mcbeen.com

I think that's about everything.

Jenn… neverwhere.com is coming, but you blog is back up at jenn.mcbeen.com.

Joe… Your blog is back online at joe.mcbeen.com

The BBS is backonline as well. Complete miracle.

I'm staring at CPG right now trying to figure out how I want to attack it. We'll see.

Everything is finally coming back online. I'm in the process of restoring the site, but some of it may be a complete loss.

For things like coppermine, I have all the photos, but the since the db crashed on the old server, I cannot move the meta data over… kinda important. Same with the BBS. Not sure what I want to do about it for now. Ugh.

Anyways… Joe… your blog will be back online soon.

Jenn… I'm working on it. 

I have had my iPhone for a little over two months now. This would be my third smartphone… and my first since abandoning the sector a year ago. “Smartphones” are an oxymoron. Generally they are dumb. They store and access tons of information, but know nothing. It’s the classic confusion between knowledge and intelligence.

As an IT engineer, I am forced to get these devices to work reliably on our networks. In general.. it sucks. For example… the current “cheap” smartphone, the “Q”, is on everyone’s list. It has a reasonably nice screen, confusing nonbutton-softkeys, and very stiff keyboard. I was delivered one a couple weeks back, charged with getting in setup for our OWA server. No problem… just put in the address and… what the… what do you mean I have a certificate problem? The Q does not come with the latest set of root CAs, so I’ll need to add a couple in… no problem right? just copy them down and click them… What do you mean I’m not allowed!?
Turns out this is regular problem for the “Q”. So much so that Microsoft has developed and released a special verizon certificate app. I’ll just go down load it… copy it to the “Q”… and run it. Oh… I have to go setup a custom folder to put my certs in… ok, whatever… Now, lets run the app… click the certs… ok first one done… ok now the intermediate… WTF?!?!? WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT IS NOT A VALID ROOT CERT?!?!? Of course it’s not you stupid phone. Just import it!

Well… This went on for days. Litterally. I tried certificate chain downloaders. I manually created CAB files from my certs. I tried unsupported utilities (from microsoft) that no longer exist on the internet. Nothing worked.

I was finally able to get around the problem by REGISTRY HACKING THE PHONE. That’s right. I had to HACK THE REGISTRY ON MY PHONE to get a root certificate chain installed.

And this is supposed to be “enterprise ready”

Thus leads me to the first myth of the day:
“The iPhone is a consumer gadget that is not enterprise ready”
I guess this can be translated to, “If I don’t have to fuck with it for a week, it’s not sufficiently hard enough to use to justify my job”. After I got my iPhone, it was on our mail server, using push services in less than 7 minutes. It was so simple, that anyone who has sent a home email account with an ISP could do it. That’s a large number of people.

“The iPhone touch screen keyboard is inaccurate and slow”
“Physical keyboards are better”
“I want to be able to type without looking”
I have yet to measure my words per minute on the iPhone. What I can tell you, is that I have typed out multi-page emails on the iPhone. They were typed very quickly. I did not have to get bandaids when I was done from clicking hard “Q” buttons.

The autocorrect on the iPhone is frustrating when lost. I find myself pointing at my computer throughout the day saying, “You know, my iPhone would have gotten that right. Why can’t you?” The autocorrect is a true killer feature. It is what allows quick typing without excessive focus on hitting the right key. There are some obvious ones it can’t get. For example: dog vs fog. Both have roughly the same pattern on the screen. That’s about the only draw back to it I can think of.

The screen requires very little contact to type. When watching smartphone users try the iPhone for the first time, they make the exact same mistake I did when I picked it up. Pressing too hard. When you do that, it creates a huge target area, which can lead to mis reads. The best touch is the one you can barely feel. By using a lite touch, you can type excessively fast, and your fingers do not hurt.

Typing without looking. I think some one made this one up on the fly without thinking. These are smartphones. They keyboard is attached to the screen. What… do you close you eyes while typing? seriously? Some would say it is for typing in the dark. But again, that’s from lack of experience. The iPhone has no issues with darkness. Or bright sunlight for that matter.

Accuracy. I don’t know how else to put this. The algorithms apple uses to figure out finger position is black magic. I do not understand it. It should not be possible. With a co-worker testing me. I loaded up a search for all pizza restaurants in the quincy area. It came up with four. Two of them happened to be very close together in the default zoom level. They completely overlapped, except for a couple pixels. I was able to reliably click on the requested push pin every time. It is important to point out that there is no screen calibration tool for the iPhone. Apple is doing something very different here, and everyone needs to figure out what it is and copy it. It will change computing. Here we have better than stylus accuracy with a finger tip, and after less than a week with the device.

“GSM on the iPhone takes five minutes to load an email”
I’m not even sure this deserves a response. It doesn’t. But this is typical of the baseless FUD being spewed these days. So, how long does it really take? Text emails are instant. Doesn’t matter how long they are. An Apple HTML email with a couple logos, like a receipt, takes seven seconds. But how about the mother of all emails. A weekly itunes alert. These bad boys hurt even desktop readers… so what’s the damage? fourteen seconds to full readable html layout, twenty seven for all images to complete loading. That’s about ten times better than five minutes. My gripe with the email app is that it does not support rotation. According to apple’s guidelines, it definitely should. Maybe in a future release.

“Apple will never update the iPhone. Cellphones can’t be patched”
1.0.2. Next.

I guess at some point I should go back and link to all the sites these claims were made from. Maybe. We’ll see.

For now, how about we measure the iPhone on merit, vs baseless slander.

For me, it is worth every penny of it’s cost. Some (Steve Balmer) would argue that it is the most expensive phone ever, and that would be more than a little in accurate. Right now a treo 650 goes for between 300-450 dollars without a special plan. Basically the same price range. Unfortunately, ATT does not offer a rebate/deal at this point. Maybe some day.

On you iPhone, go find a text field (I used the one in youtube). Type in Balmer. As in Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. Maybe they are referring to this?

(It auto corrects to suggest Ballet… If you are iPhone challenged)

Dyne’s Blog » Blog Archive » Dell Support Nightmare – The Ball has been Dropped….AGAIN

More Dell woes… stay away people… it’s dangerous with that company.

Does Virtual Reality Need a Sheriff? – washingtonpost.com
In World of Warcraft, the most popular online game, with an estimated 8 million participants worldwide, some regions of this fantasy domain have grown so lawless that players said they fear to brave them alone. Gangs of animated characters have repeatedly preyed upon lone travelers, killing them and making off with their virtual belongings.

Too bad this isn’t the way it works…. It could be fun! Too much south park for this editor I think.

freak Bear in zoo – Google Video

Party Animal.

alligator mouth, hummingbird ass