Screen real-estate, PDA’s vs iPod Touch/iPhone

I’m amused, I’ve been evaluating a PDA/iPod replacement and have been impressed with the ‘full screen’ presentation ability of the Safari web browser on the iPhone/ iPod Touch devices. For many years many popular websites have produced reduced displays that are more or less tailored to PDA’s and cellphones which have small screens. This is great for PDA’s and mobile phone users, but requires an extra effort on the part of the website builder, an effort that many sites choose to forgo.

So it is with much amusement that during this research I find that there are great efforts being rendered to redirect mobile Safari browsers to a reduced screen real-estate copy of any given website an iPhone friendly page if you will. This is, in a some measure, a vindication of the previous efforts of website creators to provide Palm PDA’s, WinCE, Symbian browsers with a Practical web interface to their sites.

This, more or less, mitigates the one great Mobile Safari advantage on the iPod Touch/ iPhone. You don’t need Zoom and shrink on a smaller screen. You don’t need to download, and render full sized graphics. You don’t need 3G bandwidth. And in one step, renders the browsers, on all the other mobile Phones and PDA’s, equal.

iPhone/iPod Touch Monopoly

I have been in the market for an upgrade to my iPod and the question of a replacement has been this, should I upgrade my old Palm Vx to a Palm T/X or my first generation iPod (5GB). The candidates have been the Nokia N770 / N800 / N810 series, the iPod Touch and the Palm T/X. I have by this time determined that the Nokia systems, while the most versatile are not completely integrated systems, more hacker devices than finished products. So the choices are down to the Palm T/X, which is getting very long in the tooth, running an aging operating system, or the iPod touch with a revolutionary OS/GUI but no third party applications.

The requirements are relatively simple, WiFi, bluetooth, applications like email, browsing communicating. MultiMedia. And any other things would be optional like eBooks. I have a medium sized iTunes collection, and plenty of Palm apps.

Currently if the rumor that Apple will approve and distribute apps and limit access to iPod/iPhone internals is true, this will be a deal breaker. No iPod Touch!

I have no intention of buying a totally locked in device. If for no other reason than it’s bad monopolistic practice. It will limit what the developers will be able to develop, and turn away some of the most innovative designs. This would be the most stupid thing Apple could do. A proverbial shooting one’s own foot off. It would cripple any development that might be applied, it would make the Palm the only choice.

I’ll wait until Apple announces on Thursday, but this rumor smells too true, so I’ll start pricing Palm T/X’s.

UPDATE: I looks like Apple has screwed it’s self Here! So my Decision to but an unlocked Obsolete Palm T/X is vindicated yet again!

Whatever became of the truth?

Bush’s friendly co-conspirator in the White House Lies and deception club has come up with something he can really sink his teeth into, The U.S. Propaganda Agency to quote;

…the United States is losing the war of ideas in the Muslim world, and the answer to that, in part, is through the creation of this new government agency

Whatever happened to the truth? If the truth isn’t there, someone will discover that it’s not the truth, and no amount of lying is going to make anyone listen to it. Mind you if you can control all sources of information (MSN, radio, TV, Internet), and either censor or block the truth, what does it matter what you say?

Radio Free Europe has been identified as one of the most useful tool to bring down the Iron curtain, on a simple principal, that even under political pressure, it would ONLY broadcast the truth.

But this administration doesn’t know the truth, to them, the truth is the enemy, and so we have what we have. A world of spin and deception.

More fear being seeded

It looks like more fear is being seeded as Hackers Cut Cities’ Power. So, without actually naming the cities, or the methods of ‘hacking’ the CIA is now claiming without proof that there are hackers ‘outside’ the U.S. that have shutdown power to cities, and extorted money.

So, fear, is the next best thing to the truth. Tell an American audience, that rarely hears international news, that ‘cities’ have had their power shutdown by ‘Terrorist hackers’ fully expecting that population will not know any better. In most cases the CIA would be accurate, most americans don’t have a clue what is going on in the rest of the world.

Great. What next? Hackers under the bed? Terrorist boogyman hackers under every bed in America?

Update: Hackers Have Attacked Foreign Utilities

Ricardo Franco Levi looks to be a Nazi proposing censorship

Ricardo Franco Levi, Prodi’s right hand man , undersecretary to the President of the Council, has written the text to put a stopper in the mouth of the Internet. The draft law was approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 October. No Minister dissociated themselves from it. On gagging information, very quietly, these are all in agreement.
The Levi-Prodi law lays out that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC, a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money.

A Cure for cancer? How about a cure for spam?

Why is it we can work on a cure for cancer, and haven’t got a clue about a Spam, or phishing or trackback spam? I have heard the old saw, ‘Mind the pennies, and the pounds will take care of themselves.’ so where are the pennies in spam? and how do we mind them?

I remember the first person the ‘spammed’ the internet, and he was locked out of the internet and prosecuted. I just finished up deleting my 20,000 comment spam!!!

Crypto in the personal privacy world

I was recently presented with The Code Book and while leafing through the pages during a moment of boredom I managed to create a simple crypto using the Julius Caesar character substitution method using Sybase T-SQL. And though I’m sure that the resulting encrypted text could be broken with brute force, it would not be easy, nor very worthwhile for most messaging.

In this world of spying and privacy invasion from all directions, a little personal crypto might be in order, particularly if one is inclined to be suspicious of commercial algorithms. and while this stored procedure is simple, it can be enhanced, feel free to use it for your own needs.

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.simple_crypto
(
@key_word varchar(25),
@message varchar(255),
@direction varchar(8)
)
as

set nocount on

declare
@key_input varchar(20),
@key varchar(27),
@key2 char(27),
@olumn int, @olumnk int,
@input varchar(255),
@olumnb int,
@output varchar(255),
@out char(1), @a_char char(1),
@undone varchar(255),
@count int

select @count = 97, @olumnk = 1
select @key_input = lower(@key_word) –‘branedy’
select @input = lower(@message)

create table #alpha (a_char char(1))

while @count <= 122 begin insert into #alpha values (char(@count)) select @count = @count + 1 end select @key = char(32) while @olumnk <= datalength(@key_input) begin select @out = substring(@key_input, @olumnk, 1) delete from #alpha where a_char = @out if @@rowcount = 1 begin select @key = @key + @out end select @olumnk = @olumnk+1 end select @key = @key + a_char from #alpha drop table #alpha select @olumn = 1, @olumnb = 1, @key2 = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{' -----------------encrypt if @direction = 'Cipher' begin while @olumnb <= datalength(@input) begin select @output = @output + char(charindex(substring(@input, @olumnb,1), @key) + 96) select @olumnb = @olumnb+1 end select @input + ' = ' + @output as 'Encrypted' end -------------------------------------------decrypt if @direction = 'Decipher' begin select @output =@message while @olumn <= datalength(@output) begin select @undone = @undone+ char(ascii(substring(@key, charindex(substring(@output, @olumn,1), @key2),1))) --, select @olumn = @olumn+1 end select @output + ' = ' + @undone as 'Decrypted' end -------------------------------- select 'From the key ' + @key return GO

The switch from BT to Eircom

This Friday we were informed we were paying for Eircom Broadband, no modem had arrived, and there was no disruption in service from BT. I was expecting a cutoff of service as Eircom ‘switched’ our service. It was expected as I was expecting them to transfer our ‘port’ from BT to Eircom before they started to charge us for it.

So on a lark, I reset my router to use the Eircom username password, and as easy as you please, the ip address of the router switched, and bingo, we were on Eircom. A quick change of DNS addresses and all was back to normal. Except that the domain was Eircom.

A check of the VPN connection, the primary reason for making the switch, and sure enough, a stable connection. Utilizing the same routers, wires and having made no changes to the router setting, I had a stable and useful VPN connection where BT had claimed it was my equipment.

BT, over the last few weeks, had become increasingly unstable with frequent dropouts, and performance issues. Some of this may not have been their fault, but their inability to repair and maintain, were their fault, and the response of their techies’ was unacceptable.

So now I’m Broadbanding from bigbrotherland, and strangely happy about it.