By PatB Contributing Writer, [GAS] I have written here a few times that Comcast was justified in using traffic shaping to protect equal access among all of their customers.ย Because of the aggressiveness of the bittorrent P2P protocol, neighbors on the shared pipe could have experienced slowdowns.ย To fix this, Comcast was sending resets on […]
Intel announced this week they are working on a new Wi-Fi solution with a maximum range of 60 miles. Scheduled for release in the second half of 2008, Intel’s Rural Connectivity Platform (RCP) will allow people living in areas unsupported by high-speed infrastructures to get on the net at a speed of up to 6.5 […]
By Mark O’Neill Bad news geeks. A psychiatrist is pushing for internet addiction – “excessive gaming, sexual pre-occupations and e-mail/text messaging” – to be classified as a mental illness which means the most serious cases could warrant medication or even a stay in a hospital, like all those gamers in China.ย ย Do you get broadband […]
By Mark O’Neill
Sometimes I don’t know why I bother with all the technophobes of this world.
I’ve been working on the internet exclusively for the past two years now. This makes for some very interesting conversation at dinner parties when someone asks me what I “do”. I’m sure you’ve had the same problem explaining what you do for a job. You have the doctor explaining the latest rectal examination technique, the lawyer bragging about the latest billion dollar lawsuit they’ve just won, the businessman giving you the ups and downs of the NASDAQ…..then they turn to me and I start talking about the unfairness of the new Digg algorithim. Is it me or is everyone fidgeting? Why is that woman looking at her watch? Why is the lawyer holding the butter knife as if he wants to use it as a murder weapon?
By Mark O’Neill A new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that more Americans would prefer to give up the television than lose their internet connection by a margin of 45% to 43%. It also found that losing their internet connection for a sustained period of time would make people […]
By Mark O’Neill When the cost of bandwidth is virtually next to nothing these days, couples who find themselves apart are using Skype to recreate that “at home” feeling. It even has a name – Ambient Skype. Basically you leave the app constantly running on your computer as background noise. Since Skype-to-Skype calls are free, […]
By Mark O’Neill I live in a pretty neat place. My girlfriend and I live in a small apartment which is connected to her parents house. Our apartment and their house is completely connected by a network that runs our internet, telephones and satellite TV. When I first moved here years ago, I thought that […]
By Mark O’Neill
On Sunday evening, I received the most nerve-wracking instant message of my life, even though I knew right from the start that it was a fake. I decided to write this article in case you get hit by this online scam too. Being computer-based creatures, I figured some of the GAS readership were high risk targets.
When it happened, I was sitting where I always sit – in front of the computer, chatting via IM, and researching some possible blog stories. It was then that a new IM window popped up with the following message :
I am hitman. I been paid lot of money to kill you by good friend of yours. They waiting f0r your funerael announcement. What I want too know is how much youre life is worth?
Now I would be lying if I said that by this point my heart wasn’t threatening to explode and my hands weren’t shaking. But I knew that this was what the FBI was warning everyone not to fall for so I decided to call this joker’s bluff. I was first tempted to correct his grammar (I AM a writer after all) but I decided to get right to it.
By Ilya Kochanov Contributing Writer, [GAS] According to some doctors with big weird eyebrows and some kind of doctorate, excessive internet usage might soon be classified as an actual mental disease. Never mind the fact that people, such as myself, earn money by going online. Or that corporations, banks, and schools rely heavily on the […]
By Mark O’Neill Wikipedia has always been my number one reference source (where else can you find out everything you need to know about Eric Cartman?) but it is an absolute bitch when it comes to printing off articles. First you have to find a way to remove all the images (up to now I […]