Cell Phone Recycler Rips Me Off

After 2 or 3 years of not using my prepaid cell phone more than once a week, I decided to stop buying cards for it. Anyway it was getting harder to find the cards . So it took all the money loaded on it.

My local mall has a machine that recycles phones & other gadgets.  You put a sticker on it, put it in the machine, it searches for the model & decides what to pay you. Well it correctly identified my phone ( a Samsung, complete with picture), & said it was worth $1. Whoopee! A whole dollar! Are you kidding me?

I'm guessing I could go somewhere else & get more, but you know what? I don't really care. I let the machine keep it, & took the bill. But I wonder how many other people say " uh, I don't think so". This is a failure.

The Guardian's Series On Internet Freedom

The Guardian has done it again. Last year the British news organization broke the Murdoch phone hacking scandal with weeks of reporting no American paper could do. Now its doing the same for the web. It's called the "Battle for the internet".

Five days of reporting so far. I just found out about it today, so it will take me awhile to catch up. And five days doesn't mean five articles. One could spend hours reading everything in the special section that appears on the guardian's website. This is why a paper in Manchester, UK, previously known only for the world's most famous soccer team, is now one of the most read news sites in the world.

Among the articles in this section is an interview with Tim Berners-Lee. Who is he? Without him, you are not reading this. He is the founder of the World Wide Web. That's right, Mr WWW. himself. Or rather Sir WWW.

There are articles on government censorship, the "walled gardens" of Apple & Facebook. The copyright wars in the US & western Europe. And how the general user is effected. This is important work & highly recommended to anyone who uses the internet.

Windows Messes Up Anti Virus

Today I did an anti virus scan. Just like I do every week. The difference is that part way through the scan I got a message saying I had a bunch of virus or objects & needed to use the rescue CD. This made me nervous. Plus I couldn't figure out where I got this stuff.

So I looked up how to install the rescue CD from Avira's website. First problem: it suggests you download the file from a different pc. I only have one. So I went in the forums. Here I discovered that a lot of people were getting this same message. All had at least 64 objects, & some after doing a second scan now had 90! I had 70.

Apparently Avira has a bug related to Windows Update. Nice. So according to one poster it is related to one of Microsoft's hotfixes. Meaning that Avira detects this security fix as a hidden object. This is a problem, especially since Microsoft does these updates once a week. It would appear that Avira needs to fix their software so that it doesn't conflict with Windows. And yes, I have scanned with MalwareBytes, like everyone else who got these warnings, & nothing came up. And in fact, when the original Avira scan finished, despite listing 70 hidden objects it said I had no viruses. It's saying two things at once. Anti virus software shouldn't do that. I've used Avira for years & this is the first oops I've come across.

Online Contests

Does anybody ever win these contests or surveys? I ask because it seems every time you buy something at the store your receipt has access to a survey where you can win money or prizes. Just this week I have done survey's for Target & Best Buy. AARP has a daily contest for a Kindle Fire or $1000. This involves a game arcade with 25 different games. You don't even have to play the games, just by clicking on the game you get an entry. So I have probably 200 entries this month. My prediction: I won't win.

I guess I can't call them a scam, since I don't have to spend any money, but who makes any? Yeah somebody supposedly gets something. The Target & Best Buy ones are for $5000 gift cards. AARP has one for $10,000. I entered that one too. I won't win that either. I'm guessing clicking on these gets ad clicks, but since I have AdBlock Plus, I don't see those.

iTunes Tries to Download More Than I Ordered

I am a big fan of Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. But this year they went & changed their schedule. Now the show is on Sunday opposite my HBO shows. They have never been on Sunday first run before, as far as I know.

So I keep trying to find reruns during the week & usually fail. I haven't seen a full episode yet. So I was going to tape tonight's at 6, that being the east coast broadcast. Wouldn't you know it, I forgot.

So I said "screw it, I'll download it from iTunes". For some reason iTunes tried to download two episodes, last weeks & an episode from last season. Now why would it want to do that? I didn't order that episode. I didn't click on it because it wasn't listed.

Now I did download an episode last year & watched it. But didn't order any more, so what is Apple up to? I deleted the other episode, but I will be interested in seeing if I get charged for one or two episodes.

Microsoft Buys AOL Patents

Microsoft just spent 1 billion on AOL patents. This includes several Netscape ones. So is M$ going to put Gecko stuff into IE? 

One guesses that they will use this to go after Google Chrome. The relationship with Mozilla is a strange one. You would think this would be a deathnell for Firefox but Redmond has been known to send over cakes when Firefox released new versions.

Plus Firefox is open source. Despite the blustering from Steve Ballmar & Bill Gates before him about open source, I don't expect Microsoft to use these patents to put Mozilla out of business. They are more likely to go after Google & use the newly acquired patents to go after Chrome. Interestingly, new info shows IE coming up a little in share while both Firefox & Chrome have lost a little. Again, not much. IE has gone from 47% to 49%, Firefox from 21% to 19%, & Chrome has sat around the high 17% to low 17%. Not  a lot of change. Mind you, a year ago IE was at 57% & at one time (before Firefox) 90%.

So how will M$ actually use these patents? Who knows. What has Google done with those Motorola patents? Nothing, at least not so far.

Prepaid Cells Are a Ripoff

Because I hardly ever use my phone I bought a prepaid cell phone. I've probably made 5 calls in 3 years. But every 3 months I add $30 to keep it active. Why do I have to do this?

The money rolls over. So if I don't make calls, then add another $30 guess what happens? I had $109 on mine. But I got tired of spending $30 every three months for seemingly no reason. So I didn't add any this week, when it was due.

So this morning the $109 simply disappeared. Nice. I'm not going to tell you the carrier, because I don't think it matters. I'm going to assume that all these crooks do the same thing. It's a way of getting extra money out of people. The alternative is to buy a contract phone & pay $40-$100 a month. That is not gonna happen. I have better use for the money.

Mystery Solved:Daily Joke Labeled Spam by Gmail

I have been wondering for a couple of months what happened to my "joke of the day". I always buy a "Page a Day" calendar, & this year I subscribed to a free online calendar that came with the calendar I bought. The one I got was a joke calendar. After a month it suddenly disappeared.

Today for some reason I decided to see what was in the spam box. To my surprise there were all the daily jokes for 2 months! I have no idea why this happened. Google just decided on it's own that these daily little jokes were spam that I needed to be protected from. Makes you wonder what else Gmail wants to protect me from.

There's a lot of stuff from HP trying to sell me stuff. That's OK. I don't need to see that. Nothing else stands out. My Yahoo account has a lot more junk in it, & that stuff is in the inbox! So I did what Gmail said to get the jokes back in the inbox, but I won't really know until tomorrow. So I would suggest that peoplke check spam once in a while.

Finding Podcasts

There are numerous podcasts all over the internet. Finding them, however, can be a pain.

The #1 directory is, of course, iTunes. Hundreds, if not thousands. But I was looking for ones I hadn't seen on there. So i wrote in "podcasts" on Google, & started looking. This was painful. I would find a site that supposedly had lots of podcasts, only to find it didn't have squat.

One site I went on, you clicked on a heading like TV & Film. It had in parentheses, I think 1300 podcasts. So I click on it , & there is ONE! Uh, how did 1300 become 1? Just horrible. Another site only had 3 or 4 in each category. How is that helpful?

So back to iTunes. There are sites I know have podcasts, like Revision 3, but those are all tech related. I want a variety. NPR & the BBC have podcasts of their shows, that is good. But again, how about sports or entertainment based ones, how do I find those?

HBO's Game Of Thrones Guide

After watching the 2nd season premiere, it is recommended that you check out the HBO website. There you will find a guide for the show.

This show has so many characters & subplots that this guide is helpful. Yes, you can watch without it, but it makes it easier to understand. There are maps, family trees for all the major characters & their houses, & of course, cast & crew.

There are also interactive features to check out while viewing episodes on HBO Go. I will pass on that since I don't need to watch each episode twice. I expect that others might take advantage of that however.

HBO has done this for other series. I would like some info on the filming, but I'm sure I can find that somewhere. This is an excellent series, & the website stuff is proof that HBO wants it's audience to get a full experience. This is the best thing HBO has produced since Deadwood, & hopefully the ratings will bear that out, unlike the recently departed "Luck", which had none.

Indy Car Website Fails During Race

The Indy Car series ran its second race of the year today. And the website which includes live timing & scoring for registered users like myself was unavailable.

What happened? A server issue would be my guess. You would type in the URL, & wait & wait & wait. Sometimes you actually got on the front page, but nothing was loaded. No pictures, just  spare text. Try to go on any link-nothing. So going on Indy Car Nation (the place where timing & scoring would be) was out of the question.

Now this site has been re-launched & updated. Well, that should be re-evaluated. There are only a few races, usually every other Sunday through October, so having the site down on race day is unacceptable & frankly makes the series look minor league. This is a problem when the series already suffers from low ratings compared to the ever boring southern fried crash fest that is NASCAR.

Maybe spending some real money & putting in charge someone who understands technology would be a good idea. I understand a small site crashing because it can't handle excess usage. I don't think that is the issue with a 100 year old sport with a limited following. Yes, I wish Indy Car had the following & popularity it had in the 80's, but unfortunately, today's race fan prefers the soap opera of stock car feuds to the gritty, fast pace of open wheel.

A site should never go down because the event is on. The Oscar site worked fine during the telecast. My 49er fan site with it's massive message board is almost always fine during games. Why can't a national sport have a website that works during it's event?