This is more for the networking geeks out there, rather than your average iPhone user. Brough Turner, a veteran telecom guru and several-time CTO has got a theory. The short version is that AT&T has enough capacity to handle the massive amounts of traffic that the iPhone users consume, contrary to a lot of the news reports out there. The real problem is that AT&T has screwed up the configuration of their wireless network, he says.
The bottleneck link is the over-the-air link, i.e. the connection from radio access network or UTRAN to the Mobile Statation (MS) in the above diagram, therefore the critical buffers are those at the UTRAN. In practice the UTRAN includes both the basestations (called Node-Bs) and the Radio Network Controllers (RNCs) which coordinate handovers between basestations (among other things). Because of hand-overs, the amount of data buffered at the Node-B is relatively small. It’s the buffers at the RNC that must be large enough to deal with the delay variations in the radio network and yet small enough to induce packet loss when the network gets congested.
I have no idea if he’s right, but it makes sense. Good read, if you know networking.
I think I shall look into seeing if I can run Atari 2600 or Nesticle, or similar emulators, on my smartphone. I want to play this on the bus during my commute:
What is WRONG with people?
Thomas went under the knife for a new technique called “whittling.” The doctors made a small cut in each thumb and shaved down the bones, then they adjusted the muscles and fingernails to fit the new thumb size. Martel’s new thumbs look a tad effeminate, and there’s always that problem of expense and general discomfort, but he thinks the procedure “will pay for itself in ten to fifteen years. And what it’s saving me in frustration – that’s priceless.”
Read this, LOL: With over 5 colorful buttons you can touch, or even press multiple buttons at the same time for true, patented multi-touch technology. iPoor goes back to the basics, allowing you to memorize phone numbers and thus increasing your IQ by 17%.
read more | digg story
Digg: Check out the Official iPhone Tool they included with my warranty service packet. Seriously, you can’t make this crap up.
read more | digg story
I mentioned it here, and I just this morning ordered a PPC-6700 Windows Mobile 5 phone/Pocket PC. Another good review can be found here. The Amazon reviews, which are usually (for me, anyway) a good indicator of how something is were split, and hit and miss. Most of the grumbling was about random one-off sounding stuff, so I’m not worried there. This phone has been one of Sprint’s top sellers for over a year, so there’s got to be a nice reason for that.
Thanks to Orb2069 on Livejournal, I scored a $200 mail-in manufacturer’s rebate, to go with the $200 credit I got from my carrier. Final cost: $210. It’s got a neat slide out massive keyboard, which is good, because I despise tiny qwerty keyboards. I should have this thing on Friday! I wonder if I’ll be able to SSH from it? Images shamelessly lifted from the Gadgeteer article:
I’ve been swamped at work of late, and we’ve been out and about a fair bit when not working to decompress. That’s why the blog and Livejournal had gone dead of late, and it’s taking me ages to get back to anyone on e-mails and Instant messaging (among other things, that are done with…). We just got back from a three day weekend with family out on the Olympic Peninsula, and this week looks to be even more hectic. It’s the Bite of Seattle, Dolores O’Riordan is playing Seattle, and some crappy book is coming out on Friday (pre-delivered from Amazon, w00t!).
And, if all goes well, I may be the owner of one of these bad boys for only $350 this week, rather than the $550 retail price. Long, convoluted story. Suffice it to say, Sprint takes care of customers with accounts dating back over ten years for their cellular service when push comes to shove. For the nerds out there, yes, I know a ‘newer’ model with Windows Mobile 6 is out this very week. I don’t need nearly the firepower that model has, and I specifically need Windows Mobile 5 for my purposes. This model will easily last me 1.5 to 2.5 years, I’d imagine. It’s not the best smartphone for Sprint. That would probably be the IP-830W, but that’s a sexy international model. Which I can’t afford, and again, Windows Mobile 6. Alas.
I do love having a million things to do, though. It’s refreshing. So is the nice tan I got this weekend, and the fact that I spent time in as close the real world is going to get to the Misty Mountains. Just gorgeous, out there.
I want this as my cell phone ring tone. I’ll have to redo it to get it into my phone. I currently have Johnny Cash’s CRY CRY CRY, but figured I am about due for something new. And on that note I need to get out of the house.
ALSO I left this off; the guy just called me back twice to follow up. We were under contract on Andi’s plan for another 21.5 months from today. The new lines are actually going to be paid for, at $10/per month. BUT! The discount he gave us is actually 20% per month, not 5%. That’s what gets us the two old Connecticut lines/extra phones for “free”, plus another $5 off our old total bill. The provision on this is that our contract for service in general is now reupped for a full 24 months from today.
But we’re not in any need to switch from Sprint. It’s only a couple of months. Plus, he immediately credited our account $100 on the last phone call when I asked him to re-explain everything. So, revised:
We have four phones (two emergency backups, which given my phone’s mating habits with cups of coffee probably isn’t a bad idea), free text messaging, and $5/month off what we would have been paying for the next 21.5 months anyway. Plus, since in the math the $100/credit gets eaten in the last 2.5 months of the plan by the additional phone lines partially, it works out in the end to getting a $20 credit.
Right. $5/month off our bill, free text messaging, two bonus lines/phones for us (just so they don’t have to play telco cancel games), and a relative $20 credit. And I had to change it to my name since they would only do this for the senior account.
OK, revised: I do good?
EDIT, notes: Had I forced the cancel issue, our base bill would be $5/more per month, with no text messaging for free, and only two phones, and no $20 credit.
EDIT EDIT: I’m already fucking sick of telco again.
I finally remembered to call and cancel our Connecticut numbers on the old plan that was under my own name. Our new Washington plan is under ’s name. Weird call. I verified everything on both accounts, and told them I wanted to cancel the old CT plan–no need for it, and at the time of setting up the new ones it was easier and better for us to set up a new account under Andi’s name to 1. get a better/cheaper/newer plan; 2. get newer/better phones free; 3. get new numbers immediately, instead of a couple trips to the store/converting them.
Important clue: the manager at the Tukwilia Sprint store when we did this sort of marveled at our old 203 area code numbers, since they apparently were from some special group of numbers that aren’t in use any more and barely were to begin with. Telco (phone company) games are like a labyrinth, from my memories of working DSL lines, but at the time this didn’t jump out. I’m just blase about that stuff. Brings us to today…
…and my call to cancel. The guy immediately goes into correct spin/damage control, especially since they have no leverage–my 203 plan is out of contract and has been for over a year. Here’s where it gets good. He’s got no leg to stand on, at all. Why do I need two Connecticut cell phone numbers? I live in Washington now, 2,900 miles away. I walk away with the following:
- They wanted the plan under Andi’s name converted over to replace my own, since mine was much older.
- We keep the 203 numbers. It’s cheaper for them to let them rot idle then cancel. That goes back to what happened in the Sprint store when the manager saw the numbers. I love stupid telco games.
- Our total monthly bill goes down $5/month.
- I scored our combined plan 500 free text mesages/month. Turns out we were paying for them before.
- We were paying a premium rate (I think like $10/month?) for getting calls starting at 7pm local time for free. It’s usually 9pm-10pm for nights/weekends on the plans. That’s free now.
- He tacked on like another 5% off or so.
So… in the end I kept our existing plan exactly the same, but it’s in my name now (their insistence on this, for it work–the plan in Andi’s name was only like 2-3 months old, whereas mine dates back to 2000 or so), for $5/less per month, with more text messages than we’ll use, with an extra two phone lines at no cost to us. Did I do good? I feel like we stayed static, and just got free text plus $5/off. But having the extra phones “just in case” for free probably isn’t a bad deal, right? And no double billing. Just one.
