Paul's Tech Talk

First Look: The ZTE Awe from Virgin Mobile!

PaulNovember 5, 20131 Reply

I recently Switched!

With the Kyocera Rise that kept on fall apart, I decided I needed to invest in a better phone. This seemed perfect for me. 5 MP camera and tethering capabilities if you add 15$ more. I got this from Walmart but wanted to talk about the ZTE AWE just a few minutes and let people know I’ll be talking about this in more details. I am quite impressed with screen size and other things. The weight of the phone is less bulky and doesn’t weigh as much.

I just got tired of having to tighten those darn screws into the phone on the Kyocera Rise even though this was a cheap phone to begin with, I didn’t want to have to have to worry about it. So I opted for a little bit more money to get the Virgin Mobile US ZTE Awe (Virgin Mobile is one of the sponsors to my website, because I like their service and want others to know about them). In the coming weeks I will be talking about it even more but wanted to show you what I gotten the last few days and give you something to look at and possibly get yourself.

Display : Type: LCD (Color TFT/TFD)

Resolution: 480 x 800 pixels, 4” diagonal

Processor: 1.2 GHz Qualcomm MSM8630

Micro SD Card Size : 32 Gb capacity

Camera: 5 Mega Pixel with LED Flash

Modes: panorama, burst mode, interval mode, face detection, blink detection, smile detection, red-eye reduction

Front Facing: 1 Mega Pixel resolution

Video Capture : 720 HD

The End to all Games : Ender’s Game Review!

PaulNovember 4, 2013

Ender’s Game

I was all set to go see the movie Ender’s Game! I even talked about it in May that I wanted to go see this movie but I will say I wasn’t expecting this to blow me away! I will say this before I get to far into this and spoil it for anyone. If you haven’t seen the movie and you hate spoilers, please move on and do not read anymore. I doubt I will be able to not spoil it the plot. If you haven’t read the book, Ender’s Game and you have an Android, then you should read the book either before or after the movie. It will help explain some of the things that was not touched on in the movie. Some of the common questions that I had were quite obvious:

Did Petra Arkanian (Hailee Steinfeld) fall in love with Ender Wiggins(Asa Butterfield)?

The Backstory about Valentine (Abigail Breslin) and Peter (Jimmy ‘Jax’ Pinchak)?

As you can see this is answered in the books more or less, but I will not spoil some of these questions by answering them to my readers.

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.” —Orson Scott Card

As we start off the movie, that is the quote you see on the screen. This quote is monumental to the book and movie, because you will see the conclusion of that quote from beginning to the end and understand just how hard it was for Ender to do what he did and see his agony when he discovers a very fatal secret that was kept from him and his team until the very end. That I will not spoil because it is a key story plot that must be read or watched to fully understand the outcome of the full book or movie.

Character Development

I couldn’t blog about this without at least touching on the characters a little and talking about them. In the movie the development of Ender Wiggins and how he got where he got to was constantly changing and increasing in difficulty due to the need for him to be a leader. This was about him and this battle with the bugs as some would say but it was also something that in the movie was never forced upon you and it kept my attention. The details they used on the big screen were in essence almost exactly the same in the book. I doubt I was the only one but I saw each chapter on the screen as it was playing and it was like a WOW moment when I realized that. They created the movie almost like the book, chapter by chapter and I am impressed.

We had some big name actors Harrison Ford from Star Wars, Abigal Breslin from various films like “Definately, Maybe” and “Nim’s Island” and ofcourse Ben Kingsley who played in Iron Man 3. Each one of them brought a unique presence to the movie and helped draw you into the story line. I must say I was impressed with their abilities and how they made you believe they were who they said they were.

Graphics of Movie!

I must say they didn’t over do any of the CGI and I am quite curious how they actually did the Zero Gravity, and all that. I cant’ wait to see the behind story of all that because it fascinates me and makes me wonder if it was some CGI and some actual weightlessness that they did to makes you believe they were actually in Zero Gravity and not on earth. I won’t go any farther than that to try to not spoil it for anyone but it was very well done with the Graphics and the battle scenes were actually believable.

Conclusion

I have talked about this as thoroughly as I could without giving any major plots away and it is rated PG-13 with minor violence and VERY little language. So it is up to you who you will allow to go see this movie but I have to say if you read the book you won’t be surprised at anything that you see in the movie. I do think this movie is a MUST “Go See” and the idea of boycotting this movie because of the Anti-Gay ideas of the Author is simply ridiculous because every writer who ever wrote anything has some view or idea that you may not like and it is hypocritical to think you can change who he was just by boycotting a good movie.

How to move your number to another cellular service!

PaulOctober 30, 2013

Portabilitly is required!

When the FCC made the rule LNP (Local Number Portability), it gave consumers the right to keep your number as long as you are staying in the same area. So if you have decided to move to another cellular phone service, then you are in luck.

I was in Walmart, and I heard one person tell the Walmart service employee that they needed to get another phone because they wanted to keep their number. I interjected because I was curious as to why they wanted to keep with their current service if they did not have the phones they wanted. I also suggested they could easily go to Virgin Mobile US and still keep their number. They were quite surprised because the service they were using never told them they could keep their number.

Although this is a common ploy by any cellular phone company, because they want you to spend money on them and not pay another service that could be better or even worse.

The Steps to move your number!

It isn’t hard to do but I guess some people just don’t understand how to do it!

Call the new service and find out what you need to have to move your number to their service!
Until you have decided to move your number please DO NOT cancel your current service!
If yout terminate your service from a contractual wireless phone company, then you may need to pay for the early termination fee. If you want to go with No contract phone companies here are a few that might work!
- Straight Talk Bring your own Phone Plan
- Virgin Mobile US
- T-Mobile
- MetroPCS

As you can see there are a several few Cellular Companies that you can use to pay as you go and not have to worry about any contracts! It can take up to one day to move the number to the new service but don’t worry, if it is important you may want to tell people to call someone who can get a hold of you in case of an emergency but I don’t see that happening!

Unlocked Cell Phones

Having an unlocked cell phone will make the process much easier and thus you may not need to buy a new cell phone. You will however have to find out from the new service provider if you will need to buy a new phone from the new carrier. I always tell people you should buy an unlocked cell phone and that will make it easier to move from one provider to another if you so choose to!

If you do these things you should not have any problems. If you do have problems you can always file a complaint with the FCC online. It will help if you provide all the important information to give to help you solve your problem.

How Cryptolocker (Ransomware) gets installed and how to remove it!

PaulOctober 25, 2013

Cryptolocker Virus!

I have been watching what has been going on in the past few days and thought it was high time I tell you about this nasty little worm or virus! It has been many months since I have talked about this and I wanted to help you understand how you might of been infected. If you have been infected and want to remove it, you can easily remove it by using Malwarebytes Pro, Which is a sponsor of my blog. The Malwarebytes Blog has some interesting stuff about what this bug really does to your files and what it encrypts!

Drive by download

Some would say it is coming from emails but I suspect it will get much worse before it gets better. If they are making money they will probably start advertising that you have a virus and when you click on the image you will be taken over to actually have the virus or worm as some would call it. It all started when scammers started infecting systems and doing the defederpageblock and others like that. They found they could actually make money by scaring people into paying. I even tried to help people by offering some great Antivirus And Antimalware tools to help fight off this types of infections.

So how are some ways to get infected? The basic ways are simple opening email links if you don’t know the sender. This is the most common approach by any scammer or spammer because you can’t really see where that link is going or even if they are trying to use a script.

Social Media is the next biggest way that you might get infected by clicking links in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and sites like that. You have to be careful but most of the time you can expand the URL by using a service like LongURL. I sometimes use this to find out where a shortened bitly link or twitter link is going to take me.

Googling or Searching is the next way an attacker would install this type of software on your system. They would just use scripts, known vulnerabilities, to force install or silent install this type of software in your system and if you were using something like NoScript you would be much safer than if you didn’t!

Installing untrusted software can lead to you getting infected by this virus and others if you think you have to have a piece of software for something then please do not use your Windows Admin account to install this on. You should try to see what others are saying about a particular software or application. It isn’t always going to be fool proof but it will at least slow it down.

Now these are a few ways you could get infected if you were trying to get infected with this nasty virus. Which case you would be paying 300 US dollars or 2 bitcoins which is how they want to keep getting paid. So if you don’t want to find your pictures, and important data encrypted, please put them on a recordable dvd and put them up! This would be one step to help fight this little problem.

I havent’ heard if it has infected any Apple, Android, or Linux Operating systems it looks to be primarily Windows Systems. I can assure you it will happen to these other OS in the coming months so don’t think you aren’t immune to this and other malwares or viruses. With Android having exploits in the wild you can bet they will targeted soon to encrypted your contact list and your pictures. This would be my next bet!