I tried desperately to fix the fonts, summoning the help of the Ubuntu forums.  I tried editing font rendering settings in my local .fonts.conf.  I deleted the font cache and reconfigured fontconfig.  I tried adjusting a font quality parameter in Firefox’s about:config. For some forums posters, these solutions worked.  For me, nothing seemed to help.  Finally, I was able to get Firefox 3.6 installed with normal fonts by downloading and compiling the source code and installing the binaries compiled on my own system.

I’m not the only one who is frustrated by this.  This was probably the first time I’ve resorted to compiling a third party application from source since first using Ubuntu and Debian in 2006.  Normally, it’s just apt-get install whatever program you want.  The package manager automatically updates everything and keeps out of my way, rarely nagging to reboot unless the kernel was updated.  The package repository was one of the main reasons I switched to Linux in the first place: an easy, single step way to install anything and keep it up to date.  No hunting for a download website somewhere on the internet or clicking through a bunch of dialogs in an install wizard.

With such lag before new third party applications get added to the Ubuntu software repository, plenty argue that Linux isn’t ready for the mainstream.  I agree completely.  Most people will have to go through similar steps as I to get many of the latest third party applications installed, and it can be a real pain.  However, in Linux, I am free (as in speech) to customize or rewrite any part of the operating system and share my changes with others.  It also gives me a free (as in beer), top notch development environment for my work.  The problem is that such freedom comes at a cost: tinkering to get everything to work correctly.  Every time I’ve upgraded to the latest Ubuntu version, something doesn’t work and has to be fixed.  In another example, I recently installed the netbook remix version on my netbook and was rewarded by a flickering screen, which was fixed with a BIOS update.

Mainstream users just don’t want to be faced with flickering screens and BIOS updates, they want something that just works.  Consequently, they are willing to give up some of that freedom (as in speech and beer) to have a device that boots normally and doesn’t have font rendering issues when they install the latest version of a program.  Such users are better off with an Apple, and indeed Apple charges them a price in terms of money and control.

The iPad has launched a storm of controversy over its lack of user control.  Essentially, the device is a large iPhone, except there is no phone.  All applications must be purchased from the Apple-controlled App Store.  The real question is: do  mainstream users really need fine-grained control over their devices?  One comment on a Slashdot post really makes an interesting argument:

What has choice done? It’s given us the chaos of spam, malware, worms etc…  The average consumer should get a locked down device such as what Apple are proposing, a limited device with a closed market. And you do realise this is really no different to a games console.  Full blown computers should be reserved for those of us who know how to manage them responsibly…Computers as they are today are simply too complex and difficult to manage for the average consumer, so you either give them something simple or you take the management out of their hands.

Combined with the “Linux is not for mainstream” argument, this really makes the case that perhaps devices that work well but allow little user freedom may be the best for most people.  Most of the time, it’s the best choice for me.  I’ve got a phone, media player, GPS device, and others that I want to just work and perform a very specific function.  In these cases, I would rather they perform their jobs reliably than be extensively customizable.  However, I do think that the option to exercise greater control should be there for those who want it, no matter how few.  In the case of PCs, I’ll take that option, stick to Linux, and keep compiling from source when I have to.

A holistic computing solution

Everyone splits their computing time between a whole pile of devices: cell phones, media players, laptops, netbooks, desktops, and gaming consoles.  Even typical cable TV boxes have a hard drive and user interface.  The purposes and capabilities of such devices is becoming increasingly diverse and will probably continue to do so in the short term.  However, it’s becoming a real pain to use a standalone device for a different task.   Carry a cell phone for voice and text messages.  Carry a laptop or netbook for working on the go.  Carry a media player to listen to music.  When at home, many people switch from a laptop to a separate desktop PC.  It would be great to see some consolidation in order to reduce frustration with dragging around multiple devices and learning the quirks of each.

Since most people aren’t running weather prediction simulations, a single small mobile device would be sufficient for most people’s computing needs.  Ideally, something the size of a cell phone would combine the functionalities of a phone, camera, media player, laptop/netbook PC, and even desktop PC.  No longer would people with multiple devices need to synchronize information or become familiar with multiple interfaces.  A single device would provide a user with most of the computing power and capability that he or she would need without the hassle of dragging around a separate phone, media player, and laptop.  The device would be designed such that it could easily support and interface with different user input and output methods.

Improved user interfaces

Improved interfaces in mobile devices would make for a better user experience and improve productivity.  With multiple gadgets to haul around, each comes with a different interface with varying levels of usability.  For the most part, the smaller the device, the worse the user experience becomes.  A desktop computer with a keyboard, mouse, and giant monitor provides a solid experience for most, with both ease of input and output.  A netbook, however, may satisfy a user’s computing needs, but may cramp usability and productivity with its tiny screen and uncomfortable keyboard.  Even worse, web browsing and writing emails or text messages on some cell phones can be nearly impossible.  Personally, my experience with multi-touch phones has been horrible, since most of the time the phone selects something other than what I intended.  Rethinking and improving the physical and software interfaces would permit a shift to a cell phone-sized holistic computing device.

Improvements to both physical and software interfaces would provide huge benefits for the end user.  With respect to physical interfaces, improving multi-touch surfaces would be a big step in the right direction.  Input methods that are simple and accurate would make phone calls, text messaging, and web browsing on mobile devices much more enjoyable.   Output methods should extend beyond a tiny three inch screen, such as a wearable HUD or projector similar to that used in MIT’s SixthSense.  With regards to software interfaces, most cell phone operating systems provide horrible user interfaces which make the simplest tasks a real pain.  Most of these software designs inherit from heavyweight PC interfaces where input is made easy with keyboard and mouse.  Mobile developers should focus on increasing usability by making tasks require the fewest amount of user inputs possible.

Behavior and activity recognition

Computing systems of tomorrow could predict a user’s intentions and act upon these predictions.  With the introduction of accelerometers, GPS receivers, light sensors, cameras, and microphones in cell phones, plenty of research has provided ways to recognize user behavior and activities.  Such research can help provide an augmented reality for users, pointing out suggestions as to what a user could do based on his or her surroundings, current activity and learned preferences and behavior.  For example, a user traveling in an unfamiliar city could get instant suggestions as to where to eat when he or she normally takes a meal, with a mobile device providing directions to restaraunts that match the kinds of foods the user normally eats.  A HUD would allow the device to paint a path directly on the streets to take without the user staring down at his or her phone.  A device could automatically perform Internet searches and return data relevant to what a user is doing, whether it be retrieving a weather report before a user heads to the beach or providing real-time flight delay information as a user drives to the airport.  Such intelligent systems could interact with the physical world and turn on the lights or adjust the temperature at a user’s home before he or she arrives.    Also, behavioral and activity recognition would eliminate the need for user-generated Twitter and Facebook posts, performing automatic updates whenever a user changes activities or does something unusual.

Better inter-device collaboration

Figuring out how to get cell phone pictures off the phone and onto a computer can be a monumental task.  It’s even more enjoyable to get a projector to correctly display a presentation on a laptop.  Nearly every slideshow presentation I’ve witnessed, in classes and in conferences requires each presenter to wage war with his or her laptop and the projector to get the presentation to display properly.  Improving inter-device communication would make everyday computing more seamless and a lot less frustrating.   For example, a slideshow presentation could be loaded on a mobile device and a user could walk into a room with a projector, with the mobile device automatically connecting wirelessly to the projector and displaying the presentation.  There would be no cables to plug in, no display settings to modify, and no buttons and inputs to fidget with on the projector.  Synchronizing and moving data between different devices stands to gain significant improvement, for people are constantly upgrading their cell phones and laptops as well as sharing their data with others.

Longer design lifetimes

I’m guessing I’m not the only one with a pile of old hardware that’s worn out from too much use or discarded due to obsolescence.  More robust devices with longer expected lifetimes would reduce the pile of useless junk in the closet.  This would be especially helpful for mobile devices, which often wind up in mud puddles, toilets, or under someone’s steel-toed boot.  Modular construction would allow for periodic upgrades without throwing away the whole device.  An effort towards longer lifetimes and upgradeability would also significantly cut down on the amount of toxic e-waste.

Longer battery life

Most cell phones don’t last past  a couple days of standby or two hours of talk time.  Most laptops don’t make it past three or four hours.  With an increased focus towards mobile and ubiquitous computing, improvements in battery technology, power savings, and battery recharging would do wonders.  Apple has a new battery design in its latest laptops that double battery life, but more strides in this direction are needed.  Efforts on power-conscious radio communication and CPU utilization will contribute to power savings through better software.  Lastly, harnessing available energy sources such as motion, body heat, and the sun will also allow mobile devices to run unplugged for longer periods.

In general, these issues are what I think mobile computing needs in order to really take off.  The current experience is haphazard and lacking, requiring a mobile user to carry multiple devices with poor interfaces and short battery life.  With future applications, mobile devices will do a lot more than allow phone calls, web browsing, and text messaging.  They will further the integration of the cyber and the physical world, helping a user interact with the environment and the Internet in ways currently unimaginable.

Given the state of the art in machine learning, there is no way for an AI to learn on its own.  There is reinforcement learning, but even in this case a human must decide the conditions and the amount of a reward or penalty for each AI decision or output.  This is why AI in games is terrible: when there are a large number of non-deterministic game states and a large number of non-deterministic actions to take, it is almost impossible to determine the correct action to take at every decision point.  This means that it is difficult or impossible to provide the AI with labeled ground truth or a reward for training.  More to the point, labeling each output with the correct value would be a real headache.  Instead, game developers resort to a rule-based system that still has trouble covering every possible scenario.  As a result, NPC characters still wind up doing something weird, like running into walls.

I’ve been working with this stuff for awhile, realizing its capabilities and especially its limitations.  Then, this weekend I see a headline reading: “Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man.”  Overblown media hype at its best.  The article concerns a conference on machine learning attended by the aforementioned Tom Mitchell and futurist Ray Kurzweil.  From what I gather, the conference dealt with mostly philosophical issues with respect to advancing technology and its integration with everyday life.  There wasn’t much about strong AI taking over the world, yet it was plastered all over the news that a Skynet-esque entity would rise from the Internet and doom us all.  In some ways, simpler systems have already taken over our lives: GPS tells us where to drive, automated tools read MRI scans and provide diagnoses, and viruses wreak havoc on our personal computers.  However, strong AI has quite a ways to go, with most machine learning research peaking decades ago.  As one Slashdot commenter on the NYT article writes:

Any computer scientist who is worried about AI taking over no longer deserves to be referred to as a computer scientist. The state of “artifiical intelligence” can be best described as “a pipe dream.”

All of this comes on the heels of a TED talk on the development of a brain simulator.  The speaker indicates his current brain “implementation” is running on a 10,000 core Blue Gene system.  The article gives few details, but it sounds like a large scale artificial neural network, which still needs supervised training data to learn properly.  10,000 nodes is still way too small, since the average human brain has 100 billion neurons with 7,000 connections each.  Maybe in ten years the requisite computing horsepower will be in place, but I’m guessing the algorithms and the intelligence will not.

In a similar light, a team of scientists recently used DNA computing to solve the NP-Complete Hamiltonian Path problem.  Instead of using some artificial construct or model, billions of DNA sequences, each representing a possible path, were randomly constructed such that those having a correct solution would glow a different color.  While massive parallelism makes this a relatively fast solution to an NP-Complete problem, this approach really isn’t a doomsday AI either.

While specific solutions continue to be discovered for our technological problems, development of strong AI (and the development of Skynet) will sit on the back burner.  Until then (and it’ll be awhile), everyone can take off their tinfoil hats.

Today, there was an article in the local paper about a guy, Paul Boyette, from Chesapeake who had a running streak that lasted over six years.  He ran at least two miles every day, running through injuries, terrible respiratory infections, and all kinds of weather.  His streak was finally ended by a torn meniscus which proved too painful for him to run through.  Oddly, this happened last summer, within a month of the pain in my knee becoming too great to run.  The article was really vague as to what happened after he stopped because of the torn meniscus, but one of the photo captions describes him running last month.  So, it appears as though he is back to doing what he loves.

The author of the article really makes this guy out to be an eccentric, hounding him because of his massive music and beer stein collections.  The author describes how Boyette’s family and friends gave him endless grief about maintaining the running streak and running every day though illness and injury.  Boyette is compared with a drug addict, as someone who has to get his fix or else he can’t function.  His stacks of meticulously kept running logs and piles of worn out shoes are referenced as paraphernalia, aiding the addiction.  A few commenters for the article say the guy is addicted to endorphins.

It isn’t addiction.  It isn’t obsession. It is passion.  Over the years, I’ve been hounded by people saying the same things, over and over:

“Why are you running in this weather? It’s too [cold/hot/rainy].”

“If you’re tired, take a day off.”

“Why don’t you try doing something else instead of running?”

The mediocre, the average, the run-of-the-mill Joe Six Pack only cares enough to go through the motions with any activity.  These people, which make up a large majority of the population, see those who put all their effort into something as obsessive.  The mediocre only wish to do good enough and to quit early.  They will never feel good about any of their accomplishments, yet they simultaneously envy and criticize those who work extremely hard and become successful.  The mediocre are everywhere and would love nothing more than to witness the failure of those who actually try.  To that end, the mediocre spread their negativity and criticism to those they know that are successful, secretly wishing their endeavors will implode and their work will be for nothing.  The author of the article and the commenters that follow are prime examples of those who just don’t get it.

People scoff at Bill Gates for sleeping in his office during the early years of Microsoft, working at his computer until he collapsed onto the floor with exhaustion.  Though the mediocre label him as obsessive and wish to see Microsoft wiped from the earth, every single one of them has used a Microsoft product.  If it weren’t for Gates’s efforts, this large scale success would never have been realized.  Computing would never be what it is today without those “obsessives” working until they drop on the floor.  Still more people can’t believe that the efforts Adam Savage of Mythbusters undertook to recreate an exact duplicate of the Maltese Falcon.  He spent months of work researching the prop from the film, drawing sketches, making several mockups, and eventually getting his hands on the original prop to create a near flawless duplicate.  In the video, Savage’s passion for his work really comes out as he speaks quickly and excitedly about every last detail of his quest.  You don’t see that with the mediocre.  You can tell when someone is passionate about their work when they speak of it like Savage, and you can tell when someone really just doesn’t care.  I’ve seen professors, other grad students, running teammates, and internship co-workers speak with the same excitedness as Savage when they speak about their latest accomplishments.  The passionate can pull you right into the hype.

It disappoints me to see that most others criticize the concentrated efforts of those like Bill Gates and Adam Savage while it is efforts such as those that keep the world in one piece.  Without them, this world would be a bunch of slackers.

So why run until the pain becomes unbearable?  Why work until you fall asleep at your desk?  It is because not doing so would be a failure.  I ran every day I could because I wanted to make the best of what I had.  I ran every day and through all weather and many illnesses and injuries of my own because I knew there would be a day where the problems would be too great to run.  On that day when I finally couldn’t run, I could look back and know that I had done my best.  On the day I couldn’t run, I would have no regrets about the past.  I would not have to wish that I had gone out for a run on a day that I was only too lazy to go.  That day came last summer when my knee made running unbearable.  Like Boyette, I had to stop.  I had no regrets: I knew that I had made the best with what I had.  Those who are mediocre will regret the day that they are unable to do something because of circumstances beyond their control.  They had the chance to give it their all, but they didn’t make use of it.

I hope that I never again get criticised for biking or running as much as I can or for doing work when someone wants me to go out.  It is what makes me who I am and it is not a disorder that should be treated with magic pills.

Looking here and here I found that you can mount a remote filesystem as a particular local user and/or group.  I modified my /etc/fstab accordingly so that all users of the “fuse” group can correctly mount my remote filesystem:

sshfs#username@remotehost:/remotedir /path/to/mountpoint fuse user,noauto 0 0

You can also specify a user or group id by replacing user with uid=xxxx,gid=xxxx.

As I see it, the ultimate goal in the computer science community is to provide systems that improve our lives without us even being aware of it. Stuff should just happen in the background that we don’t even know about to provide drastic improvements in general areas like productivity, entertainment, and communication. All the background noise should be filtered out by these hidden systems so that we only see things that are important to us. For now, it seems, nothing is being filtered out and we are subjected to an increasing amount of information, almost all of which we really don’t care about. For example, this morning I searched Google for “mp3 players” (as in the physical devices) and only got hits for software programs. Problems like this shouldn’t happen, and I shouldn’t have to type in some weird query to specifically exclude certain results from my search. Some serious work has to be done to limit the scope of what we see to only the things that matter, and do it in such a way that isn’t annoying. Basically, operating systems and software should just work and not require any hacks to get solutions we want.

The first issue that comes to mind is with today’s operating systems. Gigabytes of patches and updates are released each month and harass the living daylights out of the end users to install them. This is one of the best examples of the Nag Factor. An operating system should not endlessly nag the user about installing updates and allowing administrative privileges. Ideally, the user shouldn’t even be aware that he or she is using a computer at all. Updates should be automatic and occur in the background without the user even knowing. Nothing is more annoying than to be deep into writing a paper or watching a movie when up comes a nag balloon demanding that some updates be installed and the machine rebooted.

Windows is far and away the worst when it comes to the nag factor. I’m almost completely off Windows at this point, with the exception that I use a partition on my laptop for my USB TV tuner, which unfortunately doesn’t have Linux drivers. It seems every time I start up the machine, about five nag balloons pop up telling me what wireless network I’ve connected to. About once a week another torrent of nag balloons pop up telling me to install software updates. When I finally install the updates, Windows forcefully reboots my machine. Nothing, I mean absolutely nothing, should ever forcefully reboot your machine. It’s a complete disruption of anything resembling the mantra of ubiquitous computing. A professor I had for a software engineering class once told me that it takes about eight minutes for someone to become completely engaged in a task. When some moron at Microsoft thinks it’s a good time to make your machine reboot, that’s about five minutes of lost productivity due to the reboot, and another eight to get back to where you were. Even Bill Gates complains about the forced reboots in Windows. Since I’ve never used Vista, I’ve heard another annoying “feature” is the User Account Control system, which ceaselessly has you type in your administrative password for stuff as simple as connecting to a wireless network.

Next up is OS X. Two years ago, I started the shift away from Windows with a Macbook. My Windows desktop began rusting from disuse almost immediately. Unfortunately, OS X suffers from the update nag almost as badly as Windows. Nearly every update is hundreds of megabytes and requires a reboot. iTunes updates even require reboots — what were they thinking? And when you install the stuff, it takes forever. Sometimes on an OS X update, my machine has rebooted two or three times over about ten minutes before the login screen comes up again. The updates first make their way to you through the extremely aggravating dock icon jumping out at you. While the dock is a good feature, the jumping icons are not. I can’t describe how irritating it is to be doing something and have a dock icon start leaping out into the center of my vision, ceaselessly pushing my buttons until I deal with it. There is probably a way to disable the icon jumping, but I’ve moved on from OS X, so it doesn’t matter at this point. UAC is also present in OS X but the designers did a decent job of only prompting you when changing administrative settings or installing software.

For the past year, I’ve almost exclusively used Ubuntu Linux for all of my computing. Finally, a group of developers has the right idea. It works almost seamlessly. An operating system should do its best to get out of the way and let the user do what he or she wants. Ubuntu is really close to doing this. The package manager is excellent — you can install anything under the sun (for free) and it updates automatically. You can’t even do this with the Mac by default, unless you install something like DarwinPorts, and even that is a real hassle to set up. The downside is that since every program you install is controlled by the package manager, there are frequent updates that require your authorization to install. Nearly every day something has a patch, but the package manager does its best to be minimally invasive. Nag balloons are infrequent, and a small icon appears in the task bar indicating that an update is available. Reboots are almost never required except for things that affect the kernel and nothing is ever forced on you. For now, I’m extremely satisfied with my Linux experience and will probably not switch back to Windows or Mac unless some serious revamping occurs.

The nag factor isn’t present in operating systems alone. The devices that are beginning to make ubiquitous computing a reality are providing irritations of their own. Whenever I miss a call, get a voicemail, or receive a text message, my cell phone beeps and hums to no end until I touch the screen acknowledging its nags. I’ve had two phones, and they both did this. Neither has the option to turn it off. I can check manually to see if anything came in while I was away from my phone and would prefer to do so instead of being constantly annoyed. I’ve also noticed that late model cars now beep at you if you start the engine and have your seatbelt off. Apparently, this is mandated by the federal government, but it’s just another irritating nag. Some cars will nag at you after the mileage counter gets beyond a certain amount since your last service.

It isn’t just the nagging that’s a problem, though. Some poor design decisions really limit the usability of computing systems and ubiquitous computing devices. The worst of this is proprietary software and hardware, with Apple really standing out as the worst culprit. The iPod that’s starting to die on me has a proprietary USB jack to plug it into my computer. What makes me mad is that it didn’t come with a wall plug to charge it — I’ve got to use the proprietary adapter to charge it via USB or for over $40 for a wall adapter. Since I don’t need to sync my iPod every day and would like to be able to travel with it without bringing my computer, a wall plug would be great. Thanks to the wall plug adapter scam, I don’t think I’ll be getting another iPod if I can help it. Apple’s computers also make use of proprietary headphone jacks and video outputs such as mini-DVI and mini-DisplayPort. I had to fork over $20 to get a mini-DVI to DVI adapter so I could use an external monitor with my Macbook. Universal hardware standards would make ubiquitous computing much more of a reality, with devices seamlessly integrating with each other and providing minimal headaches to the end user.

With respect to proprietary software, the iPod/iTunes combination also takes the cake. When I first got my iPod, I was using Windows, and installed iTunes on Windows to keep my music and iPod in order. After I got my Mac, I tried plugging the iPod into the Mac and using the Mac to keep everything synced. Did this work? Of course not. iTunes on the Mac whined that my iPod was formatted for Windows and that it couldn’t write anything to it unless it was reformatted. I don’t see why the geniuses at Apple could have written some drivers so that the iPod’s file system could be accessed from any operating system. It all seems to be about control. Downloading songs from iTunes only allows you to have those songs installed on three machines simultaneously and you can only load them onto an iPod in a proprietary format.

Cell phones are another example of this walled garden approach. You not only pay for the access to a cell network, but you have to get a proprietary operating system running on a proprietary phone to go along with it. You can’t just build your own cell phone out of spare parts, install your own operating system, and expect to connect to Verizon’s network even if you’ve paid for it. Google’s Android seems to be a step forward to breaking down this situation by permitting custom applications, but there’s a long way to go. Without all this proprietary junk to get in the way, you could see some seriously interesting applications, such as P2P file sharing on cell networks, refinement of video and text messaging, and the eventual integration of portable gaming, media, and communication into one device (the iPhone still sucks). For now, I’ve got to carry around my laptop for web browsing and programming, my cell phone for telephone calls, my iPod for music, and my PSP for gaming. Oh, and maybe a watch to tell time.

Finally, coming back to my dying iPod, battery technology needs significant improvements in order to further the goals of ubiquitous computing. Reducing I/O and computational complexity on the software side can only help but so much. The typical Ni-Cd battery, regardless of the device, lasts about two to three years and only runs for a few hours under full load. This is crap. Until batteries last for a week under full load and hold a full charge for nearly ten years, we’re just going to be throwing away perfectly good equipment. My iPod, which is perfectly fine with the exception of the battery, could last an indefinite amount of time. It seems really wasteful to toss cell phones and other mobile devices every few years just because a battery died. Reduced reliance on proprietary hardware and software could help this problem as well, for parts could be easily interchanged or upgraded if new features become available.

If the tech industry would focus on reducing the nag factor and increasing the openness of design standards, the shift to ubiquitous computing could be faster and more seamless. Until then, we’ve got to deal with the endless OS nag balloons, proprietary devices, and terrible battery life.

Around the end of January, everything comes in and I start to set it up.  Lots of headaches ensue:

Problem 1: The Xbox 360 Pro analog and HDMI jacks are right next to each other, preventing the simultaneous use of HDMI and analog audio.  Both plugs don’t fit at the same time since they bump into each other.  I guess the MS designers thought that most people would use exclusively digital or analog AV, but not digital for video and analog other for sound.  There were plenty of complaints about this on the internet, and there are a few posts about tearing apart the Xbox analog plug so both HDMI and analog outputs can be used at the same time.  As it turns out, the Xbox 360 elite has space between the HDMI and analog jacks so both can be used simultaneously, but to me this “feature” isn’t worth the extra $100.  So, I’m using component instead, since the HP monitor has component input and I can’t tell the difference between that and HDMI.  On the internet, there are also arguments abound about HDMI versus component, so it seems that one is not necessarily better than the other.  I’ve heard that HDMI is noticeably better for really large TVs, but at 24 inches, my monitor doesn’t even come close.

Problem 2: I got the wrong adapter for the analog audio to mini-stereo.  I ordered the adapter I thought I would need to convert the analog output from the Xbox to the line in on my PC sound card.  As it turned out, I needed an additional analog AV female-female connector to make the whole thing work.  I also got a Sennheiser DSP 360 to act as a standalone amplifier, but so far I haven’t used it since the computer seems to be working fine.

Problem 3 (The Big One): The monitor came with a bent stand.  After I set it up and began using it, I noticed the monitor had a slight lean to it and the whole thing shook when I typed.  This was really annoying.  Provantage required that I call HP to try to resolve the problem first, and then go back to them for an exchange if necessary.   So, after two hours of phone tree hell and calls transferred between India and the US, I finally reach someone who handles the monitor I got.  Fortunately, the monitor I got is serviced by the small business department (not home), so the support I got was pretty good.  I got a case number to give to Provantage, since the HP tech said it would be faster if Provantage did the exchange and not HP.  I filled out an RMA request on the Provantage website, hoping this would be the case.  The monitor with the bent stand had no stuck or dead pixels and I asked the Provantage customer service agent if I could just replace the stand, but I wasn’t permitted to do that.  The whole thing had to be returned, which would come back to kick me.

Fortunately, the RMA went through and I didn’t have to pay for return shipping, but the whole process took forever.  It took about a week for the RMA to go through from the day I got the monitor, another week for the RMA to be processed, and another week still for the replacement monitor to arrive.  Last Friday, the replacement came and I picked it up, set it up (fortunately, the stand was not bent on the replacement), and turned it on.  As soon as the backlight came on, a red splotch appeared in the middle of the screen about the size of a quarter.  A smaller one the size of a dime was right below it.  On light backgrounds, I couldn’t see the splotch, but with anything dark or black, it was plainly visible, like glare from the sun.  It was really bad playing GTA IV, where it seems to be night almost all the time.

This time I decide to deal just with HP and forget about screwing around with another return from Provantage.  I’d read on the Hard Forum thread that a few other people who bought the monitor had recieved exchanges from HP, with a tech coming right to their door with a replacement.  I went throught the HP phone tree mess once again and talked to someone who said a tech would be dispatched with a replacement on Monday.  Monday came and went, but today, the guy showed.

The tech wheeled the monitor into the apartment and opened the box.  As soon as he opened the box, I knew something was amiss.  The stand was different.  When the tech took all the foam and packaging off the screen, I saw it was a different model: a 2465, not LP2475w, like what I had.  The specs were clearly inferior and didn’t have all the inputs of the 2475, so the guy said he would order the correct model and come back. I wonder how long that will be…

So, overall my new setup is great: with two monitors I have tons of desktop space for work, and the monitor works great with the Xbox, except for the red spot, of course.  Aside from the spot, the monitor is way brighter than the 20 inch Dell, even at 75% brightness.  The colors are much more vibrant.

This has been the biggest mess I’ve dealt with regarding ordering stuff online.  Poorly designed audio jacks and monitor defects have gotten the better of me, but I’m not giving up.

I even had to screw around in Ubuntu to get the drive mounted.  The floppy has been seriously neglected, but what do you do when you’ve got an old BIOS that won’t flash from USB?

Fortunately, the flash worked, but I hope the CPU fan issue is resolved.  I really hate looking down to see if the fan has started up when I turn on the computer.  I used to just leave it on indefinitely so I wouldn’t have to worry, but it gets too hot in here.

First, the mouse.  I have a Razer Copperhead USB mouse that’s been great for years and when I first booted after the installation, it didn’t work.  The lights came on, but I couldn’t move it.  If I unplugged it and plugged it back in, it worked fine.  This would happen every time I rebooted the machine: no movement, unplug, plug back in.  After some digging around, I found the problem was that the mouse firmware had to be upgraded.  Of course, Razer only has the update software for Windows, so after some screwing around with that, I rebooted with the Linux machine and it worked fine without having to unplug the mouse.

Second, the dual head support for my ATI video card was lacking after the initial install, just mirroring my primary monitor onto the other.  I was able to fix this by installing the proprietary ATI drivers and using the ATI Catalyst Control Center to “merge” both screens into one.  Of course, this didn’t entirely fix the problem since every time I rebooted, the mirroring came back.  I finally found out that after I set the displays correctly in the ATI Control Center that I had to open up the Ubuntu Display Settings panel and hit “Apply”.

Both of these problems were really annoying, kept me searching and frustrated for hours, and have rather quirky solutions.  While I really like Linux, stuff like this doesn’t seem to happen as much with Mac or Windows.  However, community support is pretty good so after some extensive research I was finally able to find others with my problems that had found solutions.

Now everything seems to be working well, except that the stand for my monitor arrived bent.  It’s only a couple millimeters out of shape and the box it came in seemed undamaged, so I’m not sure what happened.  It’s bad enough that when I type sometimes the monitor wobbles.  It’s something I could probably live with, but the wobbling is annoying and I paid for a new product (not refurbished) so I don’t feel like letting it go.  So, I spent two hours with phone tree hell HP tech support about returning it and then filed an RMA request from the online vendor.  It would be best if I could just replace the stand since the monitor is fine — there’s only one stuck pixel.  Shipping the whole thing back is going to be expensive if the RMA is approved.  I guess the question is if the bent stand is worth another $30.

I still haven’t gotten to the Xbox yet because of all this (and some other annoying legwork type stuff for a research proposal that is due this week).  It also turns out that I got the wrong RCA to mini-stereo adapter and will have to try to exchange that so I can plug in the Xbox sound to the line in on my PC.  The whole thing is kind of funny because part of the reason I went with an Xbox was to avoid dealing with putting together a new system and troubleshooting the whole thing when a bunch of stuff doesn’t work.  Instead, I got more than I bargained for.

I would really like to get back into more games, but I just can’t see myself throwing out $2000 for a computer that I would use exclusively for games and be unable to carry around anywhere without a lot of effort.  It just isn’t worth it anymore.  So, I’m pretty sure I’m going to get an Xbox.

It seems that a real shift is taking place with developers placing emphasis on console games over PC, making most PC games a buggy port of their console counterparts.  Most new PC games are packed with nasty copy protection rootkits that are nearly impossible to remove.  Finally, new PC games all seem to have extremely steep system requirements, meaning you have to undertake a massive and expensive upgrade in order to get acceptable performance.  All these are things I don’t want to deal with, especially when I can get a top of the line Xbox for less than the price of a halfway decent video card.

My main concern over console games is the controller.  I started on PC games and feel natural with keyboard and mouse.  At my height of gaming, I became one with the computer, leveling the crosshairs on an opponent and blasting away without the slightest thought of what keys to press and how much to move the mouse.  I’ve played on a fair number of consoles and I’ve never adjusted to the controllers.  I always feel sluggish and usually have to remember where the buttons are and what they do.  Because of the controller, many RTS and simulation games are exclusively developed for the PC, which is a drawback in and of itself.

Regardless, I think I’m going to make the switch anyway.  With enough practice, I can adjust to the controller.  It’s also going to be a huge cost savings since it’s far easier to shell out $400 every four or five years for a new console compared to several thousand for PC upgrades.  The additional money for PC upgrades would be more justifiable if I were to use the computer for work, but Windows is useless for development and the lack of portability is also detracting.

This leads into my proposed setup: get a new monitor with DVI and DisplayPort for my laptops and HDMI input for consoles.  This way I can use the monitor for computing and for games.  My current external monitor has a 4:3 aspect ratio with only one digital input and I would also prefer something widescreen.  With only one digital input, it’s a real pain when I want to switch the Mac laptop for the Linux one or on the rare occasion that I want to boot up the desktop.

It seems that 16:9 1080p monitors are rare and are pretty limited in terms of functionality.  The only one that remotely interests me is the Dell S2409W and I’ve it uses the poor quality TN panel which gets a lot of complaints. It may be okay for the Xbox, but I don’t know about using it with the computers.  So, it seems 16:9 monitors are out since all the other ones I can find are also TN panels.  Larger 30+ in TV-style monitors are also out since the cheapest of those runs about $800, which is out of my price range, especially for something that may not fare well as a computer monitor several feet from my face.

So, this means PC-oriented 16:10 aspect monitors.  I would prefer something at least 24 inches and I can’t really get anything with a resolution greater than 1920 x 1200 since my laptops have terrible video cards.  Being 16:10, it means that when I plug in the Xbox, I’ll get 100 pixel black bars on the bottom and top of the screen, but that’s something I can live with since the screen will be large enough.  Two 16:10 monitors interest me: the Dell 2408WFP and the HP LP2475W.  Of those, the HP seems the better buy since its panel is the highly coveted IPS and it also seems to be nearly $100 cheaper depending on the vendor.  Both have an HDMI input, two DVI inputs, and a DisplayPort input.

Then, I can pick up a Pro Xbox for about $300.  I can’t see the advantage of the Elite except for the 120 GB hard drive (vs. 60 on the Pro).  Games are a bit more on the expensive side compared to the PC, but it’s probably all worth it not having to worry too much about endless installs, wasted hard drive space, and hardware-specific bugs.

So, I get an XBox Pro for about $300 and a 24 inch monitor for about $600, which is quite the savings over a massive PC upgrade.  But there’s one problem: sound.  Consoles are oriented towards those with dedicated 7.1 surround receivers to make it sound like a battle is being fought in the room.  I don’t have that — I would prefer to just plug in some headphones, but the Xbox doesn’t have a headphone jack.  This leaves me with three options, none of which I really care for:

1) Get a receiver.  My dad’s got an old receiver that could handle the analog AV from the Xbox.  I would really like to avoid this because it means yet another large piece of electronic junk sitting in my room.  Furthermore, it would do nothing except provide me with a headphone jack for my games.  This seems like a waste.

2) Connect the analog AV cables from the Xbox to a pair of headphones with some adapters.  This isn’t really a good option either since there is no way to control the volume.  I’ve heard of at least one person doing this and having it work, but as he said, there’s no volume control.  You’re just stuck at whatever volume the Xbox puts out.

3) Connect the analog AV cables to the line in on my Macbook.  I can also do this with some adapters and then plug the headphones into the Macbook and use the laptop as an amplifier.  I’m not sure how well this would work either in terms of losing signal clarity and whines from the laptop making their way into my headphones.  Also, I’m not even sure if the line in on the Macbook is stereo.  I really don’t care about surround on headphones, but I would at least like to have stereo.

At this point, the third option is probably the best bet, and if that doesn’t work, try the others.  I can’t seem to find many others on the Internet with this kind of setup.  Most who use a PC monitor with their console still connect their sound to a dedicated receiver or a powered set of PC speakers.

I’ll probably wind up doing more research before I settle on something.  Or, I might just forget it if it really looks like this won’t work.