technology

One of the great things about the open-source movement—besides giving us free software, like a full-fledged operating system for PCs, an Office Suite of productivity applications and an email client that syncs with Exchange servers—is that other programmers can use the code for free themselves to splinter off new and interesting side-projects.

How much did you spend on your cellphone last year?

Yeah, that's crazy. Me? I spent $200 last year for my mobile phone.

You read that correctly: $200 a year. Not a month. A year.

How? Using a Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go plan (they're not just for drug dealers anymore!)

Virgin Mobile has a crap-load of plans now, but since I don't talk much on the phone, I like the basic one: 18¢TALK plan.

Frankly, my typical mobile call goes like this: Hello? Hey, Tom! Great to hear from you! Lemme call you back from the landline phone I have sitting right next to me. Bye!

Thanks to the volunteer-based Mozilla Foundation, new types of web applications have spawned from its free, standards-compliant code-base.

For example, there's the variation of Firefox that I am writing this blog entry with, named Flock. It's got blogging software built right into the browser. Plus, you can add your Flickr photos with drag-n-drop. And a bunch of other features I haven't figured out yet.

Another fun app that is still being worked on is called Songbird. It's a promising "iTunes clone" that is also free and open-source.

Blogged with Flock

Apple just introduced the new MacBook, its replacement for the iBook series of laptops. Priced from $1,000 to $1,500, the MacBook looks like the perfect consumer laptop computer. It's got everything you could need already built in. And it's using the Intel Core Duo chip so you can dual-boot it with, Heaven forbid, Windows. Looks to be another home run for the folks in Cupertino. Nice work. I just hope it will outlast its 12-month warranty period (unlike my recently deceased iPod Photo—I made it under warranty by a mere 3 days!). Little help, Steve...?

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has announced that music pirates are funding terrorism. Yes, that's it. Piracy is funding terrorists. Not the billions upon billions in profits generated by oil; no, it's the tens of millions in "Intellectual Property theft" by college students that is bankrolling Islamic extremists.

Seriously, how does Alberto keep a straight face when he says BS like that?

The proposed law scheduled to be introduced by Texas Republican (shocker) Rep. Lamar Smith permits wiretaps in investigations of copyright crimes...establish[es] a new copyright unit inside the FBI...[with] 'advanced tools of forensic science to investigate' copyright crimes.

Should this law pass, it would be a new federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison—roughly equivalent of manslaughter—just for having Limewire or Bit Torrent on your computer.

Here's a comprehensive list of unintended consequences resulting from "our "representatives" blatantly sucking up to Big Business at the expense of consumers' rights.

The big buzz in the Silicon Valley right now is Linux. It's a free Operating System much like Windows98, except for the fact that it doesn't crash every five minutes.

Remember when people talked of laying fiber-optics right to everyone's door? Cheap, high-speed access for everyone? Movies on demand? It was going to be an internet utopia.

Yeah, well, the Telcos are kinda hoping you don't. Why? Because they just pocketed the (wait for it) $200 BILLION in tax cuts the U.S. government gave them to build out the high-speed broadband system they promised.

Understandably, the Telcos are afraid you might ask for that $2,000 you—and every other American—paid to them for a service you never received. Sprint, Verizon, SBC, et al, promised speeds of 45Mbps (Hi-Def only requires 10Mbps, fyi), yet only delivered 1.5Mbps—on a good day. Meanwhile, the Koreans and Japanese already get 100Mbps, and they pay a lot less.

As a result of this blatant theft of our tax money, Korea and Japan are now the leaders in developing high-speed technologies, and worse, I can't afford that new $2000 plasma screen I've been eyeing.