RANT: Pacific Immigration & the Homeless..

So I gotta start with this homeless issue which has plagued much of Honolulu. The plan that the governor proposed in regards to the homeless population was a 90 day improvement initiative to either place much of the homeless into shelters, and overall reduce the number of the homeless folks in the city. Of course, this means tax money, and like the rail, the whole state is paying for it. For starters, I would rather see my tax money go into the homeless, but I don't agree that the state should pay unless this initiative covered the whole state. Regardless to my opinion, it happened.

Today is day 91. How did the state do? Well they brought more food in to pass out. That's good. There are more shelters set up. Excellent. It looks nice on paper, but they're really overshadowing another agenda. Something that is going down towards the end of the year. For those who don't know, we're having APEC over here, and the world will converge on poor Hawai'i to get their conference skills on. Knowing this, Governor Abercrombie had 90 days to set these facilities up and get as many homeless folks in them. It's still a good thing, but as far as overall improvement, no. Nothing was improved. The tent city that was lined up at Kaka'ako was driven out, and instead of seeking these shelters, they moved inland... in particular, where North Beretania meets North King St. and along Dillingham Blvd just before the back entrance to Costco. The same tent community that was driven out resides along these streets. This is not to include the communities at Ala Moana Beach Park, Iwilei Rd (by K-Mart and Dole Cannery.), and I'm sure many more areas in Waikiki. That's not an improvement. The state just relocated the homeless to areas where they think APEC dignitaries wouldn't venture to.

Now, this isn't all just the state. You have to realize that a number of these homeless folks are homeless because of mental disabilities, and they refuse to enter shelters. Case in point: a woman lived at a bus stop on the corner of Kapiolani and Keaaumoku (right next to KFC). Because of her ungodly funk, city transit authorities moved the bus stop 60 feet away from the woman. Her funk was due to not having a shower....for 10 years. She was mentally unstable and refuse to seek shelter. She may have been forced into one since I no longer see her at her bus stop home, and it's a prime visual area for these APEC dignitaries considering places like Nordstrom (and the largest open-air mall in the world) is across the street.

Despite missing the meat of the objective, the city is still making the effort to bring in the goods for the homeless and underprivileged folks. The means are good, but knowing why they escalated their efforts to get them off the streets is not. This should have been an ongoing effort. Of course, that's wishful thinking and worse, our current efforts are being hindered by another issue in our state.

Compact of Free Association Act
In 2003, the federal government renewed the above act which basically enables the Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau to be considered an associated state of the United States. The COFA was a result of the nuclear testing we did in the area during the Cold War. It wasn't until recently that a large number of Micronesians started to arrive in Hawai'i to live, work and make use of the medical facilities that places like the FSM don't have. Them being here is suppose to be at the cost of federal taxes being that this was a federal act signed into law at D.C. Instead, Hawai'i tax payers are paying immensly for them to be here. Keep in mind, that they're provided with housing, and a large number of immigrants are up for free medical as some would really need it for post radiation issues (among other things). The COFA also allows Micronesians to come in without a Visa and without a prior health screening. According to the latest census, Hawai'i is housing 12,000 Micronesians.

In my eyes, this is fine. They're entitled to this right. I have no problem with them being here... as a person. A human, and someone who just wants to live their lives. I'm fine with it. Despite this, there are a number of issues that I do have a problem with. The first thing is sustainability. This goes in multiple directions. One direction is the fact that the state tax payers are paying a large sum of cash to sustain their living. This is one thing that I can agree with Governor Abercrombie: the federal government needs to step in and pay up....big time.  The federal governement needs to account for bills that we never asked to pay alone. This can be even easier if the feds instilled a immigration cap for Micronesians so they can spread the population to other states. Like I said, this is a federal act. The way I see it, these issues shouldn't be placed under the burden of just one state. The 2nd thing really grinds my gears. I have witnessed on multiple occassions, harassment of others, red-handed stealing of petty items such as hedge clippers, to hose nozzles, and shovels from someones backyard. The worse...THE worse is the occasional stack of furniture (intact or broken) and matresses on the sidewalk on Keaaumoku (and actually, all around the city). Even after addressing and placing laws to prevent or minimize the time of dumping said furniture (or you can call it what I call it: my $$$) for the bulk rubbish trucks, I see piles on the sidewalk. Many see this as them showing the US a "you owe us" mentality for the nuke tests that we done over the Cold War era. It's fine to have that mentality. It's understandable yet, when they cry that they're being discriminated by the locals, it's just as easy to pin everything that I just said to justify it.

We may be a state that prides on our diversity, but because of the strife that the COFA brings to this state, some use it to justify racism against the associated states. Like the few Micronesians who have the potential of making their entire population look bad, the same can be applied to the local resident population. This is bad... for us. This is class action status right here. If people think that using the "you owe us" defense for the little stuff was bad, wait until some dumbass local decides to escalate a racial situation with them. Even if that were to happen, it wouldn't be the first time that the Micronesians taken an entity to court for some class-action... action. The Lingle administration also committed discrimination under the momentum that we agreed that this whole situation was an "unfair burden." Basically, the state took away a hefty Medicaid program and placed an inadequate program called Basic Health Hawaii. Equal justice lawyers and other law firms sued the state and won using the Equal Protection clause within the 14th Amendment. The prior medicaid program was reinstated shortly after the ruling. History has shown what discrimination does. It has no place in such a diverse state.


Regardless, we're still paying. In fact, last years bill topped at $100,000,000.00 (yes, I laid it out like that), and the annual reimbursment that we're suppose to receive from the feds is only $10 million dollars. In terms of money, I don't like the fact that these immigrants throw our money on the sidewalk, or when they have to either face trial or jail time for petty crimes. Yeah, one can easily say that the piles of crap on the sidewalk can easily be someone elses filth, but for all the years that I lived in Honolulu and all the changes I seen, I have never seen a bulk trash issue until after the COFA was renewed and immigrants started flooding the state (oh, and seeing it firsthand..). Shit, the bulk trash law was a result of the excessive bulk that remained on the streets for weeks. The Federal government needs to step up and help with the mess that they created. The population per state cap should go into effect considering the terms of the COFA. That's a start, and it's completely fair.

RANT: More Mobile Trash & Gross Misinterpretation of "4G" Continues!

So the phone industry continues to amaze me in very creative ways. One of my expertise is getting into heated discussions with the "experts" in the phone industry. It's quite an oxymoron to call them "experts" considering that their main job is to sell their products to the consumer. Similar to a crooked salesman at a used car lot in Virginia Beach (up to 37% interest!), the purpose is to entrap the customer into a plan and convince them that their network is the best. Of course, we can pin this premise with most sales-people, but unlike that used car salesman, little to nothing is being done to keep the phone companies in check. It all comes down to the honesty of the salesman, and there are quite a few who are aware of the malicious tactics that are used to hook in Johnny/Jane E. Dumbass to getting their "4G" iPhone 4 (which is NOT 4G....at all), and ridiculously priced plan. Take those salesmen away and you're left with the rest of the circus. The ones who keep prodding your back until you produce some plastic (or some Federal Reserve Notes). One of the main staples to this campaign is their network. Sprint took the upper hand early and introduced their WiMax network as the first functioning 4G network in the country. This was followed by T-Mobile using HSPA+, AT&T also releasing HSPA+, and Verizon releasing LTE. All services releasing 4G networks.. all services false advertising! As I stated here, none of these networks are actual 4G networks. They're all precursors to the standard, but they ALL fall short of the projected target of 100MBits download / 50MBits upload speed (which is indeed faster than most broadband internet speed) that is suppose to be the standard. At first impression, it's not a big deal. These current speeds are still faster than their labeled 3G counterparts. Looking further into the matter reveals a gross misinterpretation scheme design to trick the people into thinking that these networks are actually 4G.

Ryan... This Again?
Hey, the way I see it, this is your money. You're buying into what they say regardless if you think otherwise. Having that mindset, would you be thinking about what you bought yourself into? I sure as hell did. A couple days later, I had to blog my findings. To briefly summarize, HSPA+, WiMax, and LTE are considered anywhere between 3.5 - 3.9G. In reality, .5 and .9 are just loose terms to describe that they're above the standard 3G specs. All networks fall under what is called the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project). These networks all have ties to the much older GSM and CDMA (think Moto RAZR days) networks, but the point is that in order for the network to be qualified as an actual 4G network, the standard needed to be submitted to the International Telecommunications Union and it needed to meet the IMT-Advanced (fancier way of saying 4G) standard. For mobiles, the target is 100Mbits d/l and 50Mbits u/l. In a nutshell, the best that this nation can do is 37Mbits (Verizon LTE), therefore, the fastest network in the US doesn't meet the 4G standard. The only country on Earth that has exceeded the target is Japan with their LTE-Advanced standard. Regardless to this, the companies see their networks as 4G and markets them under a false flag.

This may not seem to be a big deal considering that we do have considerably faster data speeds than the last standard, but because of their marketing campaign, they used the premise of "4G speeds" as an excuse to do things like take away unlimited plans (AT&T, Verizon unless you're using an iPhone), limit connectivity speeds, and even data caps for dedicated internet services (like AT&T's U-Verse). None of these catches were present in the past, and people overlook the fact that this is being done in the name of that false flag. Another thing that they love to do is limit the capabilities of their phones. No, i'm not talking locked phones. Rooting and jailbreaking are completely legal (as per federal ruling), but you do risk a void of warranty on your current device. I'm talking about limitations within certain component software and device drivers...and I have the evidence to prove it.

RADIO Y U NO WORK!?!?
There is one major advantage to Rooting a phone: the ability to flash your radio antenna and the driver controller (RIL). Some Radios work better in different regions and different phones. Of course, there are limitations, and there are risks (being that you can brick the phone.), but if you do it right, you may have your device work much better. I have a HTC Inspire 4G using HSPA+ w/enhanced backhaul (fancy term for "faster"). On the status bar, it has always said "H+" above my reception gauge. Over the summer, I rooted my Inspire and installed the very useful Cyanogenmod 7 OS into the device. After the installation, I noticed that my status bar was only indicated with just "H" and I wondered if this was a result of the OS being meant for the HTC Desire HD (a near identical version of the Inspire). When I figured out why changing the Radio and RIL could be beneficial to me, I decided to change the radio back to the stock ATT OTA radio provided with an official update released back in April. After installing it, I set it up for a series of Speedtest benchmarks and this was the result:

Note: The bottom 3 benchmarks are from the radio/RIL provided with the Cyanogenmod7 OS. The top 3 is the ATT OTA stock combo 4/29/2011. 

As you can see, the speed difference is considerably noticeable. Also note, that the ATT OTA stock release was meant to unlock the HSUPA that was not present when the Inspire was released. The considerably large upload speed is present.

After seeing these speeds, I knew there was something fishy about AT&T's handling of their network. The CM7 radio wasn't even meant for AT&T's network (T-Mobile), and it was [mostly] dunking on this radio. In fact, AT&T recently updated the Inspire to have the new version of Android (2.3...already had it :P) and a new radio/RIL. Guess what? Word on the street is that the radio is worse and both the operating system and Radio/RIL is consuming more battery power. Anyway, the other major thing that I noticed was that the "H" did not turn back to "H+"after I installed the stock radio in. Basically this told me that AT&T altered the code (since Android is open-source) in order for the connection to show "H+." Of course, I changed the radio again and I upgraded it to 26.08.03.07_M, and this was the result:

Top 3 is the new Radio, and bottom 3 is the ATT OTA stock.

These results are much better (obviously). Later results indicated that speeds were constantly between 1.1MBits - 3.9MBits d/l and 900Kbps - 1Mbits u/l which is still not fast (as opposed to the 8 - 11MBits+ you get on the west coast), but for Hawai'i, it'll do.

Now I'm even wondering how much of difference it would make when an actual HSPA+ network is in place on the island because these speeds are no different to the very 3G iPhone 4. 

Thoughts/Advice: Mac OS X Lion Part II

I'll get straight to the point. I'm going to cover the versions of the stock OS X software. This is beside the point of whether you use these apps or not.  They are actually more useful this time around, so I encourage users to try them out.

Safari
Religiously praised by the Mob but notoriously hated by the die-hard Windows community, Safari is a mix bag by all measure. The truth is that Safari just works on the Mac. The translation to Windows is (and continues to be IMO) not optimized. Regardless, Safari is back once again, and it has a several new features. Safari also runs much better than it's predecessor. Keep in mind, as I tell about these features, if there are any that are from the last version, I apologize. I am a Google Chrome user, and I'm only now starting to embrace this browser...at least in the Mac side of computing.

Safari 5.1...looks no different, right?

..but no! There are a couple new tricks. First being the Reading List. Basically, it's a fancy RSS feed for articles that you either want to save for reading later, or if you really liked said article. I could have used this last semester when I was doing my psych paper..

By holding shift while clicking an article, Safari will save the article to the list for later enjoyment (or gawk at...yes, I know what "gawk" is..I'll show you in a bit.).

Another..

Dumb? Of course you're not! There are times when you stumble on a word that makes no sense, right? Never fear! New Oxford is here to save your post from being forever trolled. Right clicking and selecting "Look up.." will now bring up the definition. I believe that this feature was shown previously, but it usually launched the Dictionary app. Obviously this new feature is the easier compromise.

The dreaded autocorrecting feature that screws up mobile texts now exist in Safari Land (as well as all Apple based apps). you can either choose a word, or you can let autocorrect do it for you. The previous red underlined option is also available.

Downloads are now shown on the upper right corner. You can also drag and drop those downloads from the list to whatever folder you wish.

A nicer feature makes use of the gestures. Instead of being mediocre, be a hipster and two finger swipe to the left and go back to the previous page. 

Other Technical features:

-Auto resume from your last page (a now standard function of all Apple made apps)

-Tap and pinch zooming

-Private Autofill

-Auto setup for email providers.

-built-in sandboxing (to prevent malicious tracking)

-GPU support via html5

-Web Open Font Format (which allows designers to use a lot more fonts for their sites

-CSS3 auto-hyphenation, vertical text (for Japanese, Chinese and Korean), & Emphasis (again, for eastern asian text).

-website data view & purge

-MathML (which shows math notations)

-dual processing (one for web-content and the other for the interface. in case the browser interface becomes unresponsive, web page will continue to load)

-Media cache (temp stores audio/video using html5 for offline playback. This mainly benefits slower connections.)

*Tech specs provided at: http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/features.html#safari

Mail

Mail for Lion took a cue from the Mail app for the iPad and added a number of features.

The overall layout that you will be seeing looks just like the mail app on the iPad.