I recently hooked up internet in a location without Fiber and had to go to Comcast. It’s the first time I’ve used their service since I was in high school so I was hoping it had improved.

Surprisingly they said I could get 20 Mbit fiber which was awesome. My fiber was only 15 Mbit. So I got everything setup and quickly ran a speed test

Comcast 20/5

Advertised: 20/5
Actual: 5/2

Strangely I only got 5 Mbit. I thought it might be the server so I hoped on my old fiber connection and ran the same test:

BroadWeave 15/15

Advertised: 15/15
Actual: 13/10

Traffic Shaping

I was disappointed by the big loss of speed from Comcast. I expected them to fall short of advertised (everyone does) but to fall all the way down to 5? I lost 75% of my speed while fiber sat around 15% loss. That’s awful but at least I should be able to stream video.

I connected to my file server which is where I store my legally obtained digital content and started streaming. Uh-oh, even though the server can pump out 1500 KB/s I can only get 125 KB/s when going through Comcast. I checked from a few other locations and got stellar speeds which means Comcast is traffic shaping. Other locations give me quite a bit better speed, in the 1500 KB/s range but when I hit my server all of the sudden traffic shaping kicks in and my speed tanks.

Monopoly

Enjoy your monopoly now Comcast, or should I say Xfinity, because as soon as anyone has choice it will quickly become apparent that your internet offering is subpar. I don’t need a company deciding what traffic of mine is worth my bandwidth, that’s my business. Further, I think I ought to make a complaint to the BBB about your outrageous speed discrepancies.

Att: The people who decided WGA was necessary
Subject: Microsoft should not treat their consumers like criminals.

In matters of DRM and control one thing has been proven over and over again: You only hurt the ones you’re supposed to love.

The Story

A close acquaintance of mine, a 70 year old man, recently called me up because he had a problem with his computer. He turned it on one day and it told him that his copy of windows was not Genuine.

He is, as of this moment, unable to use that machine (luckily he has a Mac so he can get along). He didn’t “steal” a copy of windows. In fact he bought a copy of windows. It came with his computer. Of course, to you (Microsoft) he is probably a criminal so why shouldn’t his computer be rendered useless?

Obviously Windows tells my friend that he must reenter his key. Of course, almost every OEM license of Windows does not come with a readily available copy of the OS and key. So what are the alternatives? He can A) Call Microsoft (good luck with that) B) Call his manufacture who well send him “Restore CDs” that will whipe his data and force him to reinstall all of his programs or C) He can ask his friend who is aquatinted with these sorts of things to force Windows to behave like it’s supposed to.

The fact that Im writing this letter should tell you that the only real option is C. So here I am, having to clean up after your mistakes. All because you would rather assume that your clients are criminals rather than the people you should love and appreciate.

The cruel irony

The cruel irony of DRM is so silly that I wonder why people keep on trying. To pirates DRM and the Windows Activation thing are not problems. It does not bother them in the slightest. They dance around your silly anti-copying measures and laugh.

However to your client, the actual consumer who becomes the collateral damage of your war in error, these protections loom high and are impassable. In other words, the only people who end up having a hard time are the people that actually pay for your software!

A Modest Proposal: Steal Everything

Its simple, if you buy the software it will lock you out. If you download a cracked version and keep it that way you will be able to use your software unabated. Either way you’re considered to be a stealing criminal.

In closing, you sir (Microsoft) are disgusting. I have no idea how you can get away with treating your clients like criminals. It is absolutely deplorable that you have not learned from any of your mistakes and stopped with all of this nonsense. I will avoid your products like the plague and go with alternatives that do not consider me to be a criminal.

I’ve attached a simple diagram to help explain my article using pictures. This diagram is about music however it still applies to software.

Signed, Dan at todaywasawesome.com

I was feeling very enterprising at work this morning (Im on lunch now) and decided to make a nice mail template for something I send out quite often. I didn’t need anything crazy but quickly found some guides and went to work.

You have to manually code via html/css your email template and do all sorts of stupid and useless things like generate plists to make it but here is the catch. Let us liken the generation of this email template to a cute puppy. This is what I made:

Look how awesome my template looks!

So I was really excited to test it out and send it to someone using outlook. What they got was very different, they got the equivalent of this:

ZOMG WHAT ISTHAT?!?!!? WHAT HAPPENED!?

So be aware, it’s not worth using apple mail templates because they look like crap when you send them to people.

That’s right! Yahoo Music has won a todaywasawesome award for the category of advancement of anti-DRM. Yahoo music recently announced that they’re going to disable their DRM servers. That’s great, just that much less DRM in the world! Whoo!

Wait…they did what?!

Apparently Yahoo isn’t just disabling their DRM servers, they’ve gone the EXTRA MILE and are going to be disabling all the music that anyone has bought with their service! Not only will there be less DRM in this world but less DRM music! What a break through for digital rights to have Yahoo leading the the way in doing away with DRM technology.

But seriously, they should get an award

At least they’re proving, by stealing all of their users music, that DRM is a failure wherever it’s implemented. Here’s a breakdown in who gets robbed in DRM and non DRM situations.

DRM situations: The consumer is robbed of things they already paid for.
Non-DRM situations: No one is robbed of anything.

I’d like to announce that I’m also nominating Yahoo for biggest douche of the year award as well.

UPDATE Yahoo has vowed to reimburse customers. I guess it could be worse.

I, like many recently, have been looking at alternative fuel sources. Looking for ways to cutback my dependance on expensive electricity and gas. I’ve come up with some ideas but one that doesn’t seem to be worth a damn is Solar Panels. I found this solar panel kit that only costs $600 and yields about 1 kWh a week.

Wow a whole kilowatt every week!

That sounds like a pretty good dead right! I mean, 600 bucks gets you 52 kWhs a year assuming you have perfect weather and the sun is always directly on your solar panel…oh and it also has to be summer all year long.

There’s only one problem, after a year you will have paid ($600/52)=$11 a kilowatt. That doesn’t sound like a bad deal. A kilowatt is like…1000 watts right? That must be a large sum of watts! Like…a whole barrel of watts!

Back in the real world

Unfortunately last month my house used 981 kilowatts for a bill of $78.56. Which means I paid $0.0698 per watt. That makes solar power a whopping $10.30 more expensive per watt. In order to power my entire house I would need roughly 981 solar panels of this size 4.5 ft x 1.5 ft which means I would need an area roughly 4414.5 ft x 1471.5 ft. I’m pretty sure thats more area than the plot that my house sits on. Oh yeah, plus it would cost $588,600 dollars to make…

Sorry solar power, until you cost less than 11 times as much as normal electricity it looks like it’s a no go.

The Setup

I share an office with eight other people (nine including myself) and seven of the people in this room prefer to work with the lights off. We have big windows and it’s nice to just work in natural light. A lot of us find it easier to focus but there are two people that are very adamant that the light be turned on.

Today one of them was gone and seven of us where sitting in here working with the lights off happily when our co-worker who wants the lights on, we’ll call her “Sarah”, walked in the room and immediately turned the lights on.

I stealthily remarked via IM to another colleague that it was pretty rude to walk into a room and change it without any regard to the people already in there.

Trying to teach a lesson

To try to demonstrate to Sarah why this might be rude I left the room and when I came back in I turned off the lights. Sarah looked back at me and I stopped and said “Oh, I’m sorry, whenever I walk into a room I automatically adjust it to my personal preference regardless of what the people in the room might want.”

I was afraid that my sarcasm might come off as way too mean when I don’t bare any animosity for Sarah (I quite like her actually). Fortunately for me Sarah lacks a sense of irony and responded thusly: “Oh I see, you’re saying you’re really self-centered and you don’t think of others. Hows that working in your marriage?”

All I could do was laugh, it would be funnier though if she understood the joke was on her. Irony, it seems is lost on this one.