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Lots of memories of my computing past flooding through me this morning, and no, this won't be another Jobs tribute. But a post yesterday talking about whether you were using the Internet back in 1995 brought me back to that era, and I thought it would be a good time to show how much progress we have made in the 16-some years and what businesses were doing with the Internet back then.

The then-newly installed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, said in October 2009, "We are fast entering a world where mass-market mobile devices consume thousands of megabytes each month. So we must ask: What happens when every mobile user has an iPhone, a Palm Pre, a BlackBerry Tour or whatever the next device is? What happens when we quadruple the number of subscribers with mobile broadband on their laptops or netbooks? The short answer: We will need a lot more spectrum."

Yesterday, a systematic and mathematical analysis of U.S. spectrum allocation blatantly called Genachowski's statement to the 2009 CTIA Wireless conference flat wrong.

Coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq have a major communications issue: military, security contractor and non-government organizations frequently need to communicate with each other during combat and other operations. But communications technology compatibility issues often prohibit them from doing so effectively.

DARPA contracted Ratheon in 2009 to build the "Mobile to Ad-Hoc Interoperable Network GATEway" (MAINGATE), a mobile network that both military and civilian organizations can use to communicate using any radio or wireless device. The agency announced last month that the system has now been tested for video, voice and data by both high- and low-bandwidth users.

We all know the problems inherent in passwords. Make your password requirements too simple, and passwords can be too easily cracked. Make them too difficult, and users will write their passwords down next to their computers. Not to mention users using the same password for everything. PowerCloud, a startup spun-off of Xerox's noted Palo Alto Research Center, is pushing what it calls "usable security" - an approach to making reality converge with security. Its first project is a partnership with D-Link to improve wireless networking security.