They Know Too Much

I never told eBay my age nor have I, to the best of my recollection, done a search for hair restoration products or services.

That said, I am in the correct demographic to receive a Minoxidil promotion.

Well, it could have been less flattering: my inbox is blessedly free of ads for little blue pills, senility remedies, and long-term care insurance.

It's probably just a matter of time, though, because they know too much.

Three Weeks Later

From President Obama's October 1st remarks on the government shutdown and the Obamacare rollout:

starting today, you and your friends and your family and your co-workers can get covered too. Just visit healthcare.gov, and there, you can compare insurance plans side-by-side the same way you'd shop for a plane ticket on Kayak or a TV on Amazon. You enter some basic information, you'll be presented with a list of quality, affordable plans that are available in your area with clear descriptions of what each plan covers and what it will cost.

You'll find more choices, more competition and in many cases, lower prices. Most uninsured Americans will find that they can get covered for $100 or less. And you don't have to take my word for it, go on the website, healthcare.gov, check it out for yourself and then show it to your family and your friends and help them get covered just like mayors and churches and community groups and companies are already fanning out to do across the country.

And there's a hotline where you can apply over the phone and get help with the application. Or just get questions that you have answered by real people in 150 different languages. So let me give you that number. The number is 1-800-318-2596 -- 1-800-318-2596. Check out healthcare.gov, call that number, show your family and friends how to use it and we can get America covered once and for all so that the struggles that these folks have gone through and millions around the country have gone through for years finally get addressed.

Normally I would underline the phrases that events made ironic, but just imagine the whole passage as underlined.

Who Are You Afraid of the Most?

Brand consultant Jonathan Baskin says that data gathering by private companies "puts the National Security Agency to shame."

From the level of the internet service provider, through to social-media platforms and websites, and including apps, ads and clickable content (like videos), we collect a vast amount of information on consumers' online behavior (and their geophysical location), then use it to tee-up search results, info and ads to millions of people millions of times every day … ideally to each one of them uniquely so. We don't do it to keep anybody safe, however. We do it to sell stuff.

We are long past the point where even the virtuous who think they "have nothing to hide" can ignore the incessant snooping from all quarters. Fearing identity theft, no one freely gives out her social security number or date of birth any more. For various un-nefarious reasons people guard information about their income from co-workers; they are circumspect when talking about their assets with family and friends. But privacy does seem to be a losing battle in the expanding surveillance corporate state.

For all its problems corporate snooping, IMHO, is less bad than that done by the government. If data is lost or misused, private actors are subject to civil and criminal penalties. And for the most part one can still opt out of allowing a bank or social networking site to have access to one's information.

Not so with the government, which, despite the Fifth Amendment, can compel the submission of the most sensitive information and which has prosecutorial power to boot. Who are you afraid of the most? © 2013 Stephen Yuen

"House of Cards" - Season 1

When Netflix posted all 13 episodes of the first season on February 1st, I watched House of Cards a couple of hours each week, then binge-viewed the final four episodes today.

I didn't change my initial impressions about the series and Netflix' all-at-once experiment in distribution:

1) I liked being able to control when I watched the show and how much of it to consume during a sitting.

2) The dialog is interesting, occasionally crackling. There are no cardboard characters; even minor ones behave intelligently, although motivations are often unclear.

3) The main story is about House Majority Whip Frank Underwood, the flawed protagonist who one often finds in recent television fiction (e.g., Dexter, Breaking Bad). Is Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, a good guy with troubling defects or a bad guy with some redeeming features? The answer is fairly clear by the end of episode 13, but it's possible that surprise developments can reverse that opinion.

4) When Frank Underwood's "Plan A" fails, his disappointment and anger seem genuine. "Plan B," which could not have been attempted without Plan A's failure, at the end is on the verge of succeeding so spectacularly that the viewer wonders whether that was the true plan all along. But then why the earlier disappointment and anger, even when no one is watching?

5) We think that we understand most of the characters by season's end, but there are enough inconsistencies in their behavior to make us suspect that we don't know what's truly going on.

6) In theme and tone House of Cards reminded me of Advise and Consent, the 1959 bestselling novel about the nomination of a fictional Secretary of State. Reporter-author Allen Drury's tale of intrigue revealed how the "real" Washington differed from the civics-class version and earned him the Pulitzer Prize. While Season 1 of House of Cards can be enjoyed on a standalone basis, there are enough unresolved plot lines that, as with Advise and Consent (many) years ago, we eagerly await the next installment. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

'Tis the Season

Gift-giving, card-writing, tree-lighting, online-shopping.....the latest addition to the holiday list is delivery-scamming.

Do NOT click on the link to "Get Postal Receipt". (No, your humble observer has become less trusting in his old age and did not click.)

Maybe it's a good thing that Proposition 34 (ending the death penalty in California) didn't pass. I voted for it, but have reconsidered. A quick, painless death is too good for these predators... © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Protection Racket

A family member clicked on an email attachment, and the computer screen exploded with pop-up boxes. The Family PC had become infected with malware.

The ironically named System Progressive Protection repeatedly warns that one's computer has been invaded by a virus. A credit-card payment to SPP would supposedly remove the "virus" but really just de-activates the bogus warnings. Worse, the protection payment itself opens up the victim to identity and credit-card theft.

There are various legitimate programs that would eradicate SPP, but I didn't feel like purchasing and adding yet another program to our creaky five-year-old Dell Vostro. Because we had been regularly backing up the Dell to an external hard drive, it was possible to fix the problem the hard and perhaps better way.

Erasing the internal drive and reloading Windows XP from a set of original 2002 CDs was fairly easy. However, it took three days to download and install the various updates, including lengthy "service packs", from Microsoft. After we reloaded other software, such as the Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) suite, the backup drive restored the data.

The whole episode is not something we would go through voluntarily, but at least by clearing away leftover code and unused programs the PC is working better than it has in a long time. We won't have to replace it this year after all.

[Note: Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP, and it's not clear how much longer the service packs and updates will be available for download. The Dell has maybe two more years of useful life.] © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Why Your Internet is Slow

Aging Routers

A big part of the problem, experts and industry executives say, is that most Americans have older routers whose maximum theoretical speed is 54 mbps. Those provide "real world" speeds far below the fastest wired broadband speeds offered.

Too Many Users

Jim Waddle, a 47-year-old molecular biologist in Dallas, ran into trouble with his AT&T Internet once his family—including a wife and three kids—grew to have five computers, five iPhones, three iPads, an Apple TV and two high-definition TVs.

On a typical evening, he could be engaged in remote sessions from his labs while his wife accessed medical records, his son did online gaming, and his other two children watched iTunes shows off the Apple TV or clips off YouTube. "The connection was dropped all the time; it was driving me crazy," Mr. Waddle said. He fixed the problem by buying about $400 of Apple Inc. devices that enhance the in-home wireless connection.

Photo from Slugyard

Nesting Birds

The same [cellphone] towers Sprint is rigging with high-speed wireless technology to compete with Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. are a favorite nesting spot for ospreys. The big fish-eating raptors favor high perches with a clear approach—exactly what network engineers look for when putting up cellular sites.

Construction at 700 Sprint sites has been delayed. The birds are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. It's surprising that Internet companies didn't do a better job of lobbying Woodrow Wilson....

AT&T: Too Big to Care

Kludge first, tidy up later.

We're not power Internet users, i.e., we don't need to stream high-definition video for hours on end. We've been contented subscribers to AT&T's ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) service, which since 2005 has been fairly reliable (except for an episode last month).

Two years ago AT&T's 2WIRE modem finally gave out, and we replaced it with a $150 Netgear DGND300 (pictured standing, right), which broadcasts Wi-Fi signals throughout the house under the 802.11g and the faster 802.11n standards. All was copacetic.

Last month AT&T announced that:

1) All ADSL users in the area would be switched to VDSL (very high-data-rate digital subscriber line), which can't be read by the Netgear modem;

2) ADSL service would be discontinued by the end of September or when the subscriber switched to VDSL, whichever was earlier;

3) VDSL users would receive a "free" AT&T modem.

Rather than try your patience, dear reader, with a long(er) whiny post I'll just say:

AT&T turned off the ADSL connection without warning, so we had to convert to VDSL immediately to continue Internet service.

The new 2WIRE 3600HGV modem broadcasts in slow 802.11g and slower 802.11b only;

The 2WIRE signal is so weak that a wireless device has to be within 10 feet of the modem/router.

Fortunately, it was a simple matter to connect the modems via an Ethernet cable and use the Netgear's stronger signal. All is copacetic again, but the shabby treatment by a too-big-to-care company will make us look harder at alternatives to AT&T. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Armed Robbery

Internet scams can steal thousands of dollars from victims who at least were in no direct physical danger....until crooks began luring unsuspecting car buyers through Craigslist [bold added]:

In Berkeley, police say, four victims hoping to buy cars off the popular Internet site have been robbed at gunpoint since June, possibly by the same two men. There have been several other such holdups in Oakland, and similar heists have been reported this month in Castro Valley and Fremont.

Authorities have pointed out warning signs:

"What we're seeing is the seller will change the location. That's part of the M.O.," said Officer Johnna Watson, an Oakland police spokeswoman. "The buyer should be in control and designate the meeting location."

Car buyers should also be wary if the car they plan to purchase shows up with no license plates or with only paper plates, police say.

I use and like Craigslist, through which I've posted community announcements and bought and sold merchandise locally. Craigslist is now a for-profit organization but still retains the original Internet-should-be-free ethos from the mid-1990's. The site isn't flashy and on most listings doesn't charge its users.

Its shoestring overhead (29 employees in 2009) of necessity minimizes Craigslist's supervisory capability. The "Adult Services" section exploded in popularity during the past decade until the prevalence of illegal activities forced Craigslist to shut it down under pressure from states' attorneys general.

Here's hoping that Craigslist users become smart enough to protect themselves. Otherwise Craigslist will have to make changes that will make it less special, perhaps leading to the long decline that has befallen other Internet pioneers. © 2012 Stephen Yuen