David Weinberger and David Isenberg write in USATODAY.com - Don't prop up phone firms; let them fail : Instead of spending billions of tax dollars propping up the telephone companies and delaying the inevitable, let them fail - and fast. By doing so, an astounding new era of telecommunications will be launched that is just as inevitable.

Joho also writes that they mis-quoted him where he said "the telephone network "was not designed" to handle anything other than voice data, USAToday edited it to say that it "can't handle" non-voice data."

EU Governments should take note, but you can be sure that several ex-national monopoly Telcos will get all sorts of handouts. [from: JB Ecademy]

For years, you've been able to use MySQL from inside PHP. Now someone's written a MySQL UDF that interprets PHP so you can use PHP inside MySQL. MySQL has already got a pretty complete set of the C runtime calls exposed as SQL commands, but this takes it a stage further. And it probably takes it completely over the top! [from: JB Ecademy]

The Distributed Proofreading site assigns random pages from scanned-in or re-keyed public domain texts that are being prepared for the Gutenberg Project library to volunteer proofers who correct the errors and check them back in. After a recent slashdotting, the sites pages proofed per day rate went from less than 1,000 pages/day to over 10,000. At this rate, they'll have the entire public domain up in jig time. [thanks, Boing Boing Blog]

Another amazing community project that could only happen in an Internet world. For those unfamiliar with the Gutenberg Project it's goal is to scan, store electronically and make available the entire body of writing that is out of copyright. One fascinating side effect of this is the Bookmobile. Brewster Kahle has fitted out a truck with a satellite link, computers and fast laser printers. He travels the USA, parks up and then prints out of copyright texts to order out the back of the van. 

  [from: JB Ecademy]

Andy Oram writes that the Schlotzsky's Deli announcement of free WiFi at their delis represents a Shift in the image of open Wi-Fi access He's absolutely right. We've moaned here before about the mainstream media's obsession with portraying WiFi as some demon hacker's paradise. We need a few more of these stories about people deliberately providing free access to provide some balance.

And by the way in case anyone hasn't worked it out yet, Warchalking is actually a huge geek joke and not something that happens much at all (at all) in the wild or anything to be scared of! [from: JB Wifi]

San Diego wireless net installs 72-mile 2.4-GHz link - Computerworld This is (I think) a new world record. I'm curious about the effects of latency. I understood that 802.11b had inherent limitations in some parts of the protocol where the round trip time of such a long link would stop it working. [from: JB Wifi]

WeRoam Launches WeRoam is a service of TOGEWAnet, a WLAN and GSM network integrator headquartered in Bern, Switzerland. I'm beginning to see stories like this one that talk about the convergence of cellphone SIM card technology with WiFi. I have to say I'm uncomfortable with this because it implies levels of corporate control that work against the inherent anarchism of WiFi. But having said that it may well make WiFi+GPRS(GSM)+PDA+VoIP commercially viable.  [from: JB Wifi]

Another micropayment system. Except that the Ginx: Nickel Exchange is peer to peer and aimed at private individuals paying each other rather than all of us paying big business for small things. [from: JB Ecademy]

Lots of links in the blogosphere to this story. Wired News: Napster Co-Founder's New Venture Plaxo. I guess in a world where everyone uses Outlook and Outlook Express it makes sense but it smells like spam to me. And there's not news yet on the bueinss plan and how he intends to make money from it. [from: JB Ecademy]

The convergence of WiFi, VoIP and PDAs. Use your PocketPC with Wi-Fi as a phone TeleSym delivers its SymPhone System for wireless voice calls on PDAs Turns a Pocket PC PDA into a mobile phone for the wireless workplace, free trial offered  [thanks, CYBERFROST.net] [from: JB Wifi]

I've updated the event code so that you can now register for any future Ecademy event. You can also view the attendee list and the printable photo page for any event both in the past and future. So for instance to see who turned up to the last event; Go to events, work back through the calendar to find the event; click on Attendees; Click on Printable list with photos [from: JB Ecademy]

I was looking round for good "How to" guides about WiFi and came across the 802.11 Planet - Tutorials. Good stuff and worth reading if you want a primer into WiFi. [from: JB Wifi]

A paper, Detecting 802.11 Discovery Apps [thanks, 80211b News] has just appeared on Slashdot. It details techniques for identifying "stumbling" applications commonly used to identify WiFi networks such as NetStumbler. Interestingly, one of the applications mentioned is Windows XP that comes with a simple application for scanning. Meanwhile several applications are available for linux such as Kismet and Airmagnet which are completely passive and so offer no hints to their presence.

There's also been some talk from the community about Information Security people setting up "honeypot" WiFi access points that have no connections and no purpose beyond looking for stumblers. The hacker community have responded with code that emulates thousands upon thousands of access points and scanners.

All this stuff is fascinating. but it's also completely pointless isn't it? Wouldn't the effort be better aimed at building mesh networking protocols, solving the roaming problem and building a one click install for home APs to safely share bandwidth?

  [from: JB Wifi]

You travel often. You like stylish hard luggage. You use Bluetooth. You need a Samsonite Suitcase with Bluetooth [from: JB Ecademy]

You travel often. You like stylish hard luggage. You use Bluetooth. You need a Samsonite Suitcase with Bluetooth [from: JB Ecademy]

World War Drive II Results "The results of the second World War Drive are in, and they don't look good for wireless security. Of the almost 25,000 wireless access points surveyed, only 35 percent used Service Set Identifier (SSID), a default security feature in the 802.11b protocol. Only 28 percent had Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)... [thanks, Lockergnome's Bits and Bytes] [from: JB Wifi]

Interesting little story from a system administrator. He's setting up a company wide WLAN and suitable security measures both on the firewalls and on the Cisco access points that he puts in. But he's plagued by unauthorised WLAN access points. "I detected them by equipping my Compaq iPaq with an AirMagnet Handheld PC Card and detection software from Mountain View, Calif.-based AirMagnet Inc. I can pick up the signals, but I can't tell where the APs are. A management e-mail demanding the removal of these devices seems to have had the opposite effect." Stalking Elusive Access Points  [thanks, Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News] [from: JB Wifi]

The latest Wired has just dropped thorugh my letter box. So to continue today's comments about open source software for Microsoft platforms.

Out of 48,000 plus projects on sourceforge, 20% are cross platform and 18% are for Microsoft Windows platforms.

7% of open source coders live in the UK.

Of coders who code at work, 28% use open source and the Boss knows. 9% use it but it's not core to their job, 17% use Open source but the boss doesn't know.

60% of open source coders said that if there was another hour in the day, they'd spend it coding.

62% of open source coders said their open source project is as creative as any other pursuit in their lives. Intellectual stimulation is the most-cited motivation.

I love that last one. In my experience most open source projects get started because the lead programmer has an itch that they can't stop scratching. Thouughts of money or payback come a distant second.

The first stat, that 18% of the sourceforge projects are aimed at MS Win platforms is the one I'm most interested in. Why is it low? Is it low? Should Microsoft do anything to try and increase it? [from: JB Ecademy]

Why is there so little open source software for the MS platform?
Bear with me because this isn't fully worked out yet. I have a perception that the MS programming community doesn't produce much free or open source software. Now there are plenty of FS/OSS projects that involve ports to MS operating systems (Apache and PHP to name but two) but I never seem to see much that uses .NET or is based on Visual Studio and is specifically aimed at MS Win.

As I was thinking about this, it occured to me that MS could do worse than actively promote this sort of effort, except that it could be a double edged sword if any of the projects ended up competing directly with one of their areas.

And then I thought I had better actually check that this market doesn't actually exist or if it was all in my mind. So I took a look at Sourceforge and found some 10,000 projects aimed at MS Win. Then I looked on Hotscripts and found 1781 scripts and components So clearly there's something happening out there in this area.

So how did I miss it? Why don't I see this? Why doesn't MS promote this? And more importantly where are the websites that discuss all this? [from: JB Ecademy]

WirelessSoftware.info - Next generation of Wi-Fi (wireless LAN) has arrived ALREADY and first 802.11a/b dual PCMCIA cards are available NOW!!!

So if combined 802.11a/b cards and APs are on the verge of being available, this has all sorts of implications.

How do the manufacturers maintain sales of 802.11b only devices?

What about Antennas? An 802.11a antenna design is not going to work with 802.11b and vice versa.

What about sniffers? Where's Kismet/Netstumbler for 802.11a?

What about WISPs? Will OpenZone, T-Mobile and Megabeam (not to mention all the free ones) have to upgrade the hardware they've already put in?

My feeling is that as soon as dual mode card prices get within 25% of single mode prices, single mode device demand will just disappear. [from: JB Wifi]

A new blog searching tool has appeared. Waypath. Check out. Waypath Related Weblog Entries for Ecademy [from: JB Ecademy]