A GThing Science Project

"It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it."

--Edwin Way Teale Circle of the Seasons (1953)

Photo Courtesy LIFE.

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me a hundred time, we'll still keep giving you chances. 

Sony has a long history of doing wrong by their customers, the apologizing for it, then doing it again.  It's sad, really.  A lot of grew up in an era when Sony represented technology and awesomeness.  Sony was the Apple of the 80's, and the Walkman was their iPod. 

The sad thing is that since the Walkman, Sony has not managed to come up with anything really ground breaking or compelling.  They keep trying, but they keep failing - miserably.  Here's a history of Sony apologies and screw ups:

First there was betamax, which Sony invented.  It was a superior format to VHS in almost every way so it should not have been hard to get adoption.  But because Sony cares more about money and restrictive licensing than they do about costumers and actually being successful, it fell flat on its face.  If you had a betamax player, you were a sucker.

Then there was minidisc, my first real experience with Sony.  They had already apologized for how bad they miffed it with betamax and had promised to do better with minidisc.  I bought a minidisc player and even picked up a Yamaha MD8 multi-track data minidisc recorder (I dropped $1200 on it in high school).

It was sad that neither on the consumer side or on the pro (semi-pro, really) side of things Sony failed to deliver.  Their music software, required to use your minidisc player, was riddled with bugs and restrictive DRM.  They promised updates that never came, restricted licensing of their technology, and soon the format I had invested so much in was dead in the water, just like betamax.  I was the sucker.

So I vowed that I would never buy another Sony product again.  They just didn't seem to care about costumers, innovation, quality, or anything really, other than making tons of money.  They didn't seem to realize that if you do all those first things, the money will follow. 

About 10 years later I broke my Sony boycott to buy a Sony Reader.  Surprisingly, I had a great experience with it and enjoyed it very much.  Their software still sucked - really bad - but by this time there were 3rd party solutions that could do much better.  Overall, I thought the Reader was good - better even than the Kindle and other alternatives because of its openness.  You must really suck if Sony is doing it better than you.

After my good experience with the Reader I thought Sony had turned a new corner, so I slowly waded into their sea of products.  I bought a PS3 and received a PSP for Christmas. 

The PS3 is a pretty decent gaming machine, but falls short in other areas.  It tries to be a home media solution, but doesn't have wide format support or decent navigation abilities.  It's pretty weak, really.  Every update they come out with adds stupid features that encourage you to spend more money rather than addressing the most basic issues.

Speaking of updates, they just released one that completely removed a major feature from their systems.  They removed the option to install other OSes - one of the main reasons I bought a PS3 over the alternatives.  They simply removed it, no questions, no options.  If you were running another OS it was deleted and there was jack you could do about it.  Sony responded to criticism by saying "STFU and bend over, we don't care about you."

The update was worse for me.  I installed it and it physically bricked my entire system.  I can't even turn it on any more.  Apparently they used such crappy solder to put the thing together that it litterally melts itself to the point it doesn't work anymore.  This isn't even an isolated problem, either - it's completely widespread.  Sony doesn't care about this either - they'll just tell you to buy a new console or pay $250 to have it repaired.

I tried to get my PS3 repaired at first, but I realized that I don't even want it.  My Mac Mini is a vastly more capable media server for my TV, and I didn't even play games all that much on the PS3. 

There are lots of other problems I have had with Sony and their products, but for the sake of brevity I won't go into any more detail.  The bottom line is they don't give a damn about their costumers.  Suffice it to say that I will be re-instating my personal Sony boycott and will always recommend my friends and family away from Sony products. 

Here's a neat, bulleted list of things I'd rather do than buy another Sony product for as long as I live:

• Stick a red hot soldering iron in my eye
• Peal the skin off my entire head starting with my eyelid
• Get on a plane with a bunch of rapid terrorists
• Bite my fingernails off, one by one
• Pull out each one of my chest hairs with a rusty pair of pliers
• Sit on hot coals
• Be buried alive
• Buy a Microsoft product

I just sent the following letter to QWest. I'll let you know if I ever receive a response.

Today I received a flyer from Qwest stating that you were now offering fiber optic internet in my neighborhood with speeds up to 20mbps. Naturally, as a mouth breathing internet nerd I was ecstatic. I recently had to move out of my old neighborhood where I had 50/50mbps fiber optic and it was like living in sweet digital nirvana. Now I'm suffering with Comcrapst "16mpbs" - and I put that in quotes because they have some kind of different, slower, definition of 16mpbs than the rest of reality uses.

Anyway, I called up, credit card in hand to sign up for this new wonderland of digital goodness we call fiber. Turns out you guys were actually offering 40mbit connections in my area! This is like hearing someone you know won the lottery, and then finding out that person is actually you!

Unfortunately I found out the 40mbit connection costs some exorbitant amount of money - I have to sign over my first born and bring the Qwest gods the head of a rare goat only found on a specific mountain in the Himalayas or something. I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention. Anyway, I can handle the 20mbit connection advertised on the flyer for $45/mo. I can handle $45 a month and no goats have to be hurt in the process.

What I found out next shocked me to my very core (jelly filled! mmmm!). The 20mbit connection actually costs $68/mo ... or $75/mo depending on which part of the conversation we're talking about. Every time I asked it seemed to get more expensive. To get the good deal for $45/mo I have to sign up for a phone line.

A phone line?!?! Really!?!?!? What year is this? Who has phone lines anymore? What am I, a cave man? It's like saying "Yea, you can get an internet connection from us but only if you purchase our sharpened stone for scrawling hunting stories on the walls of caves!" It's madness!

Why would you force me to bundle a new service that modern humans would want with something surely from the cro-magnon era that only grandmas and people in 3rd world countries use. And all of this AFTER your salesman tried to sell me cell phone service. Why would I want something that requires archaic copper wiring in my house when I could have something that works anywhere in the country for the same price (plus brain cancer, possibly, but I don't like living in the future!).

Oh, and remember that sweet, sweet nectar of the gods internet connection I told you I had that was 50/50mbit fiber? Well, it was awesome, and it was only $50/mo (no lie). That's like 3x cheaper than yours and I don't have to find a flight to the Himalayas.

So the point of all this is to say that I would love to have your faster Internet, but I can't convince my room mates to pay more for something they don't care about, and none of them even knew what a land line was. One of them said "a land line? Is that how dinosaurs hunted for prey or something?" I don't know, room mate guy, I don't know.

So, all I'm saying is, come up with a different bundle. Preferably something that bundles the internet service with something that people under 30 have at least vaguely heard of and might even want (like, I don't know, TV service or nightly pizza delivery or something). Then, I would love to suckle and the sweet digital teet of Qwest high speed fiber optic internets.

"It's really a frustrating experience working with Apple on the [iPhone App Store] approval process, which is weird, because my other experiences with the company are so good. It's hard to reconcile that it's the same company."

-Jared Brown, iPhone Developer from this interview on crunchgear.

A couple people have asked me to review Palm's newest entry into the smartphone market, the Pre. Not only has Palm introduced a new an innovative hardware form factor, but they have also given the world an entirely new mobile operating system called WebOS. It's a pretty big deal. Bigger-than-Ron-Burgundy big.

When talking about the Palm's new phone, it's impossible not to talk about the current reigning champion in the smartphone space: iPhone. The best way to start out my review would be to tell you why I chose the Pre over Apple's more mature offering.

There are a few reasons, but the biggest sticking point for me about iPhone (this is how Apple refers to it - "iPhone" rather than "the iPhone") is their attitude towards developers. For a very interesting insight into the issue, I highly recommend reading The Future of The Internet and How To Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain. It's available for free download here. If nothing else, just read the introduction.

In the book, Zittrain compares iPhone to the original Apple II computer. When you bought an Apple II and turned it on, you got a prompt. The machine was waiting for you to tell it what to do. If you could imagine it, you could make the computer do it (within reason, of course). One enterprising company came up with the World's first spreadsheet software VisiCalc. Not only was the software revolutionary, but it started selling a lot of computers.

Here's the important thing: Apple didn't know that VisiCalc even existed until they started noticing a lot more computers going out the door. It was software that was beyond the scope of their vision. The Apple II became great because developers made it so, and this relationship between developers and computer makers is what is responsible for the current state of computers now. Give someone a sandbox, and they will create something great.

So bringing this all back to iPhone, the problem is that the platform can never fully become something beyond Apple's narrow vision for it. Evidence of this turns up every day when you hear about yet another app being rejected from the app store. You are so restricted in what you can do - no messing with the core OS, no interpreted code (that means no flash, no emulators, etc.), and nothing outside of Apple's as-of-yet undefined arbitrary moral code. iPhone is an appliance. It's a really nice typerwriter with lots of gee-whiz applications, but it's stagnant in that Apple choose a window of past technology and said "Here, you can make things within these limits and within these limits only." I don't see how the groundbreaking mobile technologies of the future can be born on such a platform.

So why is Apple winning? Why is iPhone the leading smartphone? I'm not ashamed to say it: it has been the best. Despite it's very fundamental flaws, it introduced a new generation of mobile computing. Until very recently there has been nothing like it on the market. With iPhone, Apple spurred the entire industry into a whole new generation. If it wasn't for them, I might now be reviewing a boring Palm OS phone or a Windows Mobile 6.1 phone.

So my argument would be that Apple is now winning not because they have the best phone NOW, but that they've had it for the last couple years. They have a head start - and the deserve it for the innovation that they've introduced and the bar they've raised in the industry. But, like the line of early Apple computers, a more open, more approachable, and more innovation friendly competitor has shown up. Unless Apple changes its ways (and quick), the same thing will happen to their phone that happened to their computers - they'll become second place.

There are two promising competitors on the market: Android and Palm's WebOS. I'm not going to talk about Android here, but I think it's awesome and am excited to see what will be done with it.

WebOS is a breath of fresh air. I'll say it right now: it's the best mobile operating system there is. Yes, it has its flaws but it's young and has a bright future ahead of it. Although their developer ecosystem is not in full swing, all indications show that it will be much more open (and innovation-friendly) than Apple.

The greatness of WebOS was really driven home for me a few days after I got the Pre. I was sitting there talking to my little brother over IM, as well as another friend who likes to send me lots of links to things he finds humorous or entertaining. The WebOS built-in IM program is more than adequate at keeping up with multiple conversations. My little brother was sending me links to mockups he had created for a website he was working on. I would click on the links and a new "card" would open within WebOS. I could view, rotate, zoom in and out on his mockups, then flip right back to the conversation and give him my feedback. When I was done viewing a mockup, I could simply flick it off the top of the screen.

The whole experience was exactly what I've wanted from a mobile device. I don't just want to be able to make calls - I want to be able to communicate - and the phone abilities are only a small portion of how I communicate with people. The conversation with my brother, and how it integrated with the mobile web experience, and how the whole thing was wrapped into the WebOS multi-tasking "cards" philosophy was so seamless and awesome that I was sold right there on WebOS. It's exactly what I've been wanting. Exactly.

Contrast that experience with the other leading mobile platform, and such an experience would have been a lot more frustrating. With every link I would have to sign out of IM, close the program, open up the web browser, manually type in the URL (having written it down on a piece of paper or something due to lack of copy and paste), look at the image, close out of the browser, re-open the IM program, sign in, and give my feedback. At that point, the experience is so cumbersome that it's not even worth it. The experience is outweighed by the amount of work involved and you just say "I'll have to check it later when I get to a computer."

My main fear with the Pre was that it would not be stable. Palm OS was always notoriously buggy and crashy. From my original Palm Pilot, the my Palm II, to my Palm V, to my Visor to my Treo, I never had a Palm device that didn't crash often and a lot of time take ALL OF MY DATA with it. I am happy to say that after a few weeks with the Pre, it has not crashed once, frozen, or become overly sluggish. It's solid as a rock and fast enough that I don't find myself sitting around waiting for programs to open or webpages to load.

Launching apps does take some time. It's comparable with Windows Mobile, and a lot slower than Palm OS and iPhone OS. But the benefit is that once it's loaded, it's loaded. You can keep it running for as long as you want and with as many other applications as you want. I'd rather open a WebOS app once at 5 seconds then 5 times at 2 seconds each on a platform that isn't capable of multi-tasking. Plus, once the app is loaded, it runs at full speed, regardless of how many other apps you have open in the background (I've had about 20 at the most).

With Synergy, all of my contacts are sync'd automagically from the cloud. Both Google contacts and Facebook are used as sources. Overall, the concept and execution are awesome, but it does leave a bit to be desired. Most of this is due to the fact that Google's contact application is in its infancy and advanced contact management is just not possible. The Pre also does not yet give you the ability to choose which groups from Google contacts to sync with, so you get EVERYTHING. If you're going to use this feature, expect taking some time to clean up your Google contacts address book.

Once everything it up and running, though, it's great. If someone changes their Facebook picture I see the update in my very own address book. If someone updates their contact info with a new phone number or email address, I have it without ever having to do anything. I think THIS is the future. Everyone manages their own contact information and what you have is never out of date.

There are a few other shortcomings with WebOS (lack of applications, for example), but most - if not all - are due to the platform's infancy. There are some features missing and a lot of things I'd like to see improved, but as is Palm has delivered a very impressive experience for a first generation operating system, and the updates are coming fast (4 revisions to date). I think it will take 6 months or a year for things to get really, really good to the point where people used to the number of applications on iPhone OS will start seeing WebOS as an alternative. The fact that WebOS will be available on multiple devices in a variety of form factors and on multiple carriers will only help things.

Will the Pre dethrone the iPhone? As I said, it's a better platform, but more important than the platform is what is done with it. WebOS opens a lot more possibilities than iPhone. However, a three generation head start is hard to catch up to. Then again, Apple did it. They went up against industry leaders like Palm, Microsoft, and Blackberry and destroyed them all within two years. It's not impossible that WebOS could do the same. My guess is that it will take a bit longer (given that the jump between previous generation smartphones and the iPhone was a lot bigger than the iPhone to the Palm Pre) and that both platforms will enjoy success for the next several years. That said, had iPhone and the Pre launched on the same day, I am confident that the Pre would have the larger market share today. Hopefully Apple ups their game and relaxes a little bit with their developers. Then things are really going to get interesting.

Yesterday I was sitting at my desk when a film crew rolled in to the office and started setting up their cameras and everything RIGHT BEHIND ME. Apparently I was supposed to be the backdrop for this commercial they were filming. Interesting how nobody told me...

The spokeswoman came up and stood directly behind my chair and started talking to the cameras, doing her lines. Nobody this entire time said anything to me, but it was clear that I was on camera and that my triple monitor desk was the main backdrop for the commercial.

I couldn't exactly have client data up on my screen, so I just started messing around. First I pulled up this on my far left monitor (Thanks, Dean). It's basically a countdown timer that flies by really fast with Arabic writing right above it. Innocuous enough, right?

On my main monitor I pulled up a rolling demo of one of the coolest looking games ever, Defcon. It looks a little something like this:

I also pulled up a satellite photo zoomed in on the White House and another map of the world that shows all my server traffic over the last several minutes (with lines all connecting to my server which happens to be in Washington D.C.).

On my far right monitor I pulled up a Windows virtual machine and put a BSOD on it. Then in my display preferences I flipped the monitor image 180 degrees so the whole thing was upside down. After all that, my desktop looked a little something like this:

I toyed with the idea of running MILF308, which is a program that shoots up TONS of ridiculous novelty popup windows that advertise all sorts of ridiculous internet warez, but I thought it would get too obvious - and some of them are a bit NSFW.

They filmed for an hour or two, me in the background the whole time hitting refresh on my Arabic countdown timer every time they said "action!" Nobody said a word to me the entire time. Finally at the end one of the film crew came up to me and said "So, uhh .... what are you working on over here?" I just told him I was keeping busy with some client reports and he walked off. Those are some pretty interesting client reports!

I can't wait to see the commercial. If I find it (I think it will be posted online), I'll definitely link to it here so you can see the evil genius in the background conducting thermonuclear war.

This morning I received the following text message on my phone:

FRM: VISA

MSG: VISA ALERT. Unusual Activity - Call now at 1-(623)398-0539

Since I receive SMS alerts from my bank regularly my first though was "holy crap, what's going on with my card?" I almost started dialing the number before I decided to google the number first. I don't normally take things at face value - if someone from my bank calls me I always verify their number or ask to call them back. But I'll get to that in a minute.

A secure call to the number began with a recorded voice telling me my credit card had been compromised. A robotic woman computer voice then came on and asked me to key in my credit card number. I entered a fake (but valid) Visa number at which point it asked for my pin, which I made up. The woman's voice said "thanks for attending to this matter" and hung up.

Pretty much the worst scam ever. I can't imagine too many people falling for it, and the fact that the system gives you no further information after entering your CC number is just going to make people curious and attract attention to them. Whoever is behind the scam is clearly an amateur.

A quick Google search for the number resulted in a whois page for benham.net. The phone number is listed as the contact number for Darren Banham, the guy who registered and runs the domain.

It should be noted up front that the fact that his number is on his domain doesn't necessarily mean he's behind the scam, but it does point a finger at him. His website appears to be down, meaning this could be some kind of elaborate hack or identity theft. His is number could have changed since he input his domain's whois info as well. However, this seems unlikely as the domain was last renewed only two months ago. Furthermore, given the amateurish nature of the scam, it would be no surprise to find out the scammer left his personal information in the first Google result for the number.

Occam's razor would suggest that Benham is behind the scam. Therefore, I'm going to post here on my blog everything I know about him as I continue my investigation.

Name: Darren Benham
Age: 40
Address: PO Box 605 Wickenburg AZ 85390 US
Address: 161 N. Madison St., Wickenburg, AZ 85390
Email: Darren@benham.net

Here are some snapshots of different versions of his website:

Circa July 2003

Circa May 2008

Now (May 2009) Raw SQL queries? Note that this is not some kind of error, this appears to be the actual text published to the page.

A lot of pages are still up at the ols.benham.net as seen here.

Interests:

Unix Administrator (There goes the 'he got hacked' theory)
Experience: Solaris, HPUX, AIX, OS/400, Linux, C/C++, Pascal, Basic, Cobol, Assembly, Perl, Python. (Capable of putting this scam together). Could he be using asterisk?
The Bible (I'll let that speak for itself)
Married
Father of nine, 3 of them step children. (Could one of his kids be the scammer?)

Other info:

Attended Clark, Ed HS in Las Vegas, NV (Grad. 1987)
Air Force Brat

That's all for now.

Update 1:

I have seen one other report of someone getting the same scam from a person with a number very close to mine. I received the text at 10:26am according to my phone and this person received the same text at the same time. It would appear it is a script running on numbers in sequential order. This probably means he doesn't have a phone book, but is just incrementing sets of phone numbers.

The text was sent via email. I'm going to try to figure out if I can find some headers or something.

Time to start working on his voicemail system.

Update 2:

The number appears to just be ringing endlessly now, no answer by the robot woman.

Update 3:

Contacted Benham via Myspace, waiting for response. Haven't pointed him at this blog post yet, but he might find it through my Myspace profile or if he has google alerts on his name.

Filed complaint with Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard against Benham. Waiting for response.

Update 4:

I was contacted by the Crime Fraud and Victim Resource center for the Arizona State attorney general. The number has been reported to the Attorney General.

Benham has apparently not logged into his Myspace for some time, so it is unlikely he will get my message. If anyone finds alternate contact info, I will call or email him and find out what's up.

Update 5:

Multiple reports have come in to the Attorney General's office and they are now being forwarded to his local (Wickenburg) police department. I have contacted them directly as well. Will keep you posted on updates.

Many more reports coming in here.

More info on the phone number:

Type: Land Line
Provider: XO
Location: Phoenix, AZ

County: MARICOPA
Carrier: T-MOBILE USA, INC.
Phone Type: PHOENIX TEMPAZNR1MD
Rate Center: PHOENIX

Update 6:

Found a twitter page - actually updated recently. Apparently he just had a kid, so maybe he's been offline for a while. http://twitter.com/father0fnine

Correction: He didn't just have a kid, he is involved in the opening of a new ER somehow. It is looking less likely that he is involved in this scam.

Took a closer look at old.benham.net. Apparently he's having a rough time in this economy, and he's got a new baby to pay for to boot. Hmmmmm... Also, his family photos all consist of wolves. That's right, he was raised by wolves.

Update 7

Radio License:
Call Sign: KC7YAQ, Licensee ID: L00327807
Grant Date: 06/27/2008, Expiration Date: 06/27/2018
Registrant: Darren O Benham, 161 N. Madison St., Wickenburg, AZ 85390
Maybe someone could rouse him on the old ham radio?

(If anyone else has information about this, please contact me here or use the chat badge in the right sidebar of this site.)

10. Dilbert Principle

The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.

The Takeaway: If you suck are your job, you're probably going to get fired ... unless there's a spot open in management.

9. Wirth's Law

Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.

Sam's law: Hardware gets faster faster than your wallet gets bigger.

8. Skitt's Law

The Likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster.

The takeaway: If you're posting a comment in a forum or on a blog in which you attempt to correct someone else's spelling or grammar, be sure to triple check for errors.

7. Occam's Razor

When two explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable. Never multiply causes without necessity.

The Takeaway: How does electricity work? Magic.

6. Stugeon's Law

Sturgeon's Revelation: 90% of everything is crap.

The Takeaway: Just because you read book one of the Goosebumps series and hated it doesn't mean reading is a waste of time, you just need to find the 10% of books that are actually good.

5. Murphy's Law

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

Finagle's law - "... and at the worst possible moment."

The Takeaway: Don't row boats below flying piano factories.

4. Clarke's 3 Laws

First law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Second law: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Okay, I know three laws in one is cheating, but it's Arthur C. Clarke we're talking about - he gets to have three for one. A closely related adage is Shermer's law which states; "Any sufficiently advanced alien intelligence is indistinguishable from god." But since god created the planet and was therefore not born on it, I'd say god is an alien.

3. Hanlon's Razor

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

2. Dollo's Law

"An organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in the ranks of its ancestors." Simply put this law states that evolution is not reversible.

The Takeaway: Sorry guys, it was a thought provoking movie but it's not our future.

1. Godwin's Law

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

The Takeaway: Nazi's are bound to show up at some point.

I noticed today that some moron was hotlinking one of my images. That means he was posting an image from my server all over myspace rather than hosting the image himself. The bottom line is he was posting an image that I have control over.

Since I don't like other people eating up all my bandwidth, I decided to pull a little switcheroo on the image. So instead of serving up the image he intended, I made a new image. Check out the before and after.

Before:

After:

If you've ever tried to include a logo in your Apple Mail signatures, you know it can be a pain. Mail wants to add a space above and a space below the image, which can make your sig look all retarded instead of super professional.

There doesn't appear to be any consistent way of fixing this, but here's a few things to try.

Start by removing the line below the image first. To do that delete all the spaces between the image and the text so the text sits to the right of the image. To finalize this change, click on another tab within mail prefs and then back onto the signatures tab.

Once you've confirmed that changes by doing the tab dance, place your cursor between the image and text and hit return once. Do the tab dance again to see if the changes stuck and worked. You should have this now:

Now move onto the top line, place your cursor at the end of the line of text above your image ("towel boy") and hit delete (fn+delete for forward delete) until the image is sitting to the right of your text thusly:

Now do the tab dance to confirm your changes. If you're lucky, you'll now have this:

Note that you may need to try this a few times to get it to work. I know that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results, but in this case you will get different results. I'm pretty sure Mail is the insane one here.

(Hint: Try deleting the white space in different ways - i.e. using forward delete vs. backwards delete or some combination of the two).

Once you can do the tab dance and still have your signature looking the way you want it, go start a new message and see if it's okay there. This seems to show up okay in Outlook and gmail so you should be good to go but YMMV.

If you just can't get it to work, there is one more trick you can try. Place a period on the side of the image that is giving you trouble (left side=top space, right side=bottom space). Using the Format/Alignment Menu, float the image left, and align the period(s) left as well. If this works, then you can color the periods white with the Format/Show Colors menu.