Comments (0)

By Matthieu, 2012-01-19 11:01

A nice explanation of EDGE/3G/4G/HSPA/LTE

Network Symbols Explained

*As I’ve only had AT&T, I can only speak for how it is with them.*

Firstly, AT&T stock LTE phones always showing 4G is a lie. It will show 4G wether you have HPSA or HPSA+. Technically 4G doesn’t even exist. It’s a marketing gimmick.

According to AT&T here is how the symbols work:

• E(dge): GSM – The slowest of the slow.
• 3G: HSPA or UMTS – High Speed Pack Access and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
• 3G(+): HSPA+ – An upgrade to the HSPA protocal. This is your average network.
• 4G: HSPA+ – Tower upgrade. Enhanced backhaul. (essentially the same tech as 3G+)
• 4G LTE: LTE – Long Term Evolution. On LTE you should typically expect speeds no less then 20mbps.

If you are using the RumRaider ROM (as of 1/3/’12) your symbols will appear as:

• E – E
• 3G/3G+ – 3G
• 4G – H
• 4G LTE – 4G

via General Knowledge Thread – xda-developers.

Bell/Telus/Sprint/Verizon also operate an older 3G network using CDMA2000 technology. 1x, EV-DO and 1xEV refer to CDMA2000 extensions for enhanced data.

Gotta love when marketing brings “technical” terms to the masses.

Comments (0)

By Matthieu, 2012-01-18 22:38

After attempting to use Asterisk for the past little while, I decided to give FreeSWITCH a try.

Following the instructions at : http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/Quick_Start to build packages for Ubuntu 11.10.

In addition to the packages suggested, I had to install bison and libsofiasip-dev.

WIP, still compiling right now, will update this post as I go along.

Comments (0)

By Matthieu, 2012-01-15 11:26

Found this somewhere a few months back. Some food for thought.

Comments (0)

By Matthieu, 2012-01-14 17:22

Note to self: Always install ubuntu-restricted-extras first. Without it, XBMC will crash when playing MP3s since libmad is missing.

Comments (0)

By Matthieu, 2012-01-12 14:14

So Ubuntu is getting into the TV business. If they can pull it off, and get into Cable/Satellite/IPTV STBs, the would would be a much better place. This looks way better than Microsoft Mediaroom or any proprietary cable box software I’ve seen.

Now, is it just me or does that video sound a lot like this one?

I have to say, I gotta feeling that Canonical might have got it right. Unfortunately, past experience says Big Telecom isn’t very interested in what’s good for the customer.

more at

http://www.ubuntu.com/tv
http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697982/interview-ubuntu-tv-pete-goodall

Comments (0)

By Matthieu, 2012-01-11 22:14

Just before Christmas, I was telling a friend visiting from France about our mayor Rob Ford and his gravy train.

No, not that gravy train. I would totally get on THAT gravy train.

Anyway, that evening we decided to watch the classic James Bond flick, Goldfinger, since neither of us had seen Bond movies before Pierce Brosnan.

Upon seeing the titular villain, I couldn’t help but notice his resemblance to the mayor.

Goldfinger

Mayor Ford

(I’m not the first to notice… pictures above from “Goldfinger Elected Mayor of Toronto – Blogging Canadians“.)

Also, neither she nor I could see why Sean Connery as Bond is considered so attractive. Particularly in this outfit.

I don't even know. Bathshortsuit?

Comments (0)

By Matthieu, 2012-01-11 09:21

30 Rock is set to return to NBC tomorrow evening. (Unfortunately, it’s in Community’s time slot.) I decided to take the occasion to revisit some clever but blatant (to comedic effect) product placement from earlier seasons.

Snapple:

Cisco Telepresence:

Comments (1)

By Matthieu, 2012-01-08 22:37

I was watching the MuchMusic countdown and saw this awesome video. (yes, MuchMusic. They still exist, and still play music. I’m really loving having TV again… more on that later)

Arcade Fire presents Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) – YouTube.

I’m not absolutely sure, but it seems the whole video was shot in a suburb of Montréal, Lasalle, which is where my parents lived for a while. Mom, Dad, recognize anything?

The empty photo studio is at 1465, boul Shevchenko.

How Canadian of me to get all excited to see a place in Canada on TV.

Anyway, cool video, great song. Watch it.

Comments (0)

By Matthieu, 2012-01-06 15:58

Remove the Open File Security Warning in XP | vNate.

A concise tutorial on how to disable the annoying “Open File – Security Warning” popup and associated time delay/latency in Windows XP SP2 and higher.

Comments (0)

By Matthieu, 2011-12-24 19:04

Adobe Acrobat PDF documents have a nice feature which allows content authors to restrict certain features or “encrypt” the document using a password. These can all be easily bypassed using the open-source Ghostscript:

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=unencrypted.pdf -c .setpdfwrite -f encrypted.pdf

Source : http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/removing-password-from-pdf-on-linux/