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martes, junio 10, 2008

OK, the iPhone is not really $200

Categoría: Web, HTML, tecnología

Yesterday, with great fanfare, Steve Jobs declared that the iPhone is only $200.

No, it's not.

To get an iPhone for $200 in the US, you have to, at the same time, buy a service contract where you agree to pay AT&T $30 a month for wireless internet for 2 years. Basically, we don't know the real price for an iPhone because you can't get an unlocked iPhone.

The phone I've been looking at, the Nokia 5310, has a real unlocked price of $230. Here in Mexico, we don't have service contracts to lower the cost of phones (it appears many companies don't want to deal with collecting bill payments in this culture). Instead, that same 5310 costs a little under $300 here, but includes a number of perks, such as a prepaid phone card which gives you a number of minutes of airtime from the get-go.

If you want to pay by the month, there is a place that specializes in buying things on credit, Elektra, that will let you buy the 5310 for so much a month (I forget the exact price) over two years. But there's none of this US nonsense of hiding prices in service contracts.

A couple of other nice things about Mexico's phone service:

It never costs anything to receive a phone call or text message; you get unlimited incoming calls/texts

You can actually give other people minutes on their cell phone if you know their number and what service they use. I've done this to let this one girl know I really liked getting calls from her :)

18:29

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lunes, junio 09, 2008

The iPhone is coming to Mexico

Categoría: Web, HTML, tecnología

OK, it's official. The new iPhone is coming to Mexico. You know, I was just looking around at various phones to see what a good phone to replace my dying Nokia would be (I got an el cheapo $60 mp3 phone--the LG KP 115--and, well, got what I paid for: I can't hear people very clearly, people can't hear me well, and calls gets dropped a lot more than they did with the old el cheapo $150 Nokia I bought three years ago. It's decent for mp3s and text messages, but sadly really dropped the ball on talk quality).

Basically, I just want the basics: Good quality conversations, few dropped calls, SMS messaging, and one extra: mp3 playback. The only phone I have found at a reasonable price with mp3s and with high quality conversations is the Nokia 5310 (which also has a lousy camera). However, this phone is not cheap: It's street price in the US unlocked is $230, and, as I recall, the set price for this phone here in Mexico is a little under $300 (Telcel forces resellers to sell phones at a given price).

Now that the iPhone is going down to $200, that completely changes the picture. I can now consider getting one. My worry is the Jobs control freak factor (then again, phones right now are pretty restrictive): I don't think it will be possible to get an iPhone that both works in Mexico and also works for my vacations in the US when I get a "throw away" prepaid chip at the AT&T store. But, I can use my older Nokia for that, push comes to shove.

Speaking of phones, Telcel finally woke up and smelled the coffee. Calls to the US now only cost a little over a dollar for 20 minutes (they used to cost a dollar per minute), so I have been calling my family a lot more. It's nice to be able to call them up every week, from the comfort of my home, instead of once in a blue moon using a clunky phone card and a phone in an office where everyone can hear me talk.

19:30

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jueves, mayo 22, 2008

Remembering 1983

Categoría: Web, HTML, tecnología

1983.

When you think of this year, you probably think of teenage girls having crushes on members of the band Duran Duran, Michael Jackson hitting 1 multiple times ("Beat It", "Billie Jean", etc), Tom Cruise making his first splash in the movie Risky Business, the song Flashdance being one where someone actually sings lyrics, Regan being president, etc....

Eras are always cursed to be remembered for their failures, or for their very dated sounding songs.

As it turns out, 1983 was also the first year the Internet, as it exists today, was deployed. The technology itself was developed and standardized in late 1981; the Arpanet of the time was converted to use this technology at the beginning of 1983. (DNS, which allows you to go to "blog.myspace.com" instead of having to memorize "216.178.38.90" or placing a file saying "blog.myspace.com has the IP 216.178.38.90" on your computer, didn't start to exist until later in 1983, and wasn't standardized until 1987; the web didn't exist until 1991 or so)

Yes, the underlying technology that you are using right to read this page, to send email, to download programs and other files, was first used when MTV was still new (and still played music videos) and Michael Jackson was the most popular artist out there.

The only issue with the technology is that it only allows 4 billion or so computers to have numbers on the internet. We will probably run out of numbers by 2012.

Keep in mind that, at the time, only expensive computers that many people used at the same time (yes, kids, not only was Flashdance once a song with lyrics, but there were these computers that were so expensive, multiple people used the computer at the same time) could actually use the internet, and 32 bits was the biggest number even these expensive computers could handle. Yes, the home computer revolution was well underway, and indeed, it is possible to have a home computer of that era use the internet, but 4 billion (32 bits) was an inconceivably big number at the time.

In fact, 32-bit is still alive and well: You're probably using a 32-bit operating system to access this page (yes, 64-bit is here, but it's still in the early stages; I'm using a 64-bit OS and browser to post this, but there are still a lot of rough edges, such as limited or no Flash support)

In order to increase the number of computers that can be on the internet, a new Internet technology called ipv6 is being developed that will have a much bigger number of computer "numbers" that can be on the internet. But. it's taking a while for this new technology to catch on; it's not practical to use the ipv6 on the internet today.

17:30

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miércoles, mayo 21, 2008

What next? Charging for flights by body wieght?

Categoría: Viajes y lugares

With the increase in prices for airplane fuel, American Airlines has just announced that they will charge $15 for a passenger to check in luggage. With the way things are going, I think airliners will soon have scales at the terminals, and will charge by the pound.

I don't think this is such a horrible idea myself. I mean, I have one friend who asked me "You know Sam, my boyfriend, he is, well, you know, gaining weight and how do I politely tell him he needs to lose some of that gut he is growing?" Well, when airlines start charging by the pound to get on a plane, it's really easy to bring up this delicate discussion: "Well, you know it might be a good idea to lose a little weight so it doesn't cost us so much to fly on an airplane".

Actually, in the United States' uber-political-correct lets-find-any-excuse-to-sue climate, I think sadly any such proposal by an airline will sadly be struck down for "discriminating based on one's body weight". Personally, I don't think it would be discrimination. If I were the defense lawyer in such a suit, I would just say "You know, guys, we're just trying to combat America's obesity epidemic by encouraging people to spend some more time at the gym instead of just spending all day watching TV or surfing the 'net".

17:52

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martes, mayo 20, 2008

Why did you vote for George Bush

Emoticón actual:  confundido/a

Categoría: Noticias y política

OK, so here I was hanging out with my friend Ivonne last night, with us having one of our talk-for-hours sessions, when we started talking about war and politics. She then asked me "How could you guys have voted for a guy like George Bush for president?" Which is, sorry my republican friends, a question I was incapable of answering.

I didn't vote for Bush in 2000. I didn't vote for him in 2004 either. I can not take any responsibility for getting our country in to this war that has killed over 100,000 people in Iraq and over 4,000 soldiers in the United States, and the resulting increase in gas prices and terrible economy the United States currently has. Indeed, I protested the Iraq war the day after Bush started his invasion of Iraq.

So, if you voted for Bush, what crack were you smoking what led you to decide to vote for him?

17:20

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martes, mayo 13, 2008

My lucky day

Categoría: Viajes y lugares

Today was a very lucky day for me. I am wearing a different pair of pants today that have looser pockets than the pants I usually wear. My wallet fell out of my pants, on to my seat, without my knowledge.

As I was getting off of the bus, a young teenager signaled to me and had my wallet in his hand. I took it, opened it, and gave him 20 pesos (about $2). I should have given him $20, to be honest.

An interesting thought on Mexican cell phones: Unlike American cell phones, it doesn't cost me a cent to receive a text message nor a phone call. The caller/sender pays all of the expenses of contacting me. The bad news is that calls usually cost 40 cents a minute. As you can imagine, I do text messages a lot more than phone calls.

There is a special program with the cell phone service I use, Telcel, where calls can only cost 55 cents for 20 minutes (as long as the person you call uses the same cell phone service; I would say Telcel has about 75% of the market here), that a friend of mine Ivonne set me up with. Basically, you have to know that this plan exists and then call them up and give them some information and they'll enable it on your cell phone.

16:02

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martes, abril 01, 2008

The H1-B nonsense starts again

Categoría: Noticias y política

The H1-B nonsense start again. There is only one time in the year when companies have a shortage of employees; that is every spring when they ask congress for more H1-B applications.

This line is classic: "Technology companies have urged Congress to raise the annual limit, saying they face damaging shortages of the computer engineers and software technicians that these visas attract." Is this an April Fool’s joke?

The last time I looked for a technology job in late 2005, every company that I phone screened or interviewed told me they had "many other applicants" and therefore couldn’t hire me. I ended up working as a cashier in Wal*Mart.

There isn’t a shortage of workers in America. If there were, I would have gotten a job in late 2005 working for the tech industry.

11:29

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martes, marzo 04, 2008

Gary Gygax has died

Categoría: Juegos

I just learned that Gary Gygax, the original creator of Dungeons and Dragons, has died.  He died this morning at the age of 69.

I first got introduced to D&D in the early 1980s, just before it was the trendy game for kids to play (along with video games in the arcades).  While I greatly enjoyed reading the D&D books, I actually did not get a chance to have a regular group of people to play D&D with until 1991.

A buddy of mine in college invited me to be part of his D&D campaign that he was the dungeon master (DM) of.  He promised me it would only be three hours a day, twice a week.  Six hours a week, and I didn't have much better to do (it was a rather boring, if pleasant, tiny little college)

So, I started playing with this group.  At first it really was six hours a week, on campus in the "student union" (A room the size of two classrooms that was where students were to hang out).  Then we started playing on more days of the week.  Pretty soon, in addition to playing at school, we were also playing at the DM's house, and playing for six or eight hours at a time.

I just wasn't much of a D&D player.  I would constantly have my characters die, resulting in having to reroll at least twice.  I complained to the DM about this; he told me I just had to be a better player.  In addition, we had a munchkin (someone obsessed with a character with big stats) who was very unpleasant to be around join our campaign.  I could tell he was an unpleasant person within one minute of first meeting him; I was surprised other people in our group accepted him.

Indeed, later on other people could see the problems this person was causing.  By then, I had decided to phase out my involvment with the D&D group; I realized I had more important things to do--like study for my classes, and that this game was going to suck more and more of my time if I kept playing.

By the end of 1991, I was done with playing D&D at that college.

The next time I played D&D was with Victor, the number 1 person on my "top 12" list of friends.  This was in the late 1990s; we only played a few games in small groups, but the games were a lot of fun because we never took the game too seriously and had a lot of laughter at some of the stupid things we did in the game.  And, the DM never killed us, even if we did something really foolish.

One campaign we played had Orc points, where anyone who, while playing the game, did something Orcish (like burp or audibly fart in public) got an Orc point.  For years afterwords, I would tell Victor he earned an Orc point every time he burped or farted around me.  He admitted that he long since became an Orc shaman.

I don't play D&D today, and haven't played for many years, but the friendship I developed with Victor playing D&D is still strong.

I am also involved a little with a chess variant site; since Gygax invented a chess variant in the mid-1980s, we had a page describing his variant.  Gygax was always very friendly; he contributed a couple of comments on that site about his variant.

I am glad that Gygax invented D&D, and also like the creativity he had in inventing a chess variant, and in some books he wrote in the 1980s that I enjoyed back in the day (I read "Sea of Death" in 1988), and am sad to see him pass away.

16:53

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martes, febrero 19, 2008

Please get your facts straight

Categoría: Noticias y política

Scanning through some articles about Mexico at a popular, err, conservative news site, I discovered this gem:

If a foreigner wishes to reside in Mexico, he or she must have a guaranteed job or be financially independent, and must prove an income from abroad consisting of pensions or investments four hundred times the minimum wage in Mexico City (monthly). This amount represents approximately $1,500 in U.S. dollars per month.

Which shows that these people can't get their facts straight.

I have a Mexican residency visa, and I did not have to show that I getting $1,500 US a month from outside of Mexico.  Not at all.  All I needed was:

* A 4-year degree

* A job for a company willing to sponsor me.

I am earning no where near $1500 a month US; I am earning enough to pay my expenses, but let me put it this way: There was a time when I earned in two days what I currently earn in a month.  (I'm happier now, but that's another story for another blog entry)

If conservative news sites are this inaccurate about things I know about, how accurate are they about things I don't know about?

I don't mind a conservative mindset; I accept people of all mindsets.  I, however, do not care for a mindset based on inaccurate facts.

14:06

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viernes, febrero 08, 2008

My prediction for the presidental election

Categoría: Noticias y política

Here is my guess as to who is going to win the presidental election:

After a difficult presidental race, Barack Obama will win the presidental election.  Once he wins, the economy will start to improve.

Of course, it's really too easy to know, but a student asked me today during the class who's going to win in November, so I made a prediction.

03:28

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