On occasion, I’ve been an avid reader of the online comments on sites like The Globe, The National Post, Calgary Herald, Toronto Sun, CBC, etc. But it’s all going to hell, and quickly.

Visit any of those online sites to see for yourself (the illusion of) Internet anonymity run amok.

(There is no anonymity on the Internet, unless you’re technically competent enough to hide your tracks, or you’ve hired someone to do it for you. It’s not something that comes with Micr0soft Office or the iPad.)

Thanks to lax registration requirements and amateurish moderation standards, the majority of the online ‘discussion’ consists of personal insults, name calling, completely unfounded and often scurrilous accusations, constant reposting of the same litany over and over ad nauseum, constant attempts to change the subject to all-too familiar rants. A place where the MSM writers and editors rarely if ever respond, and where the only visible sanction is to make the post go away with a note saying ‘We made the post go away’.

Meanwhile, we have anonymous postings, being able to hide your earlier posts, no way to ‘ignore’ the relentless trolls on both sides of every issue, and the freedom to rant nearly at will.

On occasion, the postings are so egregious as to make me jerk back in my chair, stung by the savagery. One example is enough. There are plenty more where this came from:

“…it is a weak society that convicts its warriors of killing an injured enemy on the battlefield…”

Armies that slaughter injured enemy combatants are usually described using terms such as ‘murderers’ and ’savages’ and ‘butchers’. Want more examples? Visit the forums mentioned above.

So what’s the current scenario: all too often a nasty, divisive ‘public’ spaces with all the charm, wit and intelligence of Question Period.

-g

Donald Savoie, New Brunswick’s eminent and oft-quoted political scientist, says the two leading parties in the provincial election campaign that officially began today are painting pretty pictures to get elected, but know they’re facing a harsh post-election reality.

In a think piece on CBC’s website, he says promises of no new taxes nor cuts in services belie a huge and growing deficit in a province dependent on federal transfer payments at a time when Ottawa is turning off the anti-recession tap. Mix in an aging population, the youth exodus and  the decay of rural communities and you have, he argues, a recipe for disaster.

The provincial Progressive Conservatives, meantime, have an online ‘poll’ (it’s really just a partisan diatribe, but let’s suspend reality for a second and see where this goes). The poll is trying to determine what New Brunswickers consider “Shawn Graham’s 10 (sic) worse (sic) decisions as Premier.” Is there a proofreader in the room?

But that’s minor. The web site where this so-called poll is posted is called ‘NBLiberalParty.com”

So putting on my geek hat, I checked out the ownership. It’s well-disguised:

Registrant: (which is Internet-speak for domain name owner)

Domain: nbliberalparty.com

The Company
ATTN NBLIBERALPARTY.COM
care of Network Solutions
PO Box 459
Drums, PA.  US  18222

Maybe I’m naiive, but is it kosher for the NB PC’s – it clearly says on the web site that it’s approved by the party (”Authorized by PCNB“) – to call themselves NBLiberalParty.com? I’d raise the same ethical question if the Liberals were to register NBPCParty.com and try to trick voters in the very same way.

I get that they’re trying to game the search engines. Is it clever? Sure. Is it ethical? Even in warfare, dressing up as the enemy is generally considered bad form.

This is no endorsement of the Liberals. In fact, the PCs may be on to something when they conveniently list what they think are Premier Shawn Graham’s top ten muckups:

- NB Power
- $50M for Atcon
- $60M for Caisse Populaire
- $5M for golf course
- French immersion
- Laying off TAs and library staff
- Trying to break doctor’s contracts
-  Ferries
-  $200,000 for slogan Be…in this place
- Untendered multi-million $$$ contracts to Shannex

But pretending to be the people they’re slagging? I don’t like that smell at all.

And it’s not just a website:

http://www.youtube.com/nbliberalparty

http://twitter.com/nbliberalparty

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nbliberalparty/

The one and only image on the NBLiberalParty flickr account

Let’s stop the lies? Can you spell ‘irony’? In my opinion, the PCs should admit they crossed the line and stop this kind of nonsense. And the rest of our political parties should see this as a lesson learned and  a line best not crossed.

And all parties should fess up to the problems facing this province, and stop pretending that the solution is to elect one side or the other to a job with quite the pension plan. (Which, of course, is a story for another day.)

Why expect exemplary behaviour from people seeking public office. So we should.

Yet on day one of this campaign we have a combination of dirty tricks and rose-coloured fantasies.

What’s next?

-g

There are people who work near each other – their desks or cubes are in close proximity – and people who work with each other. I’m happy to be part of the latter group.

I just sent off a proposal to what we hope will be a great new client. We only found out about the opportunity two weeks ago, and had to fly to Ottawa to meet with them in the middle of last week. And work through the weekend to get our proposal in on time.

I’m looking at the final result now – wishing I could show you it to you (later) – and I’m totally amazed: We produced a 30-page proposal that looks and reads like a magazine,  produced a relevant video segment, added dozens of work samples, and created a micro-site that pulls it all together.

It happened because I’m part of a team of professionals who enjoy working together, who excel at what they do, and appreciate bigger-than-the-sum-of-the-parts results.

Will we be disappointed if we don’t get this contract? You bet. Will we be devastated? No way. This is the best proposal we’ve ever created. And we’re only going to get better.

What a nice way to end a summer Monday.

-g

Out of all the registrars I’ve used, GoDaddy is just about my least-favourite. When asked for a recommendation on domain registration, I will recommend nearly any registrar over GoDaddy – with the exception of the Domain Registry of Canada. And, not surprisingly, I’ve found yet another reason to dislike the “used-car dealership of domain registrars”: their inane restrictions on WHOIS lookups for domains registered through them.

When a domain name is registered with any one of the vast majority of registrars, the registration details are publicly-available using something called a “WHOIS lookup” (the same process that’s used to check whether or not a domain is available to purchase). This will show you contact information of the person or organization who registered the domain name – and the WHOIS database is not controlled by any single registrar. This means that (normally) any WHOIS lookup service can retrieve the details of any domain name, regardless of where it was registered.

This doesn’t apply to all types of domain names, but it’s almost always the case with the common ones: .com, .org, and .net. Not so with GoDaddy – to view the details of a domain registered through them, you must use the WHOIS function on the GoDaddy.com website. And if you attempt to do a lookup from anywhere else, you just get a message saying “For complete domain details go to: “.

Aside from undermining the purpose of the publicly-accessible WHOIS database, the GoDaddy WHOIS lookup page itself is absolutely plastered with their advertisements and branding. The actual WHOIS details are “below the scroll” on a 1024*768 display, buried underneath advertisements to purchase variations of the domain that you looked-up.

Sadly, though, it’s exactly the sort of thing I’d expect from the company that purchased the assets of RegisterFly.

Either the Thai Parliament is now a player in the global spam game, or the country’s Parliamentary mail server has been taken over by a bot herder who’s using it to send out what’s known as advance fee fraud spam.

According to an email from Teddy Woods,  he’s willing to share $10.5 million US with me because I have the same last name as the dead guy who left Teddy the money. Sounds plausible to me. Teddy’s a lawyer, see, and the dead guy, Alfred, was his client.

Teddy says this is the third time he’s written to me  and he’s starting to get a little pushy. It’s understandable, of course, if you’re trying to split $10.5 mill with a stranger who’s ignoring you. (Damned if I can find his earlier emails. But that’s another story…)

Anyway, Teddy wants me to email him back at <tededdywoods@gmail.com> right away so that we can get this show on the road.

Teddy’s not dumb enough to send his plea directly from gmail. He is, however, dumb enough to send it from ‘mail.parliament.go.th’

Let me break that down for you:

‘mail’ is the name of a mail server at ‘parliament.go.th’

‘go.th’ is the domain name owned by the Government of Thailand. It should be pretty easy to figure out what ‘parliament.go.th’ is all about.

The Parliament of Thailand, also known as Ratthasapha Thai, is that country’s national assembly based in Bangkok.

So I’m a little suspicious. Maybe I’ll wait to see if Teddy emails me again. Maybe this time from mail.prison.go.th

-g

The American Association of Retired People is the latest spammer to hit an email address here that usually just gets links to porn or pitches from Nigerian lawyers offering to split $6.5 million from their dead clients.

It came from LeslieSmith@thalized.info – about as real as the latest lawyer from Lagos? – with the subject line of “Receive a gift with AARP membership”

And here’s the usual ‘you asked for it’ nonsense that leads off the email:

“You have received this e-mail on behalf of AARP because you requested to receive information from the company listed at the bottom of this message.”

(more…)

I don’t know much about Scarborough Southwest MP Michelle Simson. What I know is that she promised – and kept it – to put details of how she spent taxpayers’ dollars online.

That’s so right in this day and age. The technology makes it possible, and Canadians of all political stripes overwhelmingly want this kind of full disclosure.

Every other Member of Parliament should recognize the value of this openness. Walk like a duck…

So we have  the political class and the chattering masses. Not for the first time, of course.

Remember these refrains?

- Let them eat cake.

- Off with their heads.

Anyway, I don’t know very much about Michelle Simson, but I think she might be Canada’s first MP 3.0

-g

Remember those Rogers “Proven the Fastest” ads that were popping up everywhere not too long ago? For some strange reason, those ads started disappearing right around the time that Aliant’s Fibre-to-the-home rollout got underway. The “Proven the Fastest” promotional site is still online, but the “Atlantic” link now just redirects to a different Rogers site (until very recently it had been showing a “404 Not Found” error instead).

Ever wonder if that timing was just coincidental? We recently had the opportunity to run a few side-by-side speed tests comparing an Aliant Fibre connection & Rogers’ Highspeed Extreme service – the winner? According to SpeedTest.net, here’s how Rogers and Aliant currently measure up:

ALIANT FIBRE Download: 57.08 Mb/second Upload: 14.34 Mb/second	ROGERS HIGH-SPEED EXTREME Download: 10.01 Mb/second Upload: 0.99 Mb/second
View Results	View Results

If those numbers don’t make the difference evident enough, consider that Aliant’s download speed is almost 6 times that of Rogers’ – and Aliant’s upload speed is more than 14 times that of Rogers’. For that matter, Aliant’s upload speed is almost 1.5 times greater than Rogers’ download speed. So if you’re in New Brunswick and you have a “requirement for velocity,” it looks like Aliant is currently the best choice.

We recently ran into a situation where a hosting customer already owned the .NB.CA version of a domain name and wanted to register the .CA version as well. It’s fairly well-known that, if you register a province-specific domain name (domain.nb.ca), then no one can register the national-level domain (domain.ca) without your permission. Unfortunately, it’s rather difficult to find any details on the specific steps needed to provide permission.

CIRA does provide a document detailing the “Registration Of Conflicting Domain Names,” though it’s barely-comprehensible four pages riddled with bureaucrat-eese and instructions for registrars (that 99% of individual domain owners don’t need to know). It turns out that the process is fairly simple (CIRA over-complicating something? Shocking, I know).

The scenario is that you already own domain.nb.ca and you want to purchase domain.ca (note: nb.ca is used as an example, but this information should apply to any province-specific domains – on.ca, sk.ca, ns.ca, etc) . First you need to put in a registration order for the national-level domain (domain.ca), just as you would for any new .CA domain. Within a few minutes CIRA will send a notification EMail to the admin contact of the province-specific domain (domain.nb.ca), requesting permission to register domain.ca.

To grant permission, the process is exactly the same as authorizing any other “non-trivial” change to a .CA domain: you need to login to the CIRA account for the province-specific domain (domain.nb.ca) and click on an “Approve” link. That will take you a page where you can authorize (or reject) registration of the national domain (domain.ca).

Of course you either need to have an up-to-date administrative contact EMail address for the province-specific domain (domain.nb.ca) so that CIRA can send you your login information, or you need to have a copy of your CIRA account information on record. Otherwise, you need to (literally) find a judge or notary public or priest and get started with the dreaded CIRA “Manual Change of Admin Contact” process.

About twenty minutes ago, I encountered something truly rare: decent customer service from an ISP in Atlantic Canada. I had called Seaside Highspeed Internet, a company that provides wireless high-speed internet in several parts of Nova Scotia – and after only two levels of voice menus, I got the standard “all of our representatives are currently busy” recording.

But then came the shocking part: there was actually an option to leave a message with a call-back number. After a decade of dealing with Rogers and Aliant customer support, this was incredibly surprising.

Seaside Highspeed is clearly new to the ISP game, given all of these rookie mistakes. As an ISP, you’re supposed to make your customers wait on hold for 45 minutes while eroding their sanity with elevator muzak – and that’s after they’ve waded through a dozen levels of voice menus. Oh, and if you want to be a truly world-class ISP, don’t let customers simply key in their choices – no, give them the convenience of repeatedly yelling “ENGLISH!!!!” into their phone. Oh, and employing customer service staff on the same the same continent?!?!? That’s lunacy!!! Now how am I supposed to keep in touch with “Mike” from Bangalore?

Seaside will obviously need to resolve these glaring issues if they hope to provide the level of service that Atlantic Canadians expect from telcos and internet providers.