The travels of Justin

I found this after a visit to http://canada.info-syn.com:

Telus is blocking access to a pro-union website that it argues “contains confidential proprietary information and that photographs on the site raise privacy and security issues for certain of its employees.” Michael Geist reminds us that internet service providers—especially Telus—have argued vocally to let the courts, not companies, decide what should and should not be blocked.

Telus says the website, www.voices-for-change.com, contains confidential corporate information while photos of Telus managers with captions like “pieces of scum” and “weasels” are offensive and potentially dangerous.

While I haven’t examined either blocked site, voices-for-change.com or telusscabs.ca, it wouldn’t shock me if the company did have a legitimate argument. Regardless, if the company honestly believed the material posted was in violation of Canadian law, a court injunction would force the website to be blocked by ALL internet service providers.

“We’re not apologizing for taking action for protecting our employees,” Telus vice-president of business solutions Bruce Okabe told 24 hours yesterday. “It would be morally negligent for us to tolerate this kind of behaviour.” [Ed. emphasis added]

By NOT bringing this matter to court and choosing to block the site for Telus subscribers only, Telus seems to be demonstrating a belief that their moral negligence is limited to their own subscribers while subscribers using Shaw, etc., do not provide a threat to the employees in question.

Reported at:

• 24 Hours Vancouver
• Boing Boing
• The Edmonton Sun

This is just a personal note.

I’m running an older version of Mandrake Linux on my computer, and I found this information for connecting mailto: links. In case I find this handy in the future, I’m blogging it for future reference and the rest of you can safely ignore it.

Mozilla Thunderbird Notes - Waikato Linux Users Group

Today is the first time in ages that I’ve looked at my site using Internet Explorer (I’m in the TRU computer lab) and I’m reminded why I dislike that browser. With Firefox, — regardless whether I’m on Windows, Linux, or Apple platforms — the icons for my weather widget on the main-page sidebar blend smoothly with the background colour. Internet Explorer can’t handle the transparency of the PNG images, thus the attractive drop shadow designed by the graphic artist doesn’t match the site. For a designer, this means that a change in the site colour scheme requires the designer also re-creates the graphics to match each scheme. Any business with a web presence will appreciate how IE removes the economy of scale as a minor tweak in design requires additional graphic production labour proportional to the size and complexity of the site.

I’m not sure whether I want to make the changes required to make the weather icon look as attractive under IE as it does under any modern browser, but I suppose I will (if I can find the time) since the majority of my visitors use that ancient and almost unavoidable relic of technology.

If you’re currently using Internet Explorer, consider making the quick and painless free upgrade to Firefox.

Since there doesn’t seem like much happening in domestic politics to write about these days (sarcasm intended), I think this is a pretty awesome development at Statscan. Now you can use Firefox live bookmarks, or — my favourite — Thunderbird’s RSS reader to keep up with Statscan’s publication, The Daily.

The Government of Canada Newsroom has also adopted RSS (look for the orange “XML” button in the left-column). The newsroom is an interesting source for “News releases, Warnings/Advisories, Media Advisories, Speeches, Reports”.

This is great — especially if you have a propensity to be well-read in obscure news and trends. At least it shows both the trend of mainstream adoption of a fantastic technology (that only sounds complicated), and that the IT people working for the Canadian federal government gather no moss.

Wordpress, the free software that I use to manage this site, just released a new version. After all these months, I still feel bad that I’ve never bothered to customize the design, considering I’ve been building websites since 1999. Oh well, at this moment in time, I’d rather focus on more important pursuits.

My most recent online work has been some reconstruction of the Economics Department website here at TRU. It’s not exciting, and I was restricted to the ancient templates provided, but at least I could make the site just a tad more accessible, clean up the code, and give you, the user, control over text-size. In a few months, UCC will become Thompson Rivers University and they will launch a redesigned site. It is supposed to use a content management system that will allow departments to make changes to their site without having to learn code, or use any special software. I have some ideas for the redesign, but I need to wait until my life settles down before I bite into more than I can chew. My guess is that the current site was designed around 2001, and the school has grown a lot since. All in all, this is a great school and it’s too bad that the website does not entirely reflect a modern, growing university. It’ll all come in time.

I’ve been at university for six months and I absolutly love it. Anyone who labels it a ‘lesser’ school, because it’s new, or not in a ‘major’ city centre, is really missing out. TRU’s size means it may not have the breadth of programs offered at a school like SFU or UBC, but the programs it does offer are great. Anyone I’ve ever spoken to about other, more established, universities have said they really appreciate the personal attention you can get from your instructors. While some professors at other schools try to offload their work on teachers assistants, the TRU teachers are very accessible to us; my math teacher has even complained that not enough students drop by her office for extra help. Even those students worried about student loans will benefit from the lower tuition than other BC schools, and the lower cost of living in Kamloops — bottom line, is that you can graduate with less debt… and who can complain about that? I haven’t decided whether I will finish my degree here, but I assure anyone considering this school that my decision will be based on factors unrelated to the quality of education.

It’s come to my attention that Kamloops Indymedia has been under attack by hackers. I have no problem admitting that I don’t particularly like the extreme left views usually represented, but I strongly support freedom of speech. In recent years, I’ve really come to appreciate how the internet allows us to take an author to task when there is strong disagreement; certainly, reading the work of others has allowed me to challenge my own views. On the other hand, understanding the premises — even if fundamentally flawed — that are used to support or oppose a particular viewpoint provides clear arms those who disagree.

I believe that one of the causes for the extreme left views at Indymedia, is the lack of alternate writing submitted. I could be wrong, it could be editorial policy, but I have always seen the idea of independent media as being very similar to blogging — take independent views, and publish them. The simple concept of putting the power of publishing into the hands of the community doesn’t seem to politically suggest left or right wing views, only that news can be disseminated in a new way.

I’m sure that the community will find a way to keep Kamloops Indymedia alive. One can only hope the low-life’s behind the attacks will get their just desserts.

Today is the Kamloops FireFox release party at On The Rocks Pub & Grill. In case you haven’t heard about it, I wrote about it earlier, and you can find the location and details at the official Mozparty2 website.

Hope to see you there!

Firefox is getting all kinds of attention with their official release. Even the evening news in Denmark has covered the software release. I really like this great article published by the Washington Post today. Here’s my favourite quote:

“I think anybody using Internet Explorer should switch to Firefox today. Seriously. Even if you’ve loaded every IE security update, Firefox will give you a faster, more useful view of the Web. If you haven’t — or if you use a pre-XP version of Windows ineligible for Service Pack 2’s security fixes — it would be lunacy to stick with IE.”

On security, I like this bit also:

One in particular should delight many long-suffering Web users: Firefox blocks pop-up ads automatically.

But Firefox’s security goes deeper than that. It doesn’t support Microsoft’s dangerous ActiveX software, which gives a Web site the run of your computer. It omits IE’s extensive hooks into the rest of Windows, which can turn a mishap into a systemwide meltdown.

Firefox resists “phishing” scams [define: phishing], in which con artists lure users into entering personal info on fake Web pages, by making it easier to tell good sites from bad. When you land on an encrypted page — almost no phishing sites provide this protection — Firefox advertises that status by highlighting the address bar in yellow. It also lists that page’s domain name on the status bar; if that doesn’t match what you see in the address bar, you’re probably on a phishing site.”

Firefox, the finest, most secure Web browser ever created for average-user applications, went 1.0 today. You can download it below, toss out Internet Explorer, and be relatively assured that you computer won’t be compromised due to Microsoft’s bad design decisions and lax security maintenance.

Download it here

It was only a few weeks ago when I read about the upcoming official release of the awesome web browser FireFox. Then I read about a donation drive spearheaded by SpreadFireFox.com. The goal was to raise enough money to put a full-page ad in the New York Times. In only 10 days, over 10,000 people raised an impressive $250,000 USD.

After watching this incredible success, I heard about an event dubbed Mozparty2. (For the non-geeks: ‘Moz’ referrs to the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation that manages FireFox and other excellent free software.) Just imagine, people from all over the world, using the release of free and open-source software as an excuse to get together. Just look at all the countries being represented at Mozparty2.

So why not Kamloops? I posted an announcement to the mailing list of the KamLUG website and a location was chosen.

Kamloops Party Details

So Kamloops is officially represented at Mozparty2, and our party details are as follows:
DATE: Friday November 19^th, 2004
TIME: 6 PM
LOCATION: On The Rocks Pub & Grill - 1265 Rogers Way, BC (click for map)

Please RSVP (yes I know the title is redundant redundant)

If you will be attending, please RSVP at the Mozparty2 website.

Who should come?

Whether you are a professional geek, an enthusiast, or a curious luddite, you are encouraged to join us. This is not an exclusive party; it’s a community event—please bring a friend!

This is also not meant to be an anti-propritary software gathering. Ardent Internet Explorer users are still welcome to join us; we will not turn you away, despite your faults.