Fake Bill Gates

People ask what my take is on net neutrality and I keep thinking that net neutrality is basically a guarantee on innovation, for now. The problem is that with the traditional system, the cable company is blasting every single channel into your home, regardless of whether you’re watching it or not. The upside is that changing channels is merely a process of adjusting the frequency the TV listens on, and you get a nearly instantaneous channel change. This is ridiculously wasteful. IPTV saves so much bandwidth by only transferring the data for the channel that you’re tuned into. Even if we used the ridiculously wasteful Blu-ray codec, and the cable industry’s low estimate of coax bandwidth, IPTV could allow you to watch 46 HD channels at once.

I have outlined signals analysis below. The only caveat is that I did not specialize in e-signals, but I took tons of physics and software engineering courses and can set up mythtv with an analog tuner blindfolded, with my hands tied behind my back (okay, maybe not both hands… I still have to type). Please correct me anywhere that I’m wrong.

Data Rates

At 1080x, Blu-ray’s data rate is 54Mbps (~6.75 MBps). Comparatively, HD television providers (namely Verizon and Comcast) regularly transmit 1080x at 10-18 Mbps. Supposedly, Blu-ray sends so much extraneous data for error handling, but something tells me that encryption (which is apparently to protect you from yourself) helps put that overhead up there too.

Coax

Typical coax’s total bandwidth is a total of 672 MHz. The data rate for coax is 6 MHz per 50 Mbps (~6.25 MBps). Slapping down some quick dimensional analysis leaves us with:

672 MHz * 50 Mbps = 5600 Mbps (~700 MBps)

           6 MHz

Now, since IEEE sometimes works in vacuum of theory and formulas that don’t work with such exactitude in the real world, one trade group claims that coax total bandwidth is only 300 MHz. At that rate, we’re still talking 2500 Mbps (~312 MBps, which is pretty close to the new DOCSIS rates). Thus, even if we use Blu-ray’s ridiculously redundant and encrypted codec at 6.75 MBps, and the trade group’s bandwidth estimate (that is half of IEEE’s estimate), you could watch 46 HD channels at once.

To mitigate the channel changing issues, you could easily receive a background signal that transmits a reduced signal resolution which includes every channel. Also, as the new generations grow up where DVRs are standard, live TV will undoubtedly make way for on-demand TV, which dumps channel changing for menus. It will only become further unnecessary to have data constantly blasted into your home that was blasted in just a few hours ago. For example, the Daily Show and Colbert Report are channeled into your home AT LEAST 4 times per day on weekdays. Even then, re-runs and syndication account for a ridiculous portion of data beamed into your home. The result is that you’re “downloading” stuff that you’ve downloaded tens if not hundreds of times. With on-demand TV, loading of data could easily start while on menu screens. Trailers (and beginnings of shows) and video art would quickly be downloaded in the background and then the regular video could be downloaded in real time.

Back to Neutrality

So the moral of the story is that if we require net neutrality, we require innovation, and it’s only a matter of time before we get amazing pipes into our homes that blast ridiculous speeds and tens of concurrent HD signals. Without net neutrality, the incentives are not to make a better system, but to make a system full of more rules and nickel/dime rates.

I’m looking to get a computer for my parents, and we’re pretty stiff on them not getting Vista for the reason’s below. When I was looking at all Dell’s site, I couldn’t find any options that didn’t include Vista. So I joined their CSR chat, and this is what followed.

CSR: Welcome to Dell’s Inspiron Sales Chat! I hope you are doing well and thank you for waiting. My name is Derwin. I will be your personal sales agent, please provide your phone number and e-mail address where I can contact you in case we get disconnected. How may I help you with your purchase today?

Me: I’m looking at one of the Inspiron 1525 packages and I was wondering whether I could get it with Windows XP instead of Vista

CSR: Hi <my name… no I did not type Fake Bill Gates>.

CSR: Dell has followed suite with the industry and we no longer offer XP. I personally use and enjoy Vista though. What concerns do you have with it?

Me: The computer is for my parents and they have some older, yet perfectly good peripherals that Vista doesn’t have drivers for.

Me: My dad’s job also uses some custom software which just crashes on Vista. In fact, they just got new computers a month ago or so, and they were adamant in getting XP instead of Vista

Me: Or is there a way to get the laptop without having to pay for Vista and I can install XP on it?

CSR: I understand. however Dell systems has vista on there systems [sic]

CSR: you can downgraded vista to xp though.

Me: Right, but if we’re not using it, we shouldn’t be paying for it. Does Dell offer refunds for unused Vista licenses?

CSR: No. i apologize for that.

Me: Thank you for your time then.

And that’s about it. Not only did his punctuation and proper capitalization go out the window, he used “there” instead of “their” but he should have said “our” (and his name is Derwin). It’s pretty clear that Dell has been skimping on customer service.

Apparently, Dell won’t let consumers buy !OS laptops to evade the Microsoft Tax, and they won’t let people get XP even if their software isn’t compatible. Good thing for me though. That means they have to buy my software and up my stock price. Thank you, Dell!

If you haven’t been living under a rock, you probably have heard about the House and Senate voting for retroactive telecom immunity. The funny thing is the Bush administration is claiming the warrantless wiretapping (which may or may not exist of course) wasn’t in any way illegal, but if it wasn’t illegal, then they wouldn’t need retroactive immunity for anyone involved, and could just throw the lawsuits away with summary judgment, and even ask for attorneys fees. Anyways, so the tech geek’s Champion of Change, Mr. Broadband Policy himself, and Supreme Commander of all that is the Neutral Net, Barack Obama repeatedly swore that he’d stand against retroactive telecom immunity.

Obama said there is “little doubt” that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, “has abused [its] authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders. . . . [The bill] does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.”

That was literally in mid-June. Here we are, not even a month later, and he’s apparently retitled himself to Lord “The Only Change We’ll Deliver is that We’ll Violate Your Rights Instead of Republicans”. Obama voted FOR telecom immunity.

I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program.

So in other words, he feels it’s acceptable to violate our constitutional rights, just as long as he gets to do it instead of Republicans. Trading one administration that violates our rights to another administration that violates our rights certainly isn’t change. The worst part is that after lying about what Obama said he’d support, is that he’s now lying to our face by calling it a compromise. There was no compromise. Republicans wanted retroactive immunity. Democrats were against it. This “compromise” directs all federal courts to dismiss any suits over any alleged NSA wiretapping. That’s not a compromise. The bill removes all accountability entirely. Regardless of which definition of compromise you happen to use, not a single one involves “Republicans get everything they want, and the Democratic majority shows just how spineless they really are.” Despite the obvious substantive due process, procedural due process, and separation of powers issues, Obama (who went to Harvard law nonetheless) has gone ahead and sold his soul.  You know Obama messed up when even the kos kids are blasting him for his piss poor strategy.

Now lets look at Obama’s report card. He’s for higher taxes, for government healthcare, for citizen defenselessness (he calls it “gun control”), and now for government intrusion into our homes whilst lying to our faces about his political indiscretion. You can call it populist, authoritarian, totalitarian, or socialist. I call it “any chance Obama had at me casting my big swing state Florida vote in his favor went out the window yesterday.” I’m not saying McCain is a saint. I’m just saying that neither one has any integrity whatsoever.

Now I want to know, Mr. Obama, can I get some retroactive immunity for all the antitrust suits we lost over the last 10 years? That’d really help my share price, and I might be able to get past Buffet and Helú. We’ll, ummmm, give you some “campaign finance” money. Or at least I think that’s what you call it nowadays.

By the way, there are credits at the end. This is not real, but it’s probably based on true story. I know because I worked IT at one point in my life. Never again.

Computers are evolving so fast. Sorry, you’ll have to flip to about 40 seconds in to get to the skit.

It’s an excerpt from the Onion Movie. Fake Bill Gates does not endorse killing anyone via thrown tools, especially if that anyone is me.

I’m looking around at LCD TVs for when I move in August. I already have a vga-rca converter that I use to connect my computer to my 36 inch SDTV, but I want to get something with a higher resolution. I’m tempted to just get a projector, although replacing bulbs for $200-300 every 2 years isn’t fun.

Then I got to thinking about why I was buying a better TV. When I move in August, I don’t intend to buy any satellite or cable as I have realized that they’re obsolete. I generally watch:

• The Daily Show (on hulu and comedycentral.com)
• Colbert Report (on hulu and comedycentral.com)
• Chuck (on hulu and nbc.com)
• Heroes (on hulu and nbc.com)
• South Park (on southpartstudios.com)
• Assorted stand-up specials (on comedycentral.com)
• Stargate Atlantis
• Mythbusters
• Scrubs
• Good eats

The Daily Show and Colbert Report have four new episodes every week and they’re off a full week every 4 weeks or so. The writer’s strike started in November of 2007, and most of these other shows won’t have a new episode (since the strike) at least until the middle of July. In that 8 month span, I’ve seen all the reruns of every one of these shows except a few episodes of Penn & Teller. Most will come back with roughly 4 episodes per month while in season, and most of these are available for free, some in HD, through legal online venues. Of the last few shows, we’re talking 4 shows x 4 episodes = 16 episodes per month, in season. With a cable/satellite bill at roughly $50 just for the TV service, we’re talking $3.13 per episode, and I have to suffer through all the ridiculous and grossly irrelevant advertising. Here’s a look at what advertisers apparently think is acceptable:

Family Guy is playing, and Bill Engvall comes, pauses the show, and gives a short advertisement, and then unpauses the show. There’s plenty of other ridiculousness as promotions often take up the bottom third of the screen during the regular content.

I won’t even address how ridiculous television news is (that’s for another rant). Between TapTheHive, the Daily Show, and Colbert Report, I get way more and way better quality news that’s highly tailored to my interests.

The part that I don’t get is that advertising time is just under 1/3 of all the television we watch (8-9 min of a 30 min show and 16-19 min of a 60 min show). If you make $6/hr, your 20 minutes are worth $2 in the aggregate (and I’m Fake Bill Gates… my time is worth astronomically more than that). Now, I despise Apple with the burning hot intensity of ten thousand suns, and I wish even more vile things upon DRM, but iTMS is the only decent commercial web-video service around. If there were more stores like it, dumping cable/satellite entirely would be feasible for many more people. Seeing as I’m already paying $3.13 per episode of commercial laden video, if I paid $5 for an episode without advertising, and I make minimum wage, I’d still come out ahead.

And if you’re worried about re-runs, catch them on DVD through netflix or ebay. Hell, the SG-1 box set was $100 at Costco for all 10 seasons. With most seasons having roughly 20 episodes, that’s around 50 cents per episode, all with no commercials.

The problem is that we’re in a rut right now. People use DVRs to skip commercials, and as things shift over to web-based systems, ad-block further decimates revenue for “broadcasters”. Meanwhile, cable reverts to compression to deal with bandwidth overcrowding instead of dumping analog signals for IPTV. Even then, most people are too deluded to do the math on how much of their all-you-can-eat TV plan they actually use. They’re apparently more willing to pay extensively for the opportunity to watch things they don’t actually watch, than actually to just pay for what they watch.

And all of this completely ignores the elephant standing in the room: torrent networks which spew commercial free video for $0 per month via RSS feeds.

Vote with your dollars, and disconnect your cable/satellite. I know I will.