Posts

Posted on

Hey AT&T would you quit blowing smoke up peoples asses… I mean really…

I’ve  been passively watching the attempted merger of T-Mobile & AT&T , but what they are saying would make someone more angry than the hulk on crack.  They keep saying this merger will create jobs and to a tune of 100,000 jobs and that’s a right out lie. The point of a merger is to combine ones interest and take the brand over to make it there own. In this video AT&T is claiming that 96,000 jobs will be created. What?

By the two companies merging there will be overlap of positions, overlap of coverage , overlap of just about everything and logically there’s no reason to keep employees on the company that your merging, Logistically if AT&T blowing smoke out there ass since T-mobile USA supposedly employs over 40,000 people. if this counts all the store droids in all the malls and mobile stores is a good question. but how is this going to create these jobs. Since this is a narrow field there is going to be a huge amount of overlap.

in malls you would have AT&T stores next to new acquired AT&T stores that were formally T-mobile. in all over time the parent company would see no use to having these stores together, and likely break lease and fire all employees, While AT&T is playing the “hot” card for job creation when you look at the big picture- the jobs lost while likely have a big effect on what jobs are created. There are other things in play , AT&T is generally regarded by some as terrible, the T-mobile customer base will erode on acquisition, Also the longer this merger stays in limbo the more damage that’s done to T-mobile and to an effect I think AT&T likes it because , if the company goes critical they will *Sweep* in and be the *her0* .

If there is any job creation at all it will be skilled labor and not sales force that will be VERY temporary at best.  Retail locations might get held for a short time to fluff the books on saying they “Created” jobs and as soon as the merger is complete most of these employees will be laid off.  With the limited pool of jobs in these companies it will likely be a clusterfuck of lay-offs as soon as the ink dries.

Posted on

Stick this in your “cloud” and smoke it.

Everywhere you look these days you hear about that newfangled cloud thing…. and most people ask what the hell is the cloud. I tell them its a pile of shit buzzword. Watching TV you see the Microsoft commercials about the cloud and how you can access your stuff at home…  Or your job… or the moon whatever the fuck.. Here’s and example of said “cloud”

For those whom have had there head buried in the sand or are quite possibly dead… this innovation is as old at the internet it self(of current not arpanet you silly ass).. its called network storage. Introduced in the 1980s

 

Network-attached storage
Connects to Local Area Network via:

Hard Drives via one of:
Common manufacturers HP
NetApp
Dell
Cisco
Netgear
CTERA
Sun Microsystems
Introduced 1980’s

 

 

Yes this amazing new cloud of bullshit buzzwords yay!

And this.. hmm this is not “cloud” like .. the fact these people are accessing there pc at home tells me …. Remote desktop .. YAY MORE OLD TECH CALLED CLOUD! Mind you the guy says “I just brought up our PC at home” yeah… that’s safe.. you’re flying to who the hell knows where and your leaving a PC on 24/7 while your away from the house, when the PC overheats and sets the house on fire – Your house will be a cloud! YAY CLOUD!!

This should be called the windows FartCloud technology

It’s the Cloud! ZOMG!

Microsoft’s idea of the cloud is pretty much rebranding old technology and calling it new.. Some of the other cloud innovations here are just blatantly scary , Such as software as a service .. that’s pretty much a baaaaaaaaaaaaad thing.. Your Office software you bought.. You know the 365 one … You don’t own it. at least the could portion.. also when Office 366 comes out.. and they shut down 365 … Forced upgrade… since your only paying for a service. your stuck in an upgrade cycle for money …  Also you will have zero expectations of privacy .. Your account gets hacked? your shit is good as stolen.

What companies are banking on is that you buy into the cloud without any research thinking “Hey this is cool wizbang tech!”

When it comes down to office level this is going to be a nightmare.. as to finding your document or having documents that are not supposed to be public leaking out to the public, since the information would be on the “cloud” it maybe a passworded folder and you give it out and someone cleans out the office bank account because the boss left the banking information in the “Cloud”.

Better yet.. this is all on the internet.. the office connection goes down and productivity goes to zero since no one can access the files..

All these “cloud” services are going to open a black hole when some random company hosting your cloud goes out of business and you cant access your data anymore. not to mention there will likely be a monthly/yearly price to pay for this rather than paying a one time costs.. Its Like renting a car that you have no control over and only can do simple things on like turn on the lights and honk the horn yet your paying a cost X infinity , rather than a one time license cost. These companies will at first seem cheaper than buying software outright but when you figure that over a period of months or even years . the “cloud” costs will greatly exceed the software costs.

And I’ve said it many times… the cloud is just rehashed shit with rainbow farts and ponies with glitter just to stuplify the average user into thinking he is getting something better than it really is.

The risks building a company around the cloud is just insanely risky … From buying ultra cheap terminals that can only access the cloud, to having to build a connection that can handle massive amount of data throughput. if you have a company of 100 people all using the fartcloud you need 100 networked computers that has a zero lag time connection to manipulate data. if you have a crowd-sourced project with lag you will have 50 people fixing one problem and not realized that the other 50 just did the same thing and wasted about an hours of productivity due to each person wasting 30 seconds fixing a problem that was fixed by 1 person.

The idea of the cloud is just totally not a good idea in its current form since corporations are not looking at this as a productivity tool but more as a subscription for cash run.. since they have to sell nothing and get a fuckton of money.

 

In the end I really hope people understand what the cloud is and its not anything new nor is it worth it in any means of the word.

Posted on

Phone Fun MMXXIV – thank you sprint….(nexus S 4g)

After Much Dealings with replacing my phone more times than the amount of explosions in a Michael bay movie, Sprint has worked with me and I have gotten away from HTC..

After going back and forth with the executive customer care since my phones kept having issues. they offered to restart my contract and pick up a phone at new contract cost, which was alot better than returning phone after phone. I tried to get a brand new EVO in hope of getting a phone without issue.
It just seems sprints flagship phones from the refurbished end are TERRIBLE.

From the B spot to random reboots and bad sound…

I wondered if HTC’s release products are the same – there is no way quality control should of ever let these phones back on the market. A refurbished phone is like a repaired car, It should look and act like NEW..

Anyways I am fully done with HTC.. the only way I’d use one is if one was given to me…

well, This time i’ve gone with a Samsung… though, The second phone problem going back to Phone fun 3 was a samsung.  This time I’ve gone with a Samsung Nexus s 4g

Now in previous post I’ve had my “Requirements for my phone”.

  1. to make calls –
  2. The Phone is configurable
  3. good battery life
  4. add/make ringtones
  5. Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
  6. Durable

Basically The nexus S is as follows.

  1. This phone makes calls and does it well with one small stipulation.. in some areas the antenna for the phone is lacking.
  2. Configuration on most android phones is your mileage may vary.. but this phone you can configure it pretty much ANY way you please… rooting is fairly simple. reflashing is simple.
  3. This point Really needs a to be explained, since any smart phone will not hold a candle to a “dumb” phone , On average a smart phone lasts about 1 day on a decent charge. The EVO on average would require charging after about 18hours. The nexus easily passes the 1 day marker and most days it gets close to 2 days before requiring to be charged.
  4. on android phones this is a dead simple process.
  5. Android Market has all kinds of applications- but, Its now not cost … but moreover privacy with apps now.
  6. While this phone feels very light its fairly durable. the EVO in comparison weighs alot more.

So far  this phone has served me extremely well .. and hopefully (knock on wood a tree or something) I will not have any issues with this.

Im leaving this post fairly short.

Hopefully I will not have to go back to this post and make phonefun MMMXXXVI

Posted on

Phone fun CDIV: WTF HTC?!

SO………………
Yeah..
IN the last issue of phone fun.. it actually turned out to be not so much phone. err fun….. well the Story might of stopped if it hadn’t been time for a new contract and me wanting a new phone due to the horrid life of the HTC touch. The HTC touch at the time i thought was a good phone but the thing is those phones seem to SUCK. I had gone through 11 or More HTC touches.. Now in the end Sprint made good on there end and offered me a HTC Diamond to make good. the HTC diamond was a much better phone.

Figuring my contract was up in 2010 , I figured I’d start with a brand New phone the HTC EVO, funny enough I didn’t even pre-order the phone I figured i’d goto the store and buy up the phone and they didn’t have it I’d wait. I went in to best buy On the day before the phone was due to be released and tried to pre-order the phone which didn’t work so well since the pre-orders we’re filled as of that day , So I was told to come back at the crack of opening at best buy, they were actually opening early that day to sell the phone. so on June 4th i got out of bed at the crack of dawn and headed out to best buy , Waited At the entrance and was told that it may not be possible to get the EVO , well since i was the first person in line which upped my chances, I got in the store first to find out they had only 2 EVO’s being sold on the floor and the rest were filled in as pre-orders. I was thinking Yee-fucking-ha as I got to the Mobile area first and started filling out the paperwork for the phone. The guy who was behind me was also in line heard the same thing i heard about 2 phones and thought i was going to buy both. Even if i wanted to i couldn’t.

But Happy i had the phone I walked out the door with a day one release phone and was Happy … Till about 6 months down the line. I had gone to the local store and was buying soda – I had been using the phone as a music Player after a bike trip and was thirstier than a man lost in a desert on mercury. So i took the phone out to shut off the music and while trying to manipulate the phone it happened….
The phone dropped and it was like slow motion. in a last ditch effort i grabbed the earphone plug…. Bad mistake… almost as bad as playing with a flamethrower in a gunpowder factory. As i had the cord thinking i was saved the phone stopped for what seemed a moment and the earphone jack disconnected and snapped the momentum of the phone Screen down to the cement … FUCK , I stirred at the phone for a moment like a dead animal not wanting to know if it was truly dead. After getting some courage and picking the phone up the worst of my fears were confirmed . the screen was smashed and only being held together by the screen protector. Well, the second thought swirled through my mind as to “AH HA , I have insurance.” so i picked up the pieces and headed down to the repair center , They quickly replaced my screen and i thought i was on my way again.. wrong…

Trip 1 phone 1:
WHen they had replaced the screen they goofed it up by somehow putting what seemed to be bad glass on the screen which was causing pressure on the LCD making the colors go all LSD on the LCD . I brought it to the original repair center and they said they would take a look at it. figuring i was in OK hands I left the phone with them to come back 2 hours later. when i picked up the phone sprint claimed to had have replaced the Screen and made sure of everything was ok. but, I did notice something. the Receipt for the back end service area your not supposed to see was in front of me , at the time i questioned the “DNR SENT BACK TO Customer”. not thinking what it meant i had left and was halfway home when it hit me…

DID NOT REPLICATE. FUCK….and behind the screen was the same dust that they had got in the phone from the first replacement.
So… Trip 3 i went back and explained my problems and how they did nothing and they offered to replace the phone. I was fine with that figuring I’d get a phone that was in better shaped than my phone. 2 days later I received that phone. that phone had its own problems Dead pixels and sounding like a constipated cat when getting calls.
Trip 4 Phone 3:
This trip ended up with sprint offering to send a Phone to my house in order to save me the trip of picking it up from the service center, well that was all good except this phone was also in sad ass shape. when you hit the touch screen the colors went into strobe mode and than freaked out………..
So another trip to the sprint repair center
Trip 5:
Again offered another phone i was still sort of happy with the service I’ve received from sprint. So this time it was offered that they would ship a phone from sprint corporate to the repair depot so they could inspect the phone themselves.
Trip 6 phone 4:
Miserable failure…. I had gone down the street and realized this phone had some pretty bad issues too..

In the end of this phone sprint again offered to ship the phone from corporate to my home.
I had asked and was told that I would be receiving a brand new EVO, which I would of been happy with Had i Actually had received on rather than Yet another refurbished problems.
Phone 5:
I ended up dealing with that phone for less than a month when i noticed the screen looked like it was badly put together and it had literally waves in the screen, that had looked like whomever worked on the phone crushed the LCD screen in there hands. The phones when it was off looked phone but when you looked at it it had whats known as the B-spot but about 10 times worse.

At this point I had it with refurbished phones I had it with the EVO. I was sick of running across the state and i was sick of seeing people order replacement after bad replacement of phones. Whatever company that repairs and refurbished the Sprint EVO’s was doing a terrible job. I would not be surprised if they just cleaned the phones up and let them loose into the world. For One of HTC’s flagship phones they made no effort to make these phones aesthetically pleasing for being a refurbished phone.

Sprint or whatever company handles there repairs seriously needs to check themselves for Quality control. there is no reason in the world these phones should be sent out into the wild like they are. Also the costs involved with this is likely crazy.. Replacing a phone 5 times has to has some costs behind it that are expensive.

For now I’ve sworn off HTC. It may not be there fault but after being through so many phones it leaves a bad taste in my mouth…

Posted on

PSN – Its dead jim.

The other night I decided to play some game on the PlayStation 3, Little did i know it would turn into something much worse.

After spending about 3weeks without the ps3 after sending the thing for a repair for a disk issue, basically my ps3 either turned into HAL as a 3 year old with disks, Every few times when ejecting the disc it would start to eject than take the disc back in as if playing a game of keep away.  When it started to happen I had called sony and was surprised by the tech support figuring that they would tell me that the drive has to blow up in an epic explosion – or you need mr scott to beam the disc out. Instead they offered to service the system. Thankfully the disc was not stuck in the system, anyways fast forward a few weeks after impatiently waiting to have the system back….

Around april 20th I figured i’d play the PS3,  I was greeted by the PlayStation Network giving an obscure error code. “error 80710a06” while trying to log into the Playstation Network

Continue reading “PSN – Its dead jim.”

Posted on

Review: Test Drive Unlimited 2

I Generally like racing games , Kart games, Racing game, Sandbox games. A few years back I bought Test Drive unlimited. TDU is an open game pretty much leaving you open to do what you please in the game with a MMO’ish setup and a social side. When I heard TDU2 was going to come out I was going I WANT THE GAME NOW!

Many months later the game releases, and I loaded the game and the first 5 minutes seemed ok . Than as i got into the game  I realized the introduction was an omen of sorts. The scene where your lead out to the garage and drive a car around for 5minutes and you *wake up* only to realize that you were only dreaming.

TDU2 Is nothing like its first game,While it has familiarity with the first the game is completely different in all the wrong ways. Some of the new things are welcome. Such as random locations for the random missions as helping people out. finding the random wrecks was also a nice addition. Than things take a toll for the worse.

Licensing- In the first game they were given through progression, the more races you won and other stuff you did the licenses were given to you, In this game you have to earn them through painful tasks reminding me of gran turismo that have extremely stringent rules. When you fail a task for the whole fact that someone rear ended you that’s a little asinine. That said the game wants you to be one of the borg, Driving to your standard is  futile, You will be assimilated to driving like we say.  Those test alone are worth one thrown controller for things beyond your control. Not to mention they threw in tantulus jr in as one of the driving tests.

After you deal with the driving test you have the hope of driving to a race and being off on your own, Instead your welcomed to the solar crown or Clown which fits better. this is begining of the point where you realize TDU 2 Is taking a turn and plowing into a wall at 150MPH. You are introduced to the “drama” of the game of putting faces on the brainless AI. Each cup has a set number of races and very poor rewards. At $2000 a race and being Non-repeatable at that point makes your options very slim. Whereas TDU if you failed a race you could always go back to a race you had better luck with you could race that race till you could afford a car that would better handle, Instead you can drive around to random events that include driving a man to work that sounds like sol Rosenberg from the jerky boys, Mr i want to go fast guy, and the vomit queen. The Cup races are painfully convoluted when you can rerace them, by the tenth time you hear the voice you just turn off the volume.

The biggest problem is they separated the open game from the racing part, since you do not have to drive to the locations the whole point of getting to the race is lost. The Driving Schools are harder than the game itself, and integrating the sims is worse. Sure you can have your own personalized Avatar but it takes away from the game. Sure its nice to “walk around” but on a severely limited scale.

All the problems of the launch day and the game itself it draws down to one thing.  With the Casino add-on the only winning move for the game is not to play. Since money is so poorly dispersed its actually easier to get money at the casino by jamming a key down or using a turbo controller. TDU2 Comes down to being simcity 2000 at that point, You build up a bit by racing to the next point, than zombieing out in the casino for hours on end. The First night of playing TDU with my friend we actually went into the casino , sat down at the machines than hit the buttons hours on end while smoking cigarettes outside and BS’ing.

Atari Really needs to do something here – Even at the shortest somehow implement the original TDU 1 races… because, As i said the easiest way to play TDU is not play at all, since thats what I’ve seen about everyone i know to play the game. build up a bit- get to the casino, Than turn on a turbo controller or mash a nickel into the keyboard and goto sleep.

Posted on

Of the PS3 Jailbreak and sonys reaction.

As you know I do talk about games… alot. Anyways, When i bought my PS3 i had intended to make use of the OtherOS feature. The only thing was when i bought my PS3 a week later They removed OtherOS.  If you have followed this little adventure, Sony originally dropped otherOS from the PS3slim and people got worried that  they would drop it from the ps3.

OtherOS on the PS3 was used to install Linux and use the system as a computer in some ways, From the Normal user perspective it would be a mostly useless thing, The only reason I say mostly useless is, that most people have a home PC and would rather use something they are more familiar with. People interaction with linux is pretty funny, even the word they cringe thinking its some sort of alien software.  The state of linux Is just a different iteration of “windows” really .. between win7/OSX/linux the interface is nearly the same now .

Before the removal of OtherOS hacking the internals for the playstation3 was minimal, when sony decided that removing otherOS was a good idea, they Officially opened Pandora’s box.  After that door was opened and removing the option hobbyist and players alike were pissed because of the loss of otherOS, but the segment of the market they did piss off was not the one they should of pissed off. Basically everyone that had this on there system looked for a way to return there system back to having the otherOS option. Geohot was the first person i payed attention to when it came to poking around in the PS3 hardware.  People originally blamed Geohot when it came to exploiting the hypervisor and the removal of OtherOS on the ps3.  The most recent development was the release of the private system key for the system pretty much fully opening Pandora’s box. With the final kick to the door with the key exploiting the system is actually a null point now. With the Key in hand people can now sign there code with the key and run software as if it was from Sony with little to no exploitation to the system. The question comes to mind.. would this key have been found without the removal of OtherOS , yes eventually , but Not as fast as it was found since the removal of it. If you follow the timeline of hacks for the PS3 virtually all hacks came AFTER the removal of OtherOS .  Now, sony is suing the two groups involved with finding the private system key, at this point Sony I think is making the wrong move.

Why, because look what happened with the bluray/HD-DVD AACS Encryption keys. the attempted DMCA take down started an explosion of attention towards the keys in question. Will this happen with the PS3? Maybe, the main problem is this Key will be harder to fix. there are a ton of problems with fixing the key or revoking said key.  If the key is revoked millions of PS3’s will have issues playing games, basically making your entire game library a minefield of if you can play it or not. Reading from Sony’s “motion for Temporary restraining order”

Knowing that the “Metldr Keys” can defeat TPMs in the PS3 System, Hotz began
using these proprietary Keys as a component of a Circumvention Device that applies SCEA
signatures to any file, effectively “tricking” the PS3 System into running unauthorized
programs.

by Using the key your not “tricking” the system, as far as the system cares its a signed file and will run it as so. Since the key is there you can run whatever you want, with that key exposed basically the keys to the castle are open and its open season on whatever someone wants to run.

Again if sony revokes said key there will be a nightmare of problems with games, there is no good way to revoke a key at this point since you would have to adapt EVERY piece of software out there to the newer key and changes to the system may create a hardware failure rate that would cost billions to the company. With Failoverflow and geohot were there intentions piracy… No, it was not , most software hardware and other devices tend to have homebrew scenes to which to run there own code on systems and find out interesting things with the hardware or make your own games. Unfortunately homebrew is often associated with piracy and homebrew is not piracy .

From here since Sony’s suing people the next step will be very interesting, Questionably – if the slashdot effect happens sony will have truly released Pandora’s box and created themselves an even bigger problem as millions of users go rogue. If they ban consoles, same effect, at this point they have backed themselves into a corner. Sony could have stayed silent about the issue and tried to fix it in the background, Either way its a long road ahead and an uncertain future with the PS3 since one of the main keys has been released. Looking at the possibilities…

The worst case scenario? Sony throws up there hands at the ps3 and shoehorns the PS4 into service with little to no upgrades and completely alienates there user base.
Another possibility, Sony finds an amicable fix that doesn’t break too many consoles but leaves older unsupported software unplayable.

Hopefully Sony finds a way to not completely screw up everyone’s game library.

well.. in the next few weeks, we will see..