Recently in Computers Category

Dianne Feinstien's DC number is 202-224-3841.

I know Network Neutrality isn't high on most people list of priorities, but Di Fi is trying to get this language put in the Stimulus Package during the conference committee.

Obama's stimulus bill sets aside between $6bn and $9bn for expanding American broadband into rural areas, and Senator Feinstein hopes to (PDF) augment this Broadband Technology Opportunities Program so that it "allows for reasonable network management practices such as deterring unlawful activity, including child pornography and copyright infringement."

http://ping.fm/g96EG

This is pretty bad. We've been fighting against this crap for several years now. They're using Child Porn as a straw man argument to allow internet service providers to spy on their customers.

Just call and tell her staff that you don't want the language to be added. Say you don't want ISPs to spy on their customers.

I'm sorry this isn't the best thought out post, but it's critical that people call right away. The conference over this bill is going on right now.

So, I just spent four days with an iPhone 3G, the experience was enough to make me switch to a BlackBerry Curve as my only cell phone. I really wanted to like the iPhone, but it just didn't work out.

Here are the pros and cons from my standpoint:

Email (and Messaging):

Email is easily the number one application for "smartphone" users. It really is what the BlackBerry was created for. Back before they added the phone functionality to the BlackBerry it was an email-only device. I expected the BlackBerry to handily beat the iPhone here, and actually was surprised at how well email works on the iPhone. Honestly, it's probably its best feature. The biggest concern I had before buying the iPhone was using the on screen keyboard. I had used some of my friend's iPhones and I found it really hard to type on the screen, but after buying one I was able to type easily on the iPhone after only a few hours with it. The iPhone does have one small annoyance that I think they should fix. When you have a new message and you click on the Mail icon on the home screen it should take you to the mailbox with the message. I frequently had to go searching around to find which account had the new message in it.

The last thing about messaging is SMS and MMS. The iPhone doesn't support MMS at all. This is just a super-weak FAIL on Apple's part. I used to work for a company that all we did was MMS and really, it's a super simple protocol from the phone's perspective. Here the BlackBerry wins by default. On SMS - the iPhone does this cool thing where it makes your chat messages look like an iChat conversation, but I've had phones that do this for ages. My Sony Ericsson T68i did this back in 2001, and my BlackBerry does it too, although, minus the cute bubbles. My biggest problem with SMS is what AT&T charges for it. An SMS message is 140 bytes. It costs the carrier almost nothing to transmit an SMS message, but AT&T charges an arm and a leg for them simply because it knows that people will pay whatever. It's stupid to have to pay an extra $15 per month (on top of the $30 data plan) just to get a basic functionality. AT&T deliberately skips from $5 for barely any messages to $15 for more than most people use. On T-Mobile I can pay $8 month for what works out for me to be the "just right" amount of text messages.

Another big plus for the iPhone is its address book. The layout and general legibility of contacts on the iPhone is far superior to the contact list on the BlackBerry. It's just overall easier to use and understand. Also, the "me.com" syncing ability on the iPhone is great. I like having all my contacts available online, on my mac and on my iPhone. There was one major glitch. I have most of my contacts on my me.com account as well as in my exchange contacts. This makes them show up twice on my iPhone. This is pretty lame. If someone has two copies of a contact the phone should do something intelligent about that.

So here's where I'm really torn on the iPhone. The external applications are awesome. Pandora for the iPhone kicks ass, so does the Yelp application, and the Facebook one, etc. Just for this, I really want to keep my iPhone. Heck, I'd spend $200 just for a device I could carry around with me and have Pandora all the time. So, if iPhone applications are so fricken awesome, then what is the catch?

Well, there are several catches - the first one is that you can only run one application at a time on the iPhone. This means that if you're listening to a great tune on Pandora, you can't browse the web or look at your email at the same time. It also basically means that there are no useful instant messaging clients for the iPhone. You can access Google Talk or AIM (or both through Meebo), but as soon as you switch applications, you're logged out. The second catch is that a lot of great applications are out there for the BlackBerry that you can't get for the iPhone yet. The big one for me is Opera. Opera is basically the best browser for mobile phones out there. I'll explain more when I talk about the web browser below. There are more issues, but I'll highlight only one more. The Apple walled garden sucks. I want to be able to write software or download software from anyone. I don't want to need Apple to approve what I can run on my device. I paid for it, I own it, I should be able to run any software I please on it thank-you-very-much.

I really expected the iPhone to dominate here. I mean really, but in the end, it disappointed. Probably the biggest thing is that it's slow, but leaving that aside for a moment, there's a problem that comes from the "one app at a time" issue I mentioned in the last paragraph. On my BlackBerry, I frequently start loading a webpage and then switch to my email, then come back to my webpage a minute later once it's loaded. Since you can't run more than one application at a time on the iPhone, you can't do this. As soon as you exit the web browser, the page stops loading. This even happens if you switch to another "tab" without even quitting the web browser. The multiple tabs thing was just another case where I was really let down by the iPhone. Overall the web browsing experience just doesn't really make it.

Web browsing on the BlackBerry is a whole different beast. The default, built in, web browser for the Blackberry is very much a "mobile" browser. It's a stripped down browser that doesn't handle anything complicated very well, but it's saved by one thing - it's fast. On the other hand, the lack of the walled garden means that the web browsing experience on the BlackBerry can be saved by Opera. Opera is a full web browser that does everything Safari does - and it's fast. This means that I can have the best of both worlds, a full browser that handles AJAX and complicated web pages when I need it, and a stripped down browser for when I'm mostly dealing with text. That along with the fact that I can run more than one application at at time, means that I can multitask between the two browsers (I'd really love it if Opera implemented tabs, they were the first to do that on their desktop browser) and be even more productive. Honestly, I'd say that both phones have a way to go before they'll have the perfect browsing experience, but for now, I think the BlackBerry wins by a nose.

Maps are another place where I expected the iPhone to dominate. The iPhone has a built in GPS chip and the touch screen user interface looks very intuitive. The BlackBerry has to rely on either an external bluetooth GPS or just use cell tower triangulation to figure out where you are. Turns out all is not so well in iPhone land. I'm not sure why, but 9 times out of ten the map on the iPhone hasn't been able to figure out where I am, while the BlackBerry, while less accurate, has almost always been able to guess my location. It's nice to use the multitouch interface, but then, the trackball on the BlackBerry works almost as well and I can zoom in and out using the keyboard, which actually is more reliable than the multitouch interface. Another thing is that the version of Google Maps on my BlackBerry is at least one generation newer. On my iPhone I can't get directions for public transit, but the feature works fine on the BlackBerry. I'm sure this will come with the next software update, but it's not here yet. Finally, maps on the iPhone are just plain slow. The user interface seems to take forever to respond. One thing both could do better - I'd love actual spoken driving directions, like a real GPS, neither phone can do this yet.

I don't really use my camera on my phone. It's a nice to have, but really, eh. If I want to take pictures I generally bring a real camera. The only time I find myself using the camera ability on my phone is when it's more of a spur of the moment thing. I think both phones have crappy cameras. The BlackBerry has a flash, which is nice. Eh, I don't care enough about this feature to write any more about it.

Here's the thing - the iPhone is slow. The iPhone is running-windows-vista-on-your-mom's-old-pentium slow. The iPhone OS is buggy. The iPhone is running-windows-vista-anywhere-but-worse buggy. I've had Safari crash on me more times than I could count. Scrabble (the real, legit, paid $9.99 for Scrabble) crashes as soon as it launches. It just sems that in general I spend far too much time waiting for the phone to do something. Even with the fancy-shmancy 3G network that AT&T rolled out, the web browsing is slow. It's slower than my basic "EDGE" 2G BlackBerry. It's even slower than the BlackBerry when it's on a Wi-Fi network and the BlackBerry isn't. To steal a quote from a friend of mine "it's like watching turtles racing in peanut butter."

The iPhone also has terrible battery life. I have to charge it when I'm at my desk or I run out of power by the end of the day. I managed to drain a full battery in less than 4 hours the other day just listening to the iPod application. People keep telling me all these tricks you can do to prolong battery life, but honestly, the phone should do that automatically. Turn off 3G when it doesn't need high speed data, not actively search for Wi-Fi networks at all times, etc. I don't want to dig three menus deep to turn on and off different features every time I need them. If the phone really needs a human to tell it when to save power, then it should have a big, bright, "save power" button in the settings.

The BlackBerry supports this idea of "profiles" and you can basically have an unlimited list of them. It even comes with a few set up for you by default. The iPhone has two "profiles". These are "Silent" and "Ring". I actually really love the fact that there is a switch on the outside of the phone to switch between the two, but there's a catch. On my BlackBerry, I use four profiles really. I have Silent, Vibrate, Normal, and Phone Only. The iPhone should at least have a "Phone Only" mode. At night, I want my phone to ring, but I don't want it to beep every time I get a spam message, and it don't want to have to remember to set and un-set (two menus deep) a bunch of alerting options every time go to bed and get up in the morning.

The BlackBerry also lets you tether it so you can use it to access the internet

Honestly, both phones could use some improvement. I think the upcoming BlackBerry Bold will fill in some of the holes in the existing BlackBerry Curve. I expect some 2.1 software updates will make the iPhone faster and more stable. I'm sure eventually the iPhone will even allow some sort of multi-tasking, but for now, the Curve wins.

I want to watch this, but the internet connection I'm on right now is not good enough:

This might be one of the geekiest things I've posted here, but it is about the most useful line of perl code I've come across recently and I don't want to lose it.

perl -pe 's/(\d+)/localtime($1)/e'

It converts epoch time to local time when looking at a log file.

The Utah UTOPIA project is amazing. It really shows that it makes more sense for the public to have owernship of the infrastructure for the internet. This allows true compition. I hope San Francisco has the foresight to implement something like this.

I've said before that I pretty much hate myspace, but the DOPA act is stupid for a whole host of reasons. If you've got a minute run on over to Save Your Space and sign the petition.

AdAge article: Wal-Mart Tries to Be MySpace. Seriously.

I'm not sure if I should be sad or horrified. It's too bad they spent so much time and effort creating something so, well, lame. You'd think they could have done better.

I came across this post on slashdot. It really did a good job of explaining the discomfort I've always had with using spreadsheets.

Movable Type W3C XHTML Validator.

Available here.

This is a really insigful post about the recent MySpace scandals and internet safety in general. Everybody should read it.

Wells Fargo is introducing new ATMs that can scan the checks (and cash) that you deposit. This eliminates the need for envelopes and it shows the check that it scanned on the screen as well as printing it on the receipt. Seems pretty cool.

So, I don't know if this pisses everyone else off as much as it does me, but I've been forced to use Windows XP for some work related tasks and one thing that drives me nuts is these stupid baloons that pop up from the system tray. It would be ok if they pop'd up and then went away, but I'm sick of having to click that stupid "X" every time to get them to go away. Particularly because they rarely provide information that I need or even want.

Fortunately, someone has figured out how to get rid of them. Instructions here.

This post was in response to this article on slashdot.

Quoted in full:

Look, who gives a flying fuck if the government knows? I certainly don't. In fact, I'd rather they didn't.

This government is getting way to nosy, IMHO. I don't care what the reason is, I'm sick and fucking tired of being saved from myself. Let me smoke my cigarette in my bar, and masturbate the Islamic terrorist porno, leave me ALONE.

Hey old white bastards, how about a law that requires me to be informed when my companies data has been hacked? Or better yet, why don't you worry about things like maintaining roads. Why is it that the NSA knows what sort of hemorrhoid creme I prefer, and when my girlfriend's periods are, but I can't drive down I-20 for more than 3 hours without needing a new wheel alignment for my car?

How about a fucking law that says I get to be informed every single time my personal information is accessed by the government? Every time I turn on the news I seem to be reading about how the Department of Homeland Security is making sure I'm following the latest terror alerts and that I'm not cooperating with al-Qaida via Xbox Live. I mean, Jesus, what the hell.

Even better, the slashdot summary makes it sound like they can circumvent state legislation. Um, my constitutional skills may be a little rusty, but I'm pretty sure that's what the 10th Amendment was all about.

While we're on the subject, what about the 9th Amendment? I'm pretty sure that that one said that we have rights that may not be explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights, and thus, we reserve those rights. It seems like America is serving up it's rights like a Shoney's smorgasbord. It's like 8.99 all-you-can-give-away at the Patriot Act Red Lobster. Jesus.

Douglas Adams once said (forgive my horrible paraphrasing, as I don't have my copy of Salmon of Doubt with me) that Australians often say "We're the last place left mate," and it made him nervous because of the confidence with which he said it. Makes me wanna see if they're right, cuz quite frankly I'm sick of this place. It's not just the politicians, it's the people. How can my vote count if I realize for every vote I cast with some knowledge of the issues, there's fifty people are are being exploited by like-minded zealots whose sole purpose is to acquire power, and seek to retain that power.

Madison, in Federalist 9 & 10, argued that mutual self-intrest will keep the 'factions' in line, draw them towards a central, middle ground, and thus make decisions that are best for everyone. The problem seems to be that no all 'factions' are allowed into the game. At this point, I've got to request that I be allowed to collect my chips and move to another table, cuz I think I'm getting screwed, and all I see is more Dick coming. ~a

So for some reason I get drawn into a conversation about Wireless Carriers several times a day. Could be that I'm looking for them.

Either way, I thought I'd draw up a quick chart describing all the carriers in the bay area and what I see as their strengths/weaknesses.

First, the handy-dandy table:

Explanation of grades:
A - Exceptional
B - Above Average
C - Average
D - Poor
F - Lame
F-- (special category for exceptionally lame)

The whole thing reminds me of the "fast, friendly, cheap, pick any two," joke. None of the carriers are really head and shoulders above the rest. They each have their strong points, and each one as at least one negative. Unfortunately it's not about picking the best wireless carrier, it's about picking the one that sucks the least. I'll go into my opinions of each below.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile is my current and favorite carrier. T-Mobile has exceptional customer service which is open 24/7. The agents there have almost always been polite, helpful and quick to solve any issues I've had. They only make you wait 30 days after buying a phone before they will unlock it for you, and they don't give you the run around when you call and ask for it. T-Mobile tends to have relatively generous plans. More minutes per price level than any other carrier and they don't try to nickel and dime you to death like Sprint or Verizon. I do wish they had rollover minutes though, and they can't do anything if you run out of minutes in the middle of the month, which was a problem for me last January. The big downside for me with T-Mobile is the fact that they stopped carrying Sony Ericsson phones a few years back. This is a bummer for me because generally Sony has had the best phones out there lately. I can't wait for the new K790a to come out. 3.2 Megapixels of Sony CyberShot goodness. Almost all Sony phones have Bluetooth and they're GSM/GPRS/EDGE. Some of my friends complain of network weirdness from T-Mobile. I haven't had any problems lately, but I do know of a few things that have bothered me with T-Mobile's network in the past. For a long time Cincinnati was in the wrong time zone. This meant that our "evening" hours didn't start until 10pm (they'd fix our bill if we called them about it). This was lame, but then again, Cincinnati is lame, and I don't live there anymore. I really don't care if they've fixed this or not, although I think they have. The other problem I've occasionally had with T-Mobile is weird behavior when roaming. Things like calls going to voice mail without the phone ringing, or trouble getting a signal. I don't think this is as bad as it used to be, but a few years ago I had problems when I was visiting my family in Aspen. In the bay area I rarely find that I don't have a signal.

Cingular

Cingular has exceptionally lame customer service. Their customer service is actually the worst customer service I've ever had from any company in any industry. That's including credit card companies, car dealerships, and even the evil Best Buy. They've earned the special F-- for their atrocious customer service. If you really don't care about customer service, and I mean customer service that randomly turns off your account and can't give you a good reason why, Cingular has a few positives going for it. It has generally good coverage in the bay area, and it carries Sony Ericsson phones. If you really want a Sony phone, buy it from Cingular with a prepaid account, wait 90 days, ask them to unlock it and then use it with T-Mobile. Or even better, buy an already unlocked one with the OEM Firmware off eBay. T-Mobile will even tell you how to reset your internet settings to work with their network. I guess I should also mention that Cingular has roll over minutes, so if your usage varies a lot from month-to-month this might smooth things out for you. Cingular off-sets this a little by giving you less minutes per price point than T-Mobile.

Verizon

Verizon has the best network hands down. If you want coverage everywhere, this is the one to go with. A lot of this comes from the technology they use. Verizon uses a CDMA network that is much more advanced than GSM, they're bringing up their EV-DO network, and most of their phones still work with the old school AMPS analog network. There is a huge downside to this though - it means you have to wait for phones to be developed specifically for Verizon's non-standard technology. If it wasn't bad enough that their phones are 2-3 years behind the GSM phones from T-Mobile and Cingular (and those are at least a year behind the ones in europe) Verizon cripples their phones. Verizon locks out the OBEX protocol on their Bluetooth phones. This means that while you can use a Bluetooth headset, you can't sync your address book with your computer. It's about the lamest thing I've seen a company do. It's right up there with Best Buy's rebate policies. I guess they did market research and found that only geeks ever actually transfer files, contacts, photos, ringtones or whatever using bluetooth and everybody else just wants a wireless headset. The logic behind this is that it forces you to use their expensive network to get your photos off your phone, and you have to pay them for ringtones, you can't just copy them over to your phone. Verizon Wireless actually had to settle a class action lawsuit because of this. This is a total deal breaker for me, both because it's just lame and because I have a Mac. One of the coolest things that Macs can do is they can use a program called iSync to sync your address book on your computer to your phone. I never loose my contact list. I don't loose phone numbers and it really isn't a problem for me when I get a new phone. This is all due to the magic of iSync. All this adds up to earn Verizon a special F-- for phones. Their customer service can also be a total pain in the ass. It took a friend of mine months of calling them to get her phone account separated from her ex-boyfriend's after they broke up. Overall, unless you really, really need the network strength (like your parents live in Maine), I'd stay away from Verizon.

Sprint

Ooo spiffy! You can have push-to-talk. Actually, that's a feature of the now long gone Nextel. I basically got nothing against Sprint. They use a network technology that, like Verizon is only used by them. Ok, to be totally fair, Verizon, Sprint, MetroPCS and a few others all use the same technology -- but their phones won't interoperate on each other's networks. This means their phones, like Verizon's are outdated. They also like to retain control of their brand, so you don't buy a Samsung phone to use with Sprint, you buy a Sprint phone to use with Sprint (made by Samsung). Their plans are so-so. They require long contracts (I think they were the first company to go to two-year contracts), and almost everything else about them is unremarkable. I did really like Nextel when I used to have a company provided phone. The push-to-talk thing is kinda handy, but it's not that much more useful than just dialing someone. Nextel also was the first company to do a really neat user-interface thing with their phones (since copied by Sony Ericsson and others). If you store multiple numbers under a contact you can scroll up/down to select that contact in your address book and then use the left/right buttons to select which number you want to dial. It really is the best way to navigate an address book I've seen so far.

MetroPCS

I want to say I haven't heard anything negative about MetroPCS. If you never leave the bay area they do have decent phones and really cheap plans, but they charge roaming anytime you go anywhere - which just doesn't work for me.

Well, that's it. If you've got any comments (or Cingular horror stories) you can leave them below.

Actually, one more thing. Before I step off my soap box I have to say that the whole "network locking" thing is crap. If I buy a GSM phone I want it to work no matter who's SIM card I put in it. Maybe the mighty carriers have studied this and found it stops fraud, or keeps their customers, but quite frankly all I think it has done is create this cottage industry around unlocking phones. Anyone who wants to can download software, or go to chinatown and get their phone unlocked. To me it's just a stupid way to piss off customers. Okay, now you can leave comments