Category: Rants

Posted in Rants, Technology

Facebook doesn’t pay me for ads?

Posted on by RustyG

Ok, so it seems Facebook has added a new feature that allows you or your friends to tag PRODUCTS, in your photos. Much like the (stolen) photo above. The idea behind this is, it allows companies to get a feel for their web presence. Really??? Oh and by the way, so far, I can’t find anything that says I’m getting paid to do this, so why would I?

Well to be a bit more specific, they are allowing you to tag photos with Pages. For instance, the girl above is holding a coke, and coke has a page, so you then can tag the coke page, like you would normally your friends, and they can see it. To be honest, at this point, I have given up on security and privacy on Facebook. Mark Zuckerburg is all about the Benjamins. He’s just basically turning us into product placement whores.

I’m removing all my likes and any pages that I like right now… I’m boycotting! Let’s start the revolt!!! We aren’t product whores!!!

via [TechCrunch]

Posted in Rants, Videos

Batman Movie Similarities Across the Ages

Posted on by RustyG

Ok, so I just purchased the Anthology of Batman (1989-1997), I was a big fan of Batman as a kid growing up, I never really did like Forever or Batman and Robin, as I think they got away from the darkness that was Batman and Batman Returns were. I still to this day can watch Jack Nicholson pull off Joker, it’s just a great character for him, as was Heath Ledger for the Dark Knight version. I will give you a little background though, Tim Burton did the first two movies, Batman and Batman Returns, so I think this is why I liked the first two so well. It was then handed off to Joel Schumacher for the last two of the series, in which the rest were totally ruined. Plus Michael Keaton playing the first two were a LOT better than Val Kilmer (Forever) and George Clooney (B&R). By the time Clooney showed up, it was a horrible, horrible mess. Directors, stick with the same actors, it helps not to confuse the audience. (You listen here Spiderman 4, and Transformers 3, Iron Man 2 oh and Hulk 2??)

Anyways….. enough about the history, let me give you what I was thinking the entire time I started watching Batman again.

So I began to think that I had seen some of these scenes before. You know, like for instance, the Batman and Joker standoff. And I started putting the pieces together, I think that Christopher Nolan (Begins, Dark Knight) was either paying homage to, or just straight ripping off from the original Batman movies from 89′ and 92′. So I began a mental inventory of the scenes I was watching. (I’m not talking about the story line, obviously, they have to stick true to the comics, but the scenes seemed oddly familiar)

#1– Fat Bad Detective

See??? The bad detective from Begins seems to look a lot like the one from Batman

#2 Bad guy gets a speech from Batman while hanging out over the edge of a building

Wow, now this time the characters are completely different, but the scene is pretty much the same. (Batman, Batman Begins)

#3 Harvey Dent is giving a speech about crime

the weird difference here, is in Batman, he is black, in Begins, he is white. What was he in the comics??? (Besides Two Face)

#4 The Joker crashes a party (well Art Museum in Batman)

So in Dark Night, he is holding a shotgun, in Batman his just dancing around with a cane, but in both instances, Joker ends up trying to take Batman’s girl. Rachel for Dark Night and Vicki for Batman.

#5 Batman Crashes the Party

Now this one I’ll let slide, because I’m sure that there is a crashing the party scene in EVERYONE of the movies. Some scene where he comes crashing through the roof with his cape spread out. As a matter of fact, I remember in B&R, there was a scene when they met Ice for the first time at the museum. But as for the pictured above, the first is when Batman comes in after Joker raided the art museum. The 2nd is from Begins, towards the end when he jumped down the middle of the staircase. The last one is in Dark Knight where he lands on top of the van and almost crushes it.

#6 The joker shows his face without makeup (or with makeup, however you want to see it)

You’ll see here from Batman, he was wearing a hat to help hide his identity, as for the same in Dark Knight. Also, both in a tie.

#7 Batman drives the girl back to safety

Now in Batman, Vicki wasn’t sick, but she was in danger, in Begins, Rachel was sick and in danger. And both times each scene ends with Batman driving into what seems to be a wall (either the stone from batman or the waterfall from Begins) and scares the girl in the passenger seat. Also, they both get lights shined into their eyes. HA! This is the first time for both girls to see the Batcave.

#8 Batman has to think about what he is doing

I don’t know if the reference is the same, but both times Bruce is or has said something to the fact that he doesn’t think he should be doing the job, but someone has to do it. (Dark Knight and Batman)

#9 Batman grabs the joker close-up to his face

Now I’m sure I have seen that somewhere in a comic, but it seems for both Batman and Dark Knight, he has to pull Joker in close to get his attention.

#10 The Batman stance

Now these are from different parts of the movies, the Batman scene is at the end, and the Dark Night scene is near the end when he is listening for Joker phone calls and such. Both are still him standing up against a night sky though.

#11 The Batman and Joker Standoff

This one was way too easy and almost EXACTLY the same. Both scenes from Dark Knight and Batman have Joker standing in the middle of the street with a gun, shooting at Batman, while Batman charges at him in a vehicle of sorts. Obviously for Batman it was the Batwing and for Dark Knight it was the Batpod. Either way, Batman blows up something behind Joker and then “crashes”. All this as the Joker is tauting him with a line like HIT ME, COME ON HIT ME or COME ON, COME ON YOU GRUESOME S.O.B.

#12 The Joker Kills a guy while talking to the mob.

This one I couldn’t find a screen shot, so I’ll just explain it. It Batman, Joker is basically trying to take over the mob as their new boss, because he had killed his boss, because his boss tried to have him picked off by the police (over a woman). So when he comes back the first time as the Joker, he is telling the mob that he has taken over, and one guy doesn’t believe him, so he electrocutes him to death with a hand buzzer and leaves him smoking.

In Dark Knight, Joker is trying to tell the mob that their money isn’t safe and they need to trust him, but one guy doesn’t believe him, so he stabs a pencil on the table and makes it “disappear” by shoving the guys head right on top of it really quick (assuming that it killed him).

#13 Freak Accident to create the bad guy

Again, no screenshot. Batman, Jack Napier has to fall into the toxic waste to become the Joker.

Dark Knight: Harvey dent survives an explosion to become Two Face.

#14 Joker Falls off a tall building

No screenshot. In Batman, the Joker fell off of a ladder from the helicopter all the way to his death. In Dark Knight, they didn’t let joker die, Batman caught him and tied him so he hung over the ledge.

#15 The Batmobile transforms into something else

In Batman Returns, the Batmobile turns into this torpedo looking thing. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SqwMMj2wvA)

In Dark Knight, the Batmobile broke down and became a Batpod (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPaTv98wUsE)

#16 Gotham City gets gassed!

You will remember that in Batman, the Joker is gassing the city with his toxic fumes to kill everyone, and in Begins, the Scarecrow is gassing the city with his toxic fumes to scare everyone to death!

Final and last one #17

This one was pretty OBVIOUS, but I didn’t make this split screen comparison, but it is pretty convincing; a trailer comparison of the Dark Knight and Batman:

With that off in your mind, let me know what you think… Have we just watched the same movie? Did Christopher Nolan steal the new Batman series all form Tim Burton? Was this just his interpretation??? Or is it Chris Nolan’s homage to the two better originals. We will never know. Leave your thoughts below.

Posted in Apple, Rants

The iPhone tracking problem

Posted on by RustyG

Well it seems, even amongst all the rumors, rumors & rumors of the white “unicorn” iPhone 4 coming on the 27th of April (spotted for Vodafone in the UK and Van Roey in Belgium), Apple can’t seem to get away from headlines about this whole tracking ordeal. It seems the whole world is asking questions as to why this is going on. South Korea is asking questions, the Attornery General from Illinois is asking for a meeting & now Senator Al Franken is holding a hearing on May 10th and has called Apple and Google both to this meeting.

Source: O'Reilly Radar

What has made this even worse, is now there is a couple of guys filing a class action lawsuit against Apple; one is from Florida and the other from New York. What’s even better about this is, a user emailed the great and powerful Steve Jobs, told him that he was getting a droid, and he got SERVED. Basically, Steve told the guy that Apple doesn’t track you, Google (via Android) does track you, and all the blogs are lying and spewing false information. WOW. How can you deny the information that is out there? The two guys from the UK plainly showed it works with their online tool and directions. Now even if Apple doesn’t use the information directly, why would you store it on the phone and on the local harddrive of the PC or Mac? UNENCRYPTED.

I found this file on my PC, I haven’t put it on a map yet, but still rather odd that it is there. It seems a security issue, especially since users that know nothing about the inner workings of an iPhone can be easily SSH’d into with the ‘root’ and ‘alpine’ combination. (Why doesn’t Apple give the basic user the chance to change this, without having to jailbreak. ) Once inside, the file isn’t even encrypted and easily downloadable and transferred to a map. So it seems to be a small whole in the security of the iPhone and it is causing a lot of concern among a lot of people.

The funny thing is, WE ALL CONSENTED to it, wether you knew about it or not. So I have no more pity for those crying about this issue. If you don’t take time read what you are agreeing to, then it is your own fault. The same goes for any legal documents, it is always good to read it before you sign anything! I’ll give you a section from the Apple document that you agreed to, upon purchasing and syncing up your iPhone: (pulled from the Apple SLA .pdf)

(b) Location Data. Apple and its partners and licensees may provide certain services through your iPhone that rely upon location information. To provide and improve these services, where available, Apple and its partners and licensees may transmit, collect, maintain, process and use your location data, including the real-time geographic location of your iPhone, and location search queries. The location data and queries collected by Apple are collected in a form that does not personally identify you and may be used by Apple and its partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. By using any location-based services on your iPhone, you agree and consent to Apple’s and its partners’ and licensees’ transmission, collection, maintenance, processing and use of your location data and queries to provide and improve such products and services. You may withdraw this consent at any time by going to the Location Services setting on your iPhone and either turning off the global Location Services setting or turning off the individual location settings of each location-aware application on your iPhone. Not using these location features will not impact the non location-based functionality of your iPhone. When using third party applications or services on the iPhone that use or provide location data, you are subject to and should review such third party’s terms and privacy policy on use of location data by such third party applications or services.

See? You agreed to that when you were syncing up the iPhone for the first time. You may not have realized it, as most people don’t. You just click and click and click, until you get to the end so you can setup your phone. The problem that I have with all of this, it seems that we are to believe (again for regular users) that this can be disabled by turning off the location servies, inside the settings of your phone. There are tests that show that iPhone continues to record location data, even after the switch is turned off. So you are being lied to at this point? “Oh yeah, we track you, we’re sorry. You can turn that off in your settings. Not really.”

As for me, I don’t really care, and it doesn’t bother me, but there are some people out there that still don’t have a cell phone, don’t direct deposit, mail things with a stamp, write letters, have landline phones and still pay for cable or satellite service. It may matter to them, and it may be their first smartphone and they don’t like the idea that they are being tracked, even if it isn’t being uploaded anywhere. If you do care and don’t really know what do about it, I suggest you jailbreak your iPhone and download the app ‘untrackered‘.

Just one more thing, it seems that Microsoft is trying to get a piece of this frenzy pie. Since they are the lowest percentage of smartphone users, it seems they are just reaching for attention at this point. They basically say they do the same thing, but just don’t store it locally for someone to find. Shut up microsoft, no one cares.

Posted in Apple, Rants

iOS 4.3.1 Data issues and strange uploads – Phoning Home?

Posted on by RustyG

Ok, so I have a really weird data leak and I need help with it, as it seems I am not getting any help from AT&T or Apple. AT&T can’t tell me where my data is going, and Apple hasn’t heard of this issue as of yet, which I guess is fine, since it is only a 10 day old issue. I’ll see if anyone else has this and can help, or maybe an Apple Rep can help.

Lost yet? I’ll give you the background. I have had an iPhone 4 (GSM) on iOS 4.1 for the longest time because of the jailbreaks not being untethered until recently. I don’t upgrade my phones software unless the jailbreak is untethered and confirmed for Windows (either redsn0w or greenp0ison). I saw this tweet from the iPhone Dev Team saying that iOS 4.3.1 was jailbroken untethered, and jumped in! I skipped iOS 4.2, 4.2.1 & 4.3 because of jailbreaks that were tethered, and were lost once you rebooted the phone. Well let’s just say EVERYTHING was fine and dandy on 4.1.. but then I upgraded to 4.3.1.

For the Find my iPhone that was added in 4.2, and the personal hotspot that was added in 4.3.

So I updated and started having issues. With my themes, the background for the Lock Screen and Home Screen had gone missing in my themes. When I tried to apply a different theme, I kept getting a black background with a square and blue question mark. So it looked like from 4.1 to 4.3.1, Apple has changed the location of the home screen and lock screen wallpaper locations. No problem, I just moved the wallpaper to the locations that the themes were looking for them, instead of trying to find where Apple had moved the new ones, or possibly renamed them, to make them harder to fine. Stupid Apple.

Ok, so I kind of did a work around to make my theme work, but I used to be able to change my background in the settings on the phone, now I will have to use iFile or SSH into the phone from my laptop to change my wallpaper. Stupid Apple.

Then I came across this little gem today… My iPhone is apparently sending CRAP loads of data either late late at night or early in the morning, at the cost of 300+MB a pop! It’s a good thing I have the “Unlimited” 5GB of data. So let’s start a timeline here so you get an idea where I am going with this.

April 4th 2011 – roughly around 10:30PM I backup 4.1, before I update to 4.3.1 as you see below.

Just for reference I started my new career as a Tier 1 Tech Support on Tuesday 4/5/11 the next morning at 8am.

So the first full week goes by of me being at my job, and we finally got desks, workstations and laptops on Friday 4/8/11.

Then yesterday, Wednesday the 13th, for the first time in a long time, I booted up Pandora (over 3G) just after getting to work at 8am. I let it run pretty much all day, except for my 1 hour lunch break and left to go home at 5pm. So we can say roughly 8 hours out of the day, I ran Pandora. Then today (4/14) I did the same, booted up Pandora and for say maybe 7 hours of the day, because I paused it a lot more because of meetings and conversations I was having in the office. So we have a total of 15 hours of Pandora being used in a two day period. That’s it.(They have a 40 hour cutoff for free accounts)

So I went to check my usage on my account since I have a 5GB cap. Wow was I surprised! I went to investigate and found a few little instances where my Phone was spitting out some serious amounts of data, and at times I wasn’t even awake!! The worst part, is that it was doing it over 3G and not my wireless connection. So let’s see those “issues”:

See that? What happened here? I have a lot of data being used across my phone. And I don’t know how either. So I looked into it, and it seems that I have had over 2.5GB used in the past 10 days, which is what the at&t account page lets me see. So let me put this in a table like view, so it’s all grouped together.

364,139KB (355.6MB) 04/05/11 11:47pm (im in bed asleep by 10 or 10:30pm)
322,353KB (314.8MB) 04/06/11 11:12pm (asleep)
138,392KB (135.15MB) 04/10/11 07:46pm (I was up, but watching netflix on my xbox)
359,160KB (350.74MB) 04/10/11 11:13pm (asleep, but later that night)
448,801KB (438.28MB) 04/11/11 10:56pm (asleep, the next day)
675,764KB (659.93MB) 04/13/11 06:49am (i don’t wake up till 7am)

The thing that gets me, is this is all since I update to 4.3.1 on the 4th. Now I think someone will say that it is because I have a jailbroken phone, but you can’t say that, because I have had a jailbroken phone since iPhone 2G. I always jailbreak them. I also noticed that I was having battery issues as well, and my battery was getting worse than before. See below:

So then I thought, let’s go back to the previous months to see what my data use was. AT&T has a data calculator to show you what you have used historically so you can make decisions on changing packages. So let’s see what that looks like.

Wow. Nowhere close. Except for Christmas, because I was out of town and using tethering on my iPhone for my laptop when I couldn’t get a good landline cable or DSL connection. Nothing over .5GB at all. That seems to be my normal usage (skipping December) for the last 6 months, well 5. So you see what I mean? I think I need to go back to 4.1. The only problem is, I will lose Photoshop Express because they quit supporting 4.1 and I can’t have the latest version of the app if I go back. Boo..

I need help. Any others with this problem? Can you help? Leave comments below or check out the two threads I have joined on the Apple forums.

4.3.1 bug by Judyabro

or the one I started (with the exact same question)

Magical Overnight Data Uploads or just plainly data loss

I’ll link back to this page as well.

Posted in Rants, Technology

It’s NOT Capped, its just not really 4G

Posted on by RustyG

With AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon all SCREAMING 4G, it seems more and more people are crying SHENANIGANS! Some people are getting really tired of hearing the 4G marketing B.S. and now that the ITU (governing body that sets the standards) has backtracked on what the standards are, allowing for all these LIES to be spread to the consumer. Especially since the HTC Inspire 4G, Motorola Atrix 4G & the Samsung Infuse 4G are all on the AT&T network, or coming soon. The problem seems to be that there are people giving factual speed tests that show that this is all crap! They are grouping together and starting to send their devices back as well. Some people were originally complaining that the devices were being capped due to the fact that they were on a new technology, when in reality, AT&T doesn’t really even have it turned on! Shown ever so wonderfully by the graphic above and the link to this page. The other issue is, that the older phones, like the iPhone 4, can sometimes show to have better speed than the new phones on the market. I am just glad that AT&T has adopted the 4G surcharge that Sprint does for their EVO customers for using 4G.

I guess they can’t really a this point, since they admit, that their 4G isn’t really 4G an it is just HSUPA or HSPDA+ at this point. AT&T did answer to Wired with this quote:

“We will be turning HSUPA upload speeds on via a software update to the Motorola ATRIX 4G and HTC Inspire 4G planned for April,” a spokesman said. He also added that “the Samsung Infuse 4G will launch with HSUPA.”

So you see that? We don’t really have it ready yet. WOW. So why are you selling me a 4G phone? This is more fuel to the fire that when you go to buy that new shiny cell phone, don’t let the 4G be a factor in your decision, find something you like and stick with it. Don’t worry about 4G until like 2012 or 2013. Maybe this acquisition of T-Mobile will help, who knows?

via [Digg] via [Wired]

honorable mention [AndroidandMe]