Dot Product

There must be a better description for the practice, but at least the title is descriptive. My definition: “System or Network Administration that is offensive to end-users.”. The example I have in mind is something I was banging my head against last night. Talking with this user last night, and she was unable to tune to many internet radio stations. Connections simply didn’t work, and they did a day or so ago.

So I tried to help, narrowing down where the problem lay. Since she was using Windows, the natural place to start is corrupted software. Several tests later, we determined it was a problem with networking, not the software she had installed. Here is what we found: her WiFi provider was re-routing requests to port 8000 (typical for internet radio) to port 80 on the same host. Just port 8000.

WTF? The only answer I could come up with last night was that the provider was trying to manage bandwidth usage, since internet radio can be pretty intense for really high quality streams (128kbps or higher). Get 10 users sucking at those HQ streams and you’ve basically filled a T1.

Except for this user, internet radio is one of the reasons she has the service. Offensive Networking Administration.

Another example: broadband providers that re-route or block outgoing port 25 requests. This is a anti-virus or anti-spam measure, but for those of us using our own servers for relaying mail, this simply sucks the big one.

And I won’t get into the activities of big ISPs like AOL which make it very time consuming to keep deliveries to their servers working when YOUR users are recieving spam through aliases on YOUR servers being delivered to the ISP. The customer calls YOU to ask why they’re not getting their e-mail, but it’s the ISP’s action that is causing the problem.

All of this is very aggravating, and besides chewing the poor sot being paid to take my tech support call, I’m not sure how we (as intermediaries or end users) can fix this general practice.

Thoughts?

So a renewal notice from GoDaddy for our CodeFuries.com domain has brought up an interesting conundrum: when should you take a web site down? Chris, Brian, MattC, MattH and I set up the site to facilitate joint development and distribution of some software we had a common interest in. In the intervening years, our interests (and geophysical proximity) have migrated, and things are pretty dormant at CodeFuries now. The software is still useful, and still available, but development is basically halted because alternate solutions have become available that simply work better. Most of us are using Wiki code now for common/shared authoring environments, so is it time to pull the plug?

On the one hand, the hosting is free, the domain costs a whopping $9 to renew… it many ways that is the easiest thing to do (aside from just letting the domain expire). On the other hand, why leave clutter lying around. I’m interested in hearing your input!

This week I’m attending the SBIR/STTR National conference in Albany, NY. For those not familiar with the SBIR/STTR program, it’s a federal grant and contract program designed to help small businesses develop technology and transfer tech from research institutions into the commercial sector. Generally, both programs have two phases, where Phase I is a feasibility study, and Phase II involves producing a prototype. Phase III is for commercialization. The awards for Phase I are somewhere from $50k - $100k for 6 - 9 months, while Phase II is for up to $750k for up to 2 years.

So far, the conference has provided some important nuggets of information I had not gleaned through reading the solicitations or through other workshops. The frustration is that those nuggets are buried in HOURs of content that is not so revolutionary… and for those of us already crunched for time from competing concerns, it can be hard to sit still and sift for gold.

Still, it’s a good program, and hopefully my next startup will be able to take advantage of the program to fund some development work. Sure beats dilution through outside investors!

Many thanks to MattH for sending along a link to some excellent Machinima: Return. I’m amazed at just how much they are able to do with the game engine. I think the level of expression for the characters is on par with some animated series… wow.

While we’re on the subject of media stuff worth looking at, if you haven’t looked at Star Wreck: In The Pikinning, I can highly recommend it. It’s sort of half-spoof, half serious in a blending of Star Trek and Babylon 5 settings. Maggie (who spent a year in Finland and knows the language) says it was made by Finnish Sci-Fi fans for Finnish Sci-Fi fans, with Finnish humor. It’s still accessible for the rest of us, and worth the trouble of download.

Finally, for those of you using OS X 10.4, check out Widget Television VF1. It has quite a few channels on there, including NASA TV. My only complaint is that it’s kinda big to clutter my Dashboard with…. but I’ll remove it from my active Dashboard and save it for when I need a fix.

I recently came across iEmulator, which is similar to Virtual PC in that it allows you to run various Windows and other Intel architecture OS’s under Mac OS X. For $24, I figured it was worth a shot.

It started out looking very promising. The installation of Windows 2000 took roughly 3 hours (par for the cours, based on prior experience). Then came actually trying to make things work in the hosted OS. I suspect Windows has some code that throws the dragging sandbags whenever you try to run it in a program like iEmulator….

Lets just say that my experience thus far has made Virtual PC look like a lean, mean executin’ machine. The shutdown button won’t actually shut down the virtual machine unless the hosted OS gives it the OK. So when Windows shuts down in a less-than-happy state, you can’t hit the power button! And you can’t CMD-Q to close the app either, because it wants you to shut down the emulated machines first! GRRRR.

I never got the networking up and running, so applying updates, and doing anything at all useful with the product is impossible. I could send e-mail to tech support, but this sort of brick wall so early in the process has me questioning the value proposition of the software anyway.

In addition, there are some key features that Virtual PC has that are lacking in iEmulator: namely the ability to drag and drop files from one desktop to the other. Not cool.

At some point, I might try Linux just to see if it works better than my dead-end experience through Virtual PC. Then again, perhaps I’ve had enough beating my head against the wall for a while.

A while ago, I got a new Motorola i710 phone as part of a renewal with my cell service from Verizon. It’s a sweet phone, and the service with Verizon has been great… until Verizon had to spoil my mood by disabling some features on my phone.

You see, one of the cool features is that the phone has a small memory card slot (TransFlash) that lets you exchange files through an SD memory adapter with your computer. Pictures, Video, MP3s… they can all be placed on the card and then through inserting the card in the phone, you have access to all that coolness. It’s also a way to pull your photos and videos OFF the phone without sending them as text messages. All around wholesome goodness abounds.

Another cool feature is that I can use an MP3 as a ringtone. So it follows that I should be able to put a short MP3 on the TF card, and then designate it as my ring tone.

Nope.

The ringtones have to be stored on the phone.

Fine, I can see that if you have a file on the TF set up for ringing, and the TF is not present, this could cause some hardship if the phone wasn’t smart enough to fall back to something else. So all I need to do is move the file from the TF to the internal phone memory, right? After all, I can do that with pictures and videos, so that should be a snap… right?

Wrong.

Oh, the i710 COULD do that, if Verizon did not disable that feature. I guess they were worried that it might damage their ringtone sales. GRRRRRRR.

Well, I’ve got a news flash for them. All they’ve done is piss me off, because there is are 4 separate hacks that can be used to get that file into the phone. Inconvenient, yes… but I have not been stopped. Is it enough for me to cancel service? No, but you can be damn sure I won’t buy any ringtones from them now.

For the music buffs in the audience, I can heartily recommend giving Pandora a go. Created by the folks at the Music Genome Project, it’s a service for finding other music that you like based on an initial artist or song that you already love. I started with Delerium as the artist because they’re currently in heavy rotation on my listening queue. So far, it’s come up with some interesting alternatives… ones I haven’t found through other apps that purport to do the same thing (like MusicPlasma, which is also excellent). But it’s also come up with some stinkers (Jessica Simpson! Britney Spears!).

What I find interesting is not just what it finds, but what it does *not* find. I would have expected cuts from Conjure One to show up in the rotation, since it shares alot of musical DNA with Delerium. Ditto regarding the absence of Enigma and Dead Can Dance.

Shrug.

Still worth a look. I’m sure as people give various cuts “thumbs up” and “thumbs down”, the database will become more refined.

Darwin would recognize the mechanisms of today’s global enterprises: survival of the fittest and adaptation. Why does Southwest thrive while Delta, United, American and Northwest shudder in the air-travel market? In the broadest strokes, it’s because their organization is more fit for survival in the industry environment. The companies that are most likely to survive are the ones that adapt to the environment and out-last their competitors.

With this in mind, it’s interesting to see the adaptation strategies employed in different industries. An article in the latest Wall Street Journal piqued my interest: Media Counter Piracy in China In New Ways.

For the movie industry, the claim has always been that they’ve lost $280 million in box office and video sales from piracy in China. Set aside that figure for a moment and just assume that whatever the number really is, it’s still worthwhile for the movie industry to figure out a way to stop the piracy and cash in. So what’s a media conglomerate to do?

Sure, there have been the token government crackdowns where they collected the heads of a few pirates and seized some copied movies. But it’s a game of whack-a-mole. More pirates simply show up the next day and supply is undisturbed. Since it’s not a continual process of arresting pirates and seizing their booty (ARRRRRGH!), this sort of tactic is really not going to generate any traction.

So instead, some companies are *gasp* selling their wares at prices that are closer to the pirates going rate. In comparison to $1 at Eye-Patch-R-Us, legit copies can be scored for $2 - $4. As a second punch, these vendors are also rolling out legit copies of the movies on DVD in China when they hit the *screens* in the US. Brilliant! (So if you’re wondering why that BitTorrent of the latest screen epic has Chinese subtitles, now you know).

Game companies have a different hand to play, but one that has an even better chance of success: tie the game to an online experience. Go ahead and pirate the media all you want… you still need an online account (and the payment to go with it) if you want to play. Indeed, the game doesn’t even need to have a multiplayer component to it… simply require an internet connection to verify the license key before playing.

Now that last scheme I mentioned has a little grit in it for many of us. If I buy a game, and there is no online experience, why should I have to allow an internet connection every time to prove I’m not a thief? Totally legitimate position, and I agree. But our culture is not the only culture on the planet, and perhaps in China this is not an offensive proposition. Time will tell.

Aspyr has made a Doom 3 demo available for the Mac, which is pretty neat in itself. What is truly outstanding is that they’re distributing the demo via BitTorrent. Now legitimate file distribution via any P2P protocol (including BitTorrent) is nothing new. Disk images for various Linux distributions are released that way to save on hosting bandwidth and get the product out quickly. Maybe more commercial enterprises have been doing this and I missed it, but it’s pretty neat to see distributed downloading in action.

Ok, this is a neat take on wind energy for the home. “The Wind Converter” looks like a cross between a reel lawn mower and a weather vane. Looks like the max output is around 3.5 kW (well, that’s what the generator is rated for), so it might be a decent complement to the solar panels on the roof (that’s how they’ve decided to pitch it anyway). No prices yet, but I’d be keen to find out how much one would cost.