Communication – Page 5

Noisy Web sites

Mar 052015

Notice to Web advertisers: If you stick a video on a Web page that starts with blaring noise in the middle of the night, the only thing you accomplish is that I close the bleeping page in a mad panic, and I make sure never to visit it again.

Moments ago, this is what happened when I visited a page on the Montreal Gazette’s Web site, trying to read an article, only to have a car commercial start without any interaction on my part, at maximum volume.

I don’t know what car was being advertised. I don’t even care. I just swore and scrambled to click the Close button.

This is unpleasant even during the day, insanely annoying late at night when you worry about waking up family members, for instance.

I hope that one day, the idiots who believe this form of advertising is appropriate will all have their eardrums pierced in a most painful manner by excessive noise.

It appears though that I am not alone: there is a study suggesting that such loud ads are bad for business.

As for me, against my better judgment, I just decided to install AdBlock Plus on Chrome. Let’s see if it works as advertised.

Dear CRTC: Hands off the Internet please

Canada, Internet, Television No Responses »

Sep 232014

Dear CRTC: Please stop trying to protect us poor Canadians from evil companies like Netflix.

Video-on-demand is not broadcasting. The Internet is not the public airwaves. You have no business trying to bully companies just because they threaten the livelihood of lumbering, decrepit behemoths like Rogers.

I am a Rogers Cable subscriber. I have been a Rogers Cable subscriber ever since they purchased Ottawa Cablevision more than two decades ago.

What am I getting from Rogers? Here are a few examples:

Inept, sometimes openly contemptuous customer service (like, what kind of a backward moron am I for still wanting to use analog cable without a settop box?);
Technically substandard service (programs interrupted by local commercials that are inserted at the wrong time, substandard signal quality on some analog channels; an analog video frame that is reduced in size by a ratio of 59/60 for no apparent reason);
Overpriced, obsolete hardware and no opportunity to use non-Rogers equipment, e.g., with a subscriber identity card;
Unnecessary encryption on all digital channels (including local channels), which makes it impossible to use a TV without a settop box.

And you wonder why I am contemplating “cutting the cord”?

Instead of blaming Netflix, perhaps you can have a conversation with Rogers about addressing issues that alienate their customers. If you are not willing to do that, fine, then let the free market do its thing. But take your dirty regulatory paws off the Canadian Internet, please.

Mailing lists and digests

Internet No Responses »

Aug 142014

Electronic mailing lists are a somewhat old-fashioned way to let a group of people stay in touch and communicate about a topic of interest.

Many mailing lists these days offer a “digest” service: instead of sending out each message individually to the list recipient, they receive one message a day, a week, or some other set interval, containing all the traffic from the mailing list during that time period.

Tonight, on a mailing list to which I subscribe, I saw yet another request to delete the original message from any replies, for the benefit of digest readers. I have seen such requests many times in the past, and every time I come across one, I get rather annoyed.

Including the original message is of course redundant for “digest” readers, as they probably have a copy of the original message right there, as part of the same digest. But for non-digest readers, including the original saves the time it takes to look up the earlier message.

In other words, what these helpful volunteer “list police” folks are really saying amounts to this: If you are one of those idiots who actually bothers to read messages individually, your time is less valuable than the time of those who already decided that the list is not worth that much attention in the first place.

Why, thank you for putting me in my place.

Firefox or Chrome? Firefox for now…

Computers, Internet No Responses »

Jun 212014

Having been annoyed by a Firefox crash a few weeks ago, I decided to give Google’s Chrome browser a serious try on my Windows desktop. I am, after all, using Chrome on my Android phone and tablet, so I figured I might as well swear allegiance to our Google overlords on my desktop as well…

But it’s not going to happen, not just yet. Yesterday, after I managed to close a tab in Chrome by accident one too many times, I Googled for ways to disable the “X” in tabs other than the active tab… only to find that Google years ago declared that they don’t consider this a problem and they would not solve it. Indeed, I find Chrome’s customization features rather limited compared to what is available in Firefox under about:config.

So, I switched back. I shall be using Firefox for the time being. I am still keeping Chrome on standby, just in case Mozilla goes berserk (their recent UI changes were not exactly welcome with open arms by much of the user community, myself included; who knows what new insanity awaits us in the pipeline.)

And, it seems that I am not alone.

Biometric identification is not the right solution

Computer Security, Internet No Responses »

Apr 102014

In light of the latest Internet security scare, the Heartbleed bug, there are again many voices calling for an end to the use of passwords, to be replaced instead by fingerprint scanners or other kinds of biometric identification.

I think it is a horrifyingly, terribly bad idea.

Just to be clear, I am putting aside any concerns about the reliability of biometric identification. They are not as reliable as their advocates would like us to believe, but this is not really the issue. I am assuming that as of today, biometric technologies are absolutely, 100% reliable. Even so, they are still a terrible idea, and here is why.

First, what happens if your biometric identification becomes compromised? However it is acquired, it is still transmitted in the form of a series of bits and bytes, which can be intercepted by an attacker. If this were a password, you could easily change it to thwart an attack. But how do you change your fingerprint? Your retina print? Your voice? Your heartbeat?

Second, what happens if you “lose” your biometric identification marker? Fingers get chopped off in accidents. People lose their eyesight. An emergency tracheotomy may deprive you of your normal voice. What then?

And what about privacy concerns? There have been rulings I understand, in the US and perhaps elsewhere, that imply that the same legal or constitutional guarantees that protect you from being compelled to reveal a password may not apply when it comes to providing a fingerprint, a DNA sample, or other biometric markers.

The bottom line is this: a password associating an account or a service to a unique piece of secret knowledge. This knowledge can be changed, passed on, or revoked, and owners may be protected by law from being compelled to reveal it. Biometric identification fundamentally changes this relationship by associating the account or the service with an unmalleable biometric characteristic of a person.

Please don’t.

My interplanetary earnings

Internet 1 Response »

Apr 012014

I checked my Google AdSense report moments ago, and much to my delight I found that most of my earnings today were due to clicks from Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.

What a nice surprise on the first day of a new month, April.

Wait a moment… First day? April???

Thoughts on Inmarsat’s analysis of MH370

Aviation, Communication, Space No Responses »

Mar 262014

Some details have been released (leaked?) by Inmarsat and the AAIB about their analysis of the flight path of the missing Malaysian airliner. Some details remain frustratingly absent.

Relying on the measured frequency of the signal received from the missing jet, they plotted possible courses of the aircraft and they concluded that only the route that took MH370 to the southern Indian Ocean is consistent with the data. Here are the two critical slides from the annex of their released material:

They are clearly quite confident about the validity of their analysis, and they may be right. Still, there are a few potential issues with which I am not comfortable.

The analysis obviously relies on two key assumptions: first, that the aircraft traveled at a constant speed and second, that its transmitter had good frequency stability. I am not familiar with Inmarsat equipment used on board aircraft, but I do know that a frequency drift of a couple of hundred Hz, over a period of time of several hours and under changing environmental conditions, is not at all unusual [Update (2014/03/28): I now know (thanks, Craig!) that Inmarsat equipment uses an oven-controlled oscillator, with a frequency stability of a few 10 Hz or better over the course of a year, so this is a non-issue] for an oscillator that is running at around 1.6 GHz (which, I believe, is the frequency range used by Inmarsat.)

The analysis also relies on the estimated range at the time of final transmission, which is what was used to generate the infamous “arcs” along which the airplane is expected to be found. Presumably, similar estimated ranges are available for all the intermediate data points. However, this range information was not published in the currently released document. [Update (2014/03/28): Intermediate range arcs were, however, published by the Washington Post on March 21 (thanks again, Craig!).]

It is also unclear to me why the northern route can be excluded, as the top slide shows. If the satellite was stationary with respect to the ground, the northern and southern routes would have identical Doppler signatures. Presumably the difference is due to the fact that the satellite, though geostationary, still moves with respect to the Earth’s surface, e.g., because its orbit is inclined. [Update (2014/03/28): The orbital inclination of the satellite in question is 1.6° (once again, thanks, Craig!)] But this is not explained.

Finally, I am also concerned about the large deviations in the early stages of flight between the predicted and observed values and what it says about the validity of the analysis.

Just to be clear, I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories. I do believe that it may have been premature to exclude the possibility that the aircraft made an emergency landing and remained intact in a remote area not far from the location of its last transponder signal, but I may very well be wrong about this. However, I do think that a little more transparency would be useful.

Healthcare.gov woes

Internet, Politics No Responses »

Dec 012013

American news channels are abuzz with news about the revamped Obamacare Web site, healthcare.gov.

Moments ago, out of curiosity, I visited the site. To be precise, I wanted to search for news about healthcare.gov, so clicking on a link that actually took me to the site is something I did more by accident than by design.

Indeed, I only realized that I actually visited the site (and not just a news site page about the site) when I encountered the following error:

healthcare-gov

Ah, the irony.

Phonebloks – a great idea that will never work

Communication, Technology No Responses »

Sep 172013

This has been making the rounds on the Internets in the past few days: a modular mobile phone concept, with swappable parts.

Except that (with apologies to its inventor and supporters) I don’t think it will ever work. And no, not because conspiring corporations will torpedo it. (For what it’s worth, I am a free agent: I am not on the payroll of any conspiring corporations.)

The first reason is mechanical. For the phone to be robust, the backboard would have to be really strong and bulky. The connectors would have to be rock solid. Yes, it can be done, but only by using expensive materials, and the backboard itself will be half as thick already as a modern phone like a Samsung Galaxy.

The second reason is power and signaling. The placement of components on a modern phone mainboard is not accidental. Signal paths matter when things run off a multigigahertz clock. Power matters when some components can momentarily draw significant current. The placement of antennas matters, to maximize efficiency and minimize interference from the phone’s own components.

Third, the design will inevitably prove too constraining. Take modern PCs as an analogy. Yes, they are modular (it is much easier, of course, to make a desktop PC modular.) But only to a point. Try shoving an old ISA extension card into a modern PC. Even if it were perfectly functional (e.g., an old modem, serial/parallel or low-speed communication card that never needed more than ISA speeds) you can’t use it anymore, as no modern motherboard supports ISA slots. Many modern motherboards don’t even support PCI slots. Processor sockets change. Memory module standards change. Even power supply standards changed a surprising number of times. (You’d think there are only so many ways to supply 12VDC, 5VDC, and maybe 3.3VDC, but you’d be wrong.)

Still, Phonebloks is a neat idea. In fact, it’s one of those ideas that may never work as intended, but may still inspire other useful inventions.

A beautiful routing table entry

Internet, Personal No Responses »

Sep 122013

Here is a sight I have not seen since July 30:

Route results for 199.166.252.0/24 from Vienna, Austria

BGP routing table entry for 199.166.252.0/24
Paths: (4 available, best #1)
  1239 577
  AS-path translation: { AS1239 BELL-AS }
    edge3.Frankfurt1 (metric 13114)
      Origin IGP, metric 100000, localpref 86, valid, internal, best
      Community: Europe  Lclprf_86 Germany Level3_Peer Frankfurt
      Originator: edge3.Frankfurt1
  1239 577
  AS-path translation: { AS1239 BELL-AS }
    edge3.Frankfurt1 (metric 13114)
      Origin IGP, metric 100000, localpref 86, valid, internal
      Community: Europe  Lclprf_86 Germany Level3_Peer Frankfurt
      Originator: edge3.Frankfurt1
  1239 577
  AS-path translation: { AS1239 BELL-AS }
    edge3.Frankfurt1 (metric 13114)
      Origin IGP, metric 100000, localpref 86, valid, internal
      Community: Europe  Lclprf_86 Germany Level3_Peer Frankfurt
      Originator: edge3.Frankfurt1
  1239 577
  AS-path translation: { AS1239 BELL-AS }
    edge3.Frankfurt1 (metric 13114)
      Origin IGP, metric 100000, localpref 86, valid, internal
      Community: Europe  Lclprf_86 Germany Level3_Peer Frankfurt
      Originator: edge3.Frankfurt1

This is a valid routing table entry for my class C address space at a randomly picked backbone router somewhere on the Internet.

On July 30, Verizon Canada disconnected me. Or rather, they decommissioned the point-of-presence equipment that was utilized by my Internet connection, without moving all their customers first to another POP.

When Verizon proved unable to restore my connection after 10 (!) days, I canceled my contract with them. Meanwhile, my sites’ continuing existence on the Internet was maintained using a backup cable modem connection.

But, as of today, I once again have a functioning DSL connection, courtesy of Bell Canada. Better yet, they were actually able to set up everything properly, including my special request for routing for my portable class C address space. Needless to say, I am very pleased.

And their service costs a lot less than Verizon Canada’s.

Why the NSA undermines our digital security

Computer Security, Internet, Politics No Responses »

Sep 062013

So the NSA and their counterparts elsewhere, including Canada and the UK, are spying on us. I wish I could say the news shocked me, but it didn’t.

The level of secrecy is a cause for concern of course. It is one thing for these agencies not to disclose specific sources and methods, it is another to keep the existence of entire programs secret, especially when these programs are designed to collect data wholesale.

But my biggest concern is that the programs themselves represent a huge security threat for all of us.

First, the NSA apparently relies on its ability to compromise the security of encryption products and technologies or on backdoors built into these products. An unspoken assumption is that only the NSA would be able to exploit these weaknesses. But how do we know that this is the case? How do we know that the same weaknesses and backdoors used by the NSA to decrypt our communications are not discovered and then exploited by foreign intelligence agencies, industrial spies, or criminal organizations?

As an illustrative example, imagine purchasing a very secure lock for your front door. Now imagine that the manufacturer does not tell you that the locks are designed such that there exists a master key that opens them all. Maybe the only officially sanctioned master key is deposited in a safe place, but what are the guarantees that it does not get stolen? Copied? Or that the lock is not reverse engineered?

My other worry is about how the NSA either directly collects, or compels service providers to collect, and store, large amounts of data (e.g., raw Internet traffic). Once again, the unspoken assumption is that only authorized personnel are able to access the data that was collected. But what are the guarantees for that? How do we know that these databases are not compromised and that our private data will not fall into hands not bound by laws and legislative oversight?

These are not groundless concerns. As Edward Snowden’s case demonstrates, the NSA was unable to control unauthorized access even by its own contract employees working in what was supposedly a highly structured, extremely secure work environment. (How on Earth was Snowden able to copy data from a top secret system to a portable device? That violates just about every security rule in the book.)

So even if the NSA and friends play entirely above board and never act in an unlawful manner, these serious concerns remain.

I do not believe we, as citizens, should grant the authority to any state security apparatus to collect data wholesale, or to compromise the cryptographic security of our digital infrastructure. Even if it makes it harder to catch bad guys.

So, our message to the NSA, the CSE, the GCHQ and their friends elsewhere in the free world should be simply this: back off, guys. Or else, risk undermining the very thing you purportedly protect, our basic security.

Verizon Canada woes

Canada, Internet, Personal 1 Response »

Aug 072013

Visitors to my blog or Web sites may have noticed that in the past week, my Web pages loaded more slowly than usual, and may even have been unavailable at times.

The reason: shortly before noon, July 30, I lost my primary Internet connection.

This connection was via a legacy DSL service (bridged DSL) to a company that used to be UUNet Canada, was purchased by MCI, and eventually, by Verizon, and now does business under the Verizon Canada name.

Yes, the same Verizon that is about to enter the Canadian wireless market, much to the concern of Canada’s “big three”, Bell, Rogers and Telus.

I noticed the service interruption essentially immediately, and reported it to Verizon. First, they suggested that it was a telco problem; indeed, Bell Canada even wanted to send out a technician, but fortunately, I was able to talk them out of this. (The DSL modem was connecting just fine.)

The service was not restored the next day, nor on August 1. But on August 1, I had a long discussion with a Verizon technician. The first thing I learned is that the technician resides in the Philippines. Back in the old days, when I had a technical issue with UUNet Canada, I usually ended up talking to an engineer in their Toronto network operations center, and my issue was resolved in minutes. Don’t get me wrong, the Philippines technician spoke accent-free English and had a basic level of understanding of the technology; but no real competence and, obviously, no decision-making authority.

What the technician did explain, however, is that Verizon made a colossal screw-up: they decommissioned some of their point-of-presence equipment here in Ottawa without first moving all customers who were still using said equipment. The technician told me that they were scrambling to find a solution, and I’ll be back up and running within a few days.

Well… that was August 1. A long weekend then came and went, but still, no Internet service. So on Tuesday, August 5, I called Verizon Canada. Their main 800 number was answered by a pleasant sounding young lady (an intern, I later learned) but on my first two calls, she managed to connect me to two different voice mailboxes, whereas on the third try, I got disconnected. On the fourth try, she made a real effort to reach someone within the company. She was ready to give up (providing me with an e-mail address instead) but when I told her that I’d rather wait on hold a little longer, she finally managed to get me connected to a senior manager.

This gentleman was friendly and competent enough, and certainly understood and appreciated the severity of my situation. I explained to him that I was already taking steps to switch to Bell Canada as my primary Internet provider. He promised to look into my situation and find a solution. He asked for a day. I asked him to call me this morning, because I wanted to make a decision today, one way or another.

He called indeed at the promised time, but all he could tell me was that he was still waiting for some technical folks to come out of a meeting. Okay, we agreed that he’d call again before 2 PM. He sent an e-mail at 2:09 PM, saying that it would take just a tad longer.

At 3:45 PM, I e-mailed and then called him. No answer. So a few minutes later, it was the end of the line for me: I called and e-mailed again, this time instructing Verizon to terminate my service. I then contacted Bell and asked them to initiate setting up my new account.

Now let’s be clear for a moment: I am not talking about some cheap $20/month wireless contract. I was paying^★ a premium, to the tune of several hundred dollars, to Verizon for this service. And I’ve been their customer (with a a short interruption) since way back in 1994. If my experience is indicative of the kind of service Verizon provides, all I can say to people cheering the prospects of Verizon’s entry into the Canadian wireless market is to be careful what they wish for.

It will be a few days before my new service with Bell is up and running. I am sure there will be headaches, but I am hopeful that it won’t be too much of a hassle. Meanwhile, I am relying on a backup service that I set up two years ago with Rogers, when my Verizon service was down for a few days (that time, it was actually Bell’s fault, or so I was told.) This service is a little slower, but at least it works (for now).

^★I said “I was paying a premium”, but in the last few months, I really wasn’t. Not my fault… I really tried giving them my money. Earlier this year, Verizon moved their Canadian business customers to their pre-existing Enterprise system that combines billing, online payments, service calls, etc. I dutifully set up my account as instructed and made many attempts to pay. The system accepted my credit card, informed me that my payment was processed, but charges never actually appeared on my credit card account. Last month, I contacted Verizon and after some lengthy phone calls with their billing department, also located in the Philippines, they finally told me that the problem has been found and fixed. Well… no charges appeared on my credit card account yet. Funny thing is, when I check with Verizon, my account there shows no arrears. What can I say? If they don’t want my money… I just hope that if they do come to their senses and collect the outstanding invoice amounts, they don’t actually try to charge me for the month of August… the service, after all, went away on July 30 and it was never restored.

Yahoo (noun): A person regarded as crude or brutish

Computer Security, Internet No Responses »

Jun 202013

I have read about this before and I didn’t want to believe it then. I still don’t believe it, to be honest, but it is apparently happening.

Yahoo will recycle inactive user IDs. That is, if you don’t log on to Yahoo for a period of 12 months, your old user ID will be up for grabs by whoever happens to be interested.

Like your friendly neighborhood identity thief.

Yahoo claims that they are going to extraordinary lengths to prevent identity theft. But that is an insanely stupid thing to say. How can Yahoo prevent, say, a financial institution from sending a password confirmation e-mail to a hapless user’s old Yahoo ID if said user happened to use that ID to establish the account years ago?

That is just one of many scenarios that I can think about for Yahoo’s bone-headed decision to backfire.

And I can’t think of a single sensible reason as to why Yahoo wants to do this in the first place. They will piss off a great many users and likely please no one.

I hope they will change their mind before it’s too late. I hope that if they don’t change their mind, something nasty happens soon and someone sues their pants off.

International data roaming prices

Communication, Internet No Responses »

Jun 162013

Last month, I was in Europe. It was fun (apart from a stomach bug that crippled me for two days.)

While in Europe, I used my smartphone. My phone is unlocked. I originally planned to purchase SIM cards in Hungary and the UK, to minimize costs. In the meantime though, I found out that Telus had fairly decent international data roaming packages. I already have a Telus SIM card, in a data stick that I use as a backup Internet connection. So instead of wasting my time hunting for local SIM cards with the right features, I put the Telus SIM card into my phone for the duration of this trip.

I used 191 megabytes of data, 51 minutes of voice, and 1 text message during this trip. The first 100 megabytes were covered by a $65 data package, after which data was charged at $1/megabyte. Here is the breakdown of my final bill:

Package	$65.00
Data	$90.72
Voice	$76.50
Text	$0.60
TOTAL	$232.82

As it turns out, the plan I chose was not optimal: a slightly different plan that combined voice and data would have saved me an additional 17 dollars or so. But it is hard to anticipate in advance how you would use your phone (I expected to rely more on Skype, but Skype was often not working very well). On the other hand, without a plan, I would have paid through my nose:

Package	$0.00
Data	$953.60
Voice	$76.50
Text	$0.60
TOTAL	$1,030.70

Even this is nothing though compared to what Rogers would have charged me. Without a plan, the amount is almost astronomical:

Package	$0.00
Data	$1,907.20
Voice	$102.00
Text	$0.75
TOTAL	$2,009.95

Even with the best plan available at the time (purchasing three times 75 megabytes plus 40 minutes of international voice roaming) I would have paid more than three times as much as I paid Telus:

Package	$725.00
Data	$0.00
Voice	$14.85
Text	$0.00
TOTAL	$739.85

Rogers has since introduced new prices and new roaming packages, so it is only fair to check what I would have paid under the new scheme. After purchasing 100 megabytes of data and 40 minutes in advance, the total would have come to:

Package	$160.00
Data	$91.00
Voice	$14.85
Text	$0.00
TOTAL	$265.85

So the new Rogers plan is still beaten by the old plan of Telus to the tune of over 30 dollars (or more like 50 dollars, had I purchased the optimal Telus plan).

No wonder Rogers doesn’t want you to unlock your phone.

Facebook miseries

Internet, Personal No Responses »

Jun 082013

Today I realized that in the past month, my blog has once again become what blogs were meant to be originally: a write-only medium that nobody reads.

Well, almost. The few people who actually bother to look it up at spinor.info could still read it (and thank you for your interest!) The few people who follow my tweets may have seen my posts. People on Google+ may have seen them as well, but are there still people on Google+?

However, the WordPress plugin that I’ve been using for the last couple of years now to publish my posts automatically on my Facebook page has quit on me. And since I was not usually checking my own Facebook posts, I didn’t even notice that something was amiss, I merely assumed that my Facebook friends were really not that interested in what I had to say.

In reality, my posts never made it to Facebook. The culprit has been one of the stupid “migrations” of the Facebook API (Application Programming Interface), which I foolishly enabled, thus breaking the plugin.

Anyhow, thanks to a helpful hint by the plugin’s developer in a WordPress support forum, I was able to find the cause and fix the problem.

I have yet to figure out why people who develop software on which other people depend, most notably people who develop software libraries that are used by other people’s programs, are so keen on making changes that seemingly serve no useful purpose other than breaking said other people’s programs.

Grumble.

Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength!

Computer Security, Internet, Politics 2 Responses »

Jun 082013

Yes, it’s Orwellian, and this time around, it’s no hyperbole.

The US government apparently not only collects information (“metadata”) on all telephone calls, they also have the means collect e-mails, online chats, voice-over-IP (e.g., Skype) telephone calls, file transfers, photographs and other stored data, and who knows what else… basically, all data handled by some of the largest Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Skype and others.

Last summer, I decided to revamp my e-mail system. The main goal was to make it compatible with mobile devices; instead of using a conventional mail client that downloads and stores messages, I set up an IMAP server.

But before I did so, I seriously considered off-loading all this stuff to Google’s Gmail or perhaps, Microsoft’s outlook.com. After all, why should I bother maintaining my own server, when these fine companies offer all the services I need for free (or for a nominal fee)?

After evaluating all options, I decided against “outsourcing” my mail system. The fact that I did not want to have my mail stored on servers that fall under the jurisdiction of the US government played a significant role in my decision. Not because I have anything to hide; it’s because I value my privacy.

Little did I know back then just how extensively the US government was already keeping services such as Google under surveillance:

From the leaked slides (marked top secret, sensitive information, originator controlled, no foreign nationals; just how much more secret can stuff get?) and the accompanying newspaper articles it is not clear if this is blanket surveillance (as in the case of telephone company metadata) or targeted surveillance. Even so, the very fact that the US government has set up this capability and recruited America’s leading Internet companies (apparently not concerned about their reputation; after all, a presentation, internal as it may be, looks so much nicer if you can splatter the logos of said companies all over your slides) is disconcerting, to say the least.

True, they are doing this supposedly to keep us safe. And I am willing to believe that. But if I preferred security over liberty, I’d have joined Hungary’s communist party in 1986 instead of emigrating and starting a new life in a foreign country. Communist countries were very safe, after all. (And incidentally, they were not nearly this intrusive. Though who knows how intrusive they’d have become if they had the technical means available.)

One thing I especially liked: the assurances that the NSA does not spy on US residents or citizens. Of course… they don’t have to. This will be done for them by their British (or Canadian?) counterparts. No agency is breaking any of the laws of its own country, yet everybody is kept under surveillance. And this is not even new: I remember reading an article in the Globe and Mail some 20 years ago, detailing this “mutually beneficial” practice. I may even have kept a copy, but if so, it is probably buried somewhere in my basement.

Meanwhile, I realize that the good people at the NSA or at Canada’s Communications Security Establishment must really hate folks like me, though, running our own secure mail servers. I wonder when I will get on some suspect list for simply refusing to use free services like Gmail that can be easily monitored by our masters and overlords.

Cats on Google Street View

Cats, Internet, Personal No Responses »

May 262013

I noticed that the pictures on Google Street View for our neighborhood were updated recently. Much to my delight, I noticed that two cats from the neighborhood, cats that we have known for at least seven years, were photographed by Google’s cameras:

Yes, my wife and I are both fond of cats. Not just our own four cats but also cats from the neighborhood.

Gingrich perplexed by his smartphone

Communication, Politics No Responses »

May 132013

Upon watching this video produced by Newt Gingrich, I can only wonder: What was he thinking? What was his team thinking?

Does Newt Gingrich, the technologically savvy, well-educated former House speaker and presidential wannabee really not know that the thing he is holding in his hands is called, indeed has been called for more than 15 years… wait a moment… a smartphone?

But then, a commenter on YouTube suggested that it should be called a horseless telephone. I like the idea.

Suspect in custody

Internet, Legal, Society No Responses »

Apr 192013

Minutes ago, a tweet from the Boston Police Department: “Suspect in custody. Officers sweeping the area. Stand by for further info.”

If true: if these two were indeed the clowns who committed mass murder on Monday, then congratulations are in order. They may have shut down a major metropolis for a day, but the result was worth it. This was not a shutting-the-barn-door-after-the-horses-left overreaction, but appropriate action in light of the fact that an extremely dangerous clown with explosives was on the loose. If I lived in Boston, I’d seriously consider intercepting a random off-duty police officer and inviting him for a beer.

An interesting side note, though, about how information flows (or doesn’t flow) in the 21st century: despite the massive media presence and the non-stop breathless reporting, in the end Anderson Cooper broke the news by reading the above tweet from the Boston Police Department. Not sure what it says about the freedom of the press and the authorities’ ability to control the message in this day and age.

Google Reader, RIP

Internet No Responses »

Mar 152013

Yesterday, when I logged on to Google Reader, I was presented with a notice indicating that Reader will be shut down July 1st.

Too bad. I was not using Reader much, but it was the one semi-automated means with which I was reasonably comfortable that allowed me to share my blog posts on Google+. Whether or not I can be bothered to continue with Google+ afterwards remains to be seen. Maybe not… blogs are meant to be a write-only medium anyway (I yell at the world, I do not expect the world to yell back at me), a model which is kind of broken in this era of social networking.

Anyhow, it appears that a number of people are quite upset at Google’s decision, and they even started a petition that is rapidly approaching 100,000 signatures. (Yes, I signed it, too.) So who knows, maybe Google will listen and Reader will get a reprieve.

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