Screw Google and there Back Sliding Statements.

Looks like Google pussy is starting to hurt. And though I am glad they are making a facebook alternative, and I will use it. I hate facebook more than google, but going back on such big statements is pussified and wrong.

Screw Google. They are completely pussing out and backing down on there word.

“Tonight, David Drummond, Google’s top legal executive, has written a post outlining Google’s “new approach” to China. Basically, they’re ending the redirect from google.cn to google.com.hk — and restarting the Chinese Google page. But instead of being the full (and fully censored) site that it once was, Google is making it into a completely degraded search engine”

“While they’re still refusing to censor (which Chinese law requires), they are willing to stop the redirect which China finds “unacceptable.” Why? Because if they don’t, China won’t renew the Internet Content Provider license — google.cn will cease to be.”

“Google clearly knew the risks it was taking with their actions — they did them anyway. That’s what made the move seem so ballsy and brilliant. But, of course, that was before the first real punch was thrown. Now that it has been, and they’re flinching — no matter how slightly — the actions seem less ballsy, less brilliant.”

“Would it be wise for Google to simply let google.cn be shut down? Or for them to fully pull out of China? Of course not. But this wasn’t supposed to be about what’s “wise.” This was supposed to be about what’s “right.”

“The power was all in the redirect. It was a big “fuck you” to China. They were saying: “You know everyone that goes to our Chinese site expecting censored results? Well, now we’re going to send them to an uncensored site. Do something about it.” Well, China did. And now Google’s reaction is to change that “fuck you” into a more docile “we don’t like you very much” with that link to google.com.hk from google.cn.”

“The link is weak. It’s moving responsibility for uncensored searches away from Google and putting it into the laps of Chinese users”

“he power of Google’s initial message was anchored by the fact that they said they were ready to leave China and shut down google.cn if it came to that. Now that it has come to that, and it’s clear they’re not going to do that”

so i guess they was blowing out there ass when they threatened to leave?

They said they would shut doen google offices if they had to, lol. Bunch of f**king ass talking bulls**tters.

quotes via www.techcrunch.com

Satan, Jesus and Computers (joke)

Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who managed to get the most out of his computer. This had been going on for days and God, was tired of hearing all of the bickering.

God said, “Cool it. I am going to set up a test that will run two hours and I will judge who does the better job.”

So down they sat at the keyboards and typed away. They moused away. They did spreadsheets, they wrote reports, they sent faxes, they sent out e-mail, they sent out e-mail with attachments, they downloaded, they did some genealogy reports, they made cards, they did every known job. But just a few minutes before the two hours were up, a lightening flashed across the sky. The thunder rolled and the rains came down hard. And of course the electricity went off.

Satan was upset. He fumed and fussed and he ranted and raved, all to no avail. The electricity stayed off. But after a bit, the rains stopped and the electricity came back on. Satan screamed, “I lost it all when the power went off. What am I going to do? What happened to Jesus’ work?”

Jesus just sat and smiled.

Again Satan asked about the work that Jesus had done. As Jesus turned his computer back on the screen glowed and when he pushed “print it”, it was all there. “How did he do it.” Satan asked? God smiled and said, “Jesus Saves.”

Standards?

“Why do you think the road to an industry standard web has been slow ? could it be because content providers and publishers fall back on the old stuff to deliver ? imagine if the original iMac came with parallel/printer/ADB ports in addition to USB, would peripheral makers have moved as quickly as they did to make USB devices ? Apple’s abandoning flash, and pushing an industry standard web is the primary reason why content providers are migrating away from flash. No one else dared to take the risk to do so, to make the web industry standard. The iPad, which is capable of rendering industry standard webpages amazingly has been on the market for about a month, and the web has already begun transforming. If it’s not fast enough for you, i encourage you to persuade the sites you frequent to adopt the industry standards for publishing to the web. Apple has born the brunt of the risk in moving this industry forward in this regard, and the rest is up to the publishers. I can guarantee you that had Apple allowed flash on the platform, no publisher would have bothered with industry standards. And users would have been stuck with a insecure hog of a platform, and Apple would have been at the mercy of Adobe to deliver a compelling user experience to it’s customers. For customers, companies, publishers, content providers, and the industry as a whole to move forward…. Flash (in it’s current plug-in/runtime form) has to die.” -Anonymous

Apple iPhone 4 Antennas…

Spencer Webb AntennaSys, Inc. Antenna design, integration and consulting.

http://www.antennasys.com/antennasys-blog/2010/6/24/apple-iphone-4-antennas.html

I received a phone call today from PC Magazine.  They were running a story on the new Apple iPhone 4, specifically the reports (PC Mag, Gizmodo, Engadget) that people are experiencing decreased reception on their cell phone when they hold the phone by the metal frame.  That frame has been touted by Apple, in the keynote address by Jobs, as being part of the antenna system.  Here is a brief summary of what I told the reporter who called me, and a little extra. (I will update this with his name when he emails me.)

I saw the photo of the frame of the iPhone in the slideshow at the end of Steve Job’s keynote address at the Developer’s Conference.  There are three gaps in the stainless steel band which are allegedly part of the antenna system.  I have not had alot of time to analyze their structure, nor do I have one in my hands yet.  So, either it is public relations hokum, or those slots are really part of the antenna structure.  They do appear to be active, based on observations.

In the first generation iPhone (which I am currently using), the antennas were on the back of the phone, near the bottom.  There was a piece of plastic on the bottom covering the antennas, so you knew where they were.  I developed a way to hold the phone which avoided covering this area with my hand, similar to the Gizmodo article linked above.  It is worth stepping back a moment and asking the question, “Why are the antennas placed where my hand is MOST likely to cover it?”  It’s a fair question.

The FCC puts strict limits on the amount of energy from a handheld device that may be absorbed by the body.  We call this Specific Absorbtion Rate, or SAR.  In the olden days, when I walked ten miles to school in three feet of snow, uphill in both directions, cell phones had pull-up antennas.  This allowed the designer to use a half-wave antenna variant, and put the point of maximum radiation somewhat away from the users cranium.  Of course, most people did not think it was necessary and kept the antenna stowed.  Motorola’s flip phone acutally had a second helical antenna that was switched into place when this was the case.  But, more importantly, SAR rules were not yet in effect.

Flip phones became yesterday’s style, and phones were becoming more monolithic.  Some phones, like the early Treo, kept the antenna in the traditional location at the top of the phone, near one edge, but reduced it to a short stub.  Whips became stubs, stubs became bumps, and finally antennas were embedded into the rectangular volume of the phone.  The trouble was SAR; if you left the antenna at the top, the user was now pressing it into their head, insuring lots of tissue heating.  Enter the bottom-located cellphone antenna.

Just about every cell phone in current production has the antenna located at the bottom.  This insures that the radiating portion of the antenna is furthest from the head.  Apple was not the first to locate the antenna on the bottom, and certainly won’t be the last.  The problem is that humans have their hands below their ears, so the most natural position for the hand is covering the antenna.  This can’t be a good design decision, can it?  How can we be stuck with this conundrum?  It’s the FCC’s fault.

You see, when the FCC tests are run, the head is required to be in the vicinity of the phone.  But, the hand is not!!  And the FCC’s tests are not the only tests that must be passed by a candidate product.  AT&T has their own requirements for devices put on their network, and antenna efficiency is one of them.  I know because I have designed quad-band GSM antennas for the AT&T network.  The AT&T test similarly does not require the hand to be on the phone.

So, naturally, the design evolved to meet requirements – and efficient transmission and reception while being held by a human hand are simply not design requirements!

OK, back to the iPhone 4.  The antenna structure for the cell phone is still down at the bottom (I won’t address the WiFi nor GPS antennas in this blog entry).  The iPhone 4 has two symmetrical slots in the stainless frame.  If you short these slots, or cover them with your hand, the antenna performance will suffer.

There is no way around this, it’s a design compromise that is forced by the requirements of the FCC, AT&T, Apple’s marketing department and Apple’s industrial designers, to name a few.

One of the questions the intrepid reporter from PC Magazine asked me was, “Will putting the phone in a pocket and using a Bluetooth device help?”  Good question.  The answer is yes, to a point.  The first generation iPhone clearly had a conductive surface below the antenna (I hesitate to call it a ground plane, because it it too small).  So, putting it in your pocket with the screen toward your body and the antennas facing out while using your Bluetooth earpiece will work better than holding the phone with your hand.  In fact, in my car my iPhone sits forward on the dashboard, under the winshield, screen down while I use my Jawbone.  Works great.  (However, if you put your iPhone in your left back pocket, and your earpiece in your right ear, you may have issues.  This is a failing of the Bluetooth system in dealing with severe body losses at 2.4GHz, not the cellphone’s problem.)

The iPhone 4, however, moved the antenna action from the back of the phone to the sides.  This probably improves the isotropy of the radiation pattern, but only when the phone is suspended magically in air.  Not too helpful.  Putting this iPhone 4 in your pocket will likely couple more energy into your body (you bag of salt water, you) than did the first generation model.  Yep, I predict it will be worse.

So, what’s an iPhone lover to do?  Well, I voted with my dollars.  I ordered my iPhone 4 to replace my Original.  I already know how to do the Vulcan Antenna Grip on the iPhone, and I am wearing out my current model.

And sometimes an antenna that’s not great, but good enough, is good enough.

Copyright © 2000-2010, Antennasys, Inc. All rights reserved. The word “ANTENNASYS” (USPTO Reg. 2,698,930 & 3,784,289) and the “A”+antenna symbol (USPTO Reg. 2,666,206) are registered trademarks of Antennasys, Inc. “Antennas Designed for the Tactical Edge” is a trademark of Antennasys, Inc.

Why Onlive May Be AWESOME

I think for the serious gamer (someone who plays a lot of games), this obviously would not be an option. Let’s say for a minute that this service works as advertised (can deliver decent game play experience to a low/medium end PC or TV without any noticeable lag) – IF they can deliver that, then the rest falls on price (both the cost of purchasing or renting the game, and the monthly cost for the service. If there was NO monthly subscription cost, and somehow they take in their share of the revenue by taking a percentage of game sales or rental revenues (like a retailer or distributor does), then I think this could be a console killer technology/service. However, as you say, if they charge a subscription fee, and that fee is higher than it would cost (amortized over 5 years) for you to purchase a high end PC or Console/High Def TV plus games, then it will not win out. Let’s assume that they will have to charge a fee to subsidize their server and bandwidth costs. What would break even be for them? $7/month for the service – just to break even to cover costs assuming the following…. Let’s say they have a server with 4 GPU cards in it, capable of hosting 8-16 people at a time playing a high-end game simultaneously at 720p. Let’s say that the server is $3k, the 4 GPUs cost $1800 and their custom hardware card $300, ram $800 – total server cost would be around $6,000 per server. Best case scenario, they can host 16 players at a time, and let’s say that the average player plays for 2 hours a day. That means that 96 people can utilize that server in a day, and if they use it every day to play games, then the server generates 96 times the subscription fee in revenue per month. If that subscription fee is $10/month, then it is generating $960 a month in revenues. If you took that $6,000 server and amortized it over 3 years (the useful life of the server) it gives you $166/month in fixed cost. So if that server can generate $960/month in revenue, that it is making $794/month gross. Bandwidth cost for that server would probably be around $500/month (guesstimate) so that would bring the gross down to $294. So that means that for break even the subscription cost would have to be $7/month per subscriber. That is the cost side. Now lets look at the consumer side. If they charge you $8/month in subscription fees (making $1/month profit) and they charge you $20 to buy a game or $4 to rent a game…. Let’s say an average gamer would buy 6 game titles a year (again not a serious gamer but an average gamer). Under their service it would cost you $120 to purchase those games through the service, and $96 for the yearly subscription fee – total cost $216/year to play those 6 games. That is considerably cheaper than buying a console and 6 games to play for the year. So I guess it really depends on what they charge you for the subscription fee (to keep accessing your purchased games). Also their policy on when you stop paying your monthly fee for a month and then want to get back your account with games in it at a later date – or whether you have to buy your games all over again…. there will be technicalities like that which will make the difference.