Do you void warranties?

After the poll, many people will void their warranties to improve their hardware, or just have fun.

http://www.howtogeek.com/57027/what-you-said-are-you-willing-to-void-your-warranty-for-geek-pride/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=270311

Facebook Data thru China - Proof Internet Not Always Safe

A funny thing happened to some traffic heading to Facebook earlier this week. It ended up going out of the way through China.

Rodney Joffe, senior technologist at DNS (Domain Name System) registry Neustar, described it as "route hijacking."

"It's real. It is happening. It can't be described as an 'accident' anymore," Joffe, who observed similar traffic snafus involving China last year, said in an e-mail to CNET today.

According to a CNET article:

"Quietly this morning customers of AT&T browsing Facebook did so by way of China then Korea. Typically, AT&T customers' data would have routed over the AT&T network directly to Facebook's network provider, but due to a routing mistake their private data went first to Chinanet then via Chinanet to SK Broadband in South Korea, then to Facebook. This means that anything you looked at via Facebook without encryption was exposed to anyone operating Chinanet, which has a very suspect modus operandi."

In his analysis, Lyon speculates that most likely nothing happened to the data.

"This happens all the time--the Internet is just not a trusted network," he wrote. "Yet I prefer to know that when I am on AT&T's network, going to U.S.-located sites, my packets are not accidentally leaving the country and being subject to another nation's policies."

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20046338-245.html#ixzz1HoC6dK00

Trouble in the mobile market Part 3

FCC official: AT&T deal faces 'steep climb' for approval • The Register

Trouble in the Mobile Market? Part 2

Recently, there has been a lot of news about the AT&T/T-Mobile merger.  In this day and age where everyday, the news is filled with "(insert company) Is Too Big To Fail", is there anyone watching out for the consumer?  Here is a link to a news story about the merger:  http://www.technewsworld.com/story/72134.html?wlc=1301060102

Just FYI, it seems like everyday, the big companies forming monopolies are able to get what they want out of the consumer.  Our economy is based on the consumers, the everyday people, making decisions.  If there is a company that is moving jobs overseas, we can show them what we think about that by not buying their products.  We are allowed to buy the products we want from the companies we want.  There is a spoken word album (although a little dated) that can be found on iTunes that I recommend called "Stuff You Should Know's Super Stuffed Guide to the Economy".  The album goes into detail about how the American economy works, both micro and macro.  If you have any questions about the American economy, listen to this.  It can be found at the following link:  http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/stuff-you-should-know-super/id308953962.  You do not need an iPod to listen to it.  You just need a computer with iTunes installed.  iTunes is a free download available at:  www.apple.com/itunes/download/.

3g vs. 4g

{The beginning of this post is more for those that are younger or haven''t been keeping up on the news on the mobile web front}

Differences:

The main technologies for 3g are CDMA (Verizon/Sprint) and GSM (AT&T/T-Mobile).  Here in the US, where I am based so that is the easiest information for me to get and where I focus on, the major technology is CDMA.  While the world has adopted GSM for the main technology.  Along with 4G technologies, 3G technologies are NOT compatible.  You CANNOT use a CDMA phone on a GSM network and vice versa.

The main technologies for 4G are LTE and WiMax.  In the early days of 4G, the technologies were more based on region than company or network.  WiMax was based in the South, East/West, while LTE was base more in the Northern areas, but neither technologies really made it into the main cities before they were adopted by the cell phone network companies.  Fortunately for us in the US, both the US and the world at large seem to be looking at LTE as the standard (although there are still countries with WiMax as the standard)  since the WiMax crash we saw a few years ago.  

Similarities:

Both 3G and 4G networks allow access to the Internet, although most of the differences I have see are under-the-hood.  The biggest difference that I have seen is that load times of webpages are quicker.  If you haven't been reading up,  the networks are running out of bandwidth and the FCC has been very reluctant to give them more.  This is not like cable companies where you can just build more cable lines, there is a finite amount of room each company gets on the electromagnetic spectrum (light spectrum).  Both 4G technologies are better at compressing data than both 3G technologies.  Unfortunately, the demand for bandwidth is growing exponentially so we could very well see a 5G in the next 5 years.

Companies: (again, based in the US)

The first company to unveil their 4G network was MetroPCS.  Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T now all have phones running on their 4G networks and T-Mobile has one coming next week.  Already the big four have outpaced MetroPCS in building out their networks.  TracFone has yet to even come out with a 3G network so it is unlikely that they will come out with a 4G network and it seems that they have even stop building out their 2G network so if you are a customer of TracFone, you might be losing your phone coverage within the next few years.

Trouble in the Mobile Market?

  Here is a news story from PC World about what we might expect about the much-talked-about 4g networks.  Not mentioned in the article, just like 3g, there are 2 main technologies here in the US.  If you don't know already, the major 3g technologies are CDMA and GSM (more information can be found in the post 3g vs. 4g).  For 4g technologies, we are looking at LTE and WiMax.  LTE, atleast for now, looks to be like the standard that the world, and fortunately the US, is using. http://www.pcworld.com/article/223183/4g_why_wireless_carriers_promote_and_dread_it.html

Firefox 4 vs. IE9

{Before you read the reviews, I have no personal experience with the new browser updates.  I have no intentions of ever updating my Internet explorer as I never use it.}  FireFox 4 beat IE9 in first day downloads this week.  Last week when Microsoft unveiled Internet Explorer 9, the company announced that the new browser was downloaded 2.35 million times.  Now that might seem like a lot but in FireFox 4's first 24 hours, Mozilla has reported that the new open-source browser was downloaded 7.1 million times.  Unfortunately for Mozilla, that is less than FireFox 3 had in its first 24 hours.  When Mozilla unveiled FireFox 3 in 2008, it was downloaded 8 million times.
You can find more information on the browser wars at http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/browsers/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=229400258&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All
{Even with the new updates, I am not persuaded to move from Google's Chrome browser as my main browser.  Although I am interested in looking at the new FireFox 4 just to see what it is like.}

Interested in Java?

Here is the opportunity to contribute to the next generation of the Java SDK. Oracle wants help in figuring out what should go into Java Development Kit 8, the next-generation development platform for the programming language.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9214930/Oracle_asks_for_help_planning_JDK_8?source=CTWNLE_nlt_app_2011-03-24&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+computerworld%2Fs%2Ffeed%2Ftopic%2F11+%28Computerworld+App+Development+News%29

Fireworks

Win!

Note:  this can be found on failblog or by following this link:  http://cheezburger.com/View/4582130688