blinkit

Bargains and lack of choice

WMD: I've discovered Costco. I've gone perhaps once before, some years ago, but never shopped on my own. Last week, I embarked on a journey into warehouse land, where I spent $123 to ensure that I have enough tissue, cat litter, garbage bags, porridge, pasta, tomato sauce, tomato paste, whole wheat bread and buns to last me for at least two months. I also have 20 new fancy coat hangars. Just this past weekend, I returned to ensure a similar supply of toilet paper, paper towel, mushroom soup, Raisin Bran and other items. By buying at a wholesale level, I am saving money. But choice of goods is quite constrained. Quality is not assured. The ginger snap cookies I bought will last all week, but they are moderately enjoyable. The cat litter was less than $8 for 50 pounds, and it's subpar. But just one box, about one fourth of the supply I have now, of my regular litter costs $9, so the cat will have to deal with it for the next few weeks. And that's what Costco is about. Note: the tomato sauce is just fine ...

Today's bLINKit: Tor is offering free science fiction and fantasy e-books for download. And need to sync bookmarks over two or more computers using Firefox? Try Foxmarks. I was sceptical, but so far, works well between my main PC and my laptop. And a site with headlines about how Barack Obama has added you as a friend/carries a picture of you in his wallet/thought you could use some chocolate. Click on what you find here and keep clicking.

Canada and saving the Internet

WMD: A column from May based on an interview with Matt Thompson of Savetheinternet.com. Every time I read another story about the shenanigans of companies like Rogers, I shudder:

Big Internet providers control on-ramps to information highway

Bell, Shaw and Telus well-positioned to dictate shaping of Internet in Canada

Barry Link, Vancouver Courier

Published: Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Imagine ordering a pizza over the phone from the locally owned pizza shop a few blocks away. You try calling but find it takes forever to get a dial tone. Frustrated, you hang up and call the nearest pizza chain and are instantly connected.

Now imagine the next day you learn that the chain corporation cut a deal with Telus to provide super quick phone service, while the local guy, as a much smaller pizza maker with limited funds, refused or could not afford to pay for a similar deal and was given an inferior phone line. As a consumer in search of open and equal pizza choices, you'd be outraged. And so would the local guy.

Of course, this scenario is a fantasy. Anyone of us can order from a small independent pizza place as easily as we can call Dominos or Panagos. But according to Internet defenders like Matt Thompson, this kind of imbalance could soon occur on the Internet thanks to the monopolistic cable and telecommunications companies that now control almost all the on-ramps to what we once called the information highway. In the U.S., giant Internet providers want to charge a premium to web destinations which have the potential for high traffic. Those who pay the premium would be offered a fast lane for Internet users to patronize to their websites and services. Those who don't pay the premium will find their traffic relegated to a second tier of inferior service on a bumpy and winding dirt road.

The issue has become known as net neutrality, which Thompson highlights during a talk Friday at VIDFEST, Vancouver's annual geek gathering of digital new media. The Vancouver-born Montreal resident, a consultant with the U.S.-based SavetheInternet.com campaign, will share the podium with John Perry Barlow, the former Grateful Dead member who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Net neutrality is a complicated issue to wrap our heads around. We gripe about monthly fees for broadband access, but most of us don't care about the technical workings behind the scenes of the Internet as long as we can poke friends on Facebook and watch cats play piano on YouTube.

But the pizza by phone analogy, which Thompson used when I talked to him last week, is useful to remember. The Internet is as much a key part of modern economic and social life as the telephone, Thompson argues. And just as consumers expect certain rights involving phone usage--such as the ability to easily call any number in the phone book--we should expect the same rights online.

Canadian Internet providers such as Shaw and Telus haven't made noises--yet--about providing premium service to web destinations that can afford to pay. But they are messing with the Internet in other ways. Telus infamously blocked a union website to its subscribers during its last labour dispute--the equivalent of cutting off phone service to the union office. Most providers routinely throttle the connection speeds of users who engage in peer-to-peer file trading. And Bell, a major provider in Eastern Canada, recently admitted slowing down connection speeds for third-party providers that legally lease the use of its network.

In the U.S., similar moves by American providers have sent geeks to virtual barricades. Last year, Thompson produced an award-winning online video that was part of a massive campaign to thwart legislation that favoured the giant Internet providers. The campaign went far beyond geekdom to include hundreds of organizations--from conservative Christian lobby groups to artists--and hundreds of thousands of individuals. That same diverse and powerful coalition has a shot at passing genuine net neutrality legislation in the U.S. in coming months.

But in Canada, net neutrality is an emerging issue at best The CRTC has washed its hands of Internet regulation, and Thompson believes the federal Conservatives will let Bell, Shaw and Telus dictate how the Internet will be shaped in this country.

Thompson, who says the economic importance of net neutrality can't be emphasized enough, notes the Internet was built as an open and equal marketplace. Anyone with an idea--or service, company or political position--has just as much a chance of promoting that idea to the world as anyone else.

Thompson hopes Canadians wake up. We developed a plan for the 19th century railway lines which built the country in its early years, he says. We need to have a similar plan "for the most important invention since the printing press, and the public needs to have a role in that plan," he says. If we don't, better start preparing for limited choice in pizza.

See VIDFEST at www.vidfest.com.

Today's bLINKit: Life getting you down? Learn how to do things to make life better, or at least how to repair your roof or dye wool, at Diylife.com.

On my list ...

WMD: OK, I haven't blogged in a long time, a common setback for bloggers. Work kept me more than busy, sometimes drained, and owning your own apartment and being on the strata takes more time than you realize. I needed the time off. But back now, with catching up to do -- rebuilding my small but faithful audience for one thing. Hope you all come back.

I'll be catching up on past Courier columns first. My most recent Courier column is here. And since the links still don't last on the paper's web page, I've reproduced the text below:

Confessions of a compulsive list-maker

Scent of cat pee highlights need for 'writing things down'

Barry Link, Vancouver Courier

Published: Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Some time ago I came home, opened my door and smelled cat pee. I was not surprised, since I have a cat. But I was surprised, since in all the years we've been roomies he's never gone either No. 1 or No. 2 where he's not supposed to.

I quickly checked the litter box in the hallway closet and discovered an interesting fact: it had no litter. I had changed the litter box only three days before, dumping out and bagging the old litter and putting a new plastic liner in the box. But I forgot to put in new litter. I don't know why. I was distracted when changing it--listening to my MP3 player, thinking about ordering a pizza and meditating--haven't we all done this?--on the future of contextual human-corporate relationships in the void left by the retreat of post-industrial social organization. But the real reason my litter replacement project failed came down to one thing: I forgot to put it on my list.

I am a list-maker. If I don't make lists, I don't get things done. The fridge can be empty and the pantry bare, but unless I put "get groceries, stupid" on a list somewhere, I won't go to the grocery store. I'll eat the drapes first. And if I eat those, I won't replace them unless I put them on a list.

That's why I have many lists. I have a list of short-term domestic projects and another of long-term personal goals. I have a list of things I want to buy, a list of things not to buy, and a list of things to recycle or give away. I have a list of friends I need to catch up with and another list of friends to apologize to for failing to catch up with them because I've spent too much time putting things on lists.

I'm not alone. Humans have been making lists since the invention of writing. We know this from cuneiform clay tablets unearthed in Iraq and dating back to the ancient Sumerian city states of 5,000 years ago. The many thousands of tablets are full of lists: monarchs establishing their royal lineage, merchants making lists of customers and suppliers, alien supermen making lists of human women they took back to Atlantis to mate with. And there's also this famous fragment: "...and pick up a quart of goat's milk on the way home."

Lists became vital to keeping early human civilization together. Now centuries later, everyone makes lists--government tax departments, telemarketers, Mafia hitmen, Santa. Lists permeate our culture, from the bestselling Book of Lists, first published in the 1970s and going strong today, to the endless and fairly irrelevant rollout of "endorsers" by Vancouver's three dozen or so mayoral contenders.

Some lists you want to be on, such as the VIP list for the opening gala of the Vancouver International Film Festival. And no matter how hard you try or embarrass yourself in public with obvious hints, some lists you never seem to get on, such as the VIP list for the opening gala of the Vancouver International Film Festival.

But keeping lists is hard, which is why helping people keep lists has become an industry. And like a lot of industry it's moved to the Internet, which of course, thanks to Google, whose business is to keep some of the biggest lists ever made, was tailor-made for the creation and keeping of lists.

As a monomaniacal lister, I was overjoyed a few months back to discover Remember the Milk, a free web-based tool for making lists that are easy to create and edit and easy on the eyes.

We have plenty of lists at the Courier. Every day, we juggle lists of stories for our writers to file, lists of stories that need to be edited, a list of photos that must be shot, and a list of pages where those stories and photos will go. I have a list of freelancers, a list of words and phrases I try to ban from copy, a list of local public figures to offend (we try to rotate them) and a list of staff days off. My email inbox is essentially one vast list of people to reply to.

So thank God for RTM, as it likes to be called. Each morning, I fire up my personal account page and watch the lists magically unfold. It tells me what I need to do. And because it's on the Internet, I believe everything it says.

Back to my cat: he's highly resourceful. He used the litter-less box once, decided that was dumb, and for several days used the fireplace, which still had winter's ashes, as a toilet. It was a clever move, but also the main reason my apartment reeked of feline urine. But he never would have used the fireplace to pee in if I had not forgotten to remove the ashes. And why didn't I get around to that job?

It wasn't on my list.

Today's bLINKit: Remember the Milk, a great online efficiency tool, can be found here. I use it for both home and work.

Web Poll Nation: Pro-police, anti-everything else

WMD: Latest Courier column, divining vox populi via the weekly web polls. Source is here, copy reproduced below:

'Web Poll Nation' took the pulse of Vancouver in 2007

Poll participants want more cops, fewer mascots, no socks and sandals

Barry Link, Vancouver Courier

Published: Wednesday, December 19, 2007

We stay awake at night wondering who you are. We wait breathlessly for your responses. We live by your word, thankful that you bothered to answer our tiny, fragile little question of the week.

You are the people who answer the Courier's weekly online web polls. We adore you. And this year, in our annual analysis of your answers to our questions, we're giving you a name: with apologies to Stephen Colbert, you are Web Poll Nation. Be proud.

So who was WPN in 2007? Tough. Really tough. In the competition to win the affection of WPN, the Vancouver Police Department was in. The civic strike, the mayor, New Age mysticism and the 2010 Olympics were out. Trees, surprisingly were also out, unless it meant dissing the Games. WPN liked sticking it to the Games.

The citizens of WPN tired of crime this year, with nearly half of them saying the run of gang violence made them feel unsafe. Three quarters report it diminished their idea of Vancouver as Lotusland.

As a result, the VPD received solid support. Slightly more than half of WPN said Tasers should remain in the department's inventory. Sixty-seven per cent supported the VPD proposal that chronic criminals be shipped back to their home provinces. Fifty-six per cent applauded putting more cops on the streets, and nearly 70 per cent backed spending more money to do so.

WPN's cooing at cops, however, had boundaries. Former VPD chief Jamie Graham's idea to put Support Our Troops stickers on police cars earned lukewarm support at 44 per cent. Get the criminals, forget the politics.

Politics seemed to annoy WPN, and its members had absolutely no love this year for Mayor Sam Sullivan. Three quarters didn't believe the mayor when he said he wanted the supervised injection site to remain open. Three quarters urged him to stay out of labour negotiations. Sixty-three per cent remained baffled about why the lengthy civic strike happened, while roughly the same number didn't expect it to last for months. The endless, meaningless strike made WPN grumpy, with three quarters decreeing no job deserves the 318,838 sweet ones city manager Judy Rogers received as her salary.

Like a date from Toronto, WPN was notoriously difficult to impress. Sixty-four per cent shot down the notion that giant robotic versions of NPA parks board commissioners installed in Stanley Park would create new revenue for the park. Sixty-eight per cent said Valentine's Day is the Air Supply of holiday observances. Three quarters said women should not be jealous of men's ability to grow playoff beards. One third didn't bother to celebrate Canada Day.

Fifty-six per cent rejected the notion the Law of Attraction, the theme of the bestselling book and DVD The Secret, would attract a delicious and healthy organic vegan stew into their lives just when they needed it the most. We're concerned about the 44 per cent who said it would. Same goes for the 42 per cent of WPN who harboured a secret desire to become a ninja.

WPN could be savage in 2007. Nearly three quarters called socks and sandals a summer fashion crime. Eighty-four per cent agreed the 8,400 people who showed up at GM Place for the unveiling of the Canucks' new uniform need to get a life. Fifty-eight per cent said their very own child was not a star in the making. Ouch.

And don't get WPN started on the 2010 Olympics. Nearly half of WPN rated the culturally baffling Olympic mascots as "really, really, really" unimportant to their lives. Most of the rest complained they didn't represent Vancouver. And while a hefty 71 per cent of WPN thought too much time and attention was lavished on a bunch of trees in the wake of the storm that flattened huge parts of Stanley Park, more than half thought some of the bajillions earmarked for the Olympics should go to the park's restoration. Note to VANOC: you got beat out by a grove of fallen firs.

Finally, nature was a minefield for WPN's swaying emotions. Three quarters would pay more for cage-free eggs and rejected the proposal that domesticated apes were the answer to our labour shortage. Yet only 55 per cent felt guilty for accelerating climate change through their carbon-spewing lifestyle. Maybe WPN has already slashed the carbon output and is far ahead of the curve.

In closing, we note WPN felt reasonably happy and considered itself lucky this year, with 70 per cent of the citizenry finding a reason to be thankful every day.

We're thankful, too. See you for more questions in January at www.vancourier.com.

Women were there

WMD: Tod Maffin, the broadcaster and social media  entrepreneur who hosted the Leo Laporte/Amber MacArthur event at Future Shop, wrote to remind me that women were indeed in attendance. Duly noted, and my piece should have reflected that. Which leads to ...

Today's bLINKit: One woman who was there (and there weren't many), was Miss604, whose very good blog is found here. Maffin's site can be found here.

The return of Mr. Squid

Today's bLINKit: And a long overdue nod to Mr. Squid, better known as the most famous astrophysicist ever to originate from *Lennard Island, who's got a blog going on again. And a sharp looking blog it is: Blogger has really upped its roster of design templates, and Squid has kept it basic but classy.

In his most recent post, Squid opines on an NHL open air game in Buffalo (vs.the visiting Penguins) slated for New Year's Day 2008, and what a great idea it is. He also takes a shot at TO, or at least the Star, which considers an open air game a dumb idea. I'm with Squid. I remember the Edmonton open air game from 2003 on TV, and it was fine watching.

 

* spelling corrected since initial post

"The best place on what?"

WMD: When is a licence plate a propaganda tool? When it's found in B.C., or so I say in my latest column found here.

Thanks again to continuing uncertainty about the longevity of the link, the column is reproduced below:

***

(Published in the Vancouver Courier Wednesday, September 12, 2007)

In B.C., licence plates identify registered motor vehicles. They're also propaganda.
The latest reminder of this use of personal vehicle space is the recent Olympic specialty plate, available for sale from ICBC since the spring as an alternative to the standard issue plate. Instead of the familiar "Beautiful British Columbia" slogan worn by plates in this province for more than four decades, the 2010 plates feature an image of Mount Garibaldi, the Games logo and the catchphrase "The best place on earth." It's the same catchphrase the B.C. Liberal government used to rebrand B.C. for both domestic and tourist consumption. You may remember the commercials of ordinary but overjoyed British Columbians standing by pristine mountain meadows and coastal fjords proclaiming how happy they are to exist in God's favoured space. Presumably, none of them works in the forest industry.

I hated that phrase when it first appeared on my TV, and I dislike it no less now that it's appearing on our roads. It's a needless boast, and to anyone who's travelled the world even slightly, untrue. Our landscape--pine beetle infestation, sewage runoff and expanding acres of suburban blacktop notwithstanding--is beautiful. And my how we're rich. But in our current fevered monied state, we forget how vulnerable the good times are to forces beyond our control. All we need is a drop in global commodity prices, trouble in Asian markets, or more mortgage and stock trouble in the U.S., and the best place on earth will look like the best place to leave in search of work. When the gas tank runs low, that plate will become a cruel joke.

But according to Christopher Garrish, who runs the fascinating website BCPL8S.ca, using licence plates as political marketing is nothing new. Garrish, a trained historian who lives in Penticton in the Okanagan Valley and works as a town planner for the regional district, started the website three years ago to mark the 100th anniversary of the first registered motor vehicle in B.C. Since then, he's compiled a geekily exhaustive list, complete with photos, of the hundreds of varieties of plates that have been used through the decades. His enthusiasm for the subject is infectious and, for outraged columnists, moderating. He notes that the "Beautiful" slogan was introduced in 1964 by the W.A.C. Bennett government as a marketing tool to draw tourists to B.C. Even then, Garrish reminded me, the uptight complained the slogan was too frothy.

The government of Wacky's son Bill ramped up the use of plates for political ends when it engineered the placement of a wavy version of the B.C. flag between the registration numbers. It happened to be the same flag symbol used by the then-governing Social Credit party. Like any longstanding, arrogant regime, Bennett and his cronies saw no difference between the controlling party and the government machinery they ran. Stylistically dated today, the flag remains on our plates as a reminder of past hubris. Where are the Socreds now?

As it turns out, they morphed into the Liberals, which is why we're getting another new licence plate catchphrase with political overtones. Garrish told me in an email that he's "not too fussed" by the new plates. He thinks the "Beautiful" slogan is overdue for retirement, and he'd love to see the aging Socred-era flag gone. He also points out that the Olympic specialty plates have proved popular. As of August, ICBC reported selling 45,000 Olympic plates to drivers willing to pay $35 for the privilege of participating in a government-orchestrated PR campaign.

Garrish says the slogan could be worse. The Bill Bennett government considered replacing the "Beautiful" slogan with "Supernatural," which was the tuneless Socred marketing slogan of the day. Garrish has also lived in Australia, where he says the state governments have a habit of hamfisted slogans for plates. Queensland actually called itself the "Smart State" on its plates, and the Australian Capital Territory, the seat of the federal government, quickly killed its introduction of "Canberra: Feel the Power," when it realized Canberrans were afraid their car would be keyed if they crossed state lines. Think of how Albertans would react to Ontario plates bearing "Canada's Centre."

Garrish advises us to get used to the new "Best place" phrase. It's already on consular plates, and he believes all plates issued in B.C. will move to the new slogan as an Olympic tie-in. In a province where shameless propaganda is as regular as the rain, I wouldn't bet against him.

Today's bLINKit: You can find Garrish's site here.

Europa, Europa: SL demographics

SL Neighbourhood Update: According to demographic data for June (stupidly, I've lost the source of this information, but I found it in a past post at the excellent New World Notes), one quarter of the active avatars in SL are American. American residents also participate in SL beyond their numbers, racking up nearly 35 per cent of the total hours users spent in the world. But if anyone dominates SL, it's Europeans, who make up, by a rough count, almost half of the active residents. I've noted this before, in the increasing presence of European languages on the chat logs and Eurocentric buildings and institutions appearing on the landscape. Just across from me, an Italian avie is building what looks like an art house/gallery in the sky. It's massive, with several floors and ten times the floor space of my flying loft. And although I can see the building from my living room, I have to see anyone actually in it. The Euros are on when the North Americanos slumber.

Chief among the Europeans are Germans followed by the French and Brits. My hunch about Dutch going into SL in a big way was correct. Despite Holland having one-sixth the population of Canada, they rank one level above Canadian residents in both number of active avatars and number of hours spent in the world.

Asians are generally down the list, but NWN notes that Japan has come on strong lately, with a look and in-world culture uniquely their own.

Other updates: according to NWN, Linden Labs has declared gambling illegal in SL. That's huge.

And around my hood: the neopagan I sold my initial land to awhile back is building a castle. There's that art house project across the way. And some very ordinary, and refreshingly so, new houses have popped up. But whenever I log on, there's still seldom anyone around. It's not very neighbourly.

The pic: the flag of a united Europe flies over my hood.

Today's bLINKit: Neocons on a cruise, and how they go fascist when lounging at sea.

Happy 140 plus one

WMD: I'm officially 14 minutes late in getting around to posting about my own country's birthday. But don't worry: the card is in the mail.

Today's bLINKit: One of my favourite so essentially Canadian hobbies is to read what non-Canadians say or write about us. We're probably one of the few nations around that actually does care what people think about us ... So I was delighted to come across the Conservapedia entry for Canada. Conservapedia, calling itself the "trustworthy encyclopedia," is a right wing American response to Wikipedia, which apparently as a creation of vox populi is considered too vox populi (and therefore too "liberal." But it seems to operate on essentially the same organizational principles as Wikipedia in terms of the back and forth discussion and editing between various contributors and editors of various entries. The entry for Canada is fairly even handed. There are some errors (municipal government is not mentioned in the BNA Act, which I think would now be the Constitution), the discussion about health care exaggerates the problems faced by the system, and the obsession with the flag debate is odd (it was changed to appease socialists, among others?). But generally it's solid. And after reading the edit section, I feel for the sole Canadian who's valiantly trying to protect a fair and balanced rendering of his nation to what seems like a predominantly U.S. audience. Writes the contributor known as TrueGrit:

This page is not for comparing Canada to the United States. This is a page for reporting facts about the country. If I was so inclined, I could come up with some really nice things to say about Canada that make us look much better than the United States- but I don't. It's people that come in here and try to drag down my country that make their country look bad. Lose the attitude of superiority. This is not "An American Site". This is a wiki which is open to users around the world. If this site is to gain credibility, then it has to be balanced.

I'm with TrueGrit on that, so on this Canada Day plus 1, my hat's tipped to him/her with appreciation. (And a small note: while it might not be an "American site," its logo is essentially made up of the Stars and Stripes.)

201 views/Find your ancestors

WMD: That's the latest count of people (or computers) who have watched the YouTube video I posted Sunday. It's nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands who are watching cats pee in the toilet or play the piano, but it's a larger audience than any other video creation I've produced. It's also nearly as much as the total domestic audience for the average Canadian film. I'm honoured to be in such company.

Today's bLINKit: A genealogy project online.

Recommended listen: Open Source's The New Zoology, about the latest studies into animal emotion and consciousness. To sum up: they have more of both than most of us thought.