Category: Geek Stuff

Any of you use AT&T for your home Internet service? Well you better start paying attention to your usage because it looks like the company will impose data caps on its DSL and U-Verse Internet services. According to DSL Reports, DSL users will “enjoy” a 150GB monthly cap, while U-Verse users will get 250GB. Users will be charged an overage fee of $10 per 50GB, but only if they’ve exceeded the cap three times.

While some people feel that these caps are pretty lenient, I believe that’s just short term thinking. Data caps get in the way of innovation and restrict what users can do with the Internet. Streaming HD games, movies, and television is becoming more common all the time. The value of services like Hulu, Netflix, and Onlive takes a dive if customers can’t take advantage of their unlimited offerings due to data caps.

When you throw in the American telecom industry’s general lack of competition and carriers unwilling to spend money to fatten their data pipes, the caps seem even more bogus. Having said that, I know that most users aren’t aware of their usage and don’t care about bandwidth caps or shaping. What do you think of AT&T’s upcoming practice? Is it outrageous? Or are you fine with it?

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I highly recommend updating to version 10 of the Google Chrome web browser. In addition to JavaScript performance that’s up too 66 percent faster, Google has extended Chrome’s outstanding sandboxing feature to Flash. Prior to this release, each Chrome tab was an independent process, except for Flash. With version 10, the sandboxing extends to Chrome’s integrated Flash player. This makes browsing Flash heavy sites more secure and stable. It’s just great, great stuff.

Once you’ve downloaded Google Chrome 10, kindly share your thoughts on its performance and features.

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In a surprise move that has the media world buzzing, AOL has agreed to buy The Huffington Post for $315 million. For those of you that follow  Arianna Huffington in the media, AOL now owns a site run by one of America’s most outspoken liberals. The move also has implications for tech enthusiasts. Here’s a clip from CNN Money:

The companies said Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all Huffington Post and AOL content.

Tech enthusiast sites like Engadget and TechCrunch fall under Huffington’s jurisdiction. That’s just…weird. In my head I see a sitcom where Huffington alternates between blasting her annoyingly shrilly voice at and showing an inappropriate amount of leg to TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington and Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky.

On a more serious note, it’s interesting that AOL has gone from Internet giant to Internet afterthought to Internet content king. I’m curious to see how it all plays out.

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Microsoft has introduced a new way to create and manage throwaway email addresses in its Hotmail product. More than ever, people are using multiple email accounts, with different email addresses for personal use, business use, e-shopping, news, etc. According to CNet, the new Hotmail feature will help make managing it all a bit easier:

Hotmail is getting a new feature aimed at “e-mail enthusiasts,” which lets anyone create multiple e-mail accounts that can be read, replied to, and managed from their everyday e-mail inbox. These additional e-mail addresses can be had in the same manner as signing up for new accounts, but they require no extra log-ins or upkeep.

The idea is to give users a safe way to provide third parties with an e-mail address, without giving up the address they’ve provided to family and friends, which, if compromised, can end the usefulness of that particular account.

While I totally see how useful this feature is, I also see how it can be used for naughty activity. Hotmail users can make a “temporary” email addresses for pr0n, leaving nasty blog comments, ordering Viagra online, and more. Spammers will also be able to manage multiple spam email addresses from one account. The whole thing has me wondering if this is the Internet equivalent of a burner cell phone.

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A California woman has started a class-action lawsuit against Yum Brands due to Taco Bell’s beef not having much…well, beef. While most reasonable people expect fast-food meat to have a certain amount of fillers, this woman believes that 65 percent of the ingredients in beef not being beef is a problem. Here are the details from The LA Times:

The class-action suit, which does not ask for money, objects to Taco Bell calling its products “seasoned ground beef or seasoned beef, when in fact a substantial amount of the filling contains substances other than beef.”

It says Taco Bell’s ground beef is made of such components as water, isolated oat product, wheat oats, soy lecithin, maltodextrin, anti-dusting agent, autolyzed yeast extract, modified corn starch and sodium phosphate, as well as some beef and seasonings.

Just 35 percent of the taco filling was a solid, and just 15 percent overall was protein, said attorney W. Daniel “Dee” Miles III of the Montgomery, Ala., law firm Beasley Allen, which filed the suit.

Hmmmm, it’s lunch time. I’m hungry. This lawsuit makes me want to go to Taco Bell for some of its fake beef.

Are any of you surprised that Taco Bell’s seasoned beef is comprised mostly of non-beef products?

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