"Cellular companies have been hampered by their inexperience as middlemen between consumers and producers of music, videos and other content. Their high-speed networks can't yet guarantee constant connections. And equipment is expensive.
What's more, the price of the content provided by cellular companies remains steep."
With special offer on top of special offers listening to music or watching TV on a cell phone is still, and will be for long, outrageously expensive.
And outrageously stupid too.
Even though stupidity wouldn't be a barrier, the cost will.
Paying slightly more to have the same wouldn't be a problem if that is a status symbol, paying a lot more for the same is a problem even if it is a status symbol.
Because it is the symbol of the status of being very rich.
In other words, if the mass cannot afford it, it cannot become a mass market product.
The cell phone network doesn't have enough bandwidth and the bandwidth it has is too expensive.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
A cell phone is a physical tracking device
Every mobile phone, whenever it's turned on, is *already* a physical tracking device. *EVERY* mobile phone. Even when idle, phones periodically transmit "registration" messages to the base station so that the network will know where to deliver an SMS or inbound call message. (This is why airlines require phones to be completely shut off in flight; it's not sufficient to simply avoid making calls to prevent transmissions.)
In the old analog days, low user populations and lack of automatic wide-area roaming sometimes made it practical to "flood" paging messages over a network so that mobile registrations were not necessary. But flood paging has long become impractical in digital cellular networks.
Cellular networks have a perfectly legitimate need to know where you are, at least to the nearest cell sector, so they can do their job. The recent addition of GPS reporting to E911 calls increases the positioning accuracy still further.
And this is what's so problematical. Location data, like so much other personal data necessarily collected in the routine operation of modern communication networks, has both benign -- lifesaving, even -- and harmful uses.
At least the content confidentiality problem has an effective technical defense (end to end encryption) even if it isn't widely used. But there seems to be no such technological defense against the abuse of cellular location data. Your only choice is to turn your phone off, preferably by removing the battery, when you don't want to be tracked. If you turn it on, even for a moment, the system will again know where you are.
Another alternative is to forego a cell phone in favor of a one-way pager, if they're even still available. But should you answer a page, even with a pay phone, you could in principle still be tracked unless you encode your pages.
Phil Karn
In the old analog days, low user populations and lack of automatic wide-area roaming sometimes made it practical to "flood" paging messages over a network so that mobile registrations were not necessary. But flood paging has long become impractical in digital cellular networks.
Cellular networks have a perfectly legitimate need to know where you are, at least to the nearest cell sector, so they can do their job. The recent addition of GPS reporting to E911 calls increases the positioning accuracy still further.
And this is what's so problematical. Location data, like so much other personal data necessarily collected in the routine operation of modern communication networks, has both benign -- lifesaving, even -- and harmful uses.
At least the content confidentiality problem has an effective technical defense (end to end encryption) even if it isn't widely used. But there seems to be no such technological defense against the abuse of cellular location data. Your only choice is to turn your phone off, preferably by removing the battery, when you don't want to be tracked. If you turn it on, even for a moment, the system will again know where you are.
Another alternative is to forego a cell phone in favor of a one-way pager, if they're even still available. But should you answer a page, even with a pay phone, you could in principle still be tracked unless you encode your pages.
Phil Karn
How To Tell If Your Cell Phone Is Bugged
If you're not on a call, and you hear a continuing rapid buzz-buzz-buzz in nearby speakers that lasts more than a few seconds and gets louder as you approach with your phone, well, the odds are that your phone is busily transmitting, and bugging is a definite possibility.
Note that this particular test is much less reliable with non-GSM phones that use CDMA (e.g. Sprint/Verizon phones), since CDMA's technology is less prone to producing easily audible local interference. This strongly suggests that CDMA phones may be preferred for such bugging operations.
A variant form of CDMA (called "WCDMA") is used for the high speed data channel (but not the voice channel) on new 3G GSM phones. Since voice could theoretically be encoded onto that channel as I mentioned above --which would be harder to detect than the main GSM voice channel --this is a technology that will bear watching.
Most of this applies to bugging in real time. If delayed bugging is acceptable, there is another approach available that would be more difficult to detect -- record ambient audio from the phone mic and store it in the phone's memory in compressed form, then upload it en masse later.
Modern phones have plenty of available memory, especially ones with cameras, mp3 capabilities, and the like. The processing requirements of a delayed bug would probably be beyond the capabilities of some low-end phones, but even most entry-level
phones are relatively powerful these days.
When the recorded audio was uploaded all of the transmission factors mentioned above would come into play, but since the transmission time would be shorter this would be harder to detect. Probably the biggest giveaway to this type of bugging would be battery drain, which would typically be quite considerable even in a voice-controlled recording (VOX) mode. So, my comments above about unusually poor battery performance would be especially applicable in this case.
The odds of most people being targeted for bugging are quite small.
But it's always better to know the technical realities. Don't be paranoid, but be careful.
Lauren Weinstein
Note that this particular test is much less reliable with non-GSM phones that use CDMA (e.g. Sprint/Verizon phones), since CDMA's technology is less prone to producing easily audible local interference. This strongly suggests that CDMA phones may be preferred for such bugging operations.
A variant form of CDMA (called "WCDMA") is used for the high speed data channel (but not the voice channel) on new 3G GSM phones. Since voice could theoretically be encoded onto that channel as I mentioned above --which would be harder to detect than the main GSM voice channel --this is a technology that will bear watching.
Most of this applies to bugging in real time. If delayed bugging is acceptable, there is another approach available that would be more difficult to detect -- record ambient audio from the phone mic and store it in the phone's memory in compressed form, then upload it en masse later.
Modern phones have plenty of available memory, especially ones with cameras, mp3 capabilities, and the like. The processing requirements of a delayed bug would probably be beyond the capabilities of some low-end phones, but even most entry-level
phones are relatively powerful these days.
When the recorded audio was uploaded all of the transmission factors mentioned above would come into play, but since the transmission time would be shorter this would be harder to detect. Probably the biggest giveaway to this type of bugging would be battery drain, which would typically be quite considerable even in a voice-controlled recording (VOX) mode. So, my comments above about unusually poor battery performance would be especially applicable in this case.
The odds of most people being targeted for bugging are quite small.
But it's always better to know the technical realities. Don't be paranoid, but be careful.
Lauren Weinstein
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
You pay for what you get...
What better offer than paying JUST for what you get?
And that is so important when you talk about SEO.
The usual way is: you pay and we do what we can.
Of course they promise the best, but if you do not reach what they promise?
Sorry...may be it is your fault and so on...
But with etrafficjams.com search engine optimization company you pay for performance. That means that it is simply the best model to ensure you get the improved search engine placement you want and don't wind up paying a Seo company for non-results.
You pay for the listing in the three most important Search Engines: Google, Yahoo! and MSN. If you do not reach a top 10 placement it is free!!!
I bet it is one of those few times in which one is happy to pay...
You are almost sure that your website will get the exposition you need to sell more or to be known better or whatever.
Their monthly fees are based on the number of top 10 rankings they get for their clients. Minimum of 10 top 10 rankings per month or that month is free. Of course competitive keywords are more than welcome!!
And it is better than a pay per click.
You do not have to pay for the number of customers, just for your placement.
You can choose the plan that suits you best and decide. Then you just wait...
This is a sponsored post, please read disclosure policy.
And that is so important when you talk about SEO.
The usual way is: you pay and we do what we can.
Of course they promise the best, but if you do not reach what they promise?
Sorry...may be it is your fault and so on...
But with etrafficjams.com search engine optimization company you pay for performance. That means that it is simply the best model to ensure you get the improved search engine placement you want and don't wind up paying a Seo company for non-results.
You pay for the listing in the three most important Search Engines: Google, Yahoo! and MSN. If you do not reach a top 10 placement it is free!!!
I bet it is one of those few times in which one is happy to pay...
You are almost sure that your website will get the exposition you need to sell more or to be known better or whatever.
Their monthly fees are based on the number of top 10 rankings they get for their clients. Minimum of 10 top 10 rankings per month or that month is free. Of course competitive keywords are more than welcome!!
And it is better than a pay per click.
You do not have to pay for the number of customers, just for your placement.
You can choose the plan that suits you best and decide. Then you just wait...
This is a sponsored post, please read disclosure policy.
Free will and a pair of shoes...
"The place you buy your shoes has been decided by the search engine, and the search engine was been decided by the browser, which has been decided by the operating system, which has been decided by the computer.
If those things are kept independent, it's working. But if a company gets into a very strong position of having a vertical supply through the market, and has all these things tied up together, then your choice of shoes is dictated by your choice of computer."
Anyway my choice of shoes was never so independent as it looks.
First I had to see what Armani decided was fashionable that year, then what my friends decided it was "in" that year, then what my parents decided how much I could spend for a new pair of shoes and if I needed one, so in the end I couldn't really talk about "free will"...
If those things are kept independent, it's working. But if a company gets into a very strong position of having a vertical supply through the market, and has all these things tied up together, then your choice of shoes is dictated by your choice of computer."
Anyway my choice of shoes was never so independent as it looks.
First I had to see what Armani decided was fashionable that year, then what my friends decided it was "in" that year, then what my parents decided how much I could spend for a new pair of shoes and if I needed one, so in the end I couldn't really talk about "free will"...
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