Dear RCN, I’ve been an RCN internet customer for five years. You are superior to Comcast, the other provider on my street (and thank God I have access to two providers, when so many people don’t!) in many ways. In other ways, you were superior to Comcast when I signed up, but since then you’ve changed your policies and… Read More: Dear RCN, please stop blocking ports and lying to customers… »
Much ado has been made recently about Lena Dunham’s intention to invite seven lesser known artists to warm up the crowds during her upcoming book tour, without actually paying them. More generally, it seems like there has been a growing backlash against the idea that it’s OK to offer artists “opportunities” for “exposure” without actually… Read More: StoryPress: “Can we profit from your work product without compensating… »
I’ve had my share of run-ins with the incompetent bureaucracy of EZ-Pass Massachusetts (née “MTA Fastlane”), but somehow they’ve avoided being deservedly mocked on my blog. Well, the free ride is over. Several months ago, I had to change the credit-card number associated with my EZ-Pass account, because of a lost credit card. Unfortunately, EZ-Pass tried… Read More: EZ-Pass Massachusetts credit card replenishment stupidity »
Raising money for a worthy charity is a good thing. Raising awareness about a (currently) incurable disease that afflicts 30,000 people in the U.S. and many more worldwide, is a good thing. Encouraging people to think about the needs of others is a good thing. Doing all this using social blackmail that is guaranteed to… Read More: Here’s what’s wrong with the Ice Bucket Challenge »
To: openinternet@fcc.gov Subject: Internet must remain open To the commissioners: Those who object to regulating internet service providers to ensure an open internet, as the FCC is currently proposing to do, adhere to the rigid political philosophy that regulation, by definition, stifles competition, innovation, growth, etc. However, this philosophy is only even theoretically true when… Read More: My letter to the FCC about the open internet proposal »
Dear T-Mobile, In my life, I am blessed in many ways. I have a wonderful family; I am part of several great communities; I have a good job I love with people I respect and learn from every day; I have a roof over my head and enough food to eat. However, like many other… Read More: Dear T-Mobile, thanks for wasting my time! »
Back when I was using Vonage, I wrote and shared a Selenium script to alert me automatically if I was approaching my monthly usage limits. Then I kicked Vonage to the curb and switched to using Google Voice plus an OBi202 box for my home phone service, lowering my monthly bill from around $14 for… Read More: Using Selenium to monitor Phone Power international call usage »
I’ve seen several people recently discussing how LastPass protects your LastPass master password and your encrypted site password data (a.k.a., your vault). If what some of those people were saying were true, then LastPass wouldn’t be as secure as I thought it was. This gave me pause, since I use LastPass to store all my… Read More: How LastPass protects your data »
Those of us who help create and maintain “the internet” that everyone benefits from are now tasked with helping the world recover with one of the biggest, if not the biggest, security holes in the history of the internet. To be certain they aren’t vulnerable, users need to change their passwords at every site that… Read More: We need a “/heartbleed.txt” standard, and we need it ASAP »
Don’t use a self-signed SSL certificate for your web site. Way to go, Incapsula!