Bus error: Jake Billo's weblog

Rogers users last week were delivered letters indicating the provider’s intent to start implementing usage caps of 60GB and 95GB for the two standard tiers, Express and Extreme. Their misinformation site contains some interesting usage calculations, but essentially muddies the waters by describing activities in an “or” context: for example, you could download 24 high-definition videos (at about 4GB each) OR download 24,300 songs.

I’m admittedly surprised at their references to BitTorrent and high-definition movie downloads, but frankly that’s what their target audience is with this particular site: heavy users that they hope to coerce into keeping under a specific 95GB point.

The problem for consumers with this approach is that it’s no longer just the top 10% of users being targetted – a 95GB cap means that the top 10% of users will be using close to that amount, and it would be trivial for the ISP to reduce the figure in the future, even as more bandwidth intensive applications emerge.

Good news, though: extra bandwidth usage charges top out at $25 extra per month, which is a fee I’ll likely be paying part of every month upon my next move. (I also have full intent to purchase a TekSavvy unlimited account as well.)

From a network management perspective, I understand the need to keep subscribers and abusers of the service under control. There have always been provisions in every Internet contract for disconnecting people based on overuse, even back when dialup connections were standard. I’m irked that something previously touted as “unlimited” has gotten to the point where a hard cap and extra charges are necessary. Having heavy users on your network comes with the territory of having users like Granny checking her email once a week.

Rogers injects a usage frame into a webpage.

Admittedly, my Internet usage patterns tend to encompass newsgroup downloading and hefty SCP/SFTP transfers – on a regular basis working for IBM, I’d have to prop the latest Eclipse builds from Ottawa down the home line. Combined with the rest of the mandatory software suite, the nightly package could be 5GB.

One thing that will be interesting to see is Rogers’ deep packet inspection and rewriting – the usage message that caused issue back in December. They have an example image shown on one of their magazine property websites.

As soon as they start to insert HTML arbitrarily into webpages, that’s where they’ve crossed the line.

Are you going to change your internet usage patterns as a result of these developments? How much bandwidth are you using on a monthly basis?

Facebook’s finally heard the hue and cry from all of those kids whose parents insist on “friending” them. You’re now able to restrict access to profile features and content based on specific users and groups of people, which I’ve promptly employed to sequester elementary and high school acquaintances away from viewing specific adventures.

I’d suggest you go ahead and update your settings, mostly because I could swear mine were more restrictive before the update was pushed.

As the two most commented posts on my site show, people are really interested in getting their high-definition MKV files to play on the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, the existing GOTsent utility isn’t working out as a complete solution, and complicates the situation by trying to cater to PlayStation 3 users. 😉

I’ve developed a tool in VB2005 that automates the conversion process. It doesn’t transcode the video – just the audio so that the file will properly play. While the tool isn’t complete at present, and probably won’t work for files above 4GB, it’s served my immediate needs. I’d encourage anyone interested to check out the XenonMKV site and download a copy if interested. There’s also a support forum for people that run into issues with files.

From Boy Genius Report:

Deutsche Telekom has been pre-approved for a financing and protocol agreement which will allow them to introduce T-Mobile to the Canadian market (subject to restrictions in all provinces except Ontario during a 6, 12 and 18 month trial period that expires in 2010), and also pre-approves them for testing roaming, cell tower reception and international data agreements.

More details from the source, but the information seems credible – and after all, isn’t another wireless player in Canada what we’d like?

The most common complaint I hear about T-Mobile in the States is their lack of coverage compared to AT&T or Verizon, but realistically, another GSM carrier would really only give people options. The ability to roam on Rogers towers for brief periods of time – especially if government mandated cooperation occurred – could also improve the coverage situation drastically.

I’ve been getting random IM’s from infrequent contacts on Windows Live Messenger (MSN). These all have a weird domains or “viewprofile.php”-style links, which is usually a good indicator that your system is presently compromised with a trojan or worm. Run a virus scan if you’ve been getting complaints. Stinger will probably even take care of things.

Since I run a MacBook using That Damned Quacking Duck for instant messaging, my own smug sense of superiority is enough to prevent infection.

When having one of my brief IM conversations with Phil, the subject of the atrocities committed in today’s modern music came up and. Both Phil and I have musical interests that can be represented in the following Venn diagram. Members of the jury, Exhibit A clearly indicates that while Jake may be a poor judge of music, he does know something truly awful when he hears it.

Thus, Phil and I have decided to collaborate on a project called the !grammys, which is read as “notgrammys” using a Borat Sagdiyev accent. These awards will be given out to the truly horrible songs being shoveled as “top 40 hits” to an unsuspecting public. There is no actual prize awarded.

With this, I give you a preliminary set of awards. The following content is for parody purposes only and you should be ashamed if you take any of this seriously.

Worst Rap Song: Crank That (Soulja Boy) by Soulja “DeAndre Way” Boy
The ringtone-esque “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” was actually nominated for Best Rap Song in this year’s actual gramophone-esque awards, which I can only presume was the result of a sordid backdoor three-way affair between Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group; Jimmy Jam, Chairman of NARAS/The Recording Academy; and a major corporate sponsor – let’s say Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless, since his company charges approximately 2.49 and 2.99US for a thirty second snippet of the song in question. In any event, it’s safe to assume someone and someone else conducted a Lemonparty with a third participant, eventually achieving a remarkable feat of bribery, collusion and flexibility under extreme duress.

original image by Johnthan “Sesshomaru” Speed, used under CC license.
Actually, Johnthan has a fairly good rant about the Grammys which you should check out.

What Soulja Boy brings to the table is a completely illogical entrée of sexual positions set to a horrific steel pan background track. It’s impossible not to wholeheartedly agree with the parents expressing moral outrage this time. Children going around imitating a song that advocates super soaking a ho’ or completing a robocop is more than the usual moral decay that politicians harp on about.

Observe that in a four minute track, DeAndre Ramone Way is capable of humilating a girl in three unique erotic positions: none of which can be found in the Kama Sutra, and all of which require climax to be effective. Even Shiva would be exhausted, and using Cialis is just cheating. To be accurate, Soulja Boy cranks off in or on that ho’ nineteen times, or sixteen if we assume that background vocals are firing genetic material independently.

For pedantic listeners wishing to debate the number of cranking transactions, it is presumed that the segment mentioning roosevelt refers to the urban dance move. This implication is based on the fact that nowhere else in the song features a sexual encounter in a wheelchair. Also noteworthy in this definition is that a ho’ must be involved in the transaction at hand, disqualifying the two alternately accepted definitions of the verb.

original image by Travis S., used under CC license

If one believes that a song can be judged by its quality of listeners, then consider that Soulja supporters have posted the following text of what is presumably their own free will:

HEY I FINK THE SONG IS GREAT

i love dat song and i love soulja boy.

Calm the heck down people! Of course kids are going to know what these words mean at the right age. They will find out eventually. I happen to think it’s better than the kids dancing killing somebody or robbing a store.

Apart from the aneurysm-inducing application of poor logic in the last contribution, we can already determine that ebonics make a prominent placement in the track without even consulting the lyrics. These aren’t typical Jay-Z Umbrella-style chyeah callouts, though. “Crank That” is truly engineered around the core principles of

• Segmentation into thirty second clips, for ringtones, and
• Alluding to sexual innuendo, yet maintaining ability to be censored for radio play

With these two qualifiers, it becomes significantly easier to understand the obnoxious repetition and call/response structure of the track in question. Ho’, a word that when combined with nappy-headed ruined Don Imus, can easily be interpreted as “Oh”. The action of cocking on a partner’s bitch ass is likewise fairly easily removed, and fails to interrupt the act of catching DeAndre at a local party.

As the song progresses past the unreasonably mass-marketable chorus, listeners are dragged forward to the slurred outro of the first verse. The first three lines are possible to interpret without the aid of a street-savvy teenager, but the fourth provides a confusing and frightening shock to upper class, likely-monocle-wearing citizens.

You catch me at your local party
Yes I crank it everyday
Haters getting mad cause
“I got me some bathing apes”

original image by EverJean, CC licensed

Individuals who are not attuned to urban culture might incorrectly construe bathing apes as a racial or sexual reference, when in fact it is neither. In a complete about-face from the song’s other incomprehensible inferences, bapes are allegedly a Japanese brand of sneaker that might be preferred by Entourage’s Turtle.

No truly awful rap song would be complete, however, without a catch phrase. In Crank That‘s case, cranking is the predominant activity, but YOOOOOOUUUUUUUUU is the gift that keeps on giving – the shaft.

It is my pleasure to award Soulja Boy the !grammy for Worst Rap Song.

Don’t all stampede through the comments section at once, now.

There’s been a fairly lively discussion ongoing in the GOTsent tutorial post, describing how to convert high-definition MKV files to properly play on the Xbox 360. The general consensus is that GOTsent is throwing errors for no discernable reason, and failing to produce files containing both audio and video on a regular basis.

Having experienced this issue myself, I’ve decided to look up the actual video demuxing, encoding and remuxing process and implement a tool to take over the GOTsent functions. I usually have better results when I write utilities myself, and I have several gigabytes of MKV files that I’d like to have functional on the 360.

Here’s a teaser screenshot at present to actually demonstrate that I’m working on it. 🙂 No expected release date, but I don’t expect the technical implementation to take much longer.

Technical details: This frontend is presently written in Visual Basic 2005, because I’m most comfortable with it for simple utilities, and it compiles out to an .exe file without too much nuisance. Hate on VB all you want, but it’s serving the purpose. I plan to add single file and batch file support, as well as a command line interface later on. The application will need the .NET Framework 2.0, and likely CCCP and AC3Filter.

I’m using the MKVtoolnix suite at present, and will be implementing Nero AAC encoder and MP4Box support shortly to finish off the process. I don’t plan to open source this utility unless one of the original authors of the included utilities indicates that I’m violating a license – and it’ll have to be an actual developer, not a Digg fanboy claiming I’m worse than pond scum by ignoring the GPL or whatever.

Any better suggestions for the name, other than “MKVOfDeath”? I thought it was going to be witty but it’s hard to come up with any more “red ring of death” jokes when all the popular Xbox 360 blogs have essentially clubbed that poor horse beyond recognition.

Rogers now considers themselves the premium carrier in the Canadian marketplace, with a 45% increase in earnings – and let’s face it, no other GSM competition in the country is a significant contributor to this state of affairs. One of the most PR-spun phrases I’ve seen since the Todd Holmdahl Xbox 360 interview needs some attention:

“We’re not fans of unlimited plans,” Rob Bruce, the president of Rogers’ wireless division, told analysts during a conference call.

“We want to make sure … that we create plans that are helpful and don’t become barriers to adoption.”

I think Adam said it best recently:

Why do they have to make this so complicated? I don’t keep track of my usage of e-mail and Web to the MegaByte, and why should I? Ugh… No company is getting a dime from me for data usage until a true unlimited plan is released.

So if unlimited plans aren’t in Rogers’ future, what’s this entire post about? A recent HowardForums thread gives the lowdown on some upcoming changes to BlackBerry and PDA plans, which eliminate the current packages and replace them with a tiered system. Thanks to Tyler_QB and O_ssie for the information. Check out the original post if you’re interested in PDA or Windows Mobile data rates.

Effective March 25, 2008 – or more than likely a few days afterwards – Rogers will begin offering two different BlackBerry packages that support both BIS and BES. Prices and details are subject to change before launch, but seem realistic in my opinion.

BlackBerry “Flex” Plan: 3-Year Contract Required
This package is only available with a three year data term. Early termination fees are either a maximum of $100, or $5 per month for the number of months remaining in your term (minimum $25.) Data contracts start and end independently from your voice plan, unless you sign up for both of them at the same time.

Possibly the most interesting feature of this plan is its tiered structure. The base package costs $15 per month, for up to 10MB of data. If you use more than 10MB in a month, you are bumped into the next plan bracket; use less than 10MB in a month and pay $15.

Usage over 500MB is charged at 5 cents per MB. Therefore, blowing through 2GB of data on a BlackBerry would cost $65 for 500MB, plus $77.40 for the extra 1.5GB – totalling $142.40.

BlackBerry Plan: No Contract
For users not interested in signing a 3-year data contract, a month-to-month plan is also scheduled for introduction. These plans do not automatically transition to the next tier and have significantly increased overage rates, which makes sense given that there’s no required level of consumer commitment.

For comparison purposes, the cost of 2GB of BlackBerry data on a non-commitment $50 plan would be the original $50, plus $924 for 1848MB – a total of $974. Considering that the maximum data cancellation fee is only $100, heavy users will definitely want to grit their teeth and sign for three years.

The Extras
Allegedly, both these plans will also include unlimited email through BIS and instant/PIN messaging – so only actual Web browsing or application data (for example, Google Maps) will contribute to your usage for the month. This isn’t really a huge deal for most people, since email is significantly compressed before arriving on the device. I’d also be willing to bet that attachments aren’t included in the “unlimited” portion, but it might save heavy email users some precious kilobytes.

So what’s the score? I’m reasonably impressed with the changes but at the same time, Telus has the superior data package for $45 per month, with unlimited data and text messaging included. If you don’t mind SureType and CDMA, picking up the Pearl (8130) for under $100 seems to be one of the better options in the marketplace today.

For those of you who got in on the Telus $15 IM/Personal Email plan back in December through to January, it was a wise move. Telus recently released a new set of data plans which distinguish between purely email and Web usage.

Essentially, Web browsing on a Windows Mobile or BlackBerry device now costs an extra $15 per month; or for the same $30, you can have email, BlackBerry Messenger, unlimited text messaging, caller ID and voicemail (without the Web.) Bumping up to a $45 data plan gives all the fruit (Web/IM/text/CID/VM/email), which is actually a very reasonable deal in the spectrum of Canadian wireless pricing.

The related HowardForums thread indicates that existing clients on the pre-February $15 Unlimited IM/Personal Email rate plan will be able to keep the “unlimited on-device browsing” bonus for the duration of their contract. Changing rate plans (for example, going to the $30 email/text/CID+VM package) at this point will remove the bonus, as noted in the conditions post.

What’s interesting is that the Telus plans are specifically set up to charge $8/MB for data usage over and above standard email/Web access; this would indicate that clients on BlackBerry devices are being set up as fully functional subscribers with the BIS-B (BlackBerry Internet Service – Browsing) service enabled, and that Telus is doing the necessary work to distinguish different types of traffic.

I’ll keep a close eye on my personal bill to see if there are any extra charges for services – like many other new subscribers in December and January, I was told that “unlimited data, provided it’s not abuse or tethering” was fully included for the duration of my rate plan.

While I don’t think 2008 will be the year of truly unlimited BlackBerry data plans (including BES access or tethering), things are definitely looking up for consumers.

Up until this point, Inside Xbox (a new feature of the Fall 2007 dashboard update) was restricted to American and UK accounts – although not ISP-locked, since my American profile could access the content with no problem. Now, the feature seems to be available for Canadians, and actually offers some exclusive Canadian content in the blades. Here are a few pictures of the interface and updated dashboard. Click for larger versions.

Note that the official Xbox.ca site doesn’t seem to have details on this development yet, but it’s welcome news for Canadian accounts (which previously had Messages and Friends as two separate UI icons, as before the Fall Update hit in the US.)