Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Brought to you by Apple

Just now, I turned on the TV, which is connected to a Mac mini, then I fired up iTunes, and used the Remote app on my iPod touch to queue some music. My 3 year old and 6 year old both grabbed an iPad and started playing a networked game. I checked news.google.ca to read about the iPhone 4S, and instead learned that Steve Jobs is dead.



The king is dead.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

I Heart Wikipedia

It's funny how Wikipedia snuck up on me. It's the first place I turn to when I need to know something. It's like Google, the internet, air and gravity.

Support Wikipedia

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

What's that sound? Boomers, what's-a-happening?

Colby Cosh has written a hilarious article kicking the boomers when they're down, and just getting ready to retire.

It's along the lines of Stephen Colbert's impression of Baby Boomers: "Waaaa, I'm a Baby Boomer! I wanna pony!"

The defining characteristic of Baby Boomers is typically presented as the simple fact that there are so many of them. But think about that a minute. Regardless of how many post-war children were born, the following generations should be even bigger.

But they're not.

Which means that the truly defining characteristic of Baby Boomers is that they had so few offspring.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Let the Big 3 Automakers Go Broke

First off, let me say that I have shares in both GM and Ford, so I will be personally affected if the Big 3 automakers go broke.

I still say "let them go broke."

What would it mean to Ontario and Canada if that happened? Would all the jobs and auto manufacturing disappear? Of course not! Anyone who says otherwise is either foolish or purposely misleading.

Scenarios After they Go Broke
1. Restructure.
They declare bankruptcy, rip up their union contracts, close un-productive plants, then continue to make only the most profitable and successful lines of cars.

2. Sell off Assets.
GM, for example, could call itself Chevrolet, and make just Chevrolet models, and sell off Buick, Hummer, etc. to other parties. Ford and Chrysler could do similar things. Maybe Shelby would put together some investors and buy Dodge. Whatever happens, we would have maybe a Medium-Sized 10 instead of Big 3.

3. Many other possibilities.
Look, people in the U.S. and Canada will continue to want/need cars and trucks, and wherever there's a need, the free market will step up and provide.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Complaining about Rogers DNS and URL Hijack

If you are as mad as I am, then here are some things you can do.

1. Login to rogers.com and fill out their online complaint form.

2. Complain to the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services Inc.

3. Sign this petition: http://www.wrequest.com/7

Monday, July 21, 2008

Rogers is now Hijacking invalid DNS requests

Firefox has a great feature for finding web pages. It tries to load whatever you type in the URL bar, then if that doesn't work, it passes off what you typed to Google, and clicks the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. This lets me type "apple" to get http://www.apple.com/, or "costco canada" to get http://www.costco.ca/ , etc. Great! I haven't used bookmarks for years.

So this morning I discover that Rogers has decided to over-ride this feature and piss me off to no end.

When Firefox tries to load something you typed in the URL box, like "apple", it gets a DNS error that says, in effect, there is no site called "apple", which is technically true, because it would have to be at least apple.com to be valid. Rogers has decided to hijack this behaviour by re-directing your browser to their own search page, instead of displaying the error. Of course, their search page is full of ads, which they are paid to run.

Imagine that the next time you dialed a wrong number, instead of getting an automated message that informed you the number didn't exist, you were instead sent to a telemarketer who tried to sell you lawn-care service. Now imagine that your phone used to automatically fix up wrong numbers for you, but now it can't any more because your phone company is hijacking all your wrong numbers. That's basically what Rogers is doing.

I've been mad at Rogers before, and even took steps last summer to make leaving Rogers really easy. (I stopped using my Rogers email address, and switched everything over to an email address on one of my own domains.) So, my first instinct this morning was to leave Rogers and switch to Bell Sympatico.

Then I thought about it for a minute, and decided that instead of doing that, I would just stop paying my Rogers internet bill.

How do you like me now, Rogers?