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In the short term, AT&T’s acquisition of DirecTV is unlikely to affect either company's customers. But the long term is another story.

AT&T -- like its rivals Verizon and Comcast clearly wants to sell bundles of broadband and television that deliver on the promise of anything/anytime/anywhere programming.

Wall Street analysts pointed to a number of other motivations for the deal.

"While this transaction has some strategic merits, it appears more to be structured to enhance AT&T's financial position," Vijay Jayant of ISI Group said. Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson agreed -- he commented that AT&T is "in dire need of a cash producer to sustain their dividend."

Moffett said he was struggling to find "greater meaning" in the deal. "It's a huge transaction, but I think it's very unlikely to change the landscape of pay TV very much," he said. Whether people want to sit back and watch live TV on a big screen, Netflix-style on a smart phone, or some other way that's still being dreamed up, AT&T wants to have a stake in it.

You can spot the words "privacy policy" at the bottom of nearly every website. Don't be fooled. Those policies are more about data collection than privacy.

Companies use these policies to alert you to how they track your location, read your emails, spy on your Web browsing -- and sell some of that to advertisers. It doesn't help that these disclaimers are close to unintelligible.

With the help of several legal experts, CNN has reviewed policies at many top websites and apps. The conclusion: Most privacy policies are basically useless.

• They're too vague. Unclear language isn't just annoying. It arms companies with more legal muscle. Having ambiguous language in privacy policies lessens a consumer's ability to fight back if their personal information is ever mishandled.
• Terms are open-ended.
• Policies change all the time.
• Sometimes they don't even exist. Mobile app developers are increasingly relying on even more nebulous "permissions" instead of privacy policies. These pop-ups list all the features an app can access on your phone. It's worth paying attention to them, because they're starting to get weird.

You can't always control what's said about you on the Internet. But with enough money, you can influence what comes up in a search. A few companies promise to control your message online, or eliminate a bit of scandal or bad press -- for a price.

"We can remove something that shouldn't be there," said Chris Dinota, the CEO and founder of Solvera Group. The cost for that service? Between $50,000 and $300,000, depending on the project, plus a monthly maintenance cost. While many less expensive services work to move negative content down and positive content up, Solvera will try to remove the negative links altogether and manage the search results.

Dinota's company, which performs background checks and will not work with clients whose negative reviews prove to be accurate, will "de-index" negative links, removing them from the search results of Google, Yahoo and Bing. This sometimes involves legal battles to get content removed, using a court order alleging something like defamation or slander.

Many are desperate because a negative link can have devastating effects on an individual, or the bottom line. He described a company that made $10 million to 15 million in revenue, but "because of a link at the top they literally lost $1 million in revenue," he said.

[Commentary] Over the past few years, a large crop of cell phone companies have popped up promising far cheaper rates than the likes of AT&T and Verizon.

There are pros and cons to their plans, but they do stay true to their word: They really are much cheaper.

There are no shortage of these companies. Ting, RingPlus, Zact, Republic Wireless, FreedomPop, Boost Mobile, H20, Net10 ... the list goes on. While each has its own nuances in pricing and phones, they all function in the same fundamental way. Prices can go as low as $0 a month -- which FreedomPop promises -- and can jump as high as $60 a month if you're in search of a completely unlimited plan that offers 4G.

The great caveat with super cheap cell phone plans comes down to the phones themselves. The vast majority of dirt cheap cell phone services don't offer much in the way of desirable phones, instead funneling you to a selection of dated, low-end Android phones.

The Web has been buzzing over news of a federal proposal that would allow the creation of "fast" and "slow" lanes online. As part of the plan, on which the Federal Communications Commission will vote, Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon would be able to charge companies like Netflix and Amazon for faster access to customers.

The rules are still subject to change -- the FCC has to consider public comments and face scrutiny from lawmakers before they're finalized. But here are a few ways your Internet service could change if the fast lane plan is enacted: 1) Higher costs, 2) Slower speeds, 3) Prioritized content, and 4) Better service for some applications.

[Commentary] There's been a lot of noise in the past few years about the impending shortage of engineers and scientists in the US and its impacts on our future economic growth.

To conduct a thought experiment on this topic, we recently asked a dozen technology executives to grapple with a faux Wall Street Journal headline in the year 2020 that read: US Economy Is Choking! Lack of Skilled Workers, Drop in Government Funding Obstruct Growth.

The story beneath the headline painted a dark, recession-weary world in which business opportunities existed in abundance for tech companies working on the cloud, as well as for biotech and energy companies, but not nearly enough STEM workers to feed this potential growth. The executives were then asked this question: How will your company remain competitive if indeed there is a STEM talent shortage in the coming years?

Citing the fact that companies such as Google and countless others have established R&D centers offshore, some participants argued that Google will continue to move its R&D shops abroad. The group concluded that Google, faced with talent scarcity, will innovate its way to success – living with less talent and even thriving despite this shortage. This future-scape discussion taught these executives one very important lesson: Today's critical growth issue -- immigration reform, for example – may fade into the background as the truly creative, inventive companies find ways to overcome obstacles.

[Fuld is founder and CEO of Fuld & Company]

The Justice Department is issuing new legal guidance encouraging companies to share cyber-security information with each other and the government, while protecting the privacy of their customers.

US authorities are concerned about the sharp rise of computer-based crime, which siphons billions of dollars from companies and individuals, and could pose major national security and economic harm.

Credit card and other private data belonging to hundreds of millions of consumers was compromised in a series of major retailer breaches in 2013, according to Verizon, which compiles an authoritative survey of cyber-security threats around the world. At the same time, the US government's effort to try to improve cyber-security is hampered by fears of the kind of widespread government surveillance revealed in leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

James Cole, deputy attorney general, said that the new guidance was issued because company executives have told him they would like to work more with the government but want to do so without compromising consumer privacy.

"We at the Justice Department share that concern and developed this guidance to help clarify that companies can and should share aggregated information with the government, so we can work in partnership to protect consumers from malicious cyber threats," he added.

Apple's potential purchase of Beats Electronics could spell trouble for some of Beats' rivals. Headphone manufacturers such as Skullcandy and Harman will likely be affected "very little in the short-term," said Aram Sinnreich, an assistant professor at Rutgers University who writes about music, technology, and media.

But the future might be less stable for rival music streaming services, such as Spotify and Pandora. "They're not making money," Sinnreich said. "But Apple can afford to lose money on music the way they always have."

For years, Apple's music business has been based on purchased, downloaded songs. Now, though, consumers are far more interested in streaming services of the type Apple would get in a Beats acquisition.

"Apple was kind of artificially buoyed for the last decade by having created this download market," said Sinnreich. "The future is clearly in streaming."

Virtual reality technology is poised to take off for home entertainment and gaming as inexpensive headsets become commercially available from companies like Sony and Facebook's newly acquired Oculus VR. But at the same time, VR's computer-simulated environments are expected to transform key industries such as health sciences, financial services, and manufacturing in new and imaginative ways that experts say will improve our lives and the choices we make.

"Virtual reality transforms relationships that tend to be abstract to become visceral," says Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab. "Our research has shown that making this cause and effect relationship perceptual, as opposed to theoretical, changes consumer and other behaviors more than other interventions."

VR can be an effective tool even where cause and effect are not obvious. In a collaboration with Stanford's Department of Anesthesia, Bailenson used the technology to place children with chronic regional pain syndrome (CRPS) -- a disease characterized by severe pain, swelling, and changes in the skin -- in virtual simulations that divert their brains from unpleasant physical therapy and treatment. The children use computer-generated doubles known as avatars, a fixture in VR environments, to perform a simple exercise like popping balloons, distracting them from processing pain signals.

Ted Rappaport is in charge of NYU WIRELESS, a New York University research program in downtown Brooklyn that has enlisted researchers to work on the next generation of wireless technology.

His goal? To demonstrate that a commercially viable expansion of spectrum for cellular and Wi-Fi could physically be done.

Many industry players doubted that it was possible. Now, those same people are using the results of the professor's research to begin sketching out their own strategies for the next phase of wireless technology.

Rappaport's team found that signals at 73 gigahertz could be sent and received as far as 200 meters under very dense conditions, with an acceptable number of instances where buildings stopped a signal. Sending and receiving data at these particular narrow frequency bands are what the industry refers to as 5G wireless technology.