silentblue | Quantified

Kyocera 7135: I had to laugh at this photo collage of some frustrated user busting a few caps in his Kyocera 7135’s ass. I have two coworkers with the 7135 Palm phone, and besides the fact you look like a geek toting around this monstrous phone, its problems are legion. One coworker had his crash several times a week, and even considered asking Bell Mobility to let him just keep the cheapo loaner Nokia 3865.

My other colleague seems to have a patched version, although he doesn’t like the interface. It seems like the Palm UI was grafted onto the phone’s UI, so sometimes you can use the touchscreen and sometimes you can only use the numeric keypad. Dialing numbers while driving is impossible, since you’d have to whip out your stylus, press “Main”, click “Address Book”….

Motorola MPx220: PocketPC phones are not immune to the same problems, it seems. My sister had a prototype of the MPx220; some wag at Windows Mobile gave her one. She thought it was great; she could check her mail and MSN and Outlook calendar and take pictures and everything.

So I asked her how was the RF quality? “Actually, it keeps dropping my calls,” she said sheepishly.

But hey, who needs a phone for talking when it’s got a mean game of Solitaire?

Microsoft doesn’t want you to defect to Linux. However, instead of pointing out Windows’s obvious strengths, they have decided to harp about total cost of ownership, a metric that is debateable and non-consistent at best. It doesn’t help that their proof – in the form of Microsoft-funded studies – seem to be stacking the deck in MS’s favour. Take this excerpt from a Microsoft “Get The Facts” anti-Linux advertisement seen in InfoWorld:

Wow. Imagine that. A mainframe costs more to purchase and maintain than a personal computer.

As always, the best way to check the validity of any claim is to ask questions. ZDNet UK has offered some helpful questions to Microsoft salespeople to give them the chance to clarify their statements. My favourite:

“Why shouldn’t I replace Microsoft Office with Open Office, or Internet Explorer with Mozilla? Won’t this work as an excellent first step towards full-scale open source deployment, given Microsoft’s commitment to openness and interoperability?”

Even the so-called “success stories” should be scrutinized. ZDNet points out that at least one organization that chose Windows over Linux because MS appeared cheaper, the London borough of Newham, may have in fact been offered an “uncharacteristically generous package, including a substantial amount of free consultancy, to sweeten the deal.”

“We’re winning, people.”
That’s what the outspoken Eric Raymond concluded as he dissected Microsoft’s latest Get the Facts marketing push. “Microsoft has failed to stop us with better software technology or lower prices; they’re incapable of the former and their business model wouldn’t survive the latter.” Raymond dismisses Get the Facts as mere “semantic warfare” and “an obvious circle the wagons move”.

Certainly no one product, Windows or Linux, is the be all that ends all. However, methinks that if your product is truly superior, there is no need to belittle the competition. Fight with facts, not with mud.

CNN reports where the Internet-enabled, laptop-toting children of today, the Generation I if you will, have made technology as indispensible extensions of themselves. Nothing new here: Marshall McLuhan postulated that computers would amplify humanistic intelligence, in the same way that sliderules and calculators augment our mathematic skills.

Steve Mann of the University of Toronto took the extension theory to its logical extreme by augmenting himself with a series of wearable computers and cameras that allow him to interact with and record his surroundings.

As usual, the kids figured it out first. The computer isn’t just a grey box in the living room for surfing eBay: it’s a familiar that connects and enriches their very lives.

Where information is free and readily available, it has increasingly become a world where it’s not what you know, but where to find it, how to interpret it, and who to talk to. The ability to forge relationships (both in the causal and social sense) becomes even more precious.

When I moved back to Toronto, I discovered I wasn’t allowed to stick my ExpressVu satellite dish on the building, so I had no choice but to obtain my television from our local cable monopolist, Rogers Cable.

Because we are such a valued customers, Rogers has awarded us by putting me on their email spam list. Every month I get sales pitches for the latest Rogers whatzit. And what happens when you click on “unsubscribe”?

Well, you have to fill out a giant form plus urine sample and signed letter from the Queen to get removed off the list. All fields are required to be filled in. Oh yeah, your wireless cellphone number is also a required field, so, you know, Rogers can be extra extra sure that you are you and they’ll never stick you on their telemarketing list, cross their hearts and hope to die.

The funny is, after sending off this form (I put down a fake phone #), I am still getting the Rogers spam newsletter.