Last update May 28, 2010

BANDWIDTH POLUTION

Today, I take a different spin on my blog. I see a shockingly growing trend on the 'net today. I call it bandwidth Pollution!
With a slow internet connection, you can see just how many servers you are connecting to when you call up a page. A site like Hotmail (for example) an connect to over 2 dozen servers even before your "Inbox" comes up. Now on a fast, high speed connection, this doesn't really mater, but on a slow connection, it can take over 5 minutes for the page to come up. This is happening on TON's of sites. I like to go to Gizmodo, HP forums, Engaget, you name it.

In this era of being "Green" and responsible, I am surprised that this is happening. Is it bad coding? or just nobody cares? I mean if we see a large corporation emitting light pollution, noise pollution or tons of toxic smoke, we are up in arms. But for the people with slow connections, well, they are poor and just don't matter.

Another problem with this is the cell phone user. Here in Canada, our cell phone providers are rapping customers with "Data-charges" so how much money is it costing to go to a site like Gizmodo? 5 Cents a page ? 50 cents a page? Even with a Data plan, these sites can be a costly view.

Ultimately, it boils down to the website owners to take a good look at their site. Is all the eye candy worth the extra bandwidth? In a perfect world, the Internet should be free or very cheap to access, but the ISP's. Telecom's and cable companies have only increase their "fees" in the last 15 years, not reduced them. This "Problem" is just going to snowball in the future, where it won't be affordable to surf the net anymore.

Then again, maybe its just me..

 

 

 

Last Update May 17,2010

NO luck with Heathkit!

God Heathkit must hate me by now, it seems no matter what we do, something just screws up the chemistry!
I got a (rather angry) call from Ernie (I believe that is his name) from Heathkit this morning. He was informed that I canceled the payment on my VISA for the course. I explained to him that I DID NO such thing, but he was adamant that the payment was canceled. I did mention that 2 weeks ago, it looked like the payment was canceled by Heathkit, but they had taken the payment out again. I then called VISA to see what the problem was. Well, it looks like the problem is VISA themselves. Because Heathkit took a few days to process my order. VISA then took out my monthly service fee. Now, just to get this straight. the monthly service charge is ONLY $7.50. Heathkit then put the order through, and I had a negative balance of $7.37 . VISA then froze my account for 45 days, suspecting fraud from Heathkit. Normally, a call to me would have cleared this up instantly, but meanwhile everyone gets pissed, and nobody tells me why. The funds are still there for Heathkit, but they are on hold at the moment.
To me, the simple solution is to go and take 5 minutes and put another $10 on the card and clear everything up. Visa is "escalating" this off to their claims department, so hopefully I can get the cleared up ASAP with Heathkit.This is why service fees will kill us all.

 

last update May 16,2010

We Lost Another Legend this week!

It has been another insane week here at the lounge! I have been working 8 days straight (because our manager is on holidays) and as a result, things have slipped a bit here at the lounge. I even had to miss my AMICUE monthly meeting and Coffee sessions, I was not impressed on that part.
Tuesday, UPS finally dropped off the Heathkit soldering course. I noticed that AFTER I paid the extortion fee, UPS wanted me to sign all these forms, stating I GAVE them power of attorney, permission to represent me and a whole bunch of other legal documents. I refused to sign any of the forms, AS I GAVE NO permission what so ever for UPS to do ANYTHING on my behalf. I told the driver for his office to call me if they had any issues with this, but, so far nothing. It seems like all they cared for was my cash, and that is it.
Speaking of my Heathkit course, I was VERY disappointed when I opened the package. Every Picture/ description/ catalog that Heathkit has ever put out, shows a soft cover textbook or manual with the course. I opened my package to find a stack of loose leaf sheets, that were just badly photocopied of the manual (and not even a binder for them to go into!). I immediately called Heathkit and one of their tech's got back to me. His copy of the course was a soft cover textbook, so he is looking into what has happened- so far, I have not heard back from anyone there. No one can tell me if this is how they ship them now, or if this is part of another course. Even though the course is only $32, I expect more than (badly) photocopied sheets. Come on Heathkit, you are better than this.
I also asked if I could buy the exams separately. You may remember, I had mentioned in an early Blog, my DC Electronics exam was missing, he is going to send me a new one, because after all, the (blank) answer sheet is missing and that is all I have to send in for credit. We were discussing the age of my courses and he thought the Audio was on VHS tape or cassettes. His reaction was priceless, when I told him it was on records.." RECORDS!! " he said, and he would have to fix that.
In other news, we lost another legend this week. Not from Computer history, but artist Frank Frezetta past away on Monday. If you do not know who he was, he painted all the Conan covers back in the late 60's and '70's. He was a major geek influence. If you have the chance see the 2002 Documentary "Painting with Fire" to find out about the major influence Frank had on many people, artists, writers, film makers etc. He was 82 years old.
I also got to see IRON MAN 2 this week. It was/is the ONLY movie I wanted to see this summer. It was not as good as the first one, but it was 1000 time more enjoyable than "Avatar" (GOD, was I the only one who thought Avatar was pure crap?- visually stunning, but just a big load of horse shit of a movie). I thank God, Iron Man 2 was not in 3D. I did find it fascinatingly funny that the ORACLE Pavilion on the Stark EXPO (and rather IRONIC) had NO TECHNOLOGY in it, just trees and streams. Like it was saying that ORACLE has moss growing on it, because it is such an outdated and ancient company..

 

 

 

Last Update May 9, 2010

A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF HOW UPS IS MAKING COMPANIES LOOSE BUSSINESS.

Just a quick update today as I have a double shift to work in about an hour. Heathkit called me on Friday. At first they were mad that I refused shipment and there were going to cancel my order. I told them to get UPS to re-try delivery and I will pay for it as this is just a retarded situation, and UPS is making me out to be the bad guy in this situation (like they always do). Either way Heathkit or myself will get stuck with the extortion fees, and I want to do business with Heathkit again. I thought UPS would be at my door with hand out again and that would be the end of it.
Well UPS did NOT show up on Friday, and I see today my CC has been credited with the reverse payment. I will call Heathkit again tomorrow, but it looks like UPS has screwed up another business relationship. I use to comment all the time on Companies that only ship UPS, because we Canadians know better and won't deal with them, and you can easily see on Ebay that nobody bits on auctions that "Only ship UPS", but how do we get this point across to American's. It is beyond me.

Last Update May 6, 2010

HERE WE GO AGAIN -UPS SUCKS ASS!!!!

You may remember last month I ordered the soldering course from HeathKit. You may also remember my rant from last year at this time, on how UPS FUCKS us Canadian's at the boarder with extortion fees. Well, I just got through with the USP guy at the door and nothing has changed! I had to send the Course back to Heathkit.
I had asked Heathkit NOT to send it UPS, and they said no problem, but of course, I was talking to the sales guy, not the shipping Dept. UPS wanted another $20 on a $32 course, and to top it off, I already Paid about $23 or so dollars in Shipping, so the grand total is now nearing $75.
When will the law step in and stop these outrageous fees? probably never!
Will I ever get the HeathKit course? Probably not. I will call Heathkit tomorrow to find out what to do next.



Last Update May 4,2010

Slump Dump Week

ok, I will admit it, I have been in a slump this week, I just don't have the energy or the drive to do the website or even keep up with current events. Heck, I haven't even done the dishes or cleaned the Apartment this week. I guess I am a bit depressed on my current financial state, as my internet connection is not back up,You Know your in a funk, when you listen to Pink Floyd's "is there anybody out there" over and over at 3 am, and watch "Pirates of Silicon Valley" Over and over at work, until you can see where they re-used some cars in the background for different scenes,and the more I work, the more behind I get it seems. Piggy backing off of a weak wi-fi signal doesn't help, as some days, I barley get 5 minutes of internet and then the connection is lost.
Today did not help. I woke up to a freak blizzard. The last few weeks have been OK -weather wise, with daytime highs reaching between 15 and 20 degrees C, but this morning was 2 cm of wet snow and brutal winds, so I just wanted to crawl back in bed. It will all be gone in a day or so, but today is shot.

Last week, I commented on HP's buy out of Palm. Apparently, the "NEW" WebOS is great, I was commenting on the Access OS that my Treo has just sucks the proverbial Donkey. I know I am dreaming, but it would be cool to see HP-Voodoo branded Smart Phones. Voodoo had talked about them years ago and did a prototype. I snagged photos at the time and they are below.

 

In other tech news, I just found out that Ed Roberts past away last month. He was only 68. If you don't know who Ed is/ was, he was the founder of MITS computers and was the creator of the ALTAIR 8088. He gave Bill Gates and Paul Allen their first jobs programming BASIC for the ALTAIR. With out ED, Bill Gates would not have even been in the Computer Industry. I believe he is one of the important "founding Fathers" of the computer revolution

Below is the Wikkipedia Article on Ed:

Bill Gates was a student at Harvard University and Paul Allen worked for Honeywell in Boston when they saw the Altair computer on the cover of Popular Electronics. They had previously written software for the earlier Intel 8008 microprocessor and knew the Intel 8080 was powerful enough to support a BASIC interpreter. They sent a letter to MITS claiming to have a BASIC interpreter for the 8080 microprocessor. Roberts was interested, so Gates and Allen began work on the software. Both had experience with the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10 minicomputers that they would use. Allen modified the DEC Macro Assembler to produce code for the Intel 8080 and wrote a program to emulate the 8080 so they could test their BASIC without having an Altair computer. Using DEC's BASIC-PLUS language as a guide, Gates determined what features would work with the limited resources of the Altair computer. Gates then started writing the 8080 assembly-language code on yellow legal pads. In February Gates and Allen started using a PDP-10 at Harvard to write and debug BASIC. They also enlisted another Harvard student, Monte Davidoff, to write the floating-point math routines.
Altair 8K BASIC on paper tape. Bill Gates gave Paul Allen a paper tape containing BASIC to bring to MITS.
Paul Allen flew to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in March 1975 to test BASIC on a real Altair 8800 computer. Roberts picked him up at the airport in his pickup truck and drove to the nondescript storefront where MITS was located. Allen was not impressed. The Altair computer with 7 kB of memory that BASIC required was still being tested and would not be ready until the next day. Roberts had booked Allen in the most expensive hotel in Albuquerque and the room was $40 more than Allen brought with him. Roberts paid for the room and wondered who is this software guy who can not afford a room in a hotel.

The next day the Altair with 7 kB had finally passed its memory test and Allen had their BASIC interpreter on a paper tape Bill Gates had created just before Allen left Boston. It took almost 15 minutes for the ASR-33 Teletype to load the program into the Altair then the Teletype printed "MEMORY SIZE?" Allen entered 7168 and the Teletype printed "READY". Both Allen and Roberts were stunned their software and hardware actually worked. They entered several small programs and they worked. The BASIC interpreter was not complete and crashed several times, but Roberts had a high level language for his computer. Roberts hired Allen as Vice President and Director of Software at MITS.Bill Gates also worked at MITS; the October 1975 company newsletter gives his title as "Software Specialist"

Bill Gates remained at Harvard, but continued working on BASIC. Students were allowed to use the DEC PDP-10, but officials were not pleased when they found that Gates was developing a commercial product. The school then implemented a policy that forced Gates to use a commercial time share service to work on BASIC.
On July 22, 1975, MITS signed a contract for the Altair BASIC with Bill Gates and Paul Allen. They received $3000 at signing and a royalty for each copy of BASIC sold, with a cap of $180,000. MITS received an exclusive worldwide license to the program for 10 years. They also had exclusive rights to sublicense the program to other companies and agreed to use its "best efforts" to license, promote and commercialize the program. MITS would supply the computer time necessary for development on a PDP-10 owned by the Albuquerque school district.
MITS realized that BASIC was a competitive advantage and bundled the software with computer hardware sales. Customers who purchased the computer, memory, and I/O boards from MITS could get BASIC for $75; the standalone price was $500. Many hobbyists purchased their hardware from a third-party and "borrowed" a copy of Altair BASIC. Roberts refused to sub-license BASIC to other companies; this led to arbitration in 1977 between MITS and the new "Micro-Soft". The arbitrator agreed with Microsoft and allowed them to license the 8080 BASIC to other companies. Roberts was disappointed with this ruling. Since both Allen and Gates had been employees of MITS and he paid for the computer time, Roberts felt it was his software.

Roberts died April 1, 2010 after a months-long bout with pneumonia, he was 68.His sister, Cheryl R Roberts (b. November 13, 1947 – d. March 6, 2010), of nearby Dublin, Georgia died at age 62, a few weeks before his death. He was survived by his wife, all six of his children and his mother, Edna Wilcher Roberts. All live in Georgia.