C'mon hardware people, make more monitors with DisplayPort out, and make them reasonably priced

DisplayPort (and Thunderbolt) are supposed to be the bomb diggity display transport technology of the future. Not only can you push better resolutions over it than DVI or HDMI, but you can daisy chain equipment. With Thunderbolt, not only can you daisy chain monitors, but you can include drives as well.

I have dreams of plugging one DisplayPort cable from my laptop into a monitor, which itself has another monitor(s) and at least a keyboard & mouse hanging off it (possibly a backup drive as well). During reading & research, in the clear as mud marketing & faq's, I did finally glean that a DP monitor would have to have a DP output as well as input to make a daisy chain.

The problem here is that there are many more monitors that only have DP in, but not out. Some of them don't have USB ports either. There are only a small handful of monitors supporting DP out, and they start at $800.

There are also monitors with confusing or downright misleading marketing (I'm looking at you, ASUS). The blurb will mention the fact that DP is superior because it supports daisy chaining. It will fail to mention the fact that this monitor can only be the last point in the chain & that you can't daisy chain two of that model.

At least one of the available Dell models had reviews saying it was of crappy build, and Dell support wasn't helpful. That limits the acceptable options.

Really, DP is cool. I'd be doing the daisy chain right now if it wasn't so stupid expensive to replace my two monitors. It's been years, hardware people. Step up to the plate.

When a Luddite works in a tech company

My company develops software, so I find today's bit of Luddite minded wtf coming from one of our admins a bit ironic.

We have an admin that sent out an Exchange invite to a meeting. I replied to the calendar event & confirmed my attendance. Anyone who has worked at a place that relies on Exchange calendars to know when people are free or busy, and relies on those meeting confirmations can understand why I didn't think anything further was needed after I confirmed my attendance via the invite.

Today, I got an email from the admin asking me, just to verify, if I was going to be at the meeting. I replied saying yes, I had confirmed on the invite. She replied to me with:

"I know, but I had asked specifically in my original email for everyone to rsvp by e-mail (don't trust exchange).  That is way I said, "just verifying"."

Can't trust that newfangled technolobly.

It reminds me of how many employees are hindered in being more productive because of backwards, broken, kludgy processes being kept in place by the lowest common denominator. In this case, to be fair, there's not been a company wide push to rely on the Exchange calendar, rather than just use it for reminder noises. We're small enough we could do this. I'm going to push for this to get more awareness.

I'm sure that just about every company has some process that's an artifact of people not changing methods to match changes in tools. How much less time we'd all spend on administrivia if people took the initiative to train themselves on the common, not terribly difficult tools at their disposal and/or their company provided training. I'm hoping we can achieve that here.

In the meantime, I'll continue to poke at the Luddite.

Smartphones again, can there be one that doesn't have a Major Suckage Point? Pretty please?

Seems like a good place to resume from where I left off just that little while ago.

The LG turned out to be crap with flaky hardware. There were plenty enough comments around the Interwebs for me to know that it wasn't me, it was them. I'm avoiding that company in the future.

Replaced it with a Samsung Droid Charge, that never saw an upgrade past Android 2.3. And that didn't hit until earlier this year. Oh Android fragmentation, how I loathe thee. Especially after reading today about a serious attack vector that is only patched as of 4.3.

Verizon will never update this thing to 4.3. It can't even run the Cyanogenmod ROM which would get me to 4.3. This is because of proprietary bullshit with the radios that no Android dev has been able to reverse engineer. All this closed source nonsense in my open source is like the fly in the soup. Except that you can't pick it out.

If only there was a phone OS that didn't have a Major Suckage Point.

Android - fragmentation, closed source surprises in a platform that's touted as "open", Google's insisting I need to have a G+ account to write app reviews (no, don't have one, don't want one, won't make one), absolutely shitty customer service from some vendors like HTC (you can read tons about the grief people go through who have tried to get a repair / replacement for faulty hardware). I'm wanting to say laggy glitchy performance, but this isn't true on all Android interfaces, and is supposed to be resolved by Jelly Bean. That gets me back to fragmentation.....

iPhone - a walled garden, weird syncing madness you *have* to do with iTunes, falling behind the innovation and hardware power curves, Apples insistence that they know the absolute best thing for users and just swallow it even if you disagree, blaming users for hardware issues (you're holding it wrong), fighting users who want to root their phone (sorry, it's *my* hardware that *I* purchased, I won't have a vendor telling me what I can and cannot install on it).

Windows - another walled garden, less functionality with more restrictions, ugliness & bah Microsoft

All smartphone OS's - tying you into one ecosystem whether you like it or not (Google /Apple / Microsoft account). The desktop is trying to go that route (e.g. needing an Apple Store account to download software for your OSX machine), but it's still not as much heartache to avoid.

I've not included the potential Ubuntu phone, but Canonical is the Apple of the open source world. They also have that "we know what is best for you" mentality. More than that I can't say as I don't know much about the experience of Ubuntu on a phone.


My personal solution is going to be to replace my current phone (only 1.5 years old) with a newer Android that can run stock Android, no vendor or carrier addon crap. Even if Google doesn't roll out updates to my hardware in a timely fashion, I can throw Cyanogen or another ROM on it because it will be built on standards. At that point, I may not be 100% happy with Android, I'll still be tied into the Google ecosystem, but at least I'll have the phone that sucks the least*.





* ... for me. YMMV, get the phone that's right for you, etc etc. Phandroids, iFans and Microsofties all amuse me.

I have joined teh smartphone masses

So I went & got meself an LG Ally running Android. This is the gadget I have been lusting after since my Zaurus PDA days - the toy that holds my calendar, contacts and can make calls. Lufs. Now I understand why one friend of mine is constantly checking her smart phone during our gaming sessions. It's that always connected, must answer the messages compulsion.

Bonus - now I get my choice of ways (text, IM, email) to tell said good friend from the next gaming session to tell her to put the damn phone down.

In related news, I'll have to keep an eye out for this - security holes in certain vendors' Android versions that allow apps to be installed without your consent.

To wrap up today's spew, we're one step closer to 1984.

"Speaking at an investor's conference on Thursday, a Microsoft executive offered that Kinect not only knows how many are in the room when an ad's shown, but what kind of team colors they might be wearing. Uh-oh."

Even if Microsoft isn't intentionally gathering user data for marketing purposes, they are known for software vulnerabilities. Care to bet on how long it will take before someone finds a way to gather the data illicitly?

Daylight savings confusion - it's not just for Windows anymore

A couple of years ago when daylight savings time changed in the US, Windows users got to deal with patching & confused clocks. Now the Followers of Jobs can experience the same enlightenment of freeing the mind by destroying assumptions (like - my clock is correct). I think the one OS I haven't had daylight savings time conversion issues was Linux.

Regular domains beat smut sites at hosting malware

Who knew? I have long joked with people whose PC's get infected by malware to stop browsing pr0n with Windows and/or IE. Apparently, I shouldn't have been so quick to blame the skin trade.

In my own personal experience, there has only been one time recently that malware tried to get me to install it via the browser. There was a time when I had IE 7 open with just one tab with Facebook loaded. It was one of the now infamous "Your PC may be infected by a virus..." pop ups. It was likely through a cross script injection, which is possible through the many many bugs in the FB code (reason #2 of many to be glad I deleted the damn account). So now, when friends complain that their PC's have gotten p0wned I'm going to recommend a more secure browser, not different sites ;)

Yet another Facebook privacy breach

In other news, the sky is blue. This here is why I deleted the stupid FB account.

"According to the report, many Facebook apps have transmitted identifiable details about individual users to around 25 companies, in effect breaking the terms laid down by the Mark Zuckerberg-run website."

Oh, and by the way, they also steal your friends' phone numbers via Contact Sync.

"...what Facebook WILL DO, with neither your knowledge or consent, is import ALL the names and phone numbers FROM your phone’s address book and upload them to your Facebook Phonebook app (Click HERE to see your Facebook Phonebook) on Facebook.com, thus storing your private contact numbers on Facebook‘s servers. Once your phone is synced , Facebook will attempt to match the newly uploaded phone numbers to users that have listed the same phone number on their Facebook profile, wether you are friends with them or not. If Facebook cannot make a match, it will create a new contact entry in your Facebook Phonebook using the contact details imported from your phone, and add a link to invite them to join Facebook. And guess what? There is no way to delete the names and numbers Facebook imports from your phone’s address book."