if you don’t care about the story and just came here looking for the short answer: you can bypass the social security number by using the following number instead: 141-11-1111. this is the number at&t uses internally for cases where they want to permit customers to bypass the ssn field. your phone will be registered but you have two options: either you can pay a security deposit of $90 to $1000 ( since they can’t run a credit check without a ssn) or you can register for a pre-paid plan.

for those interested in the story, a friend of mine bought an iphone last week but when he went to activate it (he didn’t want to jailbreak/sim-free it), he ran into a problem: the registration process requires a social security number but because he is an international student, he doesn’t have one. i googled around for a while and all i could find was either alarmist articles on why you shouldn’t send your social security number over to at&t (remember at&t is the company that gave unchecked, back-door access to all your information to the nsa) or articles on why you shouldn’t buy an iphone at all if you don’t have a ssn.

what will apple they do with such sensitive information? will they protect it? do they really need to collect it? these are questions that privacy advocates are demanding answers for–and rightfully so. gone are the days where consumers should just provide such sensitive information because someone asks for it and cannot imagine why apple would need this information–it just doesn’t seem necessary.

anyway, i got on the phone with a customer support agent to resolve my problem. after putting me on hold for 15 minutes, she told me that i could enter the number 141-11-1111 (a number they internally use that let’s you bypass the ssn) in the social security number field and i would be ready to go. the only catch is that if you don’t enter your ssn, you either have to pay a security deposit between $90 and $1,000 or you can sign up for a pre-paid plan.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, at&t, social security number, ssn

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i woke up this morning to the following email from american express:

click image for larger version.

american express has issued a partial refund of $106.25 to me for my iphone purchase. i called the purchase protection plan service department number to ask them about how this amount was reached and this is what i was told:

we are examining these requests out of policy and on a case-by-case basis. in your case an amount of $100 was approved and since we are also crediting the sales tax, the additional $6.25 is the tax refund on that $100 amount based on the sales tax for illinois.

when i asked to speak to an examiner about why i was refunded only $100 on a $200+ claim, i was told the following:

i’m sorry the examiner is not available right now but i have talked to my supervisor and he said that we have issued a $100 credit because an additional $100 can be claimed from apple.

apply for refund from apple.

Technorati Tags: american express, apple, iphone, refund, credit

let me ask you a question: what’s the difference between prince and trent reznor? the answer is quite simple and gives gives us a look at two distinct camps in the entertainment industry.

the artist formerly known

in an effort to ‘reclaim his art on the internet’, prince is planning to sue youtube, ebay and the pirate bay. the move comes as somewhat of a surprise since acts like this are usually reserved for for the record industry (i.e. the big labels) with whom prince has had a rocky relationship to say the least. furthermore, it is an interesting about-face. before he decided to reclaim his place on the internet throne, prince was last seen giving away copies of his album ‘planet earth’, for free with a british sunday paper.

also ran: metallica, elton john, and just about every other entertainer out there.

the people’s artist

representing the other camp, we have trent reznor of nine inch nails. known for publicly lashing out against the record industry, the nine inch nails front-man has posted tracks from ‘year zero’ on the pirate bay and has made other material available for download, directly from the band’s site. furthermore, reznor was recently quoted in china as making the following statement,

as for the special situation in china, it does not seem to be easy to obtain western music via legal channels, so i have the following suggestion for our fans: if you can find and buy our legal cds, i express my thanks for your support. if you cannot find it, i think that downloading from the Internet is a more acceptable option than buying pirated cds. our music is easy to find on the internet, and you might not need to spend much effort to find most of our songs. if you like our songs after you’ve heard them, please feel free to share it with your friends. as i have put all my effort and heart into my music, i sincerely hope that more and more people can share the enjoyment with us.

also ran: trey parker and matt stone, many indie bands

so what does this say about the entertainment industry?

the positions that these two artists have taken (they aren’t the only ones but they are the most vocal/popular) shed light on the two major problems with the entertainment industry that are the main cause of the content piracy problem.

1. content is not ubiquitously available

if content is not available everywhere and accessible anytime, people who are locked out will have to turn to the black market to get that content. furthermore, if content is not made available everywhere at the same time, there will be people who do not wish to wait another 6 months to get your content while others are already enjoying it, and these people will steal it instead.

2. content is not fairly priced

this is perhaps the touchiest point in the whole debate. consumers argue that the record labels are fleecing them and trent reznor has given legitimacy to the claim. consumers not only argue that content is generally overpriced but that the additional revenue isn’t going into the pockets of the content producer. if prices were lowered and the artists were given a more reasonable share of the revenue (as defined by the consumers) perhaps we would all be happier. of course this is also the argument that can most easily be challenged.

so what are prince’s odds?

just like reznor’s position has gave him a huge amount of free publicity and has made him a godlike figure in the eyes of the consumers, prince’s decision is going to have the exact opposite effect at a time that he could really use some good press. the lawsuits won’t do prince any good. youtube is going to comply and take down all infringing content (as is their policy), only substantially decreasing the artist’s online visibility, and not only is the pirate bay not going to comply but they’re going to throw the lawsuit and the take down notices back in the face of the artist formerly known.

Technorati Tags: prince, nin, nine inch nails, trent reznor, music, entertainment, riaa, youtube, the pirate bay, ebay, metallica, elton john, trey parker, matt stone

did you hear that sound a couple days ago? well that was a few hundred thousand iphone early-adopters groaning in frustration and anger in response to steve jobs’ decision to reduce the price of the phone by $200. not only were the customers angry, but so were the investors, sending the stock price down around 10% since the announcement two days ago. while the investors and the analysts will have to wait to see if the move pays off, there are several ways for customers to get their money back.

1. apple’s price guarantee

should apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 calendar days of shipment, you may contact apple sales support at 1-800-676-2775 to request a refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the current selling price. to receive the refund or credit you must contact apple within 14 business days of shipment.

2. steve jobs’ apology

after telling usatoday that the price drop was just how technology works and saying tough luck to the early-adopters, jobs’ did an about-face in an open letter to iphone customers.

therefore, we have decided to offer every iphone customer who purchased an iphone from either apple or at&t, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an apple retail store or the apple online store.

3. most credit card companies

The following is quoted from the additional citicard disclosures but most credit cards have a similar offering.

if you buy an item with your mastercard or visa card, and if within 60 days after your purchase you see a printed advertisement for the same item (same model number and same model year) by the same manufacturer for lower price, we will refund you the price difference, up to $250 per item (up to a maximum of $1,000 per cardmember per year) provided the printed advertisement was published on the same day as or within 60 days after your purchase. no registration is necessary.

4. american express

american express also has an offering similar to the one mentioned above, but in spite of the 60-day limit on the offering and regardless of whether you are enrolled in it, american express is offering to adjust the price difference to all members. I called american express return protection at 1 (800) 297-8019 yesterday and was told that even though this was out of my coverage, in this case american express was making exceptions for all members.

after confirming my account and billing address, the lady on the phone simply asked for transaction date, location, price (with sales tax because you also get a refund on that), and the adjustment requested, and told me that the change would be reflected on my account within 24-48 hours.

note: i bought my iphone on launch-day and it was out of the 60-day window but i amex gave me the refund anyway. 

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, american express

when the news first broke that the iphone had been unlocked, everyone’s first reaction was that at&t is screwed. while it’s definitely true that at&t is screwed (since the iphone was clearly the best thing they had going for them), here’s a reason why this unlocking screws over apple just the same.

according to gene munster, a lead analyst with piper jaffray,

While we do not know the exact details of the agreement, we conservatively estimate that AT&T gives Apple $3 per month (over the life of the 24 month contract) for every iPhone customer already with AT&T and $11 per month for every new subscriber.

furthermore, according to a note from american technology research, another financial firm,

About one quarter of consumers adopting Apple’s heavily-hyped iPhone handset are ’switchers’ to AT&T from other carriers

so if apple is to recieve $3 per month for every current at&t customer purchasing an iphone, and $11 per month for every new at&t subscriber, if the iphone is locked, this is money apple could’ve gotten but won’t. using these statistics, and the projection of 10 million iphones expected to be sold by the end of 2008, here’s the amount of money apple stands to lose from the iphone’s unlocking (due to people abandoning or not signing up with at&t):

the calculations are done as follows:

1. percentage of unlocked users multiplied by 10 million (total users projected by end of 2008) = total unlocked users.
   
2. 25% of total unlocked users multiplied by $11 plus 75% of unlocked users multiplied by $3 = total shared revenue lost per month.
3. total shared revenue lost per month multiplied by 24 (total duration of iphone contract) = total shared revenue lost.

now let’s take a look at the amount of shared revenue apple could lose:

1. if 10% unlock: $120,000,000 lost
2. if 25% unlock: $300,000,000 lost
3. if 50% unlock: $600,000,000 lost
4. if 100% unlock: $1,200,000,000 lost

it is clearly not logical to expect many people already in a contract to jump ship (because of the fine they would have to pay), but if 100% all potentially new at&t subscribers (which means 25% of all iphone buyers) go the unlock route instead, in that case, apple stands to lose $660,000,000 in shared revenue from at&t.

it seems reasonable to expect that a substantial amount of new iphone buyers would have heard about the unlock and will opt to not activate with at&t. even if 50% of only the new users go the unlock route, apple loses $330,000,000.

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, att, unlock

with all the hoopla over the freakonomics blog switching from full feeds to partial feeds because they have a new home at the nytimes, dubner has written a long post that does exactly what it claims, it pleases no one. long story short,

For the readers who have no idea what a feed is and don’t care, this post is probably of zero value. Feel free to skip it.

The people who do read the blog via feed, meanwhile, and prefer the old full feed to the current partial feed, won’t be receiving the outcome they wanted.

so with that in mind and without further delay (and contrary to what the freakonomics people will tell you), i present to you the freakonomics blog’s full feed (just click to subscribe).

Technorati Tags: freakonomics, blog, rss, feed, nytimes

not even a day has gone by since i published some calculations about how much paper was being wasted courtesy of unnecessarily lengthy, itemized bills at&t was sending its customers using iphones. this is an email i received in response to that post:

Hey, I just saw your post about AT&T’s paper bills being enormous today through a link on Digg.

I actually work for an AT&T call center, and while I’m not defending AT&T, I thought the following should be known:

1. AT&T is aware they are killing a lot of trees and is just starting to prevent it by going to “summary billing”–meaning no more call/data details for every phone on the account, just basic charges. This happens by default for every new customer as of August 10th.

2. We are told to encourage customers to use ATT.com to view their detailed bill online rather than looking at all the specifics on their physical bill. We’re also told to encourage paperless billing altogether; an option offered to customers when they sign up their phone number online. All of this is offered free on their website and is available to them 24 hours a day. There are a few exceptions where they wouldn’t be able to view their latest bill for a while, but I am still new there, so I don’t know all the specific factors that will cause this.

3. Also, any customer that changes their rate plan (which, trust me, is about half the calls I get every day) as of August 10th will automatically be put on the summary billing. They have to actually pay an extra $1.99 per month per line to view their call details now. This is where we are trying to push for the customer to view their bill online in hopes that they eventually just sign up for paperless billing. While this method of charging can be taken as two ways, A) ATT just wants to make an extra buck, or B) ATT really does care about trees and is just trying to sway customers away from viewing their bill on paper, I like to think that they are doing the latter. Though, it’s probably the former. ATT doesn’t have the greatest scruples in the world.

[last part of the email has been omitted]

mission accomplished.

while the exact number is yet to be determined, current consensus puts the number of iphones sold at 270,000 for the first day and a half of sales, and expectations at around 10 million devices to be sold by the end of 2008. if during this time at&t does not get its act together and stop sending out bills that are averaging 50 pages in length, they’re going to have a lot more than just unsatisfied customers after them.

before we go on, let’s look at some quick paper facts (pdf):

A cord of wood is approximately 8 feet wide, 4 feet deep, and 4 feet high. A cord of air-dried, dense hardwood (oak, hickory, etc.) weighs roughly 2 tons, about 15-20 percent of which is water. It has been estimated that one cord of this wood will yield one of these approximate quantities of products:

• 1,000-2,000 pounds of paper (depending on the process)
• 942 100-page, hard-cover books
• 61,370 No. 10 business envelopes
• 4,384,000 commemorative-sized postage stamps
• 460,000 personal checks
• 1,200 copies of National Geographic
• 2,700 copies of an average daily newspaper

that said, with 10 million iphones expected to be sold by the end of 2008, that means 10 million at&t customers that can expect to get 50-page bills, 12 times a year, totaling 6 billion sheets of paper wasted (at around 80,500 sheets of paper per tree, this would mean around 74,535 trees) because of at&t’s stupidity. of course sales aren’t going to stop there so it’s up to us to stop at&t from continuing this madness.

i recently wrote a post pretty much flaming jeff pulver for his stance on the facebook versus linkedin debate. this wasn’t the best way to get my points across and i shouldn’t have made it personal. it was more out of my frustration with the tech community in general and their stance on the debate and i think pulver’s post was just the tipping point for me.

apologies to gordon finlayson and josh bernoff too. in any case, we’re all human, and i can be grumpy too, y’know.

the internet can be a dangerous place for kids using publicly accesible sites without any parental monitoring. kids can be exposed to strangers, sexual offenders, etc. for example, according to a report from 2 weeks ago, MySpace found and deleted the profiles of 29,000 sex offenders on the site, a number that was 4 times the previous total.

however, now, the idiots at the national school boards association have released a report saying that fears prompted by statistics such as those listed above are overblown. the more accurate statistics according to them are as follows (these statistics are as reported by the nsba’s pool of interviewees):

1. 20% of kids have seen inappropriate pictures on social networking sites in the last 3 months.
2. 18% of kids have seen inappropriate language on social networking sites.
3. 7% of the kids were asked for information about their personal identity on a social network.
4. 7% of the kids experienced cyber-bullying.
5. 4% of the kids have had conversations on social networking sites that made them uncomfortable.
6. 3% of the kids were repeatedly asked by unwelcome strangers to communicate with them online.
7. 2% of the kids were asked by strangers met online to meet them in person.
8. 0.08% of the kids met someone in person from an online encounter without their parents’ permission.

In spite of these figures the nsba (national stupidity bureau of america?) believes that kids should be encouraged to use these sites and learn from their own mistakes.

The report concludes with a handful of recommendations, the most controversial of which is likely to be a suggestion that schools reexamine social networking policies. “Safety policies remain important, as does teaching students about online safety and responsible online expression,” the study’s authors note. “But students may learn these lessons better while they’re actually using social networking tools.”

if you’re having a hard time believing this slant from the nsba, it shouldn’t be too surprising considering that the study was in fact sponsored by news corp., parent of myspace (one of the largest sources of offences like those mentioned above). and as far as  the 0.08% figure is concerned, if you just look at myspace and their 180 million users (of which approximately 10% are in the 12-17 year-old range), that puts 14,400 kids in danger! i wouldn’t want that on my conscience.

note to nsba: only 16% of all rapes are ever reported. are those fears overblown too?

check out the pdf study and more from the great folks at ars technica.