I learned today that Joybubbles (aka Josef Engressia) had died on August 8th. I never knew Joybubbles, never spoke to him, but I knew of him. I had first heard his name some thirty years ago when I was shown my first bluebox, and heard how he had routed a phone call around the world [...]
Johannes Ullrich over at SANS, reminded me of an increasing threat to the telecommunications and power infrastructure: copper and fiber theft. Odd as it seems, we have arrived at a point where people are robbing both construction sites and critical infrastructure of copper in order make a few bucks. Over the past few months several [...]
Every few years I go through old domain names and get rid of some. When you have been working on the Internet for a number of years, you tend to collect domain names like old clothes. At one point, I had some 50+ domains, but, as I am not a squatter, I let them go [...]
A few days ago, I wrote about how AT&T censored anti-administration lyrics from Pearl Jam’s webcast. The Chicago Sun Times is now reporting that this was not the first instance of AT&T’s squelching of music questioning the Bush administration:
AT&T’s Blue Room Webcast also had silenced comments during two performances at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee [...]
Last weekend during the Lollapalooza webcast AT&T decided that some improvisation by Pearl Jam was just too questionable to be sent out over the Internets. AT&T decided that when Eddie Vedder sang out, to tune of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, “George Bush, leave this world alone;” “George Bush, find yourself another home.” it would offend [...]
Recently proto virtual-world Second Life banned in-world gambling using it’s native currency, Linden Dollars. This really shouldn’t have come as a shock to anyone, given the government’s recent war against online gambling. Linden Labs, who administers Second Life, could not take the chance that the feds would come and seize their business. States have lobbied [...]
This week the Communications Workers of America released its report on broadband speeds across America. It’s a sobering document which should serve as an indictment of the entire American telecommunications model. However because their methodology relied upon users running their own speed test, the defenders of the status quo will claim the findings [...]
