Published in 1637, The Art of Worldly Wisdom is a collection of 300 aphorisms about life, behaviour, politics, morality, faith, philosophy and society. One comment, on Amazon.ca called it, somewhat unfairly to Machiavelli, “Machiavelli with a soul.” I have been … Continue reading →
Continue readingTag: internet
Altavistagoogle: Modern Seinfeld
Ricky Gervais, Jerry Seinfeld and an Austin Healey in an unothorised screen capture of the Death Machine episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. While writing this post I got seriously distracted by Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (hat tip NY Times) and tracking down “The League” (found it on iTunes) as per a comment
Continue readingCanadian Progressive: How the ITU threatens Internet freedom and access (VIDEO)
Last week’s shutdown of Internet access in Syria has shifted the focus to the ongoing discussions of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Concerns abound that the discussions could lead to greater surveillance powers for governments, and crippling limitations on Internet-based democratic activity. RELATED: Google Exposes Harper Government’s Growing Internet Censorship
Continue readingdrive-by planet: Assange book ‘Cypherpunks’ warns of threats to internet freedom
Julian Assange’ new book Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet is now available in paperback and e-book.
The term “cypherpunks” refers to activists who make use of coded writing or cryptography in an effort to bring about progressive …
Continue readingChadwick's Blog & Commentary: Ten Lessons Learned From the Petraeus Affair
After watching the recent, exaggerated – and sordid – upheaval over the story about an extramarital affair that the (now former) head of the CIA had with his biographer, I have come to several conclusions about America, sex, American medi…
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: Excerpt: Internet addicts, looking for a fix in The Fridgularity
The Fridgularity begins with the Big Crash — the Internet goes down, as an entity takes over all the horsepower available through all the devices connected to it. This has certain deleterious effects on the folks who NEED the Internet … Con…
Continue readingmark a rayner | scribblings, squibs & sundry monkey joys: Sad about the singularity?
Is this robot really sad? Or is it just celebrating the technological singularity it its own quiet way? I don’t want to project onto this robot. Maybe he’s programmed to be happy with his single red balloon. Unlike Zathir, the … Continue read…
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Good Ol’ American Sex Scandal
The American media is very primitive, which is why it avoids complex and important issues, and instead resorts to tabloid topics like sex scandals. While their country is embroiled in an unprovoked war in Iraq, occupies Afghanistan (along with Canada), and itches to bomb Iran for oil, they’re worried more about where the wiener Petraeus […]
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Intel Driver Error Causes Blue Screen of Death
If you have an Intel Centrino wireless adapter, and get a Blue Screen of Death, update the driver to version 15. 13.x and 14.x can generate BSODs especially when connecting to commercial Access Points, like Alcatel’s. netw5ns64.sys (or related errors) come up on the BSOD screen. Windows doesn’t update to the latest Intel driver, that’s […]
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Geist on Copyright vs. Internet
An interesting, long lecture from Canadian copyright expert Michael Geist, given at the U of Sask. recently.
ADDED: Here’s a little on open government, as presented at the U of Regina
Chadwick's Blog & Commentary: The Useless Web
We all know Wikipedia is not always accurate, and sometimes biased. We all know that most internet quotations are wrong attributed or misquoted. We all know that the Web is full of useless, trivial pap like “psychic” hot lines, astrology, &…
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Anonymous comments? Dean Del Mastro’s right: there oughtta be a law!
A young member of the Tory Online Rage Machine (TORM) composes a mean Tweet using talking points from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office. TORM operatives may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below: The unfortunate Dean Del Mastro. It’s hard not to feel a pang of sympathy for Dean Del Mastro,
Continue readingOpenMedia.ca: The Globe and Mail: How to cut your Internet-phone bill
We’re making progress in having a transparent review of Big Telecom’s pricing practices for independent providers, but Canadian citizens are still being overcharged for everyday services. Let’s move forward together and put Big Telecom’s price-gouging behind us. Make the pledge to switch to an independent provider using our online tool
Continue readingCanadian ProgressiveCanadian Progressive: Anonymous: The Betrayal Of Wikileaks
Last week, the hacktivist collective Anonymous dumped WikiLeaks. Anonymous accuses WikiLeaks’ beleagured founder Julian Assange of turning the whistle-blowing website into a one man “Julian Assange show”. Below is the full text of Anonymous’ statement explaining the divorce: Greetings World – In December of 2010 Anonymous came to the defense of and began supporting
Continue readingCanadian ProgressiveCanadian Progressive: The Best Reporting on Facebook and Your Privacy
by Theodoric Meyer | ProPublica Facebook hit the one-billion user mark last week, a little more than two years after it reached 500 million users. To mark the occasion, we’ve rounded up some of the best reads on Facebook and privacy. Facebook Raises Fears With Ad Tracking, The Financial Times, September 2012 Facebook has
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Microsoft’s vacuous new news portal
Microsoft is undoubtedly hoping that its new news portal, to launch concurrently with Windows 8 and be heavily Metro UI based, will revolutionize our consumption of news. Or at least, that it will manage to carve out a nice chunk of the Internet news market for itself, especially given the break up
Continue readingOpenMedia.ca: Behind Closed Doors
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement continues to threaten our free speech, Internet privacy and access to content online. Speak out and join our growing campaign at StopTheTrap.net.
Continue readingCanadian Progressive: The Mouse That Roared: Imagining an internet safe haven for journalists, whistleblowers and activists in Iceland
The Mouse That Roared is a documentary-in-the-making film by Judith Ehrlich, the award-winning director of “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers”, which earned a Peabody, and was nominated for an Academy award for best documentary. The film centers around Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jónsdóttir’s efforts fights
Continue readingAltavistagoogle: I love Dynamic View… When It Works
Dynamic View, Google’s newest templates (11 months old) simply don’t work all the time. Imagine having cool new light-bulbs that didn’t always turn on. Sometimes the pages load correctly, sometimes they don’t load at all. And who knows why. After a Summer of impressive page views, I’ve given up. No way that many people
Continue readingOpenMedia.ca: TorrentFreak.com: New data exposes Canadian ISPs throttling download speeds
Canadian citizens are paying for Internet access, but Big Telecom isn’t being completely open about the restrictions that they’ve been imposing. With new data just published by the Measurement Lab, Canadian service providers such as Bell and Rogers have been exposed as interfering with over 75% of torrent transfers and
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