Wireless Solutions for the Bay Area
Products - Solutions

Time Warner Cable Drops Tiered Pricing Push

Ron Wilhelm

Time Warner Cable has been under harsh criticism from consumers and politicians to stop thier proposed tiered internet pricing trials. The trials would have seen users currently paying about $40 for unlimited bandwidth forced to pay $150 per month for the same service. Much of the consumer protest surrounding the metered trials was in the Rochester, N.Y. area reports the AP. In that area, U.S. Rep. Eric Massa had said he was preparing legislation that would ban metered billing of internet access.

 

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Continue reading Time Warner Cable Drops Tiered Pricing Push →

Products - Solutions

Conficker turns on its scareware

Ron Wilhelm

The Conficker botnet has stirred to life, using its peer-to-peer communication system to update itself and download scareware (fake anti-virus programs) to millions of infected Windows PC’s.Which means that millions of Conficker-infected machines will start getting pop-ups pushing a fake $49.95 security scanner.

Virus Alerts

Conficker Virus Test

Ron Wilhelm

Here is a simple method to determine if your PC is infected with the Conficker Virus.  The conficker virus will prevent a PC from accessing the security websites. Joe Stewart is the director of malware research at SecureWorks, and he has created a neat Web page that instantly and visually tells you if you’re likely to be infected by the Conficker worm.
http://www.joestewart.org/cfeyechart.html
Simple. Very nice.

Wireless News

Next iPod Touch may be extremely wireless:

Ron Wilhelm

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-12519_7-10213039-49.html
As programmers continue to pick apart the code underlying Apple’s iPhone 3.0 OS, more details are surfacing that point to possible new hardware features for both the iPhone and iPod Touch. One of the first details
unearthed from the code is the addition of stereo Bluetooth audio streaming–a feature that current (second-generation) iPhone and iPod Touch owners will be able to take advantage of, once the new OS
is available this summer. Continue reading Next iPod Touch may be extremely wireless: →

Products - Solutions

Heavy Users Tax Hotel Systems

SF WiFi

The tweens taking up the seventh floor are instant-messaging while listening to Internet radio and downloading a pirated version of “Twilight” to watch later. The 200-person meeting in the ballroom has a full interactive multimedia presentation going for the next hour. And you do not want to know what the businessman in room 1208 is streaming on BitTorrent, but it is probably not a productivity booster.

These are just a few of the guests eating bandwidth at hotels today, and it is enough to break the average network backbone, or at least create bottlenecks. And no one—not those multitasking kids, not the conference attendees and certainly not the businessman on the top floor—is happy when that happens. Continue reading Heavy Users Tax Hotel Systems →

Virus Alerts

Conficker Confused:

SF WiFi

he Conficker worm mostly spreads across networks. If it finds a vulnerable computer, it turns off the automatic backup service, deletes previous restore points, disables many security services, blocks access to a number of security web sites and opens infected machines to receive additional programs from the malware’s creator. The worm then tries to spread itself to other computers on the same network.

How does the worm infect a computer?The Downadup worm tries to take advantage of a problem with Windows (a vulnerability) called MS08-067 to quietly install itself. Users who automatically receive updates from Microsoft are already protected from this. The worm also tries to spread by copying itself into shared folders on networks and by infecting USB devices such as memory sticks. Continue reading Conficker Confused: →