Bus error: Jake Billo’s weblog

The latest news from the Bell CDMA camp is raising eyebrows - and is the first volley in a potentially upcoming wireless data price war in Canada. The Toronto Star reports that Bell has launched a promotion: the HTC Touch, a Windows Mobile-based device, is eligible for a $7 per month unlimited data addon to an existing voice plan.

Strictly speaking, this feature is not a new development, but the decision to offer the plan on a PDA certainly is. Bell Mobility customers have been eligible for some time now to purchase the Unlimited Mobile Browser package, the focus of the news article. In technical terms, what “unlimited” really means is “unlimited WAP browsing”.

This definition, while not necessarily consumer-friendly, is much less of a risk for carriers. Customers are limited to accessing mobile-enabled sites serving WML pages. Generally these sites are heavily bandwidth-optimized and require multiple Next Page operations to completely browse the remote site. As a result, carriers don’t typically have to worry about heavy users abusing the system; the $7 fee will usually be quite profitable due to the difficulty and time required to use inordinate amounts of data. Each “page” is generally delivered in under 1KB. WAP sites can also easily be cached on a proxy server, reducing the external bandwidth required on the wireless provider’s part.

Rogers, for example, began offering unlimited WAP access this year within the Rogers-specific WAP site. What’s more, it’s included with any user’s plan without an additional fee. This is more of a marketing technique, though. It only serves to advertise; point to external, revenue-generating WAP sites; and offer costly downloadable ringtones and games. As soon as users leave the walled garden, the charges begin, and they’re not pretty.

Why this plan is so important now, though, is the fact that the HTC Touch is a Windows Mobile device. It contains a suite of Microsoft applications that almost all have one thing in common: they’re Internet enabled, and they can access the full Internet - not some watered-down, proxified version where WAP sites are the only possible destinations. Instead of using a browser limited to SMS-length information retrievals, Windows Mobile devices ship with Pocket Internet Explorer. Pocket IE, while offering nowhere near the advanced capabilities of a desktop Internet Explorer installation, attempts to replicate the full Web experience as closely as possible on a PDA.

Bell, remarkably, has changed the definition of “unlimited mobile Internet” to “unlimited mobile Internet - NO, REALLY, Internet.” Windows Mobile also offers portable versions of Windows Live Messenger and Outlook, not to mention the Office suite of productivity applications. With the HTC Touch’s ability to access significantly greater amounts of data at much higher EvDO speeds, the rules of the game have been changed.

So really, what prompted Bell Canada - for a long time, the only possible phone company - to change their tune? The Toronto Star speculates that the potential threat of Rogers beginning to offer the iPhone could have swayed the decision. Since Apple has shown absolutely zero interest in producing a CDMA-compatible version of their holy grail, and Bell’s national network is rooted in the technology, there is nearly equivalently zero possibility that Bell can deliver an exclusivity arrangement for the device. This means that, much like Verizon and Sprint in the United States, Bell must convince customers that it’s not the device that matters: it’s the network and services. After all, what’s an iPhone really going to cost when data alone on a PDA is $80 per month for 500MB?

The plan also gives Bell a certain level of credibility with tech-savvy consumers. The company (in certain circles) has long been viewed as corporate, inflexible and uncompetitive. Data plans encourage a second look by knowledgeable users, who will drive additional customer adoption by virtue of recommendations.

The GSM versus CDMA technology argument is best hashed out by people on HowardForums, where thinly-veiled trolling over voice quality, network coverage and device swaps is commonplace. One thing’s for sure: Bell is in the perfect position as a carrier to offer this deal, since their CDMA-based network and provisioning structure can effectively limit this plan to eligible Touch users. On a comparable GSM network, users could buy a plan and start using it with a different device in the time it takes to swap SIM cards.

Competing carriers Rogers and Telus should be concerned for their data profits, and rightly so. Enthusiasts and savvy consumers are already taking advantage of the groundbreaking plan in the typically ‘pikey’ fashions: purchasing the device outright on a prepaid plan and adding the data capabilities; negotiation with retentions specialists for reduced data rates; and harassing customer service representatives for “official comments.” The TELUS forum in particular is filled with snarky, baiting posts: clicking a link titled Its Official, Telus’s Official Response To The Bell $7 Data Plan! “…is to deny the whole thing exists, and that Bell is just talking out of their harses, and that its not true!”

(Later on in the thread, the unofficial Telus retention offer seems to be a $15 per month unlimited email/instant messaging plan with 250MB extra data. Not bad, especially if you’re using a BlackBerry instead. ;))

Regardless of who your carrier is right now, it’s certainly a much better time to be a wireless data user in Canada - things are only looking up for the future. Any thoughts or comments about what this development means for your own wireless usage?

I recently had a request from Phil to rip a particular track to MP3 from a band’s MySpace page. While most music on MySpace is shoddily encoded at 96Kbps, sometimes it’s the only place available online to listen to a particular song. To save yourself from the agony of calling up a Web browser, going to the domain, and having ads foisted upon yourself, some technical work will get you set to have a fully unrestricted MP3 copy of the music.

Other solutions exist for this process, including connecting a 3.5mm cable from your sound card line out to sound card line in, and then recording the result, but this introduces even more quality loss to the process.

There are some technical restrictions on this process, and I advise anyone coming here to ask about them to seriously consider their questions before commenting. With a post title involving music and MySpace, I don’t expect the cream of the crop to start posting their wireless packet sniffing instructions or automated Flash extractor Linux tools (although that would be a pleasant change.)

You need a wired connection to the Internet to perform the packet capture. Most wireless card drivers don’t have the ability to capture packets, or they don’t work in this configuration.

1. Download and install Wireshark, which is the newest version of the classic Ethereal network utility. The Windows installer also comes with a driver, WinPCap, that allows the packet capture to take place. Follow all default instructions in the installer.
2. Close any programs that use your Internet or network connection. This includes other Web browsers, instant messaging programs, file sharing utilities and feed readers. While you don’t have to close everything, it’ll help make sure that there’s enough memory to load the MySpace page and capture the MP3 at the same time.
3. Open Wireshark, then resize it to a standard window.
   
4. Start a new Web browser window, resize it to a standard window, and click the Stop button to cancel the page load. You should have Wireshark and your web browser running side by side:
5. Enter the address of the MySpace page in the web browser address bar, but don’t press Enter or Go yet.
6. Switch to Wireshark, and click the Interfaces button - it’s the first one on the left:
7. In the Interfaces window, look for the active wired Ethernet controller in your computer. The numbers for the controller should be slowly increasing:
8. Click the Start button to the right of the controller. Immediately, switch back to your browser and let the MySpace page load. If the song isn’t the one you want, switch to it as quickly as possible. If you resize the Wireshark window, you’ll see packets scrolling past:
9. Wait until the song is done or is almost done playing. (You really only need to wait until the song data is downloaded, though.) Once finished, click the Stop Capture button in Wireshark:
10. Resize the Wireshark window. Copy and paste the following text into the Filter box, then click the Apply button.http.content_type == "audio/mpeg"

    

11. When you click the Apply button, you should only see one entry in the packet list. You may also see two dialog box with progress bars - one filters the captured packets, and the other decodes the MP3 file sequence.
12. Resize the Wireshark window so that you can see the packet overview, as in the dialog below. Click on the Media Type header and cancel the progress windows.
13. Right-click on the Media Type header and click Export Selected Packet Bytes. Enter a filename for the data, ending with the extension .mp3.
14. Open the MP3 or import it into your library. You’ll likely have to provide artist and title information for the track, since it’s not included with the packet stream.

As a special bonus, I’ve also recorded a Wink tutorial on the process. The video takes the shortcut of applying the audio/mpeg filter before stopping the packet capture, so that you can save your song file immediately after it’s downloaded from MySpace.

Other possibilities to reduce processing time would be to set a filter, only capturing HTTP packets on port 80 following the audio/mpeg chain, and changing various configuration settings in Wireshark.

The band that I demoed the capture from is Stalling Dawn, who also have much higher quality tracks available to download directly from their PodShow page if you create an account. Unfortunately they don’t seem to have an official album released yet, but I’d definitely buy it if one ever comes out.

I find that one of the more interesting parts of the law is any action related to “contempt of court“. The term basically covers any tomfoolery that goes on during the serious legal business of a trial, and most judges are given free will to impose punishments. Generally you don’t see people sent to county jail for more than 30 days for the offense, and that would be a serious situation indeed.

In any event, this woman was caught trying to get out of jury duty, giving lame excuses, and eventually it was discovered that she was wearing an MP3 player under her hijab. Unfortunately this sort of thing could spawn a knee-jerk reaction; especially if it occurred in the States.

I assume it could easily occur again with anyone with long hair, or a cleverly-disguised Bluetooth earbud. One might expect that jurors would have to pass through a metal detector before entering the court, although that might not find certain solid-state devices. Personally, while jury duty might suck for people, I believe that avoiding it is the sign of a self-indulgent jerk. Hell, you could always be serving in the army for your country instead.

What type of measures would you think of that could alleviate this situation? Is it more of a social conditioning angle that needs to be reviewed, or is there any technical prevention process for this sort of thing?

This conference call transcript should explain everything, as well as Larry Hyrb’s podcast feed.

When they have to bring in Peter Moore to explain things, plus offer a $1 billion-plus loss on financial statements, you KNOW that there was something seriously wrong that Todd Holmdahl couldn’t weasel his way out of.

From Xbox-Scene: Dean Takahashi interviewed Todd Holmdahl about alleged Xbox 360 failure rates. Holmdahl is the “corporate vice president of Gaming and Xbox Products Group”, and effectively has NOTHING meaningful to answer during the interview. He also fails to answer questions that have even already been answered in public. The issue at hand is the “three red lights of death”, in which the Xbox 360 console indicates a hardware failure with three red LED’s.

In my personal opinion, his answers constitute possibly the weakest excuse ever for a press interview. Larry Hryb (Major Nelson), Andre Vrignaud (Ozymandias) and Dave Weller (Let’s Kill Dave) far outdo this guy in being open with the public.

Let’s get this clear: I’ve personally gone through two Xbox 360 consoles and am on my third model. Both have experienced disk reading issues, owing to their substandard internal DVD drives. I have owned five original Xbox consoles in total, and of those, only one failed out of the box after a bad Xbox Live update. The only reason I’m calling Holmdahl out on this is because Microsoft has a great chance of winning the next-generation console wars, and to be hamstrung by quality control problems is something they can’t afford.

Here’s my interpretation of Todd’s answers to some of Dean’s questions; I’m skipping the ones that are just corporate rehashing of “customer happiness” crap.

Q: What is the post-mortem on Xbox 360 manufacturing? How has it turned out for you?

A: Like any other post mortem, there are some things you would have done differently that you learned and that you incorporate back into your processes. Overall, it was really smoothe compared to the complexity of the product we were building.

This is the standard excuse from a Microsoft PR standpoint with respect to the machine itself. You can’t find an interview online where the complexity of the machine isn’t mentioned. We have an appeal to novelty: because the Xbox 360 is a new console, it must be comparatively better, and comparatively more complex to manufacture.

Q: The ramp of the Xbox 360 compared to the original Xbox. Was it similar or different?

A: Having lived through both of those, I remember both very well. Both were very complex products. State of the art technology. They were relatively similar in the ramp complexity and ramp speed. Exciting stuff. You and I had a conversation about this around November, 2005.

The ramp of the original Xbox wasn’t plagued by memory shortages. It’s also not really appropriate to compare the two situations as the Xbox 360 effectively had a world launch, whereas the original Xbox started out production in North America based from a single Flextronics factory in Mexico. The Xbox 360 used Wistron (who now no longer have the contract, even at a 10% revenue loss), Flextronics and Celestica.

Q: I’m sure you’ve seen some of these complaints that we’ve written about from the guy who went through seven machines. There are a lot of people posting on the blog saying they still have problems. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that the quality of the Xbox 360 isn’t there. How can you paint the bigger picture for me there?

A: We’re very proud of the box. We think the vast majority of people are having just a great experience. You look at the number of games they are buying, the number of accessories they are buying, the Live attach. They love the box. They continue to buy the box. That said, we take any customer issue very seriously. We continue to look into these things very deeply. You have seen we have made some changes to our customer service policy.

Initially at the console launch, I’d heard rumors that Sony was flooding the Internet with fakeposts and trolls about Xbox 360 failure rates. I’d believe this, and it wouldn’t necessarily have to be company-sanctioned; after all, the fanboy wars between the PlayStation and Xbox camps have made utter drivel out of either company’s official forums.

There’s no excuse for people on, say, Something Awful, to risk a ban and $10 by fakeposting about console failures at this point in 2007. The official Xbox 360 thread in the Games forum has a running commentary of people going “well, mine died today.” I think the real bigger picture stems from a lack of time-sensitive stress testing, and there are already enough consoles out in the market that a motherboard revision at this time wouldn’t make sense.

(As an aside: The Xbox 360 is well overdue for a new motherboard anyway, but it likely won’t become public knowledge until the rumored 65nm chips begin shipping. It’s likely part of Microsoft’s profitability plan that yearly motherboard revisions wouldn’t make sense for this generation of consoles. Xblade, Tuscany and Barcelona are all codenames for various editions of the Xbox’s original board; in the Xbox modification scene, the boards are known by revision numbers such as 1.0 through 1.6b.)

Q: I’ve heard varying accounts of what is considered a normal return rate. Some people say that 2 percent is normal. Sometimes 3 percent to 5 percent is considered normal. Back to that question, can you address whether you are within those rates or within a normal rate.

A: We don’t disclose the actual number.

Q: Normal compared to the Xbox?

A: We don’t comment on that.

We know the alleged percentage is at least 3% and possibly as high as 5%:

“Microsoft has said that Xbox 360 return rates are within the normal 3 percent to 5 percent average for consumer electronics products. With 1.75 million consoles sold as of March 31, that means at least 50,000 consumers have had problems.”

Q: You guys did get rid of Wistron. Was that related to product quality?

A: We didn’t get rid of Wistron. It was a voluntary decision between the two of us. We try to run as efficient as possible. With our supply base the way it is now, two high quality contract manufacturers satisfy our needs.

Guys, it was a mutual breakup that was totally mutual, nobody dumped anyone. We both decided we’d start seeing other people mutually and it was so mutual that we’re still good friends. Really.

Q: If you take the main chips from 90nm to 65nm, do you get accompanying benefits in the rest of the system? Does the board itself get smaller?

A: That’s a really good point, Dean. When you do these designs, you’re looking at the CPU or the GPU, or just one specific internal component, as we continue to look through it, we look at it as a complete system. We make sure the components work with the system, delivers the right levels of performance, and operates at the right voltage to perform at the levels we want it to perform at.

Any CS or engineering student knows the potential heat reduction and decrease in power consumption that’s achieved from going from 90nm to 65nm. There are easy, non-confidential benefits that could have been discussed. Todd is walking a fine line and essentially saying “Buy an Xbox 360 now, it’ll be JUST AS GOOD as when we eventually cost reduce our components and make it run cooler.” That’s a HUGE decision for some customers.

Q: There was a surge of supplies in the spring of 2006. Did that mark any particular advance in manufacturing? Was that Celestica coming online?

A: We hold as confidential our production ramp. It’s not something we talk about.

It wasn’t so confidential when you announced it in March 2006.

Of all the comments this guy’s made, this one irks me to an incredible degree. Microsoft trumpeted around Celestica coming online to every major Xbox fansite out there, since people were screaming for the Xbox 360 to show up in the retail channel. This isn’t so much a corporate weasel as a flat out lie; Todd’s trying not to get tripped up so much that he’s not even releasing information that’s already commonly public knowledge.

I know this post seems somewhat irrational, but I’m a big fan of Dean Takahashi’s work, and to see him completely denied by a VP is a bit ludicrous. He’ll get the information anyways.