Hasta La Gadget!

How do you start a net neutrality debate without ever saying “net neutrality?” If you’re a European wireless carrier like France Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, or Vodafone, you do it by just getting straight to the point: you say companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook need to start paying for continued network access because their devices and services use too much bandwidth. Yep, that’s a straight-up network neutrality issue, but the carriers are framing it like it’s an accounting problem — and they’re not being shy about wanting more cash to even out the books as they invest in next-gen networks. “It’s necessary to put in place a system of payments by service providers as a function of their use,” says France Telecom CEO Stephane Richard, while Telefonica CEO Cesar Alierta says that Google and Yahoo’s free use of his network is a “tragedy” that “can’t continue.” (No, we’re not making this up.)

In addition to shaking down service providers and device makers, European carriers are also following AT&T and Verizon to tiered data plans — France Telecom is will move from unlimited pricing to something “more sophisticated,” and the other networks expected to follow. What’s most interesting to us is that the carriers are appearing to conflate bandwidth-heavy services like Facebook and YouTube with devices that customers use to access those services — does it really make any sense to charge Apple or Google a fee for making good phones that encourage more network use, on top of charging users for tiered data? That’s an unexpected — and unfortunate — twist on the standard net neutrality debate, and we’re not so sure we want to see where it’s going. Read the whole article at the source link, it’s a good one.

European carriers want content companies and smartphone makers to pay network usage fees originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You may think you know when you’re thirsty, but you’d be wrong. That’s why you need the i-dration water bottle, a high tech device that uses sensors to tell you when to drink for maximum hydration.

The device works in conjunction with an app on your phone to determine the conditions around you. The bottle uses sensors to measure things like temperature and how much/how often you are drinking, and then it sends this information to your phone. The phone, meanwhile, measures just how active you are through its internal gyroscopes and sensors. Once all the data is crunched, the water bottle will light up with a blue glow, letting you know it’s time to take a drink of water.

The i-dration bottle is available just yet, but the creators will be showing it off in January at CES.

Via Engadget

There wasn’t even so much as a press release announcing this one, but The New York Times has confirmed with Intel that the chip maker recently formed a new business unit dubbed simply the “netbook and tablet group.” That’s apparently been tasked with fending off competition in the netbook and tablet space, and ensuring Intel remains as successful as it has been with its Atom processors — it will be led by the the current head of Intel’s embedded and communications group, Douglas L. Davis. Intel spokesman Bill Kircos further explained that “it makes sense for us to sharpen our focus on these friends of the PC, and Doug’s experience running a similar and very successful embedded division makes him the right guy to lead the group.”

Intel quietly forms netbook and tablet group to fend off competition originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just as you were getting to the bottom of the cartoon characters as profile pictures phenomenon, another odd trend rears its head on Facebook. This time out, it’s a bunch of numbers in users’ status updates. The reason behind them isn’t quite as grandiose as the cartoon characters’ attempt to end child abuse. The numbers are actually part of a game called, simply enough “The Number Game.”

It’s a goofy little game–in fact “game” seems like something of a charitable description of the whole thing. It’s more like passing one of those “Do You Like Me? []Yes []No [] Maybe” notes in class.

The rules are fitting simple. Send a friend a random number and they post a status update with their thoughts about you featuring it. Here’s an example from the game’s Facebook site,

Number sent to you: 21
Status: True friend; you’ve always been there and I’m grateful for our relationship!

Reads a bit like it’s been translated verbatim from another language, doesn’t it?

The Number Game’s organizers are making a big push to take the thing viral, and judging from all of the press it’s been getting, they’re doing a pretty good job with it.

Let this be a warning for John and Jane Q. Public (always a cute couple, those two) to always wipe sensitive / secret data from your hard drives before selling a computer. Or better yet, take out the drive entirely and physically destroy it. That’s what we’d expect from our government entities, but an internal investigation found that a number of PCs and components from NASA‘s shuttles had been sold from four different centers — Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers, and Ames and Langley Research Centers — that “failed sanitization verification testing,” or weren’t even tested at all. In Langley’s case, while hard drives were being destroyed, “personnel did not properly account for or track the removed hard drives during the destruction process.” Meanwhile at Kennedy, computers were found being prepped for sale that still had “Internet Protocol information [that] was prominently displayed.” Helluva way to start a shuttle launch retirement, eh?

NASA’s shuttle PCs sold with sensitive data intact, insert WikiLeaks joke here originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Dec 2010 12:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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