thepaul’s blog

I suppose each decade can be defined by the important questions:

The Seventies- " Who Shot J.R."
The Eighties -"Where's the Beef"
The Nineties- "Boxers or Briefs"

Now we are in the first decade of the 21st Century and it appears the question is

"Twitter" or "Plurk" and I suppose or "Jaiku".  To say nothing of "Pownce".  

I already mentioned the phenomenon of the micro blog, the 140 character blog that is becoming a fixture in anyone's Internet experience.

I realize I may be putting a lot of currency on a system that may only be a month or two old, by that I mean Plurk but I think that it may be the next step in the evolution of the mico blog. 

 I say this because:  like Twitter it too is going through it's growing pains.  When Twitter commenced some of the commentators quickly criticized it for the banal postings.  Things such as " I got up this morning and had toast".  Or, " watched TV", were pointed to as proof that Twitter was inane and gave people the right to post the minutia of their lives.  One of the jokes on Crankygeeks  has to do with Sebastian Rupley.  He was more or less shamed to set up the account and some of his early postings were: "Sitting in my new beanbag chair watching TV".  Of course later he accused of John C. Dvorak of posting them.

However, Twitter seems to have gronw up.  Now a great number of posts have to do with links and more information.  It is becoming another way to blog, albeit in 140 characters.  Which of course makes it easy to post thorugh the cellphone.  Certainly it's popularity has grown so there is a bushel of API, apps and mashups.  It was discovered by SXSW and grown up there too.  It has inspired a number of cartoons. 

With Twitter you can follow the Mars Phoenix Lander.    So it is becoming serious.  A number of newsfeeds twitter including CNN. 

It's big problem is its success.  Now people are complaining about the number of times its servers are down.  But I think while people complain or get sarcastic when they experience only a minimum of problems over the day, it is still a positive part of the Internet.

Now comes Plurk.  I'm not considering jaiku because I think is rather stilted in its growth, although according to Leo Laporte, the creators are planning a major roll out and getting it embedded with Nokia.  Listen to the latest TWIT for this information.

Now what about Plurk?

Well, it is based upon the 140 character protocol of the micro blog but it adds the ability to share videos, from YouTube and photographs that you share with others.  You can share from Flickr.  Both medias are shared with ease.

As I have mentioned, Plurk is irreverent, it is simply fun.  At first it is odd looking in that it misses the neatness of Twitter.  The timeline seems to reveal the regular result of multiple conversations taking on at the same time.  As well, each post can become a conversation.  Other plurkers can add their comments and so a nice string can take place.

It is developing its own unique style.  The main features seem to be a concern with karma, dancing bananas and coffee.  The latter seems to be the beverage and legal stimulant of a lot of plurkers.  There is also a dictionary.  Plurk is being added to a number of words, and it is all brought about by users.

We plurkers are very involved with each other and our own karma.   If it goes up there is dancing bananas, if it goes down there weeping and gnashing of teeth.   There was a news release today that Plurk is going to change calculation of karma.   I don't know if we know how karma works now, and they are going to change it?

Still, Plurk is flirty and fun.  It's people getting together and having a good time.  It's becoming a minion of HotFish, which is a great honour.

I will continue to use Twitter and I will use Plurk.  Follow me with both.  If you don't have an invite, send me a message and I'll send you one.  It will mean adding friends and my karma will go up.  

Enjoy.

Recently, this incident happened in Manitoba.  It appears child welfare seized a couple of children from a family.  The crime of the famly? Physical abuse? Mental, Sexual, Emotional abuse? 

No. 

Here is the reason:

 "A seven-year-old girl and a boy, 2, were recently taken by child welfare workers from a home in south Winnipeg after the girl showed up at school with "hate-related drawings on her body," police Const. Blair Good said Monday. Good would not confirm a media report that quoted unnamed sources as saying the girl was sporting a swastika and a white supremacy slogan. "

Obviously it was something.  The question, did she put them on herself, or did her folks?

Are the parents unfit because of their political philosophy?

Who decides what is "right" thinking?

This the same time the BC Human Rights Tribunal is hearing a complaint from the Canadian Islamic Congress about an article in Maclean's Magazine from Mark Steryn. He warned that the increased birth rates among Muslims will guarantee Europe and North America will become Muslim rather then Christian continents.

I'm not going to argue the points because it's whatever.  However the problem is the fact that free speech is being narrowed.  You can't say anything for fear of displeasing any group and then facing the problems of a kangaroo trial before a Human Right Tribunal, which is always an oxymoron, they neither protect humans or rights.

The National Post has this interesting article.

But let's go back, are these parents wrong for being racist, yes.  Should they teach their children their racists philosophy, I would rather they did not.  But, the problem is, who should decide what is right thinking.

Are the parents bad parents?  Do they put their children in danger?  Nothing, sure there's a comment on the report of 'drugs', but come on, that's short hand for 'we don't have any reason to bust them, so we'll make up this thing about drug abuse and alcohol'.  If that is true, then the kids should be taken, because children should not be exposed to drug and alcohol abuse at a young age, or any age.

But thinking?  That is the thin edge of the wedge.

There was a case a number of years ago when children were seized from a family who practiced Biblical Discipline.  So they had 'wrong' thinking.

Racism is wrong, but so is the suppression of freedom of expression.  You see that's what happen when you allow people to think, say and express themselves, they do just that.  They come up with some weird thoughts too.  They might disagree with others, but does that make their thoughts targets for banning?

Just a thought.

Probably we've done it all, gone from emailing, to designing websites to blogging.  The wonder that is self-expression is the joy of the Internet.

Now, we microblog.  We take our thoughts and reduce them to 140 words.  The main one is Twitter.  It allowed people to say their words in short pithy statements, or to post links to interesting articles, photographs or whatever managed to strike the fancy of the person twittering.  It led to such sites as Jaiku and Pownce.  Each had strong points especially the latter which allows for the posting of media and sharing that with all one's friends.  But you know that.

Still the top site is still Twitter.  It is famous and is growing.  It growth has been fueled by such things as word of mouth, no doubt, posting on the Internet, awards from SXSW.  In 2007 it exploded.  It continued and was probably pushed even more when Leo Laporte mentioned it over the last few episodes of TWIT.   Now all members of TWIT have accounts.   By the way I'm paulthe on Twitter.

Now, another new site is out there to tempt us and it's Plurk.

Plurk2

In the endeavour to find an alternative source of energy or at least something to take a little of the place of Oil, one suggestion is biofuels.

In and of itself, this sounds interesting, it is renewable, it can be local and it can happen now.  Plus it becomes an additive and so you use less petroleum and therefore less carbon is pumped into the atmosphere.  Almost sounds like a winner.

There is just one problem and it is articulated in this article.  It appears the mad rush towards biofuels is responsible for pushing up the price of food and therefore bringing starvation and all sorts of suffering upon the globe's poor.

So a solution to our environmental crisis is feeding another crisis and that is the spectre of starvation.  Grain that could be used for food is being removed and becoming fuel.    The problem with all this is it takes a lot to bring it about.  I recall reading an article that said to produce all the biofuel needed for the US for one year, would take the entire corn crop.  Every single solitary kernel of corn would go towards the production of fuel.  That means, no corn for animals or for people.  So forget your Corn Flakes, they ain't part of the diet any more. One person suggested it takes 450 lbs of corn to make one gallon of ethanol. 

That's just the start of the problem, Global Research put online an article entitled:  Biofuels: The Five Myths of Agro-fuels Transition.  The writer states a myth is being given to the Media of the advantages of biofuel and how it will change the environment for the better.  However, as always, there are consequences which are not being reported.  The five myths  are:
 

Oilprice1947

Certainly if you look at the chart above there is correlation between problems in the Middle East and the cost of Crude.  Consider another idea, for the most part, the price of Crude is the result of manipulation by the Oil Companies themselves.  I have not heard about OPEC doing any massive cutback of the amount they are pumping out of the ground.

Bell Throttles its Internet Competitors

So yesterday I made comment on Roger's Internet plan to charge overage and to 'encourage' people to go to higher bandwidth and costs.  As well, Rogers has been putting limits on such things as torrents.  This came to light when peole tried to download the material CBC has posted though BitTorrent.

Now it's time to turn the attention to Bell Canada, another one of Canada's highly despised telecommunication companies.  It seems that the CRTC has always had Bell make sure other Internet Providers could use Bell's lines to establish their business.  It only makes sense otherwise Bell would have a total monopoly on DSL service in the area. These rates were regulated and were probably one of the few times the CRTC decided to support the consumer rather then it's usual activity of making Canada safe for monopolies

Now this,Bell is going to throttle everything back.  They want to cut bandwidth to everyone.

This is called "customer service" in the eyes of Bell.  Make sure everyone gets screwed, equally.  If you are the Independent ISP, your customers will see things go slow.  If you are with Bell Sympatico, you will see things go slow. It's called being fair.  Although Bell claims it won't affect the independents, others disagree.

Michael Geist, the author of the Star article gives some warnings about this strategy.  He states: "

The third competition concern brings a cultural dimension to the issue. The major ISPs claim that throttling is needed to ensure better quality of service to all customers, yet it also has a significant impact on the video marketplace. Cable and satellite companies have begun to sell new video on demand services to consumers, which compete directly with video distributed over the Internet. "

The end has to be, the consumer will get it in the neck again.

With Bell under new ownership, expect a huge increase in costs.

To that end, the best way to express your displeasure is to find a teacher in Ontario and kick them in the shins.  

Canadian union decries ISP bandwidth issues

It appears that some Canadian ISP's are messing around with the bandwidth. It seems they don't like the idea of people using bittorrent to download legitimate material.

The whole issue deals with the recent CBC decision to post some programs to BitTorrent and allow anybody to download and I suppose re-distribute.  When that happened, some of the larger ISP's decided to slow things down.

I don't know why we are surprised, companies such as Rogers has been doing this for the past few years, they have decided "Net Neutrality" is a concept they are not interested in.

Now, they want to get more money from us.  I received a very nice letter regarding my internet usage.  There was a graph that demonstrates I managed to keep under the 60 GIG usage allowance two out of the three months.  Now they want to sell me even nicer services.

For an extra ten dollars a month, I get 10Mbs of download speed, plus 95BG of usage allowance.

This may be a good thing, because they are going to charge anyone who goes over the usage up to $5.00 per GB.  With my plan it will be $2.00 for the over use. 

What one common food item do you refuse to eat? 

Pickles-01

This is the one food I will not eat. 

I could add Peppers, but I will eat peppers as long as its mixed in with other foods, such as on pizza, or in a stir-fry.  But this is the one thing I cannot eat.

I don't know why, but I've never developed a taste for pickles.  I have tried, but still to no avail.

As for Broccoli, I love it, Brussel Sprouts, they are okay.

Pickles- yuck