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Well this is interesting. Fresh off a wave of good karma following the revelation that it was not behind blocking Google Voice on the iPhone, AT&T appears to be looking to draw the ire of consumers with regards to the service once again. The telco giant has sent a letter (attached below) to the FCC asking them to investigate Google Voice. Yes, you read that right. But this actually goes much deeper than that. Once again, this is about net neutrality.

While AT&T may have not blocked Google Voice from being on the iPhone, it clearly does not like the service (no surprise there). From AT&T’s letter:

According to Google, non-discrimination ensures that a provider “cannot block fair access” to another provider.9  But that is exactly what Google is doing when it blocks calls that Google Voice customers make to telephone numbers associated with certain local exchange carriers.

Yes, AT&T is calling out Google for violating net neutrality principles.

Here’s where this gets pretty interesting. AT&T is really upset because they tried to do the same thing a couple years ago. Back in 2007, AT&T and the other telecos were trying to block access to some rural phone customers because the giants felt local carrier fees were too high, WSJ reports. Google has acknowledged that it does block some access, but says that it’s to things like adult voice lines. That’s obviously a big difference, but AT&T is claiming that Google doing exactly what it was banned from doing by the FCC two years ago. From Reuters:

AT&T cited media reports that Google Voice was blocking some calls to phone numbers in certain rural areas in order to cut down on expenses. Phone companies are banned from blocking calls.

And so now we’re stuck with the rather humorous situation where AT&T is playing the net neutrality card. Of course, what’s hilarious here is that AT&T (and Verizon) just got done saying that net neutrality should not apply to wireless communications mere days ago.

AT&T is trying to argue there’s a difference between regular Internet net neutrality and wireless net neutrality, but that’s garbage. More and more, the lines are blurring with the way people access the web. Sure, it used to the case that people used wireless lines only for phone calls and text messages, but the rapid rise of smartphones and other mobile devices that use things like AT&T’s 3G wireless cards have changed everything.

Meanwhile Google, a huge proponent of net neutrality, also appears to be going against it in this case. What a mess. Both of these companies need to realize that you can’t be selectively for and against net neutrality.

Update: Google has responded on its public policy blog. Basically, they are saying that software should not have to be regulated by net neutrality rules, despite what AT&T says. Interesting, but it seems that Google Voice is going well beyond the range of your typical software. We’ll have more on this shortly.

ATT Letter to FCC on Google Voice v7 clean –

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For any girl who has ever been in the room with her boyfriend (or any guy playing video games) and has been utterly confused by the screaming and ranting and frustration, I feel you. For most of us, it's nearly impossible to understand or decode the lingo that's exchanged during video game play, and even more difficult to understand why a guy is yelling, “STOP CAMPING!” or why it matters if you are fighting for the Alliance or the Horde. Perhaps the biggest problems girls face with video games is that Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and World of Warcraft don't seem interesting in the slightest. (Or, in my case, you're just really bad at most of them…)

But have no fear! After many hours of watching my brother, my boyfriend, and all my guy friends spend hours and hours playing video games, I've had the chance to figure it all out. Sort of. Well, at least enough to give some of you other girls out there a little more understanding as to what's going on, and show you how I became a bit of a gamer myself.

My family's first game system was a Playstation. We all loved it, and it's really the only game system I have played avidly. Spyro was our favorite game, and my brother and I beat all of them. The first one without using a memory card. But anyhow, because of our Playstation I did have a little heads up on gaming. But once my brother got an Xbox, and then his Xbox 360, it was a whole other world. Between him and my boyfriend, I was completely in over my head when it came to playing any of the games.

That's not to say I didn't play any games. I'm a PC game kinda gal, and so I spend the majority of my game time playing computer games like Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon. (Gosh I'm terribly addicted to Sims, but more on that later!) But the few times I attempted Halo, it was so bad they didn't even bother trying to kill me anymore because any attempts I made to kill them usually ended up with me killing myself. (Falling off the edge of the map, usually.) So, I decided observing was probably the best choice.

But watching them play has taught me a lot, and sparked my interest in video games. And girls, let me tell you, it's so much easier to actually be interested than it is to pretend to be, and guys appreciate it a lot more! All you need is to find what it is that is interesting about it to you-the graphics, the plot, the music, the characters, anything.

My plan is that each article I write of this series I will cover a game. I'll go over the basics of it, the goal, what you do in the game, what is good or bad about it, and especially the terms that get thrown around during game play. Depending on the game, I might even be able to throw in some tips on playing it yourself, so that you can get in on the action next time, instead of sitting on the couch watching. My hope is that you find a way to get interested, play, or at least appreciate why your guy is so crazy about his video games.

Did that hurt? Sorry!!!

September 16, 2009 - Robin Walker

As with the first Left 4 Dead game, most of the TF2 team has moved over to help out Left 4 Dead 2 get through its final shipping steps. This time around, though, we've improved our process a little to ensure we can keep some people on TF2, enabling us to continue doing TF2 updates. We've been a bit slow on updating here, and there's plenty of stuff to talk about, so we might as well jump right in.

First off, a quick update on where we are with the character model and animation sources. After we got over our excitement of releasing them, we ran into a couple of problems:

• All the character modelers & animators are incredibly busy working on L4D2.
• None of our new .DMX file format tools have been released in the SDK yet, which are integral to working with these sources.

As a result, it's taken a bit more work than we'd originally intended. And to make sure that the work is being done right, we decided it'd be best to get one model out, if only so we could get your feedback on it before we went ahead and got the rest done. So today we're updating the Source SDK to include all the model and animation source for the Heavy. Take a look at it, and be sure to send us your thoughts.

Secondly, some community updates:

• The Dead Workers Party just released their 88th (!) TF2 podcast over at the Control Point podcast, the longest running TF-related podcast in the universe. There's a wealth of information there on updates, class strategies, new maps, and player shoutouts, as well as plenty of fun community stuff you can get involved in, like fan videos and art.
• The folks over at Ubercharged.net have finished their fantastic introduction to competitive TF2.
• The SourceOP guys keep working away on their nifty TF2 Backpack Viewer. It's great if you ever wanted to see what items your buddies are toting around. Or if you wanted to see Gabe's weapon that bans your Steam account if he kills you with it.

Finally, we've had a lot of requests to release the official set of “Ubercharged” avatars that Dhabih did for our internal TF2 clan. You can buff up your community profile by getting them from the Official TF2 Community page or grab the zip of them here.

TF2 Hacks