LUX.ET.UMBRA

Image by Scott Ableman via Flickr

The FAA is still denying that cell phones are safe in the air.   While it’s true that cell phones do generate electromagnetic signals, it’s also true that the signal of the EM field dramatically drops off as you get farther away from the user.  Most do not generate any substantial field outside of the “personal space” of the cell phone user.   If you don’t believe this, go buy a EM reader and give it a shot.   It’s rather interesting on the non-linear drop.

On top of this, it was shown on Mythbusters (episode 49) a while back that cell phones do not interfere with the navigational equipment of a plane unless the plane has unshielded wiring.  And believe me, if you’re running faulty wiring, the least of your worries will be coming from mobile devices.

I will agree that banning cell phone use on a plane for sake of safety is a cop out play when in reality, the only thing that cell phones are in the air would probably be the annoyance factor.   Due to the background noise of the plane, people that talk loudly already would just raise their voices.   And the last thing most passengers want to to is to be locked in a confined space with a bunch of shouting business people that are trying to conduct business.

Fortunately, I have a solution for this.   If someone has enough change to spare that they’re willing to sign an agreement before the flight takes off to have a decibel monitor on them, and their credit card on file, then if their voice ever goes above a certain level, they’re automatically fined.  This fine is then distributed to both the flight crew, airline, and passengers on board guided by the fact that since everyone will be annoyed, you might as well be compensated for the annoyance.

This would either prevent people from calling as much on flights, or keep their voices down of which they should be doing anyways.   While policing the airwaves at thirty thousand feet isn’t something fun, use the right reasoning.   I mean, let’s be honest.   If people can use cell phones when they “touch down” on the landing, then it would also be safe to say that those EM transmissions would not effect other instruments.  Or else every time you land, you’d see a blip in your flight instruments that would be visible to the naked eye.

Tags: Cellular, Electronics, Observation, Opinion, Technology, Travel by darkmoon
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I have to say that the last two times I’ve been out to dinner with my wife, it’s been a rather strange experience. Both times, I was asked whether or not we wanted separate checks. What’s weird is that I’m getting the strange feeling that this could be the fact that we’re a mixed couple and people make assumptions that apparently that doesn’t exist in the South.

How odd is that? I can’t think of any other reason that you’d ask whether or not someone wanted separate checks. Usually, people ask, but both times at different restaurants, the waitresses offered up the option right away.

For some odd reason, I haven’t been able to justify it by any other means, and giving benefit of the doubt. It just doesn’t make any logical sense unless you throw race into play. While I know that these tendencies still exist, it’s usually strange to see it so blatantly. But really, why am I not surprised at all…

Tags: Observation, Opinion by darkmoon
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I have to say that it’s very amusing when you get emails like this. I had to do a little bit of digging to get the dirt on it, but fortunately when you’re not the first of these types of scams, the Internet can be a great resource. Basically, the idea is no different than the domain snail mail letters that people send in the mail that look like a bill in the US. This takes a different approach, since it makes you scared that your brand is in jeopardy and you didn’t buy up some of the other domains.

The below was a verbatim email that I got from the scammers. I had started a dialogue in my usual manners, but was fascinated when they basically said that they were doing due diligence, but then they could not deny the application by the other corporation even though they were doing due diligence.

Hmm, makes you wonder. What’s the point of doing due diligence then?

If you ask about it, then they’ll send you a cost sheet, and it’s like $60-$120 per brand and domain. Amusingly, these same domains cost somewhere around $10 to $30USD depending on what they were, and a lot of them, you have to show registration of a legitimate business within that domain. For example, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, you have to have a registered business within those regions to actually even apply for the .com.tw and .com.hk. I don’t know about China, but in all honesty, it’s not something that I would care to register as a business owner. In the end, the .com is king and anyone in the web world knows that.

This happened to come from a site called “drc-asia.org” which claims to be a domain registrar in China. Interestingly enough if you look up the domain itself, it’s owned by “shanghaifengwangwangluokejiyouxiangongsi”. Which is fine in itself, except for the fact that they have a .live.cn (Hotmail China) email registration. Crazy thing here, but legitimate businesses never have domains registered under any personal email places. No hotmail, gmail, or anything else. Much less when a domain registrar doesn’t know how to set up a CNAMEs so that drc-asia.org doesn’t point anywhere, but www.drc-asia.org actually does go to a host? Come on.

In any case, if you find yourself worried that you might be on the verge of getting taken in, fear not. Usually it’s a permutation of the email below.


(If you are not the person who is in charge of this, please forward to the right person/ department, as this is urgent, thank you!)

Best regards,
Robert Yang


Tags: Internet, Observation, Security by darkmoon
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Interestingly enough, there’s this new fun little thing that the TSA is pushing which really shows that they’re actually with the times.   While most people still use the paper boarding passes, you can now have it sent to your phone.   What it does, is that it actually sends you an image of a QR code I believe, of which is then scanned at the TSA checkpoint.   They use one of the red bar code scanners so it doesn’t really get effected as much by the reflective screens on smart phones.

What’s neat about this technology isn’t just because it’s “green” since there’s no paper, but the fact that the government is finally getting on board the technology train WHILE it’s going.   Not like ten years behind.  Usually you don’t see things like that except in military and advanced research labs.   I find that absolutely fascinating.

While I had the opportunity to use it more recently, I was hesitant mainly because I didn’t want to hassle with it if there were airports that had screeners that were not trained to actually deal with the passes.  Even if the airlines are pushing it, it doesn’t necessarily mean there are untrained staff out there.  So I decided to observe and see for myself.

It happened that there was one lady in front of me at Newark that used this system.  It was actually very quick and easy and definitely put my mind at ease that perhaps this is the next thing I’ll adopt while I travel.  Nothing like getting rid of the abundance of boarding passes that one has to carry these days along with all of the advertisements and the weather and what not.  In all honesty, while it seemed like a pretty good idea, I usually am annoyed that they print all my boarding passes on separate pages with a bunch of junk on them.   Just print them all on one page!

I’m actually pretty happy that so far my observation of the paperless boarding pass has been a great experience.

Tags: Cellular, Government, Observation, Security, Travel by darkmoon
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Image via Wikipedia

Google needs to step up to the plate when it comes to moderating Android Market comments.  Overall, the ratings system is pretty typical.  If you like a product, you rate it high, if you dislike you rate it low.  There’s some trolls when it comes to ratings, but it’s actually not all that bad for the most part.  The good stuff still tends to float to the top.

But lately, there’s been a rash of really annoying 5-star comments that I mark as spam all the time and keep seeing everywhere.   Subscription services are going around and posting comments everywhere and basically saying how it’s this website has all of the apps for a monthly subscription and it’s cheaper, and all that.  Extremely annoying when you’re trying to read about whether or not an app works or not and what problems they might encounter.

Think of the commenting system as a user review board.   I mean, overall, the goal is to be like Amazon’s product reviews where people tend to use these days as a secondary source of “real people-real reviews” type of place outside of reading Consumer Reports.   Since Android Market doesn’t have a Consumer Reports, you’ll just have to settle for trial and error, and user reviews.  Unfortunately, on a mobile interface, spam type comments not only take up space, but it throws the review off.   Especially these types of subscription services.

Tags: Cellular, Google, Observation by darkmoon
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Image by sociomantic via Flickr

I don’t know who came up with using quotes. But having analyzed much of the traffic that goes across social networks, I have to say that if you use quotes, you’re asking for trouble.

Why?

Have you ever looked the twitter bot accounts and what they post? Usually, a substantial number of them use quotes. Those that filter onto Facebook also use quotes. In fact, there really isn’t any time that those bots don’t throw in the quotes section since they want some filler that could be applicable to human interaction. And thus, those of us that actually do watch and read the traffic become extremely desensitized to quotations.

This is a lose-lose situation. First, the people that read don’t feel like there’s substance there so they skip reading your information, even if you might have some fabulous stuff later on. What can I say, the attention span of Internet users is fairly short. But also, the user of the medium that has integrated quotations also gets thrown into the bucket with the spam bots. Now, I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be in the same bucket as spam bots.

If you do use quotes, I implore you to stop. It’s not helping and the filler really isn’t useful. If you intend to keep at it though, no worries. The rest of the world is probably ignoring you.

Tags: Blogging, Facebook, Internet, Observation, Opinion, Twitter, spam by darkmoon
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I have to say that there’s some things that seem entirely like FUD because people watch too many movies. So there’s this sign that I saw while I was driving home and the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed.

Most people wouldn’t think twice about reading this sign and would just do as it said. But, think about it. Most of your 2-way radios are on the family band. This means that it’s a public channel. These channels are for use of all sorts of things (thus the word public). Private radio bands require licensing and is on a different spectrum. But regardless, you would imagine that anyone setting a wireless detonator on a public band is absolutely bonkers. I mean, there are signals at all times on those bands so that wouldn’t make any sense.

And the entire cell phone thing is silly too since the signal is on two levels. One is from the base station, and one is from your mobile. If you turn off your phone, that doesn’t mean the base station quits trying to provide coverage. So, if a cell phone signal would set off blasting, then wouldn’t you have to shield it from all cell phone signals? Including the base station? So if you use wireless detonators, you call the wireless companies to turn off their towers? What about emergency band vehicles? No more 911 calls?

Without more solid evidence that there is any reason to turn off a two-way radio or cell phone, this becomes very much like a movie based FUD action. Lovely.

Tags: Cellular, Observation, Opinion, Wireless by darkmoon
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Image by roberthuffstutter via Flickr

“Seriously. What the hell, Mr. President?” , is the question I want to ask.

It’s funny how in several years, the United States will take all the progress its done and piss it all away. Truthfully, I don’t think the Republican Party could have asked for a better screw up as the health care reform, but even the consideration of VAT tax is the nail on the coffin.

Here’s the key. In living in one of the states with the highest unemployment rates, I’ve found that the government really doesn’t care about me. Or you. Or anyone else. It’s not really that crazy, all in all I believe that GOP has solidified November and will continue to grow stronger as long as they don’t open their mouths and say something stupid. That’s still a possibility, but overall the Democrats have really shot themselves in the foot with this one.

First, you don’t pass something that you know you can’t pay for. Especially in times like this. If we could pay for it, then why are we considering the VAT tax option? And second, the point of VAT is to replace the antiquated sales tax. It’s not an additional tax. I’ve been working in financial markets for long enough to know that the value-added tax is just a multi-tiered system that allows the percentage of tax to be collected at multiple levels throughout the product cycle. This ensures that the government gets more of the percentage in case someone skimps on paying sales tax instead of a all or nothing scenario which is what we have in the United States currently.

The state of government seems to be screwed up by politicians that don’t take the time to understand basic concepts before they start pushing them. Which is not only frightening but also very sad. The fact that I read last night where there was an amendment to the Whistleblower Act in 2009 from the Senate that capped compensatory damages as opposed to punitive damages just made me extremely annoyed. I mean, seriously? You don’t know which word means what and for what logic? Whistleblowers serve a purpose and capping the loss compensation basically would remove any reason to blow the whistle on bad behavior. I thought the point was to protect the little guy when the big guy is doing something inherently wrong. Guess not.

I suppose I should have known better when I myself got sick of the financial market ruin created by bad laws passed by the GOP majority. Which means this stupidity problem falls on both sides of the aisle. Politicians need to start removing their heads from wherever they are and start realizing that you actually need to know what the hell you’re talking about instead of being the salesperson. Looking good for the camera doesn’t help you when you can’t understand basic concepts that even “I” can understand. And I don’t claim to be a graduate of any Ivy League or an expert in anything legal or political. If Joe the Plumber understands that you’re screwing up somewhere, doesn’t this mean that you need to stop to think before you pass something stupid instead of gunking up the toilet? It’s time to wake up.

Tags: Observation, Opinion, Politics by darkmoon
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Image via CrunchBase

This is funny as hell. I mean seriously. Does this guy even understand how power works? Less trips to the charger? WOW. Okay… a little lesson on how telecom radios work folks. It’s a really easy concept actually. A base station is usually located somewhere between one to two miles away. Ideally. Sometimes farther, sometimes closer. But the amount of power it takes to generate a signal that far is a lot more power on the forward channel than any WiFi signal. Ever.

So buying into the whole … Verizon is the best 3G network so we’re making use of their network thing is total marketing mumbo jumbo. I would know, considering I’ve worked on the infrastructure. What’s funny is that someone at Verizon made this call on banning WiFi which I have no clue about because from a telecom business perspective it makes absolutely no sense. Probably a sales guy that didn’t do his bean counting correctly.

So if you have a Verizon smart phone, you have to pay for a line and a data package. You don’t have a choice in this matter. And more than likely you use it for way more things than Skype. Believe me, the last thing I consider use for my data package for is voip. So why would you ban voip? Because some brilliant guy somewhere thought that it would decrease sales in lines, without actually thinking through who actually uses Android phones.

Here’s food for thought. The point of Skype is voip, but RF spectrum is actually expensive to run. Why not allow people to do their voip on WiFi but still pay for their data packages? You’re basically allowing more spectrum available for both actual data and voice use (depending on how the channels are configured). It’s the most optimal use of your current network from a business perspective and network perspective. Again, something else I’d know since I spent over ten years optimizing network traffic and analyzing KPIs.

It seems that Skype couldn’t break their full client in to Verizon and they didn’t know the telecom lingo to actually sell it. What’s amusing is that it makes them look bad in throwing the Skype Lite out since it really doesn’t help with those of us that run SkypeIn numbers or allow us to conduct business the way Google Voice does. Oh right, Verizon isn’t afraid of Google Voice which makes connections over the voice lines? That’s more traffic taken up for no reason when it doesn’t have to be routed as such.

All in all, both of Skype and Verizon Wireless need to revisit how their technologies work and why one thing is superseded by another when they’re two different things. I get the whole Verizon wants to make money and are afraid that they would lose subs. But come on… are you serious? Releasing a product that half par is worse than not releasing one at all. It just makes both ends look terrible from a public relations perspective and becomes a marketing nightmare. In the end, you’d spend more money trying to fight the non-existent problem instead of just letting the thing through.

Right now? I can say that as a telecom veteran, I have to say that this application might as well have been left in beta. In fact, the beta was better since it didn’t disable the wifi. That’s a little sad. There’s nothing great about the final Android version and continues to win subpar remarks because of bad decision made on both ends.

Tags: Business, Cellular, Observation, Opinion, Skype, WiFi by darkmoon
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Image via CrunchBase

People that know me have known that I’ve already been talking about this for the past few months, but it’s time to put it on paper. I’m calling it. Google is going to be chasing the airwaves for ad space in a couple years. Guaranteed.

Why? Pieces of the puzzle are falling into place already. Google Fiber experiment? Pulease. That’s a FiOS pull if I’ve ever saw one. And Verizon already brings television to your home. This would just give Google medium to mine all that invaluable data and run their algorithms on it to find out what you’re watching and how to target the advertisement. And we all know that Google is king when it comes to algorithmic ad targeting.

But this piece that I just found out about…. now this really puts it into perspective. Google is getting into set-top boxes. Forget Internet television. There is a real big money play being driven here, and it’s being done through the eyes of people thinking outside the box but staying within the realm of what the company is just plain good at: mathematics.

Companies like this are few and far between. Even many of the older 1990s companies have not been able to take any of their product lines outside of their general medium scopes. Google is actually buying up real estate in new mediums to try their hand at things that they have stuck with in the Internet world. And believe you me, it’ll work like a charm. Like a friend of mine told me a long time ago: it’s not the fact that you’re inventing a car, or a plane. It’s the thought that you’re building a car that can fly like a plane that is what no one else has grasped. And Google already setting up for take-off before anyone even realizes.

Tags: Advertising, Business, Google, Internet, Observation, Opinion, Technology, Television by darkmoon
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