Microsoft IPTV Sucks sooooo much! And ATT does too.
Since January of this year, I have been using Microsoft IPTV based equipment by Motorola. The service it runs on – AT&T Fiber Optic. The download speed it absorbs per box – 6 Mb/s. How good it works- not so priceless. Don’t get me wrong, the Internet download speeds is very fast, but that is where the good qualities end. The Internet is prone to constant crashing, and the T.V. is prone to constant freezing. The weird thing is that neither or at the same time. The boxes usually store a long enough cache of what is happening to get by with the Internet crashes, but the boxes just freeze. Randomly and when we haven’t had an Internet down time in several hours. I called them and asked them (Them being the AT&T U-Verse team) weather or not this was the box re caching what is happening. They said no, the box re-caches on restart, and that it doesn’t even need the cache to run right, just as kind of an “anti-skip” like iPods have.
So I call them again. They tell me now that there has been a red light on one of our boxes for several weeks, and that we were never contacted because they thought the red light was a false alarm (thanks AT&T for making sure). They ask me if it is doing it on the rest of the T.V.s, which it is, and tell me that it must be some different problem, cause it would only happen on that one box.
What is the verdict? Turns out that it was not A box, my Internet, or anything like that, but all of them. They said that Microsoft IPTV software (based on my least favorite thing, windows) is just kinda buggy, and will hopefully get fixed with updates down the road.
I’m sure there is a technical explanation to the boxes not working, other then a Mac user trying to give the panacea answer; Microsoft. But in all actuality, not even the U-Verse team wanted to go further into the issue.
Apple Boxes and Packaging
Apple Inc. is a company well known for their inventive designs as well as their great products. But I have to wonder about one thing. Their packaging. If you really look at the One To One container, or the iPod box, or maybe even the cool simplistic design of the MacBook Air box, I have to wonder, is there an entire unit at apple that is devoted to designing the boxes that things come in. I would really love to get on that team, and be paid a cool million a year to design the next box that apples newest computer comes in. Maybe even one that opens itself, plugs everything in for you, and then takes itself out to the trash. OR! maybe a box that even puts itself away, with the receipt inside, if you decide you want to take it back. That would be the life.
MobileMe; the good, the bad, the ungly, and the “Hey, thats cool!”
I, like the many other MobileMe(formerly .Mac) subscibers have gotten and upgrade and a name change to our servie. Okay, I exagerate. The four of us that use MobileMe got an upgarde. [ 
] And, if that weren’t enough, since they screwed around so much, they also gave us a free month because of service delays and issues. I have been using this new service, even though it isn’t that new to me, for about 2 or 3 weeks now. I find it pretty good, with some bumps and hiccups, but overall I would consider it an upgrade. I know that I am often harsh on technology services, upgrades, and changes, but I can truly say that this really tops the rest. Along with the space upgrade of 10 GB to 20 GB, for the same price per year, you also get Push Email, Contacts, and Calendars. In some directions between you and the “Cloud”, you have to wait up to 15 minutes, but other than that, it works.
I really don’t have much to complain about, since I have always liked the .Mac service, and found it better than my free email services (mainly Yahoo!, and GMail), but think that the best think is still in the iDisk. I find this especially useful because so few people have it, that it is one of the few online storage sites that my school has yet to block. I have heard reports of it being slow, and overall too different, but I don’t notice many problems with the Email, and other things that have been there for a while. What I do notice are the upgrades.
Thank you Apple, now all I need is an iPhone that will run on T-Mobile that I don’t have to Jailbreak (cause I don’t want to be frowned apon), and you will be the perfect corporations.
P.S.- as with all Apple products, the integration with other Apple products, hands down, cannot be beat.
Who names a website “Cuil”
It took me ten minutes to figure out how to pronounce the word, and then when I go to use it, I find out that I wish I didn’t know how to say it.
When a search engine, indexing over 120 billion websites says this:
No results because of high load…
Due to excessive load, our servers didn’t return results. Please try your search again.
i think to myself, “I will never use this.” And that is all.
Let me tell you what industries there is no room for competition in. Search Engines, Social Networking (Or fileshare. That was to you, Pownce), Blogging, Forums, Cars, Computer Building, and that new “Million Dollar” idea you have been thinking about for the last ten years. No room.
In remembrance of Randy Pausch
There will be no posts today.
Olympics in Beijing, why not
The Olympic games are coming up soon, and it, unlike the last in the U.S., is taking place in Beijing. A lot of people seem to think this a bad idea, including me. Lets face it, the government there is not the greatest, and after seeing how they responded to the earthquake a while back, how can we think they could possibly handle the Olympic games. Then to top it all off, I read in both the L.A. Times and the WSJ this morning, that there are going to be certain areas set up to protest, because the government is worried that it may become an issue if they riot to close to the game stadium. Not only does that seem careless, but it seems like the government there can’t take a hint. Here it is, i’ll give it to you. Not even your own country wants YOU to have the Olympics.
Does Bush deserve what he gets
I am going to give you information and views from where I am seeing them. Inside a High School. But don’t stop reading, it gets interesting. One argument we were having in our English class (teacher initiated, don’t worry) was weather or not Bush’s reputation is really what is should be. I mean, people out there are so angry with him, because they wanted the country to be ran their way. Well, the problem is there are 304,632,500 (as of July 18, 2008; 9:40 AM) other people that he also has to make happy. That’s not even counting allies that he has to make happy, businesses, ext.
What I said above was true, but it is not what I wanted to focus on. Now that one person, say a very convincing person, is mad at Bush. He is now going to start telling all his friends and family members that Bush is a bad president. But since the United States has the attention span of a 1st grader, and the mood swings to match, a lot of people have no idea what to think because they don’t follow presidential elections or know what the hell is going on. But since they want to know what to think, who to vote for, and who is good and bad, they listen instead of do their own research. So now, there are a lot of uneducated people making an uneducated guess. That’s right, I said it because no one else would.
But it gets even worse then that. These people start preaching it to their kids. They are telling our future that Bush was a bad president. Problem with kids/teens, is that we don’t want to think for ourselves most of the time. Believe me, I know. We want to think we do but we don’t want to actually have to. So now their children think the same thing, with now backing, no reason, and no thought put in. They just go around and start talking the same way their parents do about Bush.
They greatest threat to America as we stand now is not oil, terrorists, racists, Buddhists, emos, religious leaders, or religions. It is, as the song goes, the American Idiot.
Merriam-Webster definition of
Idiot:
- 1 usually offensive : a person affected with extreme mental retardation
New company formed, but their name is too long.
Anheuser-Busch InBev. Kinda just rolls off the tongue. They are the new company formed by the InBev acquisition of Anheuser-Busch. This, at least to me, seems to be yet another nail in the coffin type things for the U.S. economy. The more businesses that are outsourced and run in other countries, the less money get circulated in the U.S., and the more dangerous this whole recession thing becomes. I mean, come on, did they really have to sell out. I guess this is yet another reason why companies should really not go incorporated.
Blogging from my sidekick
It works surprisingly well, except for key typos. If you would like to try this with any mobile browser just put an m. infront of the address.
Should killers be given a second chance?
I read an article in the LA times. You can read it here. It talks about how there are people in prison who have killed, gotten the chance for parole, and then had it taken away. It raises the question of weather or not people who have murdered other people should be allowed to have parole, and weather or not the justice system is unjust.
There are people, not necessarily the one in the article, in prison that have been cleared for parol, but the Governor has vetoed the order. The woman in this article has been released, even though the Governor’s order was to keep her in. He was overruled. I personally don’t know what to think.
It is not exactly a fine line between murder, and hurting someone. It is a pretty obvious outcome. I think that people who murder purposely should never be released from prison. Having them released is like mocking the dead, I think. It’s essentially saying, “We know they killed someone, but was the person they killed really that important anyway?” I mean, this country is in shambles as it is, but to then let people who we know are killers back on the streets is horrible. They say they won’t do it again, but a lot of them said they didn’t kill them in the first place.
The article says that an inmate said the state gives you false hope, and when you deserve your release, they then decide not to give it to you. Well, I have new for them, they don’t deserve their release. Why should they get off easy. When a live is taken, theirs should be taken too, and I think the death penalty is wrong because it is making the life sentence more bearable. Instead of sitting their, rotting away in prison, they are able just to say it’ll all be over in 15 minutes. AH, that is so wrong to me.
The worst part is, I don’t want to find out that I am living near one of them, cause I don’t want to have anything to do with them. People who have committed crimes are probably the only people who should continue to be stereotyped, pointed at, and feared. They should be social outcasts, and not allowed to be let back into society in a calm and quiet way because they proved they couldn’t live normally in society.
I know that I have strong views, and may edit this article later. Please leave comment on what you think, cause I would like to hear them.
