Category: Internet matters

Posts about the internet

Jeopardy selection starting

As my trivia buddy Aaron pointed out via Twitter, Jeopardy testing is starting today – just the thing for the various species of geek and nerd who I am pleased to say read this blog.

One of Ottawa’s better trivia teams is called ‘I Lost on Jeopardy’. Even if you don’t win on the show, just getting on it might be enough to get them to let you join.

There are scheduled test times for the eastern, central, and Pacific time zones:

  • Tuesday, February 8th at 8:00pm ET
  • Wednesday, February 9th at 8:00pm CT / 7:00pm MT
  • Thursday, February 10th at 8:00pm PT

If you are lucky enough to be in Alaska or Hawaii, the times are 7:00pm (Alaska) and 6:00pm (Hawaii).

The test takes an hour and will only be given once on each of the three nights.

Fewer photos to Facebook

Because of how they get their money, it seems to me that Facebook has a business model that is fundamentally opposed to the interests of its users. Since they don’t pay monthly fees, they aren’t Facebook’s customers. Instead, they are Facebook’s product, which is then sold to advertisers in the form of eyeballs and (more worrisomely) databases of personal information.

Because of that, Facebook is never going to be proactively involved in protecting privacy. Instead, it will always be pushing the boundary and doing as much as users are willing to accept. Bit by bit – visibly and invisibly – it seems that privacy protections will be eaten away and more and more data will be available to Facebook’s real clients, the advertisers.

In response to this, I have been gradually stripping down my profile. That’s not all that possible, however. For one thing, Facebook never forgets information you entered, even if you delete it. For another, it can guess all sorts of things about you based on your friends. It can guess what sort of products you are likely to buy, or even if you are gay.

Some people may not be bothered by this, but I am. As such, I am going to shift away from posting photography on Facebook. Instead, I will mostly rely on Flickr Pro, which is a paid and user-focused service.

[Update: 6:39pm] Fear not, photo appreciators! There will still be photos uploaded, and they are likely to be in smaller batches of higher quality work. These are from today: Rideau Canal Skating 2011.

Cause to comment

One more reason to comment: this site uses WordPress SuperCache as a way of rendering pages for non-commenting visitors. The cached versions are not fully up-to-date, especially when it comes to comments left by visitors.

As soon as you leave a comment that behaviour changes for your computer. That means you will be getting a freshly rendered version of the page every time.

Crediting friends for photos

I put a lot of photography online. I try to put a photo per day up on this site, and I have heaps of photos on Facebook and Flickr. It’s a hobby I enjoy and people seem to enjoy seeing my photos, including ones of themselves.

As photo and computer gear have made it easier and easier to store large numbers of digital images, my library is ballooning. I use iPhoto to store ‘digital negatives’ and currently have an album of 36,109 photos. Most of those photos (over 2/3) have been taken since I came to Ottawa.

While lugging around a giant SLR, it is fun to let other people try taking a few shots. One person brought the gear, but that doesn’t mean people with different perspectives shouldn’t be allowed to make use of it.

I do try to memorize which shots are mine and which ones were taken by others, but I deal with a daunting number of photographs overall. Once in a while, I may accidentally mis-attribute a photo taken by someone else as my own. It is never my intention to do so, and I ask you not to be offended if I haven’t remembered which shots you took. I would always be pleased if you would let me know, so that I can provide an appropriate caption or hover-over text.

Does that seem like a sensible approach to people?

Bell, usage based billing, and TekSavvy

It seems the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has let the dominant internet service provider (ISP) Bell largely ruin the smaller ISP Teksavvy:

From March 1 on, users of the up to 5 Mbps packages in Ontario can expect a usage cap of 25GB (60GB in Quebec), substantially down from the 200GB or unlimited deals TekSavvy was able to offer before the CRTC’s decision to impose usage based billing…

We encourage you to monitor your usage carefully, as the CRTC has imposed a very high overage rate, above your new monthly limit, of $1.90 per gigabyte ($2.35 per gigabyte in Quebec).

Forcing big companies like Bell to lease capacity to companies like Teksavvy seems very smart, as it helps prevent dominant monopolies from forming. Unfortunately, such arrangements don’t have much meaning if you also allow the big company to force their own policies on the smaller companies that are leasing from them.

Consider the case of a customer using 100 GB a month – half of Teksavvy’s previous low cap. Before, they would have paid $44.30 with tax. Under the new rules, they would pay that plus another $142.50 in additional data usage fees.

AdBlock arms race?

I have been happily using AdBlock for years, with few if any inconveniences resulting. Lately, however, I have noticed websites partially sabotaging themselves for AdBlock users. I suppose this makes sense – they must hate the loss of advertising revenue.

It wouldn’t surprise me if even the sites that aren’t taking action in response to AdBlock now are tracking which of their visitors have used the software in the past.

Upgrade terrors

When you really rely on a piece of software, it is always frightening to see that there is an upgrade available. That sets you to worrying about the day when your version will no longer be supported, when it may even stop working altogether.

You’ve spent so long learning the peculiarities of the software, you naturally worry about how hard it will be to learn the new version, and whether you will still be capable when using it. If they change something that is a core job function of yours, you can be suddenly unable to do your job.

And yet, you’re a nerd and you believe in the possibility of never-ending improvement. You are seduced by the new version, where they promise it will be easier to do all the jobs you have to, and you will look like more of a professional when using it (camera companies promise the same thing for lenses).

And so, everyone is forced along the upgrade path. Ordinary users probably hate every step of the march, because they don’t buy into the seduction of the new (and yet everyone working in an office with an old version of Windows is happy to complain about it) and they still have to deal with the headaches of upgrading. Many geeks will be content with any change since their primary need – novelty – is automatically being served, even when they are cursing the strange new interface. The uber-geeks who actually run everything will work to keep everyone sane: maintaining a lifeline for all the old legacy systems that people absolutely rely on, while also making the investments necessary to service the software and hardware needs of the future.

Pondering smartphones III

I realize that one of the bigger sustainability problems of our age is all the waste generated by planned obselescence and the need to have the next big thing every couple of years. At the same time, it seems plausible that for whatever my trade is, a functional smartphone is increasingly a necessary tool.

As such, the increasing number of bugs and problems with my Nokia E71 (purchased in summer 2009) are driving me to think about new options. The phone no longer receives text messages while on, but rather in one big clump when rebooted. The battery now cannot even handle an evening out, even when it has been charging all day at work, and yet replacing it would cost a fair bit of what a new phone would. The web browsers (both Nokia’s and Opera Mobile) are inadequate for many everyday tasks. The machine won’t stay connected to my email server, even when it has constant access to the cell network, and it doesn’t tell you when the connection goes down. Also, it has been abruptly and randomly crashing.

The smartphone market changes fast. When I looked at it previously (once and again), I concluded that a Nokia phone aimed at the business market was the best match for my needs. Foremost among those are a good keyboard and integration with Google. It’s great that the Nokia seamlessly syncs up my contacts and calendar with GMail and Google Calendar, though it seems ironic that it uses Microsoft’s ‘Mail for Exchange’ app to do so. Other important features are decent battery life, GPS, access to useful apps like Google Maps, and good build quality. I don’t care at all about media player or camera capabilities, as I have better machines to do those things and I don’t have a problem carrying them with me.

What would people recommend? One of the BlackBerries? An Android phone? Much as I appreciate the familiar layout of Nokia’s operating systems, I don’t think I will be giving them another go. This will probably be my first ever cell phone not made by the Finnish giant.

I won’t be getting it very soon, however. Things are still a bit up in the air with the job search, and some of the lower-paying opportunities might not be smartphone compatible. Once I have some certainty, however, I will be back on the pocket computer market.

Fun, and also educational

Here’s a question that I think a lot of Ottawa-area Anglophones would appreciate an answer to:

Are there any good French television shows or films available via Netflix streaming?

For one reason or another, a few of us could benefit from some revision and practice.

I think most people watch at least some television as a guilty pleasure (HBO doesn’t count as television, does it?). Maybe we could just do that in French and kill two birds with one stone – get in one’s vegging time, and maintain French language skills.

Two linguistic surprises

I try to stay pretty on top, when it comes to pedantic debates. They come up in trivia, and in editorial battles. I have read The Economist Style Guide (which gives one good cover). As such, I was surprised to discover that I had been partially wrong on two for as long as I can remember:

  1. ‘Octopodes’, the most pedantic pluralization of ‘octopus’ isn’t pronounced oct-oh-pohde. It is pronounced oct-aw-pow-deez, like a character in a Greek play.
  2. The proper abbreviation for the imperial weight unit ‘pounds’ is always ‘lb’ and never ‘lbs’.

I may be the only one who didn’t know about these (the misconceptions people maintain vary). How many other people are surprised by one or the other? Running into such a reminder of why it is a good idea to have people point out my mistakes.