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| Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 | | 6:40 am |
WARNING: Friends-only posts
For some reason, several friends-only locked posts over 2 years old have been mysteriously unlocked by Livejournal this week.
Multiple users are affected. Check your posts. Log out, and read your journal. | | Sunday, September 14th, 2008 | | 4:08 pm |
Reviewlet: Burn After Reading
Astounding performance by J.K. Simmons, but way too little screen time for him.
Great performances by all the actors, actually, but the movie itself was crap. Half as funny as Fargo, and 4 times as long. | | Thursday, September 4th, 2008 | | 8:36 pm |
Upcoming festivities.
Birthday celebration planning is underway for the evenings of the 10th and 12th in Toronto. If you want in, but you didn't hear about it because you're not in Toronto, not on my Facebook, or were otherwise omitted from the invitation list -- lemme know. | | Friday, August 22nd, 2008 | | 10:34 am |
An open letter to Stephane Dion and Garth Turner This letter was emailed out to Stéphane, Garth and Yasmin at 5pm. The dead-tree copies should be in their parliament offices by the end of next week. Did you know that sending mail to MPs in Ottawa is free of charge? Try it out! Huge thanks to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ben_zine for cleaning up much of my overly verbose language and passive-aggressive sentence structure.
To: http://www.stephanedion.parl.gc.ca/ http://www.garth.ca/CC: http://www.yasminratansi.parl.gc.ca/Stephane, Garth; On 20 Aug 2008, I had the honour and the privilege of meeting with you at the Halton Town Hall, ( http://www.garth.ca/weblog/2008/08/21/in-search-of-hope/) - both in the large Town Hall, as well as in the smaller blogger's reception beforehand. I'd like to thank you for your availability. For your bravery in handling our unscripted and unannounced questions. For your thought leadership, your openness, your passion, and your approachability. Your willingness to address difficult questions from wingnuts such as myself is a welcome change from what we have sadly come to expect from our politicians. I have no doubt that you've been positively influenced by Garth Turner's dedication to open democracy. The bulk of your statements, and the bulk of the questions from the floor dealt with the Green Shift ( http://www.thegreenshift.ca/). A question from the floor noted 30,000 scientists who oppose the plan, but my own research today has convinced me that this petition was mostly signed by fictional characters and persons in fields unrelated to climate change or environmental studies. The common name for this petition is the "Oregon Petition," and it's over 7 years old. ( http://www.google.ca/search?q=Oregon+Petition) Many of the actual signatories have now changed their positions. I mention this because you were unaware of the petition on Wednesday, and I hope you didn't take it seriously. Your Green Shift plan is simply a logical necessity. I believe that the strategies you've proposed are inevitable and necessary for our survival. Even the current government believes that this taxation of pollution is desperately needed, but their plan for new taxes doesn't include any reductions in personal taxes -- it's just a cash grab! ( http://www.ec.gc.ca/doc/virage-corner/2008-03/541_eng.htm) The taxation of pollution is inevitable: we must use market economic externality metering in order to ensure our survival. A mandate to implement the Green Shift with the next election will allow us to start sooner, cheaper, and ramp up more gradually than if we were to put this off any longer. There were other questions from the floor that caused me some concern. Some of the increasingly pressing issues with Canadians are relatively unknown to you, although there was always at least one other MP in attendance who was familiar with them. Because the Liberal Party does not yet seem to have articulated positions on these topics, I'd like to share with you my opinions, in the hopes of making them yours as well. Garth mentioned that he's been able to convince you to start a blog, the "Leader's Notebook" ( http://www.liberal.ca/notebook_e.aspx). This move will certainly make you more accessible. In time, I hope you'll be brave enough to permit commenting and discussion. I know I'll certainly follow your postings once they're available for syndication by RSS. The Liberal.CA website has 6 published RSS feeds, but some oversight has left your blog from the list. Additionally, I found that your profile on the Liberal.CA website links to a Facebook profile that does not exist ( http://www.liberal.ca/conversation_e.aspx). I'm sure that your web staff will be able to easily correct these oversights once they've been made aware. You mentioned in one of your answers that we would have to build more of a knowledge economy in order to weather the economic changes taking place in the manufacturing and industrial sectors. I have personally transitioned from manufacturing work to a professional career over the past decade, and can vouch for this necessity. Building a knowledge economy requires a knowledge infrastructure. Such an infrastructure includes traditional schools, libraries, and publishing, but also incorporates telecommunications, the internet, and a creative commons. Restrictions on research and development, knowledge sharing, academic discourse and innovation are all barriers to the construction of the kind of knowledge infrastructure that Canada needs to compete on a global scale. Our biggest threat right now is Bill C-61. This bill was crafted in the interests of foreign corporations, and misunderstood even by the tabling minister. Bill C-61 decimates the existing Fair Use provisions of the Copyright Act, provisions previously described by the Supreme Court as user rights. Bill C-61 makes it illegal for teachers and librarians to continue sharing knowledge in the ways they have become accustomed, and this is unacceptable. Dr. Micheal Geist, the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has proposed that all Members of Parliament be asked to take a copyright pledge in defence of teachers and librarians. The pledge is simple: "I will not introduce, support, or endorse any copyright bill that, either directly or indirectly, undermines or weakens the Copyright Act's fair dealing provision." (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2562/125/) Mr. Dion, I challenge you to ask the Liberal caucus to take this pledge with you and affirm your commitment to Canada's knowledge infrastructure. Further, I encourage you to meet with Dr. Geist in order to learn more about these new issues. I know that it is often difficult for experienced politicians to understand the controversies and issues surrounding new technologies, and I hope you'll see Dr. Geist as an ambassador from that world. The internet is a huge component of this new knowledge infrastructure, and wonderful because the internet is decentralized, global, and commoditized. Except that it's not commoditized in Canada. While other countries benefit from a competitive marketplace, Canadians very often only have one or two high-speed telecommunications providers for last-mile service delivery in their areas, and these providers are heavily and successfully lobbying to maintain their monopolies. The current government has instructed the CRTC to take a hands-off approach in regulating the internet. This instruction has effectively handed control of our national knowledge infrastructure to a very small group of companies. Bell has used their monopoly in last-mile DSL-based telecommunications to unfairly and unreasonably interfere with the relationships between consumers and smaller Bell competitors. Rogers has locked out all competitors from their cable-based last-mile monopoly, and Canadian consumers have been left with no other options since the effective failure of Look Communications. Canadians are in dire need of a new competitor in the last-mile telecommunications marketplace, but Canadian regulation of that market prevents new competitors from arising! Bell, Rogers, Telus, Shaw and Cogego are leveraging the regulation of one market in order to monopolize another unregulated industry, with a disastrous effect on the quality, pricing and other measures of competitive marketplaces. Canadian consumers left to brave the whims of this stale seller's market. This brings us to the subject of network neutrality. Bell's anti-competitive practices are well-known within the government, ( http://blog.juliannayau.com/2008/08/21/prentice-response-to-my-email-regarding-net-neutrality/) but our government is simply not taking a leadership stance to ensure that Canada's knowledge infrastructure is nurtured and fostered. In Canada, we only have three wireless telephone network providers: Bell, Telus and Rogers. Other wireless telephone "brands" are subsidiaries or resellers, giving control of our wireless telecommunications to the same effective trifecta monopoly as our last-mile high speed internet connections. I'd like to give you a concrete example of why this is bad. I've got a smartphone, a Nokia e51. When I bought it, the device was light-years ahead of any cellphone sold by Canadian wireless providers; they were unable to satisfy my requirements in a cellphone, so I purchased my phone from an importer. Bell and Telus wouldn't let me use an imported cellphone on their networks, since their infrastructures are too antiquated. This is also the reason why the iPhone only works on the Rogers network (Fido is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rogers). Since Rogers has a complete monopoly on GSM communications in Canada, I'm forced to use Rogers as my wireless provider. Because I have an imported phone, the cheapest wireless internet available to me is $0.05/kB. Your blog, Mr. Dion, is a very modest webpage, and is over 500KB in size. Mr. Turner's blog is double that. It would cost me over $75 to read those two blogs on my cellphone -- just once. Without even reading the comments! In the USA, I could buy an unlimited internet data plan from AT&T for $30/mo. I would pay $30/mo to read your blogs, but not $75. There's no doubt that Research In Motion is a Canadian success story, and an aggressive innovator in its field. It's too bad that the Canadian market is so uncompetitive, causing our citizens to pay significantly more for Blackberry service than those of any other nation. I am confident that the inventors at RIM will explain in private meetings how the current wireless marketplace in Canada is a major barrier to Canadian innovation and technological leadership. ( http://exple.tive.org/blarg/?p=727) My core theme in this letter is that the Canadian knowledge infrastructure is so misunderstood by so many politicians that Canadians are missing out on the knowledge economy. Technological innovation is fleeing our country, our infrastructure cannot support its development, and backwards legislation like Bill C-61 aims to make it suicidal for consumer electronics companies to operate here. I know that the environment and the Green shift are higher priorities, and are your flagship policies. I know that it would be unreasonable to expect you to become overnight experts in knowledge infrastructure. I urge you, though, to designate a caucus member to become versed in these issues and to engage themselves in the public discussions. The 91,000 Canadians concerned about Bill C-61 are waiting for you at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6315846683The 24,000 Canadians concerned about net neutrality are waiting for you at http://www.neutrality.ca/Thanks again for your involvement, http://quota.tion.ca/ | | Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 | | 11:12 pm |
On Hypocricy The internets are abuzz over a series of exceptionally well done Muppets shorts. I have seen them, and they are wonderful. But. Since their release, there has been a continuing, systematic and overwhelming deletion on youtube of everything else Muppet-related -- primarily the classics. For shame. | | Friday, July 18th, 2008 | | 4:02 pm |
Further to the competition bureau So here was my complaint to them, sent in on the 8th when I stumbled upon their online complaint form: The competition bureau failed miserably in protecting Canadian consumers by providing competitive high-speed internet over Rogers Cable lines.
Please don't fail us again with the Rogers monopoly on GSM Communications in Canada. Now, I have a long letter back from them. It assumes I'm complaining about the iPhone, but there's really much more to it than that. I plan on replying to this letter in a more formal manner after my cottage weekend. So I leave it to you, lazyweb -- do my research and provide my talking points. So much of this letter is demonstrably inaccurate that I'm at a loss for where to start. ( Their Reply ) | | Thursday, July 17th, 2008 | | 3:30 pm |
Response from the Competition Bureau
. . .
It is the Bureau’s view that Rogers does not hold a dominant position in the market for mobile wireless telephony services in Canada. Rogers is in direct competition with two other major wireless providers, in addition to a number of smaller carriers, all of whom offer handsets that are functional substitutes for the iPhone.
. . . | | Monday, May 26th, 2008 | | 8:24 pm |
From the Canada Revenue Agency (Paraphrased) Dearest Mr. quotation; We audited your 2006 taxes without telling you, and we figured that you owed us a crapload of money -- enough to pay for a third of your sweet new ride. But, we didn't tell you about the audit until 2008. Even though you objected and challenged our audit in writing before filing your 2007 taxes, we deducted that crapload of money from your 2007 refund, essentially holding your money hostage while we considered your challenge. Today, we admit that we were wrong in our audit, and were wrongfully holding back your refund money for a couple of weeks. So, here's a cheque for the balance. Because we were wrong, we've added on an extra $12.11 in interest on that money. Please note that interest income is taxable. If you do not declare this $12.11 as taxable interest income on your 2008 return, we will audit you again, you nitpicky little motherfucker, and we'll screw you eight ways from Sunday for filing a false return; so let that be a freaking lesson to you. Jackass. Love and kisses, Canada Revenue Agency Dipshits Extraordinaire | | Friday, April 11th, 2008 | | 8:18 pm |
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| | Sunday, April 6th, 2008 | | 6:38 pm |
On letting my money stand up for what is right. I've had a couple of questions lately about what's going on with Bell. I'll try to express my views and opinions here as understandably as I can. Please try to make it through, this is important. Nerd Summary: Bell is now doing deep packet inspections of PPPoE traffic at the CO head-end before passing them to wholesale DSL providers, so that they can throttle bittorrent, change QoS on Skype, and generally fuck around.In the interests of full disclosure, I'll start of by saying that I'm a BCE shareholder. I own somewhere between one and five shares personally; which affords me certain meeting, voting and reporting privileges. Through my investment funds, the necessity of diversification, and the practicality of mutual funds as registered vehicles for tax management, I am part owner of several more shares. Since 1997, the Canadian Government completely deregulated local phone service. You can get a "phome line" from Bell, Rogers, Primus, or any number of other, smaller companies. But, they use the same wires in to your home that Bell used to use, and those wires still go to the same Bell bunker they used to go to. They just get plugged in to different jacks in that bunker, depending on who you chose as your local phone company. Bell, though, hasn't adjusted very well, and are still trying to behave like they own all of our business. They've hired Norm MacDonald to lie to us, and they just aren't in touch with the future. Consider the following quote, from a Mr. mightydogking today:
- fuck a normal phone costs 30 dollars a MONTH!??! what th FUCK
But insane prices for local phone service (which you'll never talk your grandmother out of paying) is just one of many things that has resulted in share price stagnation since deregulation. A company as big as Bell should, by any reasonable standard, be diversifying itself much better, managing itself better, and competing better. But the current management is too narrow-minded to see that. In the right hands, Bell could be much more evil, much more like Rogers, and make much more money. It is for these reasons that the Ontario Teachers have decided to purchase Bell, and turn it around. As individuals, most teachers are fine. As an economic force, though, they're pretty crappy employers. Their crowning glory was the union-busting tactics and wage rollbacks they used against their employees at Maple Leaf Foods during a strike. Not nice at all -- and I'm not the biggest fan of unions! As an aside, I'll make a callback to my previous posting: I think that all employees of a union, or the union's pension plan, or their subsidiaries, should be eligible for membership and representation in the union and pension plan. It's just basic decency, in my opinion. Owner-run companies are just better for everyone. Anyhow, I digress. In trying to turn itself around and in response to the buyout, Bell has made two moves in the past month that have pushed me over the tipping point. First, they have asked the CRTC to reinstate some monopoly conditions over the last mile of copper, and second, they have broadened the reach of their privacy-invading communications monitoring/censoring. I won't talk too much about their CRTC request, because it's just a proposal at this point. Please believe me when I tell you that if Bell wins that fight, Canada will become even more of a third-world in the telecommunications landscape than we are now. I'll talk instead about the other evil. Just as I can choose which company I get my land line from, I can also choose my DSL high-speed internet service provider. Previously, I chose Magma. I had friends working at Magma, I got great customer service from them, their product was superior, etc. Primus bought Magma, and Magma started to suck, so I switched to Sympatico. I switched to Sympatico because I don't actually have a home phone line. The wires are there, they can be used for internet, but I don't have an actual dial tone, because I have a cellphone, and I text more than I talk anyhow. But, if you don't have a landline, Bell has a bad habit of randomly disconnecting the internet you bought through another provider. The last time they disconnected my Magma internet ("By accident," according to Bell), it took them two weeks to turn it back on. With Sympatico, the Bell Goons are less likely to snip my wires. Like Rogers, Bell has been selling "unlimited" internet that isn't unlimited. If you are using your unlimited internet to share things instead of just download from sites, they will limit your connection. If you are using your unlimited internet to make voice calls and save on long distance, they will limit your connection. Within the technical community, these limits are usually referred to as "traffic shaping," caps, throttles and filtering. We know about them, we discuss and rank them, and we make educated decisions about our choice of internet service provider. We don't believe a word we hear about Bell or Rogers on TV, radio, or magazines -- because Rogers and Bell own those mediums. If we don't like Rogers, or Bell, we've had a choice. A choice, but not a really good one. Rogers and Bell are what economists refer to as an oligopoly -- they're so big that they don't really compete anymore, they just fight over market share. They work together in keeping other companies from trying to enter the market, and abuse their government-granted assets (last mile of copper, transmission spectrum, etc) to make sure that we only ever have a real choice between the two, and never a third. Not only is Bell lobbying the government to eliminate our choice completely now, but they are also now monitoring the communications between ISPs and their customers, regulating what other ISP's customers can and cannot do on the internet. My preferred term for this practice is "counter to common decency." Imagine this: You get your home phone from Primus, not from Bell. You buy unlimited local calling from Primus for $20 -- but Bell monitors your calling and finds out that you're talking to your mom for hours at a time! Bell declares that this is abuse of your unlimited privileges, so they disconnect all calls you make to your mom as soon as they hit 30 minutes -- then they block you from calling your mom for the next two hours. Even though neither you or your mom is a Bell customer! This is exactly what they are doing to the customers of 3rd-party internet service providers like Teksavvy. Consider the following policy from Bell on the matter: - Mrs. / Mr. customer, in order to ensure a consistently high level of service for all our customers, Bell may be required to manage its network in such a way that no customer, service or application consumes excessive bandwidth which may impede the use and enjoyment of other customers. Bell has the right to manage its network to deliver a consistent and reliable experience to all its customers and doing so is not a material change to the service. Therefore, the early termination fee will apply if you wish to exit your contract before the end of your term.
If I buy my internet service from Teksavvy, Primus, or anyone else, then Bell should have no right to monitor or censor my communications. Unfortunately, the government doesn't seem to understand that (as aforementionned through Bell's petition to the CRTC) there actually is regulation of some parts of internet service provision in Canada, and they continue to stick their heads in the sand on this issue: This past week, I downloaded a CBC television show, "Canada's next great prime minister," that was made available for download by the CBC in high-def. I don't pay Rogers or Bell for digital cable or satellite, so this was my chance to watch some high-def Canadian content. The CBC's mandate is to make Canadian Content available using the most effective and efficient methods available, and is trying to join the future on the internet. Well, Bell, who owns CTV and considers itself a competitor of the CBC, decided to deliberately limit, slow and degrade my access to that download from the CBC. You don't fuck with access to the CBC and expect Canadians to take it sitting down. I will grant you that this is a complicated issue, and there seems to be much debate between people that don't understand the issue. Within the technical discussions among those that do fully understand the technologies and techniques in use, though, I can assure you that there is almost universal agreement. Bell and Rogers are going to kill our country's ability to evolve, develop, innovate, progress, grow and learn at a competitive pace with the rest of the world. I truly believe that the precedents set at this juncture will determine the future of Canada on the internet, and in the world. If you want future generations to be able to compete for jobs, if you want Canadian Content to be available, if you want freedom of expression for your children, now is the time to stand up to Bell and Rogers. It's time for us to do something, and for you, the first step is to be informed. Thank you. For me, the next steps will involve the cancellation of all my Bell services. I'll be getting my internet service from Teksavvy, who has demonstrably shown this past month that they share my values, and that they're willing to fight the same fight with me. So long as I still have some semblance of choice in ISPs, I will choose the one that will fight for what I believe in. I will also begin the process of minimizing Rogers expenditures in my life. Sadly, I have very little choice of cellphone providers, as only Rogers supports the equipment that I need to use -- thanks to very bad regulation from our beloved government. If you'd like to stay informed on this, and other critical fights in defence of the future (Copyright, Privacy, etc.), I recommend reading the notes of Michael Geist, a prof at the University of Ottawa Law School, and the current Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law. | | Thursday, March 27th, 2008 | | 9:51 pm |
Whereas participatory economics is a more powerful force of good than participatory democracy,
Be it resolved that all Canadian employees of corporations that have a greater than 25% ownership by a Canadian pension plan be provided with the opportunity to participate in said pension plan through contribition, through benefit, and through representation; under the same terms as other members of the pension plan.
So teachers, if you really want to help build a better future, it's time to put your money where your mouth is. | | Monday, February 11th, 2008 | | 11:24 pm |
Come to the concert with me on Wednesday! Hit me up for more info, here on the facebook. ardently, I'm lookin' right at you. Pawn off the surrender monkey and get sociable! | | Thursday, January 24th, 2008 | | 6:58 pm |
Why is it that I'm not a programmer because I know I'm really bad at programming, and yet I'm still better at programming than a programmer? | | Monday, January 21st, 2008 | | 11:04 pm |
| | Sunday, December 30th, 2007 | | 2:10 pm |
It seems that some people are still bitter, and also can't even beat me at Poleconomy. Bitter, bitter, bitter. | | Thursday, December 27th, 2007 | | 11:15 am |
On Hobbies If you know a little bit about Linux, and you think that perhaps you don't have enough frustrations in your life, I recommend picking up an NSLU2. There are lots of cool things you can do with them, really! Update: Thursday, 4pm: AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. | | Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 | | 8:10 pm |
Christmas letter from my grandfather A progression from last year. . . Dear Friends, The awe-inspiring news that her son, clothed in the glory that arises from the power of the word of God, had been raised from the dead, would cause Mary to remember the circumstances of his birth. The vivid memories of hearing and seeing Jesus on a cross surely gave way to treasured memories of the Angel Gabriel. Through faith, Mary would believe by his resurrection from the grave that this was the fulfillment of the promise that her son is also the son of God. Since the beginning of history, all promises contained within the word of God led to the son of Mary in his humanity, and the Son of God in his divinity, suffering and dying on the cross. The promises of God have never ceased, as they come from eternity and return to eternity, with the message that sacrificial love is the greatest power in heaven and on earth. Anxiety concerning the natural environment, terrorism, religious bigotry, greed for economic, political and military power, exploitation of the poor and dispossessed, immorality and other evils, have been and will continue to be overcome by sacrificial love. Mary lived long enough to realize the spiritual significance of being addressed as blessed among women, with her life surrendered to the promises and power of the word of God. May each one of us be blessed as daily we live the truth in the birth of our Saviour. Through faith in the promises and power of the word of God we each see the other person of all nations, religions, and cultural surroundings, as one with whom, by the grace of God, we can share the most precious of all gifts, the love that reigns in heaven and in our hearts. Trust you are blessed with the joy of Christmas | | Monday, December 3rd, 2007 | | 8:53 am |
Public Service Announcement RFC 2068, Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1; Fielding, et al. January 1997. 9 Method Definitions; 9.1 Safe and Idempotent Methods; 9.1.1 Safe Methods Implementors should be aware that the software represents the user in their interactions over the Internet, and should be careful to allow the user to be aware of any actions they might take which may have an unexpected significance to themselves or others.
In particular, the convention has been established that the GET and HEAD methods SHOULD NOT have the significance of taking an action other than retrieval. These methods ought to be considered "safe". This allows user agents to represent other methods, such as POST, PUT and DELETE, in a special way, so that the user is made aware of the fact that a possibly unsafe action is being requested.
Naturally, it is not possible to ensure that the server does not generate side-effects as a result of performing a GET request; in fact, some dynamic resources consider that a feature. The important distinction here is that the user did not request the side-effects, so therefore cannot be held accountable for them. | | Sunday, November 25th, 2007 | | 1:01 pm |
| | Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 | | 10:00 pm |
I hate homework.
Especially when it means developing a multi-million dollar budget for a paper airplane. |
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