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This is my October 2014 Time Warner "Triple Play" bill. When I signed up, less than two years ago, it was advertised at $89.99 and today, less than two years later, the actual price is 110% more -- now $190.77.
Fact is -- you can never, ever get the advertised price because it doesn't include many of the fixed costs, like the set top box, not to mention it is littered with pass-throughs of the company's taxes and fees, including the cable franchise fees. To add insult to injury, there are a bunch of garbage, made up charges, and let us not forget the increases on all services -- the 'Internet modem' fee went up 140 percent.
Not to mention I was overcharged as the Universal Service Fund calculation is wrong by $.07 -- not in my favor.
I know most of you reading this "feel my pain."
This bill is like going to a restaurant and ordering the $20.00 dinner 'special' only to get a bill of $38.68, not counting the allowable taxes. When you ask the wait-person about the extras, they respond -- Well, there is a "silverware rental" fee -- you could have brought your own utensils, right? A "garbage disposal fee"-- someone had to clean off your plates and take out the trash. And, of course, a "no smoking" fee, because if people could smoke in here, we'd make more money.
Is Windows 8 the worst operating system Microsoft has ever released? There are some bombs it has to compete against. Windows ME was laughably bad, and lasted only a little more than a year before Windows XP was released. But Windows ME's badness was nothing compared to the awfulness that was Windows Vista, a bug-ridden, hardware-unfriendly operating system with high-end system requirements and annoying features such as overly intrusive User Account Control.
Being worse than Windows Vista takes some work, but Windows 8 has proved to be up to the task. It forces users of traditional computers to wrangle with an operating system built for touchscreen tablets, and it bolts together two entirely different operating systems. Even Rube Goldberg would have been embarassed to sketch out something like this.
The consequences of Windows 8's problems will haunt Microsoft for far longer than Vista did. Windows 7 largely fixed what was wrong with Vista, and as a result Microsoft suffered no serious long-term losses because of it. Not so with Windows 8. Windows 8 came out at a time when Microsoft needed to make a splash with tablets. But because its tablets were forced to run an operating system built for both tablets and traditional computers, Windows 8 has never been a great tablet operating system. As a result, Microsoft fell behind even further in mobile.
The way people engage with Google search engine result pages (SERPs) has changed significantly over the past decade, according to a recent report from Mediative.
The report was based on data from an eye-tracking study of 53 participants who were asked to complete 43 common search tasks, such as looking for an apartment to rent in a particular neighborhood. All searches were conducted on desktop computers in Canada using the Google search engine.
A similar study conducted by Mediative in 2005 found that users tended to focus their gaze on the "Golden Triangle"—the top-left corner of a SERP where the first result was usually displayed.
The 2014 results were strikingly different from those a decade ago. The Golden Triangle has all but disappeared; instead, users tend scan more vertically and to vary their focus depending on what they are searching for...
"...Apple Pay is a full mobile payments solution that works with American Express, Visa and MasterCard. Apple has signed up a number of major retailers including Walgreens, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Subway, Staples, McDonald’s, Whole Foods and Apple retail locations. We also note that Apple Pay will be available to conduct secure transactions on mobile websites/apps, which we believe should make mobile commerce significantly more compelling for consumers..." --Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray
"...Apple Pay is backed by the iTunes account card, so Apple is working on top of the traditional credit card infrastructure as we expected. Although financial terms were not disclosed, we don’t expect a substantial new revenue stream as much as differentiation of the ecosystem..." --Steve Milunovich, USB
"...By partnering with the leading merchants across retail, grocery, drugstore, and dining, consumers can use Apple Pay with merchants they shop every day — which will accelerate the growth of mobile payments in the US..." --Denée Carrington, Senior Analyst
Mysterious “interceptor” cell towers in the USA are grabbing phone calls — but they’re not part of the phone networks... The towers were revealed by Les Goldsmith to Popular Science last week. He’s CEO of ESD America, which builds the super-secure Cryptophone 500 for clients that need the military-grade security and can handle the phone’s estimated $3,500 price tag.
In the course of testing the phone, Goldsmith’s team discovered the existence of phone cell towers that intercept a call and hand it off to the real network — allowing the tower to listen in or load spyware to the mobile device... In July, ESD America identified 17 of the towers, but now it has increased that outed inventory to 19...
...Who is installing and managing these interceptors? ... Not the NSA, cloud security firm SilverSky CTO/SVP Andrew Jaquith told us. “The NSA doesn’t need a fake tower,” he said. “They can just go to the carrier” to tap your line.
...They could be from perhaps law enforcement agencies or the military, he suggested. A number of these towers are around military bases, although they’re also found in other locations, including the vicinity of the South Point Casino in Las Vegas...
...The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced last month that it is launching an investigation into the use of cell network interceptors by criminal gangs and foreign intelligence...
Emerging in 2005 out of the need for a memory card small enough to fit inside a mobile phone, microSD cards have rapidly matured to their current status of global ubiquity and adoption. This year's Mobile World Congress marks a significant milestone in their growth, with SanDisk introducing the first 128GB microSD card. That will store a thousand times more photos, videos, and GIFs than the original maximum of 128MB.
At such large sizes, microSD cards are approaching the typical storage you'll get on an SSD-equipped laptop or tablet, which will surely contribute to the ongoing erosion of the distinction between mobile devices and PCs...
I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval. Surely such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment...
[It uses] almost-Orwellian technology.
A member of the White House review panel on NSA surveillance said he was “absolutely” surprised when he discovered the agency’s lack of evidence that the bulk collection of telephone call records had thwarted any terrorist attacks.
...Under the NSA program, first revealed by ex-contractor Edward Snowden, the agency collects in bulk the records of the time and duration of phone calls made by persons inside the United States.
...The conclusions of the panel’s reports were at direct odds with public statements by President Barack Obama and U.S. intelligence officials. “Lives have been saved,” Obama told reporters last June, referring to the bulk collection program and another program that intercepts communications overseas. “We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information.”
...But in one little-noticed footnote in its report, ... Section 215, based on the provision of the U.S. Patriot Act that provided the legal basis for it – had made “only a modest contribution to the nation’s security.” The report said that “there has been no instance in which NSA could say with confidence that the outcome [of a terror investigation] would have been any different” without the program.
The panel’s findings echoed that of U.S. Judge Richard Leon, who in a ruling this week found the bulk collection program to be unconstitutional. Leon said that government officials were unable to cite “a single instance in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk collection metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the Government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive in nature.”
...The comparison between [the] 702 overseas interceptions and 215 bulk metadata collection was “night and day,” said Stone. “With 702, the record is very impressive. It’s no doubt the nation is safer and spared potential attacks because of 702. There was nothing like that for 215. We asked the question and they [the NSA] gave us the data. They were very straight about it.”
According to a report on state-owned TV in Russia (via the BBC), ...[s]ome irons imported from China allegedly showed evidence of including wireless spy chips that could connect to unprotected Wi-Fi networks and spread viruses. And tech blog The Register notes that reportedly chips were also found in kettles.
The Russian news agency Rosbalt reported that a few dozen products were at retailers in St. Petersburg. The spy chips had infiltrated some company networks, using them to send spam.
It sounds like a spy thriller spoof, but this is hardly the first time Chinese products were reported infested with ways for someone to break into systems. There was the report last year that a researcher found a so-called back door in a military-grade computer chip, meaning that someone could, from anywhere, get ready access to the chip and, through it, connected systems.
...There have been cases where suspected hacking from China paralleled Chinese military interests, again raising suspicion that the government is either directly or indirectly involved with both military and industrial espionage.
But given the vast number of products made in China and the increasing percentage of items that included chips of some sort, the potential for problems could be disturbing. One step, as CBS MoneyWatch's Dave Johnson recently noted, is to turn encryption on for all your wireless networks. That locks out any device that doesn't know the password.
Of course, that wouldn't necessarily help block a new computer "super virus" that seems to infect computers even without a network connection, according to an Ars Technica report. The original discovery was by a highly-respected security researcher and no one is sure how it works, other than possibly using high-frequency sound emitted by the speaker of an infected computer and received by the microphone of the target. Could an infected household appliance include a tiny speaker that might broadcast such a sound? Certainly.
Are you an undocumented immigrant who needs a cell phone? Here’s good news. We’ve just published The Undocumented Immigrant’s Guide to Free Government Cell Phones.
Much to our surprise, there are no regulations that prohibit undocumented immigrants from getting these phones.
In fact, based on our research we assume many undocumented immigrants are already using the free government cell phone program to help land jobs, to keep in touch with doctors and other medical professionals, to stay in touch with their family, and to reach 911 in emergency situations.
The Undocumented Immigrant’s Guide to Free Government Cell Phones will teach you everything you need to know to get your own free cell phone, thanks to the generous U.S. government. It’s not illegal. You just have to know the rules.
For the longest time, I thought that SIM cards were merely a piece of laminated memory that stored the data that your phone needs to connect to a cellular network (ICCID, Ki, etc.), along with enough space to store a few phone numbers. In actuality, the SIM card in your phone is actually a small computer, with memory, a processor, and even an operating system. As you can see in the diagram below, there is a chip beneath those gold contacts, and on that chip there is a processor, ROM (firmware that stores the OS and SIM apps), EEPROM (which stores your phone book, settings, patches), and RAM (for use by the SIM’s OS and apps). In the photo below of a disassembled SIM card, you can clearly see that this is quite a complex computer chip.
And, unfortunately, like any computer chip that runs an operating system and apps, a SIM card can be hacked. In this case, modern SIM cards run a very simple OS that loads up Java Card — a version of the Java virtual machine for smart cards (of which SIMs are a variety of). Java Card essentially runs small Java applets, and each applet is encapsulated and firewalled (sandboxed) by the Java VM, preventing sensitive data from leaking to other apps. Your phone interacts with these apps via the SIM Application Toolkit (STK) to display information on your screen, and to interact with the outside world. To load apps onto the SIM or to update them, hidden text messages are sent by the carrier, containing over-the-air (OTA) programming in binary form. These messages are signed with a cryptographic key, so that the SIM knows that these messages have originated from a trusted source.
Now, German security researcher Karsten Nohl has discovered a way of finding out that all-important cryptographic key. By sending his own OTA SMSes that aren’t signed with the correct key, he discovered that some phones pop up an error message that contains a cryptographic signature. Then, using rainbow tables (a list of plaintext keys/passwords and their encrypted equivalent), Nohl found he could discover the SIM card’s cryptographic key in about one minute. Once he had this key, he could send apps and viruses to the SIM card that can send premium text messages (racking up huge bills), re-route or record calls, collect location data — you name it, with access to the SIM, you can do just about anything.
...The global apps business is expected to make $25 billion in revenue this year, up 62% from a year ago, according to Gartner. To put that in perspective, movie theaters sold less than half that dollar amount at the box office in 2012.
And we have a ton of apps to choose from: Apple’s store now has about 800,000 apps, compared with 700,000 on Google GOOG -0.28% Play, 125,000 on Windows and 70,000 for Amazon.
Yes, business is booming. But it’s also unpredictable. About 63% of the apps used daily now differ from those used daily a year ago. Our attention span is so short these days – and the competition is so fierce – that we soon move on to the latest and greatest app.
On average, we only focus on about eight apps at a time. And we use these apps more than you might think: The average smartphone user spends two hours a day with apps, more than double the time spent two years earlier...
...Where did we find all this free time?
It’s hard to say exactly — if you look at the following graphic, the amount of time watching television and surfing the Web is flat in the past couple of years. Of course, we often have apps running in the background, like music-streaming apps, allowing us to multitask.
So consumption of apps is catching up to television viewing – some might say that’s a good thing, that apps are more productive than watching “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”
...But, as the following graphic shows, productivity apps capture just 2% of our time. Rather, games are stealing the most of our attention...
...43% of our time is spent catapulting angry birds at pigs and fighting monsters...
Google ... announced a promotion in which people who share interesting ideas about what to do with the device get the chance to become a "Glass Explorer," who can then pre-order a $1,500 prototype. The application deadline is February 27.
#ifihadglass I would automatically recognize QR codes and project previews of web pages in their stead (now w/pic: 4.bp.blogspot.com/-4Tx-3lcdVOA/U… )
— Doug Ross (@directorblue) February 20, 2013
Contrary to popular perception, Twitter has always been more of a niche social network in most countries around the world. In our first wave of research in July 2009, we estimated that Twitter had just 35.47 million monthly active users across the markets covered at the time. Twitter, however, is shaking off that niche status with impressive style, and as we being 2013, it is the fastest growing social platform on the planet.
GWI.8, the Q4 2012 dataset from GlobalWebIndex, shows that the number of active Twitter users grew 40% from Q2 2012 to Q4 2012. This is equal to 288 million monthly active users (claimed to have used or contribute to Twitter in the past month) across the 31 markets currently researched by GWI (representing nearly 90% of the global internet population aged 16 to 65). That marks a whopping growth rate in active users of 714% since July 2009.
An incredible 21% of the global internet population now use Twitter actively on a monthly basis...
...As the chart below shows, the way people are using Twitter is changing in two respects. Firstly, it is becoming a passive source of discovery for users and secondly, users are using more as a tool or service rather than a pure social service. Amazingly, only 51% of active users claim to have posted a tweet in the past month. This means that half the active user base is just reading, reacting or using Twitter as a source of discovery. The caricature of the average Twitter user banally talking about what they had for breakfast is dying...
...All of these changes in usage underline the changing nature of Twitter (and the broader social media landscape) from a peer-to-peer or personal publishing platform, to the social infrastructure that links our internet experience across multiple devices and allows us to use the internet more efficiently. It’s quite possible that the majority of Twitter users in future will have very little or no interaction with the Twitter web page, and only use it through third party apps, aggregation services, operating system integration or via connected devices such as your TV...
Remember the name Zora Ball. At seven years old, she's the youngest person to ever create a mobile game app, which was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania's Bootstrap Expo last month.
Zora used the Bootstrap programming language, and lest you think her older brother Trace, who was a STEM scholar of the year at Zora's charter school, did the work for her, she reconfigured her app on the fly when asked, according to the Pittsburgh Courier.
This could be the beginning of a long career as a programmer and developer for Ball. But first she has to get through first grade.
