Times (of London) Online: EBay admits to bad call on how much it paid to take over Skype

EBay bought Skype in 2005 for $2.6 billion. Yesterday it warned shareholders that it would have to take an impairment charge of $900 million (£450 million) because it had valued the group too highly two years ago. …

An eBay spokesman said: "Skype has not performed as well as we would have hoped. And we are disappointed about the impairment charge. But we still believe Skype to be an extremely valuable asset."

Anyone can use Skype to call other Skype members for free but they have to pay to use Skype to make phone calls to regular phones or to allow regular phones to call the Skype service. Most people choose only to use the former, and if they use the latter, they do so rarely. While Skype is an impressive VoIP application for consumers, it has significant problems with reliability which makes it problematic for use in business - those most likely to want to switch to Skype to save on those long-distance telephone bills.

I myself have a significant cause to use Skype-out service, calling people in New Zealand when my cellphone has no international capability, yet I think I've spent about $50 on the service over the past three years. (By the way, my Skype name is "brianboyko" if anyone wants to call me up and talk about the blog. Why not? It's free.)

InfoWorld: Test Your Network Security IQ

A fun little quiz today on Network Security, complete with the requisite 'joke answers"

ITNews: About half of IT workers admit sleeping on the job, kissing co-workers

Forty-nine percent of male techies say they've fallen asleep at work, while only 35 percent of women admitted doing so.

As for smooching, 44 percent of men techies say they've kissed a co-worker, while only 34 percent [of women] confessed to puckering up with a colleague.

I just wanted to say to all the attractive young IT professionals out there that if they want to request a smoochin' session with me, feel free to check my schedule in Outlook.