Archive for December 18, 2009

RB | December 18, 2009
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Super-Size My Wi-Fi

wifi McDonald’s Corp. will soon start offering free wireless Internet access at its U.S. restaurants  according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal. Starting in mid-January, McDonald’s will lift it’s $2.95 fee that it had charged customers for two hours of wireless Internet access, available at about 11,000 of its 14,000 domestic locations, McDonald’s USA Chief Information Officer David Grooms said in an interview.

mcdonalds-logoThe free access is a partnership with at&t Inc., which provides McDonald’s stores with wireless Internet. Free Wi-Fi is part of the fast-food chain’s transformation from its hamburger roots into a hang-out destination. Over at Mashable.com they speculate that McDonald’s plans to start selling frappes and smoothies mid-2010 as another part of the transformation.

Masattlogohable.com writes that at&t purchased the Texas-based Wi-Fi hotspot operator Wayport in 2008 for $275 million in cash. The privately held company administered over 80,000 Wi-Fi hotspots all over the world for airports and large organizations like Wyndham, Four Seasons and McDonald’s restaurants nationwide. Stacey Higgenbotham over at GigaOm wrote in 2008 that at&t made this deal to off-load the mobile data network,  “allows at&t to provide its customers with more places to do their bandwidth-sucking applications. Already, AT&T is willing to let iPhone and BlackBerry users access its Wi-Fi hotspots free at Starbucks. It also means AT&T can hold out a bit longer before deploying its 4G LTE network, which is designed for data.”

This is nothing but a holding-action so at&t can launch more rich-content phones like Apple’s iPhone and the Blackberry Bold and keep thier old network in-place. At&t already requires iPhone users to use their Wi-Fi connection to download files from iTunes and prohibits bandwidth-intensive applications such as P2P sharing. According to GigOM, part of the reason for this is the limitations of its HSPA network. While fast, it isn’t designed to handle the continuous streams of data a song download or video upload requires. 3G is still designed for voice traffic, which is intermittent and much less bandwidth intensive. The network has a data overlay, but that, too, is designed for bursts of data rather than continuous streams. If too many people that require continuous streams of data get on, it clogs the network, leaving other subscribers unable to access it.

This move will allow at&t to delay deploying its 4G LTE network, and charge heavy users more.  Ralph de la Vega, president and chief executive for mobility and consumer markets at at&t said “We’re going to try to focus on making sure we give incentives to those small percentages to either reduce or modify their usage, so they don’t crowd out the customers on those same cell sites,” he said. The company might consider a “pricing scheme that addresses the usage,” Mr. de la Vega said in the New York Times.

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There are questions that this partnership between McDonald’s and at&t raises:

  • Will the service be  ’gated’ via some kind of time code on your receipt, or will be truly free?
  • Will usage be monitored?
  • What does the idea of people hanging out at McD’s to troll Facebook do to the idea  of a “fast food” restaurant?

Remember, you get what you pay for.

Category: Networking, wi-fi | Tags: ,
RB | December 11, 2009
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Insurers Astroturf Facebook

greedThe Business Insider reports that health insurance industry trade groups opposed to President Obama’s health care reform bill are paying Facebook users virtual currency to send letters to Congress protesting the bill.

facebookWhen Facebook users play a social game, like “FarmVille” or “Mafia Wars,” the gamers get virtual currency in three ways:

  • Winning it playing the games
  • Paying for it with real money
  • By accepting offers from third-parties who agree to give the gamer virtual currency so long as that gamer agrees to try a product or service. This is done through an “offers” provider — a middleman that brings the companies, the Facebook and the Facebook gamemaker’s users together.

It’s this third method that an anti-reform group called “Get Health Reform Right”  which is funded and directed by mega-insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield according to SourceWatch is using to pay gamers virtual currency for their opposition to health-care reform. This practice of paying people to act like a political supporters is called “astroturfing,”  because of the fake grass-roots campaigning. The Insurance Companies’ Political Action Committee astroturfing is targeting women in their 30s and 40s and teenagers of both sexes who tend to be Facebook gamers according to Business Insider.

BCBS logoInstead of asking the gamers to try a product, “Get Health Reform Right” requires gamers to take a survey, which, upon completion, automatically sends the following email to their Congressional Representative, including:

“I am concerned a new government plan could cause me to lose the employer coverage I have today. More government bureaucracy will only create more problems, not solve the ones we have.”

Under the “Who We Are” tab on GetHealthReformRight.org (appears down on 12-10-09 and back up on 12-11-09) the following organizations are listed:

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While this practice is not illegal, since most EULA’s are so broad, ambiguous and slanted toward the vendor that most anything is possible, the ethics of this practice are pretty shading in my opinion.  Based on the list of companies that back  GetHealthReformRight.org. I find it extremely hard to believe that these insurance companies have anyone but their own best interests in mind.

Category: Malware, Politics | Tags: , , , , , ,
RB | December 9, 2009
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Which Anti-Malware is Best?

malwareIn a report release last month, AV-Comparatives compared the base performance of some of the top anti-malware products on the market. The objective of these tests was to identify how well antivirus scanners can detect new malware using their base functions, their proactive scanning and heuristics methods, without the advantage of downloading the latest signatures. Forcing a test without the latest virus signatures however, makes it possible to do an evaluation of the strength of the heuristic–or proactive, technology of the various anti-malware engines.

ArsTechnica summarizes the tests were two sets of malware: Set A, which contains malware from December 2007 to December 2008 (of which most products could detect over 97 percent), and Set B, which contained 1.6 million samples of malware collected between August 11, 2009 and August 17, 2009. This set included the following categories of malware: Trojans (69.5 percent), Backdoors/Bots (20.7 percent), Worms (6.1 percent), other malware (1.5 percent), and Windows viruses (0.4 percent).

Ars reported these proactive detection results (rounded to the nearest percent):

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After taking these results into consideration and adjusting for false positives, AV-Comparatives rated the security companies from best to worst in three categories:

  • Advanced+:
    • G DATA,
    • Kaspersky,
    • ESET,
    • F-Secure,
    • Microsoft,
    • Avast,
    • BitDefender,
    • eScan.
  • Advanced:
    • AVIRA,
    • AVG,
    • Symantec.
  • Standard:
    • McAfee,
    • TrustPort,
    • Sophos,
    • Norman,
    • Kingsoft.

In September of 2008 NetworkWorld reported on Gartner claims that enterprises are paying too much for security software. Gartner says vendors simply aren’t doing enough to keep up with the prevalence of threats on the Internet. Neil MacDonald, a research vice president at Gartner says that security vendors are “maintaining high profit margins on firewalls and antivirus software despite these products being nothing more than commodities.” NetworkWorld says that during his presentation at the Gartner’s 2008  IT Security Summit in London,  Mr. MacDonald was vociferous in his condemnation of how security products are actually increasing their prices over the years across a backdrop of lowered effectiveness, contradicting pricing schemes across the rest of the IT industry.  Security vendors have maintained a pricing scheme that contradicts the rest of the IT industry, MacDonald said. Typically with software or hardware, prices go down year after year with the introduction of new and better products. In some cases, however, security software often loses its effectiveness as new threats emerge, while prices stay high. “Why in antivirus year after year do we pay more for something that gives us less?” MacDonald asked. “It’s insanity. Why is information security immune from the trends of the IT industry?”

gartnerGartner recommends that firms use the commodity status of security software to their advantage, “I know it’s hard to switch but you have to seriously enter the negotiations,” MacDonald said. “Let the vendors know that you are not afraid to switch.”  And he recommends that buyers should aggressively negotiate for better prices.

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While the majority of malware writers are script kiddies with an affinity to making minor modifications to existing malware there are some very good black hat hackers out there that are not dummies.  These tests are important for buyers to understand which product’s core functionality is more efficient against new threats rather than rely on constant updates to augment their capabilities. In the face of new threats a superior heuristic capabilities is crucial to anti-malware software? The weekly, daily, or even multiple times a day, definitions updates are the lifeline of the anti-malware industry. The need for constant updates is what drives the annual payments for subscriptions.

Category: Malware, Security | Tags: ,
RB | December 5, 2009
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Tech Adds Ads In Everything

Tprivacy_internethe New York Times is reporting that Apple Computers has filed an application with the U.S.  Patent and Trademark Office to patent a technology called “Advertisement in Operating System.” Advertisement in Operating System will display advertising on almost anything that has a screen of some kind: computers, phones, televisions, media players, game devices and other consumer electronics.

appleThe patent application claims the distinctive feature of the patent is it that doesn’t simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. Apple’s technology, according to the NYT, can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message. Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing.

Within this new technology, Apple has developed what it calls an “enforcement routine” that makes people watch ads they may not want to watch. What the application calls the “enforcement routine” entails administering periodic tests, like displaying on top of an ad a pop-up box with a response button that must be pressed within five seconds before disappearing to confirm that the user is paying attention.

These tests “can be made progressively more aggressive if the user has failed a previous test,” the application says. One option makes the response box smaller and smaller, requiring more concentration to find and banish. According to the NYT,  the system can require that the user press varying keyboard combination’s, the current date, or the name of the advertiser upon command, again demonstrating “the presence of an attentive user.” The system also has a version for music players, inserting commercials that come with an audible prompt to press a particular button to verify the listener’s attentiveness.

stevejobsThe Apple inventors,  including Apple CEO Steve Jobs, whose name is the first listed on the application,  say the advertising would enable computers and other consumer electronics products to be offered to customers free or at a reduced price. In exchange, recipients would agree to view the ads. If, down the road, users found the advertisements and the attentiveness tests unendurable, they could pay to make the device “ad free” on a temporary or permanent basis.

googleThe Download Squad points out that over at Google, a “highly praised” feature of the newly announced Chrome OS’s “totally new” approach to security sounds similar to Apple’s plan for forced ads.. Chrome OS is reported to be self-healing. If the OS detects something it does not like, a “verified boot” will restore files to their previous state as if nothing ever happened. Since it is Google’s OS they get to decide what is or isn’t malicious. It is easy to imagine that anything which interferes with the delivery of Google-powered content would be considered malicious. Applications like AdBlock or AdSweep which block Google ads may not be allowed. Chrome OS will put Google in complete control over the delivery platform its audience is using.

Microsoft LogoMicrosoft has experimented with ads in software since June 2007 with a version of Microsoft Works. Now Microsoft working on placing advertisements in a more conspicuous location next year with a free version of Office Starter 2010, a free version of Office pre-installed on some PCs. It will include a small Microsoft display ad in the lower-right corner of the screen, and offer only barebones versions of Word and Excel, with fewer functions than the regular paid ones. In Office Starter 2010, Microsoft is not seeking revenue from advertising and is going to use the ads only to promote the full-featured, commercial versions of Office. The company plans to take customers “along a journey to educate them about the product,” said Bryson Gordon, a director on Microsoft’s Office team said in the NYT piece. By allowing customers to ignore the ads that will sit passively in the corner of the screen, Microsoft will use a gentle approach to the up-sell.

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The tech world is moving backwards taking cues from Free-PC and ZapMe because the public is cheap. Apple, Google and MS are counting on the fact there product are so “insanely great” and integrated into our lives that we as consumers can’t live without Gmail or iTunes. Now that we are all junkies of cheap tech, the tech firms are going to exploit this. The price of free starts with a text ad then it will be a banner ad then a pop-up and then a full video where you have to interact with the device in order to use it.

MS, Apple and Google have huge organizations to run, CEO’s and Wall $treet bankers that need their bonuses  so the move to monetize all their services has just begun. The big question is how far will this go? Will the pillars of tech add so many clicks, surveys, ads and forced interactions to eventually make their products unwieldy and useless. Look where FreePC and ZapMe are today.

Forced advertising is not some new idea lots of malware force their victims to view web pages they did not request.

Category: Business, Hardware | Tags: , , , ,
RB | December 1, 2009
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1 in 3 Notebooks Dead Within 3 Years

The ChannelInsider reports that SquareTrade , a provider of PC extended warranty services, studied the failure rates of the most widely used notebook computers and found that an alarming one in three notebooks will fail within three years. The SquareTrade study proved the old adage that you get what you pay for. Premium priced notebooks had a lower malfunction and failure rate than lower-priced notebooks and netbooks. 3-year failure rate by price. FairTrade says  Netbooks have a 25.1% failure rate, Entry level notebooks have a 20.6% failure rate and Premium notebooks have a 18.1% failure rate.

squaretradenov2009-lg2

According to the SquareTrade report:

  • HP is the market share leader in notebooks, and has the highest failure rate. Nearly 26% of its notebooks fails after three years.
  • Gateway sees 23.5% of its machines fail after three years of use.
  • Acer‘s three-year failure rate is 23.3% .
  • Lenovo has more than 21% of its notebooks fail or have maintenance issues after three years of use.
  • Dell’s 3-year failure rate is 18.3%.
  • Macs have a 3-year failure rate of 17.4%.
  • Sony’s VAIOs have a 3-year failure rate of 16.8%
  • Toshiba’s 3-year failure rate is 15.7%
  • Asus has a 3-year failure rate of 15.6%.

squaretradenov2009-lg3

Only 4.7% of all notebooks failed from a hardware malfunction in the first year of ownership, that rate more than doubled to 12.7% by the end of year two, and then leaped again to 20.4% by the time three years had passed.

SquareTrade said that the increasing high failure rate was no surprise. “Laptops have a high usage rate,” Vince Tseng, the vice president of marketing, told ComputerWorld “People leave them on all the time, and notebook components are sensitive to heat. Two, they’re portable and take a lot of abuse. And three, they’re more complex than most other consumer electronics devices.”

RESCUECOM’s  Computer Reliability Reportfor Q2 2009 shows similar results to FairTrade’s results. The Syracuse NY computer support vendor reported in August 2009 that the ASUS brand of personal computers for the second time in a row, results have shown ASUS to be the newest leader in reliable personal computers.”

  1. ASUS (416)
  2. APPLE (394)
  3. IBM/LENOVO (314)
  4. TOSHIBA (218)
  5. HP/COMPAQ (142)

The SquareTrade findings must have hit close to home because Lenovo corporate media relations contact Ray Gorman took some strong objections to the report. A point by point response from SquareTrade is available on their blog.

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asus_logoAsus maintains it leadership position even though they introduced the Eee, an early notebook,  in 2007. The challenge for Asus will be to maintain their position as they roll out more products and new models and gain corporate acceptance.

Category: Hardware | Tags: ,
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