Category: Posts

This is something I’ve been wanting for a while now – the Xbox Live DRM utility now functions properly. As some background information, when you download video or games from Xbox Live Marketplace, the content is licensed to two places: your Gamertag online, and your console by its serial number. If you change consoles, you can only access content if you’re signed into Xbox Live under that original profile.

For me, this was a major problem because I’m now on my fourth Xbox 360 – two exchanged through EB’s warranty program for faulty disc drives, plus a functional unit that I sold so I could upgrade to an Elite with 120GB hard drive and HDMI. As a result, some of my Rock Band tracks were licensed to the previous console and some to the new one. Offline play at a friend’s place was severely hampered and the game always required my acount to be signed in to access the content. No longer, though!

Check out Major Nelson’s post on the process, or hit up the license migration page. All my content was relinked to my 360 Elite properly and there should be some good times with Rock Band in the near future.

Peter Westwood, a WordPress developer, recently announced a planned change that will disable Atom and XML-RPC publishing by default. I’m thrilled at this direction: many of my corporate and professional installations of WordPress require significant tweaking to disable remote publishing.

In the meantime, I’ve actually had no ill effects from removing xmlrpc.php from the default WordPress installation.

Another tweak I usually employ is applying a .htaccess file to the wp-admin directory. Using a set of Allow/Deny directives, you can restrict access to your administration panel to local machines only. For example, creating a new file /wp-admin/.htaccess:

Order allow,deny
Allow from 192.168.1
Deny from all

This example file ensures that only users coming from 192.168.1.x addresses can access the administration dashboard. It’s very useful because regardless of password compromise, only internal users will ever be able to access the login prompt.

Another solution that would still allow remote access by trusted users would include a dual-layered authentication system. Using the htpasswd utility and the .htaccess tutorial from Apache, create a separate login to access the administration panel. This prompt will appear before the default WordPress login. Roaming web spiders and malicious bots will have a more difficult time accessing the wp-admin directory with appropriate access restrictions in place.

I’ve been holding off on posting this because too many data rumors are lame, but BlackBerry Cool and CrackBerry have just announced that Rogers is upping their consumer BlackBerry data plans.

The bad news: nothing’s unlimited, and if the iPhone plans leaked yesterday are accurate then BlackBerry users are getting severely shafted. Finally, these plans are for BIS customers only. If you’re on an Enterprise Server, your choices are still $40 for 7MB, $60 for 25MB, and $100 for 1GB.

The plans are available at Rogers’ site and calling data/BlackBerry support (1-800-ROGERS1 and say “BlackBerry” at any possible opportunity, or *611 from your device). Here’s a summary of what you can get:

Plan Price	Data Included	Other Details
$30	300MB	50 cents per MB over. To compare, this is about half a cent per KB, much lower than the 5 cents/KB on Pay As You Go data.
$50	500MB flex plan	On a Flex plan, you’re bumped up to the next tier if you go over your limit. It’s also $0.03/MB for any usage over 5GB. The packages are: $50/500MB $65/1GB $75/2GB $85/3GB $100/5GB
$60	1GB	$0.50/MB over 1GB
$80	3GB	$0.50/MB over 3GB
$100	6GB	$0.50/MB over 6GB

All of these new plans (except for the Flex Rate) have overage protection, which means that usage of over 60MB is only counted at $0.03/MB. Business plans that offer data pooling can’t take advantage of this feature either. Here’s how this works in practice:

• You’re on the 300MB plan ($30 base) and use 500MB in that month because you decided to run BitTorrent off your device.
• You’re charged for your base plan: $30 for 300MB
• You’re then charged $0.50 per MB, up to 60MB: another $30 for 360MB
• You’re then charged $0.03 per MB, for data after 60MB: another $4.20 for 500MB
• Total data bill is $30+$30+$4.20 = $64.20

The good news: the base 300MB is a significant amount on a BlackBerry device – I’ve never gotten close to this figure myself, and in fact had a hard time topping 60MB/month on my Telus package. The included data can also be used for tethering to a laptop, and people likely to tether are paying more appropriate rates for heavier usage.

Rogers’ site also indicates that these plans are available on monthly agreements, meaning that you shouldn’t have to sign a data contract to take advantage of these new offerings. Of course, if you’re using a hardware upgrade credit or buying a new device directly from Rogers, you may get locked into a data package for three years. My personal preference these days would be to get an unlocked device online and activate it with an existing contract, unless you need UMA support (Rogers Home Calling Zone.)

Since the iPhone plans are still just a rumor, I’m happy with a solid release of much more customer-friendly wireless data packages, and will try to get some of my clients and associates moved to these offerings.

Engadget Mobile is reporting a HowardForums post that details two potential iPhone plans for Canadian users: on top of a qualifying voice plan, unlimited data will be offered at $30 per month for individual customers and $45 for business clients. There’s also a Facebook group detailing the information.

In contrast to my previous statements on the subject, this seems like a reasonable plan falling in line with what AT&T is offering in the States. It remains to be seen if this rumor is accurate, but the original poster is generally well-informed and a community member in reasonably high standing. One other known employee/dealer has also confirmed the memo. That said – most of the usual dealers and “insider sources” have been silent on this matter.

I’m assuming the qualifying voice plan will be $35 minimum plus system access fee: Rogers has stated they’re expecting $90 per user with a combination of the voice and data plans, and $30 data plus $35 voice plus $6.95 SAF is only about $72. If they assume most people will take value packages, such as the $15 smartphone plan (text messaging/caller ID/voicemail), this figure is slightly closer to what’s expected financially.

While Apple may have given up their revenue-sharing program in favour of carrier subsidized phones, if this memo is accurate then Apple still retains a large amount of control over the available plans. It’s nearly a direct copy of AT&T’s launch memo with a few minor changes.

The plan is listed as “unlimited data (E-mail/Web)” which people are presently freaking out over for no good reason. This terminology is actually very common in the BlackBerry world, meaning that you get email access as well as having standard Internet access available – which encompasses all on-device TCP/IP data.

Forum users are assuming that GPS/YouTube/other random features will be disabled because they’re not specifically listed in the plan title. If we assume Apple still mains some control over the sales and pricing process, one thing certainly enforced is full access to all applications on the device.

One thing that’s probably accurate is the inability to tether with this plan. It’s not technically possible out of the box, requiring a hacked device. Users on HowardForums that desire tethering capabilities seem to be the most likely to abuse the definition of “unlimited” in wireless carrier terms: when you’re downloading over 5GB per month on your device, there’s a high chance you’re using the plan as an Internet connection replacement.

Is $30 per month unlimited data enough to get you to change carriers and pick up an iPhone? Myself, I’m waiting for the BlackBerry Bold (9000) and its related plans.

For $7 per month, it should.

As per this thread on HowardForums and the fact that I got a call from Purolator that displayed the business name. Didn’t think anything of it since nearly 100% of my calls are already listed as contacts in the address book.

Changes are, for once, reflected on Rogers’ site.

It’s interesting that they’d give up this formerly $2 per month cash cow. I’d had this feature for a month as a trial, but I assume the uptake outside of these one-off promotions must have been pretty lame.

Here’s where most people might make an unfounded assumption that this must be for the iPhone 3G, oh my dear sweet Christ. I will do no such thing and instead make an unfounded assumption that it’s because… oh, I don’t know, somebody hacked the Gibson and irrevocably set a bitflag for all GSM towers that can’t be reversed without starting an international thermonuclear war.

So I’ve been working a fair bit with C# and Excel automation, and I’ve picked up a few things from the whole experience so far – namely that the thing is really poorly put together and requires a whole lot of work to make things work nicely.

The emphasis there is on nicely. You can hack together something real quick in about 5 minutes that probably almost does what you want, and will be good enough if you just need the job done. However, the Excel COM uses about 3 different standards and each time you get to guess which one you’ll need to use.

Over the next few days [or weeks] I’m going to outline a few of the problems I encountered and how I went about fixing them:

Problem: The syntax for inserting a column and changing a column’s width is completely different

This might not seem to big of an issue until you realize that:

column.Insert(); exists, but:
column.Width = 10; or column.setWidth(10); or anything like that, does not exist.

The actual solutions to do these tasks are as follows. Note, they reference the variable oSheet is the Excel.Worksheet you’re working with. These samples assume a basic knowledge of C# and using the Excel COM.

Inserting a columm:

Excel.Range rng = (Excel.Range)oSheet.Cells[rowNumber, colNumber];
Excel.Range column = rng.EntireColumn;
column.Insert(Excel.XlInsertShiftDirection.xlShiftToRight, false);

This will insert a column to the left of row rowNumber.

Changing a column’s width:

((Excel.Range)oSheet.Columns["A", Type.Missing]).ColumnWidth = 10;

This will change column A’s width.

Notice that one method uses numeric identifiers for rows, while the other uses a string. Also, interestingly enough, its a bit of a pain to actual get a hold of a column using either method.

Using MSN/Windows Live Messenger inside a Google Talk session is how I currently connect to the service from my BlackBerry. Following this guide, you can easily have contact transparency.

Recently the transport I was using went down. bgmn.net was a very reliable service in my experience, but it requires a local @bgmn.net identity – which isn’t compatible with Google Talk.

As a replacement, I’ve just registered with the jaim.at transport – following the guide instructions but using jaim.at as the server, you should be up and running in very little time.

I’ve found the following caveats:

• If a Yahoo Messenger contact has added your MSN account to their contact list, some MSN transports can’t deal with the status message and will effectively brick your account from being used.
• Removing a transport involves reauthorizing your contacts again. Make sure you’ve got some time to take care of this.

Background: Denon produces an expensive Ethernet cable, much like the kind Monster are known for. It goes for $500 for 1.5 meters.

Body: Story hits Digg, the Consumerist, and a variety of other self-righteous forums that really should focus less on “ohpleaseohpleaseohplease check my ID when I hand over a credit card”, “they sent me too big of a box”, and “lol, I have to pay taxes?” and focus more on wireless data prices, large companies screwing people over, and how not to be a chump. Commenters race to tell users all about the ridiculously cheaper alternatives and suggest Belkin. (Really?) I shamelessly promote my consulting business here to tell you about a site called Monoprice, which we’re happy to refer clients to for their cabling needs.

Plot Twist: Amazon reviews get spammed for the product, per this Slashdot article and attached comment. This should be expected, though, because people have too much time on their hands but are still chumps – don’t expect them to venture outside of the comment field.

(Hell, I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister today expressing my displeasure with Bill C-61, studied some calculus, and cleaned up after a dishwasher explosion. And still had time to tell all you chumps about this nonsense.)

Punchline: From the Amazon reviews, in case it gets taken down and you don’t see it:

If I could use a rusty boxcutter to carve a new orifice in my body that’s compatible with this link cable, I would already be doing it. I can just imagine the pure musical goodness that would flow through this cable into the wound and fill me completely — like white, holy light. Holding this cable in my hands actually makes me feel that much closer to the Lord Jesus Christ. I only make $6.25/hr at Jack In The Box, but I saved up for three months so I could have this cable. It sits in a shrine I constructed next to my futon in Mother’s basement.

I only gave it four stars in my review because I can’t find music that is worthy enough to flow through this utterly perfect interconnect.

Appendix: Check out G.P.’s other reviews, specifically the one where he bashes Cooper Lawrence’s book (the woman partially responsible for that Fox News Mass Effect sex-in-videogames scandal.)

Chump count: three

His Holiness Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 3G today, and it’s finally official: the sparkling device will be available for Canadians to purchase from Rogers or Fido on July 11th. In this post, I’ll prepare you for the possible scenarios when the Christ Phone becomes available to mere mortals – and then discuss their likeliness.

Note: These are my best guesses from the unofficial information online at HowardForums, the Apple press releases, and general observations about the wireless industry. These points are subject to change before release: if they do, I’ll update the post with details. When I say “Rogers” in this writeup, I mean both Fido and the parent company.

The iPhone 3G will cost $199 in the US, but be ludicrously overpriced in Canada.

A false assumption, but not entirely unreasonable considering how device pricing in Canada has typically worked. Apple has set prices globally for the 8GB model to be at most $199 – not with a minimum advertised price, but with carrier advertising and promotional agreements that have the same effect. Expect to pay $199 CDN for the 8GB model and $299 CDN for the 16GB, keeping in line with Apple’s announcement.

You’ll have to sign a new three year contract (or renew for three years) with Rogers or Fido to get an iPhone 3G.

Correct and accurate. The iPhone 3G will only be sold in Canada under a contract, at Rogers or Fido dealers and not at Apple stores. If you’re a new customer, it won’t be a two year commitment as AT&T demands in the United States or 18 months as per O2 in the UK. Rogers’ three year standard is the only way you’ll get the device – and expect that you’ll have to keep both your voice and data plan during this time.

Existing customers will likely have to pay a $35 (re)activation fee to switch to Steve’s pride and joy, but will end their current contract without an ECF penalty. In other words, if you’re a year and a half into your contract and decide to grab the iPhone, you won’t be stuck for four and a half years – just three. This is probably the only reasonably consumer-friendly element of the device launch. It comes with a benefit for the carrier, though.

After all, while Rogers may lose money initially on letting you out early from your existing subsidized phone – you know, the one that wasn’t brewed in Cupertino – they have two things going for them:

1. They don’t have to pay Apple for each subscriber anymore – like AT&T did for the first year of the device – so all the monthly fees are going directly to the carrier. Average revenue per user is now up by, say, $10 to $18 per month for anyone on an iPhone plan automatically.
2. Your bills are going to be higher, since you’ll need a fancy data and SMS package custom-tailored for the device. Don’t expect pricing to be anywhere near the stock Mega Time 25 plan. Average revenue per user on an iPhone voice and data package will have at least doubled, if not tripled or quadrupled from $25 plus System Access Fee. When this happens, it halves or thirds the time it takes for Rogers to recoup their losses on the previous handset.

   Average revenue per user for Canadian carriers in 2007 was $56 – but under 10% of that was on data services. iPhone users will be seen as “above average” (read: suckers and chumps) to both investors and executives; so ARPU will also follow this trend.

Also? It wouldn’t be too out of place to see an increased Early Cancellation Fee for people trying to escape their iPhone contracts. At minimum, expect $400 plus a $100 data ECF for a total of $500. The sky’s the limit for the maximum, but my best guess would be an increase of $200 (specialty product) for a total of $700.

I already have an iPhone and it won’t work on Rogers after July 11th.

Any existing iPhone you may have unlocked and working on Rogers already won’t cease to work, but there’s a high chance you won’t be able to take advantage of any new iPhone-specific data plans. Rogers has lately restricted data packages to specific phones – and not just models, but specific Rogers-branded and sold devices. They accomplish this by checking the IMEI number of the device, and falling back to $0.05/KB standard data rates if you don’t have a phone with an IMEI in a certain whitelist. Good luck getting on that!

(This has recently been a major problem with unlocked BlackBerry devices, and specific data packages. For example, trying to add the $15 “unlimited personal email” package or the $15 Smartphone Value Pack to an unlocked Curve 8320 is now a difficult task. Since the IMEI isn’t in Rogers’ database, the customer service representative doesn’t see what kind of device it is and can’t provision the correct plan. The correct response is to tell them to use the generic 111111111111119 IMEI and then the packages appear.)

If you manage to pick an iPhone 3G up on eBay or outside of the country, and it’s not branded to Rogers – I wish you well when activating, but you’ll run into the same “not our product; not our problem” attitude. You also won’t be able to sell the device to a foreign user easily: Rogers refuses to provide unlock codes to users, so the best solution might be a software exploit that Apple can revoke at any time.

The iPhone won’t be the beginning of truly unlimited data in Canada.

Definitely possible and should be expected. After all, in Irish markets, O2 Ireland caps data usage for the iPhone at 1GB per month. Australian customers get a slightly more lenient 3GB allowance.

In Canada, 1GB of data usage is readily available – for $100 per month on Rogers’ existing BlackBerry plans. With Sprint now capping their mobile broadband Internet at 5GB/month and still advertising it as unlimited, expect that a lot more data in quantity will become available – but not “all you can eat.”

Consider that Apple’s involvement after the phone sale is drastically less than with the first generation device, leaving the carriers significantly more room to do evil things to consumers.

I’ll have to pay a lot of money per month for the iPhone 3G, making the $199 pricetag pretty much a drop in the bucket.

No pricing details have been acknowledged or leaked yet, but we do have the comparisons available for the UK: for 30 pounds ($60.53 CDN as of posting time) per month, the 8GB iPhone will cost about the same as it will in Canada, with 75 minutes/125 text messages and “unlimited” data.

A more prudent analysis would involve O2 Ireland’s pricing schema for the existing device. The “paddy tax”-ing company charges about 35 pounds (~$71 CDN) for 175 minutes, 100 text messages and 1GB of data.

Best guess from my end of the court would be a combined voice and data $90+SAF plan with a 1GB cap.

What’s the bottom line?

Without Apple’s direct intervention, don’t expect too much of a change in Rogers’ status quo, and prepare to pull your pants down for three years if you absolutely must have the shiny trinket.

I’m still waiting to hear how the spectrum auction’s going.

Judge Jake has been updated. In it, I get stuck behind some idiots professing their love for HARDCORE anime at Waterloo. Also, idiot gets owned for not declaring his merchandise at the border.

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