Author: RustyG

Posted in Rants, Technology

Please stop comparing 5G services T-Mobile (aka John Legere)

Posted on by RustyG

(featured image: ASSOCIATED PRESS – via Engadget)

So it looks like T-Mobile is up to it’s old (VERY) antics again and making fun of the competition’s 5G services and claiming superiority over the 5G that Verizon is providing. This needs to stop immediately and John Legere needs to live out his days and weeks peacefully. I know in reality, this will never happen, as John’s eccentric attitude is somewhat how T-Mobile got to where it is today, but here’s hoping he reads this, or someone on his team does and passes the word along.

Let me state this up front. I am a T-Mobile fan and a current customer of 5+ years since I left At&t years ago. What I do not like, is the constant “poking” at some other carrier/s, when your stuff isn’t exactly stellar, yourself. T-Mobile marketing team, John and the incoming Mike Sievert, are you listening? Good, let’s get started.

A little history lesson. I will go back to 2012, when 4G was first starting to get out. We (as in the United States) were reaching 3G market saturation (though, some would argue) and 4G was the next-gen fledgling technology that was on the horizon. At&t just one day started labeling their 3G services (HSPA+) as 4G (aka FauxG). HSPA+ is TECHNICALLY just 3.5G, as a slightly faster 3G service. Depending on where you search, you can see evidence of this here, here (“In a lot of markets, except in the USA, an HSPA+ network is unofficially considered and marketed as a 3.5G network”) and here. T-Mobile even followed suit by marketing with Carly Foulkes in a black & pink leather motorcycle outfit and giving her “blazing” blur lines behind her motorcycle to show how fast she was going. I actually covered this marketing debacle back then when it happened.

I digress, but you get my overall point. 4G was still basically new to the market and companies had to market it, so they could sell new handsets, get consumers to buy in and how they were “improving” their networks with faster speeds. Remember, for T-Mobile, this is all pre-John Legere and post the failed 39 billion dollar buy-out attempt from At&t, from the year prior. As I noted in my above article link, I believe that T-Mobile had no “future plans”, since it was expected that T-Mobile would just fold in under At&t. (I even had a tech news show at the time and covered it and even blogged about it as well) This is completely different 8 years later and now we are expecting to see the T-Mobile buyout of the dying Sprint service, hopefully by April 1st, 2020[1] [2]. (T-Mobile may be laying people off, when they boasted that they would be creating jobs during the merger process over the last few years.) My, how the tables have turned for the former underdog, T-Mobile, since John Legere has shown up.

Moving a bit forward in time, I want to temporarily turn my sites over to Samsung (who some may call me a FanBoy) and give you a quick rundown of their similar antics of trolling iPhone, by advertising and continually selling people on the fact that they kept the 3.5mm headphone jack, well after the iPhone 7, into the Galaxy S10, being the last flagship phone to have it. For a few years, Samsung would PROUDLY stand up on stage and boast how they were able to keep the headphone jack in their flagship phones. Soon, after it was found that the Note 10 from 2019 would be dropping it, Samsung quietly deleted all of their trolling marketing materials. Let’s not forget the oddly marketed Galaxy S4 as well, with all those dancers. So my personal advice T-Mobile, let’s just stop trolling now, before you, inevitably have to delete it all anyway.

Now moving forward to a more recent time in history, last year in 2019, At&t started lying to it’s customers again and began labeling their 4.5G LTE Advanced as “5Ge”. Even though, Verizon had already been marketing it as it was intended, LTE-A for years. I assume since At&t was behind this curve on this technology and so close the “launch” of 5G technologies, they figured it wouldn’t hurt to FIB again, as they did in 2012. I even had friends telling me adamantly about how their Samsung device had “5G” already and was getting better service than I was. I had to sadly explain to them that they had been lied to by their service provider and that just because the 5Ge logo showed up, didn’t mean it was real 5G.

I have finally reached the most current marketing scheme, being led by the eccentric John Legere and his team. He started last year with the “verHIDEzon” stuff.

Before I get too deep into the details, let me give you a quick, 10,000 foot view of 5G technology. There are 3 major versions of it currently. There is the high band, high speed 5G mmWave tech that goes SUPER CRAZY fast, sometimes getting in the Gigabit speeds when testing. The problem is, these are very hard to get, and typically need line of sight and cannot be blocked by anything (even tree leaves).

Then there is the complete opposite side, the low band, slightly higher speeds (typically about 20% faster than current 4G LTE) of the sub 600Mhz spectrum. You can also see more tests about this and how it is much easier to stay connected indoors and out. This is the technology that T-Mobile decided to start with, so they could market it as being the “first nationwide 5G” rollout. While this isn’t the same tech that At&t mistakenly chose to start their “5G” marketing campaign with, the sub 600Mhz isn’t as fast as the mmWave tech that a few cities around the US are currently experiencing. Which is why John decided to start his trolling with the aforementioned “verHIDEzon” ads.

I didn’t forget the 3rd portion, known as mid-band, but this most likely won’t be seen until the completion of the merger with T-Mobile and Sprint and T-Mobile starts transforming the current 2.5Ghz towers into their coverage. There are quite a few good explanations of this out there, but I think T-Mobile has a great quick little video with Bill Nye the science guy that explains the best for all peoples.

Now back to the HIDEzon stuff. As Verizon began rolling out their mmWave 5G in select cities, sidewalks and crosswalks around America, they weren’t being real forthcoming with their 5G coverage maps, because they knew that it was spotty at best and you could literally block the tech with tree leaves, the wind or even glass. It wouldn’t be a good idea to tell people on a mass public scale of their 5G coverage if it suffered from small blockages and then have to explain themselves. As far as I am concerned, this was a very good idea, not to speak at all and just let it be tested by the tech bloggers and journalists, so they could see it for themselves and explain it to the masses. Free marketing. Win. Win.

Unfortunetly, John Legere took this as a way to troll Verizon and started his whole campaign on how they are “hiding” their maps from the public and T-Mobile was working in the background on their upcoming nationwide coverage, so he felt it was “cool” to kick this off. It was funny to some, but overall in my opinion was a flop in a marketing attempt as it didn’t reach the levels I think he wanted, as the twitter account was deleted soon after.

As of this last week, he has now created a second attempt and changing the Verizon name into “verWHYzon” ads. He has already started paying for more ads again. Yes, as in before, he has created a soon to fail, twitter account, again. This time, it seems to be headed up by Neville Ray, their President of Technology, but I am sure it is being orchestrated by Legere himself, as a coup de grâce on his way out as CEO. As I noted in a discussion thread on Reddit, I just want it to stop immediately.

If you are going to be the “best”, I ask that you shut up, be quiet and just BE THE BEST. I think Rene Ritchie said it best, when he noted that Apple doesn’t even use other companies in their advertising or comparisons at all. They just show you their products, as if there are no other competitors at all in the market. They can create the “reality” that Steve Jobs was known for, that they are the “best” and there is no need to look for companies. I am in no way an Apple fan, but Rene has a point.

So, T-Mobile, until you fix your CURRENT 4G LTE coverage, you can’t tout about how your BUDGET level sub 600 5G is nationwide and you are “better” than Verizon. It’s like touting you are the fastest turtle on the beach.

One of your biggest fans, but slowly getting frustrated, with you sending me a microCell to FIX your LTE connection issues at my house,
-Rusty G

Posted in Technology

Best Disk Space Visual Analyzers for Windows and Mac

Posted on by RustyG

So, these are not my own selections, but two articles I found that I would like to keep bookmarked on my own site for archival purposes. The two pages are originally from here (2016 on both):

https://lifehacker.com/the-best-disk-space-analyzer-for-windows-5915921

and

3 of the Best Disk Space Analyzers for Mac OS X

I personally use WinDirStat for all of my Windows installations and it has been my go to for years, but I recently just saw a very similar one called WizTree for Windows. You can see the similarities below in the screenshots:

WizTree
WinDirStat

Since I love being able to see my data in a very easy to see visual format, I also wanted to find something similar to this on the Mac side as well. It wasn’t hard to find with a quick Google search. I installed Disk Inventory X and it seemed to be exactly what the others were. Something visual I could see and click on large blocks and just click and see what the file was and do with it what I needed, very quickly.

Disk Inventory X

I hope this helps you out as you are trying to see what it taking up the most space on your drives, as it helped me!

cross
Posted in Rants

What Happened To Wednesdays Church? (Opinion Piece)

Posted on by RustyG

As I sit and write this, I find myself having a hard time with the “church” and it’s current apathetic views on the mid-week service. I want to give you a general view of my opinion on Wednesdays and open this up for discussion. As a piece of background, I grew up in an independent bible believing baptist church. As a child, I was in church, basically every time the doors were open. This meant for me, every Sunday AM and PM service and every Wednesday PM service and if there was anything else available, my mother would make sure to make it a priority in our lives, as I was growing up. So as a teenager and into my very early 20s, while I was still attending my church, I continued that behavior, just basically out of a combination of desire and habit. I have been on several mission trips with our church due to this, as well as many summer camps and other events.

After my early 20s, I moved away from home for about 12-13 years and just recently came back in 2017. After coming back, I retained my job out of town and traveled back and forth between the job and “home”, but rejoined my home church after the 13 years of absence. It was a bit jarring for me as, many of the people I grew up with had moved on in some shape or fashion. The church I remember had changed faces and it was a bit different for me, but it still had the same overall “vibe”, if you will. Even though there were a number of people who had moved on, there were just enough of the “originals”, that I could easily, jump back in and not really have to worry about re-introducing myself. I had over the 12-13 years, even been on a few more mission trips and even stopped in for a few visits randomly. So it wasn’t like I was completely absent for the entire time.

I joined a class of folks that were familiar to me, even though a portion of the class was brand new to me, but as my life has always been able to adapt to changes, it really didn’t bother me. I did however, this time around, feel a bit of a change in the air. This time, I was returning as an adult, and no longer a teenager or young adult, hidden away from the goings on of the church. So I began to dig a little deeper and as I found out, our numbers were slowly declining on Sunday PM and Wednesday PM services. There were a large number of our members that were Sunday AM people only. The PM service would really get anywhere between 50-75% of the Sunday AM service and Wednesdays, it would basically only be about 25% of the entire congregation.

Was I the only one that saw this? Was I the only one who cared? I even asked around and even criticized the fact that our numbers were so low to comparison of what I vaguely remember as a young adult. I remember being a part of the youth group and the church being somewhat larger than what we currently have. Had we lost numbers due to the pastor? Had we lost numbers due to apathy? Had we lost numbers due to busyness outside of the church? Had the members work lives taken precedent over what the church was offering? I am not here to define what the exact problem or issue is. I am only here to start a discussion and see if this is happening in your church or your congregation. I would like to offer up some ideas to start the conversation, so if you want to join, please feel free to read on and comment below.

Getting Rid of Services

I spoke with a few friends of mine in our class at a recent outing that we had after church this last week. I did find it funny, that some of those members were not at service, but still came to the outing (I’m not calling anyone out, but just wanted to point it out). After getting to the outing, I brought up this particular subject, on the fact that not many members are attending evening services and sticking only to the Sunday AM service. It was brought to my attention that there are other churches, though it did not seem like many, but I could be wrong (feel free to comment below) that are currently ditching their Wednesday PM services during the summer. This seemed to be under the ‘guise’ of summer activities and other family things that families might do that might cause them to miss regular services. Since this happened to a large number of their members in the congregation, the church would suspend Wednesday services throughout the summer until, what I assume would be when school started back up.

It was also brought to my attention, that some of our group, might even like to suspend church on Sunday PM services all together as in addition to the Wednesday evening services all together, in the name of at home “get togethers” or discipleship groups during the week. They would much more appreciate the church, if it was held only on Sunday mornings and they didn’t have to attend the building again until the following week. They wouldn’t want to get rid of church all together, but help “strengthen” the church by moving the small groups to each other’s homes for the other services. This in theory, would help grow the church and help smaller groups “bond” due to the community of the idea. If you are at each other’s houses, this would help each other understand each other better, on a personal level I suppose.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the underlying idea of a community, in that aspect, but I have a bigger problem with getting rid of the Sunday and Wednesday evening services. I grew up in the idea that we were at church every time the doors were open and try to attend as much as you can outside of the standard 3 services, as we were growing Christians and needed such stability and teaching. As an adult, I much appreciate it and still continue this, as much as I can. (Just as an aside, I have to admit, my current job is keeping me away from Sundays all together and I hate it, and have been applying for other jobs that I can get a M-F schedule) I find that if I were to attend church at a friend’s house or have those “get togethers”, it would be much too laid back and it may not be the focus that I need.

I compare this idea of “at-home-church” as the same that I do when I work from home. It’s a completely different vibe and how you handle yourself. If there isn’t the church preacher and maybe not even a leader, then we are all just friends “hanging out”, no different than the dinners that we sometimes have after a service. We may very well start out strong, but I feel that without the structure of church, you can’t REALLY, get into a heart of worship. I know that you can however, be in a spirit of prayer, if you are using the time to pray and learn about each other’s lives, but I feel that may miss the whole aspect of church. I understand the premise behind small groups at home, but I again, feel like overtime, this would degrade the overall attitude of church and would eventually boil down to just “hangout” time with your “church” friends or as some may call it, a support group.

What are your thoughts or ideas on removing services?

As stated above, I just feel that having a scheduled service time, that is always a Sunday AM, PM and Wednesday evening service, sets a precedent that these are your times that are ALWAYS available to you as a member of the church. At the church level, we should NEVER get rid of any of these times, as these are structured times in which you can count on the church being open and have other like minded members available at your disposal to congregate with and learn from. If the church were to get rid of these times, it lessens it’s impact in the community and it’s power to help share the gospel on a nearly consistent basis. I am told that it is partly because I am a person of tradition and I can understand that. I also feel that tradition sometimes, can get in the way of gospel being shared, because we are human and like tradition, structure and organization. We need to be able to be flexible in those times and sometimes allow the Holy Spirit to work though us or around us in the service. (We don’t have to always end when the hour is up!)

I struggle with the idea of getting rid of the other services, but would love open feedback and maybe even discussion in this particular topic. I will end this article with the verse that I base most of this ‘argument’ on, Hebrews 10:25.

“Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching. “

Posted in Technology

The Problem with Streaming

Posted on by RustyG

 

If you have ever been to my house, you will most definitely see the somewhat large collection of movies that I have on physical media, with 99% of it being Bluray and 0.5% being DVD and the other 0.5% being the newer 4k Bluray discs as I begin to start transitioning my newer purchases to be 4k only. As a huge media consumer and collector, I find it very odd that people are giving up their ability to own things, verses renting them for a limited time. That whole idea leads me into the reason for this article.

Streaming is a really bad idea if you want to own your music, tv shows or movies. This really can apply to any digital media to be honest, so if I missed something, I apologize. We are a society that is slowly going to the way of the content provider’s wishes and paying a subscription for streaming. I know that a lot of people are doing it and it can be seen in this latest article over at Mashable, astutely titled, “Music In the Air“. You can see from a lot of their research, that more and more people are going to the cloud streaming services for their music. This includes Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, Tidal and many many others that are available to consumers.

You Don’t Own Your Collection and Can’t Play it Anywhere

Let me give you my argument and the reasons why streaming is very bad for the future of online media. First and most importantly, you don’t actually “own” the music, but you are renting it for a small fee, most likely on a monthly basis. I am using the word “own”, very loosely, in so much as that you can play the media anywhere and any place that can play it. For example, if you purchase the physical movie (which typically comes with a ‘free’ digital copy), it will usually come in one of the three major varieties: DVD, BluRay or 4k BluRay. Most likely with the BluRay and 4k versions, you will get an extra copy via the lower version. So, with 4k, you will get a BluRay and digital and with BluRay, you will typically get a DVD and digital copy. This is not exact for every movie purchase, but is very common in most retailers.

Now that you have this, as long as you have one of these compatible players, you can play this movie anywhere you have a display of some kind, the right cables and electricity. There isn’t any online license checks or validations needed to play the movie. If you are a console gamer, then you mot likely already have one of these players built in as a ‘bonus’ and sometimes, can be cheaper than buying some of the higher end BluRay players that have some of the exact same features via their gaming dashboard. If you are somewhere where the internet doesn’t reach, but have a TV or display and the appropriate player and electricity, then no fear, you can play it!

With streaming services, this is not yet universally available. When you have streaming services, you have to have some sort of internet connection. Though, this is getting harder and harder to find, there are plenty of places in the world that do not have access to ‘landline’ (Cable, DSL or the newer Fiber) internet and may only have OTA (over-the-air) via either their cellular provider, satellite or maybe even long distance WiFi beamed internet. Sometimes, that may even be sparse or limited, depending on the ISP. Audio streaming really doesn’t need a lot of bandwidth and can really be done over ‘3G’ networks and above, but when it comes to video services, you most definitely want ‘4G LTE’ or above, unless you want to live in an utter buffering hell.

Streaming is a Temporary License

Since streaming is typically on a subscription basis, you also could lose access to your playlists or media if the provider decides to no longer carry the content provider (artist or creator) or their licensing deal has expired. If you are a member of the popular Netflix community, you know there are websites and articles that will keep you up to date with with what is coming and going on Netflix.

There have been many stories throughout the years that showcase this issue over and over. There was the very public Taylor Swift issue that was eventually ended. Even more recently, with the advent of Disney+, you will begin to see Disney movies and properties leaving Netflix and other streaming services as well. This can even include the platform specific ‘exclusives’ for video services, for the most part. The ‘exclusives’ doesn’t pertain to audio streaming services as much, but can happen from time to time. It bodes well for a music artist to be on all platforms, unless they are at Taylor Swift levels and can make exclusives for certain streaming services.

Without your internet connection, the selected service cannot validate your payment and allow for certain songs to be played, unless they have some sort of ‘offline’ feature, the way YouTube and Netflix have begun to offer in most recent years. Obviously, this has become less of an issue with more WiFi and cellular connections than we used to have, but if you go camping or hiking in some regions, this may not be possible.

SIDEBAR: Streaming Exclusives Also Hurt the Industry

So this is just a small aside, but the idea of ‘Exclusives’ also hurts the overall streaming market in general. I don’t have the best way to explain it, so I recommend watching this short 5 minute video done by the Verge to explain it (and also explains a few other points of mine):

 

Quality Suffers When You Stream

One of the biggest caveats that you give up when streaming as well is quality. I myself am kind of a quality snob, so it is important to me, but for most at home consumers, they really don’t care or can tell a difference. I will admit that this section will not affect most readers, but for those of us that enjoy the highest quality we can get, having a physical form of the media is always best, or at least the highest quality digital version, like 320Kpbs for MP3 or for real audiophiles, FLAC, which is completely lossless. In the video side of things, this maybe full 1:1 copy of a disc or even a ‘compressed’ .mkv or .mp4 file, but these can take up precious amounts of storage, if you do not have the budget to purchase large amounts of storage.

When you have the physical discs (mostly referring to movies & TV shows), you are getting a higher bit-rate (basically the amount of information able to be converted into something you can see or hear) from the disc and is more consistent while viewing. If you are using a streaming service, this can fluctuate based upon your connection speed and network congestion. With cable services, this can be worse, as it is a shared network (Think Xfinity/Comcast/Turner/Spectrum) versus having a dedicated line like DSL (though really slow in comparison) or Fiber. If you have ever watched a video online, you are well aware of ‘buffering’.  This can be more annoying when on anything less than a 10MB connection with multiple users.

Pirating or ‘Personal Copies’

Now, I won’t completely forget the online ‘underworld’ of pirating. Obviously, I cannot condone or share how to go about pirating copies of your favorite media, but I do know it exists. One of the most famous stories of this, was the early release of digital copies of movies being made available before the studios wanted them available through the Sony hack of 2014. This was the large attack that released copies of ‘The Interview’ to the internet even though the North Koreans didn’t want it released at all. There were more details and information to the overall story, but was still a very publicized story of ‘piracy’ in the mainstream.

I will admit that I learned all of the ‘piracy’ skills I would ever need in the days of Napster and Limewire (and Kazaa as well) and the Gnutella days when I was in middle school and entering high school in 1999. Peer-to-peer sharing has always been an issue with all of the digital distributors, even though iTunes and Apple was really one of the first to make it so convenient, that it is just easier to purchase your digital copy online than it is to take the risk of pirating your ‘copy’. These days, the best way to ‘share’ is via BitTorrent, but this again is meant for legal large file sharing.

I do know that there are legal and really ‘easy’ ways to backup your discs (audio or video) for your own personal collection called ‘ripping. If you were ever an owner of the original iPod and used iTunes, you know how easy it was to drop a CD in your computer and just hit the ‘rip’ button with the selected quality that you wanted (64kbps on up to 320). There are even laws that protect the consumer for ‘ripping’ movies, TV shows and CDs as long as it was for their own personal collections as backups and not being shared online for all to pirate. If you have ever heard of HandBrake, then you know what I am talking about (though these days, I hear MakeMKV is way better).

This is how most of us built up our music collections in the early 2000’s, if you are an iTunes or even WinAMP of old user. As the years went on, we had to keep adapting our music libraries and even started collecting movies with the digital copies that came with DVD and BluRay purchases via either iTunes, Vudu or even UltraViolet throughout the years. I am really happen though, with all those splinters of different companies, they finally brought them all under one ‘roof’ with the latest service, MoviesAnywhere.

Summary

So overall, you can get my general disdain for streaming as the main way of consuming content. If any of your services ever ‘die’ or cease to exist, there will be no servers on the other end to validate you DRM’d content. If you are ever without internet, you can’t get your services to work. If the zombie apocalypse happens, then you no longer have a ‘library’ of movies or music to listen to! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind having those as backups or as an extra option to watch or listen to my media, but I want to be the controller of this content, instead of some 3rd party service.

This is why large services like Plex Media, Kodi or even VLC exist. This is why there are personal ‘cloud’ devices from Western Digital(WD), Synology or even Drobo that allow you to have local storage libraries full of your media. I am not against digital media, but I just think that we need to own it, so we can play it anywhere and as many times as I want to hear my guilty pleasure of Teenagers, by My Chemical Romance.

Here is a great short video as well, basically explaining all of my thoughts above, since the most recent announcement of Samsung stopping building BluRay players in the future. There are multiple videos out there like this and I am sure are linked to this video, but I think he explains it in the shortest amount of time:

Edited 5/25/19 1:44 PM EST/EDT

Another Great Video explaining it:

Edited 5/28/19 5:32 PM EST/EDT

Even MORE great videos explaining (in part) more on the topic:

-Rusty G