travis' brain dump

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/31/justice-seeks-to-block-att-merger-with-t-mobile/?iid=A_F_News

For the record, I believe AT&T needs to go pound sand. The thought of them taking any part in T-Mobile disgusts me. I went to T-Mobile because of extremely poor service from other carriers and their value to cost ratio. AT&T would completely undermine the values of T-Mobile should they acquire the carrier. Not to mention we’d watch our rate plans and phone costs go through the roof. I hope they get burned for this and it costs them that 3 billion in reversal fees. It would serve them right for trying to covertly corner the market by strategically positioning themselves to own almost half of it.

All I can do is shake my head… really? I’m soooooo glad I don’t use PSN. What a bummer for those “70 million subscribers”….

(CNN) — A hacker has obtained the personal information of PlayStation Network account holders and subscribers of the Qriocity streaming service, Sony said in a message to customers Tuesday.

Sony’s investigations over the past week determined that an “unauthorized person” had obtained users’ names, home addresses, e-mail addresses, birth dates and passwords, according to a statement being sent to all account holders.

The attack also has crippled Sony’s PlayStation Network, which has some 70 million subscribers and has been down since April 20. The network lets customers download video games from the Web and play against each other online.

“While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility,” said Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Network Entertainment, which manage the two services, in a joint statement.

The hacker could have taken credit card numbers, card expiration dates, billing addresses, answers to security questions and purchase history, but not credit-card security codes, they said.

Sony is encouraging customers “to protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss” by reviewing credit-card statements. The company also suggested that some customers may want to place a “fraud alert” with credit bureaus.

Sony did not say how many accounts had been compromised. A spokeswoman declined to comment Tuesday.

Some subscribers reacted angrily to the news.

“You waited a WEEK to tell us our (personal) information was compromised?” one PlayStation user wrote on a Sony blog. “That should have been said last Thursday” — the day when Sony first acknowledged the issue.

The intrusions occurred between April 17 and 19, according to the statement. On April 20, Sony switched off the PlayStation and Qriocity online services, which have remained in the dark.

Users and paid subscribers were also mostly in the dark until Tuesday about the reason for the lengthy outage or about when services would be reinstated.

Sony initially said its PS network would be be back online within one to two days.

On Tuesday, PlayStation spokesman Patrick Seybold wrote in a statement that it could take another week before they “expect to restore some services.”

So far? I’m impressed.

I remember the old days of flashing a windows mobile ROM was a “plug-n-pray” operation… Those things were (and I’m sure still are) down right scary. It was all to common to find oneself “bricking” a phone if just one little thing was out of place. Then along came Android.

My G2 is my second Android phone. My first was a Motorola Cliq that met an unfortunate fate after being ejected into the snow during a snowboarding trip in Park City, Utah. Somehow those beautiful photo’s of  mountaintop vistas posted on facebook just didn’t make it feel any better to drop $500 on a new phone. Alas, it was time to move on. I learned some really important things with my Cliq. It was my first exposure to modified ROMS on the Android platform and really made me respect what was actually being done on the back end to create solid custom ROMS that reliably installed and ran well. The guys that ‘cook’ these things up really do some great work. Flashing my Cliq was the best thing I ever did with that phone and it was actually quite easy. Still, nothing compared to how easy it was to flash my G2.

There are plenty of help pages out there on the web to get you going as far as rooting your device and installing custom images so there isn’t any need for me to go into that here. One of the best tutorials resides on the site I obtained my current ROM from. Just drop out to Google and lookg for CyanogenMod. GREAT work being done over there as far as I am concerned. Don’t forget that before even moving foward, you have to root your phone. Otherwise you might as well not even look up information on custom ROMS for any other reason than to look at the pretty pictures and wish you had one. You can’t load a custom image without a rooted device, period.

I for one rooted my phone quite literally the day I got home with it. It’s a must on these devices as the carriers tend to pack so much bloatware and unneeded software on these phones it’s a wonder they even boot. A root and cleanup is almost mandatory if you want your phone to perform well. I don’t blame the platform one bit though as it’s somehow a necessary evil in this market to pack things on for people to have  ‘readily available’ applications and get support from vendors. *rolls eyes* With a rooted G2, all that’s left is to load up ROM Manager (available on the market) which installs the Clockwork Recovery image (once you’ve installed RM, applied the img and rebooted) and of course download CM7 from the site. Once you place the images on your SD card, you can run ROM Manager to get things going. Backup your phone (always important) and let the rom drop into place by installing it from the menu. Keep in mind you should backup important things like contacts (if you’re not syncing them), emails (if you’re not syncing them) and SMS messages if you’re so inclined to retain these things because custom ROMS demand wiped devices on a fresh load. It’s not like backing anything up is difficult these days with all the apps for it out there right? suck it up and go for it!

Anyway, so I loaded up CM7. Right away I noticed the system booted faster. While the G2 was already much faster than my Cliq, the new boot time was much faster than the carrier ROM. Out of the box, CM7 looks and acts smooth. Screen transitions, default notifications, the default launcher were all things that just jumped right out at me. The phone just seemed to run more cleanly. Battery life seems to be only slightly better than stock and the memory usage is a little higher, despite not being able to tell from a performance view. I haven’t run into any problems loading apps from the market and integration of my preferred home screen launcher, Launcher Pro, works well. I am a big fan of some of the upgrades that Gingerbread brings to the table. Things just tend to run a little smoother overall and thus far haven’t experienced any issues at all with wifi calling, tethering, texting, emailing (gmail and exchange), surfing the web, facebooking, blogging, streaming or any other things which I typically use on the phone.

Keep in mind if you want the Google apps you’ll need to load it up in the beginning of your process in the same fashion that you loaded the ROM from ROM Manager. It’s also downloadable from the same site as CM7. I’d recommend it unless you’re into loading your apps manually from the apk files and don’t want any integration with Google. It’s not like it eats up that much right? 🙂

Again, I can’t find any real fault with this ROM and can only sing its praises. It runs much better than the default G2 load from T-Mob and isn’t that hard to install. I hope those guys continue to keep up the good work. I can’t wait to see what’s ahead from this project.

Ok, so I figured I would do a few postings up about different things in 2011, specifically, game reviews and other various topics. While it’s fun to put up crazy computer problems, personal updates and rants, I think adding in some more informational things might help out quite a bit as well.

This game review is for “Your Shape: Fitness Evolved” for the Xb0x 360 Kinect.  For a comparison to work with, I have also played The Biggest Loser Ultimate Workout.

Out of the box, Your Shape is much easier to use than The Biggest Loser as far as interface goes. The interface for The Biggest loser is really hard to maneuver and lock onto target while Your Shape has a very intuitive system that actually keeps close proximity to your avatar and allows you to select, then confirm your action in an easy motion. It also helps you to warm-up a little while you’re traversing the menus… rather than small controlled movements of the hand, you’re using your whole arm and moving it around to select options within the menu system. Kinect tracking is also better in Your Shape as The Biggest Loser tends to lose you a lot more. You also have you change your angle a lot and it does a poor job tracking you in different positions. Another advantage to working out with Your Shape is that you’re able to see your body moving on the screen to ensure that your actions are being interpreted correctly by the system and matching the trainer’s poses and speed. The variety of the workouts between the two is pretty comparable, while The Biggest Loser has a little more variety and somewhat easier exercises, Your Shape focuses on form and speed matching the trainer to get the most out of your exercise as possible. When comparing similar timed workouts, I was able to burn nearly double the calories with Your Shape than The Biggest Loser per my Polar Heart Monitor. Both games do a poor job of actually tracking the amount of calories you’ve burned during a session.  Both The Biggest Loser and Your Shape give you some things that keep things from getting too boring in the form of challenges (The Biggest Loser) and Gym Games and Classes (Your Shape). One of the nice things with Your Shape is the expandability and the “classes” they have for things like a Zen Workout, Bollywood Dancing and Cardio Kick Boxing.

While the actual workouts themselves seem to lack some of the detail and technique you’d pick up in an actual gym in actual classes or sessions with a trainer, I personally feel that Your Shape delivers about the best you’re going to get from a video game. Ubisoft has done a great job with a first release workout game for the Kinect platform. While the scoring system sometimes falls on it’s face because the system can’t exactly tell you’re doing the move right or wrong, it still does a better job than The Biggest Loser. The only downside to both of them is they do fall short when verifying correct form and encouraging correct form when your form is improper. However, anyone who knows their body should be able to determine if they are doing the exercise right or not as you should actually feel the exercise as opposed to feeling pain or nothing from the exercise.

My recommendation if you’re looking for a workout game for the Kinect, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved.

Now to get my hands on EA’s new game and see how well that works.