- Friday, 10 July 2009
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In the battle between Intel's Foster and AMD's Guinness, only alcohol wins
Wired journalist gets phone bill, shocka
AN IT HACK, who probably should have known better - Wired editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson - ran up a $2,100 bill using his Iphone whilst 'roaming' in China.
The journo confessed to the FT that he'd accidentally left the Iphone set to picking up his emails every 10 minutes – much as you might do with a Crackberry.
Consequently Anderson ran up an enormous GPRS bill until AT&T sent him a text message to say he really ought to get in touch to "prevent a costly bill."
Anderson appeared to be majorly cheesed off because he hadn't actually made
that many phone calls whilst visiting China.
AT&T told the FT that it offers tariffs that would have reduced
Anderson's bill to around $300. The company also revealed that customers have to
deliberately request that their Iphone is activated for international roaming.
So Anderson doesn't have much of an excuse then. µ
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Our phone company charged me international fare for local (plus the service fee) and the double that to call international!
who cares.
I wonder if people are aware that, gee, pop3 logins are done in the clear with plain-text logins and passwords travelling through the wires. 

Now this might be a non-issue if you're on a wired network using a wired ISP (say, DSL). But when you're on a mobile network things suddenly are worse...

Plus, when you're roaming, you're on another country's / operator's data network.
Fear the Great Chinese Password Sniffer, yet?
I'm sorry, Mr. Anderson. 

Unfortunately, the "iPhone Loser of the Month" contest has closed for this month. 
Although you missed the deadline, we do truly appreciate your interest in showing the world what a loser you are. 

Based on your submission, we suggest a longer trip and setting your iPhone to check your email every 3 seconds. You might even get bonus points of your use a known criminal underworld proxy server. In any case, you will need to deliver a much higher phone level to cut through the general level of idiocy we are seeing.

If you really really want to be the iPhone Loser of the Month, you have to get a leg up on the other losers. Just like you, they are working hard to figure out how to use their iPhone like an idiot. Remember, although the "i" is already in the phone, you need to focus on being the "i" outside the phone. That is because there are two "i"s in "idiot".

Good luck, next time.

Regards,

Official Loser of the Month Contest
iPhone Contests Unlimited
Box 123456
Orem, UT 40808