Data Roaming Rates: What does it all mean?

The fancy new Phones, and now tablet PCs, offer 3G internet to your hand. All of which is very pretty until you need to travel, where you can expect your data costs to go from "very high" to "crippling". Telcos do tell you what these data rates are, in technical terms of so much per kilobyte and so forth.

Roaming data is incredibly convenient, but at 10c or 30c for each 10KB, it can be expensive. It's important to optimise your usage to avoid a shock when you see your bill. (For example, if your laptop conscientiously downloaded the latest 40MB Microsoft security update in the background without you realising, it could easily cost $1,200.)

-- Vodafone

Well, I can imagine.

The trouble is, normal people do not think in kilobytes.

One of the problems is that talk of megabytes and gigabytes is so much techno-gobbledygook for many consumers. They may have no idea what it translates into when it comes to web surfing, sharing videos, e-mail, downloading movies and music, or the many other functions that have made computers an indispensable tool of daily living.

So lets break it down using Vodafones own mean estimate of 2c a kilobyte, and working out typical per use activity costs:

• email
  • plain text: $0.015
  • Internet average: $1.50
  • Warning: a typical email may contain pictures too (see below)
• pictures
  • std photo: $26
  • hidgh-res: $100
• music
  • $86 per song
• movies
  • 3-min YouTube: $190
  • TVNZ Episode: $8,000
• web surfing
  • average: $2.60 per page
  • page images: $0.24 each
  • animated ads: $2.00 each

emails:

Each keyboard character takes up 1 byte in plain text mode. A short message, about 100 words, would be around 500 bytes + the information used to get the mail to the right person and so forth. So budget 1kB per plain text email.

Rich text is a different story. Depending on the formatting you use, a RTF email can double in size. As well as which, most RTF mails have a plain text version copied to the end. So budget 3k for RTF.

World wide, the average email size is about 75kB. If you do a lot of large emails, you'd want to budget with this figure instead.

None of this include any pictures or special content people add to their emails.

pictures

If a picture is worth 1000 words, it is also 1000 times the sizeA 1 megapixel photo clocks in at 1.3Mb - . Higher resolutions are now common, and they are proportionally bigger with 5Mb per photo not uncommon. This is why photos taken with phone cameras are so small.

music

On my Box - Gin Wigmore's "Oh My" ripped to a 4.3MB vorbis file (at high fidelity). mp3 and ogg format songs are usually a bit more (mp3) or a bit less (ogg) than 1MB per minute.

movies

A short film of the sort you'd find in YouTube is about 9-10MB, so we are thinking 3-10 times the size of a photo. This would be a clip about 2-3mins long. The higher the movie quality, the bigger it is. A full DVD movie is 4-6GB for 1.5 to 2hours. TVNZ Video On Demand episodes can be around 350-500Mb.

browsing the web

Browsing the web involves getting web pages, which can vary in size a great deal depending on what is on them.

If you turn all images, scripts and dynamic content off, the bare-bones html clocks in at 25k. Webmasters are pretty decent about images, normally, and do not use photo size pics. The little giff or png widgets, like the firefox link on this page (left) are only 1-2k, and main pictures are usually 12k. The total web average size of a page is 130kB. Fancy animated ads can slow a page down: they are usually short movie clips 2-3 seconds long - about 1.5MB

conclusion

Careful though: these are approximate, back of an envelope, figures - I even approximated 1MB as 1000kB. Even so... global roaming does not look like such a good option for staying in touch. This is something you have if you travel a great deat on the company, and the company pays for it.

If you are going overseas in any other capacity, buy a local sim card and switch data roaming OFF. Use local wifi hotspots for data.

Tablet PCs set to make a comeback?

Led by the iPad - are we seeing the return of tablet PCs?

The iPad itself is an odd beastie. It looks and acts like an oversized iPod Touch ... only it seems set to market through the telcos despite not actually being a phone (also does not do flash - so web surfing for multimedia may be a tad restricted.) Presumably it could be used for VOIP - oops: no camera.

Do we also expect the thing to be locked to a particular provider (I mean besides Apple) where our new iPad can only connect through a named ISP/telco/thingy? Is this even more money lost to data-roaming charges?

At an expected NZ$700 for the low-spec version, if you already have a phone and a notebook this thing will be impractical. Especially as it replaces neither. Same pretty much goes for the up-and-coming others. Possibly there is a market for students buying a new computer - if textbooks are available and cheaply on the thing. Even then, there are clear limitations to using it to actually do your school-work.

The iPad goes with your home computer, not instead of it.

Since this is Apple though, there is some concern that Apple plan to do to books what they did to music.As Holmes Wilson put it:

This is a huge step backward in the history of computing. If the first personal computers required permission from the manufacturer for each new program or new feature, the history of computing would be as dismally totalitarian as the milieu in Apple's famous Super Bowl ad.

Some people are more alarmed than others. Total control of a particular computing workspace is, indeed, possible. The primary, current, means to this control is called Digital Restrictions Management.

DRM in music is pretty much a dead issue – however it is alive and kicking for books and movies. To be fair, it wasn’t the disaster for music that was hyped – if only through consumer resistance (also called “rampant piracy” and “sharing with your friends”) – but still…

FSF Defective By Design team has a petition in the hope that apple can be persuaded to drop DRM on books before it is too late. As if – but at least signing up demonstrates a mandate and may dissuade the others.

Still, bad things come in pretty packages - and the iPad is very pretty.

Getting an unlocked tablet looks to be impossible, even with the up-and-coming Android tablets. I can see how same people would figure: “If I’m going to be in prison, I may as well make it a comfortable prison.”

Google Afterword

CNN got Schneier to write an article about the Google/China thing. He chose to focus attention on the spying technology that was involved.

An infrastructure conducive to surveillance and control invites surveillance and control, both by the people you expect and by the people you don't.

Every year brings more Internet censorship and control, not just in countries like China and Iran but in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and other free countries, egged on by both law enforcement trying to catch terrorists, child pornographers and other criminals and by media companies trying to stop file sharers.

[I]t's bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state.

And, more security holes are found in IE. This one is interesting since the proposed attack uses a combination of non-critical vulnerabilities to open a wide hole in Windows security. Granted you have to click a malicious link - how often does that happen?

Back on the software freedom front, Albany Senior College is making more headlines by continuing to resist the Microsoft sales-force. They are not the only ones, but they are the most vocal.

By comparison, witness the proprietary world, where the NZ Health Ministry can present price increases in their Microsoft licensing as a "win", with a straight face. Even after the upgrade disaster which saw MS systems in Waikato Hospital massively infected with viruses.

OK - technically the same sort of processes could have lead to similar problems with a free software base. However, this is old hat. GNU/Linux has a security culture which acts to reduce the risk that similar mistakes would happen. Lax admins may still leave the door open for attackers, but, at least, with gnu/linux, they have to open said door first.

Of facts and FUD

I have been waiting for the dust to clear before commenting on the latest round of cyber attacks. Now the spin doctors are speaking up it is time for some perspective.

Microsoft speak is well documented these days. This is the language of marketing. So we hear that we should be using IE8 instead of IE6 (fair enough) but that a move away from IE, to firefox say, will lower your security overall.

This is following the high profile attack on GMail an the last few weeks, which also affected a lot of others. It appears that crackers used an IE exploit to gain access to google servers. To me this is neither surprising nor interesting. The fun bit is that the attack used technology loaded by google in order to comply with a US law allowing better access to law enforcement.

Earlier this month I blogged on the new powers proposed for NZ spies etc. I suggested that the technology being used was open to exploitation by others. Here is the test case - just the same stuff, in google, got used by China - though intended for the likes of the FBI and only with a search warrant. All our ISPs have the same problem.

But back to the reports - we see classic FUD signs, watch:

"I'm not aware that the vulnerability exists in other products," says Evans, "But those products may have other vulnerabilities."

Or they may not.

Asked directly when a fix would be ready, Evans states that the rollout might or might not be before the normal upgrade cycle, but has no further details.

Could this be any more vague?

"We are working to provide an update to the vulnerability. We are not seeing any attacks on IE8."

The vulnerability exists in IE8, it just has not been targeted yet. This is not the same thing as saying that IE8 is less vulnerable.

The overall thesis is that, this particular exploit not withstanding, non IE browsers are more vulnerable... overall. This is the impression you are supposed to walk away with.

This particular impression is probably best countered with the facts at the time of writing. Fortunately the footwork has already been done for me.

Secunia is a digital security firm which keeps tabs on vulnerabilities on a wide variety of software. They work closely with Microsoft, so I'm not citing enemies here. According to them, at the time Evans was speaking, there were 24 unpatched vulnerabilities in IE6, 11 in IE7, and 4 in IE8 - not including the one used in the attacks. By comparison, the same company lists zero unpatched vulnerabilities with firefox, chrome, opera, or safari.

About half the readers of this blog use IE of some kind. I peer at you over the tops of my glasses.

Photos...

Here's the photos promised ... I didn't take many because the camera stopped working. I blame the sand. The pics below are thumbnails, click to enlarge.

Here is Bodie (left), he is four and a half.
Bodie is a blond fireball, up early and playing hard all day to collapse at around 8pm. We had fun with a simple magic trick, counting, reading stories, pretend fishing off the deck, running, swinging, all before breakfast!

After all that I was crying out for my morning coffee - so I packed us all off to Charley Farlies, on the beach. Bodie had a hard choice between a fluffy and an ice block - decided on the fluffy (right) as strategy, since he figured (correctly) that he could get the ice later.

It was a blistering day, and Bodie entertained himself building sand castles and digging very deep holes (below) while his mum held his bow and arrow in trust. Cathy relates child-rearing stories - there was no shade on this part of the beach: right after this shot I went for a drink.

After Onetangi, we went to little Oneroa for lunch, and Bodie found some ducklings to feed. We were still there when I realised I had to get packed to meet the ferry home. Cathy was having too much fun and elected to stay. You can see why.

I'm Ba-ack...

Sun, sand, and small children on Waiheke Island.

Whenever I am on Waiheke, I don't want to leave. Then I get back here and I don't want to leave here. Orewa and Onetangi are both wonderful places to be and for different reasons.

On Waiheke, the beach and the pace is much nicer. Facilities are whatever you make them, and I don't miss the late shopping and and other hall marks of city-style living. I can sit on my balcony in the canopy overlooking the Royal Forest and Bird Reserve and let the rat race rush on by. Even the cinima, in Oneroa, is laid back: all decked out in old sofas, and playing non-stop "Isn't Waiheke Great" reels.

Back in Orewa, it is nice to be able to just do what I want without planning it out first. Shops close late and takeaways deliver. My cell works, and the roads are well maintained.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about being back.

But I have to tell you about this: on the way to Half Moon Bay we stopped for brunch at an eatery in Takapuna called Sumo Salads. This is a Sydney-based franchise, so a chunk of your money is going to Oz, but it is a refreshing change from the usual coffee-and-panini thing you usually see. The salads are not just a bit of lettuce and rocket, but a whole mouthwatering range you can mix and match. Portions are ample, we struggled to finish the "medium" salads we ordered, which makes up for a rather steep price. Overall it was fun and worth the detour.

While away, we played host to a friend of Cathy's, from the buddhist thing she goes to, and her 4-year-old son. It was quite nice to be looking after a small kid again, so he got spoiled rotten while his mummy had a break. Cathy enjoyed it so much she's still there, while I get to slog back and feed the cats. I have photos... somewhere: more on that later.

I have discovered that the cats like frozen chicken mince ... frozen?!

Nothing in the fridge last night so I had to do takeaways - it's a hard life. Watched late night TV: I don't seem to sleep well by myself lately. Dreamed of Corwin - vividly - so this morning was a bit of a let down. I went to the supermarket and managed to lock myself out of the car - which shows how distracted I was. Fortunately there is a spare set of keys at home so I jumped on a bus.

Now to get back.

Maxx timetables are pretty good - it tells me that the bus back is at 6:34, unless I want to walk the 6096m (which takes about an hour and a half). It's a nice day, I may yet.

So here I sit, with a computer and several hundred emails. It's achingly hot and eye-stabbingly sunny. And I'm sunburned. I think I'll soak in the pool.

Tomorrow, I have to pull out the pool pump to take to be fixed. Yay.

FSF Team back!

Hurray - managed to get my admin password accepted, so I'm able ta moderate the list. Finally the outstanding posts have gone through.

That sorted: I am off to relax on sunny Waiheke Island - and see what has happened to my house there. Anybody want to buy a house? Go to sleep listening to Moreporks? Wake up to Tuis? 10mins from Aucklands best beach and 34mins to the CBD?

Maybe I can auction it. Cathy says to wait till next year though, when prices will be better.

Meantime it is our holiday bach. This time we'll be joined by a friend of Cathy's and her small child. Which should be interesting. I'll also be out of contact for a wee bit.

When I get back I'll be able to tackle the web sites and sort out what's going to be happening about courses.