Category Archives: Technology

4G

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I’ve caught myself in one of my first fuddy-duddy moments. It has to do with 4G. Mobile phones have taken on this moniker to help people understand that lower values of G are slower than higher ones. So far 3G is pretty snappy, and 4G is on the horizon.

This has me wondering what exactly would one use 4G speeds for. I start to think about the nature of the devices, what people are likely to do with them. I would say that for most people, voice still dominates the use of these devices but data use is nipping at voice’s heels. People are starting to request more data through their mobile devices and I think that the majority of the data is internet services followed up by the packetized SMS data traffic on the back-end. People are getting their emails, sending and receiving pictures as well as video over these data links and this use will only grow. I can see 3G filling the need for these services quite well, but I start to wonder about 4G, and what it could be useful for. Certainly 4G is overkill for most data traffic, as most of it is designed to flow neatly over current 3G signals. While shopping for new phones at our local Verizon store they started to push 4G on one of my friends. First of all, 4G isn’t in our market yet and I dare say it won’t be for two or three more years. Even if you did have 4G, what would you do with it?

The only applications I can think of are data tethering other devices or a group of devices to that signal, but that would only work well if the data was unlimited. As it is, I seriously doubt any provider will ever offer such service where the data cap isn’t 2 to 5 gigabytes per month, with more money due after you blow by that limit. So, what is the use of 4G? If I was using it, I’d say video calling would probably be the first use, but with a 2-5 GB cap, how many of these calls could you make before you started digging into your limit? If you artificially put a limit on a thing, people are going to use it and fill up their lives with that thing until they hit that limit. Much like how a goldfish will grow to fit the tank it lives in, if it’s a small tank, it’s a small goldfish, if it’s a giant tank, it turns into a carp. With the speed that 4G is pushing, the only other use that springs to mind immediately is BitTorrent. Now what would you be BitTorrent’ing over your mobile phone? Chances are pretty good that it isn’t a legal use of that protocol, chances are it’ll be porn or some pirated data.

I think what I’m getting at is, the nature of these devices may have all the speed they need to do what they do. That any more speed is a solution in search of a problem, and that almost never works well in the end. Is it speed people should be clamoring for or is it network coverage they should be clamoring for? I think that I’d be hotter for a well-fleshed out network than a network that is super speedy. It comes down to the question, what could I do with that speed, and when I hit my data cap, what then? What good is 4G speeds when you’ve burnt through your 2GB cap? In order to not accrue more charges you’d turn off 4G and float around with 3G or 2G. What use is that? And if there weren’t caps, what legal uses of 4G traffic are left? Video calling, yes, but beyond that? I’m not so sure.

A good portion of this argument comes to mind when I see TV spots for AT&T pushing their network speed over their shitty network coverage. Verizon makes the opposite argument, that network coverage is more important than speed. I personally agree with Verizon and am critical of AT&T. Yes your network may be very fast, maybe even 4G fast, but unless you live in a megalopolis and happen to catch the network when a minimum of people are using it all at the same time, then yes, I can see the benefit. But how many of us live in a megalopolis *and* can count on nobody in said Burg from trying to hit the network all at the same time? I call bullshit on 4G data currently. Those companies pushing 4G have an intended-use mismatch and they should probably get in touch with their legal and compliance teams to see if their customers will use 4G traffic for purely innocent and legal means. I am full of doubt.

So, why not just embrace 3G, call it a wash and concentrate on expanding network coverage? That’s an idea worth pursuing.

One thing did strike me at the end, if the really compelling use of 4G is video calling, who wants that? Do you really want to have to shave and look presentable, wearing the right (if any) clothing to make a call? It seems neat and does have some very limited use, but after all, who really needs it? Oh that’s right… Pornographers do. And that’s what will sell 4G. Mark my words. 4G will be powered by pornography, and you know deep in your heart that men will order up 4G porn while back-benching it at church on Sunday with their naive wifeypoo and accidental children. Mark my words.

Java

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I’ve written before that my feelings for technology are strong and passionate. I regard Apple with a nearly perfect halo of saintly perfection despite all the Chinese workers committing suicide and some of Apple’s darker acts in regards to the iOS App Store, but despite all that they are still as pure as driven snow in my eyes.

Not so with Sun Microsystems’ Java. It’s not that I hate Java in and of itself, actually I appreciate Java for what it has accomplished with the tools available. What I hate is tangential but squarely placed against Java. Here at work we have two really big monolithic database systems. The first is our in-house alumni database, Millennium. The second is SunGard’s Banner Student Information System.

What do these two pieces of software have to do with Java? Well, that’s the core of my agony. The two have to be used at the same time, but one needs Java 1.5.10 and the other 1.6.3. It’s impossible to expect people to understand Java versioning and when they accidentally upgrade their Java installation with 1.6.3 or later for Banner use, their Millennium client goes completely out-of-spec and makes their lives a living hell, mostly with stupid script errors as code written against 1.5.10 scrambles at the cliffs-of-insanity of 1.6.3 or later.

What is our solution? It’s ugly but it works. We split the software by virtualized operating system. Two XP’s running side-by-side, one with Java 1.5.10 the other with Java 1.6.3. It isn’t elegant, and it starts me thinking about why exactly Java is in any of these products to start with. For Banner it’s pretty clear, Banner is written against Oracle and the client software is exceptionally poor, it’s called jInitiator and I feel ill and tremble even when contemplating it. It’s the kind of software that I fantasize about staking to the earth and watch the sun rise as it burns and screams, hissing and spitting giant gobs of ichor everywhere as it slowly burns to dust.

Millennium isn’t as bad, but there is Java still. Why? It could be wholly a W3C compliant application, I mean, that’s where it’s headed, and if you want fancy bits you could always use JavaScript or even AJAX tricks to do the same things that they have Java doing. Thankfully I’ve bullied the authors into promising that by version 9 of the software, that Java will be a sad sorry memory.

So it’s not really that I’m angry at Java, but I am angry at these companies that write in ways that permanently fix a version of Java on a machine and that only invites issues like viruses, security breaches, and these horribly gross incompatibilities and there is nothing I can do to address them other than apply virtualization technology like a cure-all salve. It’s quite like hunting fleas with a BFG. Annoying.

So for those out there who are thinking about using Java to make your software shiny or somehow cute, just skip it. Your customers won’t really appreciate what neat shiny you can bring to the table and the admin tasked with keeping it all together will thank you for one less versioning nightmare to have to deal with. I blame Java because without it, my life would be much easier. One just has to wait for things to get better, at least there is hope.

 

Hamster Wheel

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A week ago a policy was sent which indicated that the IRS was effectively going to strangle the life out of our wireless infrastructure. Yesterday afternoon I learned that while the policy may be published, it was an error that it was sent out and the brouhaha that it caused was a mistake.

I talked it over with my boss and I commented that the only information I had to act on was the policy sent down and I didn’t have any other guidance. I had sent an email to management but never got a reply. Then my boss told me that sometimes not hearing an answer is an answer – and it hit me – a line right out of Serendipity, one of the best lines that Jeremy Piven’s character Dean Kansky said “So the absence of a sign, is a sign!?!.. They should make pills for this…” hit me and I had to suppress a serious case of the giggles.

So after talking with management, which is apparently dominated by the doppler effect, in so far that the words I hear are modulated by pitch changes as they rush away to another meeting, I got what I was after, which was an ounce of clarification.

So the policy exists and we are moving ahead with a wireless infrastructure. I contacted our Verizon rep and placed the toy train back on the tracks after so violently derailing it earlier and set the track power to maximum so we could catch up. Just as much as we don’t know exactly how we’re going to approach our wireless infrastructure, Verizon doesn’t know how they are going to handle our contract, at least yet. I bet when we make decisions, that will oddly be the same moment that Verizon makes it’s decisions. I suspect we’ll have a bumper crop of Kismet coming down the pike.

Say Goodbye Gracie

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Got this little marvel in the mail:

Employees using University owned cell phone/PDAs will be taxed on the fair market value, (in this case the cost to WMU), of the phone and plan.  All applicable payroll taxes will be applied.  For phones and devices already in use, we will tax the value of the plan only.  In order to properly account for University monies used to pay for dual use cell phones and ensure the fringe benefits are taxed properly, the voucher given to accounts payable to pay for such phone service must include or have attached a detail of the names and employee numbers of the employees and the respective amounts being paid for their phone/device.  For plans where the cost isn’t already broken down by phone, you will need to allocate the total cost to the phones if you are not already doing so for general ledger posting purposes.  Accounts payable will submit the cost information to the payroll department after they review to make sure all the cost is being accounted for.    Departments that are paying for University owned cell phones with a procurement card should submit the same information to the payroll department on a monthly basis.  No department should be paying for a non-University owned cell phone plan with a procurement card.

So on February 1st I will be surrendering my line at 269-599-7798. This will conclude my mobile telephony reach as well. I will most likely not be having any other phone as I cannot afford one. As a practical upshot to this, after February 1st I will be unavailable to telephone traffic for quite some time. There won’t be a replacement number as I don’t have the funds available to afford to replace such technology. If I am not at my office, I won’t be reachable. In the case of emergencies, they will have to be queued and held for me until I reach a place where I can access telephony equipment. Likewise, if I have an emergency I will be unable to call 911. Lets hope we don’t run into any of that sort of thing. This is 21st Century progress at it’s finest, folks. Let us rejoice.

As for our business mobile infrastructure?

Say Goodbye Gracie.

Future Ennui

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There is an emotion, it’s somewhere between humor, irony, shame and embarrassment. When you look at Sci-Fi movies of the past, where their settings are now in contemporary time. I find myself filled with an odd new emotion. It’s a sense of shame and loss for a future we never get to enjoy because we aren’t there yet. I think it’s really quite a piquant emotion because it’s so terribly embarrassing. It’s 2011 and what massive advances have we developed? People haven’t changed any. I look out on the world and think that if anyone were to write stories based on the future to make it more honest and relevant and skip out on depictions of new inventions, instead concentrate on the daily trudge.

I can only draw parallels in my own meager experience, take for example our air conditioning equipment. Something that was invented in 1902 is still in use today. There isn’t anything really new about the technology and in 109 years we’ve done very little to change it. It’s that sense that I want to see in more fiction stories – that some things never get better, some technologies never develop beyond their humble beginnings, that in 2025 we’ll be doing roughly the same thing we did in 2011 and 2005 and 1997… although I have to tack on this last bit, that sometimes change comes because it has to. I think our out-of-control climate will definitely change things in a few years time, so perhaps it’s only disasters that push us along?

Picky picky

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What arrived in campus mail today was a marvelous surprise. It was my reimbursement request, sent back to me by the central bureaucracy that not only was my request rejected because it lacked a business purpose but also that my reimbursement would not include the sales tax that I paid. =Insert rude gesture here= 🙂

Really, the sales tax comes down to $2.22 but like many things, it isn’t about the money as so much as it’s about the principles behind it. I can’t buy iTunes Cards or iPad Apps directly with my University Procurement Card, so I’m stuck, so the only way to move forward is to fund it privately and request reimbursement. This was something I was fine with, it helps everyone get along and business can continue without interruption. That was, until I discovered that getting said reimbursement is an uphill battle and that I won’t get a fair shake because there is a policy that people can hide behind when convenient.

So, knowing the rules of the ‘game’ now, between me and my employer, I elect to withdraw my initial “helping out” because it is plainly not equitable. I pay money on behalf of this institution and I don’t get a fair and proper reimbursement. I don’t blame this place for the failure, I blame myself. I was dumb enough to volunteer my resources to further the efforts of this institution and that was a mistake. So, a few moments ago I logged into my work-based iTunes account and removed the reference to my credit card. Since there are no funds attached to the account and no credit card, future App purchases are effectively dead until WMU decides on how it’s going to proceed on its own.

And that’s kind of the core of this blog post. How can an institution like this cope with the 21st Century. At first it was just a quaint little nothing, a bird on a radar screen – the iTunes App Store. Ever since Apple pursued this strategy further with OS X 10.6.6 and introducing the App Store to the Desktop, now we have something. Plus these devices are not simply going to go away. iPads are not a fad that is going to just fade away like Bell Bottoms, they’re here to stay and finding ways to integrate them into our “enterprise” existence has led us all to a knotwork of difficulty. The professional instrumentation that exists lacks elegance, to put it mildly.

It’s not my job any more to fret and wring my hands and get all bent out of shape that this place screwed me once again. I’m not angry. I see it as an education. Now I know through a real object lesson what happens when I do something like this, and what have I learned? I’m never going to do this, or anything else like this, ever again. Once bitten, twice shy mostly. My biggest fault is electing to forget about all the times when this place has failed me or let me down or in this case, lead to a wee bit of financial loss. In a way it’s good that I suffered financial harm during this entire endeavor, perhaps that will be enough to keep the memory alive so when I face something like this in the future I can fail to offer anything beyond what is strictly a business option. Reimbursements? Nah, never again, thanks.

Now I await with bated breath to see how this institution copes.

1Password Bug

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I ran into this little nasty earlier today. First to set the scene:

  • Mac OSX 10.6.6
  • 1Password Version 3.5.3 (build 30812)

I got an email from Trapster.com informing me that my account may have been compromised. Since I started using 1Password I’ve been making unique 16-character passwords for each individual site, so if a hacker gets my password for one site, he may own that, but nothing else. So I opened up 1Password and my highlight was on another entry related to another item. I went to the search field, typed in “trap” and found the entry for Trapster. I edited it, clicked on the password generator and made a new 16 character password. I clicked the “copy” button in the Password Generator dialog box and 1Password decided to replace the password for the previous highlighted item with the generated password that I meant to go into Trapsters entry. I did this three times just to make sure I wasn’t losing my marbles.

The way around this is to not use the search feature at all. If you browse and highlight the Trapster entry and put in a new password that way, everything is fine.

I just thought I would blog about this to help anyone who might have run into this bug on their own, it isn’t your mind, it’s the program. I’ve forwarded the bug report to the people who write 1Password, we’ll see what response we get.

Verizon iPhone 4

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Everyone is weighing in on a device that hasn’t been released yet, and everyone already has formed opinions based on rumors and suppositions. Since this is the way it is going, I’ll just toss my unrequested three-cents in with the rest of the noise and babble.

Key Differences between AT&T and Verizon on the iPhone 4:

  1. No 4G Service – Who cares to have broadband speeds in your pocket? Eventually there is a good-enough-speed that people reach, with 3G and WiFi pretty much available everywhere this claim is only going to make the really geeky miffed. If you need such speeds in your pocket, what exactly are you doing IN YOUR POCKET? At some point extra speed only benefits BitTorrent users. The only exception to this is media streaming, but frankly my dear, if you are sitting back and enjoying a movie, chances are you are doing so in the comfort of some place that has WiFi. Just like FaceTime Chat…
  2. iPhone 4 Antennagate – CDMA doesn’t have the same antenna as a GSM phone has, so physical attenuation isn’t a problem. The Verizon phone won’t have the grip-of-death, while the AT&T phone will.
  3. CDMA-GSM Simultaneous Data and Voice – I have to admit to living without this as such a thing is by the design of CDMA very unlikely if not impossible to bring off. I’ve never needed both data and voice services at the same time. My logic is that people smush the phone against their face to talk, they aren’t going to smush-tap-tap-smush-tap. The fact that AT&T can do this is pretty much a cute empty little extra. People who have been using CDMA won’t notice at all.
  4. Network Size – AT&T has done NOTHING to address signal quality in key markets that I find important. Really it comes down to Kalamazoo. AT&T bought out Centennial, along with all their 3G towers in the area. The fact that AT&T hasn’t enabled those towers speaks volumes to me. They don’t care. They claim that their network reaches 97% of Americans, and it does, some are graced with 3G service like the people in Grand Rapids or Chicago, while the rest of us have to contend with their EDGE network. So, what about Verizon? They’ve got a giant network and they have 3G in Kalamazoo. I live in Kalamazoo, it is an important market. I would argue that Kalamazoo is more important than Grand Rapids. So, when it comes to 3G network traffic, who wins? Verizon.
  5. Finally, It’s AT&T PEOPLE! – AT&T, which lets face it is just a shelled out mask that Cingular wears to ritzy dinner parties (yes, it wears another’s tanned hide) is still CINGULAR. Just because it’s wearing AT&T’s dead face and animating it doesn’t mean that it’s somehow got a new soul. Both Cingular and AT&T were as I regard them, abhorrent companies. Cingular for their lameness before trapping and gutting AT&T, and AT&T for being inherently EVIL. Many people don’t recall, and it’s understandable, that AT&T used to be Ma Bell. The giant monster company that abused it’s customers, ran a monopoly, and retarded real technological innovation for decades! This is less of an argument based in reality as it is a name-game since Verizon also was a shard of Ma Bell’s evil empire. It’s not that somehow Verizon is good, of course they aren’t, they are just as evil as AT&T is, but AT&T is stupid and evil. Verizon is clever and evil. It’s a very fine difference.
  6. Waiting around for iPhone 5 – Great, so Verizon is going to get iPhone 4, but Consumer Reports goes on at length about how they are going to wait until iPhone 5 before they’ll look at it again. What exactly are people waiting for? Isn’t the iPhone 4 “Good Enough”? What can Apple do to make the iPhone 5 compelling enough for everyone to suddenly acquire buyers remorse regarding the iPhone 4? They could make the device thinner, perhaps make it transparent, change the shape perhaps but in every other instance the iPhone 4 can be field-upgraded to whatever iOS revision is coming down the pike unless Apple is serious about enabling things like BitTorrent on the iPhone. For this class of device, how much can change? Is it enough to continue to suffer with AT&T? In my case, is it enough to continue to suffer with Sprint? My answer is no. I don’t care what is or is not coming out in June or July. I’ve been waiting for the iPhone 4, without the grip-of-death, on a competent 3G network FOR A VERY LONG TIME. Who cares if you are locked into an iPhone4 for two years? It’s not like an immense base of other iPhone 4’s out there are suddenly going to just vanish. Just because there is something new doesn’t mean it’s needful. Sometimes what you need is right in your hand all along, or in this case, in the traveling roadshow that is Verizon.

For me, this entire release of a CDMA iPhone is mana from heaven. I’m willing to give up data+voice simultaneously for fewer dropped calls (in AT&T’s case) and way fewer impossible-to-make calls (in Sprint’s case). My professional recommendation is that the Verizon iPhone 4 is exactly what people need and they should pounce on it immediately. If you are beyond your ETF-barrier on your contract with AT&T or Sprint, you owe it to yourself to leave them behind and hop on. Even if a few months down the line iPhone 5 comes out, it’s not going to be revolutionary, it’ll be evolutionary. The same way the iPad 2 is not going to make me love my iPad 1 any less. A device is still a device and if it works well, isn’t that enough?

Being Sick

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With my iPad and my MacBook I have to say that the classical lines of distinction of “The Workday” have blurred completely away. I find myself doing my best work at 1:30am or 3:30am, or even when inspiration strikes. I think that’s one of the hallmarks of how technology is changing our lives for the better. I don’t have to write a flurry of ideas down to process at some later time when I can do them RIGHT NOW. Then again, my work style is built on speed. Think fast, act fast, do it right the first time.

Even when I’m sick and hacking up a lung, I can create new blogs and assemble rights for users, and thanks to Apple and all the infrastructure I’ve combined around my work life and my private life I can do all of this pretty much from anywhere, even while driving 70MPH (as a passenger, of course! SCANDAL! :))

I think it’s something that the classical structure of business life will eventually have to address. The idea that if you have a salaried employee who is as mobile as I am and as technologically connected as I am, that we can really do our jobs competently from a rest stop as much as we can do it at work desktop. To that end I have to admit that I encourage my coworkers to heed the wisdom of non-blocking/non-interrupt based communications. I no longer really use a telephone and I don’t really value face to face communications. I prefer my communications to be of the type of Email, SMS, or Instant Message. I think these forms of communication are far more respectful than the intrusive nature of blocking/interrupt based forms of communication. Writing me an email means your message was received and understood and will get the attention it deserves, the same with the other non-blocking/non-interrupt forms, such as SMS and IM’ing. If more people would adopt these forms I know I’d be a far happier person.

I think a good portion of why people elect to use the blocking/interrupt model is because they believe there is a value in the personal approach. They are afraid of the non-blocking/non-interrupt forms to lead to alienation and depersonalization. I get enough personal interaction in my life and the last thing I need is “expensive context switches” where my task flow is interrupted by someone calling me on the telephone or knocking on my door. I often wish I could tell these people that I understand their need for human contact, I don’t require it of them myself and would vastly prefer the non-blocking/non-interrupt based communications styles. The only time I want to see someone in the flesh is if something has become an emergency, then fine. But here again, I make an exception that must be tempered – not everything is an emergency. Even when “emergencies” come up seven out of ten times those emergencies aren’t, they’re just wearing the garb of an emergency to provide an excuse to block/interrupt.

I think eventually more professional people will see the wisdom of this and finally understand that in an average workday the time-wasting emergency-based “humanizing” approach is just wasting money and time. This approach is just as good for the sources of these blocking/interrupt based issues as they are for us victims of their blocking/interrupt driven behaviors. By not having to get up, not having to pick up the phone, you save yourself so much time, to say nothing about the clarity of what you want to convey. You just can’t beat the low signal to noise ratio of text over voice.

Proof of Life

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Here is some email back and forth between me and a fellow at Google Apps who doesn’t believe that I’m who I say I am. Oh how to prove WMU.

***

Email From Google:
On Jan 13, 2011, at 6:26 PM, The Google Team wrote:

Hello Andy,

Thanks for your message.

Before we can continue processing your application for an Apps for
Education Upgrade, please clarify the purpose of the specific domain you
have requested for upgrade.

In addition, can you please provide the following information:

What are the ages of the students you teach?
Do you offer degrees to students who complete the program?
Have you received accreditation from an accepted accrediting body?

Please reply to this email with your responses so we may continue to
process your request. If you are a certified 501(c)(3) non-profit
organization please send us your EIN, as you may qualify for an upgrade to
Education Edition for non-profits.

If you do not feel you meet these requirements, we invite you to continue
to manage your account with our free Google Apps, which offers many of the
same features and services.

Sincerely,

Suchit
The Google Apps Team

My Response:

Hello,

We teach students from 18 to in their 80’s… This might help:

Western Michigan University (WMU) is a public universityestablished in 1903 by Dwight B. Waldo. When the school first opened, it was known as the Western State Normal School, but was renamed Western State Teachers College in 1927 and Western Michigan College of Education in 1941. On February 26, 1957 Governor G. Mennen Williams signed into law a bill making Western Michigan College the state’s fourth public university. In its annual ranking of the nation’s 4,000 colleges and universities, U.S. News & World Report consistently lists WMU as one of the nation’s top 100 public universities. (Hooray Wikipedia!)

We offer many degrees, Everything from Bachelors all the way up to PhD’s. We’ve got about 117,000 alumni who we’ve graced with degrees. We’ve got 278,000 living constituents… I’m just saying.

And once again…

Western Michigan University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, 30 North LaSalle Street, Suite 2400, Chicago, Illinois 60602-2504; Web site www.ncahigherlearningcommission.org.

Feel free to give me a call, 269-387-8719 and we can discuss Western Michigan University in detail. I’m the system administrator for WMU Development and Alumni Relations, my office is in Walwood Hall room 133E. I’m sure we could likely also find a few of our graduates who WORK AT GOOGLE and have degrees from our COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING. Oye!

Thanks for the laughs, I hope some of this works for you guys…

Andy McHugh
269-216-4597