Author: Jake Billo

My good friend Phil has joined the ranks of the whiny bloggers union and installed WordPress. He will likely complain about things even more vocally than I, perhaps in a more emo-tastic way. Go visit him and convince him to keep things online, since he gives things up quickly if not encouraged. 🙂

In recent months, I’ve often complained about the state of wireless data access in Canada – that is, how expensive it is to use the Web, access email and operate instant messaging over mobile devices. These incredibly high data rates make access to devices like the BlackBerry, HTC TyTN, and the obligatory iPhone limited to those users who have a business or government-locked plan with unlimited access.

One of the references I frequently cite is that Canada is worse than some third-world countries when it comes to this sort of thing.

As an aspiring developer, I’m incredibly interested in what these new devices are capable of. In order to make a serious go of Web development for mobile devices, though, it’s at least a $200 plus contract investment.

Working for Research in Motion gives an especially interesting perspective on the scenario. As a co-op student, I have a device with an (allegedly) unlimited data plan; co-ops don’t get voice (phone calls) activated on their units unless it actively relates to their job role. Since I work on BIS projects, this doesn’t apply to me – which is fine, I’d rather not place personal calls on a work device. I’m not an incredibly heavy data user by any means: I hit Google News once per workday at lunch, and I used Blackberry Maps for about 20 minutes this weekend to try and find out where MacGregor Point’s entrance was.

If I added in a bit of Facebook Mobile access, this type of data usage as a standard consumer would likely put me in a 25MB/month bracket – less than 1MB per day, which could easily be eaten up with a few Google Image searches.

Such a level of usage would require a $60/month, three year contract purchase plus whatever cell phone voice package I selected. Unless I was willing to call up my provider and argue over retention plans (which is a very popular topic at Howard Forums), I could be paying well over $100/month.

The ever-present speculation on forums and blogs to date seems to surmise that if and when Rogers is awarded the iPhone contract in Canada, they’ll be forced by Apple to reduce data rates to something more in line with the United States unlimited plans – $60 per month for a goodly number of minutes, text messages and unlimited EDGE access. Once this change is implemented, the other carriers will supposedly fall into position. I don’t have any insider industry information on this though: one would think purchasers of the BlackBerry Pearl, the highly consumer-oriented device, would already be raising hell about the situation.

As a consumer, I’d welcome lower-cost, wide availability of data plans. Just don’t count on the magical Apple product to change things here. I’ve heard suggestions of writing to the CRTC, the MP for my region, the Minister of Industry, and the Prime Minister. Would any of these things actually be the correct place to direct my concerns?

Standard disclaimer: Although I work for RIM, chances are you know just about as much as I do about future product plans, business speculation, and carrier relationships. Go check Engadget or something if you really want dirt. Anything mentioned in this post or on this site is strictly my opinion and most certainly not that of my employer. This posting confers no warranties, rights, or anything else that you think you’re owed. I’m under an NDA, so anything mentioned here is already public knowledge or my own personal speculation.

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.

Quite the excellent image by Apple, good show:

Repeating this here because it might help anyone with a recent nVidia card running XviD video:

There’s a diagonal blocking/lag issue with the nVidia 8800-series cards when playing video using the commonly used Combined Community Codec Pack. To fix this, click Start / All Programs / Combined Community Codec Pack / FFDShow Video Decoder Configuration. (If you don’t have CCCP installed, double-click the black and white ffdshow icon in your system tray when playing an XviD video.)

Scroll down to the bottom of the left panel and choose Output, then check “YV12” under Planar YUV. Click OK, restart your video and any blocking issues should be resolved. Here’s the finished dialog:

Original solution from the CCCP forums, but we all know how short-lived those can be.

I’ve moaned and whined about the half-baked operating system Microsoft imbued upon the world earlier this year, and how its only real significant plus, for me, is the upgraded edition of Media Center. For the record, MCE has always seemed like beta software to me, and there’s no exception with Vista’s edition. About once a day on the media center box, Data Execution Prevention kicks in and restarts the Media Center shell. It takes about five seconds to do, but it’s distinctively pre-release candidate material.

I was about to do my usual round of reinstallations when I noticed that Windows Home Server had gone into RC1 stage (effectively, a usable beta from Microsoft.) It’s heavily based on Windows Server 2003, which I use as my primary OS at work. I read some details about WHS on Something Awful’s SH/SC forum, and decided to give it a go.

Drive spanning? Works.
Automatic backup of other PC’s? Works.
Seems to work with all my stuff? Yep.

I guess I’ll see how it performs under load in the next few days, then…

I figured that it might be a good idea to draw up a network diagram of my home setup in preparation for a DSL installation later this week. Since about January, I’ve been investigating alternate internet service providers, since there’s no way I can afford having a slow or disconnected Internet line. If Rogers decides to implement bandwidth throttling or caps, I want to make sure there’s a backup connection in case the 8Mbit Extreme line gets pulled or shaped.

I signed up for the 5MBit unlimited DSL package from TekSavvy; they’ve been getting incredibly good reviews on BroadbandReports (DSLReports) and they have technicians active in the forums all the time. I also decided to go with a guaranteed static IP address for the line, since they specifically don’t block any ports.

From the UWaterloo LiveJournal community:

Google Maps and Google Earth apparently now both have high-res (the closest zoom level) images of Waterloo Region. The comments thread seems to indicate that the images were taken last year, sometime in the spring.

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.

Observe:

It burns. Taylor Phelps of Charleston High School, you are hereby banned from any social networking sites other than MyCesspool.