Technology

Sometimes you just have to roll your eyes at phone company stupidity. I'm thinking of the sort of thing like when AT&T started sending huge 45 page itemized bills to iPhone customers even though they had an unlimited data plan.

This month's "Where Did We Hide the Clue?" award goes to Sprint PCS.

I use Sprint PCS for my mobile phone service. Sprint recently moved to a new portal and forced me to re-register. Nearly an entire month after creating a new login, I got an email from Sprint with an RTF-formatted word processing attachment saying:

I've been test driving an HD-DVD high definition video disc player this past week. I wasn't planning to go HD, but it turns out the HD-DVD player fell into my lap not a week after the beloved Panasonic DVD-RP62 finally gave out.

Prior to the test, I was unenthused about HD. After the test, little has changed.

As you may know, we are in the midst of a HD-DVD versus Blu-ray format war. The cautious person is advised to stay off the battlefield. If you think otherwise, ask the poor sods who bought into Betamax during the VCR format wars.

Also, the Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) functions proved as bothersome as I feared. All the things you hate about DVD are here—only worse. You can't skip unskipable content. Can't make backups. Won't play on my Linux computer. Can't do screenshots.

My cell phone is an old Samsung SPH-i500 smart phone. I like it a lot in spite of its deficiencies—which are startlingly significant. I've been watching for a replacement, but so far I haven't found it.

Here is why my current phone is so awesome:

• It has smartphone functionality and Internet capability.
• It runs PalmOS, which is an open platform for developers and has a rich software ecosystem.
• I can sync the contacts and calendar to my Linux desktop.
• My phone looks and feels and works like a phone, not a brick.
• It uses the Palm Graffiti system so I do data entry with a stylus, not one of those micro keyboards.

Here is what's so awful about it:

• The SMS is crippled. It receives text messages but doesn't tell you who the messages are from. It can't send SMS at all (without purchasing add-on software).
• It's a WAP web browser, not full HTML.
• PalmOS is a dead product.
• No Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
• My phone is five year old technology. All the cool kids laugh at me when they see it.

A current Business Week article notes the growing pressure to open the iPhone.

William Hurley loves his iPhone. But he'd love it even more if he could write software for it.

He's not alone. Hundreds of programmers showed up at an iPhone event organized by Hurley, an executive at software maker BMC (BMC), even though Apple hasn't released the source code they need to exploit the device. That was in July, and the criticism of Apple's refusal to open the iPhone hasn't died down.

Austinites better know William Hurley as whurley, an organizing force behind events such as the local Bar Camp.

Me, I'm waiting for a truly open platform before I give up my Palm-based phone. I've been keeping an eye on the Neo 1973 phone, currently released in an interim developer version.

Read the entire Business Week article here: Will Apple Open the iPhone?

I'm working from home today. Earlier in the week, I got a wild hair to buy a pile of CDs from Amazon. I've done that a couple of times since I unloaded my vinyl on Craig's List. I find myself, in equal measure, replacing missed favorites and acquiring classics that escaped my collection. So I've been multitasking between my day work and the occasional trip to the living room to switch a CD in the ripping tray.

Somehow, this whole process is making me feel dated and archaic. Little discs of aluminum—how precious!

It's clear that the days of CD purchasing, let alone CD ripping are numbered. Some recent articles in the news suggest the process is hastening.

First, there is the big, recent news that EMI is going to allow their catalog onto iTunes with higher fidelity and no DRM, albiet at a higher price. I'm unwilling to purchase digital music that's licensed and tethered to a device. This, suddenly, makes things interesting. I'd be curious to hear how the higher fidelity recordings (256-bit AAC) compare to the (FLAC) lossless compression I'm using. And I'd need a web-based iTunes store, so I can access it from my Linux workstation. If those happen, I'll be ready to start buying digital downloads instead of the aluminum discs.

Then, there is this op-ed in the Times that lays out just how bad and stupid the music industry is being.

The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it's not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.

The final thing, not related to CD marketing but to general music business stupidity, is the new royalty scheme that threatens independent net-based radio. This is one of the last remaining ways for me to discover new music. I think once that's gone, it's game over.

All this makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing still buying and ripping CDs. What's the sense when the music enjoyment comes wrapped in such a crappy experience?

5:15pm update: Christopher Beam at Slate weighs in on the 256-bit AAC issue and suggests it's mostly not noticable. I'll believe it when I hear it. Sure, it probably makes little difference when you are listening on a portable player with $12 ear buds. I want digital tracks that are good enough to play on my home stereo.

I'm sorry to see that AMD has abandoned the PIC—the Personal Internet Communicator. It's an appliance computer: just add keyboard, display, and network and you have a nice Internet terminal. My first exposure to the PIC was a year ago, in the shelter for Hurricane Katrina evacuees. AMD generously donated dozens of the devices, which we used as Internet terminals. I was impressed at the ruggedness of the devices.

I was not, however, as impressed with the ruggedness of the Windows/CE operating system. It seemed like reboots were too frequent.

Which leads me to the reasons why the PIC may have failed.

The first problem is that the PIC was a closed platform. That made it hostile to open source development.The PIC had a locked down BIOS, which prevented alternate operating systems, such as Linux, from being used. It was married to Windows/CE (abbreviated "Win/CE", pronounced "wince"). Accordingly, there was never much interest in developing interesting applications for the device.

The second problem was AMD's refusal to market within the United States. They limited sales to overseas markets, probably for fear of cannibalizing PC sales. There was some talk late last year about finally trying to enter the US market through Radio Shak. Still, it's hard to understand how the PIC could be considered competitive when it's being sold at about the same price as a low-end E-Machines PC.

Either of these alone would put a damper on the product. In combination, however, they ensured that no robust community would form around the device. Compare this to the Linksys WRT-54GL router, which has become a platform for all sorts of exciting community development. So much, in fact, that when Linksys designed a cost-reduced version of the router, they still maintained production of the community hackable version.

The PIC is a really cute device, and I could have imagined all sorts of cool things people might have done with them, if they had only been given a chance.

The final problem, and perhaps really the most fatal one, is the price/performance of the device didn't measure up. The unit cost of $250 is hard to justify for a low-low-low end headless computer. It seems to me that you'd need get it down to half that, before there was significant uptake. Compare this, for instance, to the OLPC project, which is shooting for $100 price per laptop (in quantity).

In the end, it was an awfully cute device, but there were a number of problems that kept it from living up to its potential.

(There is a Slashdot thread on this topic.)

According to the Austin Business Journal, local company Forgent Networks has been threatened with delisting from the NASDAQ. Forgent's main product is lawsuits: threatening people who use standard JPEG image technology. Earlier this year, the US Patent and Trademark Office was convinced to look into the validity of the Forgent patent, and has opened up a review. If overturned (please please please), the anti-innovative company will lose its main business. Thus, the stock price has crashed, leading to the delisting notice.

Last night, while stumbling around Fry's, I noticed they have a small HD-DVD section. I was not a fan of the format to begin with. Now, I'm even less so.

The first thing that surprised me was the prices. The movies cost in the range of $25-50. That's insane, nobody is going to pay that sort of money per unit for their movie collection. Sure, back in the day I bough a few "Mobile Fidelity Sound Studio" albums (high priced specially pressed vinyl records), but I didn't need to buy special record player to hear them.

I guess they feel that early adopters are less price sensitive, but these prices sure do discourage people from becoming early adopters. The volume of these movies is going to be so small initially, the studios are almost certainly going to lose money, and they probably wouldn't lose that much more if the price was a buck. Prices these high won't help them to prevent losses, but they sure will help prevent sales.

But, hey, who wouldn't jump at the chance to pay $35 to own The Chronicles of Riddick.

Which brings me to the second problem: the selection is almost exactly not what you want. I think the early adopters would want stunning eye candy, such as Star Wars (Fox) and The Matrix (Warner Bros.). Instead you get stuff like Blazing Saddles (Warner Bros.), which while one of the ten most important movies ever made ("Work...work...work...hello boys!"), I can't imagine it benefits from the HD format.

There is so much technically wrong with the high def formats to begin with. The price tag is just icing on the shitpile. I don't think I'll be upgrading my DVD collection to HD anytime soon.

For more info, here is a recent Ars Technica article on HD-DVD movie prices.

I did an emergency system upgrade of chinacat, my main workstation (Ubuntu Linux 6.06 Dapper Drake) this weekend. Where "emergency" means I was so pressed that I drove down to Fry's to buy parts instead of ordering them online.

I built chinacat two years ago next month. It was a Gigabyte GA-K8VT800 motherboard with an AMD Athlon 64 2800+ Newcastle (1.8GHz) processor. The motherboard was an early Via K8T800 board, and it had some troubling quirks. The most troubling problem was that it would lockup overnight when populated with two memory modules, so I was stuck running 512MB when I really wanted 1GB. The second most troubling problem was that DMA could not be enabled for the DVD drive.

"[H] Consumer" has an interesting article on the computer buying experience at various national electronics stores. It's especially interesting in that the visits happened here in Austin.

The article on the following pages represents a snapshot of our buying experiences at each location. We simply visited each retail store and documented the experience we were presented with. [...] We’re simply offering up our real shopping scenarios along with our thoughts on how anyone searching for a computer to fit their needs should navigate the somewhat treacherous waters of a local retailer.

They seemed to get the best service at the store where the tech staff was filling in for the normal sales folks. Hmmm...didn't I see that in a movie recently?

Read the full article.