According to some government types, the Bush administration does have a national broadband policy. But as Hurricane Katrina rudely pointed out this week, there's still no coherent, nation-wide first-responders communications network, a technology failure that must fall, in part, at the current leader's feet.

More commonly known to enterprises for its digital certificate services, VeriSign recently announced trials of the company's Wireless IP Connect Service. VeriSign noted the involvement of three major universities at which users will have a single mobile device that roams between Wi-Fi and cellular networks. The company is also a member of mobileIGNITE, a network convergence industry body led by BridgePort Networks.

In an interview with Tom Kershaw, VeriSign Communication Services' vice president of Next Generation Services, he says VeriSign is "all about connecting different VoIP islands." Currently, there is no VoIP peering point that interconnects Vonage with SIPphone, Packet8, FreeWorldDialup, etc. Emblematic of FMC (fixed-mobile convergence), VeriSign plans to bridge VoIP, cellular and traditional voice. Touting its existing roaming and settlement agreements with carriers as well as its current SS7 (Signaling System 7) connections to all major carriers, VeriSign will operate a gateway that connects external VoIP media and signaling flows to the appropriate mobile or fixed voice carrier.

Kershaw casts some necessary doubt on the PBX-centric model demonstrated in the Motorola/Avaya/Proxim solution. This trio, which initiated the SCCAN forum, splits the functionality among handset, PBX and WLAN gateway, respectively. What's unique is that the PBX needs to have an SS7 link to the wireless carrier so that location registration and call control can be handled. Not many PBXes have such interfaces, and carriers are uncomfortable in opening up their SS7 networks to enterprises and university campuses alike.

That's going to be what our friends in the South need after yesterday's hurricane -- reinvestment by government and business, and more immediately can help from everyone who can pitch in.

The Brits are at it again -- this time our prim and proper cousins across the pond are proposing a ban on downloading and possessing violent and abusive Internet pornography.

Imagine, if you will, the judges who will be required to weed out the "abusive" pornography from the non-abusive. Lots of sweaty palms behind closed doors, you can be sure.

Memo to the Brits: Freedom requires living with ugliness, so leave it alone. There are a lot more dangerous things in the world you need to pay attention to -- like protecting yourselves against terrorist attacks. So put your attention where it's needed, and ignore the Internet sewage. You'll be better off for it.

I'm not going to bother to delve into the minutiae of the FCC's latest ruling on 911 calls and VoIP -- suffice it to say it's like discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

The FCC commissioners have been thoroughly wrongheaded on just about every issue involving networking and the Internet, taking the wrong side on everything from broadband to VoIP and beyond.

So it's time for a simple solution: Throw the bums out! We need an entirely new set of commissioners who care about fostering true competition, so that we'll get better, more advanced services at less cost. Do you agree with me or not? Let me know, below.

Today's first Friday Freebie is a website.

LinuxQuestions offers LQ ISO for all your Linux ISO download needs. LQ ISO allows users to find and rate fast local download mirrors. The site currently allows you to download almost 120 different Linux distributions from over 430 different mirrors. The site now utilizes GEO IP data to help you find the fastest local download mirror.

That's cool, because sometimes finding a mirror, let alone a fast mirror can be a PITA. Thanks, LQ ISO.

The second Friday Freebie is from SolarWinds. It's a TFTP server with security, which is something you don't often find for Windows. SolarWinds TFTP Server runs on Windows and can provide simultaenous download/upload of files. I use it often in the lab for storing and retrieving configurations from our routers and devices under test, like load balancers and other network devices. It works great and, of course, it's FREE.

Forrester just came out with a report saying that despite a 200% increase in adoption in 2004, VoIP is overhyped.

Forrester is flat-out wrong. For a start, a 200% increase in adoption rate isn't chopped liver. Enterprises are finding out that VoIP can offer tremendous savings. As for consumers, do you know anyone who doesn't want to save on their monthly phone bill, and get a slew of new features to boot?

In fact, VoIP has been such a success that Vonage is said to be planning an IPO, and expects to raise $600 million, in addition to the $400 million it already has in venture capital.

One day, and perhaps soon, we'll all be using VoIP instead of normal phone service. And that is no hype.

Recursive blogging category: I can now let you know about a new feature at Server Pipeline -- my "blog" is now actually a blog.

As the news reports of Vonage's IPO plans bubble and froth, the guess here is that the Voice over IP leader won't ever make it to the public markets, but will be acquired first. Just call the carefully leaked IPO news a bit of bait, to lure the big fishes into striking now.

Intel's Centrino platform has been a big hit with the enterprise not because its Wi-Fi radio is the best, but more because there are clear advantages to increased standardization of wireless network clients. When it comes to wireless, Intel gets high grades for commitment, in marketing most of all, but also in product development and venture funding. The company's recently announced Digital Communities initiative, designed to enhance the operational effectiveness of local governments, is mostly about community wireless networks, which are becoming increasingly popular.

Cisco is one of Intel's partners in the Digital Communities initiative. While Intel dominates wireless clients, Cisco is king of enterprise Wi-Fi infrastructure, with 53 percent market share according to a recent report by Aaron Vance of Synergy Research Group. The company's WLAN infrastructure strategy, which has two product lines based on differing architectures, is a little confusing these days. Cisco spins it as something good for customers, providing them with two alternatives. But it's more a concession to the company's desire to satisfy both a loyal Aironet customer base, those who aren't ready to rip-and-replace, while also catering to technology evaluators in many greenfield environments, where newer, more manageable WLAN system designs are often preferred.

Over time, Cisco will find a way to better rationalize its WLAN infrastructure strategy. In the mean time, there's plenty of work to do to try and overcome the fundamental problems its enterprise customers face when rolling out scalable and secure wireless LANs. Central to the problem is that irascible standards-based 802.11 client, which lacks many important capabilities in areas like roaming, security, load-balancing and quality of service. Painfully slow progress in the many 802.11 task groups working on various dimensions of the problem led the Wi-Fi Alliance to roll out its WPA security initiative in advance of standards. It also led Cisco to establish its CCX (Cisco Compatible Extensions) program, which pushes a set of proprietary client extensions that overcome limitations in standards-based systems.

When Cisco introduced CCX a little over two years ago, all the wireless silicon providers quickly signed on, announcing their commitment to implementing CCX on their clients. It was easy to see this as a Cisco power play right out of the Microsoft playbook, an end-run around standards that delivered benefits to client devices from virtually every manufacturer--but benefits that were only realizable if you had Cisco Wi-Fi infrastructure.

Although all the radio chipmakers, including Intel, stepped up quickly and added CCX capabilities to their client radios, they haven't done such a good job of keeping up with Cisco's subsequent releases of CCX 2 and CCX 3. The end result is often a mish-mash of client code, depending on the age of the notebook computer. As you might guess, even though silicon vendors were fully willing to add new CCX functionality to their latest designs, they weren't all that thrilled about upgrading older clients, which made it difficult for Cisco to leverage its infrastructure. These interoperability issues made it difficult to implement advanced wireless services. They also led a fair number of enterprises to turn to third-party client supplicants from vendors like Funk Software and Meetinghouse Communications, which provided the vendors with a standardized client across multiple notebook generations.

Now, Cisco and Intel are coming to grips with some of these issues while also advancing key strategic initiatives. In addition to the Digital Communities initiative, their Business Class Wireless Suite joint announcement at this week's Intel Developer Forum is designed to more tightly integrate Intel Centrino clients with Cisco's Unified Wireless Architecture (which, by the way, doesn't look very unified to this writer). I suspect much of this is driven by Cisco's desire to fix problems with CCX. And as part of this effort to become wireless best friends, each company pledged support for important technology initiatives being advanced by the other. Intel announced that it will join Cisco's NAC (Network Admission Control) program while Cisco will join Intel's AMT (Active Management Technology) program. These are serious and significant alliances, but that didn't stop me from chuckling when I read this sentence from Cisco's announcement:

"With Cisco NAC operating with Intel AMT, enterprises will be better able to defend against security threats, helping to maintain user and business productivity and reduce the cost of security attacks and improve system remediation."

Got that?

ASPEN, Colo. -- Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron, who was a bit of a punching bag here at the Progress & Freedom Foundation's Aspen Summit, now has a new best friend in the Internet voice business: The 800-pound gorilla called Google.

The news that a service provider was forcing its broadband customers to pay a premium to use VoIP from Vonage shows that it's time for a "broadband bill of rights."

The idea for a broadband bill of rights was suggested by Vonage's CEO Jeffrey Citron. The idea is that there are certain rights you have as a broadband consumer, for example, that your service provider can't block you from using a VoIP service from a competitor.

Citron clearly has a vested interest in the idea, because it'll ensure that would-be customers always have access to his service. But vested interest or not, he's right.

Unfortunately, the FCC is moving in the exact opposite direction. When it comes to broadband, it has a hands-off attitude. The FCC is wrong, and we can only hope it starts thinking of consumers instead of special interests.

We had a tawdry situation last week with some blatant misuse of company resources. A staff member in our accounting department had a problem with their ACME laptop. This person does a good amount of travel for work and thus we had issued them a laptop instead of a desktop computer. Well --- when one of our PC techs was working on the laptop he noticed a hoard of pron (reverse the R and O). You would think that in this day and age people would realize that such actions are really frowned upon. And we believe we block most of that at the border using our firewall and other products. We figure that this person must have been downloading the pron while they were at home.

Our unplanned series of podcasts on identity theft and personal information safety continues this week. I wish I could say that I had carefully thought out a theme for the late Summer, but serindipity gets the credit--I'm just pleased to take advantage of the situation. I'm pleased because I think (occasionaly worm outbreak notwithstanding) that keeping customer information safe is the most significant issue in network security today. Frankly, the only other issue that comes close is infrastructure (switch and router) security, and you'll be hearing more about that from us in weeks to come. This week, I had a chance to interview David Zumwalt, the president and CEO of Privacy, Inc.. David has some fascinating things to say about the topic, along with some solid tips for security professionals, and you can hear him talk about them here, in this week's podcast.

If you you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, look over to the left, you'll find the link to subscribe to the Security Channel podcast. In addition, I'd like to ask a favor. Take a minute to drop me a note at cfranklin@cmp.com, and let me know what you'd like to hear in future podcasts. A podcast can be short or long, serious or amusing, hands-on or quite strategic. Let me know what you'd like to listen to, and we'll do our best to make it happen.

The music in this podcast is "Tito on Timbales" from Musica Unidos de Latino America. If you enjoy Latin music, there's some great stuff on their web site, along with links to order DVDs and CDs.

It's been a while since an acquisition was worthy of comment, but this week's Intel-Sarvega acquisition is one that's very, very interesting.

The XML/Web Services security/management space has been in flux for the past two years, with several vendors vying for the top spot in the field and others grooming themselves for acquisition. Sarvega is the first to be scooped up, and by the most unlikely of buyers, Intel.

Intel, if you remember back far enough, picked up XML player iPivot in the 90's. The XML Director was ahead of its time and didn't go far, eventually ending up in the hands of Tarari when it was spun off from Intel a few years ago and entered back into the XML market with its own XML acceleration technology in a PCI form factor.

Now it appears Intel is heading back into the XML game, and Sarvega is an interesting purchase given its architecture. It's a software based solution, so it's possible that Intel is planning on doing exactly what we've been hoping to see - XML accelerated parsing built right into the chipsets that make up most enterprise motherboards. This would be a boon, in the end, for XML security and management vendors to pick up some performance gains without the need for custom silicon and our own testing earlier this year proved that Sarvega certainly has the chops for such a task in terms of the latency introduced by its parsing technology - which is say nearly none.

It would give its leading competitors Data Power, Forum Systems, Reactivity and Actional something to think about. If such a thing were to come to fruition, Actional and Reactivity would surely benefit the most, given their solutions are software only platforms and could easily take advantage of integrated XML acceleration, unlike ForumSystems and DataPower who use custom hardware to generate the horsepower necessary for enterprise class performance when handling XML.

It will be interesting to see if Intel is going to rip apart Sarvega's technology and integrate it into chipsets or whether it will keep the technology as is and attempt to compete against its partners yet again. Past experience has hopefully taught Intel that competing against its OEM channels is a bad idea, but sometimes it's hard to teach and old dog new tricks.

You thought I forgot about you, didn't you?

Nope, not at all. I've got two freebies for you this wonderful Friday morning.

Freebie #1
The first is from a company down under. N4ME (Inform ME) allows users to receive download and file copy notifications almost anywhere.

Developed by New Zealand based software company Data Converter Systems, N4ME for Windows 2000/XP is designed to automate the task of monitoring download and file copies.

The program watches web, ftp, kazza and irc downloads and sends an email report specific to each download.

In addition, the software can copy files, attach UNC (Universal Naming Convention) addresses for one click access to files and email differing email distribution lists depending on whether the download was successful of not.

Pretty cool when you're downloading ISO's or ... other very large files and want to know when they finish.

Freebie #2
The second freebie of the day is from Cenzic, Inc.. Cenzic has ported Nessus to Windows NT and will make the code for the product available free of charge via the Cenzic website. Cenzic is the first company to port Nessus to the Windows NT operating system and offer it for free to the open-source community. The download is available immediately from the Cenzic web site.

Well, it's happened: Intel has decided to go ahead and bump up the release of dual-core Xeon processors. Looks like Intel will begin delivering its first Xeon chips with the technology in the fourth quarter.

Let's play a game of "What They Say/What they Mean," shall we?

Jason Smathers, Ex-AOL employee convicted of stealing AOL screen names and selling them to SPAMMers says: "I know I've done something very wrong."

What Jason Means: "By wrong, I mean I shouldn't have stuck around here. I should have gotten onto that plane to the Bahamas when I had the chance."

Come on -- does anyone really believe that this guy's sorry? Please. Jason's sorry he's not drinking a frozen concoction in Margaritaville while taking a break from sunbathing on the beach. Jason's sorry he's not rolling in hundred dollar bills on top of his bed.

He's sorry he got caught.

You know who else is sorry? The owners of the 92 million (say it with me -- MILLION) screen names and email address Jason lifted and sold to SPAMMers. I bet they're also sorry that Jason copped a plea and is now only going to spend 15 months in prison for jeprodizing their privacy and identities. Meanwhile, they'll continute to be sorry as they get a slew of "Enlarge body part XX" emails or letters from the Zimbawbwee Prime Minister looking for a "reliable person" to help him hide large sums of cash."

I got an idea. Let's cut Jason's prison sentence in half, and he can spend the rest of his time knocking on the doors of every AOL subscriber affected by this action. He can tell them He's sorry in person. I bet his lip, left eye and nose will be real sorry after the first couple of visits.

Hey, we've got time for one more "What They Say/What they Mean."

Microsoft Mogul Bill Gates says: "Computers will keep getting smaller, and they'll make it easier to wade through e-mails, schedule appointments, stay on top of news and to-do lists and make lawmakers' work more transparent to the public."

What Lord Gates Means: "Soon computers will be so tiny they can be ingested. And when they're inside people, we will activate the mind control and rule the world -- Mwah ha ha ha ha ha ha -- ooooh Double Stuff Oreos!"

Alright. Enough Ramblin!

First, an important correction: In my last column on wireless data uptake, I reported 500,000 EV-DO customers for Verizon--the number that has circulated in various stories. Mobile Pipeline Editor Dave Haskin questioned this number and obtained a clarification from Verizon that the number refers to data subscribers for both 1xRTT service and EV-DO. Most likely then, the majority of the customers are using the earlier 1xRTT service. Now, on to HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access).

Vodafone, one of the world's largest cellular operators, and Nokia just completed testing of HSDPA, a new version of WCDMA (Wideband CDMA), in Italy using Nokia infrastructure. The two companies reported throughput rates of 1.5 Mbps. Various other companies have demonstrated throughput speeds of over 1 Mbps for this technology, and peak speed claims of over 14 Mbps are also common. But what speeds can you realistically expect and what services will be available when? Also, how does this technology line up with the competition, including EV-DO, Flash OFDM and WiMAX?

First, let's look at what the technology is. HSDPA is an enhancement to WCDMA, a technology that is also referred to as UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), the 3G path chosen by most GSM operators around the world. Today, there are already some 75 UMTS networks in operation around the world. In the United States, Cingular (via its purchase of AT&T Wireless) has UMTS available in six cities. However, the company is planning an aggressive deployment of HSDPA, with 15 to 20 cities planned by the end of 2005 and most major metropolitan areas by the end of 2006. The six cities with current UMTS service will be upgraded to HSDPA as well. Globally, many UMTS operators are planning on the HSDPA upgrade, and operators that have not deployed UMTS yet are likely to go directly to HSDPA.

HSDPA is important for operators because current UMTS technology, which based on 3GPP WCDMA Release 99 specifications, is extremely efficient for voice service, but it is not optimized for data services. The HSDPA upgrade, based on 3GPP Release 5 specifications, keeps the same voice mechanisms but adds highly efficient data capability. It does this through radio mechanisms such as higher order modulation (16QAM in addition to QPSK), improved error correction, dynamic adaptation of modulation and coding based on radio conditions, and a tighter link between mobile and base station. It also adds a packet scheduling approach that favors downlink transmissions to users with the best radio conditions, thus allowing them to receive data at higher throughput rates. Since conditions vary by users over time, this results in what is called user diversity. All these approaches working in combination result in at least a doubling of spectral efficiency, and with later improvements on the roadmap, a further doubling. Bottom line: The network can support many more users at a higher speed.

HSDPA is not the first technology to invent these approaches. You see them in most new wireless technologies, including CDMA2000 EV-DO and WiMAX, as well as in Wi-Fi. As for speeds, that's where things get a bit tricky. The network does indeed support a peak rate of 14 Mbps, but this is what you would get with the full capacity of the cell sector at the highest modulation level and no error correction. In other words, you'll never actually experience this speed, as you'll never experience the peak rate of 2.4 Mbps quoted for EV-DO. Initial devices are likely to have peak rates of 1.8 Mbps or 3.6 Mbps, depending on their designs. Subsequent devices will be faster. As for typical speeds you can expect, it will depend on the number of users active in the network, but average speeds in the 500 kbps to 1 Mbps range should be achievable in relatively lightly loaded networks. However, speeds may go down a bit if people flock to the technology, as is the case for all the 3G technologies. Of course, with the somewhat slow adoption of cellular data as discussed in my last column, this is a problem that operators would love to have, and one they can manage through additional cell sites and new spectrum allocations. HSDPA latency goals are also aggressive, and in initial networks, latency will likely be in the 100 to 200 msec range.

As for how this lines up with EV-DO that Sprint and Verizon are deploying, HSDPA will likely meet or exceed EV-DO performance. HSDPA also allows simultaneous voice and data on the same device. However, EV-DO operators will have broader coverage in the near term. Mobile WiMAX specifications point to somewhat higher performance, but there are a series of further enhancements planned for HSDPA.

In my view, HSDPA is a great thing for the wireless industry for a number of reasons. First, it will offer a highly compelling broadband wireless service over very large coverage areas. Second, it will compete head to head with EV-DO, resulting hopefully in competitively priced service plans. Third, it will keep the WiMAX people on their toes, forcing them to deliver the best possible technology; otherwise, it won't be competitive. The reciprocal case is also present, as WiMAX has accelerated 3GPP (the organization that specifies GSM-UMTS technology) efforts to start designing what comes after HSDPA, currently called 3GPP Long Term Evolution.

From a usage point of view, even by the end of 2006, HSDPA won't be everywhere. Coverage is likely to emphasize urban areas, and in less densely populated areas, the fallback will be to EDGE for quite some time. This means there's no reason to wait for HSDPA, as you should probably plan for most applications you deploy to work over both HSDPA and EDGE. The same is true for EV-DO, where the fallback is to 1xRTT.

As HSDPA gets closer, you're likely to see lots of hype about the technology. But if you keep in mind its true capabilities, there's no reason to not start incorporating HSDPA into your wireless planning.

I mean, weren't they all just painted cardboard with flashing lights, ala Star Trek? Lo and behold apparently not. Check out these pics (over at boingboing.net) of some Data Center action around 40-some-odd years ago. The one with the bathroom plunger kills me (yes, bathroom plunger).

ICANN should ignore pressure from the tight-lipped puritans and finally give approval to a .xxx porn domain. This week, the Internet's oversight agency delayed approving the domain due to pressure from the feds.

Like it or not, porn is here to stay --- and Internet users like it, considering that 40% of them visited a porn site in April, according to comScore Media Metrix.

The .xxx red light porn district would at least have rules of the road, such as prohibiting malicious scripts, although I'm not sure pornsters would really follow them. It would make site-blocking easier, though. And it might stop the proliferation of .com porn sites, even though those would still be allowed.

Powerful conservative special interest groups like the Family Research Council oppose the domain. But in this, like in so many other things, they're wrong. So it's time for ICANN to face the pressure and approve the domain.

We've closed out Network Computing's annual reader survey for 2005, and we're poring over your responses in preparation for our annual survey cover story, which will appear in the Sept. 22 issue. If you want to see what our reader survey coverage will look like, take a look at last year's cover story.

One of the things that's striking about this year's survey is the heavy emphasis on integration as a key theme, not only as a back-room project in the data center, but as a central criterion for future product selection. During the halcyon days of the Internet boom, enterprises were always looking for technologies to change the way they do business. Now, apparently, they're looking for technologies that don't change the way they do business.

No wonder QuickTime VR hasn't taken off. Ever try to make a QTVR movie? I'm attempting to do so right now, and finding authoring tools for free or under $100 is rather difficult. If anyone has ever made a QTVR movie on the cheap, I'd like to hear from you.

Think users sharing music files via your network was bad? There's even worse news for you --- a new survey has found that video downloads make up 61% of all file-sharing traffic.

Video files, of course, are much larger than music files. And unfortunately, you can bet that the files people are sharing aren't just old re-runs of the Brady Bunch. Given the bottom-dwelling nature of some net users, expect at least some of those file to be pornographic videos.

"Debby Does Dallas" using your bandwidth? Sad, but true.

Once again, the action in the server world this week is pretty much at LinuxWorld, and although your faithful correspondent isn't there this time, I am intrigued -- if not surprised -- that the main buzz from the show revolves around virtualization.

Our finance department has a hoard of consultants helping them with a re-audit of our books. As if that is not enough pain for the firm, we in IT have to deal with making sure the mix of mercenaries from these consulting firms can all get their jobs done (meaning, ensure their computers can work on our network). And it is ironic to hear from these consultants in terms of how poorly some of them are supported by their own firms. (read on)

If you need one more example of what's wrong with academia when it comes to technology, read the article Telecom Mergers Good For Competition: Study. A George Mason University economist argues that telecom mergers and consolidations lead to increased competition, not less competition.

Let me get this right...when there are fewer companies vying for your telecom dollars, that means more competition? Voodoo economics anyone?

This Friday we have two freebies for you.

The first is yet another free webmail offering, this one from Skaffe.com. Skaffe.com is a directory and search engine that has moved into the free email space. Skaffe.com is offering the service with 1 GB of storage available to each user of its offering, competing with the likes of Gmail, but it sounds like without the privacy issues.

The second is a test. You like tests, don't you? This one is a typing test brought to you by Ten Thumbs Typing. The site offers typing tutors for a variety of operating systems (Mac, Windows, Linux) but also provides an online typing test that keeps track of 'high scores' as well. Fun for a quick break from whatever you might be doing.

Advertising. I can't get away from it. I end up watching more commercials than I do my favorite TV shows. I can't get through an issue of "Y: The Last Man" without a stupid Skechers ad ("We put the 'S' In action!" Right. Learn to Spell!) I get totally distracted by the glare of the light-up stupid FreshDirect billboard on the way to the Midtown tunnel. (Hey, great idea, let's take drivers' minds off the road!) Of course, every day there's a new popup ad on the Internet (yesterday's winner: "Does Bigfoot Exist? Click yes or no to win a prize!"). And, of course, I certainly couldn't have enjoyed the "Wedding Crashers" this weekend without a solid 10 minutes of Coke, Cingular and car commercials before the film started (never mind the %*#(!@ product placement throughout most of today's movies)--but I digress.

Yes sir, everywhere I go. Crestor ad here, Maybeline there.

And now it seems the cell phone shall fall.

Over on EETimes, they have a little article on 'video snacking,' a wonderful idea from a panel at the "Toy Tour" sponsored by Texas Instruments. These "snacks" would be commercially produced clips of no more than 10 minutes in length. Who knows what the content would be: mini soap operas, news briefs, celebrity gossip. And who cares. The point is, you know that coming right behind these videos--and right in front of them AND right in between them--will be commercials.

That's all I need--turning on my cell phone and watching some doofus spray on Axe body spray and get ravaged by a bunch of grannies as he walks by their bingo club.

What's next? Inserting commercials into the actual phone calls?

"So yeah--the Vet said that it was the right thing to do. Scruffy was just so old and in so much pai-"

"YOUR DOGGY DESERVES THE VERY BEST. SO NEXT TIME YOUR SHOPPING, PICK UP BEGGIN' STRIPS! HE'LL THANK YOU WITH LOVE AND LICKS! We now return you to your phone call."

::choke:: "Scruffy! Nooooooooo!!!!!"

In other news, congrats to the Space Shuttle folks for getting home safe and sound. Unfortunately, the problems they experienced during their mission are threatening the shuttle program. And just today, NASA scrapped plans for a Mars mission to send another orbiter around the red planet.

I know it can't be just me, but is anyone else beginning to think that something's not quite right with our space program? I mean, according to "Star Trek," Khan should have been up there in space since around '96 waiting for the Enterprise to find him a couple of hundred years later. A lot of our sci-fi shows were waaay off target in guessing when we'd be landing on Mars and sipping espresso in Lunar Base coffee houses. So what gives? And, seriously, why the heck HAVEN'T we gone back to the moon? I mean, we did how many lunar landings back in the 60s and 70s? You can't tell me, "Well, it's just a big ol' rock, we don't have any reasons to go back." Excuse me, but it's the MOON! It's in OUTER FRIGGIN SPACE! It's the closest thing to another planet we can get to right now. Get your frozen ice cream eating, Tang slurping butts back over there and show everyone we've still got what it takes.

Unless, of course, those conspiracy theorists are right and the whole thing was on a Hollywood back lot. It's all a diabolical plot by Secret Society of Illuminati Freemasons who keep stealing people's kidneys and leaving them in tubs of ice!

(BTW, I just realized that my first three columns all focused on cell phones in some respect. Weird. Just kinda happened that way...honest. I promise to think of something completely unrelated next week.)

All right, Enough Ramblin'.

Posted here at 02:13 PM in Techno-Oddities

Comment on this blog entry

Posted here at 12:17 AM in Security

Posted here at 02:50 PM in Wireless

SUM(ORDERS.TOTAL) CATEGORY
----------------- ------------
14103848.9 CAFFEINE
12289291.3 IM
13287830.4 LASER
16861087.5 LIGHT
9980358.7 MP3
11493839.8 ROBOTS
11513981.1 SMART CARD
22925430.2 STORAGE
12541190.6 VOICE
12713046.1 WATCHES
18839119 WIRELESS

Posted here at 08:30 PM in NWC Inc

Posted here at 12:04 PM in Techno-Oddities

Posted here at 11:57 AM in Network Infrastructure

Comment on this blog entry

Posted here at 06:36 PM in NWC Inc

Posted here at 04:51 PM in TalkingTech

Posted here at 01:07 PM in Network Infrastructure

Comment on this blog entry

Posted here at 12:04 PM in Techno-Oddities

Comment on this blog entry

Posted here at 08:52 AM in