Not a single video running 480p or higher will pre-load without me getting a buffering icon in the center of the screen. I have a ‘Network meter’ widget on my Windows 7 desktop, (for giggles) and I watch the traffic sputter up and down, I am able to right click on a youtube video and view the information, and see that transfer speeds are constantly bouncing 0 -> 2500Mbits, up and down, up and down.. sputter sputter sputter…

Ok so right about now you’re thinking, you didn’t configure your modem, your profile isn’t @ 6Mbit, or any other factors that would discount my idea that ATT is throttling Youtube (probly to push a 6Mbit user to U-Verse is my idea — 6Mbit is listed as unsatisfactory for `HD` video… ha!).

Here is what I discovered

I setup a proxy server on my 100Mbit dedicated server (caveat here is it is in a professional hosting center, in New Jersey). I setup my proxy connection in firefox to use my server. The beauty here is, that I saturate my 6Mbit pipe right away! I can view a 1080p video as soon as the page loads, I get no delay, I have YET to run into a buffer pause. I have good non throttled (guaranteed) bandwidth allocation at my hosting facility, so I’m just thinking of routing all my house traffic over VPN to my server.

I want to try this as I am really suspicious that I am having media throttled by ATT.

Has anyone else done these types of tests? What were your outcomes? I am very curious to know, as my experience is NIGHT and DAY!

I max out my youtube experience when I view via my proxy, but it is barely watchable without my proxy (traffic shaping from ATT?).

I will most likely make a video of the comparison if people are interested, I just wasn’t sure if digging more into this is worth my time.

Thanks for reading, curious on your feedback.

I posted this also on dslreports.com:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r26619828-Speed-Problem-Youtube-being-throttled-on-ATT-6Mbit-profiles-

I was always overly anal with these accusations (being an IT person and having some understanding of the underlying infrastructure), I would point out to friends and anyone that brought up the issue that in fact is was just an advertising / business tactic, that the business that supplied ADSL would say, Cable was slow due to ‘hogs’. While Cable would dispute the ADSL company by saying it wasn’t true, and that in fact the hogs were just as bad on the ADSL lines (which they attributed to ‘old telephone wires’ not having the support).

Anyway, jump forward many years and finally someone has written a great article about this ‘bandwidth hog’ myth:

You might recall that back in 2009, we mentioned a piece claiming that the “bandwidth hog,” a term used ceaselessly by industry executives to justify rate hikes, net neutrality infractions, and pretty much everything else — was a myth. The piece was penned by Yankee analyst Benoit Felten and Herman Wagter, who knows a little something about consumption — as he’s the man largely responsible for Amsterdam’s FTTH efforts. The problem wasn’t bandwidth hogs, argued Wagter, the problem was poorly designed networks built by people more interested in cutting corners than offering quality product.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Bandwidth-Hog-is-a-Myth-117230

Enjoy, and leave a comment how you’ve encountered the bandwidth hog in your internet usage. Have you been hit with rate hikes due to ‘bandwidth hogs’?

I keep all my contacts organized on ‘Google Contacts’ and then I’m able to synchronize my iOS devices with my contact list. Its easy to do and just requires some dedicated time to enter everything in.

As I live in the US, I still have many friends (as well as family) in Canada, and that requires me to call ‘international’ (at least what AT&T calls Canada calling…). My skype local setup is quick and easy, and SIRI makes it fun.

I simply setup a phone number for a contact like so:

1. Create new phone entry, call it Skype
2. Enter my skype number (ex: 734-000-1234)
3. I follow that number with a PAUSE character `,` (comma) + a 2 (skype’s 2 means, call a custom number)
4. After that 2, I simply enter a Canadian number (ex: 1519-555-1234)

The final solution looks like:

Skype: 734-000-1234,21519-555-1234

And then once my contact is sync’d to the phone, I say “SIRI call [persons name] on Skype”, and obediently SIRI completes the call, and I don’t have to punch in any long strings of numbers.

Enjoy!

What I want to clear up today, is the confusion (at least for me and a few folks I know) regarding iMessage. iOS5 brings to it a new feature, the ability to give the carriers a ‘BIG F-YOU!’ when it comes to gauging users on ‘per-text-message’ options. Personally I don’t want to pay more than $5 bucks for texting, and I don’t think I should have to pay $20 per month for 160 characters each. My $5 is a 200 message plan, which is more than enough for me.

But ever since I got my iPhone, I have been unsure of what the hell I was doing when sending a message, I would click on the green ‘message’ button, and then I tried selecting a co-worker, but I couldn’t select their apple id email address, it would just show me their home/mobile numbers. However, one friend of mine told me “Its the colors! Look at the send button colors”…

At that point, the realization came, when you SELECT A CONTACT, the send button will turn one of 2 colors:

• GREEN = Text message
• BLUE = iMessage available

So that’s it, don’t worry about SMS vs iMessage, just remember, blue is good, green is not (if you are not on the unlimited plan at least!).

Hope that helps some of you to clear up the confusion regarding wether you are sending an actual iMessage or just a plain text message. Oh and in case you didn’t notice, the input box, also says “text message” vs “imessage” just to be sure, but still its confusing, especially judging by people’s forum posts around the net.

Enjoy!

Case in point, one of the things that nobody seems to ask is ‘at what speed’ will that milage be reached? If I buy that Ford Focus 2011 model, how would I reach 40MPG? Would it be at a maximum speed of ~55MPH? Or something higher?

I recall being at Honda while my coworker was getting his oil change done on this car, and I asked one of the Sales Reps, “At what speed will this Civic achieve the advertised MPG rating?” and none of the 3 present were able to give me an answer. In the end without looking foolish one of the reps said “I get that milage when I do ~75MPH”, to which I kindly laughed and shuffled away to find my coworker.

This may be a moot request, but I would love to see real world examples from manufacturers. I think it is simply a fear of them looking bad due to a poor performing vehicle, imagine advertising and paying for an estimate from the EPA of ~40MPG and then running a real world test that people can witness and your car only does ~31MPG at best under speeds most common for commuters (~60-80MPG in Michigan at least).

Getting back to the topic, I would challenge a manufacturer like Tesla to do a cross continent drive, show people that “Yes, the time has come for electric to really be a reliable solution.” Have someone drive across and charge at night (~300MP Charge/day). Then show the cost of the electrical bill. I think it would be a positive (if it performs as advertised) mark for the company. In fact any company that touts its electric fleet should do this, I’m really tired of seeing these ‘amazing’ 0 emission vehicles, but then realizing that they are effectively tethered to a small area.

Anyway, challenge proposed… who will answer the call?

Ref: http://www.teslamotors.com/models

This is the culmination of many hours of hard work and design to create a framework that enables collaboration utilizing pieces of the a3m openid architecture for openid membership.  This a3m piece allows users to simply ‘sign in’ and go.  No need to remember usernames / passwords or do stuff like password recoveries, etc.  Everything just works!

If you are in the area and are interested please check out the registration:
http://www.windsorultimate.com/about/register-for-the-league/

Verizon is now doing the same in anticipation of having those ‘hogs’ on their network… right…

I need to question if this is rather a well marketed PR ploy to limit bandwidth utilization by their customers. I honestly cannot see 5% being the cause for restrictions, how would that impact the bottom line? Most likely the usage would be spread out and covered by that 95% other user base.

As people use more content on the net, it looks like ISPs of all shapes and sizes are being overwhelmed, like the whole Netflix fiasco, where networks are crying foul that too much bandwidth is being used for viewing videos, when in fact they themselves support ‘Triple play’ packages to stream movies to customers in much the same fashion. So it just becomes a matter of being greedy.

Here is an idea, instead of limiting internet usage ISPs, just upgrade your networks to TRULY support your customer base. Stop overselling an infrastructure that you yourself point out cannot support your users.

Verizon iPhone throttle:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/03/ahead_of_iphone_launch_verizon_throttles_bandwidth_of_top_data_hogs.html

/end rant

One thing that I really have been getting annoyed with lately is checking if a variable is defined.  In most cases you could do a simple check, is it empty? However Coldfusion will puke all over itself if you do an isNull() check on a variable that is ‘not defined’. You really have to know the difference it seems between an empty value, vs a variable that has no defined value (to me they are both null/void).

In PHP, this would be a no brainer to check if it was null / empty by doing a simple string comparisson. (Then again PHP doesn’t care if a variable has been defined before you try to use it, which some people hate, but others find very convenient).

Anyway, on to the example…

Example (if our portlet has no value for renderRequest.getRemoteUser() ):

<cfset raw_userid = renderRequest.getRemoteUser() />
<cfif IsNull(raw_userid)>
   It is Null.<br />
</cfif>

The above would simply error out, as you cannot check something that is undefined. Below is the proper way to handle such a scenario with the approach:

<cfset raw_userid = renderRequest.getRemoteUser() />
<cfparam name="raw_userid" default="0">
<cfinvoke component="core.liferay-functions" method="checkIfLogin" returnvariable="userId">
	<cfinvokeargument name="userid" value="#raw_userid#">
</cfinvoke>

Try it yourself, go to: https://github.com/thispagenotfound

And move your mouse around the 404 ‘image’ you will be pleasantly surprised that the effect is the images move to reflect your cursors position, thereby creating the look and feel of 3D movement.

I really like finding these little gems on 404 pages, or 500 errors (like common on Woot), or even Googles “Aww! Snap!” message when it crashes.

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