Internet Speed Test

I'm trying to help a friend troubleshoot some connection problems he's having. When I run this speed test I consistently get these results:

• 10,000 - 25,000 kbps Download
• 900 - 990 kbps Upload

If you live in North America, could you run the same test and let me know your results? Just choose the server closest to you. It's not an exact science so run it a few times to get an average, if you could. If you leave a comment, please let me know your location. Thanks!

Calling Out a Bully (Language Warning)

On this video I just received the following message from this guy:

If you conclude from one car accident that drivers in Vancouver are out of control then you sir, are a fucking retard.


So I sent him/it this message:

A Question

I'm just curious, do you normally walk the down the street and say to a person, "You sir, are a fucking retard?"

If this is normal behaviour for you then I would strongly recommend that you contact the following agency for help:

Mental Health Services Central Office
200-520 West 6th Avenue
Vancouver, BC
V5Z 4H5

Tel: 604.874.7626

Seriously, seek them out. You really need to get some help before things get further out of control.

Some Cool New Things from Microsoft

I was fortunate to have been able to spend the past two evenings attending seminars put on by Microsoft here in Vancouver. Much of it was quite technical but here are two things that any computer user could benefit from and might not be aware of:

Internet Explorer 8
A new version of their browser is now available and it's absolutely terrific! You can download it for free here. For the time being my default browser will remain Firefox 3.0 but I use Internet Explorer a lot in my professional work so it's always nice to get Microsoft's latest & greatest! And if it proves to be as good as it seems, I may switch my default back to IE for the first time in about 3 years.

SkyDrive
One of the biggest things in computing these days is the concept of "Cloud Computing". There are many definitions for this term but in general terms it means that your data is stored on one or more servers, somewhere on the globe, and instantly available to you from anywhere, as long as you have an Internet connection, be it wireless or wired. Also, with increasing regularity, many software applications will also similarly reside in the "cloud".

From the user's perspective this means that your data - your calendar info, your contacts, your photos, your music, your home movies, your documents, etc. - will be available anytime, anywhere, pretty much equally well from your desktop computer or your handheld mobile device.

From the software developer's perspective the biggest advantage is scalability. So if a developer creates a new social networking site that quickly becomes very popular, it's much easier to handle all the new users (ie. be scalable) than traditional approaches have permitted.

SkyDrive is one of the initial such offerings from Microsoft. In a nutshell, it provides you 25GB of space for free, which you can access from any device you have that has a browser.

One particularly nice feature of SkyDrive is its slideshow feature. Here it is, displaying two photos of mine. One really neat thing, which I've never seen before in any slideshow application is that it analyzes the colours of each photo and changes the background accordingly. Notice the difference in the two screenshots and then look at each photo to see why that background was chosen. Very, very cool!

The New Linksys Routers

I've long been a fan of the Linksys brand of routers. Their distinctive blue colour could be seen in many homes. I'd become so adept at setting them up for a variety of friends that I had recorded their password info (with permission) so that I could remind my friends of their long forgotten passwords and also troubleshoot problems for them over the phone! This variety of Linksys routers hovered in the $50 price range.

But now that Cisco has purchased Linksys they've come out with a new design:
It's not clear to me that there is any core functionality that has dramatically improved, yet the price has more than doubled overnight. The capitalist in me realizes that Cisco isn't forcing anyone to buy their products but the utilitarian in me was very content with the old models!

The Most Pathetic Marketing Pitch This Year

I burst out laughing when I read this special Valentines Day offer from GoDaddy:

Nothing quite says "I Love You" like a website domain name, eh!

Wordle

Wordle is a cool tool that allows you to instantly create "word clouds" of a bunch of text or a web page. Here are a few I just created:

This blog:
Small Dead Animals:
NDP.ca:
The website of a business colleague of mine:
From the comments on this YouTube video:

A Sampling of "Moderate" Muslims

Facebook is a strange & peculiar place at times. Any user is able to create any group that they wish. Many of these groups are public, which anyone can join. Several Muslims have decided to create different versions of "I Hate Israel" groups. Thousands, upon thousands, of people have joined. Perhaps these would be the "moderate" Muslims we keep hearing about?








If you're a Facebook member, then take a look at this group. Here's a sampling of some of the comments therein:

• "if israel was a person, i wont kill em until it get the worst toprture ever, fuck israel fuck everybody who support israel" - Youssef Karmoun, University of Malaga Grad Student, Spain
• "Israel is a FAKE country, not even a country, just a band of criminals!!" - Said Ghaleb, Morocco
• "STOP EXPLAINING AND APOLOGIZIN,YES i hate jewish.they paid & still paying 2 kill palestinians and hve th3ir own country on other's land,coz they r nawar gitanes thiefs murderers sneeky and liars,every single jewish is paying tax to israel.we have to make them feel what they made palestinians feel, i hate jewish here & there & everywhere.maya from lebannnnnnnnoooooooooooooo
  ooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.proud to hate jewish,wait for us & u will see.i hve a wish:get invited to where i can find jewish,i wish to take the revenge of GAZA." - Rana Sabouni
• "hatred is not enough let's do something more .these SAUVAGES and MURDERERS ?DESERVE MORE THAN JUST HATRE" - Hanaa Naoumi
• "We should all pray to Allah to eradicate Izrael!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  !!!!!!!!!! (But Oh!!Well we have known since the creation of the Qu'ran Al Kareem that the situation in Palestine was going to remain this way or perhaps get even worse)" - Alaoui Fdili Zineb, Richmond UK 2011 student, London
• "NO way to accept the crimes comited in Palestine today, just like we never accepted the crimes comited in 2006 in Lebanon. We don't hate israel because of their nationality, their race, their religion or they colour of skin, but only beacause of they are Killers and nothing else. And this is note antisemitism, beacause of they are Ashkenaze, and Ashkenaze are from Europe, and caucasian, not hebrew! (even if their religion is judaism)" - Salim C.
• "join us all against israel group from austria" - Samir Oulhaj, FH Technikum Wien Grad Student, Austria (Note: There's something more than a little spooky about the coincidence of where this fellow lives! Also, his first name has 5 letters and his last name has 6. Hmmm, who does that remind me of?!?)
• "Allahu Akbar! When Israelis commit Genocide, they call it self defense! When Palestinians defend themselves, the media calls it terrorism! Allah will decide between the two parties!" - Drew AnZhu Ahmad Marshall, Delaware Alumni 2007, Delaware USA

Welcome to 2009! :-(

Australia's Pending Internet Censorship

The 1-year old Labour government in Australia seems intent on enacting a huge Internet filter called "Clean Feed". You can read more about it here and here.

To the second column I left this comment:

To some, I realize that Internet censorship sounds like a perfectly wonderful idea. Remove from the Internet all the "bad" sites and it'll be better for the good citizens. Unfortunately all bad ideas start with good intentions.

Take for example what has happened in my country of Canada with "Human Rights" Commissions and Freedom of Speech. It all started in such a "progressive" way: Prevent Neo-Nazis from saying & writing bad things about Jews. All fine & good, right?

But things have quickly devolved since then. Now we have Muslim extremists trying to use the same legislation to shut up mainstream authors like Mark Steyn. We have a lesbian who got drunk, heckled a comedian, and is hauling him through the same process for "daring" to speak back to her. We have Far Left activists using the legislation to silence anyone who dares disagree with them, even individuals just sharing their opinions on blogs.

And who decides each of these cases? Social activists who came to their positions, not because of any specific legal training on how to be a good judge, but simply based on who they knew. This past year of 2008 has brought out into the open the Kangaroo Court nature of these decision makers. It has become clear that truth is not a defence, facts are not a defence, and precedence is not a defence either.

As the new year turns over, welcome to the Canada of 2009, a future that Australia seems intent on blindly walking into as well. I urge you to learn from our dreadful mistake and chart a new course for yourselves before it's too late. Otherwise you WILL wake up one day and wonder how on earth you lost the freedoms you once took for granted.

America: The Internet Surpasses Newspapers for the First Time

Here's an interesting graph just released from the Pew Research Center:

Record Breaking Day

Never before do I recall receiving so many visitors in so short a period of time. Within 4 hours after I posted the breaking news story about the Whistler gondola, I had over 2,100 visitors!

I've long been curious about what sorts of things drive traffic on the Internet. Clearly I just found one!

Computer Tip

Owning a router/firewall like this one is HIGHLY recommended for anyone using a home computer these days. Such a device gives you a great deal of protection from those nefarious folks systematically examining every Internet modem they can find.
I own this specific WRT54G Linksys device and have installed many of them in the homes of friends. They're easy to setup and start using immediately. But they do have one inherent problem. Over time they start slowing down Internet traffic. This is especially the case when you have multiple computers connected. I do not know the technical reasons why but have significant anecdotal evidence that it occurs.

Resolving the problem is simple: Just unplug the power cord, wait a few seconds, and plug it right back in. Immediately you'll notice a sudden rejuvenation of Internet speed.

This remedy is also likely effective for other brands of similar devices.

CKNW An Attack Site?

When trying to go to the podcast page of CKNW today my Firefox browser displayed this:


Here's why:
It's clearly not a very smart PR move to have a corporate site identified as dangerous by Google. I will let CKNW know and see if they do anything about it!

---

2008-11-24: It's now 10 days later and CKNW hasn't bothered to respond to my inquiry nor to fix the problem. One can only conclude that they're very comfortable having their website listed as an Attack Site. Strange corporate policy!

---

2008-12-16: I just heard from Ryan at Corus. They've now fixed the problem. You can listen to their Audio Vault without any problems here: http://www.cknw.com/StationShared/AudioVault.aspx

One of my Fears of an Obamanation Presidency

"Fairness" and freedom [Mark Steyn]

If Obama wins and has Congressional coattails, I would expect a new "Fairness Doctrine" to be one of the first things the liberal supermajority will pass. John McCain, who is antipathetic to talk radio and whose birdbrained interventions in the area of public discourse have helped give us moveon.org and a 600-million-dollar candidate who could singlehandedly fund the national elections of the rest of the G7, is obviously not the best person to argue against it. But those Americans who object to government regulation of ideas and opinions ought to take this threat seriously. It applies not just to Rush & Co, but eventually to websites like this. (North of the border, I see, the broadcast regulator, the CRTC, is now moving on to swallow the Internet.)

This would be not a "long march through the institutions" (as terrorist educator William Ayers would say), only a quick and easy stroll. But it would be (in Colin Powell's word) "transformative". In Canada, for example, I'm told by leftie critics that I should be satisfied because "the system worked" - that's to say, after three investigations, a wasted year and a ton of legal bills, a government agency has, in effect, retrospectively granted me permission to say what I said. Gee, thanks. Today's Calgary Herald editorial - "Canadians Are A Censored People" - has implications down here, too:

In supposedly free societies, government has no business having an opinion on whether a book [or a radio show, or a website] is true, false or has merit.

Like Canada's "human rights" commissions, the new "Fairness Doctrine" will be framed in fluffy feelgood terms, starting with that Orwellian name, and it will serve the same purpose - to pre-emptively stifle free speech.

10/20 03:18 PM

New Internet Browser: Google's "Chrome"

Google released their own browser today. It's called "Chrome" and you can download it here.

There's no WOW! factor for me yet but it'll be interested to see if it gains a prominent market share. You can learn more about the application here.

PicLens

Danny just introduced me to PicLens, one of the most visually stunning Internet browser add-ons I've ever seen. Give it a try, it's free!

Global Broadband Comparison

Here's an interesting table of Internet statistics, retrieved from this document. It confirms what my friend, Danny, told me about Mexico (high cost and low speed) but compared to many Asian & European countries, Canada and the U.S. aren't doing very well either.

What Facebook is Really All About

The next time someone tells you that they must have access to Facebook during working hours, remember this:

Why Is The Internet Different Than Real Life?

If you use the Internet more than a little, here's an important video you should watch (ensure there are no kids around) :


The speaker, Tom, makes some excellent points, all of which I've been thinking about for years now. The truth is that the anonymity the Internet provides allows the very worst people in society to control a much larger community. Imagine attending a party full of lots of wonderful, interesting people. But one person slips in who is drunk. She shouts & screams and curses all night. Do you think the party will be the same?

When I embark on my family of social networking sites, I plan to implement peer-level moderation ability, allowing the group to exorcise the troublemaker out of the discussion. If said troublemaker keeps it up in other discussions then they'll be removed permanently and blocked via their IP address. While they could go to another computer, say at an Internet cafe, they'll quickly be booted out again. Hopefully they'll grow tired of being ostracized and will find another home to espouse their anger.

BCDD Volunteer Featured in the News

Nitin Gandhi is a 25 year-old fellow who moved to Vancouver from New Delhi, India a few years ago. Back in January he responded to an ad I posted in the Ride Share section of Craiglist Vancouver. At first I thought he misunderstood what I was saying and believed that we were hiring for the position. But after our first conversation, I realized that he knew it was a completely volunteer gig. And he has been absolutely great ever since, driving to Merritt, Penticton, Kelowna, Kamloops, and Lillooet ... all on his own dime. Pretty amazing! The South Asian Post newspaper has just written a story about Nitin's efforts.

A New Type of Online Scam

I just landed a job ... that I didn't even apply for! Here's the e-mail I received:

CareerBuilder to pocketpepe

show details Jan 16 (1 day ago)

Summer Freight LLC Company

Good day.
Thank you for enquiry. We have chosen you for the position. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask them to one of our friendly consultants and one of our regional managers will be happy to supply you with all required information. In connection with our company service promotion we declare the next vacancies:
1) Financial Manager.
2) Shipping and Receiving Manager.

Requirements:
- Resident of USA;
- Fluent English;
- Basic knowledge of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel(optional);
- Home Computer with e-mail account and ability to check your e-mail box at least twice a day;
- Adults only accepted (we cannot hire underage people);
- 1-3 hours free during the week (mainly in the evening / non-business hours) for communication and 2-4 hours a week more for transfer processing
- No criminal records and good credit history (your background will be verified with BAYCORP LTD)

Observances, learning capability, attentiveness and punctuality are welcomed.

Your occupation will be 1-2 hours per day. Some days will be completely vacant that means you may combine two jobs. The main idea it shouldn t make obstacles to work with our company.

Please visit our web site: http://www.summer-freight.com
Read operating conditions in section: For Employees
If you are sure that this job fits you go to http://www.summer-freight.com/account to register your personal account.

After this our manager will call you to have confirmation and clarifying some questions. After this procedure we send you a contract for signing which you should send to the Company address. As soon as we receive a contract signed by you we start working.

Management Department
Gary Mills
service@summer-freight.com
http://www.summer-freight.com


And here's the home page of their website:

Looks very professional, doesn't it? But it's all an entire scam!! They're just hoping that you will register or "the job" and give them all kinds of confidential information. Scary, scary, scary!

I looked up who registered this site. It's some fellow [apparently] in Spain:

   Bolek Dudek (BolekDudek@fontdrift.com)
  +34.8350840279
  Fax:
  Ctra. de la Puerta, 9
  Meira,  27240
  ES