Moore Stuff

Time Warner Cable for the past few months, has been testing the idea of bandwidth caps.  In it, you’re allotted a certain amount of data per month, then get charged overage for every GB over the cap that you go.  If that sounds like cell phone companies and their “minutes” then you’re beginning to see that moronic minds think alike.

Imagine if your Internet connection was milk.  You buy a quart of milk for $1, drink it in a few days, and go back to buy more.  The grocery store then tells you, “Oh, you’re only allowed ONE quart per month.  We can’t handle the burden that you’re putting on the cows.  So, the second quart will be $10.”

Now, I would have less reason to complain under this system, if TW used a system like Comcast’s (did I just write that?).  Comcast caps usage at 250GB/month.  That’s reasonable.  That’s like giving you the first 50 gallons of milk each month, and charging overage after those 50 gallons.  Unless I’m the OctoMom, I’m not going to be buying that much milk, and therefore extremely unlikely to be hitting that cap.

However Time Warner has recently trumpeted that their “tests” went so well, that they’ll soon be rolling bandwidth caps out to the entire country!  Hooray for the country!  And those caps will be .. from 5GB to 40GB?  Excuse me?  And, users will get charged $1 per GB over the cap.  It’s so ridiculously low, it’s almost comical.  If I weren’t a TW Cable user, I’d slap my head and go, “Boy, are their customers screwed!”

I am tech savvy.  And I would say that I surf more than “the average person”.  However, I am by no means a bandwidth hog.  And I use, on average, about 25 GB/month.  So, I’d either have to buy the 20 GB plan, and get charged another $5 on overage, or I could get the 40GB plan, for $10/month more and stay under the cap.  Or, I could just stick this pencil in my eye.  Option 3 might be the cheapest.

So many people are complaining to Time Warner, that they’ve setup a “special” email address so that they can mass delete respond to you, our valued customer.

So, I forwarded the following letter to realideas@twcable.com:

Obviously, no human will be reading this…  But I’m going to say this anyway… 5 - 40GB / month?  You’re kidding, right?  Was this was somehow related to April Fools Day?  Or are you just the fools?  You claim that bandwidth hogs are stealing the data from everyone else’s shared connections, and that anyone who uses more data than this per month is a hog.  By your definition then, bandwidth hogs are everyone, except soccer moms who check their FaceBook pages once a day.

My household has 4 PCs.  We surf the web and check email.  We watch a few YouTube videos.  We watch perhaps 2 or 3 Hulu videos per month.  We do not stream Netflix nor play online games.  We are the very definition of “normal use”.  And our average usage is about 25 GB / month.  By your math, that makes us hogs.  And with your caps and overage charges, that means our bill would go up.

I can switch right now to AT&T FastAccess DSL for cheaper than I pay for Road Runner.  AT&T U-verse and Clearwire are moving into the Charlotte area by the end of this year.  Your time as a monopoly is almost done.

I find it the very definition irony that your home page for my area has the tag line “Get More. Pay Less.”  Your cap proposal is for me to get less, and pay more for it.  I refuse to pay one cent more.  If you don’t want the expense and hassle of having “excessive” amounts of my data on your network, then I would be happy to remove all of my data from your network entirely.

As I said, I find it highly unlikely that human eyes belonging to anyone in the employ of Time Warner Cable will look at this.  But I’m hoping that some intern will check that realideas account every day and report to the higher-ups, “Wow, there’s 15,000 new messages this morning!  People are really ticked off!”

When I use XP, I simply cannot use it on a day-to-day basis without ObjectDock.  I use it primarily for both my main apps, and for quick access to certain folders.  It’s handy to be able to just fling my mouse over to the side of the screen, and have a large target to click, rather than picking out a tiny little button in the QuickLaunch toolbar.

Now, OD, and other apps like it, are simply copying the OS X dock .. and that’s fine.  But guess what? So is Windows 7, in their new dock taskbar .. and that’s fine, too.  And that’s because its a good idea.  And good ideas should never be proprietary.  By combining running and non-running apps into the same space, you place the icons in the same order all the time, so that you always know where everything is.

But, there’s one other big use for docks: docklets.  There’s no such formal name in OS X, but in the Windows docks, docklets are miniature apps which run inside the dock itself.  In essence, they are basically widgets or gadgets that confine themselves to that dock’s icon, or an icon-sized window that the app author can paint however he likes.

For instance, I have a OD docklet that not only runs iTunes when I click it, but also displays the album cover of the song I’m listening to instead of the iTunes icon.  I also have a Thunderbird icon which doubles as an IMAP email checker.  There are thousands of docklets that give you weather updates, monitor RSS feeds, display system monitors, etc.

And this is where 7’s new taskbar is not doing it for me.  As a software author, I would love to be able to design an app that can change my app’s dock icon to whatever I want; whether its to draw a miniature calendar with upcoming appointments, or to display the iTunes album art instead of a static iTunes icon.

Adding such functionality into 7 shouldn’t be that difficult for Microsoft, given that their already extensive work into gadgets, and they’re existing partnership with Stardock (to create the Dreamscenes in Vista Ultimate).  In the end, giving programmers more control gives users a better experience down the line.

Story time, kids…  For Christmas, I got a new laptop.  I had needed one badly, and I managed to get a deal on Black Friday that was too good to pass up.  I mention this because, on the laptop was ..  Windows Vista.  Something which heretofore, I had never personally used.  Now, normally, as a computer geek, I would use the latest and greatest.  And as a programmer, I need to be on the forefront of this type of stuff.  But I had heard so much junk about Vista, that I was hesitant to use it, especially on my primary machine.

After using this laptop for over 6 weeks, I’ve been happy with Vista for the most part.  Despite all the naysayers out there, Vista isn’t that bad.  It’s definitely prettier, makes XP feel old.  But, it does come with a price…

Vista is a complete memory hog.  Even after I got rid of HP’s crapware on the laptop, the amount of Windows services that run in Vista is simply staggering.

So, during PDC in October ‘08, the new head of Windows, Steven Sinofsky, showed off a netbook running 7 … in 512 MB of RAM!  As soon as I saw this, I decided I had to try 7 as soon as it came out.

So, now that day is here.  In addition to installing it on a rusting bucket of bolts, I decided to also install it dual-boot on my main desktop PC.  For the record, my main desktop PC is only about 6 months old.  The parts in the case are these:

• CPU: Core 2 Quad Q6600, overclocked to 3GHz (no more, because I like quiet+fast)
• RAM: 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2 6400
• GPU: Geforce 8600GT (yea, I know .. “meh”)
• HDD: 640GB SATA Western Digital

My initial impressions show Sinofsky to be right; the Core 2 Quad runs Win7 slightly faster than XP.  And post install, it also used up about the same amount of memory as XP.  Which is to say that 7 uses up far less memory than Vista.

Stay tuned.  I’ve also got some thoughts about the new Taskbar for my next post.

Like many others out there, I decided to try the newly released “unofficial” beta version of Windows 7 build 7000.  Based on what I’ve seen, I will be purchasing once it comes out.

Overall, I’m very impressed with the quality and completeness.   But where the rubber really meets the road is the speed…

Unlike everyone else who is trying this on the latest and greatest system, I decided to try Windows 7 on the slowest, crappiest computer I still had.  So, here’s the specs:

• PC: Shuttle SK41G barebones
• CPU: Athlon XP 2400
• RAM: 1 GB (2×512 MB)
• GPU: Geforce 6200 AGP
• HDD: 160 GB IDE

Being purchased approx. March 2001, its marginally capable of running Ubuntu Intrepid or Windows XP.  It’s mostly been used to run Ubuntu over the years.  It was capable of running Compiz, but was woefully underpowered to run the “cube” effects of Compiz.  The best I could manage is the “wall” effects, which are much less taxing.

When I tried to install Windows 7, I was all but certain it would make the system choke.  But, imagine my surprise that Windows 7 not only booted up, but Aero worked!  And it worked fairly well, also.  Its at least as usable, and actually runs Firefox, IE, etc. fairly well.

So, kudos to MS.  Now that Allchin is out of there and Sinovsky is running things, perhaps they can make a decent OS.

I have not been able to post here in a week, and I apologize for that.  But after 3½ long years of having the same ol’ Athlon 64 3400 system, I have finally moved into the modern age.  I am now writing this on a brand new quad-core Q6600 overclocked to 3.0 GHz w/ 2 GBs of RAM and a 8600GT video card.  Now, of course I could’ve splurged and gotten some Q9450 w/ 4 GBs of RAM and SLI GeForce 9800 video cards … but what’s the point of that?

My family has always been, let’s say “frugal.”  Not cheap, but frugal.  It stems from my great-grandmother Waldrop.  She never had a lot of money, and always saved it when she could.  The funny thing is, all of us decended from her have been the same way.  She died 40 years before I was born, so it wasn’t her influence or anything.  I don’t know if its genetic or what.  But when we save some money like that, its a family joke that we say “That’s the Waldrop in you.”

Well, I purchased this PC in much the same way.  First, I hate store-bought PC’s.  When you buy a Dell or HP or Sony Vaio, you’re buying a system that they fill with mediocre parts, and is loaded w/ tons of crapware.  So I buy the parts piece-by-piece.  When you buy PC’s like this, its similar in a lot of way to playing the stock market.  Set your target price, wait until it reaches it, then pounce.  So, let me explain (and forgive me if I get too geeky here)…

So, first, I waited until the April 20 Intel processor price drops, waiting for a Q6600 processor to fall below $200.  I finally found that when MicroCenter had a Q6600 for $180.  Then I got a motherboard (DFI DK P35 T2RS) for $130, waiting until it wen’t on sale.  Then, I took advantage of the really cheap DDR2 prices lately, and got 2GBs of DDR2 800 for $45.  I used a $40 mail in rebate at Buy.com to get a Corsair VX550 power supply for $50.  And I got a Cooler Master Centurion case for $20 when CompUSA was going out of business.  Throw in an Arctic Cooler Freezer 7 Pro for $27, and I spent about $500 for a PC that would cost you $900 at your local Best Buy.

Where I really saved money, though, was by not spending that extra $400 on prepackaged junk that I didn’t need. I already have a 22″ widescreen monitor, so I don’t need a stupid 17″.  I already have a Logitech MX 3200 mouse and keyboard, which, for $50 is far superior to any stupid ball-mouse HP would throw in the box.  And, I already have a Logitech X-540 5.1ch speaker system (which I got for $50 once), which would be far better than any tinny, pathetic speakers that come bundled.

And, by getting top quality parts on the stuff I did buy, I can overclock this processor to 25% beyond its rated specs (and probably a lot more).  PCs made by most manufacturers (except the boutique outlets) are usually not overclockable, because you can screw things up if you don’t know what you’re doing.  But, since I and people like me do know what we’re doing, we can crank up the speed.

Now, the downside (as some see it) would be that you don’t get any tech support.  And that’s scary to a lot of people.  But, here’s the nice thing…  When you build a PC yourself, you’ll learn so much about it that you won’t need tech support.

So, unless you’re deathly afraid of technology, I’d advise anyone wanting to have a really good desktop PC, to build it yourself.  Not only do you get top quality parts on the stuff you buy, you save money by not buying parts that you don’t need.  Spending money, and saving it at the same time is a great feeling…

But I guess that’s just the Waldrop in me.

If ‘Net Neutrality is lost,  this will be your “choice” left:

Pic

Yea, not exactly breaking news. But this article from DailyTech, says that in the UK, most people have a choice of maybe 100-200 high-speed ISPs to choose from, while here in the US, you might have two or three (cable, DSL, or FiOS if you’re lucky).

Now, I realize that the US is geographically much larger, and therefore much more expensive to wire. But not that expensive. There’s no reason (other than the monopolistic practices of the telecomms) that we shouldn’t have at least 7-8 ways to get broadband in any major metro area.

Ultimately, the biggest problem w/ broadband is lack of choice.  More choice would give more speed for less price.