I’ve a second guest post on The Running Mice, and it’s about the difficulties of trying to perform tech support on the phone. Do check it out!
The problem with trying to provide phone support
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Category Archives: Tech
The mess that is Google
I was one of the early adopters of Gmail back when beta invites started going out in 2004. That account eventually succumbed to spam over the years, and I was forced to abandon it. A few years later, Google Apps for Domain launched, allowing for the use of custom domain names with Gmail, and I eagerly jumped on to that.
In the midst of Google’s company acquiring spree, which saw YouTube and many other startups being added to its portfolio, Gmail accounts morphed into something of a more generic Google Account, giving access to other services such as Docs, Spreadsheet and so on. Initially, Google Apps for Domain had the same feature set as one would get with a regular Google account. During this time, a plethora of features were rolled out to native Gmail offering, but not the Google Apps version of Gmail. This was when Google App users, many of who were paying customers, started to feel as if they were second class citizens within the Google ecosystem. Google Apps continue to lapse behind in features when the now defunct Google Wave was rolled out and no support for Apps was included.
Then came the Google Apps transition in 2010/11 that was supposed to bring more features and timely updates to Google App users, matching up to the regular offerings from Google. This came with a huge caveat. Google Apps was now on an entirely different infrastructure and it forced users to create ‘personal’ accounts for services such as YouTube. I now have two accounts to juggle, and despite the multiple sign on feature, going back and forth between accounts is less than seamless.
Yesterday, Google+ was unveiled with Google Apps support purportedly coming somewhere in the hazy future. Over the years, Google Apps has gradually shifted from being the cream of the crop to being a walled garden within Google itself, frustrating those who wants both end user and enterprise offerings of Google. The online service has become just as fragmented as the Android platform itself.
Unlike Microsoft and Apple, both of who have a clear direction of where they want to be headed, with Office 365 targeting the enterprise sector and iCloud for individuals respectively, Google seems to be mired inbetween.
Sennheiser PC350 and Asus Xonar DG
Almost a year back, I got myself the Sennheiser PC350, and wasn’t too impressed by it’s low frequency performance. I wasn’t alone in sharing that sentiment, and armed with some guides from Head-Fi, I went about modding it. Still, it didn’t sound as well as I had hoped.
Turns out what I was missing was a proper headphone amplification. The PC350 has an impedance of 150 Ω, while normal headphones usually have an impedance of between 20 Ω to 50 Ω. Higher impedance implies higher resistance, and hence, more power to drive the drivers. The plus side of a high impedance driver is better control – sharper and tighter sound.
Last week, while shopping at SLS, I picked up the Xonar DG because the built-in headphone amp caught my attention. At $69, it was cheap. Getting an external headphone amp would cost just as much, if not more.
I usually run a Audio Technica ATH-A900. For the record, it’s the most comfortable set of headphones I’ve ever owned. The trouble is that it doesn’t have a mic, and being a gamer, voice chat is important for me. I’ve gotten by with MacGyvering a mic on to it, but it picks up too much background noise. The PC350s on the other hand, have an excellent noise cancellation boom mic.
I plugged my PC350 in, configured the headphone amp settings for > 64 Ω, and boy, it sounded like a completely different pair of headset. The low frequency response is strong, tight and accurate. I loaded up The Witcher 2, ran the escape from the dungeon level, and each footstep and echo came out crisp.
I take back what I said about the PC350 being an overhyped headphone. It doesn’t have the comfort level of my ATH-A900, but the sound quality is certainly comparable, plus it has a mic, if that’s your thing.
Cryptic error messages: Invalid Content-Range header
The HTTP server sent an invalid Content-Range header.
I kept getting that error message while trying to perform updates on Ubuntu using through apt-get. It didn’t matter if I were using the command line version, or though the Package Manager GUI. Following the error message would be an IP address.
The error message misleadingly suggested a network problem and I tried fiddling around with my wireless and wired adapter. It was strange because aside from apt-get, I wasn’t getting any connection issues at all. Looking around Google mentioned something about a bug in apt-get due to partially completed install previously. The solution was to clear the cache by issuing the following command:
sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/partial/*
Thanks Ubuntu for your cryptic error messages!
Power saving states and the high-pitched noise mystery
I usually spend most of time using on my laptop with its AC-adapter plugged in and running off the mains. My first prolonged usage on battery power alone was today.
Soon after, it came to my attention that there was a rather inconsistent high-pitched sound emitting from the laptop, which bothered me enough to start investigating. It didn’t quite sound like the creek of a hard disk, nor the whirl of a fan. I pressed my ear around the chassis, listening as I went, until I zeroed it in, at about the center of the laptop. Curiously the only component that I could think of as being there was the processor. But a processor emitting sound? That’s just crazy talk. Or is it?
It turns out, after searching around Google and reading threads on forums with similar complains and lots of skepticism from people who claim not to hear it, or maybe, they just can’t hear it, during to the difference in hearing abilities across individuals, the sound did indeed originate from the processor.
An article on Dell’s site explained it quite clearly. Quoting from the article itself,
The noise has been isolated to the processor’s power circuit and is only audible when the processor is in C3 (clock-stopped) power state. In this state, the computer is in a low-power mode designed to reduce chassis heat and extend the battery life. The changes to the components in the processor’s power circuit are caused by a phenomenon referred to as the Piezoelectric Effect. When a specific voltage is applied to these components, they begin to resonate producing sounds that fall within the range of human hearing (15 – 20 KHz).
C0 to C3 are power states of the processor, with C0 being the default functional state, and C1 through C3 being in various stages of power save. Simply put, the performance of the processor is scaled down in preference of a longer battery life.
To check the validity of the explanation, I launched Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and entered into a game, and sure enough, the noise was gone. Exiting it and waiting for a few seconds brought it back yet again.
With the cause of the problem uncovered, my next course of action was to disable the various power saving modes. Unfortunately, the BIOS settings on my laptop are minimal, and the option was nonexistent.
Trying a rather radical approach, I removed the ACPI-related drivers and rebooted. These drivers help expose hardware configuration and power management settings to the operating system so that they could be software-controlled. Sure enough, I can now run on battery without the annoying high-pitched buzz. However, the flipside to that was that the function keys no longer work, nor the screen off feature associated with closing the lid. Quite an unacceptable compromise. Resigned, I installed the ACPI related drivers back.
I didn’t fully comprehend what the Piezoelectric Effect was, neither did I manage to stop the annoying high-pitched sound, but at least I rest assured that my laptop isn’t about explode on me, or that I am going crazy.
Credit Cards, VPNs and Fraud Detection
I rely a lot on VPN services, primary to masquerade myself as being located in another country, specifically, pretending to be from US and Europe to bypass content filters, allowing myself to access the likes of Hulu. Another use is for picking optimal network routes to reduce latency when connecting to game servers outside my region. I tend to leave my VPN connected even when I’m done, since there’s no reason to disconnect.
The trouble arises when I start doing online purchases with my credit card while on these VPNs. It must look pretty suspicious to someone over at VISA, seeing as to how purchases originating from Germany, Sweden, and the United States are all using the same card, and hence, tripped their fraud detection mechanism and shutting down my card. I wish there was some way I could explain the above to the customer service agent when I called my bank up this morning, but I don’t think I could have put it in way that would make myself be understood and encourage them to lift the fraud protection.
So here I am, waiting to be issued a new card, and wanting to blame the fraud detection algorithm for placing too much weight on IP geolocation. Then again, who could have thought?
Singapore rolls out FTTH
It looks like Singapore is beginning to roll out Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) networks, upgrading the current Hybrid-Fibre-Coaxial (HFC) network, which currently constitutes a large part of Singapore’s broadband delivery medium.
In FTTH networks, fibre cables are run all the way down from the service provider and terminated directly into the consumer’s home. In HFC networks, although the backhaul comprises of fibre cables, they’re terminated further away from homes, and coaxial cables take over this last mile instead.
I first noticed the new cable installations nearly a week ago. Closer inspection of the markings revealed that they were indeed fibre cables, and the huge rolls of them lying around on the lobby suggested large scale deployment. Conversing with the technicians who were responsible for them confirmed that.
A few days later, these units begin to appear on the landing of every pair of home, which I can only surmise to be FTTH termination equipment.
Although these cables do not seem to be carrying any form of data at this point in time, they are perhaps the most important groundwork ever done for Singapore’s next generation broadband network. Last mile equipment is usually the hardest and most expensive problem to tackle, but it seems to me that we have solved that already.
Nexus One
My Nexus One arrived in the morning yesterday. From placing the order to receiving the product, it took about 3.5 days. I’m impressed.
Why did I not get an iPhone like everyone else?
Although rumored to arrive in the next major OS version, iPhone has no multitasking capabilities (and neither does Windows Mobile 7). It’s a shame that when PDA-phone hybrids were first introduced in the early 2000s, they were being touted for their multitasking capabilities compared to their cousins, the unitasking conventional phone. Ten years down the road, with all the advances in both hardware and software, we suddenly lost that capability. It is now too user unfriendly and draining on hardware to implement multitasking. Have we been advancing backwards? Perhaps we have, because in 1969, we could land on the moon, but after almost 40 years of R&D, we lost that capability too. Soon, we’ll forget how electricity works.
Also, I dislike the closed ecosystem on the iPhone. This area stems out of a philosophical disagree that I have with Steve Jobs. To release an application for the iPhone, you have to do it through the Apple marketplace. However, it is a lengthy and frustrating process to seek Steve Job’s personal blessing for a program and this detrimental for developers. On the Android, you can choose to distribute an application through any medium. The official Android Marketplace, which requires a registration of US$25 before apps can be submitted, and accepted on a good faith basis, is not the only distribution channel.
I’m a geek. Testing out and choosing between various versions of file managers amuse and excites me. I can’t do the same on the iPhone. It just ain’t for me.
Arguments asides, I’m enjoying the Nexus One. Having a QWERTY keyboard is a pleasurable experience as there is none of that wrist and thumb hurting experience ever present when wrangling with the standard 12 key layout on conventional phones. In a way, it makes me feel more socialable as I’m actually inclined to provide an adequate reply to my text messages. Previously, my replies resemble nothing more a text version of a nod and grunt.
I’ve only owned my Nexus One for 12 hours, and used it for even less. If there are any annoyances (as with any product, there are sure to be), I’ve not come across then yet.