Step 2: Drop on tile floor to shatter screen

Step 2a: Sweep up shards of glass off the floor

Step 3: Call AppleCare and find out that it’s not covered under warranty since it was broken through “negligence”.

Step 4: Decide that Apple’s out of warranty repair option ($300) is too expensive to fix a device that costs $500 brand new.

Step 5: Purchase 3rd party touch screen digitizer replacement

Step 6: Spend your Saturday afternoon with a heat gun and a tiny plastic crowbar to prying out thousands of tiny shards of glass.

Step 7: Plug in new replacement screen

Step 8: Test new replacement screen and find out that only 30% of the screen is responsive to touch

Step 9: Recognize that you’re beyond your area of expertise

Step 10: Decide that maybe the $300 repair option might be your best remaining option

Step 11: Call AppleCare again and find out that the $300 repair option actually includes a replacement if they can’t fix it, and that an Apple Store will actually just swap you straight across for a new one, even though you already tried to fix it yourself

Step 12: Decide that the AppleStore is too far away and opt for the UPS shipping option

Step 13: Ship it back to Apple

Step 14: Get an email from Apple that says they’ve determined that they won’t actually fix it or replace it after all (no word about the $300 that you spent for them to fix it)

Step 15: Have a long and frustrating conversation with AppleCare and find out that they won’t actually replace or repair anything unless every shard of the original glass is still in its original place

Step 16: Wait for your $500 lump of junk to come from Apple since they generously ship the unfixed iPad back to you

And that is how you turn your iPad2 into a $500 lump of junk.

I didn’t know what hyper-threading was, but I’d bought the hype that quad-core processors with 8 logical cores were spectacular.  As it turns out, they are, but now I know why.

Logical cores aren’t as powerful as physical cores, if you could squeeze 8 physical cores on a die, that would be better than 8 logicals, but until somebody figures out how to do that, I’ll stick with the logical ones.

Hyper threading just means that two processes can be operating on a single processor, though still not at the same time, which is why physical cores are better.  Hyperthreading just means that if one thread gets stuck waiting for something, and another thread is ready to go, the first one pauses to let the other one go past.  Kind of like a cargo train pulling onto a side-track so the bullet train can go past.

Click through to see a chart illustrating all the currently ongoing lawsuits.  This is the second chart I’ve seen like this, but this one is easier to read.  It shows the relationships between all the companies suing each other over patents related to mobile devices.  Direction of the arrow indicates who is suing and who’s being sued.

Nokia seems to be the hub, followed by Apple.  Nokia is suing everyone (and their dog) while Apple is being sued by everyone (and their dog).  Surprisingly Kodak seems to be overly litigious and conspicuously absent from everything is Palm (now HP) who has yet to sue or be sued by anyone at all.

So yes, this pleases me.  I’ve noted before that I love the idea of net neutrality, but I’m not willing to let the government regulate one more aspect of my life in order to make it a reality.  Apparently the nation agrees with me.

I do, however, find it funny that things like this can sway elections and public opinion, when you read the details and find out the the poll was based on 800 people.  That’s 0.00026% of the population if you were wondering.

There’s an process on Mac computers called ‘mds’ that shows up in Activity Monitor if you’re looking.  That process is Spotlight indexing your computer and it can sometimes use up quite a bit of CPU.

I’m saving this article for myself so that I can fix the issue if it gets too bad on my machine.

They also announced that they’re going to publish official app review guidelines so that developers will have a much better idea of whether they’re app will pass the review process or not.

Both are smart moves.  They’ll benefit the development community and, by extension, the platform in general.  I’d like to think that they listened to their developers and that the FTC investigation had nothing to do with it, but the announcement is mum on that particular subject.

Apple relaxes restrictions on iOS app code, iAd analytics.

So the important question is, how do you know if it’s real or not?  There’s no single point of failure here, an element that says it’s a scam for sure, but let’s look at a non-exhaustive list of what’s wrong with this email.

Which Inbox

First look at your own inbox.  Is this the email address that your bank has on file?  Is this where they usually send their email?

In this case, the answer is no.  I don’t use my hotmail account for any mail that I actually want to receive, so this email is showing up in the wrong place.

Why did they use my hotmail account this time?

Who Is It?

Do you even have an account with this company?  If so, check who the email is actually from.  Not the friendly name, but the actual email address.  Is this the address that your bank sends email from?

I do have a Chase account, and the email address even looks good, but email addresses can easily be spoofed when sending so it looks like it’s coming from a different place than it actually is.

The Language of Fear

If you read through the email, your first reaction is probably one of fear.  Oh No!  Somebody has been trying to hack my account.  Communications from your own bank will never have this underlying tone of fear.

And if they’re that worried about it, they’ll send you mail, even if you’re on paperless statements.  They might even call you, that’s what my credit card company does.

Why is the bank trying to scare me like this?

Second Language

If this was really your bank, they’ve got templatized email to send to someone when something goes wrong, and you can bet that it’s been scrubbed over by linguists to make sure that every word is in place and used properly.

If the sentences sound like they were written by someone who doesn’t speak English very well, it was probably written by someone who doesn’t speak English very well.  Your bank speaks English.  I promise.

Something is definitely fishy here.

Logical Flaws

My account as Chase has apparently been disabled, so what am I supposed to do to unlock it?  Go to www.chase.com and log in immediately.  Wait a minute, if my account has been disabled, how am I supposed to access it?

Links

Most browsers have a feature, that when you hover over a link, it will show you the destination in the lower right corner of your browser.  The kicker for this particular scam is revealed.  I’m supposed to go to www.chase.com, but that link actually takes me to rotarylamarsa.org.  Huh?

Secure Communication

Now let’s say that I actually click on that link.  It takes me to rotarylamarsa.org where they have essentially ripped off Chase’s website and it’s a pretty good ripoff.  The form on the link asks me to enter some personal information.  Before you ever, ever do this, look at the URL.  The very front part says http:// or it says https://.  The ‘s’ means it’s secure.  Encrypted from your browser all the way to the server.

There are methods to beat the encryption, but it’s difficult and most scammers don’t have the resources to do something like that.  If the ‘s’ is not there, never put in any personal information and never ever put in a credit card number.

What Do They Want?

Now here on the rotarylamarsa.org site that looks a lot like www.chase.com there’s a form to fill out.  What does it want?  Well it wants my username, password, name, address, city, state, zip, email address, email password, account number, credit card number, CVV2 number (the credit card security number), ATM pin, social security number, mother’s maiden name, and date of birth.

Wait, what?!

Some of these things you could make a case for.  Likely your financial agency already knows most of these things about you, but they’re not going to ask you for them on a non-secure site and all in one place.  And why do they want your email password?  Don’t they already know your account number and your credit card number?  What does my home address have to so with this?

What Should You Do?

So what should you do about this?  Use common sense.  And if you don’t want to, then the other answer is don’t click on links in your email, even if it looks like it’s coming from someone you know.

Even if I had been fooled by this email, if I had gone to chase.com instead of clicking the link in the email, I would have been just fine.  I would have logged into my account just fine.  I’d have been completely fooled by the scam, but my identity would still be mine.

I’m going to go ahead and say it.  I’m against Net Neutrality.

I love the concept.  I’d love all content to have equal access to internet pipes, but I don’t want that to be enforced by laws and a governmental morass of regulation and legislation.

If you can achieve the same thing through a gentlemen’s agreement, then it’ll be a thing of beauty, but I think this is one thing the government shouldn’t have their hands in (there are others, but let’s stay on topic).

Just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean I should go crying to the government in to solve the problem.  When I was a kid we had a word for people that always appealed to a higher authority when facing a problem.  We called them tattle-tales.

So apparently a bunch of people escaped from prison while the guard was busy playing Plants Vs. Zombies on his iPhone.

I’m looking at you, Alison!

Well, now I know what was causing all those crazy lightening storms.  The sun is done being at solar minimum.