D-Link

So, now that the bulk of the renovation projects are finished, i sat down tonight to install the new 802.11n wireless router that i bought last month.

The first box i bought was a PoS from a company called TrendNET. Spec'd out nice, and i bought the router and 3 USB wireless N adapters to go with it. One of the adapters was DOA, the other two worked sporadically, and the router could not use DHCP properly, and constantly assigned IP addresses out of the specified range. It went back to the vendor after 3 days.

I bought the D-Link cause i've been using an 802.11g router from them for the past 3 years, and it's been flawless.

First problem was that the D-Link adapters didn't run on Macs. So they went back.

Then, the software for the router was bad on the supplied CD. No quality control whatsoever. When you download the corrected software from the D-Link site, you also get another version of the corrupted software as well, in addition to a version that works. Install problems occur when the router acts as though it's rebooting to apply the changes in settings you've just made, though it really isn't. So you've got to manually reboot the router to get those changes to take effect. Once i figured all that out, getting all the computers in the house to connect to the internet was fairly straightforward.

Here's the deal, though.

I bought this device because it comes with "SharePort" software which allows you to "Share a USB printer or storage device on your network."

That's what i need. It's called network attached storage. I want a single hard drive with all of my music in one central location that can feed iTunes on the 3 computers that are hooked up to speakers for listening anywhere in the house. Network attached storage. The copy on the box reads "With SharePort technology you can connect a USB printer or storage device to your router and allow users to access them from anywhere on the network. Conveniently turn your existing USB printers and storage devices into network devices for everyone to share."

What a surprise to discover that only one computer at a time can actually "share" a device using "SharePort." Seriously. I must have read a hundred pages of documentation, reviews, and hype about this device before i bought it without encountering that limitation written down anywhere.

Why bother?

Probably too late to return this sucker for a full refund, since i bought it 6 weeks ago, and just got around to installing it tonight.

Now, i will say that i've been listening to streaming music for the past 2 hours running through my computer from the hard drive upstairs. So it works, and does that much pretty well. But that one connection at a time limitation is a deal breaker.

And it should have been mentioned somewhere.

UPDATE: D-Link tech support confirms the one user at a time limitation with the SharePort software.

Linksys tech support says their competing products offer multiple simultaneous connections to attached USB drives.

Guess what i'll be doing today?

Continue reading D-Link

Ye cannae change the laws of physics!

Seems like i've been waiting for this day most of my life:

Travel by bubble might seem more appropriate for witches in Oz, but two physicists suggest that a future spaceship could fold a space-time bubble around itself to travel faster than the speed of light.

We're talking about the very distant future, of course.

The idea involves manipulating dark energy – the mysterious force behind the universe's ongoing expansion – to propel a spaceship forward without breaking the laws of physics.

"Think of it like a surfer riding a wave," said Gerald Cleaver, a physicist at Baylor University. "The ship would be pushed by the spatial bubble and the bubble would be traveling faster than the speed of light."

In theory, the universe grew faster than the speed of light for a very short time after the Big Bang, driven by the dark energy that represents about 74 percent of the total mass-energy budget in the universe. Dark matter constitutes 22 percent of the budget, and normal matter (stars, planets and everything you see) makes up the remaining 4 percent or so.

Strange as it sounds, current evidence supports the notion that the fabric of space-time can expand faster than the speed of light, because the reality in which light travels is itself expanding.

Cleaver and Richard Obousy, a Baylor graduate student, tapped the latest idea in string theory to devise how to manipulate dark energy and accelerate a spaceship. Their notion is based on the Alcubierre drive, which proposes expanding space-time behind the spaceship while also shrinking space-time in front.

Just so long as you keep the bearin's intact. You don't want to be changing the laws of physics, now.

Continue reading Ye cannae change the laws of physics!

Great moments in marketing

I've always figured there was a reason why Steve Jobs has a closet as big as my house filled with black turtlenecks while my wardrobe consists mostly of promotional tee-shirts picked up at MacWorld Expo and Durham Bulls games. It certainly wasn't the G4 Cube that's differentiated us.

Today i got my lesson.

Here's the background.

Earlier this year, Apple released the iPhone. Lots of reviewers talked about some of its inadequacies as a phone, and its $600 price tag raised a few eyebrows.

But it was an iPhone, and for many people with more money than brains having this cool as shit toy was worth paying 2 or 3 times what other comparable devices cost.

So that's good marketing move number one from Steve.

But he did himself one better this week.

Yesterday, Steve announced, among other things, that iPhones were coming down in price by $200. If you bought your iPhone within the last two weeks, you'll get that discount reimbursed. But early adopters, who for the most part made the conscious decision that having an iPhone before anyone else was worth paying whatever obscene price Steve asked for, were not happy.

And here's where Steve's genius becomes apparent.

This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you'll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon. The good news is that if you buy products from companies that support them well, like Apple tries to do, you will receive years of useful and satisfying service from them even as newer models are introduced.

Third, even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple's website next week. Stay tuned.

That's right - your reward for buying an overpriced iPhone is getting a coupon worth a hundred bucks off your next overpriced purchase of another piece of Apple hardware.

Brilliant!

Oh, and by the way, i write as someone who has made a living using Macs since 1988, and has owned nothing but Macs since 1990.

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The march of technology

This may not interest anyone but me, but i wanted to note it.

I stopped in Costco over the weekend. Walking through the technology section at the front of the store, i saw a 1 Terabyte hard drive on display. The cost was, if i recall, $350 or so.

Now, i realize that my story about buying a 500 MB drive in 1991 for $1100 is getting a little long in the tooth. But just 5 years ago i spec'd out a 750 GB RAID tower to hang on an image server at work. The cost was around $35,000. Granted, there's all kinds of redundancies built into the controller, striping data across 10 drives takes some processing power, and FibreChannel's not cheap, yadda yadda yadda, but still.

More storage capacity (by 30%) at 1% of the cost? In 5 years?

I can't keep up.

Continue reading The march of technology