Well, it never fails when you talk about how you like one service over another, the other service fails!

Apparently Vonage has encountered a serious services outage. Vonage is aware of the problem (as noted by logging into your dashboard — if you can):

At this time some customers are experiencing intermittent issues receiving incoming calls. Our engineers are aware of the issue and are working towards resolving it as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience in this matter and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Apparently around 2ish today the service went back down after coming up this morning.

You can follow the drama over at the Vonage Forum: No Dialtone!! Anybody else having this problem this morning?

Don’t we all love technology. Too bad this one is completely on Vonage side and not a “user config” error.

I love the message is putting out on incoming calls now:

The person you are trying to reach is not accepting calls at this moment. Please try your call again later.

Please stand by……

UPDATE:

If you can get logged into Vonage dashboard you will now see:

We apologize for any inconvenience, but we are currently
upgrading to provide you with better and faster service.

Better and faster, how about just service in general today guys.

In a post Skype Increases Cost of Calls, Silently? at Chris site, he brings to the front the nice thing Skype is doing to its users.

Chris pointed out Stuart post over at SkypeJournal the entire nastiness in “Skype Raids its Customer Base“.

Pssst, don’t tell anyone (we aren’t — Skype) we are going to tack on a few cents to each Skype call and call it a “connection fee”. No one will notice, since everyone makes long duration calls right! NOT

I guess they figure, someone has to pick up the tab for paying those Oompa-Loompas* to make your connection.

As a Vonage backer these days, I feel two things:

1. Vonage better not pull this trick, good thing I am on the buffet plan.
2. I knew there was a reason I didn’t go with Skype and now I have another.

Skype folks, doesn’t this pretty much steam you glass?

The irony I find in this entire thing is summed up in:
A communication company… has done a very lousy job communicating with their customers! Imagine that?

Skype, I give you a F for today and no star for you and go to the back of the line.

*No, Oompa-Loompas do not work for Skype and none were injured in the creation of this article.

TGDaily has a nice article on all the buzz coming out of Intel and their Terascale project. 80 Processors on a single chip to produce 1.8 TeraFlops.

If you are a tech head or a hardware slut, you have to check out the article. This is not the future processor, but a prime example of processor level of “networked computers” all on a single wafer. Not that this actual chip will be our future, but this kind of design I can only imagine we will see more of. Interconnected processing units all interconnected for the ultimate benefit of the whole.

Intel squeezes 1.8 TFlops out of one processor

Hey can anyone think of a few similarities if you add some AI to these wafers!

Skynet
TitanNet
Self-Aware AI

We all laugh about these things (heck we make movies about them) but heck back in 2000 Billy Joy, Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems at the time. In Wired magazine article, stated “Our most powerful 21st-century technologies — robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech — are threatening to make humans a endangered species.”

How many more years does it take before this really does become a concern. Just something to ponder. I don’t think Sony’s Ibo is going to take over the kids, but when do we past that point of no return. Hmmmm

Joe has just released a update to the recent 1.0 release of Firefox Firebug extension.

Changes are:

1. Support escaping the % sign in console.log() calls using %%
2. Support “Find Next” in the CSS tab
3. Fixed problem causing inconsistent breakpoint triggering
4. Deleting a disabled CSS property will work properly
5. Fixed bug that prevented editing of DOM properties with numeric values
6. Inserted warning about incompatibility with Sothink SWF Catcher extension
7. Fixed incompatibility with HTML Validator extension

If you haven’t gotten the update in Firefox yet, go get it now over at Firebug.com

Related post:
Firebug 1.0 Official Release

Tate Needham over at VSoft Technologies hit the nail on the head with a post: “Who cares if the build is broken?”

“If the development team is serious about creating quality software, then the entire team should care about the build being broken. Even if the team does not use any sort of continuous integration practices, a broken build is never a good thing.”

I know I have seen it time and time again when a team gets buy in by say 90% of the team and everything is going great. But then there is that one day when the other 10% of the team thinks automated builds are a waste of time and money. Those are the folks that ignore the emails about the build being broken. Better yet, they are the folks that yell from the mountain top the WOMB (works on my box) mantra.

“Oh I have to check in the library too for the build to work!”

Playing dumb on a development team never really pays off now does it!

It was based on the write up by Derick over at AvacodoSoftware.com: The Build Is Broken… Who Cares?