DIRECTV to offer BPL?

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 08/15/07 at 02:08:41 pm

DIRECTV and Current Group recently announced that the satellite TV company’s customers will be able to get broadband over power line (BPL) Internet and VoIP service bundled with their TV packages. Since one of the biggest selling advantages of cable service is the ability to bundle with cable internet and VoIP phone service, I’m thinking that this new partnership may up the competition between the two.

I’ve noticed that BPL has really become the hot topic in broadband development. There are so many rural areas without high-speed internet out there, I would know since I’ve lived in them for the longest time. I really think BPL had a lot of potential to being the 3rd major player in consumer level high-speed internet. Current Group is actually arguably the most influential BPL provider with funding from Google and Goldman Sachs. Current Group’s subsidiary Current Communications offers BPL service in the Cincinnati area, with plans to expand to the Dallas-Fort Worth area soon.

I’m very interested to see if the partnership with DIRECTV will push BPL developments into a more rapid expansion. There are plenty of BPL deployments but it still seems like more of an idea then a real alternate means or option of getting on the internet. Check out the Current Group website for more information on the technology behind BPL, it’s pretty cool.

Movie Review: The Bourne Ultimatum

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 08/14/07 at 09:08:43 pm

This past weekend I had seen The Bourne Ultimatum at the local theater and I thought I would post some of my thoughts. Ultimatum picks up right where Supremacy leaves off so if you’re a fan of the series and have seen the other movies then you will know a little about what’s going on in the beginning. At the same time, it picks up at a weird point; it doesn’t start from the end of Supremacy where Bourne calls Deputy Director Pamela Landy. Instead, it starts immediately following the car chase near the end of the last film.

This threw me off but if you wait they actually integrate him calling Landy later on and you find out something about Bourne’s birth date that was given in Supremacy. I’m not going to give it all away but I thought that was an interesting twist, it’s like they took the sequel which seemingly wasn’t designed to support a another movie and altered the ending without actually changing anything. What’s interesting is that the end of Ultimatum leaves it wide open for a 4th movie, and there are so many unanswered questions.


Just as the other Bourne movies, The Bourne Ultimatum is action packed. In fact, its so action packed that you can get easily confused by the camera work, they seem to rapidly change the point of view in all of the major scenes so you have to watch closely. I really like how the film brought its action to so many places all over Europe and then finally into New York City. The Bourne series has always been totally excellent in capturing the environment in which it takes place, it feels like your right there with them.

As most of my regular readers know, (do I have regular readers?) I’m big into realism in action movies and the Bourne series does a great job of keeping things feasible, Ultimatum definitely doesn’t disappoint. There’s just such good detail put into the movie, like the accurate communication, or the use of technology which overall isn’t bad in terms of comparing to my opinion of “real technology”. I love the scene where they were tracking the ‘asset’ in the car and the GPS software was using Google maps.

The Bourne Ultimatum will introduce a brand new branch of Operation Treadstone called Operation Blackbriar. To me, Blackbriar is just a re-opened form of Treadstone, it’s a continuation of the Treadstone project despite claims that Treadstone was shut down. You will find out more about the history of Treadstone and why Blackbriar was formed in the movie. The movie actually presents a good amount of information about the projects and the training behind it. But why they were formed in the first place? To save American lives.

The movie while presenting new information about what’s going on leaves many questions unanswered. One question which I and Courtney had picked up is what’s going on between Nikki and Bourne? The scene in the restaurant where Bourne asks Nikki why she is helping him… My theory is that perhaps they had a relationship at one time? Before ‘it’ happened. Another question is why Bourne voluntarily signed up for Treadstone, what was his motive? What does he gain? To Save American Lives? What? There’s something missing.

The Bourne Ultimatum delivers another interesting and action packed chapter to the Bourne series. They really did leave it open for another movie, but at the same time maybe they wanted to leave the story open so that the viewers could draw their own conclusions like I’m doing now.

In terms of comparing this movie with the others released this summer, it doesn’t stand out. But I don’t have any significant complaints about it either. It was pretty good and if you’re a fan of the other movies you will enjoy this one.

ASUS… Woodtop?!

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 08/14/07 at 01:08:52 pm

ASUS was showing off some of their new design concepts at Computex Taipei 2007. Among them are a trio of laptops fashioned almost entirely of wood. They are obviously designed for style and me being the utilitarian I normally wouldn’t be interested. However they actually look pretty awesome, especially some of the artwork they have done on the outside casing. The one notebook with the built-in 4 channel mixer just blows my mind, it’s weird because I always thought of ASUS as a just motherboard and peripherals manufacture…

Engadget has posted a full article with a bunch of photos, take a look.

Storm Season is Back

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 08/14/07 at 09:08:14 am

Last night we had a brutal storm come through, we were under tornado warnings most of the night. The only good news is that this means the cool comfortable weather is coming back, at least for the time being. It seems like it’s been in the 90’s for weeks now and now today it’s 73F which is perfect. We did need the rain too, Minnesota is in a pretty nasty drought right now so we can use all of the wet goodness we can get.

Anyway, I took a short clip of the action last night with my point-and-shoot and threw it onto YouTube. The quality isn’t great but you get the jist, take a look –

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Did you know that I will blog about your website?

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 08/13/07 at 08:08:04 am

PPP DirectIt’s true, I write a good amount of advertisement and sponsored posts on my personal blog to support the website and costs associated with it. Marklangenfeld.com is a solid Google PR3 weblog that gets plenty of traffic, which means any sponsored posting that I do receives a good amount of exposure. All of the advertisements I feature on this website are done with my personal opinion and I only take paid opportunities that I’m interested in and that pertain to the content that I offer on this website.

Interested? Take a look for yourself - Hire Me via PayPerPost Direct!

I can’t sell you change sir.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 08/12/07 at 06:08:32 pm

On my way home from The Bourne Ultimatum (which I will be posting a full review about here shortly) I stopped by the local SuperAmerica gas station. I filled up my tank with $44.00 worth of gasoline and I later purchased some things inside making for a total of $48.70. When I went into the store I headed for the ATM machine to pull out 20 bucks to be made into change for the car wash in town.

As I said before I picked up a couple items and I went to the register with my things. You would think paying for my gas and getting change would be beyond a simple process, but let me inform you on the conversation I had with the station attendant as it’s undoubtedly still vivid in my mind.

Me: “Hey, I have pump 7 and this stuff, also I need change.”

Attendant: “We don’t sell money sir, I can’t sell you change.”

Me: *blank stare*

Me: “You can’t sell change?… No I’d like to break this 20? I was thinking 5 dollars in quarters..”

Attendant: “We can’t sell money sir, I can only give you change if the drawer is open.”

Me: *blank stare* “No see I want to buy this stuff and I already said I have pump 7, so I’m a paying customer…” *gives attendant $20.00 bill* “Can I have change now?”

Attendant: “Your total is $48.70, your going to need more then that.”

Me: “Yeah, hence the reason I also have my Visa here, you can take the rest out of that right? Also, here is my Rewards card. I’d like $5.00 in quarters please.”

Attendant: “I can’t do that.”

Me: “What? Why?”

Attendant: “I can only give you like a dollar in quarters.”

Me: “…… Ok… Do you have ones? Or?”

Attendant: “Ok, Here’s 4 dollars, and a dollar in quarters, $20.00 is your change.”

Me: *throws hands in air* “Ok so, do you have like a shift or day manager I could speak with?”

Attendant: “I am the day manager..”

Me: “Ok, then could you please let your self know that you should be clearer in your communication with customers?”

Attendant: “We just can’t sell change here sir, we don’t sell money.”

I might be insane but this really caught me off guard, I thought the guy was joking, I really did. But he was dead serious.

The point wasn’t breaking the 20; I can understand a person going in there solely for the purpose of getting change being turned away. However, I started the conversation by stating what I wanted to purchase and I just so happened to also want change.

His circular logic has my mind completely blown; at least it gave me a good story to tell.

It’s a Love/Hate Relationship.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 08/09/07 at 10:08:52 pm

My new-ish notebook came pre-loaded with Windows Vista, I’ve been running it for a few months now and although its sleek and feature packed, I’ve been seriously considering throwing XP Pro onto it just so I could have the compatibility and performance my business needs demand.

Now that I’ve had a chance to really use it every day for work and everything, it’s turning into a hassle. Between the endless compatibility issues, all of the options and things being nearly impossible to find, and the poorly designed and highly annoying UAC that you can’t really actually turn off - It’s all very hard to get used to. XP was just so lean and fast where Vista could be summed up in a single word – Bloated.

I was going to go through with formatting it, I was going to put XP onto my new Vista laptop but I really do want to give Vista a chance, I don’t want to give up just yet. That and the hassles of formatting my notebook and re-loading everything so it would be ready for work in the morning wasn’t very appealing. I mean, one of the reasons I bought a brand new notebook was to have Vista, when I attended the Vista launch and received my 2 copies of the Ultimate Edition pre-release and I was sold. Brainwashed. I had to have it.

So today I sat down and spent some time with it and I was determined to get a couple of the huge compatibility issues resolved. I finally got printing to work with the network printer in the office, and I obtained pcAnywhere 12.1 so I could stop using the stupid web remote for my remote desktop needs. So I got what I needed to work for now and I also flipped through some optimization tips I found. I think I’m overall content with its performance although I’m still far from impressed.

If you’re interested in my opinion and your looking to upgrade to Vista, Don’t. I would hold off a bit longer and wait for the dust to settle, Microsoft just released a couple major patches just this week to address and improve various compatibility and performance issues. Although I have installed them and haven’t really seen a difference myself, it does show that Microsoft is still working out the kinks.

There is news that a Vista Service Pack 1 isn’t too far off too, so I’m assuming there are still a ton of bugs and things that need to be addressed if they are working on a whole service pack this early in the game. I would wait until the OS is really ready to be released out into the wild before I’d actually go out buy a copy of it and upgrade. I actually have 2 fully legitimate copies of Vista Ultimate lying around collecting dust right now; I refuse to upgrade my desktop to Vista at this point. It still seems like I’m beta testing with the weird problems I’m running into. When it comes to buying a new PC that happens to be preloaded with Vista, obviously it’s going to be un-avoidable but at least you won’t run experience the driver problems like I’ve seen with people upgrading.

If you’re running Vista right now and you’re interested in the newly released patches I mentioned earlier, they haven’t been released to Windows Update just yet, but you can find more information about them and the download links in This Ars Technica Article.

A little place on Disc Dr.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 08/05/07 at 03:08:02 pm

Over this weekend I stayed in a hotel in Shakopee, MN near Canterbury Park. While I was there I went exploring and found that the hotel I was in is next to a huge office complex for Seagate, which for those who don’t know is a major manufacture of hard disk drives and commercial data storage equipment. They make Seagate branded products and they recently bought out Maxtor which is also huge in the consumer market.

The hilarious part is that both Seagate and the hotel I was staying at are located on Disc Drive.. Get it?!?!

I took some photos of the building and the signs and I had to post them up here –





I wish I had a chance to go in or maybe get some kind of tour arranged. I knew they have a big office here in MN but I didn’t know I was going to be staying next door to it. More information about this complex and what they do here can be found on The Seagate Website. Also, you can check out all of my photos of 1280 Disc Drive Here.

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