Although I wasn’t happy with T-Mobile when I used their service between 2005 and 2006 with a Sony Ericsson K700a, I find their new “uncarrier” plan really attractive, especially since they are now carrying the iPhone.
New iPhone customers will be able to purchase the 16GB iPhone 5 for $100 down, plus 24 monthly payments of $20. After the payments are finished, customers will see their monthly bills drop. On traditional subsidized plans from AT&T or Verizon, users pay $199 up front, and then see a subsidy payment invisibly built into their monthly plans. However, if the customer goes longer than two years without purchasing a new phone, the carrier continues to collect subsidy repayments as pure profit.
How about that? Are you telling me that a mobile phone carrier hides the cost of our equipment in our monthly plan and keeps our bill inflated even after we’ve paid back the phone? Thieves!
By reducing the monthly amount due once the I’ve repaid the equipment, T-Mobile’s pricing plan is downright refreshing. I wonder if they would have offered such a plan had T-Mobile merged with AT&T. Don’t bet on it.
Bring the tactile beauty of walnut wood to your keyboard with Lazerwood Keys! Created to perfectly compliment the sleek style of Apples MacBook Pro keyboards….
This mod takes some nimble fingers and patience but the results are stunning. The thin adhesive-backed wood pieces adhere to the keys firmly and the characters and symbols are laser cut with beautiful precision.
After much hesitation, I decided that the only way I could get the computer to work properly was to open the computer and clean out the keyboard. Apple does not make it easy. To access the keyboard, you have to take apart the entire computer and then remove the keyboard from the notebook’s upper case. The process must be complicated because you can only find instructions on replacing the upper case on iFixit.com, a process which they already rate as difficult. Separating the keyboard from the upper case requires peeling off the keyboard illumination sheet and then unscrewing about forty of the smallest screws you’ve ever seen in your life.
I’ll spare you the details, but I was able to remove upper case and the keyboard. I cleaned out the keyboard with some rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol and a cotton swab. I also scraped some white substance that has settled under some of the keys. I used nothing more than a thin plastic straw, such as coffee stirrer. I also used some compressed air, from a can, to blow away hair, dust and other detritus from under the keys.
Putting together the computer was a bit more difficult. Shortly after I took the computer apart, I had to leave for Los Angeles for five days. Today, I finally had the chance to put the computer back together. Thankfully, I labelled the screws by placing them in small cups with post-it notes, which made putting the computer a lot easier after not having looked it at my machine in over a week.
When I finished reassembling the computer, I powered on the computer. Immediately, the fan went into overdrive and was spinning at its maximum speed. I was able to login to the computer and, most importantly, all of the keys were working. However, the Wi-Fi wasn’t working. The Wi-Fi menu indicated that there was “No Wi-Fi Hardware Found.” Looking at Activity Monitor, the kernel was consuming as much as 100% of the processor, and attempting ro to run any other software resulted in very slow performance.
After some investigating, it appears that the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and camera are all connected via a single cable to the display. I removed the “camera connector” and reconnected it, hoping that securing the connection would get the computer to work. I rebooted the computer and noticed that the fan was spinning at its normal speed. Then after encountering a kernel panic, which has been more common since Mountain Lion on both this MacBook Pro and 2009 iMac, the Wi-Fi menu showed a full signal to my usual Wi-Fi network. I verified that the FaceTime (iSight) camera worked, and the Bluetooth is working, too.
Yes!
One mystery remains. Why does the lack of a camera, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth cause the kernel to take up so much of the processor and cause the fan to spin at its maximum speed?
Rob Fishman, writing for BuzzFeed on Google’s Lost Social Network, describes the situation when Google killed the sharing features of Google Reader, its RSS aggregator. Convinced that it needed to compete with Facebook in the social networking realm, Google envisioned these features would exist in Google Plus, the maligned social networking platform it launched in 2011 at the expense of an already vibrant, if not super-sized social, community.
There is a business lesson to be learned here. That Google shot themselves in the foot by integrating rather than innovating an existing social network. Google could have refined its own network rather than reproduced the social network. But there’s a cultural lesson, too, surrounding the nature of oligopolies in the digital realm.
The problem with oligopolies — markets dominated by a handful of outsized players — is not only that they quash the little guys, but that they tend to fixate on one another. In its most benign form, that makes for a lot of copycatting; Facebook releases “cover photos,” so Twitter introduces “header photos.” The dark side is a rancorous string of patent wars among smartphone makers and social networking giants, squabbling like litigious heirs to a disputed fortune.
The mentality that one big player has to eclipse another big player might make sense in traditional businesses, but the bottom-up nature of digital networks negates this rule when it comes to governing the Internet. While Google successfully killed off the Reader community by taking away its networking tools, it could not force them to migrate to Google Plus. By contrast, consider how quickly landline telephone users have been migrated to wireless cellular networks for their voice telephony needs.
At the moment, I don’t have a definitive answer for whether the Internet and the social networks it enables can be controlled as easily as they might be with other monopolies and oligopolies. But while it’s discouraging to see the big players wipe them out, it’s encouraging to see that they can’t be completely controlled, either.
A few days ago, I came across an episode of a long-running TV series, Computer Chronicles, about the Internet from 1993. (I don’t remember seeing this during its twenty-year run, between 1983 and 2002, but man, I wish I had!)
Throughout the program, the hosts do a commendable job at explaining the Internet (or “internet” as almost everyone on the program refers to it). One of the first things they do is distinguish it from commercial networks, such as Compuserve and Prodigy, and from closed networks, such as those run by NASA and (D)ARPA. The Internet, they imply, is free and is open. It is “open” in that there is no central authority controlling it, and it is “free” after one invests in a computer, some software, some networking infrastructure (basically, a modem and a phone line), and sign up with a service (for $10–20 per month, they explain).
The Internet in this 1993 episode predates the web, but the features of the Internet are nonetheless compelling. The guests showcase a handful of Internet technologies: gopher, telnet, finger, and file transfer protocol (FTP), which in 2012 are all deprecated. We also see a demonstration of The Well, a very old but still operating online community. Each of these technologies were independent of a commercial system. They were all contributed by an eager community of early users of the Internet. It is as if they understood that in order to make this network great, there must be some measure of personal sacrifice. The Internet was not a way to get rich. It was a place to connect.
I’m embarrassed to admit that only a few months after spilling seltzer inside of my MacBook Pro, I have spilled yet another liquid. This time it was about an ounce of coffee instead of about twelve ounces of fizzy water. However, the saving grace was that I take my coffee black and without sugar, and usually black coffee spills are rarely devastating.
As I did last time, I took apart the computer, removed the memory DIMMS, and disconnected the battery. I was very concerned about any coffee residue inside of the machine, so I attempted to remove the logic board. IFixIt.com has a guide on replacing the logic board. One of the first steps in removing the logic board is to disconnect and remove the fan. As I did so, I broke the connector between the fan and the logic board. Egads! And the small piece of the connector fell on to the kitchen floor, never to be seen again. At that point, I gave up removing the logic board and simply set the computer, keyboard facing down, on a dry towel to let it dry as much as possible.
A day later, I reconnected the battery and, with the back cover still off, I powered-on the computer. It was working! There was a brief moment where the letter G didn’t work, but after another day, the G would return to working order.
The good news was that my computer was working, but the bad news was that fan was not spinning. The fan is crucial to the computer’s operation: after only a few minutes of being powered on, the logic board was very hot. I immediately powered the computer down to prevent damaging my computer’s internals. Feeling defeated, I put the computer back on the desk and went on with my day. My biggest concern was that I would need a new logic board.
After fretting about my dear computer, I spoke with a friend of mine who works as a mechanic. His do-it-yourself attitude was a great help. He suggested rigging a piece of copper wire to bridge the broken connection. The fan has four wires that connect to the logic board. I’m unsure what each does, but he guessed that two of the wires were for DC power, one was a ground, and the other was for a temperature sensor or the like.
His solution worked. I was able to harvest a thin strand of copper from an RJ-45 cable. I inserted the strand into the fan connector and pressed the other end of the copper against logic board, where the broken connector was. I powered-on the computer, and it worked. The fan spun and was cooling the logic board. The only issue was that when I stopped applying pressure to the copper against the logic board, the fan would turn off. I would somehow need to adhere the copper to the logic board.
The obvious, albeit somewhat scary, solution would be to solder the copper to the logic board.
After reading up on soldering, I bought a very basic 40-watt soldering pen from Radio Shack. Along with a spool of the thinnest 60-40 solder I could find, I spent under $20. This was against most advice I read online about needing to get a soldering iron that has an analog (or even a digital) temperature control. If I didn’t need my computer this week, I would have opted to buy a better soldering iron and wait to have it shipped to me1. But time was crucial and thus the $20 gamble to reconnect the broken fan cable seemed worthwhile.
As you can see in the video, I don’t have the steadiest of hands when soldering, but the solder was good enough to get the connection working. The fan works at both the normal speed (2,000 rpm) and that really noisy speed (6,000 rpm) when I am processing video.
The DIY attitude saved the day yet again.
The above link to Amazon is an affiliate link. If you buy something that link, I will earn a commission fee.
A federal judge in California has for the second time thrown out a lawsuit that accused the University of California at Los Angeles of violating copyright law by streaming videos online.
This is a nice win for those of us who would like to stream videos for students to watch, on their own, outside of class. It’s a better use of class time than playing a DVD for them.
However, as much as I would like this case to affirm streaming entire videos as fair use, I think the dismissal has almost no impact beyond the two litigating parties. Reading over the story, it really only protects UCLA, as a “sovereign entity,” against Ambrose Video, who lacked “standing” to bring this particular case against UCLA. The judge stops short of saying that streaming videos to only enrolled students is NOT even fair use because no court has ever declared it as such. If anything, it might even be grounds for an appeal.
I do applaud UCLA’s vigilance and hope that the fair use applies to entire works over an intranet. The technology is here, the need is here, and it’s a more efficient use of scarce class time.
It appears that PRWeb, a public relations outfit that allows companies to distribute news releases to media outlets such as newspapers, websites, etc., distributed a report that Google was acquiring ICOA, a small WiFi company, for $400 million. The report was false.
The fake news of the acquisition was picked up by several news outlets, which often will reprint news releases without modification, and spread throughout the worlds of technology and finance. An irony was that one of the propagators of this false report was Google. The report was prominent on its own Google News service, which itself is a clearinghouse for news organizations.
While it’s not clear at this time why someone created a false report on this acquisition, one can imagine that there might be a financial motive. For those unfamiliar with the workings of the stock market, a company such as ICOA sells pieces of its company as shares to the public. The total value of these shares represent the value of the company. If the company is to be acquired for, say $400 million, the value of the owned shares of the company would reach at least that amount. In other words, each share of the company would increase dramatically once there was news of an impending acquisition. If someone held these shares before a company was being acquired, it could presumably make all the investors rich because their shares have increased in value.
Someone could presumably craft a fake news release and distribute it through PRWeb for a small fee. PRWeb will then distribute the news release to search engines, such as Google, and to news wire services, newspapers, and other news websites. Once news outlets around the web publish the fake news about the acquisition, it could set off a frenzy of investors buying the stock which will drive up the price. (The stock market works like an auction, where the most recent price of a share is the value of the share.) If the person who crafted the fake news report had shares of the company or had conspired with someone who held those shares, that person could sell his/her shares for a greatly inflated price and pocket a nice sum of money.
This practice is pump and dump. One pumps up the company by spreading positive news, and then dumps shares of the company once the news inflates the value of the shares. Because of the speed at which information can spread on the World Wide Web, the fake news of the acquisition can become the story, without allowing reporters enough time to verify the story, and it could drive up the share price very quickly. This allows the pumper of the company to dump the shares in a very short amount of time.
The manner in which the fake news release hit the web appears to be a case of humans surrendering to the almighty algorithm. It appears that PRWeb did not verify the story with Google or ICOA. Google’s algorithm does not appear to verify sources, either. And once this news began to appear on websites for major newspapers, via the Associated Press, the story was taken as true and became actionable information for investors.
After restarting my iPhone 5, I was able to use FaceTime over cellular.
But then this afternoon, I was demonstrating the process of turning this on for a fellow AT&T customer with an unlimited iPhone data plan, but the process didn’t work. When I looked at my own phone, the setting for using FaceTime over cellular had been turned off, and I could not turn it back on.
Meanwhile, AT&T has stayed mum about this whole issue, suggesting that it is a technical glitch not a policy switch.
I wish AT&T would consider those with grandfathered plans as loyal customers. We’ve clearly stuck with you, AT&T, throughout the years. This is despite having an unusable voice network when I had an iPhone 3G and an iPhone 4. Let us have FaceTime as a bonus and throttle us if we cross whatever arbitrary threshold you’ve set for us.
The memo, titled “Three Myths about Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix it,” is a direct assault on the relentlessly pro-copyright worldview dominating Washington for decades. “Most legislative discussions on this topic are not premised upon what is in the public good or what will promote the most productivity and innovation, but rather what the content creators ‘deserve’ or are ‘entitled to’ by virtue of their creation,” the memo says. That’s a problem, it argues, because the Constitution says the point of copyright is to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”—not merely to line the pockets of incumbent copyright holders.
We discussed this issue of copyright reform in my New Technologies class in the context of Lawrence Lessig’s book, Free Culture. One of the central arguments in that book was that there is a dire need for copyright reform in the face of new, digital technologies. Our copyright laws have been less a way to promote a free culture, but instead to stifle innovation in favor of profits.
It’s disheartening to see sensible reform was retracted almost as quickly as it was drafted, circulated, exciting a supportive audience.
The above link to Amazon is an affiliate link. If you buy something that link, I will earn a commission fee.
