Like landline phones, Internet users will eventually drop wired ISP connections in favor of wireless.  This shift towards mobile and ubiquitous computing emphasizes that wireless infrastructure and usage policies will be critical in the coming years.  With few exceptions, ISPs have followed the principles of network neutrality with respect to wired networks, permitting wired customers to use any device with any software using any communication protocol.  However, such openness is not reflected in wireless networks with ISPs placing heavy restrictions on devices, software, and means of communication.  To ensure competitive pricing, hardware innovations, exciting software applications, and available bandwidth for the surge in wireless traffic, wireless providers must follow the principles of network neutrality.  Since wireless providers are hesitant do do so, the FCC’s decision to enforce network neutrality is a step in the right direction.  The enforcement of the FCC’s network neutrality principles will allow researchers to push mobile computing to new and exciting levels and will allow consumers to get more functionality at lower prices.

The openness of the wired Internet has seldom been encroached upon by ISPs and rarely regulated by government, making the Internet the world that it is today.  This freedom has been defined by the FCC’s four principles of network neutrality:

• A user can access any content over the network.  All who access the Internet are provided access to everything on the Internet, whether it be an AP news report or the Unabomber Manifesto.  No ISP restricts content: everything is available, even if it may be morally objectionable or illegal.
• A user can run any application or use any service over the network.  Anyone can use any web service or application (Google, Mapquest, Facebook) without restriction from an ISP.   No ISP prevents users from making Skype calls even if that ISP also sells landline telephone service.
• A user can connect any device to the network, given it does no harm.  An Internet user can connect with any hardware, whether it be with a ten year old piece of junk running Linux or with a $10,000 top-of-the-line quad core processor running the latest Windows 7 beta.  No ISP restricts a user’s Internet access because his or her computer is a piece of junk.  Nor do ISPs force users to connect only with proprietary computers sold by the ISP.
• Competition among network, content, and application providers.  A user is open to choose from one of several ISPs (if more than one are even available), and also has choice over competing web services and content providers.

This freedom has not always been maintained, even with the wired Internet.  Two years ago, Comcast deliberately throttled the bandwidth of peer-to-peer protocols, limiting the upload and download speed of file sharing applications.  With peer-to-peer using customers enraged over this finding, the FCC forced Comcast to abandon this policy.  Other than this incident and a few others, the Internet has always been delivered equally to all who have access.

Unfortunately, such open policies of the wired Internet are not followed by wireless providers.  From the very birth of cell phones, wireless providers have controlled everything:

• Unrestricted content.  Wireless providers block (through restricted software) bandwidth-heavy content, such as streaming videos, voice/video communication, as well as file sharing.  Such restrictions are in place to limit or prevent wireless network congestion.  Improvements in wireless infrastructure could alleviate such congestion, but wireless providers have decided to restrict, rather than improve.
• Use of any application or service.  Nearly all providers restrict the operating system and applications available on connecting mobile devices.  Apple blocks the use of Skype when the phone is not connected to a WiFi network.  Similarly, the Google Voice application was also removed by Apple and AT&T.  Both applications provide features that could be seen as subversive to standard cellular voice calls.  Instead of providing competing applications (maybe with better features), the ISP and application providers just block any competition.
• Connection of any device.  Verizon’s network may be good, but their phones are terrible.  A customer cannot just build their own tricked out phone and connect it to Verizon’s network.  Instead, users are forced to choose from a handful of phones with menial features (only sold by Verizon, of course).
• Competition. Since content, applications, and hardware are restricted on most wireless networks, competition is limited.  Only a handful of wireless providers offer large coverage areas, especially for data communication.  Since the United States pays more for wireless than any other western country, it is clear that less restriction would provide more options and more competition for consumers.

Despite the crackdown on allowable hardware, software, and access, wireless executives somehow manage to argue that their industry is “perhaps the most competitive consumer market in America.”  While unregulated competition would be great for consumers in terms of increasing wireless freedom, there simply isn’t enough competition to go around.  There are only four major carriers in the United States, effectively forming a cartel that can set prices artificially high and extensively limit consumer freedom.  With barriers to entry so high (infrastructure), few new carriers are likely to emerge.  In cases like these, government intervention is the only solution.  Fortunately, the FCC is investigating the lack of competition in the wireless market with respect to insane billing rules and lack of consumer freedom in comparison to the wired Internet.  Of course, their latest decision to enforce network neutrality will also provide a strong push.

The end result should allow anyone to build their own phone, install a custom operating system, and connect it to the wireless provider of their choice without issue.  Such a user should be allowed unrestricted access to the entire Internet without throttling or restriction of streaming video, large file downloads, or VoIP calls.  Ultimately, text messaging and voice calls will be merged into wireless data plans, removing such unreal and confusing costs like $.25 to send a 160 byte message or “anytime” minutes, which are anything but anytime.  Unrestricted hardware, software, and access will bring increased competition among existing wireless providers, fostering the development of better mobile hardware and cool applications.

I debated the pros and cons of paid vs. self hosting for awhile before I settled on hosting everything myself.  Unless I get a serious amount of traffic, it just isn’t worth the money to me when I can just run the whole thing on my own.  However, after manually updating the DNS records for my domain thanks to a service outage and new IP address assignment, I’m starting to wonder.

There are a few problems with self-hosting.  First, service outages are a real pain, especially in the summer.  The IT guys schedule weekend maintenance quite often in the summer and take the whole network offline for hours at a time.  Power outages due to storms compound this and even an uninterruptible power supply may not prevent any storm-related service outages.  Second, my IP address changes occasionally (usually due to the maintenance outages) and I have to update the DNS records.  This makes for even more downtime since it may take awhile before I realize that the IP has changed.  Lastly, I’m running this on a NAS, which makes access times pretty slow.  If you’ve wondered why it takes awhile for the page to load, this is why.  Sometimes the system will unspool the hard drive when it hasn’t been accessed in awhile, so it can take several seconds to spool back up and process the incoming page requests.  This, on top of the fact that the machine can just barely run Apache/PHP/MySQL.

The good thing about self-hosting is that it’s free with no bandwidth restrictions.  I can post as many massive pictures and videos as I want and it doesn’t matter.  I can use the domain name and the NAS as a massive storage archive accessible from anywhere.  I have complete control over the system and its configuration, so if I want something installed, I can do it without begging a hosting company to provide some feature (e.g. few hosts I know of provide Subversion repositories).  Of course I also have to take responsibility to ensure everything is managed properly so that someone doesn’t install a rootkit and/or deface the site.

So the balance between noticeable downtime and no restrictions continues.  For now, it’s acceptable, but I wonder if people ever get disappointed when they can’t get to my blog.  Probably not.

Newspapers

Since several newspapers have folded, executives in this industry are now hocking paywalls as the solution to their revenue problem.  The real question here is to ask why newspapers are failing.  The rise of free and instantaneous internet news has driven down the number of subscribers.  Furthermore, online marketplaces such as Craigslist, and to a lesser extent, social networking sites, have siphoned off classified ad revenue.  As I see it, the current system will only get worse.  As newspapers are driven farther into the red by those switching to the internet, more and more quality journalists will be laid off.  With neither solid writers nor the funding for interesting and comprehensive stories, the quality of newspapers will degrade at a quickening pace, fueling their demise.  Is there a solution to keep the local paper afloat?  I think so.  National and international news is readily available everywhere on the internet: Reuters, AP, MSNBC, and CNN all provide coverage in this area.  Newspapers should focus on something that only they can do best: local coverage.  The local coverage for The Virginian Pilot is terrible.  The staff has been drastically reduced and the paper thinned.  The sports section writes about the Redskins as if they were a home team, while plenty of local minor league, college, and high school games are ignored.  If newspapers were to drop national coverage entirely and focus solely on local news, business, and sports, they could bring themselves back into the game.  There are plenty of stories to tell about what is going in any local area and plenty of people willing to hear about them, but these stories are displaced by some far away event that is already well covered on the internet.  I admire the Virginia Gazette for following this approach.  I have no doubt that paid subscriptions would rise if newspapers focused on improving local coverage.

Good stories would be worth paying for.  However, as newspapers continue to crash and burn, the quality of their stories has suffered and the demand has gone down along with it.  Nobody wants to pay for a newspaper article that could have been written by a blogger on the internet.  Newspapers complain that their demise would lead to the end of investigative journalism and educating the public on current events.  They argue that no blogger has the resources to provide the quality and detail of coverage that newspaper journalists provide.  This may have been true in the past, but is no longer.  Again, reinforcement of local coverage would really help turn things around.

Online Media

This reality shock extends from newspapers to media corporations of all kinds.  Those in the TV and movie industries are upset at the rise of freely available internet media, ranging from cable and broadcast content on Hulu, to user content on YouTube, and to plain old bootlegging.  The CEO of Sony Pictures, Michael Lynton, complains that “nothing good has come from the internet,” and that “anyone can have whatever they want at any given time.”  Lynton goes on to argue that the internet should have rules as well as “guardrails” to keep people following these rules.  Whose rules should the people of the internet follow, you might ask?  Lynton’s rules.

As the old phrase goes, “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust the sails.”  Lynton has it backwards: Sony should adapt to the reality of the current world, not the other way around.  He argues that his company is trying to make money, and thus, people should pay for the content his company produces.  Wrong.  For any rational individual, it should be: “I want quality content, therefore I am willing to pay for it.”  Nobody will pay someone for a piece of junk just because the seller wants to make money.  If someone produces something that is subpar, nobody is going to be willing to pay for it, and if they want it at all it will probably be bootlegged.  Like newspapers, TV, cable, and other media companies put profit first and quality products second.  If this were reversed, I imagine things would change.  TV shows should be kept in production based on reviews, not based on viewership, which is really an ad revenue metric.  Sequels to movies shouldn’t just be made because the previous installment was profitable.  I can think of no unplanned movie sequel that was as good or better than the original.  Furthermore, consumers should be given more options to purchase content.  For example, all previous episodes of any currently airing series should be available for purchase instead of just the last n, as is done with Hulu.  As with newspapers, an emphasis on quality and availability would more than likely support the media industry in the age of the internet.

Internet Connectivity

As bandwidth usage has increased due to increased consumption of online media sites, ISPs feel they’ve got to get their piece of the pie.  Recently, Time Warner experimented with tiered internet pricing.  This is a step backwards to the days of dial up where nearly everyone paid by the hour.  Fortunately, enough people complained that Time Warner reverted to the current unlimited monthly scheme.  While tiered pricing has been held off for now with respect to wired broadband, it’s a mess when it comes to wireless.  As it stands, a cell phone owner is charged separate fees for telephone usage, text messaging, and wireless data, and all three use pricing tiers.  Cellular telephone billing is the most convoluted of the three, with bizarre rules on who and when you can call with or without incurring some kind of penalty.  Text messages are by far the most profitable:  receiving 160 bytes costs around twenty cents — this works out to $1.5 million per gigabyte — that’s only for the size of a compressed HD movie!  With the advent of data plans, many cell users dream of circumventing weird telephone talk rules and expensive text messaging by purchasing an unlimited data plan.  A data plan could replace text messaging with instant messaging and telephone calls with Skype, but Apple is struggling to change the direction of the wind by restricting Skype use to areas of WiFi connectivity.

The role of the ISP is changing and providers are doing their best to prevent this change.  As landline telephones have been replaced by cell phones, landline internet will be marginalized with respect to mobile internet.  As the PC market has shifted from desktops to laptops over the past ten years, the next ten years will see a shift to small mobile devices.  The role of the internet will have increasing importance on cell phones, ultimately replacing cell telephone and text messaging.  ISPs do not want this, instead restricting the type of phones you can buy and the applications you run on them.  Google’s Android is a step in the right direction, and with more effort it won’t be long before an enthusiast can piece together a phone from custom hardware, install an embedded version of Linux, and connect to the internet from anywhere using software of his choice or creation.  Of course, no traditional-minded ISP would let anyone connect to their cell network with a custom-built phone, a custom OS, running custom software.  But the future will most likely be an internet of ad hoc wireless networks, making use of such custom mobile solutions.  Driven by the desire for constant connectivity and mobility, users will connect to their family, friends, and coworkers with one or two hops (and bypassing ISPs).  A significant portion of the internet could be accessed in this fashion, requesting data held by peers and forwarding it back to a user over multiple hops.  Using technologies with high bandwidth and long range, such as WiMax, a mobile ad hoc network would even be feasible in less populated areas.   Some of each user’s bandwith would be reserved for forwarding others’ requests and responses.  Data could be routed to peers with the least load (shameless plug for the paper I’m presenting at WASA 2009.)

The internet of the future will be mobile and more dynamic, but there is still a place for the ISP.  Unavoidably, there will be connectivity gaps and bottlenecks in an ad hoc wireless network, and a landline ISP will take care of this.  Also, most data will still be stored in fixed, physical locations with landline connections.  Internet users will still have to pay monthly fees to a service provider to handle gaps in coverage, but no longer will there be separate charges for landline phone, internet, TV, cell phone, text messaging, and data.  It will all be data, and it will be a big relief from the obtuse system that is in place today.

Conclusion

Those who are stuck in the system of the past are hindering the development of the future.  Today’s leaders must understand it is they that must adapt to the changing world.  The world cannot and will not shift to accomodate those who wish the world to adapt to them.  Viable business models for the internet exist and more are developing, even those with a “free” component.  Continuing adoption of a less than optimal strategy will only lead to a poor outcome for those that refuse to adapt.

Unless you live in an area with subsidized broadband and/or wifi, you’ve got to pay an access fee to an ISP. At this point, dial-up is more or less useless, so you’ve got to fork over $40 every month just to get online. Like most people, your ISP is probably a large telecom, like Verizon, Comcast, or AT&T, so the true cost is probably a lot more than that since it’s almost impossible to buy internet access by itself. You’re forced into signing up for a “bundle” which is some combination of land line phone, cell phone, TV, and internet all provided by the same company.  A lot of the junk (and added cost) that comes along with the bundle is probably unwanted, like bizarre foreign language TV channels, call waiting, and hardware rental fees since the option isn’t often given to buy your own modem or cable boxes.  By purchasing a bundle from an ISP, you’re subsidizing the weirdos who actually watch some of those high-numbered TV stations, listen music on their TV, or enjoy being nagged by call waiting that can’t be turned off.  Since the number of providers available for a given location are usually pretty limited, you’re forced into paying monopolistic prices as well as paying for services that you don’t even want.

It’s bad enough that you’ve got to fork over the dough for services that you don’t even want in order to get internet access, but in truth, it’s a lot worse.  Access is merely a base cost for using the internet.  In nearly all cases, there’s also a cost for accessing content.  Somebody has to pay for hosting and generation of that website you frequent or the videos you watch, and again, it’s going to be you.  Advertising is one commonly used method to shift the cost onto consumers.  Nearly every website has it.  Until around five years ago with the advent of pop-up blockers, Javascript removal tools, and ad-blocking tools, every website I visited spammed me with a torrent of flashing banner ads, pop-ups, and keyword advertising.  Somehow, the notion goes, enough people would actually click on that crap and buy whatever it was that was being advertised.  The advertising revenue would keep the servers running and provide the blog/newspaper authors with a small paycheck.

Personally, I can’t stand advertising in general.  It gets in the way of whatever it is I’m trying to do, whether it be searching or browsing the internet, reading a print newspaper, or watching TV.  Reading the paper or watching TV probably adds about fifteen minutes of sifting through all the ads or waiting through commercials to get to the rest of the TV show I want to watch or the newspaper article I want to read.  I’ve never clicked on a banner ad, much less even bought something that was advertised in this manner.  On the internet,  it’s hard to manually filter out all the crap to get to what you want.  Fortunately, current ad-blocking tools do a pretty good job.  I’ve even forgotten how good a job they really do, for when I sit down in front of a computer without any ad-blocking software, the harassment of flashing banners and keyword ads drive me up the wall.

Though internet advertising revenue has increased in the last year, it is predicted to fall in 2009.  Everyone is finally getting sick of all the junk constantly being pushed at them as advertising approaches levels seen in “Idiocracy” and methods used in “Minority Report.”  A great argument against internet advertising states that it is “not trusted, not wanted, and not needed.”  While print newspapers are folding due to declining subscriptions, content providers on the internet are worried about a similar fate due to declining ad revenue.  Ironically, the print newspapers mainly blame their plight on the shift to electronic media.  To that end, content providers are considering increasing their usage of a second tool to provide revenue: yet another access cost.

Most online newspaper websites and online offerings of network TV shows do so with fairly low restrictions on who accesses their content. The front page stories for nearly every newspaper are available online as well as last night’s Lost episode.  This freedom of access is what makes the internet so great: once you get in, there are few barriers to access anything.  However, the same people that brought you bundled internet access want to change that.  One media executive says, “We want to change consumer behavior somewhat, so the expectation that everything online is free has to change.”  If this expectation changes, the internet as we know it is finished.  It is the freedom and openness of the internet that makes it as valuable as it is.  You can find anything or anyone and learn about nearly any topic available.  On the internet, you can collaborate with people half a world away.  The introduction of a second access cost for some internet content will most likely remove that openness.  The effort to preserve network neutrality has been in place for several years, but now it may be coming to an end.  Several ISPs are currently proposing pay access for channels and TV shows online.  The movement of this business model may force providers of other media to do the same.  Original sources will become locked down, leaving open and collaborative efforts to rot without them, such as Wikipedia, or IMDB.  Someone may want you to look at a video posted to YouTube, but you can’t look at it because you don’t have the money to pay the access fee.

Nobody really wants to pay a pile of access fees to get the latest news, or even to watch videos on the internet, especially when an ISP is charging a significant monthly fee just to get online (though some say they are).  The problem is that the annoyance and unprofitability of internet advertising is forcing a shift to another solution to prop up content providers.  If the shift to selling access to content goes too far, the internet may become segmented into a large number of tiers, causing the digital divide to span both the physical and electronic worlds.

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.

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.

After two visits to the orthopedist and an MRI, the doctor says I have torn a hole in my articular cartilage that surrounds the joint. The piece that tore out is now floating around above the knee joint, which explains the weird spasms and soreness I have at the end of the lower quad. The good thing (according to the doctor) is that the hole is kind of on the side of the joint, meaning that it doesn’t bear much weight. If the hole were on the bottom, I wouldn’t be able to walk. The doctor had me do a couple different movements with my leg and was surprised that they didn’t cause me much pain. It seemed that the MRI indicated that I was much worse off than I felt. Going in there after the MRI, I was surprised to get such a definitive answer as to what was going on. It seems that most of my past injuries were always ambiguous, but of course they were never this bad.

So now I am scheduled for surgery at the end of August to remove the loose piece of cartilage and to stimulate growth of new cartilage via a process known as “microfracture”. They poke holes in the bone where the hole is and cause bleeding and a clot to form. Over time, the area is supposed to form new cartilage. It won’t be as good as the original cartilage, but it will be better than nothing and hopefully stop the metal-on-metal grinding that I’ve had when I last ran.

So now I have to face the prospect of not being able to run again for a very long time. Post-surgery I am supposed to be on crutches for a minimum of four weeks, but I have heard it can take longer before you can walk again. The healing process takes months so it may be that long before I can try running, but the doctor seems to think that I will be able to run again with no problem. This is good, but it really sucks that I won’t be able to do much for a long while. A couple other guys on the team have had similar problems and have had long, frustrating recoveries. I have to remember that the damage has already been done and that I will have to get the surgery or else the piece floating around in the knee could cause further complications.

Things will get worse before they get better, but it sounds like many people are able to pick up where they left off running-wise after having the same surgery. If I don’t get this done and deal with it, then I’ll never have a chance of getting back to where I was.

I find this funny, because a year ago I remarked to Keith when we were in Sacramento that I had probably done some permanent damage to myself after running in college for five years. At that point an area below the knee had been bothering me for over a year and was getting increasingly sore. The soreness below the knee seemed to come and go with time, sometimes going away for months at a time. Over last summer and into the fall it seemed to go away almost completely, but then it came back in the winter and seemed to be the basis for the blowup in January. The doctor wondered what I had done to cause such a problem but neither he nor I could seem to come up with an explanation as to why things progressed from the soreness to the sudden explosion.

For the past few weeks I’ve been biking, but sometimes I can feel something in the knee when I just start out or really jam on the pedals. It hasn’t been too bad and it’s just as well because it’s been so hot. Biking in Williamsburg is pretty enjoyable since it’s only about 10 minutes to rural farm roads. I did go home this past weekend and fought the tourists biking on Atlantic Ave.

All the stuff for my M.S. degree has been turned in and I should get my diploma at the end of August. I don’t think there is a ceremony or anything but I think I’m allowed to go to the spring graduation in 2009. My sister and I can “graduate” at the same time. I’ll still be here another two, three or more years, though. I’m glad I decided to do the Ph.D., considering the alternative of working in a cube farm as usual and doing something boring and mundane that some boss wants me to do. The work here has been challenging and has kept my interest. The work from my M.S. project is being refined into a conference paper that we will try to get out within a month. I’ve read some strong arguments as to why to not get a Ph.D., but at this point I figure I have nothing to lose as long as I am fully funded and am making progress towards completion. Most of the arguments are about the increasing difficulty of getting a tenured faculty position, but most likely I will go into industry. Those at the places I’ve worked that had Ph.D.s had a lot of control over what they worked on and also seemed indispensable to their organization. They had a lot more creative license than the regular code monkeys. I just can’t see myself being a regular run of the mill programmer for the rest of my life, always doing what someone else tells me to. Anyhow, if it hits the fan while I’m here, I can get out with my M.S. and still get a regular job.

A lot has been on my mind the past few months, but recently it’s been dominated by this mess with my knee. The coming months are going to be a bigger test of willpower and attitude than during any period during my high school or college running career.