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-James

Cox is unreliable, unhelful, and stupid.

Posted by james on Dec 31, 12:00 AM

We have Cox here at the house for Internet and TV, and Lauren's had it for the past 3 or 4 years. It's been ok, but lately we've been having problems with the internet cutting out randomly. It would appear to be really slow, since eventually pages would load. Looking at a ping log it was obvious that the signal was cutting out for about 10 seconds out of every minute or so. This would happen in episodes, so the internet would be fine all day, then this would start happening every minute for a half hour, then it'd be fine again.

First, I called Cox tech support to see if there were any issues in the area. The tech said no, no issues in the area and he could see that my modem had been online and fine for more than 30 days. This definitely wasn't true, since I'd been having trouble recently. I waited a few days, then called back because it kept happening. This time the tech said he could see on my modem's log that the signal was just barely adequate, and would gradually get worse until it reset. He said there's no reason the first tech shouldn't have seen it, it was right there. So the first tech lied to me... not good.

They sent out a tech to come to the house to try to fix it. He inspected everything, tested signals, and got them to boost the signals by enough to bring the modem within spec. It was working then, since it was not experiencing an episode at that moment. He left, and about 30 minutes later the same thing happened. I called back to Cox tech support, and they told me that a tech had looked it over, and that there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the modem, so it might be an issue with my router and they would not send someone out to check out. What a lame cop out! Especially in light of the fact that I can consistently ping the modem's internal IP, even when the dropouts are occurring, so that means my router is totally fine. The problem lies somewhere between the modem and anything outside the modem (even Cox's DHCP servers).

But they just wont send someone out to take a look, since they insist that it "could be your router". Lame.

Then recently I decided to try to work on a PVR (personal video recorder, like a DVR), and I wanted to hook up my computer to the firewire port on the DVR we rent from Cox. Normally all of the ports are disabled by Cox, but the firewire must be enabled:

According to the FCC's Rules, on page 50:
(4) Cable operators shall:
(i) Effective April 1, 2004, upon request of a customer,
replace any leased high definition set-top box, which does not
include a functional IEEE 1394 interface, with one that includes a
functional IEEE 1394 interface or upgrade the customer's set-top
box by download or other means to ensure that the IEEE 1394
interface is functional.
(ii) Effective July 1, 2005, include both a DVI or HDMI
interface and an IEEE 1394 interface on all high definition set-top
boxes acquired by a cable operator for distribution to customers.

So Cox is required by law to provide an HD box with a working firewire port. Seems pretty simple and straightforward. I plug my computer into Cox's DVR, and no firewire. So I call them up. I ask them if the firewire ports are enabled on the DVR (and spent a bit of time explaining what "firewire" and "IEEE1394" are, to tech support!). They say no, they're not enabled. So I ask them to exchange my DVR for one with firewire enabled. They say they can't, none of the ports are enabled. I tell them about the FCC ruling that states they are required by law to enable the firewire on request. And here's where the excuses start. I can't even remember all of them, they were such BS. "That rule must be new, I haven't heard anything about it." Nope, the first part was effective April 1, 2004. "We have an HDMI port, you can use that instead." Nope, I want a firewire port, since HDMI can't be connected to a computer, and it says specifically "both a DVI or HDMI interface and an IEEE 1394 interface". "Well, we must have some reason we don't have to conform to that law, so that must be why we don't do it. No, sorry, pulling fabricated nonsense out of your butt is not a valid reason (I didn't say this, but probably should have). In the end, the woman on the phone (a supervisor, since the original tech couldn't get past "What's a firewire?") simply told me that she wouldn't do it, that they didn't have to, and have a nice day *click*.

I'm done with Cox. Their tech support have been incompetent or belligerent 2 times too many, and even then my service was still having problems. Add on top of that the fact that we're paying them over $130/mo, for service that is flawed, and my mind was made up. I'm calling Cox tomorrow to cancel my service, since we already have something else in place...

How Spore ruined Christmas (or, DRM fail!)

Posted by james on Dec 9, 12:00 AM

I found what I thought to be a great gift for this coming Christmas. It's a video game called Spore by the creator of Sim City and other games. It's been highly anticipated, and some friends of mine told me how fun it was to play. You can guide the evolution of a single celled organism all the way up through civilization and space exploration. Sounds awesome and interesting. But I'd also heard some issues with the DRM it uses, so I decided to research it.

Turns out Spore uses a DRM technology that means you have to authenticate it on the internet in order to play it. Originally they wanted to authenticate all the time, and if Spore was unable to contact the authentication servers for 10 days then it would disable itself. This is a horrible idea. Granted, many people will play online and wont have to worry about this. But there are plenty of times you might want to play disconnected, and how awesome would it be to play the game on a plane or at a house without internet only to have it shut off. Lame! They loosened that so now you only have to authenticate when you install and when you play online. Still a stupid idea. If you have to reinstall and don't have internet at the moment, you're screwed. They also limited the installs to 3 times. 3!!! When you run out, then you either have to call them up to ask them for an extra authentication (which they may or may not give, at their discretion), or you're screwed. Again. After a lot of controversy, they upped the limit to 5 installs. Yeah, great.

Besides the idiocy of the Spore's DRM scheme to begin with, the bigger concern here is the longevity of Maxis' (Spore's publisher) authentication servers. What happens when Maxis turns the server off? The argument they would make is that they wont turn the servers off. But that's a load of crap, not even they can guarantee that. They could go out of business, or more likely after a while it wont make business sense to keep the servers running. So they notify all users, "Thanks for playing our game. Now buy something else, 'cause we're turning it off forever." And then you're screwed.

Many people would argue that a "big company" like Maxis won't turn off the servers anytime soon, that that would be commercial suicide. And yet, it's happened with companies like Walmart, Yahoo, and Microsoft. All of those companies have had DRM authentication servers online for just a few years, and then decided to turn them off. "Thanks for paying us for music. Unfortunately, you wont be able to listen to it anymore. Have a great day!"

While those companies have made decisions to extend deadlines or offer gift certificates to reimburse users, the point here is that you cannot count on a companies servers to be online forever, even a company as big (and seemingly permanent) as Microsoft. Many people have stated that you cannot buy DRM'd content; you are only renting it. And I agree with that statement. If another company has control over whether you can use the content you "bought" from them, then you're really just renting it until they see fit to remove your access. And there's no guarantee that you'll be given any kind of reimbursement.

Maxis has stated that they hear their customer's frustrations but hope customers understand that DRM is a necessary part of their business model. I'd say "we don't", but I can't really include myself in "their customers." I will not be buying Spore, for myself or anyone else, so I'm not really one of their customers. I've decided that I wont be buying any kind of DRM'd content that has these problems. Those companies simply do not deserve my money, and do not deserve to profit off their rental content masquerading as content you can buy. Quite simply put, it's just a lie they tell to make a sale. I've talked to car salesmen before and I've had enough of that, thanks.

Fixing no mic sound on a Dell Inspiron 1420 (or similar?)

Posted by james on Dec 4, 7:58 PM

I had a friend call me today for a problem on their Dell Laptop. They were using Skype and could hear & talk fine using the laptop's built-in speakers and microphone, but for some reason when they plugged in a headset they could hear fine but the other party could not hear them. My first thought is that they're using a USB headset and Skype is not recognizing the second audio device, but they were using a normal non-USB audio headset.

So I poke around on their machine, and have her connect her headphones. The computer gives a (ginormous, ugly) popup for the sigmaltel sound control panel, showing the 2 (yes, 2) headphone jacks and the 1 mic jack. It shows that she has 1 headphone jack plugged in and 1 mic jack plugged in. But I still can't hear here on Skype. After playing around with Skype sound settings, I go back to the sigmatel control panel. I click on the microphone jack, and it gives options for "Line In" and "Mic". "Line In" is selected, so I select "Mic" and it works! The "mic" jack on the laptop comes configured by default to act as a "line in" jack, which is what you use to connect CD players and iPods into the laptop, but not microphones. It had to be manually switched to "Mic" to be compatible with the mic in the headset. It's not just a matter of levels; electret mics need a voltage supply to operate, so w/o the voltage you will get no signal at all.

So that's that. Dell is stupid (yet again), ships their laptop with a bad default setting (honestly, do they really think the line in is more used than the mic?). But more importantly, the sigmatel software is something no computer newbie would know to go poking around in. They should revamp the UI so you could see all the options avaiable to you w/o having to click on drop downs, and they really should offer a wizard. Without a wizard, most people aren't going to know what settings they need.

Christmas Tree!

Posted by james on Dec 3, 12:00 AM

9 pictures.