is not understood and almost non-existent at a lot of places. Case in point: I changed my life insurance two years ago, and the medical firm that conducted my health screening was broken into and computers with non-encrypted hard drives and patients’ data were stolen. That medical firm didn’t really need my SSN, but then again neither did AT&T when I signed up for U-Verse. Am I just too paranoid? Is privacy dead? Should I just give up and accept the fact that privacy is not the norm anymore (like Facebook’s founder recently said) or should I keep fighting the good fight for my privacy?”

Source: Did We Lose the Privacy War?

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Source: Handmade Amps Rock Out With Matchless Tone

AT&T has reversed an earlier decision to bar Sling Media’s television-streaming mobile app from its 3G network, but there’s a catch: AT&T worked with Sling to limit the app’s bandwidth, which will affect its audio and video quality.

Source: AT&T Will Allow ‘Optimized’ 3G Sling App for iPhone

RevWaldo notes a post up at The Gothamist on AT&T’s admission of its poor cell service in New York. “AT&T has realized that the first step towards recovery is admitting it has a problem. The phone giant has confessed that its New York City iPhone service is not up to par, according to a presentation slide published on Tom’s Guide noting that the company’s 3G Voice Composite Quality in the New York metro area — particularly in Manhattan — is below its performance objective. … The slide does contain some good news for AT&T subscribers. Apparently, AT&T has had ‘[t]hree consecutive months of improvement’…”

Source: AT&T Admits New York City iPhone Service Sucks

Despite incessant complains about AT&T, the notorious telecom company is still Apple’s carrier of choice in the United States for its new iPad tablet. What gives?

Source: With iPad, Apple Still Has a Fatal Attraction for AT&T

Trepidity writes “In a case that has been winding its way through the courts for a while now, a Wisconsin prison banned inmates from playing Dungeons & Dragons, using the justification that ‘one player is denoted the Dungeon Master… [who] is tasked with giving directions to other players… [which] mimics the organization of a gang.’ The prison also cited some sparse evidence that a handful of non-inmate D&D players once committed some crimes that allegedly were related to their D&D playing. On Monday the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the regulation (PDF) against challenges from inmates. The court appeared skeptical of the ban, sarcastically referring to it as the ‘war on D&D,’ but upheld it nonetheless as having a ‘rational basis.’ Law professor Ilya Somin suggests that the court may have had no choice, given how deferential rational-basis review usually is.”

Source: Prison Bans D&D For Mimicking Gang Structure

MojoKid writes “An inside source over at HotHardware reports that AT&T will lose their iPhone exclusivity on 1/27, coincident with Apple’s upcoming press event next week, though it’s not yet clear what other carriers will be stepping in to pick up the iPhone. For anyone who has followed the saga, you may notice that you haven’t seen AT&T fighting to extend their original exclusive agreement as of late. In fact, they have spent most of their time fighting Verizon’s negative ad campaigns. This may not be all that surprising. Inside of AT&T, word is that the iPhone is causing more trouble than ever before. On some level, having the iPhone is hurting AT&T’s image. Do you remember hearing about AT&T’s ‘horrible network’ before the iPhone? The iPhone itself doesn’t really handle the switch from 3G to EDGE very gracefully, so calls that are in-progress tend to fail whenever 3G connections aren’t optimal and the phone attempts to step down to EDGE. It seems that AT&T may finally be tired of taking the heat.”

Source: Rumor — AT&T Losing iPhone Exclusivity Next Week