Author: Charles Miller (Charles Miller)

Last month the information technology world lost one of its more well-known names. John McAfee was a British-American computer programmer, businessman, and, in the 1980s, was the creator of the first commercial antivirus software.

From time to time people ask me what is the meaning of the flashing lights on their modems. The meaning of a modem’s LEDs varies from one model to another, but for one of my clients the problem was that the flashing lights on the modem in her bedroom were keeping her awake at night....

When confronted with the fact that her iPhone had a software bug, and there was nothing to do but wait to see if there would eventually be an update to fix it

I was delighted to find a no-name Chinese brand phone for 1,100 pesos that provided all the features and capabilities of a name-brand phone costing 8,000. That no-name phone was still working well three years later when I decided to replace it only because the software Operating System was out of date and could not be updated.

When life gives us lemons, we are supposed to make lemonade. So when a pickpocket stole my cellphone while riding on the Mexico City Metro three years ago, I said to myself how lucky I was to be visiting a big city where there are dozens of cellphone stores.

scare tactics which Apple Computers has been recently using. Their warning saying that your Wi-Fi “is not considered secure” means only that you are not using the latest, greatest hardware.

“The Wayback Machine” now has more than half a trillion web pages saved over the last two decades

On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Twitter, typed the first-ever tweet, “just setting up my twttr.” On March 22, 2021, Dorsey sold that tweet at auction for 2.9 million dollars. In recent weeks, several Atención readers have written to ask me “WTH?” (What the heck?).

Telecommunications standardization efforts started in 1865 with the formation of the International Telegraph Union, which became a specialized agency of the United Nations in 1947.

A big challenge involved in writing a newspaper column is that what is written one day can be immediately overtaken by events before the next edition of Atención is printed. That is what just happened here, calling for a minor update to the advice dispensed only last week.