Vishesh Kumar of the Wall Street Journal writes:

When it comes to Internet access, is there such a thing as too fast? That’s a question U.S. Internet providers are grappling with as they place strategic bets on whether or not to upgrade their networks to offer high-priced, superhigh-speed Web connections.

There have been plenty of comparisons between Internet access speeds and money.  Can one ever have enough money?  I’m sure none of us is at a loss when it comes to thinking of ways to spend money.

But more important than the money analogy is the importance of faster Internet access to media and technological innovation.

Since the advent of broadband connections we’ve seen the rise to ubiquity of YouTube, the advent of Internet applications that rival their desktop counterparts in functionality, and even the feasibility of cloud computing.  More than this, we’ve seen unprecedented democratization of information and the absolute ease of its dissemination.

This progress has all be thanks to the rise in Internet speeds.

Now imagine what we can do with 100Mbps or 400Mbps connections.  Just think of the possibilities.

Superhigh-speed broadband connections has the potential to make ubiquitous high-resolution videos, real-time video broadcast, and much, much more.  Most exciting is the prospect of engaging, entertaining, useful and indispensible applications of these superhigh-speed connections that we haven’t even thought of yet.

We don’t normally think of money as enabling us to contribute to society on the grand scale, and so comparisons of bandwidth-wealth to monetary-wealth fall short.  Bandwidth-wealth will usher in the next generation of rich media and communications access.

The important questions to ask no longer pertain to the need for faster internet access, but rather to the issues around time to deployment and ease of access.

I’d like my superhigh-speed access now, please, and I’ll take it in the 400Mbps variety, thank you very much!

(From Digg)

It looks like the net neutrality debate is finally picking up in Canada.  As far as I’m concerned, we’ve been way overdue for such a debate.  Rogers Canada’s traffic shaping practice, and now Bell’s, has gone on long enough.  South of the border, Comcast has buckled to consumer outrage and Congressional pressure.  Canadians need to let Rogers and Bell know how disappointed we are as well.

In the fight against big media, I believe we need the government to support the Canadian people against the unfair advantage these telecoms have.  They own all the infrastructure and obviously have an interest in ensuring the Internet cannot threaten their significant investments into competing distribution channels (digital cable or satellite service).

To this end, I’ve written to Jim Prentice, the Minister of Industry.

Read on…

Dear Mr. Prentice:

As a very concerned Canadian citizen, I am writing to express my dissatisfaction with your ministry’s policy of remaining uninvolved in the case of The Canadian People vs. Bell & Rogers in the issue of net neutrality.

In response to Charlie Angus’ question about your ministry’s involvement in this fight, the Globe and Mail quotes you as saying:

“At this point in time we will continue to leave the matter between consumers on the one hand and Internet service providers on the other”

I was extremely disappointed to read that you are leaving the Canadian people to fight an unfair battle, one in which the opponent holds the upper hand and all the bargaining power.

What power do I as a consumer have?  If today Rogers and Bell are suppressing technologies like BitTorrent, which help to enable media distribution over the Internet, what alternatives do I have?  BitTorrent and other Internet distribution technologies are the future of content distribution.  These technologies are also a direct threat to Rogers’ digital cable and Bell’s satellite service offerings.  Is it any surprise that we now find Bell is also traffic shaping and reducing the quality of the service offered by the wholesale service providers (an act that is also plainly anti-competitive)?

I would love for you to tell me what options I have, and what I can do to encourage Rogers or Bell to change their policy and keep the Internet open and fair.  Tell me which provider I can switch to, or how I can vote with my dollar.  Either that or tell me why I should trust such a critical public resource as the Internet to the likes of Bell or Rogers.

While you’re at it, also tell me how you’re securing the future of net neutrality and net innovation in Canada, and ensuring that we don’t end up becoming the laughing stock of the developed world.

Bell & Rogers have no will to concede to the Canadian people, and we have nowhere else to take our dollars without going back to stone-age Internet access.

Do you call this a fair fight, sir?

I urge you and our other representatives to take some action to ensure fair, responsible access to the Internet, such that innovation and choice — the lifeblood of the Internet — will be preserved.

Thank you for your time.

Sohail Mirza

If you’d like to contribute to the discussion, then be sure to share your opinion with Jim Prentice at prentice.j AT parl.gc.ca (please be civil), or get in touch with your local MP.  Oh, and do get involved with the Campaign for Democratic Media.  It’s about time a consumer-rights organization got involved in the fight.

The Royal Mint has unveiled new designs for the 1 pence through £1 coins. The new designs incorporate the Royal Arms and are absolutely brilliant in my opinion. They were conceived by Matthew Dent, a 26-year old graphic designer.

Brilliant!

(Via kottke)

Yesterday, Arstechnica reported that Bell Canada had started throttling P2P traffic not only across its own network, but even on the services being resold or redistributed by other DSL ISPs.

Throttling and other anti-P2P practises appear to gaining prevelance amongst the Canadian ISPs for some reason. Meanwhile, south of the border, the American public is in an uproar over the anti-P2P practices of Rogers‘ counterpart, Comcast. All the while, Rogers has been engaging in anti-P2P practices — in fact, anti-net neutrality practices — far worse than what Comcast has been charged with; while Comcast may be resetting P2P connections at certain times of the day or in certain areas, Rogers throttles ALL encrypted traffic wholesale.

My question is, why aren’t Canadians as concerned about Net censorship and the impaired quality of broadband offerings here? American ISPs can hardly get away with anything without Congressional hearings being arranged, and up here Rogers is making a complete mockery of the concept of net neutrality.

Canadians, it’s time to wake up and hold the telecom giants’ feet to the fire.

Someone please tell me where I can sign up to express my anger, and hopefully in a manner that might drive legislative change barring what Rogers, and now Bell, are up to. I’m angry, dangnabbit!

(Via digg)

Oh my Lord.

Yep, the age of robotic companionship is upon us.  Given advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, and not to mention expanded definitions of marriage, it seems inevitable.

Robot spouses are hardly going to become the norm — indeed they remain an anomaly at the moment (unless you know something I don’t!) — but I can certainly see the allure for a certain category of people.  Perhaps those who may find it difficult to relate to other people, or find the prospect of real human relationships too risky.

Frankly, I’m somewhat disturbed by Zoltan’s story.  It speaks to me of someone who finds real emotional contact with a human being too difficult.  As well, this is damning indictment of society at large in that we’ve been unable to help those who are emotionally repressed or fragile.

I’m sure there are those that would readily disagree with my opinion here.  After all, why shouldn’t everyone be able to do what they want and what they’re comfortable with?

I have to think that human beings gain the most satisfaction from accomplishment, and especially emotional accomplishment.  There is nothing more emotionally satisfying than a fantastic relationship, and especially with one’s spouse.

I’m sure this is going to become a more contentious and fascinating issue as technology advances, so feel free to sound off in the comments with your own opinion.

(Via digg)

Over at ReadWriteWeb, Josh Catone comments that internet fandom is not ready for primetime.  This commentary follows the news that the CBS TV series Jericho was cancelled again.

Josh asks:

What do you think? Are there any other reasons why strong online numbers haven’t translated well to the TV? Do you think Internet fandom will ever be ready for primetime?

In the comments, David Dworsky replies with an excellent statement.  He essentially asks when the differentiation made between TV and the Internet will cease.

I actually wholeheartedly agree with David.  As an example, I barely watch TV shows on my television anymore.  In fact, for the last few years, I’ve not even had a television, preferring to either watch shows with the TV tuner on my computer, or better yet, preferring to download the TV shows so that I could watch them at my leisure.

This is hardly a new concept to this Internet generation, but people are more and more expecting to be able to consume media on the devices of their choosing, at the time of their choosing, and via the medium of their choosing.

I believe this fact has really impressed upon on the TV industry.

Unfortunately, the industry still relies on old-world metrics that appear to have dealt Jericho a fatal blow.  It’s really too bad since the show is genuinely entertaining, and obviously has a large following.

My hope is that Jericho is only the first of such shows, and that eventually shows with large online followings are realized to be as worthy of investment as major network shows like Lost or House.   In fact I’d like to see us more rapidly advance to a point of being medium-agnostic when it comes to content distribution and consumption.

I just read that the first three minutes of I Am Legend are available on Yahoo.

Personally, I am really looking forward to this film. The trailers really piqued my interest. On top of that, I have a lot of respect for Will Smith as an actor and as a person. He’s always willing to challenge himself and expand into new roles and new motifs, so you can bet he chose this role for a reason.

So, do you spoil yourself with the first three minutes, or hold off until you get a chance to go see it?  For those of you that want to spoil yourself, go check out those first three minutes.

Credit:  Cream Filled Blog, via digg.

Since guns are illegal in Japan, how do people defend themselves against knife-wielding hooligans? They use a sasumata, a way of telling the bad guy that you’d only touch them with a 10-foot pole… literally!

Now, Japan is the cheesiest place on Earth, but you have to respect a society with such high rates of social obedience, and such disapproval of public malfeasance. Contrast this to the United States where gun ownership is rampant, and crime rates orders of magnitude more frequent, despite (or because of?) the argument that guns protect people from other people with guns.

It may be unfair to compare the social environment of Japan to that of the United States, but there’s a lot to be said about a society that has matured the point where it can say, we don’t need guns to protect ourselves from each other.

Mad respec’, Japan, mad respec’.

Read all about the sasumata (mirror).

Credit: from digg.

As a follow-up to my previous post on the office of the future, BandwidthBlog has a story (mirror) showcasing the workspaces of some of today’s Internet companies.

Looks like there’s a good mix of both dedicated workstations…

…and wide-open spaces…

…but nary a cubicle in sight!

Read the full article (mirror) at BandwidthBlog.

Credit:  From digg.

Every once in a while you hear about the new office paradigm that is going to replace the dreaded cubicle farm. You hear that the notorious cubicle farms that house engineers and otherwise, all over the world, are finally going away and we’ll be ushered into the bright, open future of glass offices or lounge-style workspaces.

This time, ecommercetimes.com has a piece on the “End of the Cubicle“, reporting that companies like Intel, Cisco and Sun are following the example of industry trend-setters Google and VMWare into the land of the cubicle-less.

These organizations are all promoting newer, open-concept, shared workspaces to capitalize on reduced real estate costs, supposed increases in productivity, and in general, embracing the greater collaboration they feel is required in the modern workplace.

Now, if you were to ask Joel Spolsky, he and probably no small cadre of others believe that a workplace should be quite the opposite of an open, shared workspace environment. It should be an environment where a closed door is the default policy, working to protect the think time and concentration of the developer.  Where collaboration is desired, technology and the old-fashioned concept of walking over to your peer’s cube serve to connect people, local or remote.

I canvased some of my co-workers to see what they think, and they seem to prefer cubicles and having their private space.

So, is the shared space work environment really the “new wave” the author of this article would have us believe, or is it just another experiment in imitating Google’s success?

Personally I kind of like the idea of the shared space, as long as there are plenty of team rooms and hidden corners to sneak off to when one needs their privacy.  I’m not attached to my cube.  It primarily serves as food storage depot and bookshelf, though it seems my co-workers have these “family pictures” they like to put up on their walls.  Go figure.

I think another road-block is technology adoption.  It’s great that companies like Cisco and Intel can afford wireless enabled whiteboards and laptops for every employee.  Unfortunately, most organizations simply can’t drop that kind of dime.

I’m not quite so sure it’ll turn out to be the workplace panacea, but it sure sounds like an interesting environment to work in, despite opposition.

Credit:  From digg.

I’ve been away from blogging for a while as things had been quite busy at work.  But, I’m back now and with a fresh look to the blog.

I have to commend WordPress on their excellent blogging platform, and for consistently adding new features.

Last time I browsed through the WordPress themes catalogue, you weren’t allowed to edit the CSS template of your theme nor change the title graphic without paying for these features.  I’m glad to see that has changed.  Now anyone can modify the CSS and title graphic of their blog.  I’m still using the default graphic, but I plan to change that in the near future.

Not only have I not blogged in a while, but it’s also been quite a while since I’ve watched the market.  I used to perpetually keep an eye on my Google Finance page while at work, but haven’t done that in over a month.  So, speaking of change, imagine my surprise when I took a look after all this time and saw it was a brutal day:

Wow, what a brutal day for that financial sector!  I knew the mortgage crisis had hit the market pretty badly, but this is a whole new level of hurt!

Things sure have changed while I’ve been away.

Update:  Apparently you still can’t change the CSS template without paying for the feature, though it appears that you can change the title graphic.  I would love to see custom CSS for free, but regardless, I still think the WordPress platform is wonderful.

How I’ve missed you Charamel. But now that you’re Firefox 2.0 compatible, I’ll never let you go!

How smooth is Charamel? Oh, sooo smooooth. Just take a look at the Options dialog:

Go and get Charamel.

Everybody hates being put on hold — it’s the bane of the modern customer support experience. Yet here I am, on the phone with my bank, on hold.

Well, at least they have some music playing in the background, and it’s my main man Yanni, no less.

What I don’t understand is why the quality of the hold music is always so poor. It always — always — sounds like it’s being played on one of those cheap, dollar-store, battery-operated, fell-and-hit-the-curb-one-too-many-times radios. Except you’re listening to it over a bad cell phone connection. And the guy on the other end is driving on the highway. With his windows down. And for brief moments here and there the sound cuts out so that it almost seems like the guy is driving through a tunnel.

It really couldn’t be any worse.

Actually it is worse, because it sounds like every customer service center in the world is sourcing their hold music from the same guy. In his car. With the windows down.

Customer service centers of the world: Please invest in a decent hold music system. God knows you’re already saving money by staffing one phone rep at a time (in India, no less). If we must be put on hold, at least hire a hold music guy who’ll put his windows up.

I read this InformationWeek article and was somewhat surprised to see the Covenant referred to as a “shadowy, terrorist group”. This says to me one of two things:

• The author has never played Halo before. As any gamer knows, the Covenant aren’t what you’d typically describe as terrorists. They’re clearly alien invaders.
• Contemporary political language is really re-shaping the way we perceive conflict.

I suppose propaganda to the effect of demonizing one’s opponent has probably always existed, but it still surprises me that we tend to think of our opponents as less than human, or as being unlike us.

But, of course, Halo is just a video game, and the Covenant really aren’t like us!

Update: Even funnier than the reference to the Covenant as terrorists is the ensuing debate in the article’s comments section!

read more | digg story

I have a friend staying with me these days, and his birthday was a few days ago. He decided that he deserved a Wii, so between the two of us we bought him a Wii and a handful of accessories.

We had a bit of trouble getting it online. I own a Linksys WRT54G wireless router (revision 3) which is running the DD-WRT firmware (version 23 SP1, I believe). Apparently the Wii really doesn’t like DD-WRT firmware because it simply wouldn’t go online. I figured it had to be something related to the encryption mode in use. I was using WPA-PSK (TKIP) encryption, which is supported by the Wii, but the Wii just couldn’t make the initial connection to the internet. My router’s System Information console showed the Wii constantly connecting to and disconnecting from the router.

I eventually realized that the encryption setting may in fact be preventing the Wii from connecting to the Internet, despite the support for the encryption protocol in use. What I tried next was to disable the wireless encryption on my router and…. success! The Wii connected!

Following the initial connection, the Wii attempts to download a system upgrade, which I allowed it to do. I was hoping that the upgrade would include broader router and networking support.

Fortunately, my hunch was correct since I was able to re-enable the WPA wireless encryption without affecting the Wii’s internet connection. We wouldn’t want to be running an unsecured wireless access point now, would we!

Well, Assembly sure has changed since back in the day.

In 1994, our family bought our first computer. It was a way-too-expensive IBM Aptiva with a Pentium 60Mhz CPU, which was mind-blowing for the time. The very first Pentium-class CPU! At the time I was very interested in computer graphics and other such geekery, and I had convinced my mum to buy that monster of a system so that I could experiment in 3d graphics design and computer animation, which were only budding industries at the time.

A friend at school eventually turned me onto the demo scene. I was captivated from the very beginning. To me, the demo scene represented a melding of art and mechanics. The demo creators pieced together complex visuals with what are nearly the most basic building blocks of modern computing (assembly instructions). The sheer skill required was enough to impress, but I was totally drawn in by the amazing mod soundtracks and graphical prowess on display.

So, for a few years during the mid-90’s I followed the annual scene releases and would always download the top few demos of that year. I grew up on the Future Crew and other well-knowns in the scene.

By the late 90’s though I had fallen out of the scene. My computer had aged into obsolescence and wasn’t very capable at running the newer demos. As well, most of the groups I had first heard of had since left the scene. The demos of this time just didn’t capture my interest as much. The late 90’s also saw the beginnings of the PC as a 3d gaming system, thanks to DirectX and OpenGL. This made the demos being produced at the time seem less and less impressive relative to the games that were cropping up, at least visually.

Throughout that time and the first half of this decade, I did look up the Assembly scene to see how was doing, once in a while vainly attempting to download and run a demo, but very few worked well.

Well, today I looked up the website at assembly.org and was quite surprised to find the site had meta-morphed into what looks like a thriving community for the demo scene. I suppose the demo scene never really died, and I’m not sure if the scene as a whole slumped or not, but it certainly seemed it to me. Anyways I was pretty impressed with the site, which I think only a year or two back was a simple repository for announcing the new shows and hosting the show submissions.

It was also nice to see that Assembly ‘07, this year’s incarnation of the annual meet is to take place in only 2 days.

This year I’ll plan to check out the shows submissions. Let’s see if I can’t re-ignite the captivation and awe at the skill of some of the demo-coders.

Ever been perusing the Apple Trailers website, checking out the HD trailers, and been annoyed by the process of buffering and watching the streaming video? Wouldn’t it just be better to download the video to your desktop and watch it at your own convenience, without having to buffer the video?

Well, there are a couple of ways to do this.

The Quicktime Alternative Download Method

For Windows users, I highly recommend the alternative to the Quicktime player called, well, Quicktime Alternative. Quicktime Alternative is really a Quicktime codec pack plus the lightweight video player, Media Player Classic. Quicktime Alternative does not restrict you to using Media Player Classic (in fact, it’s an optional component of the install), but in fact allows you to playback the video in any video player you choose.

So, to download the HD trailers, you first download Quicktime Alternative and install it. Then while attempting to view one of the high-definition videos from Apple Trailers, you are given the option of downloading the trailer instead.

When given the option of downloading the trailer, I recommend checking the box that offers to rename the file extension to .hdmov. As I mentioned, Quicktime Alternative allows you to view Quicktime video files using any DirectShow-compliant video player (Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic, etc.). By renaming the file with the .hdmov extension you can engage the DirectShow video playback engine and thus allow smooth playback of HD videos.

The Greasemonkey Download Method

Now, in the case that you’re not a Windows user (or even if you are a Windows user, but just prefer not to use Quicktime Alternative to download the trailers), you can use the Greasemonkey script, “Apple Trailer Download“, to download the videos using Firefox.

Once you’ve installed the script, try re-visiting the HD trailer page for a movie at Apple Trailers. You should see a neat little box in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen that looks something like this:

You just right click on any of the three sizes and choose “Save Link As…”, or use the download manager of your choice. Personally I prefer DownThemAll!.

For Windows users, even if you decide to use the Greasemonkey script for downloading the trailers, I still recommend using the Quicktime Alternative download for playing the movies.

If you haven’t ever visited ChangeThis, you absolutely must. It’s one of those sites that you won’t be visiting daily, but you will be going back every once in a while to see what’s new.

ChangeThis is an interesting web property with the goal of spreading new ideas and enticing people into engaging in this idea exchange. They do this by publishing what they term “manifestos”, which end up being very well-written essays, viewpoints, and opinions on a variety of topics, published at the decent rate of a handful per month.

They choose the manifestos from a pool of topic proposals which are also available for viewing on the website. The public is free to submit further new proposals. I’m not completely certain, but I believe each month they select the most voted-for proposals and then engage the authors to produce the complete essay for publishing on the site as part of that month’s issue.

What I really find striking about ChangeThis is the high bar of quality in everything they publish. The manifestos tend to be very engaging, well-written, and published as high-quality PDFs to boot.

If you’re looking for a manifesto to start off with, I highly recommend Issue 34.04, The Low-Information Diet: How to Eliminate E-Mail Overload & Triple Productivity in 24 Hours.

Now, this is really cool. John Resig (who, by the way, also happens to have one of the coolest blog layouts I’ve seen) of Mozilla talks about how JavaScript is evolving into a full-fledged programming language. Especially interesting are the JavaScript on Rails and Helma efforts, both efforts to create full-featured web application frameworks on top of JavaScript.

It’s Mozilla’s Rhino that’s making this possible with its implementation of JavaScript that runs in the JVM. This has significant performance benefits. Could it possibly lead to JavaScript on Rails being a better solution than Ruby on Rails, at least performance-wise?

John comments:

A good deal of energy has been put into worrying about JavaScript performance. This is a great sign. It’s sort of a natural progression for a language (worry about implementation, then standardization and compliance, and finally speed).

Read on: http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-as-a-language/

From Paul Kim:  The people at what is currently Democracy Player are asking that the blogosphere spread the word — Democracy Player is being re-branded as Miro.

If you haven’t tried out Democracy Player, it’s pretty cool.  It’s a medium for distributing original, user-generated video content over the Internet and it works pretty well.  Added bonus?  Democracy Player is based on XULRunner.