By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

What’s “Naked DSL?” It’s DSL you can get without having to have phone service as well. With more people going totally wireless phone-wise, it’s a “tier” people want. And it was part of the conditions (.PDF) AT&T agreed to in order to get FCC approval of the BellSouth merger. I wrote about the “improving naked DSL prices” in an earlier post.

According to the agreement:

Within twelve months of the Merger Closing Date, AT&T/BellSouth will make available in its in-region territory an ADSL service capable of speeds up to 768 Kbps to ADSL-capable customers without requiring such customers to also purchase circuit switched voice grade telephone service (”Stand Alone 768 Kbps service”). AT&T/BellSouth will continue to offer the 768 Kbps service in a state for thirty months after the “Stand Alone 768 Kbps Implementation Date” for that state. For purposes of this commitment, the “Stand Alone 768 Kbps Implementation Date” for a state shall be the date on which AT&T/BellSouth can offer the Stand Alone 768 Kbps service to eighty percent of the ADSL-capable premises in AT&TBellSouth’s in-region territory in that state. The Stand Alone 768 Kbps service will be offered at a rate of not more than $19.95 per month (exclusive of regulatory fees and taxes) .

According to DSL Reports and the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, that pricing tier became available on Dec. 20. However, while the AJC said you can get that rate with no contract, I couldn’t find that deal.

Not only that, it wasn’t easy to find “naked DSL” period. I did find it, however, here.

Unlike the AJC story, while there is a 768 Kbps service at $19.95 / month, it requires a 1-year contract. 1.5 Mbps service is $23.95 / month. Compare that with pricing if you have AT&T phone service: 768 Kbps service for $14.95 and 1.5 Mbps service for $23.95.

We Say: BTW, there’s also a $10 basic promotional price for new customers (with phone service) that you can only find by clicking the details link at the bottom of the standard DSL offerings page. This was also part of the merger conditions, but like the above, is obviously difficult to find.

Both of these offerings are required to run for 30 months.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Australian Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy today announced a requirement for ISPs to provide a “clean feed” for all homes, schools and any public PCs accessible by children. This follows up on a pre-election Nov. 19th Labor Party press release which first announced a proposed Cyber-safety plan.

Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says new measures are being put in place to provide greater protection to children from online pornography and violent websites.

Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.

Online civil libertarians have warned the freedom of the internet is at stake, but Senator Conroy says that is nonsense.

He says the scheme will better protect children from pornography and violent websites. Source: ABC News

We Say: Readers, how do you feel about this issue? Are we heading down a slippery slope? It’s bad enough that North American ISPs such as Comcast and Sympatico are blocking P2P traffic; do you think the U.S. and Canada will follow this path? And do you want them to?

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Here comes another tech grinch. There seems to be an abundance of them this year. In this case a Maryland girl received a strange note rather than an iPod.

“Reclaim your mind from the media shackles. Read a book and resurrect yourself. To claim your capitalistic garbage go to your nearest Apple Store.”

While the writer has it right: a National Endowment for the Arts report released last month said there has been a major decline in reading in general — he could have left the iPod and slid an paperback in with the note.

At any rate, Jay Ellis, the girls father, returned the ipod to the Germantown, MD store where he purchased it. Get this: it was Wal-Mart again, the same retailer (though not the same location) where a young girl received a porn-laden video MP3 player for Christmas.

Interestingly, the store manager said they had another report of the same type of “surprise” at that store.

We Say: This brings up a question, though: perhaps parents need to start opening up shrink-wrapped presents now. There have been far too many incidents of this type and it would prevent an unhappy Christmas day.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

As if your traveling experience isn’t bad enough already, here come new battery safety requirements from the DoT. The new rules ban packing of spare lithium batteries in checked baggage, and go into effect on Jan. 1, 2008.

New rules from the Transportation and Security Administration that take effect on January 1 ban travelers from carrying loose lithium batteries in checked baggage. Passengers are allowed to pack two spare batteries in their carry-on bag, as long as they’re in clear plastic baggies.

Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about the batteries that are already installed in the devices you’re bringing. The TSA has said it’s safe to check in items like a laptop or iPhone that already have the batteries in place. Source: News.com

We Say: What they are concerned about is short-circuits and fires, which is why keeping batteries in devices or their original packaging, or taping the contacts is OK. The FAA has found that fire-protection systems in the cargo hold of passenger planes can’t put out fires ignited in lithium batteries, while the NTSB said earlier this month it could not rule out lithium batteries as the source of a cargo plane fire at Philadelphia International Airport last year.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

In the case Atlantic vs. Howell, husband and wife Jeffrey and Pamela Howell have been accused of file-sharing over the KaZaA network. Their defense has been that although there are plenty of MP3 files on their computer, the files were not shared but were ripped from purchased CDs for personal use only.

Possibly to increase their chances of a win, a supplemental brief filed by the RIAA contends that ripping music from legally purchased CD’s is illegal. This would eliminate any escape the Howells have. If successful, it would also mean that anyone who ever ripped a CD for their iPod or other MP3 player — would now be a criminal.

Right on page 15 of the brief linked above it says:

It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings on his computer. Virtually all of the sound recordings on Exhibit B are in the “.mp3” format. Defendant admitted that he converted these sound recordings from their original format to the .mp3 format for his and his wife’s use.

So, according to the brief, ripped CDs = unauthorized copies.

Of course, the Howells could lose their case while the argument about CD ripping is dismissed, but time will tell. The defendants have until January 11th to respond.
More

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Having a New Year’s party or just want to have a little fun? The Tony-b Machine is an online synthesizer you play with your computer keyboard. Tons of beats and special effects and best of all, you can record your track and share them for free. Source: RedFerret

We Say: What else? Rock on!
Try It Here

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Many accuse Microsoft of copying Apple, but is the reverse now happening? Say it isn’t so!

Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), when it works (and that’s the problem; it doesn’t always) is an anti-piracy measure that currently disables functions in the OS when a pirated copy is disabled. However, due to false positives, Microsoft has indicated it will pull back somewhat with Windows Vista SP1 and simply nag you to death.

Apple’s patent application 20070288886 is called “Run-Time Code Injection To Perform Checks” and is dated Dec. 13. In the application, the process is described as follows:

In a first phase, an authorizing entity (e.g., an application owner or platform manufacturer) authorizes one or more applications to execute on a given hardware platform. Later, during application run-time, code is injected that performs periodic checks are made to determine if the application continues to run on the previously authorized hardware platform. If a periodic check fails, at least part of the application’s execution string is terminated–effectively rendering the application non-usable.

Let me just translate one sentence:

Later, during application run-time, code is injected that performs periodic checks are made to determine if the application continues to run on the previously authorized hardware platform.

Based on the prior sentences, that indicated that an application is authorized on a particular hardware platform (activation), this basically sounds like WGA checks to see if the software has been pirated onto a different computer.

We Say: Of course, it should be noted that an application doesn’t mean Apple will even get the patent, or that if they are granted it, that they will use it.

However, a couple of comments:

1) Section [0025] says these checks could be done as often as 5 - 10 minutes. 5 - 10 minutes? If that really happens, and the system is actually “phoning home” to check that often, can you imagine a) the impact on network traffic, b) how much flak they will take? WGA was initially only connecting with servers upon boot, not every 5 - 10 minutes, and people were up in arms over that.

2) It seems like as Apple becomes more successful, they become more corporate and more like Microsoft, which they previously eschewed, and with much fanfare. Although I can understand the reasons behind this, they might just lose some of their longtime fans as they move further in this direction.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

It’s a sad day and the end of an era. Development is to cease on the Netscape browser, which at one time held the largest market share of all browsers, and was the first browser to gain mass popularity.

However, it had been evident for a while that this move was only a matter of time. After all, while Netscape’s big brother Firefox has over 16% of the browser market share, Netscape has only 0.6%.

It was the entry of Microsoft into the “browser wars” with Internet Explorer (IE) that eventually led to the dethroning of Netscape, as competing with a browser built into the OS proved impossible — that and the ubiquitousness of Microsoft in general. Additionally more and more sites began coding for the “uniqueness” of IE.

AOL acquired Netscape Communications Corporation in 1999. However, in 1998 Netscape had created the Mozilla Organization, which eventually spun off into the Mozilla Foundation as AOL’s involvement decreased. This eventually led to Firefox, released in 2004.

For quite some time it’s been evident that Netscape has become just a reskinned Firefox browser, and that’s admitted in AOL’s blog post announcing this move.

Details:

• Support will continue in the form of security updates until Feb. 1, 2008, when all support will end.
• Netscape.com will continue as an Internet portal, though how long that will continue is questionable.
• AOL is going to provide an archive site for older versions of Netscape, though why anyone would use them is beyond me.

We Say: The King is dead. Long live the King!