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An important law that would protect California consumers from state-level regulation of VoIP and other IP-based services passed the California State Senate late last week on a bipartisan 30-6 vote.

The bill, SB 1161, now moves to the State Assembly, which has scheduled hearings for June 11.

SB 1161 is short and sweet. It prohibits the state's Public Utility Commission "from regulating Voice over Internet Protocol and Internet Protocol enabled service...except as required or delegated by federal law" or otherwise authorized by statute, until at least 2020.

Its goal is even more straight-forward. As the bill'… Read more

Last month, the European Space Agency abruptly declared its Earth observation satellite, Envisat, dead. After more than 10 years of successfully monitoring the planet's natural behaviors from space, the once valuable tool is now considered junk that could endanger active space assets for as much as 150 years.

Situations like this are what has led the U.S. Air Force and partners around the globe to move forward with the construction of a system designed to closely track as many as 200,000 piece of space debris. And now, the Air Force is considering which of two contractors' proposals … Read more

Summer is here. And for lots of people that means it's time for a vacation abroad. So what should you do about your smartphone to ensure you don't get surprised with a massive phone bill upon your return?

If you're planning to leave the U.S., you might want to consider taking a few precautions before you leave to make sure you don't end up spending more on your phone bill than you spent on your plane ticket.

You could rent or borrow a phone for your trip with local service in the country or countries … Read more

Democratic and Republican government officials warned this morning that a United Nations summit in December will lead to a virtual takeover of the Internet if proposals from China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are adopted.

It was a rare point of bipartisan agreement during an election year: a proposal that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin described last year as handing the U.N. "international control of the Internet" must be stopped.

"These are terrible ideas," Rep. Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, said during a U.S. House of Representatives hearing. They could allow "governments to … Read more

In the final chapter of a history-making space drama, a commercial cargo ship completed a near-flawless test flight to the International Space Station with a splashdown off the Baja California peninsula today, clearing the way for the start of routine cargo delivery missions later this year.

Leading the space station by about 200 miles, Dragon's retro rockets ignited at 10:51 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) and burned for a planned 9 minutes 50 seconds, reducing the ship's 5-mile-per-second velocity by 224 mph, just enough to drop the far side of the orbit into Earth's atmosphere over the … Read more

Space station astronauts unbolted a commercial cargo ship early Thursday, used the lab's robot arm to pull it away and released it into open space to set the stage for re-entry and splashdown off the Baja California peninsula to close out a successful test flight and set the stage for the start of routine cargo delivery missions later this year.

With the space station's Canadian-built robot arm locked onto the Dragon cargo craft, four gangs of motorized bolts holding the capsule in place were driven out, releasing the spacecraft from Harmony's Earth-facing port at 4:07 a.… Read more

The Flame virus recently found in Iran could be used to infect other countries, according to the International Telecommunications Union.

As the United Nations agency charged with helping members protect their data networks, the ITU plans to issue a warning about the danger of Flame.

"This is the most serious (cyber) warning we have ever put out," Marco Obiso, cyber security coordinator for the ITU, told Reuters. The warning will paint the virus as a "dangerous espionage tool that could potentially be used to attack critical infrastructure," Reuters added.

Flame was recently identified as a culprit … Read more

Running well ahead of schedule,the International Space Station's crew opened hatches between the Harmony module and the newly arrived SpaceX Dragon cargo ship early Saturday to kick off a busy few days of work to unload about a half ton of supplies and equipment.

Wearing goggles and filter masks to protect against any floating contaminants that might be present -- a routine precaution when visiting cargo craft arrive -- flight engineer Donald Pettit and Expedition 31 commander Oleg Kononenko cracked open the hatch and floated inside at 5:53 a.m. EDT (GMT-4).

The Dragon cargo ship, making … Read more

In a moment of high drama on the high frontier, flight engineer Donald Pettit, operating the International Space Station's robot arm, this morning reached out and locked onto SpaceX's Dragon capsule.

That capture of the commercial cargo ship came after a complex rendezvous, a final sequence of approach-and-retreat test maneuvers, and quick work to adjust critical sensors that were getting fooled by reflections from a Japanese research module.

The last-minute hiccups were just that, nerve-wracking but relatively minor adjustments to correct for the real-world performance of complex laser and infrared imagers used to compute the Dragon cargo ship'… Read more