I'm Not Faking it , Dad !

"I'm Not Faking it , Dad"

"Brad. You realize these tests are going to cost us thousands of dollars ,right ? And Insurance only covers part of that ?"

"I'm Not Faking it , Dad, I'm not faking it !"

- Greys Anatomy, Season 6, Episode 13

It's a standard plot line. Greys Anatomy , House, even back to old medical drama series in the seventies. No medical insurance. Can't afford anything. Look at all the trouble we have.

Sometimes I think the medical establishment in the USA bribes the producers of these shows to put that plot line in on a regular basis.

I didn't used to think that , you know. Until I worked for a company that was outsourcing AT&T calls, and while tests were running ,or while the internet was slow looking something up , we would chat, and I would ask how much are they paying for health insurance ?

These people pay more for health insurance than I pay for rent.

How can they afford this ?

And I look at my favorite medical shows, with the weird plot line about health insurance that means nothing to me because I live in Canada , and we basically have unlimited health insurance that covers everything non-trivial forever and never runs out, and I wonder.

These shows are a warning sign arnt' they ? Pay the medical Insurance Companies their pound of flesh or you will deeply regret it.

America sucks.

Its the land of the young ,because they let all the sick old guys die off.

The Evil of High Speed

Now what could possibly be evil about high speed internet ,

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/27/stephen-harper-dismisses-oppositions-sweeping-allegations-of-tory-wrongdoing-in-robocall-scandal/

, I foolishly ask , as I hit a web page with four static large static pictures vaguly related to the news article it's hawking , and one high quality video advertisement that starts playing before the rest of the page is even loading. The actual news article consisted of some text and two medium quality pictures.

Yep. Full video. On most every page these days. And not for the article you're reading , but for an advertisment to sell you stuff.

Why ? because on average people have pretty high internet , so lets use up all that speed by spamming them with advertising . Why not. And those that don't have speed, well , the advertisers are pretty happy to kick you off the internet and demand you get a connection that can handle all their advertising. You're absolutely no use to them at all if you can't see their ads.

Just who's internet is this anyways , I foolishly ask.

Mine ! Say all the advertisers. Get a real connection or get lost !

So , there's a new connection coming out in the united states, really high speed compared to the current connections. You think that will do ?

For a little while. Until we make bigger and bigger advertisements.

Are you feeling robbed yet ? I am.

I need a browser add on that refuses to play video's until I say so. Thats what I need.

EDIT I'm on firebox. got an addon called Flashblock , that blocks all flash animations (such as those ads that play whole movies ) until you click on them, thus you can see the ads anyways if you really want (or the youtube videos , without them annoyingly starting on their own ) Suddenly I browse the internet so much faster.

Just how much flash is on these pages ? My browser was slow as a cow before this ???

Googlighting

This is just hysterically funny.

Microsoft made this as a virial advertisement , and it's a fascinating glimpse at the future.

Note the part where the prospective employee (named Google) admits his software will change at will while the users are using it. This is panned as a bad thing , bad google bad ! But no mention is made that microsoft products routinely do this (remember those annoying nightly updates , and once a year or two years they'll actually break every computer in your office all at the same time ? And then the IT people go insane for a while ? )

It's worth watching just to see the dirty tricks and the mud it slings at google.

PS: Why is anyone using online word processors and spread sheets when Open Office will give you the stuff for free ? No internet connection required ?

Fraudulent election calls traced to Edmonton firm with Tory links

Transcript of a bogus call sent to a voter in Guelph on federal election day, May 2, 2011.

“This is an automated message from Elections Canada. Due to a projected increase in voter turnout, your poll location has been changed. Your new voting location is at the Old Quebec Street Mall, at 55 Wyndham Street North. Once again, your new poll location is at the Old Quebec Street Mall, at 55 Wyndham Street North. If you have any questions, please call our hotline at 1-800-443-4456. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

This wins my thumbs up for creativity. They got themselves a copy of Liberal supporters and then directed them to the wrong address so they couldn't vote. Social Engineering goes main stream , to be sure. What a great way to leverage the spammer ability to phone 100 000 people in a day.

The problem is it didn't work , the Conservatives still lost in that riding. Why ?

Who the heck even picks up the phone with an unknown caller these days ? Every spammer in the world is trying to call you all day and all night. Do you know how many times my wife's phone rings during a single day and it's that triple ring that tells me it's long distance (we don't know anyone out of the city so we automatically know a triple ring is a spam call)

Who the heck even has voice mail these days ? I turned it off on my phone because the spammer machines were happy to leave long , long messages (long enough to be cut off by the time limit) on my phone that I had to listen to before I could delete them , and my friends never bothered they knew I'd see their number on call display. Bye bye voice mail.

I don't even answer my cell phone anymore if it's an unknown caller, the spammers have been hitting that too. I aint paying 25 cents a minute to listen to an automated recording try and sell me something.

Welcome to the age of the white list. If you're not in my contacts list , I ain't picking up.

Spymaster Google

Google's Safari Tracking Debacle: Reality Check

Google reportedly breached the privacy of millions of Apple Safari users by fooling the web browser into accepting tracking cookies it normally wouldn't take. Google, however, says this is an unhappy accident and that Google never intended to track its users in this manner.

Unhappy Accident. Interesting excuse.

It's a classic case of he said, she said. Here's what's going on.

Apple's Safari is more aggressive by default than many browsers about blocking cookies that do not originate from the site you're visiting, such as cookies served by online advertising firms. These are referred to as third-party cookies and are used by most online advertising companies and common on major websites. Google got around Safari's privacy restrictions by exploiting a loophole that allowed the search giant to install a temporary cookie if a user clicked a +1 button embedded in online advertising, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

All you need to know is that a cookie is a piece of information they're storing on your computer for the purposes of them making a buck by showing you ads. And that they're doing it even though you've explicitly said "don't do that" (by way of setting your browser not to accept such cookies)

The trick, according to the Journal's report, involves sticking a hidden web form inside an online ad with a +1 button, similar to Facebook "likes," on it. If the user clicks on the +1 button, the web form tells Safari that the user filled out the phony form when in fact she or he had not, which allowed Google to install the cookie.

So what you're saying is that , by unhappy accident, you paid a team of programmers to circumvent the security restrictions of the safari browser so you could make money. That's , um , quite the accident. How does one "accidentally" order some engineers to hack a browser anyways ?

When a user appears to have explicitly interacted with content on a Website, Safari allows the site to install temporary cookies that are supposed to expire after 12 to 24 hours. As a result of this workaround, Google could then catalog a user's browsing habits for its DoubleClick advertising business,

And thus accidently get paid for this unhappy accident.

For its part, Google says it wasn't tracking people on purpose and only wanted to ascertain when a user was logged into a Google account. "We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled," says Rachel Whetstone, Google's senior vice president of communications and public policy, in a statement to PCWorld. If you were logged in, Google could then deliver personalized advertising and perform other functions, such as sending +1's back to a user's Google+ social networking profile.

Ah yes. Personalized Advertising. That's the part where you do a google search on chocolate chip cookies, and suddenly every ad you see for the next week is trying to sell you cookies. Not just google sites, but half the sites on the internet , because DoubleClick is a very popular advetising firm, and plants ads everywhere.

Google also emphasizes that its advertising cookies do not collect any personal information.

No , technically cookies are a piece of information. Pieces of Information do not collect information of any kind on you. The google servers that use those cookies, however , they blatantly do. I love the wording in that non-denial of a denial.

Google has also deleted language from one of its privacy policy pages that appeared to contradict its tracking practices as detailed by the Journal. Google allows you to install a browser cookie that tells the search giant not to store your browsing habits for online advertising purposes.

..

..

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The text on the page used to read: "While we don't have a Safari version of the Google advertising cookie opt-out plugin, Safari is set to block all third-party cookies. If you have not changed those settings, this option effectively accomplishes the same thing as setting the opt-out cookie." Google has since removed that language from its site, but PCWorld was able to find the language in a cached version of the page dated February 14.

And in other, unrelated Unhappy Accidents , all of the statements google made in it's privacy policy promising not to track you and spam you to death with unwanted advertising mysteriously were erased. How Odd.

Installing third-party tracking cookies on your browser is common practice for online advertising companies. Your browsing information is then mined so the sites serve up targeted advertising that, in theory, you are more likely to click on.

It does sound a little goofy and tin hat like to call this sort of thing mind control , doesn't it ? But it is what they are aiming for , even if they're not there yet. Buy my product , not his. Not because my product is better, but because my advertising is better.

Thats not how the world is supposed to work.

The New Business Model

Montreal telemarketing outfit accused of fraud still calls

"When the phone rings I actually get nervous. Because I don't like to get yelled at," said Unruh.

Unruh said ETS sent her dramatically overpriced cash register paper that she never ordered.

She said the company refused to take the product back, and has been harassing her for a year and a half to pay for it, sometimes calling five or six times a day.

"Very rude and very insistent that I get it together and pay my bill," said Unruh.

Welcome to the new century.

Today we will discuss the new business model made popular in this age of the internet due to the ability to buy phone numbers in bulk online.

It's basically phoning people up and yelling at them. Several times a day.

Phone you up and demand you pay for something you didn't order. Something you didn't receive. Maybe you declared bankruptcy and they're still harrassing you about stuff that was actually covered by the bankruptcy , and they don't care.

Bell Canada sent me a dsl modem. They'd phoned me up and asked if I wanted the free 90 day trial, I said no , and the modem arrived anyways. I refused to accept the modem (it had been the second time around and the first time cost a number of hours work and a lot of running around to return it) . It was still two hours on the phone cancelling it.

Question : Do you have two hours to spend cancelling something you didn't order ? What happens if this practice becomes wide spread ? Do you have four or eight hours or more , a day , to spend on hold with various cancellation departments , cancelling stuff you never asked for. You understand cancellation departments don't want you to cancel. Making you wait an hour on hold is only the beginning of the dirty tricks they will play on you.

Did I mention Bell Canada already had my credit card information when they sent me the modem ? Dell gave it to them when I bought a computer off of them. So I had no choice but to waste two hours on hold with their cancellation department, or they would have signed me up with a three year contract for a service I had no use for and no desire for , and actually said no to.

Welcome to the new century.

Cloud Computing Made Simple

Article = none, personal opinion.

What is Cloud Computing ?

Cloud Computing is the act of putting 10 gigabytes of data on the internet, usually in some other country such as the United States , where it takes forever and a day to access , meanwhile your brand new hundred dollar Terabyte (1000 gigabytes) back up drive sits on the shelf unused.

Who Needs Cloud Computing ?

Cloud Computing is needed by morons without a high school education who don't have the wit to buy a 16 port router and plug all their computers into it. (Windows and Mac machines will self configure themselves at that point, no programming required). They are afraid of computers , terrified even , and despite running a business worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars can't be bothered to spring for a couple of cheap 100$ computers and try it out for themselves.

What are the Challenges of Cloud Computing ?

Since the only one to use Cloud Computing are the ones afraid of computers, the biggest challenge is that they probably didn't bother to hire some guy with even minimal technical skills. Which means every con man and snake oil salesman out there is going to take them for a ride, and they're going to blow thousands and thousands of dollars on worthless trinkets that do absolutely nothing for them. Then they're going to stand there and say "Why the **** did I buy all this junk in the first place ? " and toss it all in the trash , and vow never to touch a computer again.

Then they'll go bankrupt because the guy next door actually hired some kid out of high school who's a computer nerd, not even a real technician , and therefore has a serious advantage over him.

Who should use Cloud Computing ?

Pretty much no one. Take a computer course or two at your local high school , or just hire a high school graduate who has a home computer and likes to talk about it a lot. (Listen for the words "online games, Em Em Oh , Wow , star wars") .

I've heard horror stories about people losing all their data

Yes. That's why you hire a reliable employee , not one who's late all the time or one you catch playing computer games on the company machine. It's your equipment , not theirs, and unless you're runing a gameing shop thats a firable offense and you should be quick to fire them over it.

What about my employees being on face book all the time ?

There's not much you can do about them being on the internet on their own cell phones. But your business network shouldn't have any internet so they shouldn't even be able to have internet access.

What about my email ?

Get a blackberry or other smart phone for that. Your office network shouldn't be connected to the internet unless you have very technical people on staff. Virus's , trojens, people surfing facebook all day , it's quite the nightmare. At best you should have a single computer for your own use in your office hooked up to the internet ,and it shouldn't be hooked up to the network at all. if you need access to your internal network , have a second computer and use a thumb drive or data stick to move data back and forth.

What if I need internet access for my business ?

Then you need a computer tech on staff, at least part time. Because you've openned the door to being hacked , to virii , and to your staff chatting with their friends all day instead of doing their work , and that needs to be tightly controlled. And it's a full time job. Be certain to examine the option of just having one or two computers isolated from the rest of the network for that purpose before you open up the whole network to the world wide web and the dangers that it entails.

Conclusion

Cloud computing is an attempt to put all the problems and technical support "in the cloud" or on the internet , so that you don't have any in house technical costs. Unfortunately , they aint giving you a free ride, they want their money too. And you are now placed in the position of a con man trying to take you for a ride, and you having no one on staff to tell you "Hey man , he's ripping you off you know". Sorry, but you gotta suck it up. You need one person on staff who knows accounting , so your book keeper doesn't rob you blind, one person who knows computers so your computer company doesn't rob you blind, etc etc. Your best hope is to get people with multiple skills (book keeper and reasonably computer savvy) not going without.

OMG Housing Prices are still dropping the government has to do something !

Mortgage Plan Gives Homeowners Bulk of the Benefits

And now for something completely slanted.

And you thought communism was bad.

After months of painstaking talks, government authorities and five of the nation’s biggest banks have agreed to a $26 billion settlement that could provide relief to nearly two million current and former American homeowners harmed by the bursting of the housing bubble, state and federal officials said in Washington on Thursday.

Ok. Nice and neutril. Very diplomatic. Doesn't say anything about the famous dishonest tactics of salesmen selling homes to people they know can't afford it and knowing the government will pick up the bill.

It is part of a broad national settlement aimed at halting the housing market’s downward slide and holding the banks accountable for foreclosure abuses.

Housing markets downward slide. and the banks own most of those houses that were foreclosed on. I can just see the american bankers "OMG the prices are still dropping we're gonna be taken to the cleaners you have to do something !!!!"

Umm... yeah. Ok. You already sold those houses, you already got paid for them from the government in this Freddy Mac Fannie Mae business when they underwrote the mortgage. And now you're going for the extra of now getting paid twice for those houses.

Capitalism at it's finest. Switch a few words around , a quick re-write here and there, and it all sounds like the banks and even the public are being bailed out of some kind of natural disaster. Instead of the real situation of the banks being handed even more money on the american tax payers dime.

UPDATE : Here in Ottawa , an hour or so after I wrote this blog entry , I got onto the bus for an appointment. And there in the newspaper the pretty girl next to me was reading was this big huge advertisement , a call to investors to invest in California Mortgages ...

Yeah , invest in a house in another country that was abandoned several years ago. If anyone's actually living in it , it's squatters. And they probably trashed the place. How much does it cost to personally inspect a house in a forien country that gives people a serious hassel if they try and cross the border these days ? Gonna rely on pics only and the word of a real estate agent that only gets paid if they make a sale ?

Can I sell you this lovely bridge , here in Brooklyn ?

Statisticians eager for new Canadian census data

Statisticians eager for new Canadian census data

For the United Church of Canada, the census data has been the backbone of a massive project to revive and grow its congregations.

From the 2006 census, church executives knew that 3 million Canadians identified themselves as affiliated with the United Church. But they could only track about 500,000 of them showing up on any given Sunday.

A church is using this data go increase it's congregation. I gotta ask. Is this a good thing or a bad ? Is it an abuse of the statistics ? Isn't there some kind of law about church and state being seperate ?

Businesses often rely on census-related data to figure out where to expand, and even what kinds of goods and services to carry. That's because the census has key information about population diversity and immigration, said Doug Norris, a former senior census official with Statistics Canada who is now the chief demographer for Environics Analytics.

And heres the real problem I have with the whole census thing. We get enough junk mail and advertising in our mail box , in our email , flyers on our door , if it was anyone else we'd be suing them for harrasment. These people are openly hiring psychologists and boasting loudly that they are searching for when we are weakest so they can trick us into buying their products.

Why are we being forced to help them ? Why do they even have access to this data ? Why are we helping those who treat us like chattel and seek only to lead us to the slaughter house so they can make a fast buck ?

This government data has no business being shared with anyone outside the government. No churches, no businesses, no private organizations that claim they're here to help but really will act as a back door to sell everything for a fast buck to support their "cause" .

Transplant jaw made by 3D printer claimed as first

Article

This artical details how they made a titanium jaw custom for a particular patient with a three dimensional printer.

Which is interesting, because once you start finding real uses for a technology , like 3D printing , it tends to snowball until it falls below the 1000$ mark and half the population has one in their home.

Which raises copy right debates.

Which is what I'm worried about.

I really have no intention of making a 3D copy of the Mona Lisa and hanging it on my wall. But if I get a 3d printer that can , say , make cheap clothing ,and I design my own cloths just for me to wear , I don't want the copy right police breathing down my neck.

I mean lets face it. When I buy a baseball cap , I really don't want it to have some company logo on it in the first place. I'd prefer a blank one. Guess what ? There are no blank ones. Anywhere. I've checked. If I can print off a blank baseball cap , I don't want copyright problems.

Ditto shoes, and oh that dining room table broke I need a replacement , and so on and so forth.

I can see making a big sticker of the flintstones and slapping it on the side of my computer might be a copyright violation ,and I have no problem with that, but I can also see that certain US companies are there to sink the competition, and if they can sink 3d printers entirely and force you to buy their junk , they will.

I'm saying we need to be careful here. And we definately need to watch out for copyrighters who want to copyright everything.

Or they'll make it illegal to use such things in the first place. And thats not in our benifit. Only theirs.