The Long Dark Tech-Time of the Soul

Development ate my OTA broadcasts!

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:06:00 +0000

For a couple of years now (at least) I have been enjoying glorious high definition TV completely for free thanks to "over the air" (OTA) which will in 2009, as most of you should know by now, completely replace the old interference ridden low-res analog transmissions. At the time I set this up I was somewhat surprised it worked at all since I live in a concrete building that is by necessity filled with iron rebar - exactly the kind of stuff that will block a TV signal, or pretty much any radio signal - hence poor cellphone reception and room to room WiFi reception inside concrete buildings. However with a modest indoor directional antenna mounted inside my unit near the ceiling everything seemed to work out - the only thing I couldn't get reliably was the KTEH PBS station that is transmitted from a location 90-degrees from where my antenna is pointing. Since I already get KQED that hasn't been a big problem for me.

Unfortunately in the past few months a new condo and parking garage have risen from the dust right between my home and the where the TV signal is coming from. Both being concrete buildings and full of rebar it seems that they have knocked the signal strength of some of my channels below the acceptable limit for my tuner. If I'm lucky I get audio with interrupted video, if I'm not I get nothing at all. While access to the sun is protected in California for solar installations access to free OTA transmissions is not. Just when analog transmissions are going away I'll find myself cut off and looking at having to resort to cable. Basically I wont do this - I've survived significant portions of my life with no TV at all.

I could petition my building to install a big-ass TV antenna on the roof, it will be hard to do, cost a lot and probably wouldn't be that effective (because of the long cable run required). Considering 22 out of the 24 units already have cable I won't hold my breath waiting for that. Or I could install a much bigger antenna in my unit - its feasible but not exactly attractive, they really aren't designed to look nice. Right now I have a DB2 bowtie with 11.4 dBi gain combined with some low-loss coax which is probably the most compact and highest gain option there is, the next step up provides a couple of extra dB (not quite double the signal strength) but is twice the size and too big for indoor use IMHO. I can always think about using an amplifier - but I'd rather not since they can also amplify out of band interference and make things worse.

My solution for now is to get a new ATSC HDTV tuner card - one of these bad boys from DVICO: Fusion HDTV7 dual-express. Many of those using it have commented it has significantly better sensitivity in the receiver which will hopefully bring my weak channels back to within acceptable limits. Fingers crossed...

Firefox Download day? What download day?

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:24:00 +0000

Today is supposedly "Download Day" for Firefox 3.0 and they are trying to set a record for the number of downloads of a software product in one day. So this morning before work I fire up Firefox and tell it to check for updates - no dice, it thinks it is up to date. Well I do have one of the release candidates installed so perhaps it doesn't think the official release is any different from what I have.

So then I go to the SpreadFirefox.com download site to do my bit and low and behold I get some Drupal default installation page. I figure their site must be so overloaded with downloaders it has crashed. I start searching Digg, SlashDot and others thinking there will be a story about it but there isn't. So then I go to Mozilla.com and low and behold it is still proudly proclaiming Firefox 2 as the latest and greatest. On the right hand side there is a little "Firefox 3 Sneak Peak link" but that is it.

So I surf over to SpreadFirefox.com again and this time the page loads with normal content, perhaps last time I just got bounced to a new machine in a cluster that hadn't yet been set up properly. But the site looks just like it did yesterday still asking me to pledge to download. There is a download button which I click and it takes me to a Firefox 2 download page. At this point I figure 95% of people who came here to download Firefox 3 on "Download Day" will give up - they don't need FF2.0 and they don't need a wild goose chase trying to find FF3.0. And even if they do download something it really looks like it may not count for the record (there's no count of "Downloads Today" either).

One possibility remains - they changed the date on me. It's not actually obvious from the website when download day is - they don't have a countdown or even the date in a big font right up there. But I eventually find that by clicking on the "Pledge Now" button it takes me to a page that clearly says

"The official date for the launch of Firefox 3 is June 17, 2008. Join our community and this effort by pledging today."

I then actually go through the pledge process and there is never any mention of a time, either local or UTC based - I would have assumed I could have started at 00:01 June 17th local time, or maybe UTC time. Finally I double check the date on my computer... June 17th.

Sorry but my guess is download day will probably fail to live up to expectations at this point since by anyone's calculations June 17th is pretty much over for most of the world and a huge percentage of the pledged downloaders. It may be 8:30am here in Pacific Time but over in Europe its already getting into evening and Asia is now into night. I wish them luck but I don't think I'm going to be wasting much of my time at work trying to chase down FF3.0 - I'll probably get it tomorrow or whenever it prompts me to download now.

It seems like as America wakes up and goes to work (at least on the West Coast) someone really wasn't ready on the infrastructure side. Trust me we'll hear more about this... Plus I really question the wisdom of basing a WorldWide product release with so much fanfare on Pacific Time!

Update 9:00am: I've since found a story on Digg by someone who says they found a note saying they wont be ready until 10:00am Pacific Time. But I don't see that anywhere. Plus now when I go back to SpreadFirefox.com I'm getting more and more connection errors and Drupal database errors which doesn't bode well.

Update 10:30am: All my efforts to reach spreadfirefox.com are now resulting in connection timeout errors - not Drupal or other server side errors, it is just plain not responding.

Update 2:30pm: Finally able to get to the SpreadFirefox.com website (on the second browser reload - it is still getting connection errors sporadically). The site is still looking like it did yesterday but the download link at least takes you to a 3.0 download. The Mozilla.com home page is dedicated to 3.0 download. Also when I did an update on my Ubuntu box it also found the 3.0 package in the repositories - so I've kicked off two downloads, one for Windows and one for Ubuntu.

Airlines missing the obvious way to save weight on planes?

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:08:00 +0000

It seems that airlines are taking heroic measures to save weight on their planes - from lighter seats, less water in bathrooms to sharing manuals between pilots. The NYTimes articles quotes one airline as saying every 25 lbs saved on their planes saves $440,000 per year in fuel costs - which I assume is across their entire fleet, not per plane.

But it seems to me that they are missing, or at least keeping quiet about the most obvious way to reduce the weight of their planes - reduce the passenger load they are carrying. Baggage surcharges are unpopular and unless uniform a point of competition between airlines, however attempts to charge over sized passengers for two seats are controversial - just how do you define over sized without forcing a passenger onto scales, something about as unpopular as trying to back scatter x-ray them for security. So maybe passenger load could apply to just bags - we all know the people who carry the max just because they can - and usually have bags full of stuff they just don't need, even for a short trip. Carry on bags are often a source of abuse because they seldom get weighed (I've never seen a weight check on them, just size) and people always manage to loadup with extra laptop bags, baby bags or handbags stuffed the brim with junk.

How about the full price assumes you take maximum baggage weight, say 50lbs, but if your combined carry-on (everything but you) plus checked baggage weighs less than that weight then you get a discount - and as always an overage in the baggage department still attracts a surcharge. This will at least incentivize customers to reduce their baggage weight and pass on fuel savings to them.

Another way would be for planes to have a greater variety of seat sizes and spacings with appropriate pricing - but not such a difference as between coach and business which get an additional level of service too. Passengers would then naturally pick the appropriate seat that they are comfortable with and pay a small premium accordingly. Some airlines already have premium seats with extra legroom, but extra width and legroom might be even more attractive - if you can figure out how to arrange seats to accommodate that (maybe a diagonal isle?).

Yes, all crazy ideas I know, but it seems like airlines are looking for crazy ideas!

Highway planners gone wild - or have they?

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:03:00 +0000

The Onion reports that the Department of Transport was spending $270 billion on lanes for reckless drivers - it turns out that was all a big joke, the reality is instead they decided to just send all those crappy drivers to my home town Oakland, California. Seriously, does anyone else think their town has the world's worst drivers, or is it just me? My partner noticed that I've now taken to driving with my thumbs on the horn buttons of my steering wheel. It's not defensive driving - only once in my 24 years of driving have I been able to use a horn defensively and it didn't work (the SUV still backed right into me) - I just figure if someone runs a red light, stop sign or does something crazy in front of me I'm going to let them know because I'm sick of people pretending they are driving just fine. I'll admit that I'm not a perfect driver but if someone honks me when I've done something wrong I'll admit it - embarrassed by my mistake I'll even take the finger or whatever they throw at me (although living Oakland I'd rather it was not fast moving lead from a Glock).

Never mind gas prices, here come the ATM fee hikes!

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:36:00 +0000

Folks, never mind federal investigations into the price of gas, how about an investigation into the outrageous prices banks charge for using someone else's ATM? It was bad enough at $2.00 but now Wells Fargo is apparently leading the charge with a hike to $2.50 - expect all the other banks to follow in short order. Basically this is easy money for them, like $0.20 per text message for the phone companies. They could make it $5.00 and people would still be paying it because when you absolutely have to have cash what alternative is there?

I'm sure banks look at cash as a competitor to credit cards so whatever percentage they get for a credit card transaction should guide their pricing on cash withdrawals. If fees are too low they will canabilize their credit card fee income - which as we all know is at least 2% and probable more like 3 or 4%. So if the average person sucks out $100 per ATM withdrawal then they need to charge $2, $3 or more per transaction to avoid hurting their credit card fees.

But this is really just BS, why are there no federal investigations into how banks can justify these fees? Their usual excuse is "well we have to cover the fees other banks charge us" but guess what those fees are just made up, one bank just charges other banks what they charge them. It doesn't reflect anywhere against the actual cost of providing ATMs. In fact it is well known that ATMs save banks money because they allow them to have fewer branches and fewer staff. We know this for a fact because it is is why banks have checking accounts that are cheaper if you don't use branches to do your transactions.

Carbon Dioxide Sequestration Gone Wrong

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:12:00 +0000

I'm sorry but I can't help thinking that pumping liquefied carbon dioxide into the ground is a bad idea waiting to go horribly, horribly wrong. From reading about the idea it sounds like the only problem with the CO2 leaking to the surface is a carbon credit lost, but what happens when 100,000 tons of denser than air CO2 reaches the surface, perhaps catastrophically one day? I really don't want to be around to find out because its gonna hang around near the ground and start killing people. If you think this is far fetched you should read about Lake Nyos, the "bad lake" where more than 1,700 people died from CO2 poisoning. The CO2 came from underground sources - and rolled out over a 10 mile radius killing all it encountered. Now does that sound familiar?

Windmills gone wild!

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:18:00 +0000

Ouch! This video of a wind turbine self destructing will be about as explosive as photos of Obama in a turban [no pun intended].

I'm pretty sure they will end up blaming it on a bird strike, or terrorists, or the oil companies.

Just say No to pay TV

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:07:00 +0000

I beg to differ with the story in Wired News that says end of analog TV broadcasts in 2009 will cause US households to switch to cable instead of buying a converter box or a new TV. I actually think the net effect will be fewer cable subscribers.

My reasoning is that people still using old analog TVs are looking for cheapest way to receive TV and as such wont want to pay at least $50 a month just to receive the local programming they can get over the air anyway. Plus switching to cable means you'll have to install cable outlets in all rooms that means a lot of expense putting in wires and outlets - and splitting cable is notoriously problematic because cable companies often provide a marginal signal to households that isn't strong enough to split (as any multi-family dwelling cable user can attest).

Also I believe that once people discover that ATSC (digital transmission) provides interference free reception and many more channels than they ever received before they will actually start dropping basic cable packages for the free over the air programming. As low end TVs increase in capabilities the ability to view 720p and 1080i high definition programming (in particular sports) will also be a big draw. In a recession people are always looking to save money and cutting the cable is an easy fix.

Alternative headlines

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:01:00 +0000

The headline for Yahoo's latest news reads "Yahoo rejects Microsoft, report says it may buy AOL" but I'm amazed no one is saying "Yahoo looks gift horse in mouth, shoots self in foot".

Seriously, could there be a dumber move? Has AOL done anyone any good in years - indeed during this century? Have they got money to burn buried in the Yahoo basement? Don't have enough of their own employees to fire so go buy someone elses and fire them as well? Or is Yahoo just doing a bit of dirty work for Microsoft for them before the acquisition really happens? Come to think of it why not scoop up Ask while you're at it? Or does someone at Yahoo have friends in AOL they want to make rich first?

Any way you look at it, every day of delay is another day of dimminshing advertising earnings for Yahoo that has little else to count on to justify their value. Hence they should have countered and wrapped it all up in double-quick time.

I'm kind of sad about all this because Yahoo was the first search site I ever used, when it was still just a directory, and the first online email account I ever had - hence I have a five letter @Yahoo.com email with no digits even if I haven't used it in years because of all the spam. I would have hoped Yang and Filo would have been smarter. It is never too late for them to pack it in and move on to something new.

Interesting developments in traffic monitoring

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 09:13:00 +0000

About a couple of years ago I had a conversation with someone who did a bunch of contract work on traffic monitoring systems - he was networking all the traffic cameras and radar together and providing a nice web interface with Traffic 511 like monitoring of congestion data. The added bonus was you could actually get a live feed of traffic on your favorite streets - his system was for Alameda county and hence monitored mostly city streets, not freeways. During the meeting he talked about how much cheaper his implementation was than the tens of millions CalTrans spent on their system which used data read from FasTrak transponders in people's cars. When he mentioned the trip time data that Traffic 511 was providing (and is now shown on electronic signs by the freeway) I asked him if they were doing the dumb thing of quoting actual measured journey times - it turns out that was how they do it.

I say it is dumb because if you are in Oakland (say) and trying to get to San Francisco and there is a wreck then you wont know about it from estimated journey times until someone has completed the entire trip - which could be a long time. And as each person arrives at the destination their data is as old as their complete journey time. Now a way around this is to break journeys into much smaller segments and integrate along the path continuously but apparently they weren't doing that either, except perhaps at very gross city to city levels.

Ideally as soon as there is a change in traffic flow past a point, as measured by velocity and number of cars at that point you should be able to feed that information into a model, combined with everything else you know about traffic on the roads and generate a new estimate very quickly - without waiting for cars to drive an entire segment. As a physicist by training that just seems like basic fluid dynamics to me... And you can feed in other information about known changes to the configuration of "pipes", ie. the roads. So when CHP calls in that they will shut down a freeway for 15 minutes to bring a medivac, or take it down to 2 lanes while they sweep debris, or open up Hwy 580 to trucks for a while then you should be able to feed that data in an make travel time prediction adjustments immediately. Thus the effect of a wreck in Oakland can instantaneously be feed back to someone in Milpitas traveling to Berkeley and allow them to choose an alternate route.

Anyway two years ago most of the clever stuff you could do really depended on having a lot of data about where cars were which either meant outfitting a lot of cars with telemetry systems or getting access to the FasTrak transponder data. Well of course two years on we have an increasing number of gadgets flying up and down freeways that already have GPS and data links built-in - they are called phones. So I kick myself for not thinking about what Nokia is doing in a trial where they are using standard N95 GPS equipped phones to see if they can predict traffic flow information - not just travel times, but predict information like I suggested. Plus the benefit is this system can be extremely cheap to set up since people like participating in such "social" applications (cf. Seti@Home and Folding@Home), even more so if they are actually of benefit to themselves. I think it will only be a matter of months before some open source project, quite likely sponsored by Google (and running on Android) will produce an app and centralized traffic monitoring/prediction services to the masses.

The only issue is that do really great prediction actually requires more than simply measurement - for this reason I think the initial data provided will be just the same level as Traffic 511, just measuring speeds on the freeway. To do really smart stuff requires complicated routing calculations and someone like Google (say) with access to that, and smart people to crunch the numbers and build models will be needed to build the software. All good stuff to build into Google Maps right and make it even more of a killer app - especially when mobile.

Two and a half years on someone finally decides to sue over unwanted text messages

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 09:55:00 +0000

I have to admit I was pleasently surprised (for once) to read about a new class action suit. This one was being filed over T-Mobile's practice of refusing to block text messages and then charging customers for receiving them. This is something that I blogged about two and a half years ago when T-Mobile told my partner (whose bill I pay) that it was impossible to block unwanted text messages from someone she didn't know. These were being sent by some kid who was crank texting her (or just had the wrong number).

I was, how shall I put it, "gobsmacked" that they could claim it was impossible to block those texts and her only recourse was to change her phone number. I mean what kind of P.O.S. network were they running that such a request was not possible. There really was only one answer - it was a deliberate ploy to extract the most text fees from all their customers. As anyone knows texts are expensive and getting more expensive and yet the underlying cost to networks is essentially zero because they are sent on a control channel that is otherwise unused and if there is ever any conflict texts are just not delivered (although I'd happen to guess customers still get billed!).

In general I'm not a particular fan of class action suits - but in this case I see that it was basically the only way to force a corporation to drop a practice it was clearly pursuing to maximize profit. In the USA since the 1919 Supreme Court case Dodge v. Ford Motor Co corporations have been legally obliged to persue profit over customer interests until such time as it is no longer profitable to ignore those interests. And since almost no individual has money to make a case against a carrier stronger than moving their business elsewhere, then a class action suit and associated punitive damages is basically the only effective way for them to get such a result, especially since such behavior seems to be endemic in the cellular industry.

Hence I would actually encourage you to contact the lawyers involved (see the linked article) if you believe you are entitled to join the class. Ironically I actually contacted a legal firm that specializes in class actions back in 2005, but they never bothered to follow through. I bet they are wishing they had now!

Flying high with Wi-Fi - got power?

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 08:47:00 +0000

Okay so in spite of the obvious danger from IP activated bombs the airlines still think they want to put Wi-Fi on planes. Fair enough - soon we'll all be flying on a wing and a prayer as the saying goes
, and nothing fails like prayer as the other saying goes. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Anyway...

The bigger, more clear and present danger is that of impending power loss - that of laptop users. Just what are the cabin crew going to do when Dick Executive (aka. Executive Dick) flattens his battery in aisle 69DD after watching too much executive p0rn (Debbie Does Debt Equity and Leveraged ~~Big Tits~~ Buy Outs) and now insists he has to have more power to draft some pesky executive signing statements? Tempers will fray, batteries will be thrown and sooner or later airlines will get it - Wi-Fi without power to every seat will spell trouble.

But that's a huge drop of power isn't it? 30W or more times 300 people - 10kW of extra power to deliver. I guess compared to keeping a plane in the air it is probably not much but they better be ready for it! Or are they planning some Sky Mall scoop selling ready charged batteries straight from the drinks cart for $200 a pop? I can hear it now, "Gin and Battery Tonic sir?" . "American Express, that'll do nicely. And would you like a privacy screen and napkin to go with that?"

Oh sweet joy, can in flight cellphones be far behind?

And then they haven't considered all the fist fights that will break out as more and more people in cattle class try to bust out their 17 inch lappies on the drink tray and the "Born to recline" dude in front does just that... Can anyone say "snap, crackle and pop" ??? I mean it has happened to me on more than one occasion and I have a mere 12 inch screen. Fortunately lightening fast reactions have saved me on every occasion. Others wont be so lucky and the results wont be pretty. Lets just say that SkyMall will soon be offering "dial-a-damage-attorney" service too.

The solution to this problem (like in-seat power for all) is clearly built in large screens in every seat back along with a USB hub and pull out keyboard plus mouse. It should only cost $100 per seat, a triffling amount compared to what they make from each seat per year but mark my words, it'll be a loooooooong time coming and if you're ever in a crash - happy landings in the LCD.

Sounds too negative? Oh well, I don't call this "The Long Dark Tech-time of the Soul" for nothing!

Network Solutions never fails to disappoint

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 19:32:00 +0000

Some companies have taken up the "do no evil" or "we're not evil" tag, but it seems like Network Solutions must have taken up the alternative "do no good" tag. It seems they just never fail to disappoint with examples of how they are surreptitiously subverting their job as domain register and guardian of the .com TLD to rip off consumers. Last time it was their obnoxious scheme to redirect all mistyped domain names to one of their own web search pages, against all the standards defined by Internet RFCs (that specify the exact rules of how the Internet works thus allowing the fantastic interoperability we see now).

This time they are now doing what is apparently called domain "front-running" by automatically reserving any unregistered domain that you search for from the Network Solutions website. This prevents you registering that domain from any other registrar - which you'll probably want to do because Network Solutions still charges the usery rate for $34.95 a year where almost everyone else is charing $10 a year or less. So you might go to Network Solutions to do a domain search - they are right there at the top of the list on Google when you search for "domain search", find an unregistered domain you like, go to register it and realize just how much they are charging, then go elsewhere and darn, if it isn't already listed as registered to Network Solutions.

Now Network Solutions will say they are doing it to protect you and they will release the domain for registration elsewhere after 4 days - but now the domain is listed as registered so any other cybersquatter will know someone was looking for it and can jump on it when the registration expires - just as you want to do. The upshot is you are sorely tempted to pay those sky-high Network Solutions registration fees just to ensure you get the domain. But according to the eWeek article it is not clear if they do actually release the domain after four days - they clearly show a domain registered for a year following a search they claim they did months ago.

Their explanation as eWeek puts its - they are "front-running" to protect you from those evil "front-runners". Gee thanks Network Solutions, if this is such a good thing why didn't you advertise that policy in black and white right by the search button - along with your overpriced registration fees? In fact I just went to check their website and there is nothing on the front page, or the domain registration page saying anything about this "front-running for your benefit" policy, and they don't even tell you the price until more than a half-dozen clicks into the ordering process - after they first try an sell you any number of other non-essential things like private domain registration, hosting and other add ons. Granted other registrars try this upsell thing, but they do that after they have told you the basic domain registration cost.

So if you're looking to do domain name search I suggest you steer well clear of Network Solutions - there are dozens of other places to search and register domains like dnsstuff.com, godaddy.com (irritating website but up front pricing and cheap), DreamHost.com and the original and simplest internic.ne t (they oversea Internet naming and registrars).

XP Unlimited still going strong

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:44:00 +0000

A year ago I blogged about a product I'd found called XP Unlimited that let you get true multiuser access to a single Windows XP (Pro) machine via remote desktop. That post is the #1 most visited post on my blog - it is listed on the first page of Google results for "XP Unlimited" and has had almost 1,500 page views in the last year. So I thought I'd post an update on XP Unlimited...

I'm here to report that XP Unlimited the product is still going strong, I still think it rocks, I still use it myself on my home computer network, and I since have got several small businesses that I do IT support for to use it after showing them the product and setting them up with a VPN and the free 3-user evaluation version.

One of those businesses is a food import company that has three local users who travel quite a bit and then two remote users on different parts of the country. They use a local Access database extensively to manage their client accounts and orders but having no web access to that data proved a big problem for them. Facing an expensive rewrite of the application as a web based tool, or switching over to an expensive proprietary solution that may not ideally fit their needs (like SugarCRM or Salesforce.com) they were stuck. I'd already set up a VPN for them that let them access critical files, but the database just wouldn't work over a Windows remote file system, it would takes literally minutes to switch from screen to screen.

So I set them up with an XP Unlimited eval license running on their central "server" which wasn't a server at all, just a desktop that hosted their database files locally, had MS Access on it and had a gigabyte of memory (which was a lot at the time they bought it three years ago). Now they could have their users connect to their VPN (we used OpenVPN because it was SSL based and hence would always be able to pass through WiFi hot spot networks) and then connect to their central server via Remote Desktop. Once logged into the server they could run their database application and because Remote Desktop optimizes screen output for the bandwidth available it was very effective. Also database apps, including theirs are typically not graphical intensive and use a lot of text and solid blocks of color, all of which are transfered very efficiently with Remote Desktop. The result was basically a miracle for the company - even when overseas in the UK where roundtrip ping times are 150ms or more it worked like a charm and they were very happy and they purchased a five user license for the product.

Some additional advantages of the XP Unlimited based solution was that it required the minimum of configuration on remote machines - all they had to do was install the OpenVPN software along with a key for that machine and pull up Remote Desktop which is included on all XP machines - even XP Home. Previously when trying to give them access to files on the server I had to get them to set up a proper user name, configure file sharing and set a password that matched a user name and password on the central server - all a big pain, especially if they had a password they didn't want to change or reveal to me. With XP Unlimited I just created a local user on the server machine, set a default password with an appropriate policy and let them have at it - they could change it to whatever they wanted. And I could easily decide what groups to put them in to restrict access to other machines on the central office network.

The only disadvantage was this was all a bit too high tech for some users - the idea of remotely logging into a machine can be confusing for those that have never seen it, and really hard to explain in words. A work around for users that only need the company database is I could get XP Unlimited to only allow access to the database, and start it when they logged in, so basically they could click a remote desktop icon on their laptop (or whatever), enter a username and password and they would see a new window containing only the database app. To them it looked just like any other application and it was much less confusing. Ultimately I stopped setting up accounts like this because most users also needed access to some shared files which was slow over the VPN and Windows remote filesystem. It was basically so much faster for them to use remote desktop to browse for the file on the server, open it in Word or whatever on the server and view it all remotely - hence all the company's remote users now log in and see a full Windows desktop afterwards. An additional benefit of this is the work they do there is always backed up and instantly available to others, plus if their VPN or network connection drops they can just log back in again later and their desktop is still there exactly as they left it - brilliant.

Lastly the central "server machine" that is really a pretty lowly P4 machine regularly handles four concurrent user session and the one local user reports no significant impact on her work so they haven't had to invest a penny on new hardware to support these remote users - and more importantly didn't have to do that costly re-write of their database app which would probably have cost them thousands in contract time.

The only disadvantage of XP Unlimited I can see is that with the plummeting value of the US Dollar vs the Euro (and most other currencies) XP Unlimited is quite a bit more expensive that when I first looked at it in early 2007. The most basic five user license will cost you € 112 which is currently around $164 (not including credit card currency exchange fees). But I think that is still a good price, especially compared to the cost of Windows Small Business Server ($500 plus per client/user fees) and XP Unlimited is really a very good and cost effective solution for small businesses that don't already have a Windows Server based solution.

I personally think XP Unlimited should have a full supported home user version with 3 user licence in the $20 to $50 range, although arguably from the terms of use you can use their demo version for non-commercial use at no charge so this is not necessary, but many businesses just don't like using demo versions (like betas!) and need to have somewhere to go for support.

For home and small biz users I think they could bundle the product with some easy to use remote acess VPN technology like Hamachi and add a lot of value and get more paying customers using it. Selling to smaller scale users like consumers and small businesses makes sense to me as so many of the larger potential customers that might buy their "enterprise" products will already be using Windows Server with corporate VPN setups (or just the SSL secured Remote Desktop) and have no real need for XP Unlimited. With the sharp increase of always on home computers and small business "servers" there is an increasing need for users to be able to do remote management and access of their machines easily from wherever they are, only pricing and better marketing lay between them and a lot of eager customers!

Of course at any time Microsoft could catch a clue and enable multi-user simultaneous desktop access for home users of XP and Vista but that doesn't seem to be likely any time soon because there are just too many small businesses using those products that might otherwise have to move to Windows SBS. With such a feature they could just use a cheap $200 Linux machine with a terminal server client and get all the benefits of an XP and Office machine without the additional cost!

In the mean time I continue to recommend XP Unlimited whole heartedly, so why not just download a demo copy and give it a try!

New DreamHost discount coupons - share and enjoy

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 04:20:00 +0000

I've been using DreamHost web hosting for several years now and have been very happy. Sure there have been a few glitches but they get better all the time and offer silly amounts of bandwidth (5,000GBytes/month), storage (500GB) and yes, hosting of an unlimited number of domains per account. They also have a good referral system that means with just a little work you can probably get most of your hosting almost free (like me).

If you'd like to check out DreamHost click here to learn about them - plus you can use the special Long Dark Tech Time discount codes when you sign up:

TECHTIME - gives you $50 off the first year of charges,
TECHTIME20IP - gives you $20 off the first years charges plus a free unique IP for life (good for anonymous FTP, SSL and other things), and
TECHTIME30DOMAIN - gives you $30 off the first year of charges plus a free domain registration for life.

So have at it - and if you don't like them they have a 97 day no questions asked full refund policy.

One other thing I love about DreamHost - if you're a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization they will give you completely free hosting forever - and not just the lowest plan, but the top of the line plan with all the options which is a really nice thing for non-profits. Sure they get a tax write off for doing that, but I've yet to find any other hosting company that has such an offer.

If you have any questions about DreamHost just ask them as a comment and I'll do my best to answer them.

www.DreamHost.com

How to copy and paste between Google's "My map" mashups

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 10:54:00 +0000

I've recently been having a lot of fun with Google's My Map DIY mashups. They really have made it dead simple to create your very own mashup, and even easier to embed them into your website. Honestly they are lot of fun and never fail to impress your average web user, I've lost track of the number of times people asked me how I did it. Compared to the old "edit in Google Earth", export, save to your website and hack up your own Javascript its a doddle!

However a couple of esential features are still missing from "My Maps" - the ability to copy a map, and the ability to import one map into another - essentially a "copy and paste" of information. This was bugging me because I have a bunch of maps of the district where I live and I was getting tired of trying to reproduce the non-trivial boundary of that district. Plus within it there are a couple of designated historic districts that I would also like to show in several places, again they have non-trivial boundaries.

Fortunately today I figured out how to do this and although not completely straight forward it is relatively easy. So here goes:

To copy a map go to your My Maps tab, select the map and locate the "View in GoogleEarth" link at the top right of the map, this is visible in both viewing and edit mode - and is available to anyone who has access to the map, not just collaborators. When you click on the link you should get the option to open it in GoogleEarth or save it (unless you don't have GE installed, in which case you'll probably be asked to save it or locate an app to open it with). Save it to a file - the extension should be ".kml"

Congratulations you have just exported your map to an XML format that can be re-imported to both Google Maps and Google Earth. And if you want you can open it with a text editor and modify the text, placemark names etc. manually.

To complete the copying of the map simply create a new map in Google Maps and then select the "Import" link. You will then get a popup asking you to either find the file on your hard-drive or to enter a URL to read a kml file from. It turns out that the hard-drive option doesn't work at the moment, or at least works only intermittently. I wasn't able to make it work at all. The workaround is to copy the kml file to a webserver somewhere that you have access to and then enter that URL when you attempt the import. If you still get an error then your webserver is probably not sending the correct MIMETYPE information for the file - this identifies its data type to the Google import code. Fortunately my hosting company already has the correct mimetype information on their servers, but you may not be so lucky. In which case visit this Google page for information on how to fix that. You may also have to consult your hosting company (if you are not self-hosted) to ask them how to add the mimetypes specified by Google.

So, once you have imported your content you should have a clone of the original map - which unfortunately exposes another bug which is when you import .kml file it also imports the map name from the .kml file and removes any map description you have already entered. So now click "Save" to save the map and you will see you have two maps with identical names. You will have to go and re-edit one of them to set the new name and decription.

To paste content from map to another e.g. Map A to Map B it is basically the same process except you copy the first map A to "Copy of Map A", then edit the copy to remove any unwanted content, then export "Copy of Map A", select "Map B", edit it and then select the import link. Enter the URL you saved "Copy of Map A" as and make sure you do not to click the "overwrite" option or you will erase all your "Map B" contents! Once again you will hit the bug that Map B will change its name and lose its description - even though it looks like it is okay before you hit "Save". So if you have any non-trivial description text first copy that text to somewhere (via Ctrl-C to the paste buffer, or to another file), then hit "Save". Google Maps will now list two maps called "Copy of Map A" - select the one that contains all the content you need, edit it and change the map name and insert the original description. Click "Save" and you are done!

While using the My Maps feature of Google Maps you will probably spot that you can display several maps overlaid on top of each other - just check the left hand box beside each one. But when you select view in Google Earth or "Link to this page" you will only get data or a view of a single map - the one that is currently highlighted in the map list on the left side. This is a shame but you can instead use the copy-paste method I described to merge several maps into one uber-map and link to that or export all the data for users to see in Google Earth. Hopefully Google will eventually update their mashups to include these features.

There may be a way to get around the overwriting of the map name and description by editing the .kml file before importing. Another solution may be to import the kml file into Google Earth and export it as a kmz file - I haven't tried this yet but will post update if I do. However the workaround for this bug isn't that hard just so long as you remember to make a copy of the map description that you are importing into. If in doubt use the "Copy map" procedure to make a backup copy first before you start importing stuff!

Napster jacks up subscription prices

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 00:20:00 +0000

As if by magic just after posting about how good Napster was at only $10 a month they sent me an email announcing they are putting their subscription rate up from $9.95 to $12.95 a month at the end of January. Grrrrr! There is no comment about the mobile device support option which is usually $5 a month extra, but that could be because I don't have it as an option.

You can lock in another year at the old rate with a code (see below) but what happens if they got bust before the end of the year? Last I heard they weren't exactly doing well financially - at least not making a healthy profit. I'm pretty sure, in the event one of the other subscription services would probably snap them up for a customer base and honor current subscriptions - but I'm not sure I want to take that chance.

Anyway, here is the email they are sending out to current members...

Dear Member,
We wanted to let you know about an important pricing change to your Napster membership.
For the first time in over four years, we are increasing the Napster monthly subscription fee from $9.95 to $12.95. This change will take place beginning on January 30, 2008. As a valued member, we would like to extend a special offer to keep your existing monthly rate.
If you switch to an annual subscription now, you can lock in your existing rate of $9.95 per month. With this special offer, you will be billed $119.40 – a $36 savings over the new monthly rate – for a full year of Napster.
To take advantage of this special offer, follow these simple steps:
1. Go to home.napster.com
2. Sign in to your Napster account using the "Sign In" link in the top menu bar
3. Click on "My Account" in the top menu bar, then click on the "Napster Cards and Codes" area
4. Enter promo code NAPSYEAR8 and click on the "Submit" button
5. Confirm your account information and click on the "Submit" button
Now you can continue enjoying the world's largest online music catalog of over 5 million songs and all the great benefits of your Napster subscription at the same great price. Plus, every week we're adding new music, playlists, videos, radio stations, and continually adding new features and enhancements to make Napster even better.
We value you as a customer and thank you for your ongoing support. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us by going to www.napster.com/support.
Sincerely,
The Napster Team

Update: I went to Digg and found someone had also just posted about this along with some background information on Napster - at current burn rate they only have 18 months left and their CEO just resigned. See Napster Raising Prices. Is it Going Out of Business?

Update 2: As of their November 1st press release Napster state they have 750,000 subscribers - lets see what the February 1st release says. My guess is revenue will be up because of people doing the one year buy in and that will look good for their cash flow too, but at the expense of revenue in future quarters. It will also be at the expense of subscribers since clearly a lot of people are calling up to cancel. My guess is they will lose at least 10% which I suppose they are guessing will be more than compensated for by the 30% price hike.

So it will be extremely interesting to see what happens with their subscriber numbers in the next two reports - the February one may not reflect changes from this month depending on their reporting "tactics" (they might report the max during the quarter or something like that). But by the May report we'll definitely know if their strategy worked or backfired badly. It could also be that they are trying to pump up this next earnings release to boost their stock price and make them look like a better target for acquisition.

Napster, DRM and subscription music

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 08:34:00 +0000

I've blogged about Napster several times before (just use the search box to find the posts) and clearly it was a bit of a love hate relationship. Love the concept, hated - or at least was frustrated with - the implementation. Well I have to say that as of the 4.1 version which came out a month or two ago it seems Napster really nailed it. Granted I don't use Napster from within Windows Media Player, but the standalone player really seems to work pretty flawlessly now and I love the new "automix" feature. Click any track you are browsing or listening - or a selection of several tracks - then select "Automix" and Napster pulls a really decent selection of other tracks as a play list. So far I've found it spot on and it has introduced me to loads of new artists based on my existing tastes. This is so much easier than manually browsing the "you might also like" selections for each artist and sampling tracks from them. I'm not sure quite what the algorithm is, but it does seem to work well for me.

Anyway, I just read an article on Wired about the author dropping all his subscription music services. Being a journalist who gets to write off such subscriptions as an expense it is mostly about making a statement - and lets him write and article on the statement at the same time. The interesting thing is reading all the comments from DRM h8ters dissing all the comments saying that subscription services are a good thing. For a short while I just didn't understand their point - they just don't understand the value of a subscription service and all they want to do is own music. But who could possibly afford to own all the tracks I listen to via Napster, it would cost a flipping fortune compared to my measly $10 a month subscription (which works for three computers and online from any web browser). And all those 30 second sampling limits the pay-per-track services have - even those DRM free services - that totally sucks. I'm supposed to by something based on listening to 1/6th or less of it, and usually a reasonably randomly chosen part at that. No way!

I mean the subscription service is a well established thing - I'm sure most of these people pay for cable at home so they really should understand the concept. And yet cable is so much more limited as a subscription service than Napster - you don't get to watch stuff when you want to unless you pay for a DVR - which is usually another subscription fee - and you don't really get to pick and choose what you see, the selection is so limited and filtered by advertising and marketing execs who decide what will be profitable for them based on what they think you want to see. I don't subscribe to cable, but if it worked like Napster I probably would, but then Comca$t would want to charge me at least $10 a day for that, probably much more.

Anyway just as I got to writing this I realized it - the DRM haters posting about subscription services sucking (I'll spare you the l33t speak this time) just do all their music sampling the old fashioned way - downloading it from file sharing services, illegally. Because you know, DRM sucks so you have to stick to the man until he gets it by downloading illegally. If you're doing that you can download all you want, listen to all you want, pay nothing and save a bundle. Given that as a modus operandi I guess, yes, DRM must suck. If you really want to feel good about your downloading habits you can "sample" all you want and then buy a track or two from one of the DRM free pay-per-track services like Amazon. If you spend $10 a month on tracks then what is the difference?

Beats me - but tell you what, why not just pay $10 a month for the rest of your life and have access to pretty much everything you want 100% legally and have all the benefits of a service equivalent to last.fm The way I see it $10 a month is $120 a year, or $1200 every ten years or maybe $6000 in my music buying lifetime. I've proably already spent $6000 on CDs in my lifetime and guess what - 90% of them I don't listen to anyway now because my tastes have changed.

To me buying music is just like buying DVDs - why bother, just when you have amazed an awesome and expensive collection of DVDs they change the frigging format for something better and you have to start all over again. I bought about 50 DVDs before I realized that - a cool $1000 at least. Now I just pay NetFlix my $15 a month or whatever it is and I can have pretty much any DVD there is available in my mailbox within 2 days, sometimes less. And you know what - when I bought DVDs I still rented movies from rental stores and that cost me a fortune and was a big hassle. The money I spent on DVDs and rentals would have paid for at least my first 5 years of NetFlix subscriptions - doh! And you know if I really, really, really like something I can still buy it - but you know in the three years I've been doing Netflix that has never happened. And with HD DVD out now I'm really glad it didn't, what a waste any purchase in that time would have been.

So all you DRM haters, open your minds. Do you listen to radio? Do you watch cable? Imagine the two combined with a library of almost everything you ever wanted to listen to. Now imagine that available all the time, on several computers, on your digital audio player, and streamed from any browser. Think about how much Comcast charges you for their piss-poor selection of stuff and divide that by 10 - there, you have Napster. If you don't think it is worth it then so be it - I don't think you'll ever get it. But I know you probably spend more on coffee or beer a month than I'll ever do for music - so ya boo sucks to you! Mohahahahaahaa!

You'll just need to put this chipset on your mobo...

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 09:41:00 +0000

I just read an interesting article that reveals the planned Q2 2008 release of the G45 chipset with its integrated GMA-X4500 graphics will relieve all the woes I've had thus far with my G33/GMA-3100 system. As I mentioned before it will deliver considerable bang for the buck performance wise, but it will also include full HDCP encryption support for HD-DVD and BluRay, plenty of MPEG2, VC-1 and H.264 codec, and support for HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort - all without additional hardware - so hopefully all mobos will have those connections and features and I wont be boxed into a corner picking a mobo with a crippled 16X PCIe slot. Naturally G45 will also deliver PCIe 2.0 so it looks to me like it will bring compatibility for a long time to come - the soon to be released G35 and then G43 based boards just wont be worth a look in.

The only question I have left is what CPUs will run with G45 - naturally it will include the new (as now) 45nm chips, but what about the next rev of the architecture Nehalem? And if it supports them what about the next die shrink beyond that? From all I've read I think I'll be happy if I get Nehalem support since it should bring a lot of benefits especially for the quad-core processor I've been hankering after, all with the proven lower power usage of 45nm.

UPDATE: according to an article in "The Register", G45 will use the ICH10 Southbridge which is required by the QuickPath interconnect of Nehalem processors. That sounds hopeful to me , althought its not clear if the QP interconnect is something else that a mobo needs or it is integrated with the processor. Anyway bring it on - something to look forward to in six months time (because I'm not expecting to see it before Q3 given what happened with G35 roll-out!)

The only thing TSA should screen for is bad attitude

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 08:42:00 +0000

Having spent a while last week hand building some loud speakers from wire, glue, paper (or plastic) and some magnets it occurred to me that there are many other things you could easily hand build from basically unrecognizable parts. While I was winding the speaker coils with wire laid out across the floor I started thinking about tasers or some other high voltage potentially lethal weapon made from little more than basic electronic components you might find in say, a laptop, and a minimum of the "sharp pointy" or "volatile explodey" type stuff TSA is usually looking for.

Not that I have any intention to take stuff on a plane but I'm constantly amazed at how easy such things could be done, and how TSA is basically like a dog chasing a gopher from hole to hole, and that homeland security is really just a myth, albeit a very expensive myth, put there to make us feel better.

No really what TSA need to be scanning for is bad attitude - they let air marshals and pilots on board with guns - what they did there is carefully screen those holders for bad attitude. Then they could let all the guns, knives, homemade weapons and tasers on board and no one would ever use them because they don't have bad attitude - heck we could even let little old ladies take knitting needles back on planes again!

Even then it is possible some person could devote his/her life to attaining a position of trust and then do something bad. There's not a lot you can do about that - supposedly trusted people go bad and do bad stuff all the time, heck sometimes it is not even a conscious act, they just go crazy.

In the mean time while they are inventing the "bad attitude" scanner (see "The Truth Machine" for a fictional study of effectively the same device) perhaps they should just arm everyone, or send everyone naked, or send everyone anesthetized - you get to choose.

Attachment Deficiency Disorder

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 19:14:00 +0000

Most people know A.D.D. as "attention deficit disorder" which plagues our additive and sugar addled teens and pre-teens leading to ad-breaks every three minutes lest we get bored, and no child left phoneless lest they forget who their friends are and presumably how to talk.

However to me A.D.D. actually stands for Attachment Deficiency Disorder which is the problem of sending an email mentioning attachments, but forgetting to attach them. Sometimes you realize right after hitting send, as I did just now and can take corrective action so you don't look quite a dumb. Other times it'll take a day or more for someone to get back to you before you realize. Then we have to suffer the excuses of clueless senders like "well your virus filter must have removed them", "they must be in your spam folder", or just plain denial followed by "I'll send them again for you..." Yeah right. I've even seen people take so much time blathering on with excuses or apologies that they send the email a second time without the attachment... The most heinous case would be the intentional "see my attached report on XYZ" sent minutes before you leave on vacation to the rain forest of Borneo with the report deliberately not attached. Maybe it is just my evil procrastinating mind that could think of such an example, but I'm sure it happens...

Granted it is an easy mistake - I probably do it about one quarter of the time when I send emails with attachments, and I always try to be careful and do attachments first... But sometimes I just suffer from that other A.D.D. and get too engrossed in writing the email to remember the attachments.

My personal belief is there will be a lot of fans for the first email client to add a feature to check for the "attachment", "attached photos", "attached invoice" etc. in the email and warn you if you don't attach one (before sending of course). It really can't be that hard can it?

Another twisty maze of Windows error messages

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 23:21:00 +0000

UPDATE: 8/20/2008 - finally after eight months it seems the latest G33 drivers from Intel have fixed this problem for me, or at least I think that is what did it. While investigating some other issues (actually HD audio support of the new G45 boards) I discovered that there were new Realtek ALC889A audio drivers. Of course I've since learned that those have nothing to do digital output, only analog out and analog in. But while I was looking at those I noticed there were new G33 drivers on the Intel site. Although the 14.34.4.4964 release notes say nothing about HDMI issues I installed those - but I think actually installing the Realtek drivers also installed the latest Intel HD Audio drivers - my control panel says its Intel HD Audio HDMI 5.10.0.1044 (6/13/2008) - so I think I got them one way or the other. Anyway initially there appeared to be no change in Netflix behavior - same old error when I went to digital output path (HDCP capable DVI), but then I tried a trick for a similar problem suggested in a thread at AVS Forum which is to set speakers to stereo in the control panel. I did this, tweaked some other settings and restarted IE and the Netflix player - low and behold it worked, and kept playing. I then went back and set my speakers to 5.1 again, untweaked the other settings I'd messed with and rebooted and it still worked. As far as I can tell changing the speaker setting must have reset something and cause Windows Media Player to get past its remembered DRM blockage - but I'm pretty sure the new driver update from Intel was what really allowed things to work. If anyone reads this and needs to compare settings of my working system I'll be happy to post them.

So yesterday it is Christmas day and after an unusually quite day I'm looking for something to watch, having running out of NetFlix movies I decided to bust out the NetFlix "Watch Now" option. I've used this before on my old system and it was okay - had a few problems with connectivity and also my system new could keep up with full screen mode. So with great expectations I pick out "Helvetica" a quirky documentary about the Helvetica font (actually if you have any interest in design its pretty darned interesting). After checking the first couple of minutes the quality looks great - better than DVD even, and full screen works a charm. So I invite my gf over and we sit down to watch.

10 minutes into it "boom". Well not literally "boom", but up there on the screen is an error message saying "Windows Meida Player has experienced an error" and goes on to give the details "WMPError (C00D1052) Windows Media Player cannot play the protected file. The player detected that the connection to your hardware might not be secure."

This immediately smacks of trying to get protected content over a non-HDCP capable link. But I figure I'm only using DVI and I thought DVI doesn't do HDCP so why would this be a problem - I mean I used DVI before on my old system and didn't have this problem. I just figured I would automatically get lower quality video without HDCP if the link wasn't capable. Anyway I try playing the movie again and this time it fails after a few seconds of playback. Then I try looking at the NetFlix link for information and that has nothing about this error or HDCP. It also seems to have no way to electronically file a bug report, only a phone number. I call the number not expecting anything - it is Christmas after all, but it does say until 2am EST so what the heck. It answers after the first ring but I end up with hold music for several minutes and give up.

Next day (today) I start Googling the error - turns out the ONLY page mentioning C00D1052 is a blog post from someone early in 2007 saying they got the error but could find nothing on Google. Now I guess there is on more page... this one. There's a few more links with Microsoft search, none of them indicating what the bug is, but interestingly this error code doesn't even appear on their support site. There's a C00D1053 but no 1052. Nada, zip, zilch - what the heck happened and am I cursed or what?

So I call up NetFlix and within seconds I'm talking to a very helpful support guy - there's no escalation required, he knows his stuff, isn't reading from a script and can answer any questions I ask. He gets me to bring up dxdiag and verify my display adapter and driver versions. Then he asks me to do a drmreset which involves downloading a tool from the NetFlix site. At the time I say that this makes sense because I migrated my system over to a new motherboard - writing this I realize that wasn't the case and hence I'd never used NetFlix on this computer image before.

Anyway I do the reset - it fails the first time and I have to reboot. Then I try again and it succeeds. So we try playing video and it has me install some DRM code before playing but then I get green flashing. The tech has me adjust some Windows Media player display settings to disable the video mixing render (he knows exactly where to send me) and then we try again. Boom! I get a new error message - this time is C00D11B1. So the tech has me do the reset operation again and this time it works first time (no reboot) but on trying to play content again I still get the same error.

Eventually the tech informs me that I probably do need either an HDCP capable monitor, to find a way to disable HDCP over DVI via some adapter specific configuration which understandably he couldn't help me with, or to watch the movie via an RGB connection, not DVI. Begrudgingly I agree to try RGB and hang up - although I have to say I was very impressed with the NetFlix tech support experience especially considering I wasn't transfered a single time. Maybe over the holidays they have their own tech guys answering phones directly and I just got lucky?

So I went and tried looking at my GMA-3100 settings and couldn't find anything about disabling HDCP, in fact there is no mention of it, just standard stuff for single vs dual monitor modes. Anyway I plug in the RGB cable and select Twin View mode, switch my monitor to RGB input and start watching the movie again. This time it plays although the quality is noticeably more blocky. It looks like I got the lower quality version of the video this time - after about 10 minutes I switch the monitor to DVI and the video looks the same and keeps playing. After watching the entire thing I try unpluging the RGB cable and playing again - the quality is high again but after a minute or so the C00D11B1 error appears again. So it definitely looks like having RGB monitor output forces the Windows media player to disable HDCP and give me the lower quality unprotected media even though I can switch to DVI afterwards. At least this is a workaround.

But... I'm still puzzled as to why it is trying to give me the HDCP protect stuff in the first place. My Dell 2407WFP supposedly isn't HDCP capable - well I assumed that because I thought HDCP required HDMI. I do some Googling and quickly find that several threads on Dells support forums stating that it is HDCP capable - you can do it over DVI and all the way up to 1080p. But then I look at my G33M-S2H mobo and according to its specs it only does HDCP over the HDMI output, not the DVI output. But it has a note that it can't yet do BluRay/HD-DVD over HDMI due to driver limitations. So really now I'm still wondering what the problem is... is there a driver problem, a cable problem, a resolution problem or some other setting I didn't set or maybe just a plain old bug?

To be sure I've put in an order for an HDMI to DVI cable from NewEgg - there's a nice 10' Rosewill 1080p capable one for only $12 and being 10' it will save me using an extension on my current DVI cable (hmmm, maybe that is the problem?). In the mean time I'm hoping this information may be of information to anyone else who gets the obscure and so far undocumented Windows media player error C00D1052 - I feel honored to be the first to post any information about it, including Microsoft!

UPDATE: I've started to notice hits from web searches on the ellusive C00D1052 and I wish I had some solution by now. Unfortunately my HDMI to DVI cable arrived and had no effect at all - the error C00D11B1 came up right away from the NetFlix player. So I'm back to concluding it is some Windows or driver bug. Bugger!

And will the true culprit please stand up...

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:35:00 +0000

I'm pretty sure I just finished debugging a really bizarre audio problem with my computer based home theater system that was starting to drive my and my gal batty. We started to get audio dropouts while watching TV - they were only a few seconds but were happening about once a minute. I have a pretty high tolerance for such things, knowing that eventually I'll figure it out, but my gal quickly gets really irritated and blaming things - tech that doesn't work is like an employee that doesn't work - she just wants to fix it or fire it.

I checked the obvious things - like some other process kicking in every minute and ruled that out. I also noticed if I paused TV playback and waited for a few seconds and continued it was fine - so it wasn't the content, it really was some period of no audio. Since I recently built a new computer that was the first culprit my gal was blaming - but I knew it had been working for at least a month with no problems at all. Yeah it could be something gone bad, but I didn't think so. "You've got a driver problem", she proclaimed. Yes, I had done a lot of fiddling with drivers, especially related to my SATA ACHI issues, and had probably dropped in a new audio driver along the way to. But this problem hadn't started right after I did it - it chose to show up a couple of weeks later. Still I duly upgraded to the very latest 1.83 drivers from Realtek and low and behold the problem was still there. Then I downgraded to the older version that was included with the system disk and still on the Gigabyte site. Nope, that didn't fix it.

Now today I finally had another clue - I went to watch some TV and audio was dropping out almost every 10 seconds, now this was really irritating! Then I discovered it wasn't just TV audio, it was any audio. Even if I shut down everything else on the system and played some music with Windows Media Player the problem was still there. Hmmmm, sounds like a big clue to me.

After much futile fiddling with audio settings I resolved to solve the problem once and for all.
I took another try at shutting down everything else on the system, including every non-essential service and that made no difference, but there was nary a blip on the performance during the outages. It really didn't seem to be process related, could still be a driver problem though, but it just seemed odd that no one else was having this problem.

So I got some headphones out and plugged them in - it took me a while to figure out how that works with this new fangled HD-Audio stuff Windows uses, but eventually I got music over the 'phones and waited. Sure enough when the audio from my amp went out the headphones were still going strong. So then I raced upstairs and got my computer speakers from there and plugged them in the back - same experience. So it really seemed like a digital audio path only problem because my normal amp is hooked up to the computer via the optical TOSlink for SPDIF output. I checked the optical connections at each end - it seemed unlikely there was a problem, these cables are just a piece of clear plastic (not glass fiber as you might imagine). Nope, that didn't fix it either.

So then I began to think it was my Samsung HT-DM150 amp which is now about 5 years old but has been very reliable. Of course I've been longing to replace it because it doesn't have discrete inputs, only the digital input and ultimately I want something that can handle HDMI for high def audio (since TOSLink is really crippled in terms of bandwidth - fortunately those DTS and Dolby Digital streams are highly compressed to fit down it).

My theory was there was something wrong with the digital path so I should find another digital signal source to throw at the amp - if that was okay then I'd have to blame my computer instead and start begging Realtek to find a cure, which I'm sure could take ages, long enough that I'd be forced to install the accursed Creative sound card I'd just gladly left behind in my old system (although to their credit it did seem like after 5 years they finally got some decent drivers for it!).

Anyway as I was fishing around the back of my amp I noticed it had a fan - I'd seen it when I bought it and never thought much of it, I didn't recall ever hearing it running so it didn't bother me. Now when I looked with a flashlight I could see it definitely wasn't running and yes, sure enough the unit was pretty toasty. In fact when I checked the top surface it was hot, too hot. Not burning hot but very hot. So I removed the shelf about it in my rack and went looking for that other digital audio source. The music kept dropping out as I worked and I was just getting close to having the other audio source working when bingo - no more dropouts. It had taken about 10 minutes but the music was now definitely playing uninterrupted. The player didn't seem that much cooler yet but I know it only takes a small change to put a circuit back within operating range.

So, here is my theory - the amp was getting so hot that the clock circuit got out of tolerance and could no longer stay in sync with the incoming 48khz data stream - the hotter it got the quicker it went out of sync. It would then resync and then carry on. I guess that it could also be some digital processor crapping out and resetting but I think the would probably have designed the entire system to shut down before that happened. Now I have no idea how long the fan hasn't been working but I went and did some googling and quickly found that a bunch of people were complaining about fan and overheating problems in early production units. I'm not sure if that included mine but I could easily imagine a fan might fail in five years.

Why did it just start happening? Well it could have been the fan failing - or it could be that in the last few weeks we've been having our heater on and that blows hot air right by where the amp is, and also I've been home more during the day so the amp has been on vs. in standby much more which gives it plenty of time to warm up.

Anyway, I moved the shelf up in my rack to give a clear three inches above the amp and hopefully that will let it stay cool enough until I can find a replacement fan. Since the fan is external - bolted onto the back in a box it shouldn't be hard to make one with computer components if necessary, assuming the system is still output voltage to turn it on since it could actually be a sensor that has failed.

So this all goes to show, you shouldn't always blame the computer for problems, especially when audio is concerned.

More writing on the wall for Microsoft

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 09:05:00 +0000

My friends at Microsoft probably wont agree but news like this is really bad news for them. I mean who cares about a few million Norwegians mandating use of open document formats, what about the other 99,9% of us on this planet? Well I think the important thing is that Norway is definitely an innovator in Europe and I expect it will now only be a matter of time before the EU itself (yes, I know Norway is not an EU member) follows suit. That will bring a mandate to member states with 500 million or so people and 30 percent or more of the worlds GDP (and going ever higher as the dollar declines in value!)

Considering how the Europeans successfully prevailed against Microsoft in their anti-trust lawsuits unlike the USA which largely failed I really don't think they will think twice about following such a mandate. Yes it will cost lots of money to enact and follow through, yes it will be a major headache and generate mountains of paperwork for eurocrats but that is exactly the kind of thing they love. And don't imagine for a moment that once Europe has embraced open formats that Asia will far behind.

Really I find it hard to imagine that in 10 years time, or even less, Microsofts flagship office suite will be using its proprietary formats any more. Given that they have finally started spewing out PDF files can it really be that long before they start reading and writing ODF files? At that point the battle is over really because it will be harder and harder for die hard Microsoft users to ignore the open source alternatives like OpenOffice. Long before then most home users will have realized they don't need to shell out $200 or more to edit a Word document, and once home users realize that they will take that knowledge to work with them too and question Office dependency there too.

Microsoft is clearly struggling hard to create deep layers of value-add to their proprietary formats with stuff like Office Live and SharePoint - none of which will embrace non-Microsoft formats any time soon. However such online collaboration apps are exactly the field that Google and others are chasing after. And you can only go so far in their development before you start treading on the tails of online app suites like Salesforce.com and other more generic business process apps - areas of which Microsoft holds a much smaller share, if any.

So really I see this Norway announcement as hugely significant and will be watching closely for the next country to follow suit.

Laptop spares priced not to sell

noreply@blogger.com (The Editor) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 08:11:00 +0000

I just finished repairing an Inspiron 8500 laptop that had burned out its graphics card. As best I could tell repeated overheating of the graphics memory lead to it failing such that on boot they would see random patterns of colors all over the screen.

The owner was lucky they knew me because a round trip to Dell would have cost at least $200 -
in fact they don't even list the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 card any more, but a suggested alternative nVidia card starts at $150. That was pretty much the standard price for a replacement graphics card, infact many places were $200 or more. By the time you add the cost to get it installed you're probably looking at $250 to $300 - at which point you might as well consider a new laptop.

As it turned out I was able to find a replacement on eBay for $45 (thank you Sunshine Express for the working part and super fast turn around shipping). With shipping and my installation fee it will only cost them $100 and the laptop was back in their hands in less than a week. With the money they saved I was at it I was able to get them some new memory for $40 doubling the capacity to 512Mb (a very worthwhile improvement for XP!). I was also able to find a neat free utility called i8kfan by someone in Germany who obviously also thought Dells BIOS settings for the Inspiron fans were very risque. If you have an Inspiron laptop you really should check out this little wonder, it does a great job of keeping your CPU and GPU cool and is very flexible - I'm hoping my client wont be coming back again to replace their graphics card.

Anyway, the point of this post is that most laptop spares online are priced ridiculously high relative to the current cost of replacement, it is a wonder that anyone ever sells any of them. So eBay is a great resource since there are many true recycled parts out there for sale that are perfectly good. Okay you are going to occasionally get a dud, or have to deal with a bad eBayer, but by and large it is probably the biggest thing between you and buying a brand new computer each time something fails. Your only other alternative is an expensive service contract with the manufacturer which by and large will cost you as much if not more than case by case repair (unless you get a real lemon!). Then again I guess not everyone is lucky enough to know me for repairing their computers - it would be very interesting to know what the Geek Squad or some other repairer would have made of their computer.