Cody Taylor

ChrisPaget writes “Thinking about buying Alienware (now owned by Dell)? Think again. After buying an almost-new Alienware laptop on eBay, I’ve spent the last week trying to get hold of a Smart Bay caddy to connect a second hard drive (about 0 for of bent metal). Four different Alienware teams have refused to even give me a price on this accessory, instead accusing me of stealing the machine since I didn’t buy it directly from their eBay store. They want me to persuade the eBay seller I did buy it from to add me as an authorized user of his Alienware account — they have no concept of ‘ownership transfer’ and instead assume that if you’re not in their system, you must be a thief.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes “Google, the wireless industry, and consumer advocates have come together to support a bill that would require the federal government to take a complete inventory of the national airwaves to determine what spectrum is being used, how it is being used and who is using it. The government needs to clean up its sloppy record keeping, they say, or the US risks running out of wireless capacity with the increasing use of the mobile Internet. ‘Radio spectrum is a natural resource, something that here in the US is owned by all of us American citizens,’ wrote Richard Whitt, Google’s counsel for telecom and media. ‘Most of us don’t give it much thought — and yet use of these airwaves is precisely what makes many of our modern communication systems possible.’ The new law, if passed, would require the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications & Information Administration to report on the use of all spectrum bands between 300 megahertz and 3.5 gigahertz, including information on the licenses or government user operating in each band and whether the spectrum is actually in use. The unusual alliance between Google, public interest groups, and big telecommunications companies may be temporary. The telecom companies want to have the opportunity to buy any extra spectrum at an auction while Google advocates the use of new technologies that would allow the spectrum to be shared by whoever needs it.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

wintersynth writes “I’ve posted a review of Virgin America’s in-flight internet provided by Gogo. Here’s the scoop: Avg. .90 megabits/sec DL, .283 megabits/sec UL, ping: 130.6 msecs, .95 for the duration of the flight. Verdict: AWESOME. In fact, I’m posting this from 36,000 feet right now. Skype did not work for voice, even though I’m pretty sure those stats are over the minimums. Any ideas from the slashdotters on what might be going on?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

judgecorp writes “A new vendor group has promised a Gigabit wireless specification by the end of this year. The Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) spec is apparently 80 percent done and, since it is aimed at high-definition TV, it has to go at more than 3Gbps. There’s around 7GHz of spectrum freely available in the 60GHz band, so it’s technically feasible, and with all the major Wi-Fi silicon vendors on board (as well as Microsoft, Dell, Nokia and others) WiGig looks to have the political muscle too. They should be aware of the Sibeam-led WirelessHD group, though, already in the 60GHz space, and Ultrawideband (UWB) is not dead, as there are actual, real UWB products.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When a system update caused service failures and bugs in T-Mobile customers’ unlocked iPhones, the users emailed T-Mobile to alert them to the issue. Even though T-Mobile doesn’t offer the iPhone, they fixed the bugs and gave the users a service credit for the inconvenience.

MarkDennehy writes “The Broadcasting Bill 2009 (currently in the last stages of becoming the Broadcasting Act 2009 and then being commenced into law in Ireland) has thrown up a rather unpleasant little nugget for broadband users in Ireland. It now defines a television set as being an electronic apparatus able to receive TV signals or “any software or assembly comprising such apparatus” which would mean that even if you haven’t got a television set, even if you don’t watch streaming content from RTE.ie (the state broadcaster’s website), you’d still have to pay 160 euro a year for a television license for your iPhone, or netbook, or laptop or desktop if you have fixed or mobile broadband.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

narramissic writes “Microsoft has identified 12 application types that won’t be accepted at the MarketPlace for Mobile store. Among them: VoIP apps, programs that are larger than 10MB, and programs that change the default browser on a device. Overly restrictive? Maybe. But perhaps the clear set of rules (PDF) will prevent confusion similar to what’s been encountered over Apple’s policy for approving or rejecting applications from the App Store.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An innocent-looking IQ test on Facebook is really a test of your privacy savvy. And ability to read tiny, tiny print.

The first netbook computer running the Google Inc.-backed Android mobile operating system on a low-cost ARM chip could become available to customers within three months, the maker’s co-founder said this week.

Bill Watkins, the former chief executive of Seagate, is now at a start-up that is trying to shrink the stack of memory chips inside mobile devices.