Verizon Wireless Buying Alltel for a Bazillion Dollars

By the end of the year, AT&T's reign as the largest wireless service provider in the United States will come to an end and Verizon will ascend to the throne: Verizon Wireless Agrees to Buy Alltel for $28.1 Billion.

here we go with Linux again

I'm putzing around while kinda, sorta doing a bunch of mundane and/or domestic tasks.

The dishwasher just gone done and waits to be emptied.  The clothes washer is at work on a load of pants and shorts.  The dryer is working on undergarments and shirts.  The HP Pavilion is restarting as I type this.  If all goes well, it'll restart running Kubuntu.  I've already tried it once and failed.  After the first restart following the first install, the computer got stuck right after loading the BIOS.  It'd stop with a black screen and in white text, "No Operating System Found".  I'd call that a serious problem.

It appears that all has gone well this time.  Now there remains one more big sticking point: getting the computer to recognize its wireless hardware.  It's ridiculous that it's even a hassle.  I believe it has something to do with open source vs proprietary software, but I'm not totally sure about it.  I do know that Broadcom is a major player in mobile and wireless hardware, so it's odd that its products aren't easily supported on one of the most popular Linux distrubtions.  Anyhoo...all I have to do is connect it to the router via ethernet cable and do a little command line wizardry and the wireless will be up and running.  I had to do the same thing when I loaded Ubuntu on my iBook G4 (which I don't recommend doing unless you're a masochist or really good with computers...or both).  If your computer has a Broadcom wireless card, you can find the solution to your Linux installation woes here: How to: Broadcom wireless cards.

UPDATE:  The instructions in the above link ended up not working.  I'm working on a solution.

a pin drops, mobile broadband users hear it clearly

Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are merging.

From a Sprint press release:

Sprint and Clearwire to Combine WiMAX Businesses, Creating a New Mobile Broadband Company

Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks to Invest $3.2 Billion in Combined Company, at Target Price of $20.00 per Share

Formation of New Company Brings Together the Nation's Leaders in Communications, Technology Innovation and Entertainment

New Company to Speed Deployment of First Nationwide Next-Generation Mobile WiMAX Network

Transaction Designed to Unlock the Potential of Clearwire's and Sprint's 4G Assets

New Company to be Led by Seasoned Management Team from Clearwire and Sprint's XOHM Business Unit; Board of Directors to Include Leading Wireless and Cable Executives

Google's involved?  Cool.  That means the new company (which will be called Clearwire) will be easily accessible by the widest range of devices possible.  It'll make it easier to use the phone you want and it'll be easier for hardware and software developers to create cool new devices and applications.

Another partner in this deal that caught my eye is Bright House Networks.  Who the #@%* is Bright House?  I did a little googling and was surprised to learn that Bright House sells cable, phone, and internet service as nearby as Cantonment and Defuniak Springs.  Who knew?

Will next year's NASCAR season be dubbed the Clearwire Cup Series?

Keep em teetering on the EDGE

GigaOm is reporting that EDGE networks will soon be sped up via a software update, Coming Soon, Even Faster EDGE Networks.

In case you don't know, EDGE, which stands for Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution, is adigital mobile phone technology that allows increased data transmission rates and improved data transmission reliability.[EDGE - Wikipedia] It's employed by AT&T and T-Mobile.

I'm an AT&T Wireless customer with an EDGE compatible phone so I think it's wonderful that they're upgrading even though I'm not sure that my phone would be able to take advantage of it. What I'm wondering is this, though: if a software upgrade can increase bandwidth, are they intentionally holding out on us so they can string us along and get more money out of us as we pay to upgrade each time or are they just now figuring out the code that'll take better advantage of their hardware?

Open Your Wallet to Open Computing

It's nice to get up early.  I recommend it.  There's something right about it.

Gizmodo informed me that computer manufacturer Acer may start producing an open platform gaming console.  I imagine it's basically going to be a gaming oriented linux based desktop computer.  Good idea.  I hope Acer succeeds.  By the way, the computer above is not the one referenced in the article.  The one above is the bitchin' Acer Aspire Gemstone Blue.  What is up with that stuff beside on the left side of the keyboard?  I think it might be an alien device.

In other "open" news, Verizon is, and this is almost impossible to imagine in today's business landscape, studying ways to improve peer to peer traffic!  Verizon has once again shown that it wants to do business the way an increasing number of consumers who want to use technology the way they want to use it and are simply looking for the fastest, cheapest service provider.  While companies like Cox and Comcast are throttling users who are heavy bandwidth consumers, Verizon is looking to improve such users' experiences.  Coupled with last year's announcement that they would open up their mobile service to "any app, any device", Verizon is showing itself to be a worthwhile, progressive business.

Speaking of open phones, check out this video Google's open phone software, Android.

Verizon courts privacy advocates

I'm a customer of AT&T and while I can't really complain about my personal experience with them, I can't really say much that's positive, either. AT&T has participated in some customer surveillance shenanigans, though, and they seem to be willing to be compliant with government efforts to snoop on people.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed legal briefs and evidence against AT&T, claiming they are diverting Internet traffic to the NSA for widespread secret surveillance and possibly breaking federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment. [SecurityFocus]

It's not just AT&T, though. It seems that most companies involved with data flow are looking at ways to snoop on their customer's activities. Well, Thomas J. Tauke, executive vice president for public affairs at Verizon, is breathing some refreshing ideas into the discussion:

“We generally are reluctant to get into the business of examining content that flows across our networks and taking some action as a result of that content,” he said.

Amen, brother!

Preach on!

“We don’t want to solve any network congestion issues by restricting the flow of certain kinds of traffic,” he said.

Read the complete article from the New York Times: Verizon Rejects Hollywood’s Call to Aid Piracy Fight. [by way of Gizmodo]

The Machine Is Aware of Us

This makes me shudder in a good way...like the chills I get sometimes when I pee:

Ambient Intelligence is a key component for future beyond 3G mobile and wireless communication systems. However, the enabling technology that provides systems with information to allow for Ambient Intelligence has been neglected and currently consists of many independent modes of input, mainly relying on active user interactions or specialised sensor systems gathering information. e-SENSE proposes a context capturing framework that enables the convergence of many input modalities, mainly focusing on energy efficient wireless sensor networks that are multi-sensory in their composition, heterogeneous in their networking, either mobile or integrated in the environment e.g. from single sensors to thousands or millions of sensors collecting information about the environment, a person or an object. This framework will be able to supply ambient intelligent systems with information in a transparent way hiding underlying technologies thus enabling simple integration.

e-SENSE VISION – e-SENSE enables capturing of Ambient Intelligence for Beyond 3G Mobile Communication Systems through Wireless Sensor Networks.

How'd I get there? From this blog: Capturing ambient intelligence. I don't think the blog's writer really added anything to the general discussion, nor did he achieve his stated goal of explaining How tech trends affect our lives. He just conveyed a vague sense of paranoia.

How'd I get there? By way of Capturing ambient intelligence which also doesn't seem to add anything to the general discussion. It's just another headsup. I got to that article by way of Smart Mobs. Makes sense.

Will the technological environment we're creating come to resemble the spiritual environment our ancestors created? A world where everything is aware of us? Where the Eye of God is upon us at all times...

A Closer Look at the 700 MHz Auction

Let the mental cud chewing begin. Late Tuesday Dec 18, the FCC released its list of applicants for the prime chunk of wireless real estate known as 700 MHz.

What's the deal with the 700 MHz spectrum? Wired has an excellent FAQ here: FAQ: Inside the High-Stakes 700-MHz-Spectrum Auction.

Basically, the 700 MHz spectrum used to be used for UHF TV signals which no one really cares about anymore so it's going to start being utilized for mobile communications. The spectrum is choice because its signal carries better than those currently in use by the major mobile service providers. In other words, tired of getting shitty signals? Help is on the way and it may be provided by everyone's online hero: Google. Google has said it's willing to shell out over $4 billion for a big chunk of the spectrum.

Yesterday I spent a couple hours perusing FCC 700 MHz Band Auction Auction ID: 73 Accepted Applications. Yes, a couple hours...at least. BusinessWeek has a mediocre article about the participants in the auction: Look Who's Bidding in Auction 73. They say:

Due to limited information provided by the filings, many of the organizations listed are nearly impossible to trace to their owners, often turning out to be foreign-backed companies, investment funds, and law firms.

I can attest to many of them being nearly impoosible to trace. I thought it was because I don't normally due that kind of research. I'm glad to see that even the pros thought the fact-finding was tough.

One company that nobody seems to be mentioning, the one I think is most intriguing, is a company called Aristotle, Inc. What is Aristotle, Inc.? From their website:

Aristotle is recognized as the pioneer in political technology. Every occupant of the White House — Democrat and Republican — for more than 20 years, has been an Aristotle customer, as are most U.S. Senators, most members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Democratic and Republican state party organizations. Year round, thousands of Americans involved in the political process — from grassroots organizers to Washington insiders — rely on Aristotle.

Basically Aristotle, Inc. owns huge and alarmingly detailed voter lists. From Aristotle, Inc.'s site I made my way to a truly worthwhile article about the company at Vanity Fair, Big Brother Inc. From the article:

“What we do is help a campaign run more and more like an effective business,” Phillips says as he types on his laptop, bringing up on a large projection screen the profile of an actual voter in Atlanta, whom we’ll call John Smith.

Phillips hits a button and up pops Smith’s basic information—address, phone number, etc. A click of the mouse brings more personal information—his photograph, his age and occupation, the names of his adult family members, his party affiliation and approximate income. Another click summons the exact amounts of political donations he has made. Phillips clicks once more, and a kind of molecular model appears on-screen, showing every political donor and potentially influential person Smith is linked to, in Atlanta and beyond, with dozens of interlocking nodes. Each node leads to the profile of another voter, about whom Aristotle knows just as much or more.

So what the heck is an ultra-tech-savvy political data mining near-monopoly doing bidding on some hugely expensive wireless real estate? Inquiring minds want to know.

Originally posted on my Tumblr blog: Bulging Shorts!

Technorati Profile