Why Verizon Doesn’t Want You to Buy an iPhone

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Here’s the problem: Verizon has spent millions of dollars rolling out its massive LTE network to cover 200 million people so far. You could call it billions, if you include the $5 billion spent on the C Block 700-Mhz spectrum licenses. But according to its first-quarter earnings presentation it’s only been able to convert 9.1 percent of its 93 million users to LTE.

via Why Verizon Doesn’t Want You to Buy an iPhone | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.

You Can’t Move an iPhone Customer to 4G
From Verizon’s position, the solution looks simple: move heavy data users in crowded urban areas from 3G to 4G as fast as possible. That would help everyone. The new 4G users get much faster connections, and the 3G users would see better speeds and network quality, too, as that network becomes less crowded.

get-flash-videos – A command line program to download flash videos

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Download videos from various Flash-based video hosting sites, without having to use the Flash player. Handy for saving videos for watching offline, and means you don’t have to keep upgrading Flash for sites that insist on a newer version of the player.

via get-flash-videos – A command line program to download flash videos – Google Project Hosting.

Update 10/14/2012: Try this site.  The relatively newer github site here.  I think I had problems with the code.google.com version which didn’t seem up to date.

Skype replaces P2P supernodes with Linux boxes hosted by Microsoft (updated)

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The change, which Immunity Security’s Kostya Kortchinsky said occurred about two months ago, represents a major departure from the design that has powered Skype for the past decade. Since its introduction in 2003, the network has consisted of “supernodes” made up of regular users who had sufficient bandwidth, processing power, and other system requirements to qualify. These supernodes then transferred data with other supernodes in a peer-to-peer fashion. At any given time, there were typically a little more than 48,000 clients that operated this way.

via Skype replaces P2P supernodes with Linux boxes hosted by Microsoft (updated).

What’s more, the boxes are running a version of Linux using grsecurity, a collection of patches and configurations designed to make servers more resistant to attacks. In addition to hardening them to hacks, the Microsoft-hosted boxes are able to accommodate significantly more users.

Religious sites ‘riskier than porn for viruses’

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Web wanderers are more likely to get a computer virus by visiting a religious website than by peering at porn, according to a study released on Tuesday.

via Religious sites ‘riskier than porn for viruses’.

“We hypothesize that this is because pornographic website owners already make money from the Internet and, as a result, have a vested interest in keeping their sites malware-free; it’s not good for repeat business.”

Link Grammar

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The Link Grammar Parser is a syntactic parser of English, based on link grammar, an original theory of English syntax. Given a sentence, the system assigns to it a syntactic structure, which consists of a set of labeled links connecting pairs of words. The parser also produces a “constituent” representation of a sentence (showing noun phrases, verb phrases, etc.).

via Link Grammar.

WordNet Perl Module

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This WordNet module (WordNet::QueryData) is a Perl interface to the WordNet database. WordNet is a database of word meanings and lexical relationships. It contains tens of thousands of words and numerous semantic relationships for each. For example, it can tell you that a limousine is a type of a car and that a car is a type of motor vehicle. It can also tell you that car and automobile have essentially the same meaning.

via WordNet Perl Module.

White spaces and happy faces: TV stations drop lawsuit against “super WiFi”

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Now the remaining obstacles to widespread adoption of white spaces technology are mostly technical. Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge told us that supporters of the technology are working on building the databases needed to track which television channels are available for use at any particular time and location. He said the databases are being set up on a “market-by-market basis. When they hit a critical mass of markets, or can accommodate multiple markets, this technology will take off much more strongly.

via White spaces and happy faces: TV stations drop lawsuit against “super WiFi”.

Apple hoards tablet share while market falls off a cliff for first quarter

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The first quarter of the calendar year usually results in a decline in unit sales from the previous quarter due to the holiday season rush to buy gadgets. Apple wasn’t completely immune to this market force—IDC says the company shipped 11.8 million iPads during the first quarter of the year, down from 15.4 million units over the holiday season. Despite this drop, Apple’s share of the tablet market was able to shoot up more than 14 percentage points between quarters, largely because of the precipitous decline in tablet sales from the likes of Amazon. According to IDC, Amazon’s share of the tablet market with the Kindle Fire was 16.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, but fell to just 4 percent in the first quarter of 2012.

via Apple hoards tablet share while market falls off a cliff for first quarter.