Why iPhone is better than the competition

UPDATE: Read my final say on which device is better!

I wanted to elaborate briefly on the “network integration” comment I made when I was justifying the purchase of the iPhone over Android. While I prefer the UI of Android, the “network integration” of the iPhone has impressed me. I will attempt to explain what I mean.

image

At Tufts this past year, I needed to access a web page as I walked into the dining halls. This was always a disaster. The Galaxy Nexus used the following approach to orchestrating data connections between multiple sources. Continue reading Why iPhone is better than the competition

Why I bought the iPhone 5

UPDATE: Read my final say on which device is better!

I’ll start this piece off with a cliche (notice that I’m too ignorantly American to find out how to put an accent on that letter, another cliche):

“Back when I was a boy, cell phones used to last all day!”

So yesterday I went out and purchased an old standby: the iPhone 5 for Verizon, on contract. I got the cheapest one they made, the 16 GB in black. Most of you who know me would note my long-held hatred of Apple in general. And this is true. I used Windows for the longest time. I further appreciate open source software (if not primarily because I fall into the category of people who are paid to make open source software work properly). I had a dumb phone up until my senior year, when I finally upgraded to a smartphone, the then-fancy-shmancy-new Verizon Droid Charge. It was in fact one of the first phones that worked on Verizon’s not-actually-4G LTE network, giving me speeds faster than most home wired connections from my telephone.

That was awesome. My phone was 10 times as fast as my Grandmother’s DSL. What could possibly be bad about this?

One word: Battery Life. On my first day the Charge had dramatically discharged by the end of the day and died. Suddenly I went from having a smart phone, straight through having a dumb phone, all the way to a paper weight. Many people joked about it’s name being the action which it was doomed to function most of the time.

Problems:

  1. Verizon, are you inept? Stupid? Well…
  2. Why would anybody sell a phone that didn’t last all day? That defies the point of being a phone… Phones are used to make calls when we need to make calls, not only for the first few hours of the day until it dies.

So after a great bit of hemming and hawing and rooting and de-bloating and buying a huge 3.5 amp-hour battery, I finally had a phone that could last nearly two days. It looked hideous. Then one of my friends advised me to the fact that VZW had since abandoned the Charge and I would be forever stuck on Android 2.3. My friend showed my Stock Jelly Bean on the Galaxy Nexus and I was hooked. I bought one used off of craigslist. Why was the man selling it, you ask? “Poor battery life.”

How I love the Galaxy Nexus. The GSM version has beautiful battery life, HSPA+, completely stock un-VZWucked up Android, a thin profile and a nice screen. The VZW version is similar, excepting of course the fact that Google Wallet has been tragically disabled. And one other thing: the 4G modem current draw is sufficient to drain the standard battery in less than 6 hours. Turn on the screen and download a web page and you could cook something on the top half of the phone.

So I got the long life battery. Finally my phone would last 12-14 hours (at best). And I truly loved the phone…but it always seemed to die at inconvenient times.

It was mostly anger. The imbeciles who would release a phone to the open market where the LTE modem current draw was >150 ma. The battery would dip below 80% before lunch. So after many months (and a rogue glass of water on the Nexus) I purchased an iPhone yesterday.

Pros:

  1. Excellent network integration — visual voicemail without monthly stipends to VZW, text messages received exponentially faster than the Nexus (why???).
  2. Battery been unplugged for six hours. Current battery status: 91%. Will it be dead at the end of the day? Nope.
  3. Thin. No screwing around (did get the otter box for safety).
  4. Built in Quad-Band GSM modem. Phone ships GSM unlocked!!!

Cons:

  1. Poor Google account integration.
  2. Interface is worse than stock Android 4.2. Still feels like Android 2.3.
  3. Apple meow meow bullshit

To me, a phone should be, first and foremost, a phone. While we may not see smartphones approach the power efficiency of the dumb phones for some time, the iPhone is a step in the right direction. (Ah the days when we could just not bring our charger on a weekend outing…)

Bank of America ATMs: Technologically Impressive, Slow as Molasses.

BOA ATMs are the second best thing since sliced bread. They can count bills and read checks (and print check images out on thermal paper!), but for god’s sake, why are they so slow? It’s as if every time you press a button it fires up a dial up modem in back and executes a MySQL query over 9600 baud.

I appreciate the tech in the machine, but the implementation of the communication architecture must be horrific…

DNS Made Easy: DNS Service that isn’t terrible!

UPDATE: This article shows that DNS Made Easy has the fastest response time of all managed DNS solutions available.

I saw the DNSMadeEasy.com free trial and jumped on it. We used them at my job this past summer, so I had experience with their API (which tragically isn’t available to the low-end tier…alas).

Massive-DDoS-Hits-DNS-Services-Provider-2

Continue reading DNS Made Easy: DNS Service that isn’t terrible!

Linux Sysadmin Lesson 135: Do not configure your firewall over SSH.

Wanted to make sure my server was secure, so I was updating IPTables config. I was also curious what would happen if I configured my firewall over SSH. I was correct: my SSH connection was instantly dropped. Time for a walk to the other side of campus to hit the reset button.

UPDATE: So I managed to clear out everything and reconfigure IPTables. Seems like a program that would be cool to learn more about (re: setting up my own NAT router with a linux computer and two NICs). Overall, I’ve simply allowed all outgoing and only allowed incoming on ports that I’m actually using (just in case some random thing is running that I’m not aware of).

Of course I’m still vulnerable to the reverse SSH tunnel…

God Bless the HP 8924C: A Tale and Tutorial of the Service Monitor

God bless the HP 8924C: without you poor college students would not be able to possess RF test equipment way above their pay grade. My model is the 60 W continuous version, US with green CRT. I was able to secure this wonder for $869 shipped from Washington to Boston, MA on eBay. It also seems like my purchase raised the price of these units on eBay by $200-$500. Sorry. Mine is in “Almost New” condition despite being over 17 years old. It originally retailed for $30,000. Pretty cool stuff. It cost more than cars back then.

2013-01-31 15.33.45

In the picture, you can see it dominating my dorm room desk (room mate is thrilled, obviously). It’s huge and heavy and says “TWO PERSON LIFT!” on the side. I have also officially named it “Bruce.” Continue reading God Bless the HP 8924C: A Tale and Tutorial of the Service Monitor