Best. Music. Video. Ever.

Why my 4 year old Treo is better than an iPhone

Everybody loves the iPhone. Except me. I see the iPhone, and I see nothing more than an Apple club badge. The only unique feature is the multi-touch interface, but to be honest with you, that doesn’t make up for the fact that it:

1. Costs $400
2. Does all these great things… which Palm and Windows Mobile devices have done for like 8 years.

I have mobile service through Sprint PCS (love them, customer service blows AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon out of the water. My unlimited data plan was free, thank you very much!). I originally had the free phone, which was a Razr, which recently died. So, I needed a new phone.

Scouring eBay, I found a pretty sweet deal on a Palm Treo 650 Smartphone. It’s 4 years old, and I paid $80 for it. Now, to prove to you that my 4-year-old USED Treo is better than a brand new $400 iPhone, I will compare the so-called “revolutionary” (quoted from Apple.com) features of the iPhone against those of my Treo:

There you have it.. a side by side comparison between the $400 iPhone, and my $80 used Treo 650 from 2004. There are only two things the iPhone has that my Treo doesn’t:

1. Visual Voicemail
   But who the hell cares? Is it really worth $400 just to have a list of my voicemails? Come on.
2. WiFi
   This is truly a gimmick when included with any phone. If you have a smart device like an iPhone, Treo, or other smartphone, you are primarily going to be in places where there isn’t any WiFi at all, and you’ll have to use your mobile data service from your provider. Considering unlimited data for most providers is like $15 a month… why the hell would I even NEED WiFi? I have a permanent 3mbps connection, no matter where I am. Always. Don’t need WiFi on my cell phone.

Apple has some serious nerve to claim that anything in their iPhone is “new”, let alone “revolutionary”. Read this carefully, iFags: It’s just a phone. Oooh, you got a weather report on it. So did I, and it was loaded 3 times as fast, since my Sprint Treo is on EV-DO, and not EDGE. That’s the other thing.. AT&T kind of sucks… a lot. If the iPhone really was the best phone ever (it isn’t, but this is a what-if) it would still be worth getting a “lesser” phone, just to avoid AT&T.

I can install any program I want onto my Treo, for free. Hell, if I so desired, I could even write my own native apps. iPhone? The closest thing it has is webpages that fit on its screen. Seriously.. dudes.. wtf. That is lame.

The whole ‘triangulate your location for the mapping thing’ is pretty bogus, too. Most people have experienced an accuracy of something along the lines of 300 yards. It may just be me, but doesn’t that sound a bit.. you know… COMPLETELY FUCKING USELESS?! Three football fields?! Yeah thanks Apple, but I could have guesstimated my location to within 300 yards for free all on my own. With the Treo, it costs extra, but I can get a GPS SDIO card with software that will pinpoint my ass right down to 3 yards. That’s 9 feet. I could actually navigate with that.

Besides, any real geek would never touch a phone that couldn’t SSH into their Linux or UNIX server:

Screenshot of justice right there. SSH’ing into my Linux box while taking a dump. Pure geekery, brought to you by the Palm Treo.

Down with the iPhone(y)!

He’s multiplying!

It’s true! I’ve managed to set off a chain reaction of dividing cells and eventual mind function!

In other words… Amber and I are having a fucking BABY…

…and I just remembered ever single bit of mischievous bullshit my parents had to deal with. Guess I better find a sturdy helmet and a good way to get dried ketchup out of cinder block basement walls.

Complete Windows XP Hardware Drivers For Gateway MT3421 Notebook

Note! Since rapidshare sucks and deleted my files, I am biting the bullet and putting these files on my server, using my own bandwidth. If anyone has a server and would be willing to mirror these files, please contact me.

CLICK HERE FOR THE DRIVERS!

Late last year, I purchased a Gateway MT3421 notebook from Office Depot to replace my damaged and unusable Toshiba Satellite M45. At this point, I wish I had bought another Toshiba.

I have spend the past 5 months trying to find a complete set of Windows XP drivers for this machine, as it came pre-installed with Vista, and I don’t want Vista. This has not been an easy task, but I have finally come out on top, and there are no more yellow (!) in my device manager! Hooray!

To aid those facing similar issues with this particular notebook, I am redistributing the drivers here for everyone.

Note: These will ONLY work with Gateway MT3421. If you have another Gateway model, you’ll need to search elsewhere, and I wish you the best of luck. Without any further ado, the drivers:

nVidia Chipset Driver: . . . . . 84 MB

nVidia Display Driver: . . . . . 46 MB

LAN Driver:. . . . . . . . . . . 40 MB

HDA 56k Modem Driver:. . . . . . 822 KB

RealTek WiFi Driver: . . . . . . 167 KB

SigmaTel HD Audio Driver:. . . . 8 MB

Coprocessor Driver:. . . . . . . 172 KB

Snow In Tennessee

Snow 1

Snow 2

FAST is slow

Trawling the tubes this afternoon, I stumbled across this article by pcpro.co.uk, an interview with John Lovelock, director general of the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST). FAST is a UK organization advocating the criminal treatment of those who download software illegally.

I just had some comments.

How do you propose ISPs tackle the problem of file-sharing and illegal downloads?

We understand ISPs can’t monitor all the content going through their pipes. What they could do is, where it has been demonstrated their customers have abused rights holders’ intellectual property and we provide evidence of this, they should close the accounts of those particular customers.

Why? Close the account? No warning? No investigation? What about people stealing WiFi? It’s not always the account holder who is committing the crime.

Once people see you can’t use the internet for illegal activity, because you’ll lose your account, that will act as a deterrent.

Uhhmm… no… it won’t. It will just piss people off, especially those who are wrongly accused.

Secondly, like the insurance industry, the ISPs could compile a register of customers that have been investigated and been found to be abusing the terms and conditions of the ISPs, whereupon they shouldn’t be conducting illegal activity.

Whereupon? What is this, 1869? Anyways, what right does the ISP have to share that information with another private organization? Certainly that violates the customer’s right to privacy, regardless of whether or not they (allegedly) violated the terms and conditions.

Then these people would have no place to hide by going from one ISP to another.

You speak as if people who download pirated software are career criminals who should be cut off from society. “No place to hide.” Who are we talking about, here? Software pirates, or serial killers? Regardless, what’s stopping them from hopping on someone else’s unsecured WiFi? Or getting a cellular phone with Internet access? Are you going to ban them from mobile phone providers as well? Isn’t that a little excessive?

With unsecured wireless accounts and file-sharers potentially falsifying their IP address, isn’t there a danger innocent people are going to find themselves cut off?

This is part of an education process now. There is so much protection available to people: if I use my wireless here, it will show three or four wireless networks around me, but they are heavily encrypted and it’s not possible to do it. The technology’s there to stop that happening.

Just because the technology exists doesn’t mean that everyone uses it, or is obligated to. Until I see legislation written stating that WiFi users are required to encrypt their network, this is bunk. If I forget to lock the door to my house, and someone walks in and steals my computers, and then proceeds to burn my house down, does that mean it’s actually my fault, and I am not only no longer entitled to help from the Police, but also guilty of grand theft and arson? Utterly ridiculous.

Furthermore, “protection”? Please. WEP encryption can be cracked in 10 minutes with some very simple tools, and a crappy laptop. WPA takes a little bit longer, but is similarly easy to circumvent. Heavily encrypted is a severe overstatement. Both WEP and WPA are very insecure encryption schemes, and saying that it is not possible to use an encrypted wireless network without knowing the key is simply an outright fallacy, put out there by a software industry lobbyist who doesn’t know the first thing about the very industry he represents, let alone the technologies that support it.  

Lame, lame, lame, lame, lame. FAST, you aren’t protecting software vendor’s rights, you are scapegoating the users for the vendors’ greed.

Tornadoes

Well, I survived my first Tennessee tornadostorm. Union University wasn’t so lucky. Their site is still down, in fact. Hope they had backups. Glad nobody was killed there.

My condolences go out to the families of the two who were killed by the tornadoes in Madison county last night.

Why you should not vote for Mike Huckabee

I have never supported Huckabee, I think he is clinically insane, and has no business governing a state, let alone sitting in the Oval Office.

Thanks to Lew Rockwell for the following:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/keller21.html

Grif The Superpuppy

Well, we finally found a place for Boomer, which meant we could finally get the German Shepherd puppy we’ve been longing for. So, this past Saturday, we made the 2.5 hour drive up to Nashville to meet with Friends of Hannah Animal Rescue, and pick up our new little friend, who we have affectionately named Grif:

He’s mostly purebred (thanks Roy at Best Buy) German Shepherd, as you can see from the photos. We’re pretty sure he has some Chow in him somewhere down the line, as his tongue has some blue spots. His tongue has blue spots, which is apparently common in purebred German Shepherds. I had no idea. You can also see from the photos that he is 100% adorable.

Our other dogs are treating him as one of their own, as they should. Shadow, our 85lbs white German Shepherd, is very careful when playing with him. It’s the funniest thing to watch; she’ll BARK BARK BARK BARK at him (she is VERY vocal while playing), but won’t wrestle or push him with more than a feather’s touch. He’s still a little scared of his gigantic new friend, but making good progress. I think once he gets a little bigger he’ll feel more confident playing with Shadow.

Depression Cookie

This was inside my fortune cookie this evening at our local Chinese buffet restaurant. I just have to say….wtf?!

“It could be better, but its good enough.” Uhh.. okay.. so.. your wonderful, mystic advice to me is “yeah, your life could be better, but why bother? Settle for mediocrity.”

Brilliant. It’s a new generation of Chinese fortune cookies: Depression Cookies!

It really is brilliant, actually.. drive the population into depression, causing them to want to eat more… where’s the best place to drown your depression in prepared food? That’s right. A buffet.

Diabolical.