2011 - Technology Update

My technology life is getting to be strange. People are starting to ask me to install jabber, Ubuntu, Open Office onto their computers.  That is what I have been recommending for quite a few years now.  I know there are still people trying to follow Apple, but more and more people are starting to see that Steve Jobs is all about control.  Their latest is not letting VLC player onto iTunes. Microsoft was never so blatant about keeping competition out of their software market.
A lot of this posturing will become mute when Chrome and Firefox 4 come out and people start uploading webm files.  With Google backing this video formate and Microsoft/Apple only controlling 40% of the Browser Market, this to me is a fight that Google has already won.  Gone will be the days when people use files that certain companies control via threats of lawsuits etc. The next hurdle to overcome is Facebook's walled garden approach, it is a lot like Apple's usage rules.  These (TOS) rules are quite draconian in nature, but most of us don't bother complaining or closing our accounts.  Maybe my niece (Kerry Cundal) with her new found fame can make the world a better place in this area. For more info see my next Buzz.  Who says I can't use marketing manipulation also?  All the best to you in 2011!

Rogers cell phone billing = confusopoly

I got my bill yesterday and if you look and the underlined printing I subscribe to their 6 Gigbytes service for $30. I also pay $17.50 / month for 200 minutes of day time cell use. What concerns me is that extra data usage bill of $25.04.  It doesn't make sense to charge 100 times more per MB just because I didn't pre know how much data I was going to use.
Can Rogers make money from irritating their customers?  Do people still buy when they are confused about the billing?  I am tempted to phone and cancel the service. What do you think? Is Rogers practising confusopoly? Should I cancel the service? Thanks for listening to my rant!

What is real and what is manipulation?

As I tie into the solar radiation I experienced 46 years ago (only one more revolution till the age of Aquarius) I keep wondering what is real. It has been almost 40 years since Nixon took the US off of the gold standard and the monies we use today to exchange services indicate more and more that we are using fiat currencies. Without the Canadian dollar as a medium for exchange, what can we do? (Please comment on buzz because it is nice to have a social discussion). To me reality is:

• food, water, air and shelter.
• Gold is real, but not easy obtainable or standardised.
• Land and buildings are real, but not easily transferable.

Having been a contrarian stock investor, the stock markets seem to have taken on the air of a gambling casino, and the pillars of greed and corruption go unchecked, virtually without bounds in our major financial institutions, and within the general fabric of society, but salt is real and more and more important.

Today I teach computers at the church in Hythe hoping more people will adopt open source because proprietary formats tend to lock people in. Even Microsoft's famous manipulation scheme -embrace -extend -extinguish hasn't allowed it to control the instant messaging market. In fact Microsoft 4 days ago adopted Jabber, but they will probably use it like facebook does --only allow instant messaging between their own domains so it is not much different from msn. Gmail with their open federation policy is the best instant messaging platform. I remember 6 years ago when I switch from hotmail to gmail wonder if Google was doing this as a manipulation scheme. I guess maybe because my heart is evil I have a hard time trusting the good people have to offer. So far, Google has been the best, biggest company promoting openness. They even offered up libvpx (webm) which I have been enjoying for it's video chat abilities. Even youtube which is own by Google allows for webm. I guess I want to thank the 100's that have taken the leap of faith with me into open software and open codecs and even those that just use the open encyclopaedia -- wikipedia. I do feel that when people get a taste for openness they will have a a hard time going back to vendor lock-in even with a 60 day trial or like Simply Accounting which now offers 1 year without payment (at least the student version I installed on Friday did) Moving data out of Simply into another accounting program can cost you a lot more. If my life becomes a conduit for truth and not just one companies version of how to manipulate people to make money, then I will die a happy man.  Information is meant to be free. Thanks for commenting / linking!