Per-Otto Lekare, Peo Lekare

Google is about to launch a phone, with a built in GPS and Google Maps, as well as Google Talk and other Google applications. There is no doubt in my mind that Larry & Sergei are trying to take over the world… A little bit like Pinky and the Brain. Muahhhahahhaahaa

Just finished watching an English documentary called “The Great Global Warming Swindle“. It’s a documentary that aims to prove that the idea of man causing global warming, is a myth that is used politically. I tend to agree, after seeing this documentary. Generally, global warming is said to be caused by humans releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. However, there is no correlation between temperatures and CO2 levels.

Only 0.054% of the Earth’s atmosphere consist of CO2. To say that humans - that release about 8% of what the oceans release of CO2 each year - contribute in any way to global warming, is a complete hoax.

�The period between 1945 and 1975 is when the greatest amounts of CO2 were released into the atmosphere by humans. Global temperatures, however, fell during this period.

Then what is causing the global warming? Studies show that the sun is responsible for the historical fluctuations in global temperature. Apparently, intense solar activity increases global temperature, as no solar activity cools global temperature.

�That said, I am of the opinion that we should take care of our environment and the Earth. But to use global warming as a reason to do that, is not right.

No… not talking about the Iphone… I believe the Iphone - albeit its’ cool GUI - sucks. No 3G, no flash for the camera, so-so resolution, etc. No, the phone I’m talking about is the cryptically named P4550 from HTC. This is the mother of all mobile phones. Don’t believe me? It has everything the Iphone doesn’t (except for the camera flash?):

• Slide out keyboard - who wants to jot sms messages on a screen that - if you just happened to eat junk food - just gets greasy?
• 3G
• 3MP camera
• Built in GPS

It looks to be quite cool when it’s released by the end of this month. Pricewise it will be way cheaper than the Iphone - around 800 bucks WITHOUT any contract. So you can expect to find it for a couple of hundred with a contract included.

Last tuesday, my ADSL connection stopped working. Apparently the modem gave up due to some electric discharge or something. I called it in wednesday, and the “helpful customer representative”, told me it would take between 24 and 72 hours for the problem to be resolved… Friday I called again, and they said that the 72 hours would end by saturday. Nothing happened, of course. I called saturday to ask what about the solution of the problem, and another “helpful customer representative” told me that the 72 hours are counted as working hours… so, for instance 24 hours are 3 working days. 72 hours are 9 working days. The obviously don’t work weekends, and this tuesday is May 1st, socialist holiday. So no work then… we’ll see when I get internet access back.

Telmex sucks. Prodigy sucks. Unfortunately, there are no options to Prodigy. Carlos Slim should use some of the 60 MUSD he makes EVERY DAY to make the service better. But he doesn’t care about the people that made him rich. Why should he? We can’t do anything about it/him anyway, since there are no ways to make him give his customers better support.

They have finally done it. The ADSL monopoly company Prodigy (owned by the landline monopoly Telmex) here in Mexico have begun blocking VOIP services now. I have 2 Swedish VOIP accounts, both of which ceased to function as of today. Looking in the setup page for my PAP2, which handles both accounts, the equipment de-registers continually from the SIP servers. The system manages to register every 15 seconds, but just for a couple of seconds at a time. Talked with people that also have VOIP services, and they have the same problem.

Now, as they say - they are in their own right to block such services (they name VOIP specifically) that “compromise the quality” of the ADSL service. What does that mean, exactly? According to this, you can’t use the ADSL service for VPN:s either (another premium service from Telmex). Wouldn’t it be better to say in the user agreement that they can’t allow any competition, since Telmex themselves live off the phone conversations of other people and sell VPN services?

The biggest problem might not be the fact that they actually do this. The biggest problem is that there is no place to turn to. Mexican consumer advocate groups have no power basically, and Telmex have an excellent standing with the government, given that they have spent millions in restoring Mexico City’s old town, infrastructure projects, etc. So basically they can screw the consumer as long as they don’t screw the government. That sucks.

Now, Telmex/Prodigy are into starting to send TV through the Internet. They have already acquired the necessary licenses. Is their next step to make Youtube illegal? Will they slam down on anybody downloading movies / television content? I think Mr. Slim needs a better team of advisors regarding his IT strategies… Mr Carlos Slim already owns most of CompUSA (which is, as I heard, struggling), and of US Prodigy. He should sit down and see what he wants to do with the extreme power that comes with purveying 80% of all Internet infrastructure to Mexicans.

It has caused quite a bit of a stir at ALT1040 Mexico’s (?) most prominent tech blog. Read [here]

Somebody had the idea to use a monochrome screen from a calculator (TI-84) to show video… the results? Interesting might be the word… read about it [here]

You can see on this picture, the quality we’re speaking of… btw, the image on the screen is from the movie Matrix.

Saw on another blog a letter from someone wanting to have that blog removed from Google, since it ranked higher than the guy’s (the one who wrote it) website. Quite funny, actually…
Update: seems I fell for it like alot of other people… just a pinch of viral marketing.,…A big hoax.

I blogged last Friday bout how I was getting slow download speeds, and how - after talking for nearly an hour with some arrogant customer support representative - he said they were going to report it. Well, I called monday to see what had happened, and there was no report made, not even a record of my call with them! So - again I had to go through a zillion tests, and another arrogant customer representative that treated me like an idiot. Until doing all the tests and one hour later the report was submitted. So now I have to wait another (possibly) 2 days before I get it to work ok.
Telmex / Prodigy sucks. Especially if you put in context the amount they charge for the service. Jeeez.

Since we recently moved, we had our ADSL connection moved as well. It was supposed to be the quickest ADSL in Mexico (except for the ridiculously high priced corporate ADSL), at 1380 kbps downstream / 384 kbps upstream. This cost me around 100 USD / month. This connection worked really well at the other house. A normal transfer rate of around 1100-1200 kbps. A totally different story when we moved.
The fee to change addresses was around 25 USD. No problem there. The time it took was an acceptable 1-2 weeks. No problem there either.
The speed, was - however - something to complain about. I would get maximum 600-700 kbps. So I called Telmex to complain. It seemed they eliminated the type of ADSL account I had. It is now impossible to buy a 1380 kbps service. They duplicated the speed on the 512kbps and 1024kbps accounts (the 1024 kbps account cost around 70 USD, but was really unreliable regarding downstream speed, and upstream it offered only 128 kbps. I need more to be able to use VOIP).
So I was suddenly moved down to the 1024 kbps account, thus getting 600-700 kbps… as they advertise their speeds, they say “up to 1024 kbps”, so as not to be liable for any slow connection speeds.
So they lowered my speed, but kept charging me 100 USD. When asking them how they could do that, nobody had a good answer. After a few angry calls, they duplicated my speed to 2048 / 256. It worked so, so. I thought it was a problem with the cabling of the house. I would get good transfer speeds (around 1600-1700 kbps) every now and then, but most of the time, speeds would linger in the low 400’s. Totally unacceptable. Until the whole thing stopped working 2 days ago. My ADSL router wouldn’t find any connection. So there I go calling Telmex again. They said it would take between 24 and 72 hours to fix the problem. Meanwhile I was offered their dial-up service. Jerks.
Got it fixed after some 40 hours. It seems a card in the phone central blew up. Again I was fighting speeds of 0.2-0.6 mbps. So I bought a long phone extension cord (the main jack is in the living room, on the street level floor), and did a connection from that jack to the main bedroom (one floor below). There is already an extension, but I thought it might be oxidated, so I thought I’d better do a new extension. Thinking that would fix the problem, I sat down at my computer to see I had the exact same speed problems as before.
To eliminate possible causes for error (I might have done the extension in a bad fashion or so), I went upstairs, and connected the ADSL router to the main jack, where I’m sitting right now. Speed? 0.2-0.6 mpbs. Seems the problem wasn’t the cabling in the house.
45 minutes later, after doing a number of tests (over the phone with a not so good support tech from Telmex), he solemnly declared that I will have to wait another 24-72 hours while they check this out….
Pretty damn tiresome.