People of Key Largo, put down the booze.

Seriously. This shouldn’t happen.

Marriott in the Florida Keys sure knows how to use flashy new technology to bring in the customers. See more Epic Fails

At least you didn’t play porn on the screen.

Monsters of Miami

I know the video is well over a year old, but I thought it was an excellent video about a topic that has been covered often in the South Florida blogging community. It’s well worth your nine minutes of viewing time.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

U.S. consumers pay more money for less.

Image by rq? via Flickr

Honestly, that title can be used for almost anything. Health care, broadband, transit, you name it. So it really isn’t surprising when you see Fortune magazine’s Jeffrey O’Brien feeling ripped off at the sight of American broadband. In South Florida, AT&T offers the following speeds and prices for DSL without a phone line, aka naked DSL.

• FastAccess DSL Direct 768 Kilobit: $19.95 per month
• FastAccess DSL Direct 1.5 Megabit: $37.95 per month
• FastAccess DSL Direct 3.0 Megabit: $42.95 per month
• FastAccess DSL Direct 6.0 Megabit: $47.95 per month

Well Jeffrey met with the CFO of Hong Kong’s City Telecom while he was in San Francisco and learned that customers of City Telecom pay only $13 a month for 100 megabit (Mbps from now on) synchronous broadband. That means 100 Mbit uploading and download. That’s absolutely disgusting in terms of dollar per Mbps and pure speed. As a side note, in the US that’s called a porn pipe by geeks. Using anecdotal evidence from just asking the people I know, most households have 3 megabit connections. 3 Mbps / $40 = $13.33 per Mbps while residents using Hong Kong’s City Telecom pay just $7.69 per Mbps. The closest thing we have to that kind of a connection is U-verse and those lucky enough to get FIOS. $145 a month (if you don’t have phone service with Verizon) nets you a 50 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up. U-verse isn’t any better at $65 for 18 Mbps.

Can you imagine paying about $40 one month, then paying $13 the next for nearly 100x the speed? Annual savings alone would be $324 per household. Consumers can then take that savings and invest or spend it elsewhere driving economic growth.

The neat thing about City Telecom is that if you don’t get 80% of the advertised speed, they refund you twice the monthly $13 bill. There is no way in holy hell AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, et all would ever do that. You’re lucky if any of those companies gave a damn about your slow speed because their service is best effort. Have you ever heard of such bullshit? If a 747 with 400 passengers only landed safely 20% of the time, you bet your ass that the FAA, NTSB and Congress would get involved. Why do we expect anything differently from utility providers?

During the early years of DSL (2002 – 2004) in my neighborhood, if you connection worked at 20% speed, AT&T techs on the phone would tell you there is nothing they could do because the service they provide is best effort. No other industry to my knowledge can get away with such a ridiculous contradiction compared to what is advertised. I am not even counting overhead, I’ll give ISP’s that much leeway.

Sadly I don’t think there is a way to fix that here in South Florida unless we just start the whole city over. We are just not dense enough to compete with City Telecom and Hong Kong. As the Fortune article points out, Hong Kong has a population density is 16,380 people per square mile while we in Dade county are at 1,158/sq mi and Broward at 1,347/sq mi. City Telecom spends about $200 per home to wire it up while Verizon says they pay $1,000 per home. So unless we stop urban sprawl, hold the UDB, and encourage smart growth with infill, we will never have anything as good.

I’ll leave the closing to a better writer, Jefferey O’Brien from Fortune. Take it away.

Innovation trumps incumbency

Lai insists the company already has. “The network is cash flow positive since 07. We’re debt free with 10% revenue growth and 30% EBITDA growth,” he says. “Our stock is up 200% in 12 months, and the market is starting to realize what we’re doing.”

All that success, Lia adds, is a result of having a Big Hairy Audacious Goal and doing everything possible to achieve it. “The telecom industry tends to commoditize people. Our strategy is to commoditize bandwidth, to make 100 megabits the industry norm in Hong Kong,” he says. “Our plan is to win by offering the best service at the lowest possible cost structure. Thirteen dollars is not a lot, but if you scale it and drive your cost base down, it’s a beautiful business to be in.”

If only some US telecom executives felt likewise.

Fortune via DSL Reports.

Engadget calls out New Times for shoddy reporting. Turns into a back and forth.

Some of my local readers may have not seen this spat between Engadget and Miami New Times. Tim Elfrink of the New Times wrote a piece on the two brothers of Psystar, the company that makes Mac clones out of PC parts for half the price of a legit Apple laptop/desktop. Young second-gen Cuban immigrants from hardscrabble upbringings defy stereotypes by dressing well and take on an established American corporation by creating grey-market shadow products. It’s like BrandsMart but sexier because Apple is involved. Almost sounds like a made for TV movie on Univision, Telemundo or Spike TV. Well there is a lot some nerd rage out on the interwebs with some of the details.

From the Engadget article.

[...]there’s a quote here from Psystar founder Rudy Pedraza that simply leaps off the page:

Rudy scoffs at the idea he borrowed from the Hackintosh scene. “The first thing you have to do is unlearn everything you’ve read online about how to make this work,” Rudy says, “because it’s all wrong.”

Really? Because we think there’s a very large, very active hacking community out there that would disagree with you, Rudy.

• “Robert cracked the code behind Apple Computer’s elegant operating system, OS X.” Yeah.
• “Psystar legally buys the software…” That’s not in question, really. The issue is what happens after Psystar buys OS X, when it modifies and redistributes it. You know, the specific thing Apple’s suing about.
• “[Apple] filed a 35-page lawsuit in California claiming Psystar was selling “unauthorized” versions of OS X.” Why is unauthorized in quotes? That’s exactly what Apple claims.
• “As with Microsoft, which lost a multimillion-dollar antitrust decision in Europe in 2004, Apple is protecting an illegal monopoly, Psystar claims.” Psystar has already lost this part of its case in California, and in the new Florida case Psystar only claims Apple has a monopoly on “premium personal computers,” which pretty much invalidates the pricing argument and has driven the company to sell more expensive machines.
• “Robert says he found his own way around Apple’s built-in security devices. The breakthrough meant that, among other things, the cheap machines were virtually immune to viruses and hackers.” This is simply not true. OS X is vulnerable to hackers in its shipping form, and hacking EFI doesn’t change that.
• “Psystar pays full price – $29 – for each copy of OS that it installs on its computers.” $29 is the Snow Leopard upgrade price. The full price is $169 with iLife and iWork.
• “What’s more, Apple holds that consumers who purchase an operating system don’t actually own the software…It’s a dubious-sounding arrangement that courts, at least so far, have upheld.” It’s not dubious to the courts, who’ve been upholding EULAs for over a decade across the country. (And striking some down, to be fair.)
• “Pretty much anyone with basic computer knowledge can make a cloned Mac for just the cost of a full tank of gas in an SUV.” Actually, anyone can do this for free, without having to pay Psystar.

Now, don’t get us wrong — the personal story of Robert and Rudy Pedraza laid out in the article is moving stuff, but when the chips are down, we’re picking the hacker and enthusiast community over a couple guys trying to make a buck selling unlicensed software, and that Hackintosh quote struck us as impossibly arrogant and extremely foolish. The OSx86 community is already wary of Psystar, and we’re guessing no one’s going to rush forward the next time these jokers need some help.

I haven’t been taken to task for my own crappy writing so I don’t have a full understanding of what Tim is feeling. I’m sure it sucks to have such a big article that took time to be lambasted by faceless people on the internet. Well faceless except for the Engadget writer Nilay Patel. Tim was nice enough to respond in the comments of his article.

Hi Edwin –

Yes, Endgadget did such a good job of calling out our “errors” that they spelled my name wrong until I called them out on it. (Looks like the’ve fixed it now).

As for the other “errors” — I see 7 complaints about characterizations in the story and no complaints about factual errors. (Way to bust us for putting “unauthorized” in quotes. That’s because it’s “quoted” straight from the Apple lawsuit.)

There is only one charge about a supposed factual mistake: that Snow Leopard’s update runs at $29 but the whole package sells for $169 with the whole iLife package.

I’m not certain which version Psystar purchases, nor do I claim to know in the story — I was simply providing readers some context on what Apple charges for Snow Leopard updates at the Apple Store.

Tim

Comment by Tim Elfrink from Miami on Nov 11th, 2009, 18:55 pm

Well, Nilay didn’t take too kindly to his article being accused of shoddy writing either.

My reply is that it’s pretty ballsy to take on a copyright lawyer who’s been covering Psystar and its associated litigation since day one by bitching about a typo and trying to re-cast my criticisms of his piece as taking issue with his “characterizations” of the facts.

His entire piece is centered around a single, provably false “characterization”: that Robert and Rudy Pedraza developed the EFI hack that enables Mac OS X to run on non-Apple hardware without any reliance on the hackintosh community. That’s a joke, and he clearly didn’t do the required research before writing his piece.

As for the rest, Psystar’s antitrust claims *have* been thrown out, so a comparison to Microsoft is ridiculous and misleading, there’s simply no way the EFI hack renders any machine “virtually immune to hackers and viruses,” the Snow Leopard price is simply wrong, calling EULA law “dubious” is even more misleading as it’s been so well-tested, and anyone *can* make a hackintosh for free.

Psystar tells a good story, and it’s clear that Tim bought it without question. It’s just too bad so much of it is based on lies and mistruths.

I don’t know about you guys, but I am with Nilay and Engadget on this. They have far more experience and the actual facts on their side. Yes Engadget had a typo with Tim’s name, but that’s really a secondary and minor issue. But at least one of the issues in the original Engadget list could be easily fixed with a little more detail. Let’s do some comparisons.

“Robert cracked the code behind Apple Computer’s elegant operating system, OS X.”

That’s too vague for me. Let’s try again.

“Robert cracked the code behind Apple Computer’s elegant operating system, OS X that prevented the OS from running on non-Apple hardware.”

“Robert cracked the code behind Apple Computer’s elegant operating system, OS X. But some in the Hackintosh community claim they stole the code from open source projects.”

Depending on what you want to believe, either of those may work and I’m sure a ton of other people can re-write it better ways. As for the others on the list, I believe the New Times did fail to get the facts on this. Granted this isn’t a quick and easy subject but with time and some research, this would not have been a problem. Sadly, time is valuable for any newspaper. Time and money that seemingly no paper has to spare. I just hope this doesn’t burn the Miami New Times from writing about more tech articles. I really enjoyed the majority of the article and wish for them to write more stories about technology.

Update:

I originally wrote this story on Wednesday of last week and something new has happened in the Psystar vs. Apple case. On Saturday this update was posted:

Yet another bad day for Psystar. After both Apple and the shady hackintosh company filed for summary judgements, the rulings are out, and Psystar is looking pretty screwed.

All of Psystar’s motions for summary judgment were denied, while all of Apple’s were granted. That means that Apple got exactly what they wanted, while Psystar got exactly what they didn’t want.

Don’t worry, there will be a trial. The court still needs to determine (*deep breath*):

Apple’s allegations of breach of contract; induced breach of contract, trademark infringement; trademark dilution; trade dress infringement; and state unfair competition under California Business and Professions Code § 17200; and common law unfair competition.

Phew! So yeah, at this point it’s looking less like a trial to determine Psystar’s legitimacy, more like a trial to decide how much they owe Apple.

Now, I’m no lawyer, but from where I’m standing this case is looking pretty grim for Psystar. I’ll leave it to you legal eagles to explain exactly what all this means in the comments, because all I know is that it can’t be good. [Gizmodo via Groklaw via 9 to 5 Mac, image via walknboston]

So there you have it.

BRB.

Image via Wikipedia

I’m out of town till Sunday in sunny Puerto Rico. I have a few posts scheduled but otherwise things will be quiet. I hope to be back with exciting news about a non-profit project I have joined. Stay tuned!

To some, it might as well be Cuba.

see more Epic Fails

Verizon Pays $2 Million For Poor Florida Service, or more reason why we need broadband competition.

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Verizon Pays $2 Million For Poor Florida Service
Years of complaints ‘resolved’ by $2 bill credits…
09:00AM Wednesday Nov 11 2009 by Karl Bode
tags: business · Verizon Online DSL

While Verizon gets a lot of warranted attention for investing heavily in fiber to the home, the last few years have seen a growing number of allegations that this investment came at the cost of neglected DSL and landline networks. Union workers have told us they aren’t getting the tools and resources they need to support DSL & landline customers effectively, and in some states the resulting service issues have been obvious. Florida in particular has been a problem spot for Verizon, with higher than normal customer complaints, and union employees picketing Verizon offices last year. Regulators investigated, and found that lack of prompt repairs were leading to extended outages for customers. After many months of debating how these complaints should be resolved, Verizon yesterday agreed to refund customers $1.75 million and pay the state another $250,000. Of that $250,000, about half of it will be going to the state’s the state’s Lifeline Assistance program, which was designed to aid elderly and low-income Floridians.What does this mean if you’re a Verizon customer in Florida? According to the Associated Press, Verizon has roughly 900,000 customers across six Florida counties. Each one of them should see a whopping $2 credit on their bill sometime in the next ninety days.

In my previous post about your internet connection sucking, I covered some stats and what both telcos and cable companies will do to stop municipalities from taking matters into their own hands, namely suing them. Verizon is getting away with delivering crappy service because there is no competition in the DSL and landline market in North Florida. You will be very hard pressed to find both AT&T and Verizon in the very same areas (wireless is a whole different post). Miami-Dade, Broward and I would guess Palm Beach  is pretty much covered by one telecom, AT&T (previously Bellsouth) while the cable market is mostly Comcast (previously Adelphia). There are some exceptions to the cable markets. Miami Beach has Atlantic broadband and some parts of north Florida have Brighthouse.

No more of this single provider per area non-sense. We need more telecoms and cable companies to compete with the established AT&T/Comcast here in South Florida. If Verizon, Charter, Clearwire, Speakeasy and other do not want to step up to the plate, then we need to create our own municipal broadband. But how do we do that? We can’t force a competitor to come to us. The only tool that I can think of is to bribe the competitor to joining the market. Obviously bribing Verizon and others to service South Florida when AT&T has had it exclusively for years is is not going to fly nicely with their legal teams. As all companies have proven they will fight any type of law or regulation that doesn’t suit them tooth and nail. Making a pact with the devil maybe our undoing. Hell, it got us to where we are now.

Getting a Concealed Weapons License, Part II.

Image via Wikipedia

At the beginning of October, I wrote part one in a two part series on what it takes to get a concealed weapons license (CWL from now on) in the state of Florida. The first part dealt with planning, requirements and qualifications. Basically a lot of paperwork. The most important part of getting a concealed weapons license is finding a good instructor or gun shop that has classes. When I say good, I mean that they take their time to actually teach the class. I’ve spoken to far too many people that just paid some guy to sign off the paperwork and never got trained or even tested! With my limited interactions with these license holders, they knew their stuff so I am not as worried about them. It’s everyone else who doesn’t know how to properly handle a firearm and just wants a license for whatever reason and doesn’t receive proper training that I worry about. If I were a proper media outlet with resources, I would be there with the undercover camera to show how some people skirt the line on this.

My experience was very pleasant. I called my local gun shop, Security Arms International in Pinecrest, and told them I wanted to take the concealed weapons class. I took the opportunity to put $20 down to reserve my spot in the class. Our instructor was an older gentleman called Cappy. His real name was actually Al. Al is one of the security officers at SAI Ops, and has been an NRA instructor for years, so he knew his stuff. Once everyone showed up to the class we got underway. But before we talk about the class I want to give you an analysis on the students. I find this to be the most interesting part.

Let’s start with me. Young twenty something geek that never owned a gun until a year ago when I purchased my first one after over a year of research. I was interested but afraid of them. It wasn’t until many months after I purchased my first handgun that I took my class. The day of my class was the first time I had fired a handgun. My previous firearm experience was in the boy scouts, which I assume we fired .22LR rifles. My first handgun is a Ruger Mk II 22/25 with a bull barrel. My second and newest one is a GSG-5. Both are chambered in tiny .22LR. My goal was to learn about firearms, safety and maintenance. I don’t think I will actually conceal carry, as getting my CWL was more of an academic exercise. Plus now when I do buy a gun, I don’t have to wait a week for a background check as I’ve already been vetted by Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and the FBI.

My first classmate to show up is a thirty something transplant from Illinois. He actually came to the class because he inherited two pistols from his passed away father in law. Lanky with receding thin hair and thick glasses, this guy wasn’t the stereotypical gun owner. Though I soon realize that there is no sterotypical gun owner except for the one we come to believe on tv. My second and third classmate was a mother-son duo. The husband/father is a regular to the shop and wanted his family to be able to protect themselves and have the knowledge to handle a firearm safely. That was it, only four students. I honestly thought there would be more students given the amount of firearm sales and wait times reported for your license to come from the state.

We started off with the anatomy of a pistol and the different types (revolver, semi-auto) and moved on to the parts of cartridges (incorrectly called bullets; see #1 in above figure). The overwhelming majority of the class involved talking about when you can and can not kill another person. I may be simplifying it a bit, but I don’t feel like I am. We discussed everything from previous cases that caused the evolution of concealed carry laws and what has happened in the past that covers your ass. Another tidbit that was covered briefly in the previous post was the kinds of weapons you can and can not concealed carry. Guns are usually the first things people think about but the license also covers blades, sprays, etc. The class itself lasted till about 3:30 PM when I finished my qualifier at the range.

In the end the experience was fun and informative. If anyone is curious about weapons, legal history or just wants to remove the fear of weapons, I highly suggest you find a good place to take your class. This course did far more to educate me about a segment of life and society that I did not know about, than any other source of information I’ve found to date.

The ideal bike lane solution.

The bicycle lane should not end and begin at every intersection.

Transit Miami posted images of the new bike lanes painted out on Coral Way and found them seriously lacking in design. I have to agree. Even the ones on Griffin Road in Broward don’t even at every street corner. While Felipe Azenha of Transit Miami has some very excellent ways other cities have improved their bike lanes, I don’t think it’s enough to just paint the intersection portions of the bike lanes green. People here are retarded when they drive. There is no way to fluff it. They just seem to lose all patience and sensibility. Besides, this isn’t how you bargain. You don’t start in the middle and work your way down. Let’s shoot for the top and if we are lucky, we get it.

Bike Shop Girl at Commute by Bike posted a very nice contraflow protected bike lane soon to be erected in Washington D.C. by DDOT. This is what we should be shooting for in South Florida. It’ll definitely be harder to implement in the Downtown area because of finite space, but in other areas it would be wonderful to have this.

DC will soon have its first protected bicycle lane.

DDOT is ready to begin construction on a protected, contraflow lane for bicyclists to ride south on 15th Street NW between U Street and Massachusetts Avenue.

By placing the lane adjacent to the sidewalk, buffered from high-speed traffic by parked cars, this will create a more comfortable environment for cyclists. According to a letter DDOT sent to residents, work will begin sometime in the next week depending on weather, and take about five days.

Not only does this serve the main purpose of protecting cyclist but think about the visual impact it will add to the city and county. No longer will the suburbs of Dade and Broward be bland and boring because this is miles and miles of prime artistic canvas. This could easily be turned into public art. South Beach has the art deco buildings and life guard stands, while the Grove has all sorts of other things. What better way to serve multiple purposes and create a unique character to our areas? The only problem we have is funding. How do we pay for this?

A physically seperated bike lane using parked cars as a barrier.

One thought could be leasing out portions of the barrier, by the foot, for artists or advertisements. I’m sure some shops would love to have a cost effective way to advertise their business with attention getting signs. Cafe’s could even take the daily specials and use the barriers like a chalk board. Maybe the various cycling groups and advocates can come together to form a non-profit construction company solely for the purpose of helping various governments to cheaply build cycling infrastructure. I know it will be hard to convince elected officials from awarding the contract to friends in the construction industry, but we have to start somewhere and try.

The imagination runs wild.