Archive for January, 2009

Why delaying the date of the DTV transition may be a very bad idea

January 23, 2009 at 5:02 pm · Filed under Digital Television, FCC, Legislation, consumer, government

Reuters (and serveral other sources) are reporting that “A proposed Senate compromise to delay the nationwide switch to digital TV … would postpone the transition date to June 12 from the planned February 17, on worries that consumers are not ready.”

Had this action been taken six months ago, it would not be a problem.  Had it been taken three months ago, there would only have been minor issues.  But folks, it is only three and a half weeks until the scheduled transition date (and by the time any legislation is actually passed, it will probably be somewhere between two and three weeks).

The first point I would make, and which many have already made in various forums, is that anyone who hasn’t gotten the message about the conversion by now probably isn’t ever going to get it.  In the last twelve months I think I’ve seen more ads about the DTV transition than political ads (and remember, last year was an election year).  Anyone who’s ignored the ten gazillion ads they’ve likely seen already isn’t going to suddenly jump out of their La-Z-Boy and decide to do something, just because Congress gives them another four months.

But the bigger problem is that there are going to be a lot of unanticipated consequences if we delay the transition now.  That is because many stations have already started to make preparations for the final transition.  For example, several stations have already cut power to their analog transmitters, so people in fringe areas may not be getting a good signal on those stations in either analog or digital format until after the transition.

For example, WZZM-TV in Grand Rapids has already cut the power on their analog signal on channel 13.  Their temporary digital signal is way up on UHF channel 39.  The plan is that after the transition, they will move their digital signal back to channel 13 with full power.  In the meantime, people in their fringe coverage areas may not be able to receive either their analog or digital signals reliably.

And it’s not just that one station.  When I mentioned this on Twitter this morning, Twitterer @quetwo replied that “WILX, WXYZ, WYSM are all lowering power — WKAR had to turn off analog already.” And that’s just in Michigan, folks.

Here’s another example of why some of us have been waiting for the transition.  The area where we live is sort of in between the GrandRapids/Kalamazoo/Battle Creek market and the Cadillac/Traverse City market.  Depending on which way the antenna is pointed, we can (usually) get a watchable analog signal from either WWMT in Kalamazoo or WWTV in Cadillac, both of which are CBS affiliates.  But WWMT’s transmitter is in the same general direction as most of the transmitters for the other stations we watch, so we tend to stay on that one.  While we get a much clearer picture from their digital signal, the problem is that right now their digital transmitter is on channel 2, which if you know anything about how television waves propagate is the worst possible channel they could be on with regard to interference from and with other stations (especially in the spring of the year).

To compound the problem, there are existing analog transmitters on channel 2 in Detroit, Chicago, and Green Bay, Wisconsin.  So, WWMT cannot run too “hot” with their digital transmitter power, in order not to cause interference with those stations, and at the same time all those other analog stations are causing interference to WWMT’s digital signal.  The result in the outermost parts of their coverage area is complete dropouts in picture and sound, which can last as long as a half minute, or longer.

Now, the post transition plan is this:  WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, which has their analog transmitter on channel 8 and their digital transmitter on channel 7, is going to stay on channel 7 post transition.  That means that channel 8 opens up and WWMT is going to move their digital transmitter to that frequency.  ANY channel above the FM radio band (which is between channels 6 and 7) is far less susceptible to co-channel interference from distant transmitters in the first place, but also there are far fewer sources of potential interference on channel 8.  So we would likely get a far better signal from WWMT in two ways:  First, the aforementioned reduced interference, and second, they could increase their power and not have to worry as much about stepping on another station’s signal.

And my point is, if you bought a converter box or a digital-ready television and are getting marginal signals on some of the weaker/more distant  stations, reception may very likely improve for you after the transition. Don’t fall victim to those highly deceptive cable or satellite ads that imply that you must subscribe to their service to continue to watch television – at worst, you might have to get rid of that old antenna that your father (or grandfather) put on the roof back at the dawn of television, and get a decent antenna (but DON’T look for one that says “digital” or “DTV” on the box – that’s just marketing hype.  Any TV antenna with similar specifications works equally well for analog or digital signals, even if it doesn’t say a word about DTV on the box.  Oh, and it doesn’t have to say “color” for you to pick up color television signals, either!). In a fringe area you will need a larger antenna than if you are closer to the transmitters, but you can go to a site like TV Fool to help determine just what type of antenna you really need.

My only concern is that if Congress delays the DTV transition now, a lot of us who’ve already prepared for the transition are going to have four more months of marginal signals on both analog and digital channels, especially when watching those stations that have already started to decommission their analog equipment.  If you share similar concerns, you may want to call your U.S. Senators and your U.S. Representative first thing Monday morning.  Let’s not put this off any longer just because some people have refused to prepare for the transition (and probably still won’t, until the signal on their analog TV turns to snow).

Besides, do you really want to be bombarded with four more months of those damn DTV conversion commercials and PSA’s?

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New Products Wanted, part 2: Music Players with “Radio Station Crossfade”

January 18, 2009 at 3:28 pm · Filed under Linux, Mac, OS X, software

Most software and hardware that plays music files (such as MP3 and similar types of files) simply plays one file after another.  You can usually set it to “shuffle play” the songs, but even so, it makes no attempt to overlap songs.  So, when you play a typical playlist, it plays a song, then (often) you hear a long fadeout, then a maybe a second or two of silence, then finally the next song starts.

Those of us who grew up in an era where a radio station would play several songs in a row recall that above all, you never heard silence between a set of songs.  As one song faded out, the DJ would start the next song over the fadeout of the previous one.  However – and this is the significant part – the next song was started at full volume.  They did not try to bring the next song up gradually, nor (in most cases) make the previous song end too quickly.  It was a natural fade, such that in many cases you almost never noticed the transition from one song to the next (unless the DJ talked over the intro, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion).

Most music players simply cannot handle that.  If they try anything at all, they will do what they call “crossfading” (and the majority of music players don’t even implement that).  The way “crossfading” is usually implemented is that in the last six seconds or so that a song is playing, they gradually fade the volume down from 100% to 0%. At the same time, they fade the next song up from 0% to 100% for the first six seconds.  This may be easy to program, but it is totally WRONG.  It is wrong because it does not take into account that the previous song may be fading out on its own, or may have a second or two of silence at the end that should be skipped altogether.  And in most cases (unless you are running a disco) you really don’t want the next song faded up – you want it to start at 100% volume.

There is a correct way to do crossfades, and it is what I call a “Radio Station Crossfade.”  You first compute the peak volume level of the music file in play.  Then you look at the last 20 seconds or so of the file (should be an adjustable value) and try to figure out where the volume has faded out to about the 40% point (also should be adjustable).  At that point, you simply start the next song at full volume, while watching the playout of the previous song – if it still hasn’t completely faded out after about three more seconds (again, adjustable) you do a quick fade from 100% to 0% in about 3 seconds, so that no matter what, after the next song has been playing for about five or six seconds, all traces of the previous song are gone and you are completely into the next song.

I have never seen any music player get this right, except ONE – and it isn’t a player, per se, but rather a plugin for the venerable Winamp media player.  It’s called SqrSoft Advanced Crossfading Output and here is the description from the author’s web site:

SqrSoft Advanced Crossfading Output is a Winamp output plugin that allows mixing audio files by applying a “crossfade”. The crossfade is made by an engine that supports non-linear crossfades and automatic detection of the mixing point. All these features make this plugin the perfect tool for parties or small radio stations.

The mixing engine has a sound analyzer, which monitors the level at the beginning and end of each track, and adjust the mixing point to obtain perfect crossfades. It also has in its output stage a slot for a DSP plugin (to be processed after the crossfade), allowing the crossfade to be sent to a Shoutcast server, a Compressor or any other DSP plugin.

There are a lot of settings that define how the crossfade will be done when you press stop, seek, skip, or the track level.

The SqrSoft Advanced Crossfading Output works perfectly, once you have tweaked its settings to your liking (and it has a LOT of settings, but fortunately there are “preset” files you can try – more on that below).  You can even get it to do the “disco style” crossfade if that’s your desire (where it fades the next song up while fading the previous one down), but it will do exactly what you want.

I like this plugin so much that even on ny Mac, I forego iTunes and fire up Winamp with the SqrSoft plugin (how, you may ask? By using  Codeweavers CrossOver Mac, which Codeweavers gave away for free for one day only recently, as part of a promotion – hope you got your copy.  Winamp runs perfectly well under CrossOver Mac, as long as you stick with the “classic” skin – remember that you can get to the Winamp menus and options by right-clicking on the Winamp player window.  If you use Linux and got CrossOver Linux during the giveaway, I would imagine that Winamp would run just fine under that as well.  If you missed the Codeweavers giveway, you could always buy a copy of CrossOver, or you could try running Winamp under Wine).

It’s really too bad that the SqrSoft Advanced Crossfading Output plugin only runs natively under Windows, and only with Winamp, because the type of crossfading this permits would be a great addition to a cross-platform media player (such as Songbird) or to any hardware music player.  Can’t anybody else get crossfading right? It’s kind of a shame when you have to run a Windows program on a Mac just to get a decent crossfade!

For anyone who may be wondering how to configure the SqrSoft Advanced Crossfading Output plugin – if you go to their web page and scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll see several presets. Try the one for Radio, and if that one doesn’t please you, try a few others until you find one you like – then just try tweaking settings until you get exactly the crossfade you really want.

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New Products Wanted, part 1: Simple VPN devices (switches and/or routers)

January 15, 2009 at 4:06 am · Filed under Internet, Security, VoIP, networking

Every now and again, particularly after seeing some of the junk that comes out at shows like the CES, I wonder why a particular product has never been offered.  Today, I want to throw out one such idea, hopefully the first of several (hence the “part 1″ in the title). To put this in perspective, however, I first want you to consider the common consumer-grade router that most of us have on our home networks.  Before these existed, you could have a router but you pretty much had to have a dedicated Linux box for the purpose (and in commercial installations, they still use dedicated Linux boxes running special software as routers).  But there is no way that most home users could figure out how to set up a router, therefore the dedicated router (as sold by Linksys, Netgear, D-Link and probably several other companies) was born.

There is another type of software that ought to be moved into its own box, and that is Virtual Private Network (VPN) client and server software.  Yes, I’m aware of OpenVPN, and I tried to find setup instructions that someone like me could understand, but to no avail – it looks like you need a degree in computer networking to understand how to set up this type of software.  And yet, built into hardware devices, it could be immensely useful in certain circumstances.  Let’s consider the following diagram:

Diagram showing position of "client side" and "server side" VPN devices

In this particular case we have a SIP-based VoIP adapter at a remote location.  Anyone who has worked with Asterisk behind the wrong kind of firewall knows the issues involved with using SIP and not having things set up just so (one-way audio, anyone)? But also, we may for whatever reason want that “remote” VoiP adapter to appear as if it were on the local network (maybe we have an ISP playing games with SIP packets?).  So we plug the VoIP adapter into our “VPN Client-Side Device” and on the other end, we have a companion “VPN Server-Side Device” which in this case makes two connections to the router – one to receive the “tunneled” data and the second to send the unencrypted data back onto the local network.  The green arrows represent the “tunnel”, the orange arrows show where the data from the VoIP adapter enters and exits the tunnel. Please note this is entirely a wired connection, we aren’t using wireless anywhere here.  Also note that as far as the VoIP adapter is concerned, the only network it can “see” is the one at the other end of the tunnel – under no circumstances can it access the Internet other than by going through the tunnel.

I show this using a VoIP adapter, but I’m sure that people could think of a lot of other ways this could be used, and a lot of other devices that could be connected to the client end.

Now some will probably argue that it is inefficient to have a device that does nothing but provide the tunnel.  But that’s the point – almost anyone could set this up.  If you send the client-side device to your grandmother, she can set it up (well, maybe that’s pushing it a bit, but you get my point).  People who would never touch a Linux box or a server could use this.

Someone will doubtless say that it would be more efficient to build this device into the router itself.  Sure it would, but here is the issue with that.  If you put it in the router, then (at least on the client side) you are going to have to provide both “tunneled” and “untunneled” jacks.  And then you have to decide, will we add extra jacks for the tunnel, or will we require some kind of web-based configuration to make each jack tunneled or non-tunneled? On the server side it would be easier – since the idea is that you’re feeding the tunneled data back into the local network, that could be done within the router itself, and you’d just need a way to configure that. But, there are doubtless many people who do not want to replace their existing routers.

Maybe a better idea would be to combine the units with a switch – you’d connect the switch to your router and, on the client side, you’d have four new tunneled ports (that connect to the distant network) and four new untunneled ports (that connect to the local network) – or something like that.  On the server side, you’d plug the switch into two ports on your router and it would give you eight more jacks for your local network, so you get a net gain of six jacks (Note: There may be some networking gurus reading this saying “You don’t need to use two connections to the router, you can do it all on one” – and if that’s the case, great, just use one.  The sum of my experience with networking is plugging computers and other devices into a router, so when conceptualizing this I’m thinking you need two connections, but I may well be wrong about that.  Probably am, in fact).

Another thing to keep in mind is that on one end of the tunnel or the other, you may want to use a software client or server.  So these devices should use some open protocol – is OpenVPN the best choice? I could see a lot of situations where you’d want the dedicated hardware on the client side (so you could send a box to someone and say, “Just plug your VoIP adapter into this device, and then plug this device into your router”) but on the server side you want to run an actual OpenVPN server, or whatever. A VoIP provider with a customer that keeps experiencing one-way audio could ship one of these boxes out, and yet on the provider’s end they’d almost certainly want to use a software server.  Maybe you’re a Linux geek, and your grandfather in Poland wants to watch programs on Hulu – you could tell him to buy one of the client boxes, then set up the OpenVPN software on your server. Sure, he could set up the server software on his computer, but do you really want to try and talk him through that?

Let me go over the main “ideal” criteria I would set for these types of boxes:

  • They must be open source, and compatible with software clients and/or servers that run on all major platforms (such as OpenVPN?)
  • They must be dead simple to set up and use
  • They must be able to find each other, even if both units are behind NAT firewalls
  • They must NOT require that ports be opened in a firewall, at least on the client side
  • Should be very flexible with regard to port usage, and able to switch ports if the “usual” port is blocked
  • If they need to communicate basic information with each other (e.g. current IP address and port usage) they should be able to use an open server (perhaps a Jabber-based IM service such as Gtalk??)
  • On the client side, the connected device(s) should never under any circumstances “see” the local internet connection – only that on the other side of the tunnel

The goal is, to the greatest extent possible these should be “plug and play” devices.  I fully expect there will be some configuration needed, but the less there is, the better. Remember, these are devices for intended for Windows users that run Internet Explorer as their browser (just as an example of the experience level of users that might buy these).

This would be a natural product for Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, or some startup company for that matter.  But I have never seen such a device.  I have seen an occasional higher-end router that advertises some type of VPN capability, but they are nowhere near drop-dead simple to set up and use, and they are also not priced for the typical consumer.  I also have no idea what they are compatble with, but I’m pretty sure it’s NOT OpenVPN.

Comments on this idea are welcome.  Oh, and if you’ve ever found any really good, clear, “cookbook” type instructions on how to set up OpenVPN (or any other VPN, for that matter), please leave a link in the comments.

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What is wrong with people lately?

January 13, 2009 at 5:27 pm · Filed under Editorial, consumer, customer service

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but people seem to be acting really strange lately. I was reminded of it when I came across this story:

Father and son try to cut to front of line, go to jail (via The Consumerist)

I was reading another story the other day (sorry, I don’t recall the source) that basically talked about how people are going off on store clerks for the slightest reason, such as the store being out of stock of a particular item.  The gist of the article (and the comments that followed) was that retail employees are seeing a new level of rudeness from customers, and don’t really understand why.

I’ve also noticed a similar effect in certain online forums, particularly those that allow unmoderated conversations in real time.  You can go to a forum where mostly helpful people hung out a year or two ago, and today find that the only “helpful” people there think they know everything and are ready and willing – eager, even – to tell you what an idiot you are (especially if you don’t immediately accept any “helpful” advice they offer, even if it’s fundamentally flawed).

It’s as though people have lost their social inhibitions and are just doing whatever makes them feel good at the moment, with no regard for other people. Maybe it’s stress from the economy, or family issues, or something else, but if this is how they are acting now, I wonder how they will act if conditions get really bad?

I understand this is not entirely a new phenomenon – witness the numerous incidents of “road rage” every year – but it just seems as though people are increasingly acting as if they “just don’t give a damn” about how their actions affect other human beings.  You see it when you call a large corporation that has screwed up in some way, and no one cares if your problem is ever resolved.  But now, more and more, it seems that attitude is starting to be seen in personal interactions between people.

I’m sure that some religious people would say this is a symptom of getting closer to the “end of days” (when “the love of many will grow cold”), while those with more “alternative” or “new-age” beliefs might say this is because we are getting closer to 2012 (don’t ask me what will happen then, if anything, but apparently some people consider the end of the Mayan calendar as something quite significant).  I think it may have more to do with the fact that life as we have know it is changing so fast that people just can’t keep up on an emotional level.

Consider the fact that if your great-grandfather had a skill or knew a trade, there was a good chance that he could remain employed using that skill or trade all his life.  Nowadays, everything you learn seems to be obsolete within a very short period of time (unless you are working at a renaissance  fair, or something like that). And he may have grown up in or near the house he was born in.  He probably paid for everything with cash or checks, and the idea of buying something other than a house or car or credit would have seemed abhorrent to him.  What I’m getting at is that life was, in many ways, far simpler back then (especially in the days before big government). Note that I said “simpler”, not necessarily “better.”

Then along came computers, which were supposed to simplify our lives – which in many ways they did, but in many other ways they have made life increasingly complex.  Also, I cannot fail to mention that computers have allowed our kids to become virtual killers in their own bedrooms or family rooms. Usually, when anyone tries to make an issue of that, someone will say “I played violent video games all though my teenage years and I turned out okay”, to which I recall that back when we were teenagers many kids drank liquor, and none that I know of became alcoholics, but of course that doesn’t mean that there were no teenage alcoholics.  Everyone has a different personality, and what doesn’t affect one person at all can have a significant impact on the psyche of another.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling for a ban on video games or anything like that, but I do wonder if they are contributing to the desensitization of some people – maybe a small minority, but still some percentage of the population – toward the feelings and concerns of other people.

[EDIT: Note that I had not yet seen this story when I wrote the above paragraph.]

Well, now (if you listen to the news) we are being confronted with times such as most of us have never seen.  Maybe this is all it is taking for some of the folks who were not that stable to begin with to start to crack, and for those who definitely have some sort of disorder to really lose it.  I don’t know, but it makes me wonder what will happen if the new year brings even more challenges.

So what I am asking is this:  Please realize that these are difficult times for all of us.  If there was ever a time to try to put others first, to observe the Golden Rule, now is that time.  At the same time, bear in mind that there are people around you that are starting to lose it, and that now is probably not a good time to pick fights with them – you may both end up worse off. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, “If you can keep your head when all about you, Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,” then you will be far ahead of the game.

I hope things get better this year – I really do.  But I can predict with some certainty that things will not get better if everyone starts yielding to their basic instincts, and forgets everything they’ve learned about how to behave toward others. You have the power to make your future what you want it to be (did I just paraphrase “Back to the Future III?”), so perhaps it would be a good idea to act as if you want civilization to continue!

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A product someone needs to manufacture for the Digital TV transition

January 4, 2009 at 9:15 pm · Filed under Digital Television

Believe it or not, there are still people in the United States that do not subscribe to Cable TV service, or to pay Satellite service.  There may be many reasons for this, from feeling that the cable and satellite companies charge too much, to not being heavy TV watchers, to having discovered that there’s a lot of free (and legal!) programming available via satellite if you have the right equipment and know how to use it (hint: The magic search phrase is “Free-To-Air“, and that is all you’re getting out of me on the subject).

The problem is that when Analog TV stations go off the air on February 17, 2009, there are going to be a lot of people who have problems receiving stations – particularly those in “fringe” areas where the signal strength isn’t that great.  The issue with digital TV is it’s an all-or-nothing proposition – you either get crystal clear picture and sound, or none at all, depending on the signal strength.  And with over the air TV, signal strength can vary, for example, when an airplane passes overhead.  This can case the picture and sound to freeze up at various intervals and for various lengths of time.

But there is another issue.  Often, people who live in a fringe area can receive signals from more than one direction that are of nearly equal strength.  For example, if you live at a certain point between Grand Rapids and Lansing in Michigan, you might receive stations from both communities nearly equally well, IF you have your antenna pointed toward their transmitter.  And therein lies the rub.  If you have a tall antenna (as is often required in fringe areas to avoid the aforementioned signal dropouts) you can put a rotor on it and change the antenna direction, but a) this takes time,  b) it may be difficult to get the antenna pointed in precisely the right direction each time it’s moved, and c) If you are feeding more than one TV set (or VCR or whatever) you may improve the signal on one set at the expense of losing a desired signal on another (whereupon the spouse and/or kids start yelling at you).

The way to avoid that is to have two antennas (either on the same or separate masts), each pointed in the respective correct direction for the signals you want to receive.  But even with analog signals, it has always been difficult to combine signals from two antennas.  With digital you have the added factor that you cannot try different configurations and actually see how much it is improving or degrading the signal (the all-or-nothing thing, remember?).  So what we will need in the coming months is a way to digitally combine the signals from two separate antennas.  Something like this (pdf file), in other words. What that device does is to take a digital channel and convert it to another channel, so it can be inserted into a different antenna or cable feed. It’s built for use by cable companies, and priced that way too (which is to say, way out of the range of many home users).

What we need now is a consumer-grade version of that device, one that may not meet cable company specs but would be good enough for home use.  If it could convert multiple channels, that would be a plus.  The idea is, you’d have your two antennas, one your “primary” and the other your “secondary”.  You’d feed both the primary and secondary antenna feeds into this box, and a single output would emerge with a combined feed.  However, rather than simply acting as a signal combiner (which would be bad), it would actually take one or more channels off the secondary antenna and convert them digitally to a totally different frequency, then insert those “clean” converted channel streams into the original (primary) feed.  My suggestion would be to convert the secondary channels down to channels 2,3,4, and/or 5 (which will be unused in many parts of the country) and then have a setting that switches in a high-pass filter, so no signal on those channels is passed from the primary antenna feed. But the point is, we need something in the (preferably) under-$100 range that can do this (at least for a single channel).  Given that digital TV converter boxes can be built for under $50, I suspect that a consumer grade unit could be built for not much more than that.

Granted that there would not be a huge market for these, yet the aforemention Free-To-Air receivers are built overseas and sold here for not much more than $100, and I have to think that what they do is probably at least as complicated as the device I’m suggesting. And while no self-respecting cable company would use one of those as their satellite receiver (for those few channels they need to receive that are not scrambled), they are nevertheless good enough for home use, so I see something of a parallel in this situation – we don’t need something that can be rack-mounted and that will feed 100,000 customers, just something that will feed a few TV sets or other devices in a home TV distribution system. Could someone – Channel Master or Winegard, perhaps – build and sell this thing, please?

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In a Twitter

January 4, 2009 at 8:05 pm · Filed under Twitter, Wireless, consumer, corporation, customer service

There are many reasons I don’t blog much anymore, but one of the reasons was that when I did post something it was rare to get any comments, and the ones that I did get were sometimes more negative than I cared for.  But also, very often I found myself writing a paragraph or two just to say, in effect, “I found this article on another site, you should check it out.”

In the last few months I have been posting most of my links to other articles on Twitter (under the user name MichiganTelepho – damn their 15 character limit) and this tends to work out well because it discourages me from being too verbose, and yet I am far more likely to post a link when I don’t have to write a long article about it.

That’s worked pretty well until tonight, when I posted a link to this article:

The high cost of high-tech teens

…..which is basically an article about how parents are getting cell phones for their kids, totally unaware of the pitfalls of extra charges for texting and other “extras”, some of which are buried in the fine print of the contract. I thought it was a good article because it educates parents about the problem and encourages them to act responsibly (by, for example, not getting a cell phone for a child until they have reached an age where they can use it responsibly).

Now, keep in mind, it was just a link to an article I thought was interesting and useful.  I didn’t write it.  I was, therefore,  not prepared for the responses I started to get.  For example, one of the early commenters said:

is this really a consumeraffairs type issue? It seems to me that the parents have no one to blame but themselves..

Uh, what?  Where did that come from? Then another person chimed in…

Hard for me to feel sorry for parents who give their kids mobile phones and not understand the consequences. Prepaid FTW!

I could not understand where these comments were coming from.  The article was intended to educate parents so they would not be irresponsible.  On the other hand, I do feel that the carriers share some of the blame by failing to conspicuously disclose the things that might cause extra charges, and  by (in some cases) failing to give parents an easy way to block access to those extra-cost services.  I also noted that as adults become smarter about corporate ripoffs, corporations are increasingly going after teenagers and pre-teens, knowing that they are not as wise to the ways of the world and can be more easily influenced to spend, spend, spend (particularly if the parents are picking up the bill – which they shouldn’t, which was one of the points made in the article).

In any case, things got a bit heated after that. Why was I getting all these negative comments about an article I thought was helpful?  And where was this “blame the victim” mentality coming from? My take is that many parents only use their cell phones (if they own one at all) for making phone calls, and that’s it.  They are, in many cases, totally clueless about text messages, charges for web access and so on.  If you are reading this blog you are almost certainly not among those people, but they are out there – maybe they are your parents or grandparents. So when their child asks for a phone, they think they are buying a phone that can be used for, you know, making phone calls, as in voice calls.  And very often the phone companies sell usage plans but do not explain about possible extra charges that may be incurred, so the parent is totally blindsided when they get their first bill.  I don’t think this is right at all, and yes, I do think that people have a right to complain about such things on consumer sites, if only so that others might read their experience and not fall victim to the scam.

Maybe I just don’t understand the ways of Twitter, but it seems to me that if someone posts an article they thought was helpful, and you disagree, you should post your disagreement as a comment on the original article – not go off on a tangent in Twitter, which just seems like an attack on the person who posted the link to article (especially if you send it as a direct message to that person).  Then again, at my age maybe I just don’t understand how these social network things are supposed to work.  Maybe I’m looking for something more akin to “60 Minutes” and the younger crowd is expecting “Jerry Springer.”  Anyway, at one point I got really pissed off at the tone of the comments, to the point that I un-friended two people (after taking a few deep breaths I re-friended one of them). Is Twitter really supposed to bring about that type of discussion?

For the record, when I post a link to an article I did not personally write in Twitter, that simply means I thought it worthy of consideration, NOT that I want to defend it against people who have nothing better to do than find something negative to post!  And, also for the record, I am NOT advocating irresponsible parenting, and parents should not yield to pressure to buy kids everything they want – but on the other hand I am sick of the “blame the victim” mentality when corporations set out to deceive and cheat customers. There is a mentality among some younger folks that I just don’t understand, that basically says it’s okay to cheat people if you are clever enough about it, or can trick them into signing a contract that allows you to cheat them.  I have no idea when this mentality became so pervasive – sure, the P.T. Barnum types have always been with us, but in the past they were more often seen as scoundrels. Today’s young people seem to have a much higher tolerance for being taken, but when someone complains about it their first response seems to be “It was your fault!  You should have known!” – at least until they are the victim.

Anyway, I hope Twitter doesn’t degenerate into a Fidonet-type experience (for those too young to have experienced it, Fidonet was a network of dial-up BBS systems that carried “echomail” conferences, in which discussions often became so contentious that some people took to calling it “Fight-O-Net”).  If you disagree with an article that someone posted, first please be sure you have read the entire article (I suspect that the people who commented on the link I posted hadn’t got past the first page) and then place your comments in the comment section for that article, if a comment section exists.  Don’t direct message the person who posted the link and start attacking them – they didn’t write the article and may not even care to defend it.  If you must comment on Twitter, just send out a general message that says something like “I just read the article at (short link address) and disagree because…” – that way the person who posted the link doesn’t feel obliged to return a comment. Keep it friendly, and you won’t be causing people’s blood pressure to shoot through the roof!

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Improve the Mac’s ability to display colors

January 4, 2009 at 5:12 am · Filed under Apple, Mac, OS X

This is reposted with the permission of the original author from a (probably) now-defunct Macintosh-oriented blog. This one will not be of much use to non-Mac owners. I brought this article over here solely because I have a need to refer to it every now and then, and didn’t want it to disappear!

One issue that some Mac “switchers” have encountered is that the colors on the Mac display look just a bit washed out compared to those on a PC. It’s generally not enough of a difference that anyone would complain; in fact, many new Mac users would think it was their imagination, or would attribute the difference to hardware variations (different display or graphics card).

In reality, however, there is a difference, and it is due to a configuration choice made by Apple. There is a page that describes the issue in some depth:

A solution to Mac “Save For Web” colour discrepancies

The gist of the problem is that Apple has chosen to, by default, go with a gamma setting of 1.8, whereas other systems use 2.2 as the default. On the above-mentioned page, it gives this bit of wisdom: “Unless you have a color management expert instructing you otherwise, select a 2.2 gamma and a D65 white point.” However, the white point is not as important as the gamma, and you may wish to use the default white point that has been determined to be right for your display. It’s most important to change the gamma setting, and calibrate the display in the process. How do you do this? By setting up a new color profile. This is fairly easy to do.

First of all, if you are using the “Shades” program (or any other program that gives you software control over display brightness or any other display parameter), go into the program or preference panel and turn it off before you begin this process, otherwise it may fight you at every step of the calibration process, turning an easy task into a really difficult one with less than satisfactory results.

Go to System Preferences, click on Displays, then go to the “Color” tab, then click on “Calibrate”:

System Preferences-Display-Color Tab

System Preferences-Display-Color Tab

Then follow the instructions. BUT, before you change the setting of your display’s contrast (using the control on the display itself), make a note of the current setting. You will be changing it as part of the calibration process but once you are all finished, you may decide that you want to go back to that setting, or something reasonably close.

During the calibration, when you are asked to adjust the monitor’s brightness, it will say to set it to where you can “just see” the oval:

Display Adjustment screen

Display Adjustment screen

The only problem is, Apple’s idea of “just seeing it” and yours might be a bit different. We wound up using a setting that was a bit more than where the oval was just barely perceptible, but still a bit less than where the two halves of the surrounding rectangle started to appear as different, and that seemed to work best. Originally we tried setting it where the oval was just barely perceptible, but then after the adjustments were completed we couldn’t get a monitor setting that we liked (everything was too dark for our liking, particularly on some of the wallpaper).

When you get to this screen:

Target Gamma Selection

Target Gamma Selection

You want to select the “2.2 Television Gamma” because that is the setting used on most non-Apple computers, and therefore that is the setting that most graphics (including those on the Web) are adjusted for. This is the setting that Apple probably should have used in the first place – at least they give you the option to use it, but we think it should have been the default. On the next screen you’ll be asked to select a target white point:

Target white point selection

Target white point selection

We suspect that “D65″ and “Native” are very close on modern displays (perhaps even identical). You can try both and see which works best, or you can just go with the recommendation from the above-mentioned article to use D65.

When you are all through, you are likely to see color in places that only looked grey or washed out before. That is because Apple’s default color profile and gamma setting tends to wash out certain colors. But, unless you have just acquired your Mac, it will look strange to you, because it’s not what you’ve become used to. You may have to try adjusting the monitor’s brightness and contrast to get something you like. The interesting thing is that whites may seem “whiter” than before and that may throw you a bit, but it will also show how screwed up Apple’s default color profile is. Try it for at least a day or two before you decide you don’t like it. We found that by setting the monitor’s contrast back to the original setting (the one we told you to note in the previous paragraph) and then using the brightness to adjust the monitor for best picture yielded the best results, but your results may be different.

If you decide you really hate the calibrated profile, you can always go back to the default Mac color profile for your monitor, but then you can expect displays on other computers to look strange. Keep in mind that if you’ve gotten used to looking at washed out colors, it may take some time to adjust!

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