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By Matthieu, 2011-01-30 22:05

Recorded yesterday from my PowerBook G4.

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By Matthieu, 2011-01-30 20:13

Hello. As you may or may not have heard, Canada has approved UBB, that is, Usage-Based Billing for all ISPs. This means the end of unlimited internet for individuals in Canada.

This makes me incredibly angry, because it’s backwards, it’s anti-competitive, and it’s expensive.

“Bandwidth (computing) or digital bandwidth: a rate of data transfer, bit rate or throughput, measured in bits per second (bps)”

I believe it’s fair to charge for BANDWIDTH. i.e. THROUGHPUT. That’s what actually costs money. If these telecom idiots hadn’t overprovisioned their infrastructure in the first place so that they could scam customers for more money, they wouldn’t have to do this to save their asses.

Ever notice how at “peak hours” the ‘net gets slower? That’s because Rogers or Bell or whoever it may be did not bother spending the money to upgrade the fiber to your local hub. In any other business this is unacceptable (taking into consideration interference and other such factors). I have a 100Mbps network, I EXPECT at LEAST 60Mbps out of it.

Once the physical medium is in place, who gives a damn how much data goes through it? It’s not like there’s physical wear on the equipment. Sure there’s maintenance, but like everything else in computing, it makes more sense to upgrade rather than to repair. So why not make network upgrades, and offer higher speeds at higher prices?

Charging for usage is wrong. Plus they’re making up rules while misusing technical terms. =Double angry.

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By Matthieu, 2011-01-28 21:59

Going through my photo library, I came across this curious shot that I took sometime last year:

Now, this looks curiously like the Google Nexus One’s bootscreen doesn’t it?

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By Matthieu, 2011-01-27 20:35

Je participe actuellement à une pièce de théâtre mise en scène par mes amis Charles et Alina. Je ne suis pas acteur, mais quelques uns de mes bons amis le sont.

C’est une comédie genre “Western”, suggérée par la chanson “Rocky Raccoon” des Beatles.

Billets disponibles sur UofTtix.

Poster par peaz.

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By Matthieu, 2011-01-19 20:16

Here’s how to “de-blur” a Motorola MB502 (aka Charm) from Telus Mobility. The process assumes a stock Telus Charm, and a Windows XP system, although tools exist that allow flashing from Linux.

1. Download and install the Motorola phone flashing tools. This means the Motorola USB drivers (get them from MOTODEV) and RSDlite.
2. Download the “deblur” sbf from Motorola (see http://and-developers.com/sbf:mb502 , download BASEM_U3_01.12.4_DEBLUR_SIGNED) and ungzip.
3. Connect your Charm. Enable USB debugging under Settings > Applications > Development. From the notifications menu, make sure the phone is connected for “Charge Only”
4. Run RSDlite, select the decompressed sbf file and flash.
5. The phone will reboot once it’s done flashing. Wait for it to finish, then hold the power button and power down the phone. Remove and replace the battery, then power up the phone again.

Now, at this point, if you’re lucky, your Charm may “Just work”. If you see signal bars and can make phone calls, then you’re in the clear. Set up your APN and you’re good to go. This happened with one of my Charms, but oddly enough, the other (seemingly identical) device just wouldn’t pick up the Bell HSPA network. I did eventually get it working, but don’t remember the steps and now have two working Charms.

If your phone doesn’t pick up the cell network, then please wait for my next post. I will be intentionally bricking one of my phones using the T-Mobile ROM in order to figure out how to fix it.

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By Matthieu, 2011-01-16 00:10

I am currently in the process of cleaning my room. And in two very distantly related events, I came across things which reminded me of the beginning of this decade. 2002 to be exact.

The first was the music video for Avril Lavigne’s “I’m with You”, which I found on YouTube while going about the usual Internet procrastination.

I miss teenage angsty Avril. “Let Go” was so awesome back in ’02. And now we’re stuck with new, “grown up” Avril.

"Grown up" Avril...

The second 2002 artifact is an old Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Mac CD. Naturally, I figured I’d install it just for kicks rather than continue cleaning, So I whipped out my old 12″ PowerBook G4 (Also from 2002!) and popped the disc in the drive and fired up the installer, only to be asked for a serial number. Now, I have no idea where the documentation or box for this disc are, so I thought “ah crap, I’m stuck!”.

But then, I realized, Google has the answer to just about everything, so why not give that a try. Sure enough:

So I typed it in, and

What do you know, it works! (By the way, I do not condone piracy and bla bla bla. If you really want, I can post a picture of the ORIGINAL Photoshop 7.0 disc. Which I own.)

Those were simpler days, when software was protected only by a string of digits and pirates spoke freely on the message boards, and a short, sassy, Canadian “skater girl” could have international fame.

And this concludes my lame little trip down memory lane.

Edit: Well this is disappointing.

And so was this.

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By Matthieu, 2011-01-12 11:08

$ rsync -WavP src.file dst.file