Thursday, May 17, 2012

Two More Rants and One Good Rave


It will be fun tomorrow to watch Facebook’s first day on the stock market. The grand opening price, as outlined in story #4, is $38 per share. Of course, the likes of you and me will never get to see that price…oh, no, no, no. Opening prices are reserved for the super-rich with friends on the inside. Now you know why there is an “Occupy Wall Street” movement.  But, don’t forget, the stock market can be fickle and it might wind up the day for less than $38, although I don’t expect it will.

Want some more news to piss you off? How about Verizon rewriting customer’s contracts to screw them out of their unlimited data plans? Even if you have an existing contract, they are cancelling it and will charge you their structured data rates. And that is the dirty little secret about cell phone contracts…only you have to honor your end…cell phone companies can do anything they want. Read your contract carefully, it is right in there.

But here is some good news…one of my favorite companies, OpenDNS.com, the company I use and recommend for your Internet DNS service, is now offering a free program that will encrypt all your data from your computer to the DNS server. No more worrying about being hijacked at open Wi-Fi places. Can’t happen when your data is encrypted.  Everyone with a laptop computer should be using this free program (see last story). Heck…I am going to use it at home. Never can be too secure.

OK, let’s get on with the show…-JRC

ZoneAlarm is an old and trusted name in the field of computer security. Its free personal firewall has been popular for years, and now, it has decided to step up its game: Its latest product takes the solid foundation of the free firewall, and adds a free antivirus on top

There are nearly 4,000 different types of devices running Android, OpenSignalMaps has found. More than 1,300 of them have custom ROMs that tweak the android.build model.

Wikipedia relies on donations to fund its work, resisting the temptation to put ads on its pages. So internet users who see commercial ads when they visit the encyclopedia are been served content via cybercrime affiliates, a blog post by Wikipedia explains.

Using Microsoft’s Metro technology in Windows 8 is like going to a flashy restaurant where your plate is delivered with a tiny morsel of food in the middle, but the rest of the plate is unused, says one tester.

Verizon Wireless subscribers who have held onto their $30-a-month unlimited data plans will soon be forced to upgrade to a new tiered offering the company plans to launch this summer.

Facebook has set the price of tomorrow's IPO at $38 a share, after phenomenally strong demand from big money managers to get in on the biggest Internet IPO in history. Should be quite a show tomorrow.

If one of your geek hobbies is stargazing and reading about celestial events, you’ll want to check out these 14 blogs and one podcast.

For Windows users who manage their own system updates, the patching process is a bit like going to the dentist — you really hope it’ll be pain-free. For making that twice-monthly chore a little easier, here are some simple tips and tricks to avoid patching woes.

In the same way the SSL turns HTTP web traffic into HTTPS encrypted Web traffic, DNSCrypt turns regular DNS traffic into encrypted DNS traffic that is secure from eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks. Just what you need for all open Wi-Fi connections.

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