Two interesting articles showed up in my RSS feed today, that juxtaposed, make for an interesting discussion. First, Business Insider has provocatively written that Android is definitively the OS for poor people, and iOS for the rich. They've got some data that shows that people of higher income brackets overwhelmingly use iphones, while Android devices are used by the brackets with less disposable income. But at the same time, they've posted a good article showing a list of eight things the iphone can't - and probably will never - do. They include external storage, NFC support, USB connectors, and a couple of others [all one one page, not eight clicks: thank you!]

So is Android destined to be the poor man's iphone, or is it the ecosystem busy pushing the boundaries of technology and function? Because the days of claiming Android is simply catching up to Apple seem to be long behind us.

What is art? Depends on who you ask. But according to anonymous over 4chan, "Art used to something you cherish. Now literally anything is art. This post is art." Precient! Because a screenshot - flash glare and all - of that post has just been sold on an ebay art market for over ninety thousand dollars.

An eBay auction for "Artwork by Anonymous," which is a 4chan screenshot printed out on regular printer paper (pictured above), sold this weekend for $90,900 after 45 bids. The piece, if we're really going to take this seriously, asks you to consider whether or not society has an eroded definition of what we cherish as art. Looking at this auction, we're thinking it does.

This is the entire product description:

"This auction is for a One of a Kind work of art by Anonymous. This work is untitled. This item will be shipped in a frame for convenience.

If you think about it, it's a pretty great deal, since that convenient frame was thrown in for free. A+++, would buy again.

The Internet of Things, whatever that means, is coming, and our networks are not prepared for it.

Cisco estimates, for example, that by 2018 the typical new car will have no less than four machine-to-machine connections. That single statistic alone introduces more than 60 million new connections every year, and that's just for automobiles.

No one really knows how the Internet of Things will play out. There will certainly be a lot of trial and error. But if it takes off the way top industry experts are anticipating, the Internet of Things (including wearable computing and the industrial Internet) will force a re-evaluation of the network infrastructures in place, otherwise those networks run the risk of getting hopelessly clogged.

Where do potential network bottlenecks lurk?

More on the subject at RCRWireless.

This just in: Verizon is still as evil as any taxpayer-subsidized monopoly can be. Which is to say, very.

That endlessly reliable copper telephone network that stretches across the country, carries its own power, and serves as a literal lifeline for millions of people even in the event of catastrophes? The one that's incredibly subsidized right down to the "Universal Service Fund" intended to protect poor and rural citizens? Yeah, that one. Ars Technica's got a nice write-up of how Verizon is doing everything it can, legally and illegally, to let the network fall into disrepair and to literally trick customers into switching into its "now! with a whole 8 hour battery life!" replacement over fiber.

It doesn't help that POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) over fiber is very different from the FiOS Internet+TV over fiber offering, and that Verizon has done everything possible to hide that distinction in order to get people paying for their FiOS Internet and TV service (which, in turn have moved quickly from "hey, cheaper than cable and sweet fast Internet" to "WTF who pays that kind of money for this stuff" in just a few years as they put the hook in). They can switch your regular telephone line from copper to fiber without any change in service at all. (Except for the whole "now you have 8 hours to live" thing.)

That, and getting rid of copper maintenance saves them a lot of cash internally. Oh yeah, it also means that once your copper is ripped out you can NEVER get DSL from Verizon or ANYONE else -- giving VZ and your cableco a de facto duopoly over you ever getting wired Internet access. Ever compared the cost Verizon's own $20/month DSL to its FiOS Internet-only service that STARTS at $75/month ?

This is all quite old news to anyone paying attention, but Ars lays out the sad story pretty well.

As a tiny aside I found it amusing that Verizon doesn't own the fios.com domain.