I was recently tasked with upgrading the software licenses on one of the products we use at the office—I won't use the real name, but let's call it "Vim"—to a version that works with the latest version of OSX. While a less detail-oriented person might buy one key outright and slap it onto as many computers as one could get away with, I prefer the high road where my employer isn't exposed to liability, and instead chose to upgrade (less cost) existing licenses that would become redundant.
The process should be reasonably simple. Vim's website has a portal that tracks all of the licenses I've purchased in the past, and when I go to their store website to purchase upgrade licenses, it requires me to log in and select which previous-version licenses I want to upgrade to.
Assuming all of my previous licenses were properly registered (which by today they were after a bit of work a couple of months ago), this upgrade purchase is straightforward enough. In and of itself, this worked fine for me.
After making the purchase, I am taken to a receipt page that makes reference to the fact that I've used a credit card, though it only says the total and nowhere does it actually say "paid". I printed it out anyway and hope it's sufficient to serve as a 'receipt' for our accounting department.
The important part, though, is the confirmation e-mail I then received. This looks like a typical invoice, with a listing of what I've purchased, subtotal, etc. There's a column for the product name, a column for the download button, a column for the license key, and price, and quantity.
The only thing is, there was only one line, with one license key and a quantity of 4.
This is where things started to break down. Some frustration:
For a normal software product, this would be fine. You'd use the license key they sent you and install it on up to four computers.
But I knew something was up. I had learned in a previous encounter with "Vim" that they do not have volume licensing or bulk licenses. So why did they just send me a license key with a quantity of 4?
My curiosity got the better of me, and I logged back in to the Vim portal and saw that the license key from the confirmation e-mail wasn't listed among my keys.
The customer support person I was talking with on the phone during much of this process was never able to tell me what the deal is with that code, other than telling me that it isn't a valid license key when I forwarded it.
Luckily, I don't rely solely on Vim's license key portal to track my licenses; I also use a custom-built license key database, which enables me to quickly notice that some of the licenses now in my portal weren't there before.
More frustration:
Meanwhile, there was an "alert" in the Vim license key portal which I would never have seen unless I went back in to the portal (which, seeing the license key in the e-mail, why would I?). The alert told me that three license keys had been generated for my recent order, and it listed the license keys. None of these were the same as the one in my e-mail.
Back in the license key portal, I was able to track down these three, as well as a fourth license key that was new (which also wasn't the one I received in the e-mail). I went back to my e-mail to see if there was something I missed.
"Sure enough, there was fine print in the confirmation e-mail that indicated that this was a temporary license key and four new keys would be generated in my license portal" is what you'd expect to read next, but alas this was not the case. Not only did the confirmation message give no indication that this was not the license key associated with my purchase, but there was also no separate e-mail to inform me that these new keys were created.
Having found my license keys, I decided to stop digging and quit while I was ahead. After verifying that my license portal did indeed show four (not three) new license keys that were purchased today which didn't show up in my own database, I concluded my call with the customer support person.
I had already wasted enough time by this point, but being the altruistic guy that I am, not wishing this situation on anyone else (especially one who might unwittingly try to install the license on multiple computers), I found the website feedback form on Vim's website and sent in my feedback and suggestions on how they can improve their messaging. (Imagine finding that you've installed this license key on various computers and after a while they stop working because it was the wrong license key and you have to track all those installations down!)
As is usual with such customer support encounters, I received an e-mail from my Indian correspondent advising me that the ticket was now closed and I could forward the ticket-closed e-mail to the licensing e-mail address for the company.
Which I did.
I copied and pasted my website feedback and sent it to the e-mail address cited in the e-mail from the customer support person.
More frustration:
Then I got an e-mail saying that that account didn't exist. I triple checked that I spelled the address exactly the way as it was given to me.
I decided then to reply to the customer support person and advise that the licensing e-mail address did not work.
More frustration:
After replying to the customer support person, I received an automated response indicating that I was replying to a closed support ticket, and therefore my e-mail would not be accepted. I could log in to a support portal (which may or may not be the same as the licensing portal) to find my support ticket and reopen it. Or I could contact them by phone.
At this point, I'd done as much as I had the patience for to try to give Vim some feedback on improving their customer communications. After all, by this point, I was trying to submit feedback to someone about a broken feedback mechanism to which they had directed me in order for me to give feedback on another feedback mechanism.
With this amount of Catch-22s, the only thing my feedback could possibly do is give more ideas to the evil twin of Douglas Adams—who must have designed these systems—to adjust any part of the process that wasn't sufficiently frustrating.
My initial feedback did, as far as I know, make it through their website feedback form, and I can only hope that it isn't used against me.
- RG>
Showing posts with label doublespeak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label doublespeak. Show all posts
Monday, December 14, 2015
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Hiding in the FedEx logo is something you might not have noticed...
No, not the arrow between the E and the x. Everyone knows about that. Can you see what the other thing is?
It's that FedEx is short for "Federal Express", but some marketing idiot figured it would be good to add another "Express" on to the end for good measure. I guess this is for the division of Federal Express that actually is Express and the other trucks all say 'FedEx / Eventually".
- RG>
It's that FedEx is short for "Federal Express", but some marketing idiot figured it would be good to add another "Express" on to the end for good measure. I guess this is for the division of Federal Express that actually is Express and the other trucks all say 'FedEx / Eventually".
- RG>
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
My mother's maiden name was Phil
I'm one of those people whose last name is the same as his mother's 'maiden' name. I'm also one of those people who, because of this, decides against using his mother's maiden name as a 'security' question. Especially when something as important as my bank account is involved.
Unfortunately, Scotiabank is one of those companies that thinks that, in today's world of everybody splattering their biographies across the internet, one's mother's maiden name is a secret that can only be transmitted through the vault door at Fort Knox with an umbilical cord.
Some time ago, I changed what I had listed at my bank for "mother's maiden name" to something else. Damned if I know what I put. So every time I call up the bank, I have to explain this so they can skip over to another set of somewhat obtrusive questions (including "employer", of which I have multiple). Invariably, they don't care because as far as they're concerned, they have to ask me a question and I have to answer it, and they needn't concern themselves with the degree of difficulty of this question or the degree of security afforded by this.
But today, I was trying to buy something online when I was presented with a "Verified by Visa" confirmation screen—ostensibly for my bank—which required me to enter my "mother's maiden name". I tried a couple things but it didn't work. There was no 'back' button so I could pay instead with PayPal, so I had to close the window. When I called up the company to see if the purchase went through, they informed me that the response from VbV wasn't even necessary unless I had set it up with my bank.
Naturally, I went to my bank website to see if I could find out whether I'd set up Verified by Visa. I didn't realize that I was on my 'new' Windows 8 laptop (which I've since relegated to secondary status under the old, reliable Windows XP beast which it had been intended to replace), and I mustn't have logged into my bank account from that computer before, because it asked me for another security question.
Damned if I knew that one, either. Let's look at the list of security questions available (from which one must pick three, and subsequently all three of which must be answered correctly if one is logging in for the first time on a new computer, or on a public computer). Remember, a good security question is one that is easy for you to understand and difficult for an identity thief to figure out. Most of these fail:
Where did you go on your honeymoon?
What was the name of your elementary school?
What was the name of the street on which you grew up?
Obviously, some of those might be obscure questions for some people, but the ones that aren't mindnumbingly obvious are, by definition, difficult for the user to remember also (the obvious ones would be like the BFF one talks to and about all the time on social media or the high school graduation year in one's Facebook timeline or LinkedIn profile). For example, I have two grandmothers (as I'm sure most do), both of whom are still alive. If I used that question, when I go to answer it, would I remember which grandmother I chose? And would I have chosen the town she grew up in, the town she lived in when I was a child, or the town she lives in now? Will I spell it right?
My paternal grandfather's first name isn't so easy either. He went by an English name, a French name, and a a nickname, and the French one had an accent. When I try to remember what I put in there, do I remember the name I called him, or since banking is formal business, did I use his formal first name?
My cousins span two generations. Did I pick the oldest of all my cousins or of my more familiar younger group of cousins? Did I put only their first name or full name?
And as for elementary school and growing-up street, I went to at least three different elementary schools; I'm sure many people grew up living on many different streets. Or maybe someone's parents still live on that street where there's only one school nearby. Either way, it's either hard for me to remember or easy for a hacker to figure out.
The rest of the questions are even more wishy-washy:
What is the name of your first employer?What was the first name of your first manager?
What is the last name of your favorite teacher in elementary school?
What is the name of your first pet?
What is your favorite hobby?
What was the name of your first girlfriend/boyfriend?
I once applied for a summer job with the Ottawa Police when I was in university. I was told to list every.single.employer on the job application, and not wanting to lie to the Police, I did. My first one was a paper route. Actually, it was a flyer route. My first 'manager' was a lady who met me once at her suburban house to tell me how to do the job and whom I never saw or heard from again. The HR person at the police service told me that I was a stellar candidate but my references didn't check out because this lady whose name I had to dig through innumerable boxes of files to find didn't remember working with me. (That taught me the dual lesson of the importance of lying to the police and lying on job applications. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever gotten a job I applied for, except for a really rotten one...)
So when it's months after I set these security questions and I'm trying to remember the answer, did I put my first.job.ever or my first 'real' job? These are the types of questions I don't have to contemplate when updating my LinkedIn profile because I don't goddamn have one.
'Favourite movie' is one of the questions I remember Blogger asking me nine years ago when I set up my account, in order to put in my public profile (go figure, it's still there). I remember this because it got me thinking, "what a stupid fucking question is that?"
Please tell me I'm not alone, and that most people don't have a single favourite movie, book, hobby, etc. that hasn't changed in decades. If you have one dominant hobby, like knitting, it'd be easy for you to remember, but chances are you talk about it a lot and maybe you have a blog about knitting, so it would be dead easy for an identity thief to figure out also, so you wouldn't really want to use it as a security question. Or maybe, a year from now, you forgot that you set up your security question when you were in your quilting phase and can't figure out why "knitting" doesn't work when you try to type it in.
Oh, by the way, Scotiabank the Canadian banking company: in Canada, it's spelled "favourite".
In fact, the only one question of that batch I can think of that is fairly definitive and that's "What did you want to be when you grew up?" It's definitive because I became that. But damned if I can remember a year from now if I typed "curmudgeonly old man" or "grumpy curmudgeon" or simply "get off my lawn".
In fact, I think I asked them to put something akin to "get off my lawn" as the answer to "mother's maiden name" and thought it was pretty clever except that I've forgotten which kin I aput it to.
***
Another flaw of these security questions is how they're presented. If you primarily use one computer to access your online banking, and that computer is your personal one, and you don't have your browser configured to kill all cookies on exit, then you can set it to remember you so you don't have to answer the security questions each time. The problem is, when it does come time to answer these questions (say, because you had to reinstall your browser, or you got a new computer, or you're checking in from a wireless café), you don't remember which of the decisions you made in how you answered these questions because you haven't had to answer them in so long because it was disabled on the primary computer from which you access it.
This is a feature, not a bug, according to the call centre agent who reset my login tonight. She suggested that setting it to not ask me the questions again on this one computer would mean that I wouldn't encounter the questions again, and the implication was that I wouldn't have to worry about remembering the answers to the 'secret questions' at a. I guess the script Scotiabank gave her was written by someone who doesn't understand the philosophy of cloud computing (or Internet banking, for that matter) where you can access stuff from different computers.
***
I don't think the bank really cares about security, it just wants to have a cloak of plausible deniability in the event of fraud. I mean, who's to blame if my account gets compromised? If I went to my home branch (which evidently isn't the one I thought it was, though the phone rep wouldn't tell me which one it was) and asked them to change my "mother's maiden name" to my mother's actual maiden name—even though it's not the least bit of a security question for me—would they blame me for using security questions that are too easy if my account got compromised? Or maybe I would be protected so long as I've checked all the boxes. Not that I care. Even if the bank is responsible and reimbursed me for wrongful expenses, I would be the one who'd have to suffer the fallout from having his identity stolen, credit likely damaged, and the paranoia (or worse, the reality) that the thief might have used it to infiltrate other areas of my life.
***
I did have a security scare once. Long story short, it got me worried that my Google/Gmail account had been compromised. I discovered that Google has a feature whereby you can get it to send a six-digit number to your cellphone via text message whenever you log in, and you must enter this number into the login page before it lets you in. It can also send you the number via a phone call. As backups, it has alternate phone numbers and you can get a set of single-use codes in the event you don't have access to your cell phone. You can tell it not to do this on 'trusted' computers (you'll still need your password to log in).
Not only is this a very secure method of protecting your log in, but it also is a built-in way of telling if someone else is trying to log in to your account (it will certainly tell you they've got your password!). Not only is it secure, but it also doesn't require me to answer a bunch of silly questions.
Twitter recently enabled a similar feature, though it doesn't have the voice call or backup codes options, and naturally the first time I tried logging in to Twitter from another computer I was behind an impenetrable wall of steel and concrete, thereby missing the text message.
Why can't the bank do this?
Whenever I'm conducting a transaction at an unfamiliar retail store with my credit or debit card, I'm always worried about the security of my card. Is this a real card reader charging me 9.95 for the large pho or is it a dummy reader that's set up to record my card number and PIN? Sometimes I deliberately enter the wrong PIN the first time to make sure it rejects the bad code.
I am horrified by the 'paypass' credit cards where you just have to tap it and it takes up to $30 out of your account without having to so much as press a button, much less enter a code.
It would be much more reassuring if, each time my credit card was authenticated, I got a text message with the amount and store name.
In the meantime, I'll have to put up with the bank's ridiculous security theatre. I think I'll tell them my mother's name was Phil.
- RG>
Unfortunately, Scotiabank is one of those companies that thinks that, in today's world of everybody splattering their biographies across the internet, one's mother's maiden name is a secret that can only be transmitted through the vault door at Fort Knox with an umbilical cord.
Some time ago, I changed what I had listed at my bank for "mother's maiden name" to something else. Damned if I know what I put. So every time I call up the bank, I have to explain this so they can skip over to another set of somewhat obtrusive questions (including "employer", of which I have multiple). Invariably, they don't care because as far as they're concerned, they have to ask me a question and I have to answer it, and they needn't concern themselves with the degree of difficulty of this question or the degree of security afforded by this.
But today, I was trying to buy something online when I was presented with a "Verified by Visa" confirmation screen—ostensibly for my bank—which required me to enter my "mother's maiden name". I tried a couple things but it didn't work. There was no 'back' button so I could pay instead with PayPal, so I had to close the window. When I called up the company to see if the purchase went through, they informed me that the response from VbV wasn't even necessary unless I had set it up with my bank.
Naturally, I went to my bank website to see if I could find out whether I'd set up Verified by Visa. I didn't realize that I was on my 'new' Windows 8 laptop (which I've since relegated to secondary status under the old, reliable Windows XP beast which it had been intended to replace), and I mustn't have logged into my bank account from that computer before, because it asked me for another security question.
Damned if I knew that one, either. Let's look at the list of security questions available (from which one must pick three, and subsequently all three of which must be answered correctly if one is logging in for the first time on a new computer, or on a public computer). Remember, a good security question is one that is easy for you to understand and difficult for an identity thief to figure out. Most of these fail:
Where did you go on your honeymoon?
What was the name of your elementary school?
What was the name of the street on which you grew up?
Obviously, some of those might be obscure questions for some people, but the ones that aren't mindnumbingly obvious are, by definition, difficult for the user to remember also (the obvious ones would be like the BFF one talks to and about all the time on social media or the high school graduation year in one's Facebook timeline or LinkedIn profile). For example, I have two grandmothers (as I'm sure most do), both of whom are still alive. If I used that question, when I go to answer it, would I remember which grandmother I chose? And would I have chosen the town she grew up in, the town she lived in when I was a child, or the town she lives in now? Will I spell it right?
My paternal grandfather's first name isn't so easy either. He went by an English name, a French name, and a a nickname, and the French one had an accent. When I try to remember what I put in there, do I remember the name I called him, or since banking is formal business, did I use his formal first name?
My cousins span two generations. Did I pick the oldest of all my cousins or of my more familiar younger group of cousins? Did I put only their first name or full name?
And as for elementary school and growing-up street, I went to at least three different elementary schools; I'm sure many people grew up living on many different streets. Or maybe someone's parents still live on that street where there's only one school nearby. Either way, it's either hard for me to remember or easy for a hacker to figure out.
The rest of the questions are even more wishy-washy:
What is the name of your first employer?What was the first name of your first manager?
What is the last name of your favorite teacher in elementary school?
What is the name of your first pet?
What is your favorite hobby?
What was the name of your first girlfriend/boyfriend?
I once applied for a summer job with the Ottawa Police when I was in university. I was told to list every.single.employer on the job application, and not wanting to lie to the Police, I did. My first one was a paper route. Actually, it was a flyer route. My first 'manager' was a lady who met me once at her suburban house to tell me how to do the job and whom I never saw or heard from again. The HR person at the police service told me that I was a stellar candidate but my references didn't check out because this lady whose name I had to dig through innumerable boxes of files to find didn't remember working with me. (That taught me the dual lesson of the importance of lying to the police and lying on job applications. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever gotten a job I applied for, except for a really rotten one...)
So when it's months after I set these security questions and I'm trying to remember the answer, did I put my first.job.ever or my first 'real' job? These are the types of questions I don't have to contemplate when updating my LinkedIn profile because I don't goddamn have one.
'Favourite movie' is one of the questions I remember Blogger asking me nine years ago when I set up my account, in order to put in my public profile (go figure, it's still there). I remember this because it got me thinking, "what a stupid fucking question is that?"
Please tell me I'm not alone, and that most people don't have a single favourite movie, book, hobby, etc. that hasn't changed in decades. If you have one dominant hobby, like knitting, it'd be easy for you to remember, but chances are you talk about it a lot and maybe you have a blog about knitting, so it would be dead easy for an identity thief to figure out also, so you wouldn't really want to use it as a security question. Or maybe, a year from now, you forgot that you set up your security question when you were in your quilting phase and can't figure out why "knitting" doesn't work when you try to type it in.
Oh, by the way, Scotiabank the Canadian banking company: in Canada, it's spelled "favourite".
In fact, the only one question of that batch I can think of that is fairly definitive and that's "What did you want to be when you grew up?" It's definitive because I became that. But damned if I can remember a year from now if I typed "curmudgeonly old man" or "grumpy curmudgeon" or simply "get off my lawn".
In fact, I think I asked them to put something akin to "get off my lawn" as the answer to "mother's maiden name" and thought it was pretty clever except that I've forgotten which kin I aput it to.
***
Another flaw of these security questions is how they're presented. If you primarily use one computer to access your online banking, and that computer is your personal one, and you don't have your browser configured to kill all cookies on exit, then you can set it to remember you so you don't have to answer the security questions each time. The problem is, when it does come time to answer these questions (say, because you had to reinstall your browser, or you got a new computer, or you're checking in from a wireless café), you don't remember which of the decisions you made in how you answered these questions because you haven't had to answer them in so long because it was disabled on the primary computer from which you access it.
This is a feature, not a bug, according to the call centre agent who reset my login tonight. She suggested that setting it to not ask me the questions again on this one computer would mean that I wouldn't encounter the questions again, and the implication was that I wouldn't have to worry about remembering the answers to the 'secret questions' at a. I guess the script Scotiabank gave her was written by someone who doesn't understand the philosophy of cloud computing (or Internet banking, for that matter) where you can access stuff from different computers.
***
I don't think the bank really cares about security, it just wants to have a cloak of plausible deniability in the event of fraud. I mean, who's to blame if my account gets compromised? If I went to my home branch (which evidently isn't the one I thought it was, though the phone rep wouldn't tell me which one it was) and asked them to change my "mother's maiden name" to my mother's actual maiden name—even though it's not the least bit of a security question for me—would they blame me for using security questions that are too easy if my account got compromised? Or maybe I would be protected so long as I've checked all the boxes. Not that I care. Even if the bank is responsible and reimbursed me for wrongful expenses, I would be the one who'd have to suffer the fallout from having his identity stolen, credit likely damaged, and the paranoia (or worse, the reality) that the thief might have used it to infiltrate other areas of my life.
***
I did have a security scare once. Long story short, it got me worried that my Google/Gmail account had been compromised. I discovered that Google has a feature whereby you can get it to send a six-digit number to your cellphone via text message whenever you log in, and you must enter this number into the login page before it lets you in. It can also send you the number via a phone call. As backups, it has alternate phone numbers and you can get a set of single-use codes in the event you don't have access to your cell phone. You can tell it not to do this on 'trusted' computers (you'll still need your password to log in).
Not only is this a very secure method of protecting your log in, but it also is a built-in way of telling if someone else is trying to log in to your account (it will certainly tell you they've got your password!). Not only is it secure, but it also doesn't require me to answer a bunch of silly questions.
Twitter recently enabled a similar feature, though it doesn't have the voice call or backup codes options, and naturally the first time I tried logging in to Twitter from another computer I was behind an impenetrable wall of steel and concrete, thereby missing the text message.
Why can't the bank do this?
Whenever I'm conducting a transaction at an unfamiliar retail store with my credit or debit card, I'm always worried about the security of my card. Is this a real card reader charging me 9.95 for the large pho or is it a dummy reader that's set up to record my card number and PIN? Sometimes I deliberately enter the wrong PIN the first time to make sure it rejects the bad code.
I am horrified by the 'paypass' credit cards where you just have to tap it and it takes up to $30 out of your account without having to so much as press a button, much less enter a code.
It would be much more reassuring if, each time my credit card was authenticated, I got a text message with the amount and store name.
In the meantime, I'll have to put up with the bank's ridiculous security theatre. I think I'll tell them my mother's name was Phil.
- RG>
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Homeopathy weak.
Apparently it's Homeopathy Week. I learned this from Ars Technica, of all places.
They're reprinting an extensive review of homeopathy from 2007.
I recall an incident where a friend of mine, who generally avoids silly stuff like religion and professional sports, remarking that his allergies were a lot better after he switched medications from his old homeopathic one. I kinda thought it was a joke, but it wasn't. When I tried to point out to him how plainly obvious it is that homeopathy is bunk, another friend chimed in, expressing skepticism, if not outright distrust, of modern, "conventional" medicine.
This really surprised me, because this other friend was even more sciencey. I would have assumed he'd at least know how homeopathy is meant to work.
That's why the Ars Technica article is great. It's a long read spanning 3 pages, but worth it. The article pokes away so much at the theories behind homeopathy that there's nothing but holes left. It doesn't just go over how homeopathy is an affront to modern medicine, but also how it's an affront to the scientific method, peer review, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Not to mention the obvious casualty: logic. I'm not going to try to summarize the article or describe homeopathy, just read the article.
I was rather disappointed to read, on page 4 of the April 2013 edition of Ottawa Woman magazine (whose issues and articles appear to require Flash and defy linking), an article called "Homeopathy during labour and birth". I won't do a detailed breakdown of all the parts of the article which offend me (been there, done that), in part because I'm not exactly the target audience. Suffice it to say that she gives a lot of advice that sounds to me like euphemisms for "placebo effect from such-and-such homeopathic mixture will make the mother feel better."
Okay, I don't want to go through the whole thing, but the passage that triggered my visceral cringing reflex (aside from the initial one I get at the sight of the word "homeopathy"), was "Some mothers will give birth not only with a midwife and a doula, but also with a hypnotherapist, acupuncturist, or a homeopath." It's good to hear that witch doctors, blood letters and phrenologists are not currently fashionable for childbirth (I have nothing against midwives or doulas, to be clear). It was only on a subsequent reading that I noticed this immediately follows the first paragraph, in which the author talks about how childbirth is a simple affair that can easily be cluttered with too many medical practitioners.
But I have to wonder how demeaning it is that a magazine feels it needs to promote such vacuous hoo-haw in order to consider itself a magazine that caters to women. I'll leave you to consider the implications of this suggestion.
The last point I wanted to make about homeopathy in this rant is that people often point to Health Canada's regulation of homeopathic remedies as an endorsement of homeopathy by Health Canada. It is not. Much as I'd like to say that the regulations are clear, they're at least understandable. And if you've got a cursory understanding in the field, you'll know what to look for.
A homeopathic remedy (which, to my dismay, can legally be called a "homeopathic medicine") must describe the 'active' ingredient, and must be at a potency of at least 12CH. If you haven't read up yet on homeopathic dilutions (Wikipedia), "potency" in the homeopathic world refers to how diluted it is. The higher the number, the more the ingredient has been diluted. From Wikipedia: "the greatest dilution that is reasonably likely to contain one molecule of the original substance is 12C, if starting from 1 mole of original substance."
In other words, Health Canada's regulations are designed to ensure that there is no more than one molecule of the 'active' ingredient per 6x1023 molecules of solvent (usually water). It's there to make sure it doesn't have any of the active ingredient in it (which is fine with the homeopaths, as they prefer to rely on the water's "memory") so that in case the active ingredient is toxic, at least the remedy won't do you any harm. Helpfully, Health Canada also requires the remedies to be labelled with a statement like "Consult a health care practitioner if symptoms persist or worsen", which is always good advice when administering a placebo.
So Health Canada will ensure that it's safe to take the stuff. As for efficacy, the Evidence for Homeopathic Medicines document from Health Canada states that, when a use is specified for the drug (i.e. "this is a dilution of bovine faeces, which is used in treating gullibility" as opposed to just "this is a dilution of bovine faeces"), the targeted condition—which cannot be one of the many major conditions listed in Schedule A of the Food and Drugs Act—must be effective based on one of various standards published by the Homeopathy industry. So Health Canada doesn't have any standards on making claims that homeopathic mixtures are effective at treating anything, so long as the homeopaths agree on it.
A certain skepticism of the medical community is healthy (no pun intended). I've even been known to myself. But it needs to be productive skepticism, like asking for evidence of the efficacy of something (as I did in my cryptic entry about the H1N1 vaccine linked in the previous sentence). The reaction my friend gave me when I called homeopathy out was not skepticism of conventional medicine, but pure distrust of it. If it were skepticism, I presume he'd have investigated the evidence for homeopathy's effectiveness instead of merely embracing it as an alternative to the thing he distrusts.
It is important to keep in mind that homeopathy originates before conventional medicine as we know it existed. Conventional medicine wasn't based on the scientific method, it was based on what was done to treat things in the past. You know, stuff like mercury, blood letting, and so on. Contrasted against that, doing nothing (which can be done very elaborately through homeopathy) usually yielded better results.
Unfortunately, now it's homeopathy that is acting based on an unchanged, unproven process, while conventional medicine has grown up. And homeopathy defenders, ironically, claim that as a benefit.
I'd go on, or at least go over this blog entry a couple times to strengthen the phrasing, if not the arguments, and maybe stick in something about how other quasi-medical people get grouped in—often willingly—with homeopaths, but it's getting late and my laptop's battery dying.
So unfortunately, I'll have to leave this blog entry like Homeopathy Week: weak.
- RG>
They're reprinting an extensive review of homeopathy from 2007.
I recall an incident where a friend of mine, who generally avoids silly stuff like religion and professional sports, remarking that his allergies were a lot better after he switched medications from his old homeopathic one. I kinda thought it was a joke, but it wasn't. When I tried to point out to him how plainly obvious it is that homeopathy is bunk, another friend chimed in, expressing skepticism, if not outright distrust, of modern, "conventional" medicine.
This really surprised me, because this other friend was even more sciencey. I would have assumed he'd at least know how homeopathy is meant to work.
That's why the Ars Technica article is great. It's a long read spanning 3 pages, but worth it. The article pokes away so much at the theories behind homeopathy that there's nothing but holes left. It doesn't just go over how homeopathy is an affront to modern medicine, but also how it's an affront to the scientific method, peer review, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Not to mention the obvious casualty: logic. I'm not going to try to summarize the article or describe homeopathy, just read the article.
I was rather disappointed to read, on page 4 of the April 2013 edition of Ottawa Woman magazine (whose issues and articles appear to require Flash and defy linking), an article called "Homeopathy during labour and birth". I won't do a detailed breakdown of all the parts of the article which offend me (been there, done that), in part because I'm not exactly the target audience. Suffice it to say that she gives a lot of advice that sounds to me like euphemisms for "placebo effect from such-and-such homeopathic mixture will make the mother feel better."
Okay, I don't want to go through the whole thing, but the passage that triggered my visceral cringing reflex (aside from the initial one I get at the sight of the word "homeopathy"), was "Some mothers will give birth not only with a midwife and a doula, but also with a hypnotherapist, acupuncturist, or a homeopath." It's good to hear that witch doctors, blood letters and phrenologists are not currently fashionable for childbirth (I have nothing against midwives or doulas, to be clear). It was only on a subsequent reading that I noticed this immediately follows the first paragraph, in which the author talks about how childbirth is a simple affair that can easily be cluttered with too many medical practitioners.
But I have to wonder how demeaning it is that a magazine feels it needs to promote such vacuous hoo-haw in order to consider itself a magazine that caters to women. I'll leave you to consider the implications of this suggestion.
The last point I wanted to make about homeopathy in this rant is that people often point to Health Canada's regulation of homeopathic remedies as an endorsement of homeopathy by Health Canada. It is not. Much as I'd like to say that the regulations are clear, they're at least understandable. And if you've got a cursory understanding in the field, you'll know what to look for.
A homeopathic remedy (which, to my dismay, can legally be called a "homeopathic medicine") must describe the 'active' ingredient, and must be at a potency of at least 12CH. If you haven't read up yet on homeopathic dilutions (Wikipedia), "potency" in the homeopathic world refers to how diluted it is. The higher the number, the more the ingredient has been diluted. From Wikipedia: "the greatest dilution that is reasonably likely to contain one molecule of the original substance is 12C, if starting from 1 mole of original substance."
In other words, Health Canada's regulations are designed to ensure that there is no more than one molecule of the 'active' ingredient per 6x1023 molecules of solvent (usually water). It's there to make sure it doesn't have any of the active ingredient in it (which is fine with the homeopaths, as they prefer to rely on the water's "memory") so that in case the active ingredient is toxic, at least the remedy won't do you any harm. Helpfully, Health Canada also requires the remedies to be labelled with a statement like "Consult a health care practitioner if symptoms persist or worsen", which is always good advice when administering a placebo.
So Health Canada will ensure that it's safe to take the stuff. As for efficacy, the Evidence for Homeopathic Medicines document from Health Canada states that, when a use is specified for the drug (i.e. "this is a dilution of bovine faeces, which is used in treating gullibility" as opposed to just "this is a dilution of bovine faeces"), the targeted condition—which cannot be one of the many major conditions listed in Schedule A of the Food and Drugs Act—must be effective based on one of various standards published by the Homeopathy industry. So Health Canada doesn't have any standards on making claims that homeopathic mixtures are effective at treating anything, so long as the homeopaths agree on it.
A certain skepticism of the medical community is healthy (no pun intended). I've even been known to myself. But it needs to be productive skepticism, like asking for evidence of the efficacy of something (as I did in my cryptic entry about the H1N1 vaccine linked in the previous sentence). The reaction my friend gave me when I called homeopathy out was not skepticism of conventional medicine, but pure distrust of it. If it were skepticism, I presume he'd have investigated the evidence for homeopathy's effectiveness instead of merely embracing it as an alternative to the thing he distrusts.
It is important to keep in mind that homeopathy originates before conventional medicine as we know it existed. Conventional medicine wasn't based on the scientific method, it was based on what was done to treat things in the past. You know, stuff like mercury, blood letting, and so on. Contrasted against that, doing nothing (which can be done very elaborately through homeopathy) usually yielded better results.
Unfortunately, now it's homeopathy that is acting based on an unchanged, unproven process, while conventional medicine has grown up. And homeopathy defenders, ironically, claim that as a benefit.
I'd go on, or at least go over this blog entry a couple times to strengthen the phrasing, if not the arguments, and maybe stick in something about how other quasi-medical people get grouped in—often willingly—with homeopaths, but it's getting late and my laptop's battery dying.
So unfortunately, I'll have to leave this blog entry like Homeopathy Week: weak.
- RG>
Sunday, February 24, 2013
The Cursive Conspiracy
There was a small media blip about cursive writing recently. Namely, that cursive writing might go the way of the Canadian penny, in that schoolteachers won't be required to teach it in Ontario. And like the penny, good riddance. Even better, educators are finding that proper typing is a more useful skill, and I wholeheartedly agree.
When I went through school, we were told a number of things about handwriting. We were not told that it was important because it was part of the curriculum (the word 'curriculum' had likely not entered my vocabulary yet, not to mention the bureaucratic environment from which it originates) but because it was a skill we children would need later in life. We were told the same thing a few years further in about the importance of writing in pen instead of pencil.
For example, I distinctly remember being told in elementary school that we'd have to get used to writing in pen, in cursive, because we'd be required to use it in middle school. Which was true enough--it was--except that middle school required us to follow the same convention only insofar as the same warning applied, this time one tier up looking on to high school.
Then the cracks started to show in the plan. Here's a sample of my notes from a high school English class:
This one was in pen, but it sure isn't cursive. In fact, it doesn't look much like print, either. The illegibility suggests that our high school teachers didn't really give a fuck how we wrote (which, sadly, seems to still be the case). None of my other surviving papers from high school were in cursive, either (though admittedly, most of the samples were from math and science classes, where print--and pencil--prevailed). Nevertheless, I seem to recall (and this might be apocryphal) a teacher telling us that we could print if we wanted to, but warned us that we'd be required in university/college/life to write in cursive.
In university, they really didn't give a fuck (the feeling was mutual). In fact, they distinctly discouraged us from writing in cursive on our written exams because it was so difficult for them to read the writing of these young adults who had been habituated into writing in cursive for school assignments but never properly disciplined in its use. (As for spelling and grammar, I agonized through the mandatory courses therein at university because they were teaching what was obvious to me. These basic lessons had long been ingrained in those of us who had endured the classes of our high school's old-school crone, who--bless her heart--would berate the hell out of you if you didn't heed her lessons on the nuances of English grammar.)
I recently discovered some old notebooks from early elementary school. My second grade teacher required us to write a diary and hand it in. She would then write some comment in it. And, as my friend observed reading through them, I wrote responses to her comments, often rather deadpan.
It's actually quite neat to find this, because it's a record with specific dates of where I've been. When going through the cache of school notebooks that contained this Grade 2 diary, I discarded a few which had no dates. I suppose it doesn't really matter what the date was in this case, but now in the information age we like our precision, which is included tacitly with each electronic snippet we produce. With e-mails and electronic agendas and date-stamped photos, etc., if for some odd reason I wanted to know what I was doing on a specific day in the last handful of years, I have ways of finding out. On handwritten notes, I now write the date obsessively, even writing the date of an annotation of an earlier, dated, note (sometimes I'll even write on an undated note a date wherein I speculate the date of the original note). I refer to older documents often enough that it annoys the hell out of me when I find something undated, because usually when I'm doing so it's to establish a chronology. The dates in this old diary were likely a teacher requirement rather than a habit of my own, but it is nice to have them nevertheless.
One particular entry, dated February 24 (no relation), ninteen-mumble-mumble, is illustrative of both. I had written it in cursive, which I suspect was at the encouragement of the teacher. It was in pencil, not pen, but we did a lot of erasing and correcting in those early days. It tells the story of a grand fort my friend and I had built at his place.
To this day, I remember quite a few details about this event: one of my parents drove me over to his house, which was in the Glebe (the significance of which was unapparent to me at the time). I went up to the door, and his mother answered. My friend wasn't in yet, she said, but I could wait for him. In fact, I think he was building a fort and I was to wait for him inside while he finished up. Perhaps we did work on the fort, since I don't remember much of what happened between arriving, looking at some toys and discussing them but not playing with them, and being picked up to leave. Okay, so maybe I don't remember so much, but the event as a whole I certainly remember, and it is nice to have this contemporary documentation of it.
Discovering the journal entry, decades later, it reads out succinctly as "On such-and-such date, I went to so-and-so's house and we dug out a fort [stet]." The teacher commented on how it was a good idea to visit a friend, and I replied coldly beneath her comment, "it was his [idea]." That's at least consistent with my recollection that he had started the fort long before I arrived. Perhaps I should have elaborated further, but it's too late now.
I also illustrated the diary entry with diagrams of the fort, once in plan view from above, and again in close up (I made a lot of blank pages which I called "drawings" of snow in elementary school).
But aside from the precise date and the minimalist banter, the big surprise was one that had eluded me for years. It was a clue staring me, staring all of my young colleagues, in the face: the cursive thing was a sham. For all the propaganda telling us we needed to write in cursive, my teacher's notes to me were in print!
If only I had looked between the lines to see my teacher's misstep, paid attention not to what she said but what she did. All of that stress, all of that browbeating, all of those threats that we'd never make it in the real world if we didn't write in cursive. It was all a lie. The writing on the cake was in cursive but the invoice for it was in print!
Sigh.
My handwriting still resembles the spaghetti in the high school example. I guess by high school I had determined the precise balance of just how messily I could write and still make out what it said. That way I can get down as much of a thought as possible before the rest escapes my mind. I can write clearly when I need to, by the way, although straight lines of text still elude me.
Rather, I can print clearly, when I need to.Which isn't often. Cursive--I literally can't think of when I last used it, but probably not since before high school.
So kids, if you're reading this at home, and teachers tell you you'll need to learn cursive, don't listen. Learn to print legibly and learn to type. And for god's sake, learn to spell: all the good jobs these days require good communication skills and no one like to hire people who can't spell.
- RG>
When I went through school, we were told a number of things about handwriting. We were not told that it was important because it was part of the curriculum (the word 'curriculum' had likely not entered my vocabulary yet, not to mention the bureaucratic environment from which it originates) but because it was a skill we children would need later in life. We were told the same thing a few years further in about the importance of writing in pen instead of pencil.
For example, I distinctly remember being told in elementary school that we'd have to get used to writing in pen, in cursive, because we'd be required to use it in middle school. Which was true enough--it was--except that middle school required us to follow the same convention only insofar as the same warning applied, this time one tier up looking on to high school.
Then the cracks started to show in the plan. Here's a sample of my notes from a high school English class:
This one was in pen, but it sure isn't cursive. In fact, it doesn't look much like print, either. The illegibility suggests that our high school teachers didn't really give a fuck how we wrote (which, sadly, seems to still be the case). None of my other surviving papers from high school were in cursive, either (though admittedly, most of the samples were from math and science classes, where print--and pencil--prevailed). Nevertheless, I seem to recall (and this might be apocryphal) a teacher telling us that we could print if we wanted to, but warned us that we'd be required in university/college/life to write in cursive.
In university, they really didn't give a fuck (the feeling was mutual). In fact, they distinctly discouraged us from writing in cursive on our written exams because it was so difficult for them to read the writing of these young adults who had been habituated into writing in cursive for school assignments but never properly disciplined in its use. (As for spelling and grammar, I agonized through the mandatory courses therein at university because they were teaching what was obvious to me. These basic lessons had long been ingrained in those of us who had endured the classes of our high school's old-school crone, who--bless her heart--would berate the hell out of you if you didn't heed her lessons on the nuances of English grammar.)
I recently discovered some old notebooks from early elementary school. My second grade teacher required us to write a diary and hand it in. She would then write some comment in it. And, as my friend observed reading through them, I wrote responses to her comments, often rather deadpan.
It's actually quite neat to find this, because it's a record with specific dates of where I've been. When going through the cache of school notebooks that contained this Grade 2 diary, I discarded a few which had no dates. I suppose it doesn't really matter what the date was in this case, but now in the information age we like our precision, which is included tacitly with each electronic snippet we produce. With e-mails and electronic agendas and date-stamped photos, etc., if for some odd reason I wanted to know what I was doing on a specific day in the last handful of years, I have ways of finding out. On handwritten notes, I now write the date obsessively, even writing the date of an annotation of an earlier, dated, note (sometimes I'll even write on an undated note a date wherein I speculate the date of the original note). I refer to older documents often enough that it annoys the hell out of me when I find something undated, because usually when I'm doing so it's to establish a chronology. The dates in this old diary were likely a teacher requirement rather than a habit of my own, but it is nice to have them nevertheless.
One particular entry, dated February 24 (no relation), ninteen-mumble-mumble, is illustrative of both. I had written it in cursive, which I suspect was at the encouragement of the teacher. It was in pencil, not pen, but we did a lot of erasing and correcting in those early days. It tells the story of a grand fort my friend and I had built at his place.
To this day, I remember quite a few details about this event: one of my parents drove me over to his house, which was in the Glebe (the significance of which was unapparent to me at the time). I went up to the door, and his mother answered. My friend wasn't in yet, she said, but I could wait for him. In fact, I think he was building a fort and I was to wait for him inside while he finished up. Perhaps we did work on the fort, since I don't remember much of what happened between arriving, looking at some toys and discussing them but not playing with them, and being picked up to leave. Okay, so maybe I don't remember so much, but the event as a whole I certainly remember, and it is nice to have this contemporary documentation of it.
Discovering the journal entry, decades later, it reads out succinctly as "On such-and-such date, I went to so-and-so's house and we dug out a fort [stet]." The teacher commented on how it was a good idea to visit a friend, and I replied coldly beneath her comment, "it was his [idea]." That's at least consistent with my recollection that he had started the fort long before I arrived. Perhaps I should have elaborated further, but it's too late now.
I also illustrated the diary entry with diagrams of the fort, once in plan view from above, and again in close up (I made a lot of blank pages which I called "drawings" of snow in elementary school).
But aside from the precise date and the minimalist banter, the big surprise was one that had eluded me for years. It was a clue staring me, staring all of my young colleagues, in the face: the cursive thing was a sham. For all the propaganda telling us we needed to write in cursive, my teacher's notes to me were in print!
If only I had looked between the lines to see my teacher's misstep, paid attention not to what she said but what she did. All of that stress, all of that browbeating, all of those threats that we'd never make it in the real world if we didn't write in cursive. It was all a lie. The writing on the cake was in cursive but the invoice for it was in print!
Sigh.
My handwriting still resembles the spaghetti in the high school example. I guess by high school I had determined the precise balance of just how messily I could write and still make out what it said. That way I can get down as much of a thought as possible before the rest escapes my mind. I can write clearly when I need to, by the way, although straight lines of text still elude me.
Rather, I can print clearly, when I need to.Which isn't often. Cursive--I literally can't think of when I last used it, but probably not since before high school.
So kids, if you're reading this at home, and teachers tell you you'll need to learn cursive, don't listen. Learn to print legibly and learn to type. And for god's sake, learn to spell: all the good jobs these days require good communication skills and no one like to hire people who can't spell.
- RG>
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
In defence of Larry O'Brien
Here I thought I'd retired the O'Brien tag on this blog, but of course this can't be.
When it was first confirmed that it was the real Larry O'Brien who had used a racial slur in a tweet about the U.S. primaries, my reaction was more fascination than upset.
Back when people paid attention to him, he was known for saying really stupid things, and it was always fun to watch him fumble his way out of it. Fun, that's all there is. To suggest he is racist because he used one racial slur is like accusing someone of infanticide for making a dead baby joke.
As hilarious as it is to watch him weasel out of it ("I already talked to my Hispanic friends and apologized to them"). I can easily give him the benefit of the doubt. I was at a talk on a matter of fiscal policy and a twenty-something used the phrase "final solution" to describe the goal of addressing the issue. After the meeting, someone sent an e-mail around expressing concern that this person used this term without realizing that it was Hitler's name for the Holocaust.
Racial slurs are a bit different than a phrase like "Final Solution" which has a benign denotation, but the comparators are stronger in this analogy than the differences. In order to reasonably jump from "O'Brien is a misguided twit who doesn't pick his words well" to "O'Brien is a racist" one would have to conclude that what he said was racist, not necessarily how he said it. Don't get me wrong, "spic" is a racist term, but if using the term makes you racist in any context, then I'm a racist for telling you that Larry used it. So context does matter, but many of the people criticizing him know little more of the situation than the fact that it included a nasty word. [Edit: to eat my own words, I wasn't aware of his comment about muslims until after writing up this blog post, which certainly puts more weight to epithets referencing O'Brien] If you take that out of the equation, we already know he's a misguided twit who doesn't pick his words well, so what's the harm of another turd in his outhouse?
And that's why my take on this whole situation is somewhat blasé. He's not the Mayor anymore, and people only pay attention to him when he does something stupid, so really he's pretty harmless. And as I wrote about after his acquittal on charges of electoral shenanigans, I'd far prefer him to be remembered for having been horribly incompetent as mayor of the capital of Canada than for some stupid thing he said after the world stopped caring about him.
He even reinforced this (albeit inadvertently) in his video confession to the Ottawa Sun when he remarked at how smoothly City Hall was running now. Remember that he had never sat through a City Council meeting before running for Mayor—a key plank in his platform, not just an embarrassing truth—so he never learned that things were running alright before him also.
As I tweeted the other day, the real surprise to me is not that some people now think less of Larry O'Brien for using a racial slur, but that some people's opinion of him still had room to go down.
- RG>
When it was first confirmed that it was the real Larry O'Brien who had used a racial slur in a tweet about the U.S. primaries, my reaction was more fascination than upset.
Back when people paid attention to him, he was known for saying really stupid things, and it was always fun to watch him fumble his way out of it. Fun, that's all there is. To suggest he is racist because he used one racial slur is like accusing someone of infanticide for making a dead baby joke.
As hilarious as it is to watch him weasel out of it ("I already talked to my Hispanic friends and apologized to them"). I can easily give him the benefit of the doubt. I was at a talk on a matter of fiscal policy and a twenty-something used the phrase "final solution" to describe the goal of addressing the issue. After the meeting, someone sent an e-mail around expressing concern that this person used this term without realizing that it was Hitler's name for the Holocaust.Racial slurs are a bit different than a phrase like "Final Solution" which has a benign denotation, but the comparators are stronger in this analogy than the differences. In order to reasonably jump from "O'Brien is a misguided twit who doesn't pick his words well" to "O'Brien is a racist" one would have to conclude that what he said was racist, not necessarily how he said it. Don't get me wrong, "spic" is a racist term, but if using the term makes you racist in any context, then I'm a racist for telling you that Larry used it. So context does matter, but many of the people criticizing him know little more of the situation than the fact that it included a nasty word. [Edit: to eat my own words, I wasn't aware of his comment about muslims until after writing up this blog post, which certainly puts more weight to epithets referencing O'Brien] If you take that out of the equation, we already know he's a misguided twit who doesn't pick his words well, so what's the harm of another turd in his outhouse?And that's why my take on this whole situation is somewhat blasé. He's not the Mayor anymore, and people only pay attention to him when he does something stupid, so really he's pretty harmless. And as I wrote about after his acquittal on charges of electoral shenanigans, I'd far prefer him to be remembered for having been horribly incompetent as mayor of the capital of Canada than for some stupid thing he said after the world stopped caring about him.
He even reinforced this (albeit inadvertently) in his video confession to the Ottawa Sun when he remarked at how smoothly City Hall was running now. Remember that he had never sat through a City Council meeting before running for Mayor—a key plank in his platform, not just an embarrassing truth—so he never learned that things were running alright before him also.
As I tweeted the other day, the real surprise to me is not that some people now think less of Larry O'Brien for using a racial slur, but that some people's opinion of him still had room to go down.
- RG>
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Pink irony
There were a few articles in the news lately about "pinkwashing": slapping a pink Breast Cancer Awareness Month ribbon on a product to make it sell better. One story in the Ottawa Citizen, Pink Fatigue describes the difficulty some groups face with the many caveats placed on the amounts given in these campaigns, and that money needs to go towards prevention, not just treatment. It's a controversial topic that I won't wade into too deeply.
Except to post this photo of the same issue covered last year.
I wonder if there was any effect on Telus' "Go Pink" campaign after the ad was placed right next to an article decrying just those types of ads!
- RG>
Except to post this photo of the same issue covered last year.
I wonder if there was any effect on Telus' "Go Pink" campaign after the ad was placed right next to an article decrying just those types of ads!- RG>
Saturday, April 23, 2011
For a free press, you must abandon your privacy
I tried commenting on the Ottawa Sun's new website, where they use this assheaded "Disqus" platform that tries to be a hell of a lot more than it is.
After typing my comment, I clicked on the "post as" button. Up came a dialog asking me to sign in using my Facebook, Twitter, Google, OpenID, or other account. I tried to sign in with my RealGrouchy google account, and it asked me if I wanted to remember this authentication (i.e. Google account with Disqus) or just do it this one time. It displayed "[name] realgrouchy@gmail.com" and I clicked "OK" expecting it to take me back to the comment form to customize how my name will appear and preview my comment.
Instead, it posted my real name, which was linked to http://profiles.google.com/realgrouchy. I do not associate my real name with RealGrouchy; it is an alias. I have plenty of other accounts to which I associate my real name, and if I wanted to use my real name I would have used one of them. The Ottawa Sun's "Sun and the City" blog (managed by Sue Sherring and Jon Willing) has posted comments before signed as RealGrouchy and linking to this blog, as has Citizen blogger David Reevely and even Ken Gray. This is because RealGrouchy has a reputation for making cogent (if sometimes aggressive) comments about relevant matters. I can be contacted to defend my comments, just as can those who sign with their real names. Sure it's an alias, but I could just as well have used an alias that looked like a real name and people would be none the wiser (actually, they'd be actively deceived).
Getting back to the Ottawa Sun/Disqus/Google website comments, I couldn't even access "http://profiles.google.com/realgrouchy" to change these settings because Google thinks my browser isn't new enough (it uses the same fucking engine as Firefox 4). When I am finally able to log in with Internet Explorer, if I change what name is associated with my account it doesn't change the previous comment. I can't customize any settings for my "google profile" account because it says I have to create a public profile to even access the settings, and I doubt it will help.
I've edited the comment, and sent a message to the Sun through their feedback form. That also doesn't appear to be working right, so I sent an e-mail to a couple people too explaining the situation and the nuances that should be investigated to improve the integrity of the system (I managed to temper it down to what I think was a rather polite message, from an angry "fuck you and your stupid comment system" type of thing, which wouldn't really help to encourage them to help me).
The Sun seems to be opening itself up to liability here, since it is allowing private contact information to be posted on their site without express authorization from the individual. That is in direct contravention to Canada's privacy legislation. Even if Disqus and Google aren't Canadian companies, it's still being published on the Sun's website.
The irony is that they instituted this comment thing to protect themselves from liability. Remember how Ken Gray always harps on about 'not being able to verify the identity of every commenter'? The Citizen also now requires you to log in to comment on their site, so I have ceased contributing to discussions on their site. Had they had a simple form that asked for name, required (but promised not to publish) an e-mail address, and offered the ability to add a URL, I could have commented and attributed my comment precisely as I wanted it to be published.
While I'll give the Sun the benefit of the doubt, since their new website is only a few days old and still in "beta", the way things are moving it seems that the mainstream, corporate media not only wants to store all sorts of information on your computer in the form of cookies (who knows how much information it tracks about you), but it also wants to take what information it does know about you from shared services and publish it against your will.
In essence, you must sell your soul and waive your right to privacy in order to participate in the information economy.
No wonder the comments sections on news sites are filled with posts by fucktards.
- RG>
After typing my comment, I clicked on the "post as" button. Up came a dialog asking me to sign in using my Facebook, Twitter, Google, OpenID, or other account. I tried to sign in with my RealGrouchy google account, and it asked me if I wanted to remember this authentication (i.e. Google account with Disqus) or just do it this one time. It displayed "[name] realgrouchy@gmail.com" and I clicked "OK" expecting it to take me back to the comment form to customize how my name will appear and preview my comment.
Instead, it posted my real name, which was linked to http://profiles.google.com/realgrouchy. I do not associate my real name with RealGrouchy; it is an alias. I have plenty of other accounts to which I associate my real name, and if I wanted to use my real name I would have used one of them. The Ottawa Sun's "Sun and the City" blog (managed by Sue Sherring and Jon Willing) has posted comments before signed as RealGrouchy and linking to this blog, as has Citizen blogger David Reevely and even Ken Gray. This is because RealGrouchy has a reputation for making cogent (if sometimes aggressive) comments about relevant matters. I can be contacted to defend my comments, just as can those who sign with their real names. Sure it's an alias, but I could just as well have used an alias that looked like a real name and people would be none the wiser (actually, they'd be actively deceived).
Getting back to the Ottawa Sun/Disqus/Google website comments, I couldn't even access "http://profiles.google.com/realgrouchy" to change these settings because Google thinks my browser isn't new enough (it uses the same fucking engine as Firefox 4). When I am finally able to log in with Internet Explorer, if I change what name is associated with my account it doesn't change the previous comment. I can't customize any settings for my "google profile" account because it says I have to create a public profile to even access the settings, and I doubt it will help.
I've edited the comment, and sent a message to the Sun through their feedback form. That also doesn't appear to be working right, so I sent an e-mail to a couple people too explaining the situation and the nuances that should be investigated to improve the integrity of the system (I managed to temper it down to what I think was a rather polite message, from an angry "fuck you and your stupid comment system" type of thing, which wouldn't really help to encourage them to help me).
The Sun seems to be opening itself up to liability here, since it is allowing private contact information to be posted on their site without express authorization from the individual. That is in direct contravention to Canada's privacy legislation. Even if Disqus and Google aren't Canadian companies, it's still being published on the Sun's website.
The irony is that they instituted this comment thing to protect themselves from liability. Remember how Ken Gray always harps on about 'not being able to verify the identity of every commenter'? The Citizen also now requires you to log in to comment on their site, so I have ceased contributing to discussions on their site. Had they had a simple form that asked for name, required (but promised not to publish) an e-mail address, and offered the ability to add a URL, I could have commented and attributed my comment precisely as I wanted it to be published.
While I'll give the Sun the benefit of the doubt, since their new website is only a few days old and still in "beta", the way things are moving it seems that the mainstream, corporate media not only wants to store all sorts of information on your computer in the form of cookies (who knows how much information it tracks about you), but it also wants to take what information it does know about you from shared services and publish it against your will.
In essence, you must sell your soul and waive your right to privacy in order to participate in the information economy.
No wonder the comments sections on news sites are filled with posts by fucktards.
- RG>
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Why do I even bother not stealing movies?
It turns out my issues with the fucks who decigned Dexter DVDs were grander than I thought.
Microsoft's insidious collaboration with the movie industry has finally hit me. I've kept Microsoft from installing WGA on my computer (I don't need a tool to know that I purchased this copy of Windows XP fair and square, or to keep me from using it once Microsoft's servers stop responding to WGA's requests), and I've stuck with Windows XP because of the DRM inherent to the more recent versions of Windows.
I just rented two DVDs from the video store--you know, instead of simply pirating them which would actually be easier and cheaper--and neither of them would play in Windows Media Player. They wouldn't open in the other program on my laptop, and they crashed my old laptop when I tried any of the three DVD players installed on it.
After over an hour of troubleshooting, my guests and I instead watched TV shows online.
This morning, I called Dell and asked them for help. The guy I spoke with essentially said, "oh yeah, some rental DVDs don't play on computers due to rights somethingorother" (he didn't say "somethingorother" exactly, but he sure didn't know it by name). At least I didn't have to go through dozens of prompts or wait on hold for hours to get this response.
He said the solution is simple: "when I get that problem, I just pop the DVD in to the DVD player and watch it on the TV." Well fuck you. I don't have a DVD player or a TV, and I'm not about to buy one knowing that the industries behind them are out to prevent me from paying for and watching their content.
Of course, the irony is that I specifically rented the videos out of some latent guilt about downloading (thanks to all sorts of fearmongering and propaganda from the movie industry), yet the movie industry itself is behind the restrictions that prevent me from watching these legally-obtained borrowed copies of the films. Not that this is news to anyone, especially me: anyone who follows slashdot has heard all the latest tricks of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), collectively and pejoratively referred to as the MAFIAA.
After my failed tech support call to Dell, I did a quick Google search, which returned VLC Player a free, open-source, cross-platform video player that is a project on SourceForge.net, a sister-company to Slashdot that hosts open-source development.
VLC player is able to play my DVDs flawlessly. I wish I'd found it last night when my friends were still here!
Anyway, I've learned my lesson about paying for copyrighted content. I'm going to go download some Bittorrent software and start getting my movies from the pirates, who are more trustworthy than the film industry.
PS: The Conservative party wants to facilitate this process of screwing media consumers and make the punishments stronger--their failed bills would have given Canada one of the most restrictive copyright regimes in the developed world. They scare you by saying the Liberal party will institute an "iPod tax", which is essentially what we already have, and which makes filesharing quasi-legal in Canada. If the Pirate Party has a candidate in your riding in the current federal election, go listen to what they have to say about copyright restrictions. They're not a joke party like the NeoRhino party, they're a serious one-issue party like the Marijuana party.
- RG>
Microsoft's insidious collaboration with the movie industry has finally hit me. I've kept Microsoft from installing WGA on my computer (I don't need a tool to know that I purchased this copy of Windows XP fair and square, or to keep me from using it once Microsoft's servers stop responding to WGA's requests), and I've stuck with Windows XP because of the DRM inherent to the more recent versions of Windows.
I just rented two DVDs from the video store--you know, instead of simply pirating them which would actually be easier and cheaper--and neither of them would play in Windows Media Player. They wouldn't open in the other program on my laptop, and they crashed my old laptop when I tried any of the three DVD players installed on it.
After over an hour of troubleshooting, my guests and I instead watched TV shows online.
This morning, I called Dell and asked them for help. The guy I spoke with essentially said, "oh yeah, some rental DVDs don't play on computers due to rights somethingorother" (he didn't say "somethingorother" exactly, but he sure didn't know it by name). At least I didn't have to go through dozens of prompts or wait on hold for hours to get this response.
He said the solution is simple: "when I get that problem, I just pop the DVD in to the DVD player and watch it on the TV." Well fuck you. I don't have a DVD player or a TV, and I'm not about to buy one knowing that the industries behind them are out to prevent me from paying for and watching their content.
Of course, the irony is that I specifically rented the videos out of some latent guilt about downloading (thanks to all sorts of fearmongering and propaganda from the movie industry), yet the movie industry itself is behind the restrictions that prevent me from watching these legally-obtained borrowed copies of the films. Not that this is news to anyone, especially me: anyone who follows slashdot has heard all the latest tricks of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), collectively and pejoratively referred to as the MAFIAA.
After my failed tech support call to Dell, I did a quick Google search, which returned VLC Player a free, open-source, cross-platform video player that is a project on SourceForge.net, a sister-company to Slashdot that hosts open-source development.
VLC player is able to play my DVDs flawlessly. I wish I'd found it last night when my friends were still here!
Anyway, I've learned my lesson about paying for copyrighted content. I'm going to go download some Bittorrent software and start getting my movies from the pirates, who are more trustworthy than the film industry.
PS: The Conservative party wants to facilitate this process of screwing media consumers and make the punishments stronger--their failed bills would have given Canada one of the most restrictive copyright regimes in the developed world. They scare you by saying the Liberal party will institute an "iPod tax", which is essentially what we already have, and which makes filesharing quasi-legal in Canada. If the Pirate Party has a candidate in your riding in the current federal election, go listen to what they have to say about copyright restrictions. They're not a joke party like the NeoRhino party, they're a serious one-issue party like the Marijuana party.
- RG>
Saturday, March 26, 2011
It's that hour again...
Well, it's time for my fourth annual Earth Hour-bashing post. As I've said in past years, I don't like to celebrate events that consider it special to turn the lights off for an hour; it's something I do for many hours every night. Twenty-four hours for Earth Day is enough in my books.
Some self-promoting environmentalists are promoting a candlelight vigil on Parliament Hill. Of course, candles are a much less efficient way to convert energy into light than electric lights are, and paraffin candles, being pure hydrocarbon, produce considerably more CO2 emissions than whatever the hell was burned to power that light you turn off. I'll laugh if some people end up driving downtown to get to the vigil.
So then people use beeswax candles, which they claim are 'carbon neutral' because it's from honeybees instead of million-year-old dinosaur bones. Notwithstanding that honeybees are producing less and less each year, if you want to reduce your CO2 emissions, you'd toss the beeswax candle into the trash. Once it gets to the landfill, its carbon will be stored and sequestered, which is much better than releasing it into the air by burning.
Then there are those who turn off the lights but still watch TV in the dark, because they're so superficially environmentalist that they can't even peel their arses off the couch for an hour to spend some time with the kids. Or there's the people who use battery-powered flash lights or unplug their laptops--apparently oblivious to the fact that they're simply using the electricity (converted and stored less efficiently in batteries) merely at a different time. These ones are the worst because they don't even get the theoretical message the Earth Hourers are trying to spread with this overhyped event. Does Jim Watson really need yet another event to pack into his agenda?
Speaking of the hype, I wouldn't be surprised if the energy "saved" by people turning off their lights is less than all the energy that goes into producing all the advertisements, posters, candles, publicity events, and three-fucking-storey-tall banners (below), plus the hot air from those of us pointing out how inane it is to celebrate a holiday that lasts only one hour. People are so disconnected from reality that the greenwashers have them convinced that electricity is the only form of energy that counts toward CO2 emissions.
In previous years, Earth Hour has gone by so quickly I didn't even get a chance to turn on all my lights and appliances in protest. This year I've got plans outside the house in the evening, so instead of leaving my house dark as it normally would be when I'm not inside it, I'll have to leave my lights on all day to make sure they'll be on during Earth Hour.
I wouldn't want someone walking by to see a dark window and think I'm an Earth Hour sycophant.
- RG>
Some self-promoting environmentalists are promoting a candlelight vigil on Parliament Hill. Of course, candles are a much less efficient way to convert energy into light than electric lights are, and paraffin candles, being pure hydrocarbon, produce considerably more CO2 emissions than whatever the hell was burned to power that light you turn off. I'll laugh if some people end up driving downtown to get to the vigil.
So then people use beeswax candles, which they claim are 'carbon neutral' because it's from honeybees instead of million-year-old dinosaur bones. Notwithstanding that honeybees are producing less and less each year, if you want to reduce your CO2 emissions, you'd toss the beeswax candle into the trash. Once it gets to the landfill, its carbon will be stored and sequestered, which is much better than releasing it into the air by burning.
Then there are those who turn off the lights but still watch TV in the dark, because they're so superficially environmentalist that they can't even peel their arses off the couch for an hour to spend some time with the kids. Or there's the people who use battery-powered flash lights or unplug their laptops--apparently oblivious to the fact that they're simply using the electricity (converted and stored less efficiently in batteries) merely at a different time. These ones are the worst because they don't even get the theoretical message the Earth Hourers are trying to spread with this overhyped event. Does Jim Watson really need yet another event to pack into his agenda?
Speaking of the hype, I wouldn't be surprised if the energy "saved" by people turning off their lights is less than all the energy that goes into producing all the advertisements, posters, candles, publicity events, and three-fucking-storey-tall banners (below), plus the hot air from those of us pointing out how inane it is to celebrate a holiday that lasts only one hour. People are so disconnected from reality that the greenwashers have them convinced that electricity is the only form of energy that counts toward CO2 emissions.
In previous years, Earth Hour has gone by so quickly I didn't even get a chance to turn on all my lights and appliances in protest. This year I've got plans outside the house in the evening, so instead of leaving my house dark as it normally would be when I'm not inside it, I'll have to leave my lights on all day to make sure they'll be on during Earth Hour.I wouldn't want someone walking by to see a dark window and think I'm an Earth Hour sycophant.
- RG>
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
The Ken Gray comeback tour
[Edit: added Ken Gray image. How could I forget!]
Ken Gray has returned from retirement. Last week, the 33-year veteran of old media announced that he was done with telling bloggers how not to blog.
He reiterates the old hyperbolic themes in this latest single, Truth through the mob. Read it now while it's still there!
This makes it awkward for the Ken Gray cover blogger (Ken Gray, an Ottawa citizen), who nevertheless appreciated the paranoid shout-out.
Me, I'm still working on sorting out the various different things said by Ken (and others), in order to write up at least 5 posts (so far) pointing out the many uncorrected (and certainly unapologized-for) errors, contradictions, ironies, and dare I say it, lies by Ken Gray.
At the moment, my screen looks like a web browser equivalent to this:
Once I get all the arguments sorted out, the jabbing puns put in the right place, and the references properly cited (something that Ken Gray says bloggers don't do), I'll post them up.
I've also been saving backup copies of all of Ken's posts and the comments thereon, lest some of them mysteriously disappear...
Unfortunately, I've been pretty busy lately at work. You see, I deliver little baggies of bulldog poo to mailboxes citywide, and lately there has been a mysterious increase in shipments... So I'm just squeezing out this little update in my lunch break.
- RG>
Ken Gray has returned from retirement. Last week, the 33-year veteran of old media announced that he was done with telling bloggers how not to blog.He reiterates the old hyperbolic themes in this latest single, Truth through the mob. Read it now while it's still there!
This makes it awkward for the Ken Gray cover blogger (Ken Gray, an Ottawa citizen), who nevertheless appreciated the paranoid shout-out.
Me, I'm still working on sorting out the various different things said by Ken (and others), in order to write up at least 5 posts (so far) pointing out the many uncorrected (and certainly unapologized-for) errors, contradictions, ironies, and dare I say it, lies by Ken Gray.
At the moment, my screen looks like a web browser equivalent to this:
Once I get all the arguments sorted out, the jabbing puns put in the right place, and the references properly cited (something that Ken Gray says bloggers don't do), I'll post them up.I've also been saving backup copies of all of Ken's posts and the comments thereon, lest some of them mysteriously disappear...
Unfortunately, I've been pretty busy lately at work. You see, I deliver little baggies of bulldog poo to mailboxes citywide, and lately there has been a mysterious increase in shipments... So I'm just squeezing out this little update in my lunch break.
- RG>
Friday, February 25, 2011
Ken Gray wants you to stop blogging
Ken Gray is a Serious Journalist. Like other isms (think "sexism" and "racism"), "journalism" in the way Ken Gray practises it means he doesn't like it when other people keep journals.In other words, Ken Gray doesn't want you to blog.
Of course, he can blog, but that's because he's a Serious Journalist. Gray's blog is called "the Bulldog", at http://www.ottawacitizen.com/bulldog (I post the link reluctantly, because I really don't like driving traffic to him). Living up to his name, a lot of what he says about blogging and social media is bull.
The latest round of his drivel about bloggers started with the post "Pity the poor blogger", in which he compares his Well-Visited Blog to the lesser citizen journalists who resort to Twitter because they are ashamed of how few people read their blog.
You can also follow Ken Gray on Twitter at @KenGray.
The self-appointed Minister of Truth followed up that post with "Blogging and the law: let the bloggers beware," in which he asserts that bloggers (and tweeters) shouldn't be trusted because they don't always get their facts right.
I'm not going to waste my time arguing with Ken Gray on the topic, but if you want to get into that discussion, I recommend this post by Twitterer Keenan Wellar and the comments to Ken's posts linked above. He's actually approved a couple of them that make decent points, and Ken graciously inserted his own comments into their comments instead of replying in a separate comment. It's like a Ministry of Truth certificate of inspection.
If you're really lucky, like me, Ken Gray will keep your comments all to himself. You see, Ken Gray upholds standards of Truth, and will only approve comments on his blog that are True, because as publisher he can be sued for libel. For example, one Truth is "Ken Gray is not a Hypocrite". I suspect it must be libelous to say otherwise, or to point out clear examples of hypocrisy by Ken Gray, as he will often not approve comments where you do so. I guess he's afraid that Ken Gray might sue the Citizen for defamation if the comments are allowed.
As a concrete example (which are definitely not allowed on the Bulldog blog when referring to Ken Gray being a hypocrite), the following comment must be libelous, because Ken Gray did not approve it when I posted the comment on his aforementioned post, "Bloggers and the Law: let the Bloggers Beware":
"I thought journalists were in favour of the widespread sharing of information; not restricting it to a select few approved by authorities. Of course, that assumes your oft-repeated definition of journalism applies to you.Well, Mea culpa. A couple of years ago when he went on one of his tirades about the anonymous ZeroMeansZero blog, I naively told him about the Streisand effect, and pointed out that by talking about ZMZ he was broadening its viewership with free advertising.
And you even admit you yourself make factual errors once in a while (an understatement, I must say), yet you contradictorily seem to think that people should not blog unless their posts are entirely without errors. You also lump all bloggers together, insulting an entire community en masse, including people who mostly write about knitting and pets.
Don't worry; I don't expect you to approve this comment. I've saved up a collection of my comments that you have censored, and your latest set of posts about bloggers has rekindled my urge to post them all on my own blog, where Ken Gray, self-appointed Minister of Truth can't veto them."
And as the ZMZ example illustrates, this is by far not the first time the Bulldog has come out at full bark on bloggers, or boldly expounded his virtuousness while cowardly concealing his foibles. Ken Gray's style is to make sweeping generalizations about groups of people or things when he doesn't agree with one or two members of those groups, and "bloggers" is perhaps his favourite group to talk about in this way.
I've got lots more to say about how Ken Gray is a liar, a coward, and a hypocrite, but for now I'll just say that people should follow his advice to not pay attention to blogs, starting with his.
To keep up with my upcoming series Ken Gray exposées, follow the ones that are tagged KenGray.
- RG>
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Bad saxophone music hurts my head
So let's say I've got this "friend" who has a genuinely good point on a couple of issues, but she only really cares about those issues. And she's a true believer in them. She has a somewhat wide audience and makes a lot of noise about her pet issues. Admittedly, not too many people take her seriously, but she likes to think they do.
Every now and then, she makes dramatic, sweeping generalizations to support her causes, and cites her two--well, I can't decide if they're sacred cows or a pair of one-trick ponies.
Anyway, she makes sweeping generalizations that support her cause, but only ever uses her handful of causes to support those generalizations. And whenever somebody brings an example of a similar case that falls under that generalization, she uses her platform to totally shit on that similar case. I guess it's a way to not always talk about her couple of issues.
Occasionally, someone will point out a major flaw in her argument--either it's based on a false premise, or the generalization is so broad that it goes way beyond the scope--sometimes to the point that she labels innocent people as malicious villains. (As you might guess, I've been this 'someone' on more than one occasion)
When this happens, she'll sometimes issue a quiet apology, but then will erase all trace of the error--by censoring the criticism, erasing the apology, and sometimes even the original argument. A surprising feat, really, in the age of information.
Unfortunately, one of these one-trick ponies (I guess this is the third, though this one has been dead for a while--and not beaten recently. If a fourth comes up, it'll be the apocalypse) is when she goes on about how much she values honesty, integrity, and sticking to one's word. Which kind of goes against the whole 'not admitting mistakes (or not for long)', 'censoring criticism', and censoring oneself after the fact.
In my mind, he's a hypocrite and a fucking coward, but what can you do?
What can I do?
- RG>
Every now and then, she makes dramatic, sweeping generalizations to support her causes, and cites her two--well, I can't decide if they're sacred cows or a pair of one-trick ponies.
Anyway, she makes sweeping generalizations that support her cause, but only ever uses her handful of causes to support those generalizations. And whenever somebody brings an example of a similar case that falls under that generalization, she uses her platform to totally shit on that similar case. I guess it's a way to not always talk about her couple of issues.
Occasionally, someone will point out a major flaw in her argument--either it's based on a false premise, or the generalization is so broad that it goes way beyond the scope--sometimes to the point that she labels innocent people as malicious villains. (As you might guess, I've been this 'someone' on more than one occasion)
When this happens, she'll sometimes issue a quiet apology, but then will erase all trace of the error--by censoring the criticism, erasing the apology, and sometimes even the original argument. A surprising feat, really, in the age of information.
Unfortunately, one of these one-trick ponies (I guess this is the third, though this one has been dead for a while--and not beaten recently. If a fourth comes up, it'll be the apocalypse) is when she goes on about how much she values honesty, integrity, and sticking to one's word. Which kind of goes against the whole 'not admitting mistakes (or not for long)', 'censoring criticism', and censoring oneself after the fact.
In my mind, he's a hypocrite and a fucking coward, but what can you do?
What can I do?
- RG>
5 Examples of Americans Thinking Foreign People Are Magic
There's a great article on Cracked.com from October called 5 Examples of Americans Thinking Foreign People Are Magic. Got the link from the depressing hanzi smatter blog (which I got to from a slashdot comment. It tells people what their stupid Chinese tattoo really means).
This is a pretty solid article, and it's only long from the snarkily-captioned images.
Pity, that.
- RG>
This is a pretty solid article, and it's only long from the snarkily-captioned images.
But bring the superstition from a foreign culture, and suddenly you are in business. You can apparently still convince a shockingly large portion of the population that you can see the future if you're doing it with Tarot cards. They come from the gypsies after all. Of course, these same people would slap you if you offered to tell their fortune from a standard card deck.Unfortunately, our homegrown homeopathy (not mentioned in the article) breaks the trend: it was invented in a different culture--in time, not in geography--and people still flock to it.
Despite being pretty stupid, feng shui got particularly hot in the 90's, with Donald Trump, Oprah, and firms like Salomon Smith Barney hiring feng shui consultants to maximize their chi. Of course, this is the equivalent of a Chinese Executive pinning 4-leaf clovers all over his office.
Pity, that.
- RG>
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
City flip-flops on tunnel length
I'm not as hellbent against Ottawa's proposed transit tunnel as Ken Gray is, though many details and options were glossed over in the decision to go with the current transit strategy. This is a slight improvement over the previous plan, which was entirely mired in secrecy, to the point that Councillors had to sign a non-disclosure agreement just to see the contract they were approving.
Citizen blogger David Reevely has been reading the City's Interim geotechnical report (which I haven't read). Apparently, as reported in an article posted to the Citizen's website this afternoon, they want to shorted the length of the tunnel by almost one-third from the current 3.2 km.
That would bring it to about 2.5km. Which is what was originally proposed in 2008 for the tunnel. At some point since then, the length of the proposed tunnel was extended 0.7km to bring the end of the tunnel closer to Lees station. At the time, it was cited that this would make it logistically easier to extract the TBM, and would be less disruptive than if the tunnel had to make a steep climb up near Laurier. City staff said the cost difference wouldn't be significant.
Now we're hearing the reverse.
We've been told time and time again that the price tag on the rail project is a "very conservative estimate" that will come down as details are worked out, and that the project includes a $100M contingency to cover unexpected increases in cost. This was the party line repeated time and time again by then-Mayor Larry O'Brien and then-Transit Committee Chair Alex Cullen--neither of whom were re-elected.
Now we're hearing that the geotechnical parameters of the tunnel exceed those of the "very conservative estimate."
While it might be tempting to think this apparently new recommendation came about because we have more information, how new can that information be if the original proposal suggested the same thing?
- RG>
Citizen blogger David Reevely has been reading the City's Interim geotechnical report (which I haven't read). Apparently, as reported in an article posted to the Citizen's website this afternoon, they want to shorted the length of the tunnel by almost one-third from the current 3.2 km.
That would bring it to about 2.5km. Which is what was originally proposed in 2008 for the tunnel. At some point since then, the length of the proposed tunnel was extended 0.7km to bring the end of the tunnel closer to Lees station. At the time, it was cited that this would make it logistically easier to extract the TBM, and would be less disruptive than if the tunnel had to make a steep climb up near Laurier. City staff said the cost difference wouldn't be significant.
Now we're hearing the reverse.
We've been told time and time again that the price tag on the rail project is a "very conservative estimate" that will come down as details are worked out, and that the project includes a $100M contingency to cover unexpected increases in cost. This was the party line repeated time and time again by then-Mayor Larry O'Brien and then-Transit Committee Chair Alex Cullen--neither of whom were re-elected.
Now we're hearing that the geotechnical parameters of the tunnel exceed those of the "very conservative estimate."
While it might be tempting to think this apparently new recommendation came about because we have more information, how new can that information be if the original proposal suggested the same thing?
- RG>
Sunday, December 05, 2010
City Council governance notes
There are a whole bunch of governance-related recommendations to City Council, including a number of additional reports linked at the bottom of that 66-page one. These are recommendations like establishing a Transit Commission and a Board of Health, and restructuring City Committees and how they run their meetings.
I'm still going through it all, but there are a couple of interesting, sometimes ironic, elements:
- The report says the clerk's office spoke with outgoing members of council for their feedback on what to fix in the upcoming term, but not all incoming members. However, many mentions are made of discussions with the incoming mayor, but none with the outgoing one. (Probably a good thing--he's 'fixed' enough already!)
- For all the talk about creating a Transit commission, the only thing that will effectively change is that instead of being a committee of 9 Councillors, it will be 8 councillors and 3 citizen appointees. For all the desire for OC Transpo to be "fixed", the report talks a heck of a lot about how much won't change.
- The governance report expounds the City's goals of public input, yet the recommendations are not being heard at any Committee (including Committee of the Whole) where members of the public will be able to speak to any of these recommendations.
- Interestingly, the Ottawa Community Housing Corporation wants to add an additional community-member seat to its board, in order to allow retiring Councillor Peggy Feltmate to continue her activities. If I read things right, this will put the representation of councillors to non-councillors on the board at 50/50.
- The feedback from Advisory Committees includes recommendations from something referred to as "EDAC", without any references to the full name of the committee. Ironically, this is the Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee, whose job it presumably would be to ensure that people can understand what's going on at City Hall.
- The Advisory Committee (AC) feedback document contains a lot of duplication, since each committee wrote them separately based on a joint meeting of AC chairs and vice-chairs. I'm pretty sure that these joint-AC initiatives were instigated by the Pedestrian and Transit Advisory Committee, yet there is no feedback from that committee listed here.
- There is a draft petition policy, meaning that petitions you may have submitted to Council in the past had no official standing. The new policy comes with some pretty stringent standards:
The report is a thorough, if dry, review of the City's existing and proposed governance structure. While I'd recommend it for people who participate in municipal affairs, I don't think it's required reading, unless you work in City Hall yourself. It's more of a theoretical framework than a practical guide of how you can participate. Read the main recommendations (summarized in bold at the beginning of the governance review document) and skim over the document for items of interest, including the attachments.
There are some curiosities, like the ones listed above, but for the most part it's housekeeping. Yes, things will change, but that's a given with any new mayor and council.
- RG>
I'm still going through it all, but there are a couple of interesting, sometimes ironic, elements:
- The report says the clerk's office spoke with outgoing members of council for their feedback on what to fix in the upcoming term, but not all incoming members. However, many mentions are made of discussions with the incoming mayor, but none with the outgoing one. (Probably a good thing--he's 'fixed' enough already!)
- For all the talk about creating a Transit commission, the only thing that will effectively change is that instead of being a committee of 9 Councillors, it will be 8 councillors and 3 citizen appointees. For all the desire for OC Transpo to be "fixed", the report talks a heck of a lot about how much won't change.
- The governance report expounds the City's goals of public input, yet the recommendations are not being heard at any Committee (including Committee of the Whole) where members of the public will be able to speak to any of these recommendations.
- Interestingly, the Ottawa Community Housing Corporation wants to add an additional community-member seat to its board, in order to allow retiring Councillor Peggy Feltmate to continue her activities. If I read things right, this will put the representation of councillors to non-councillors on the board at 50/50.
- The feedback from Advisory Committees includes recommendations from something referred to as "EDAC", without any references to the full name of the committee. Ironically, this is the Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee, whose job it presumably would be to ensure that people can understand what's going on at City Hall.
- The Advisory Committee (AC) feedback document contains a lot of duplication, since each committee wrote them separately based on a joint meeting of AC chairs and vice-chairs. I'm pretty sure that these joint-AC initiatives were instigated by the Pedestrian and Transit Advisory Committee, yet there is no feedback from that committee listed here.
- There is a draft petition policy, meaning that petitions you may have submitted to Council in the past had no official standing. The new policy comes with some pretty stringent standards:
Petition RequirementsIt's nice that they're accepting electronic petitions (easier to manage on their end, too!), but I wonder what happens to all the petitions that were started before this policy comes into force? Will this mean that petitions that would have previously been received (albeit without formal protocol) will be outright refused and can't even be submitted informally?Submission of Petitions
- The petition must be addressed to the City of Ottawa/ Ottawa City Council and request a particular action within the authority of Council.
- Petitions must be legible, typewritten or printed in ink (no pencil)
- The text of the petition must be listed at the top of each page for multiple-page petitions. Pages should be numbered and total number of pages indicated.
- The petition must be appropriate and respectful in tone, and must not contain any improper or offensive language or information.
- Each petitioner must print and sign his or her own name. A paper petition must contain original signatures only, written directly on the petition.
- Each petitioner must provide his or her full address.
- For electronic petitions, petitioners must provide name, address and a valid e-mail address.
- The petition must clearly disclose on each page that it will be considered a public document at the City of Ottawa and that information contained in it may be subject to the scrutiny of the City and other members of the general public.
- Petitions containing original signatures should be sent to the attention of the City Clerk by mail or delivered in person to Ottawa City Hall or and City of Ottawa Client Service Centre.
- Petitions may also be submitted to the Mayor or any member of City Council.
- Electronic Petitions may be submitted electronically the attention of the City Clerk at petitions@ottawa.ca.
- All petitions that meet the above standards will be presented to Council at its next regular meeting, or the meeting at which the subject of the petition is to be discussed.
- Standing Committees cannot formally accept petitions. Petitions received at Standing Committees will be forwarded to the Clerk and presented to full Council at its next regular meeting, or the meeting at which the subject of the petition is to be discussed
- Council has the discretion to accept the petition, and Council’s decision is final.
The report is a thorough, if dry, review of the City's existing and proposed governance structure. While I'd recommend it for people who participate in municipal affairs, I don't think it's required reading, unless you work in City Hall yourself. It's more of a theoretical framework than a practical guide of how you can participate. Read the main recommendations (summarized in bold at the beginning of the governance review document) and skim over the document for items of interest, including the attachments.
There are some curiosities, like the ones listed above, but for the most part it's housekeeping. Yes, things will change, but that's a given with any new mayor and council.
- RG>
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Thought of the [undefined period of time] #11
The man who hides his words is as much a coward as the one who hides his name.
Previous undefined period of time: 5 months, 27 days, 7h24
- RG>
Previous undefined period of time: 5 months, 27 days, 7h24
- RG>
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Larry O'Brien signs on
Ottawa Sun columnist/blogger Sue Sherring notes a Larry O'Brien campaign sign on a lawn on Baseline Road, despite claiming to not use campaign signs this time around. (Protip: if riding/walking/driving on Baseline gets you down, try pronouncing it like "Vaseline")
I noticed this Larry O'Brien sign up on a balcony of the Bell Street apartments on in early August. They (or two very similar signs) were on the balcony of one of the houses across the street a few days prior.
Tough call. On the one hand, it gives him exposure. On the other hand, it associates him with a major downtown eyesore.
- RG>
I noticed this Larry O'Brien sign up on a balcony of the Bell Street apartments on in early August. They (or two very similar signs) were on the balcony of one of the houses across the street a few days prior.Tough call. On the one hand, it gives him exposure. On the other hand, it associates him with a major downtown eyesore.
- RG>
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
It takes a douche to know one...
Did you hear the one about the porn store told to take down their sandwich board? Wilde's, on Bank at Gilmour, was paid a visit by a by-law officer because the sign out front of his store was apparently 'offensive'. Turns out seeing the sign reminds somebody of a bad childhood experience, and that somebody wants by-law officers to censor it.
So what's the sign a picture of? An older man eyeing a young boy? Some crazy BDSM nightmare fetish? A big white van (which would trouble him if he's an asthmatic like me, because it would remind him of the onset of rampant gas-guzzlers, prior to which air was fresh)?
Nope. No picture at all, just words. You can read them yourself, all you have to do is list the bristol board cover that says "This covered sign has been Censored by the City of Ottawa ANAL By-law #2004-239."
And lift it is what a number of people did when I was in the area recently. Young couples, middle-age couples, individuals. Universally, they read the sign and had a giggle:
"Put a smile in your ass with our anal douches :*)"
Of course, the by-law officers mindlessly followed this guy's complaint--you know, 'just doing their job to enforce by-laws'--and forced Wilde's owner, Robert Giacobbi, to cover the sign.
Of course, had they really been doing their job, they would have noticed the boobies on display across the street at Wicked Wanda's. (Then again, maybe they did notice, but aren't quite so hard on Wanda)
Quoted in Capital Xtra, the complainer, Richard Cormier, says that "children don't have to see that."
Also on the list of things children don't have to see is grown adults breaking shop windows to keep them from speaking freely. Which must be why Cormier smashed the window in the middle of night, while children are asleep.
Now if only we can get them to stop advertising those white vans...
- RG>
So what's the sign a picture of? An older man eyeing a young boy? Some crazy BDSM nightmare fetish? A big white van (which would trouble him if he's an asthmatic like me, because it would remind him of the onset of rampant gas-guzzlers, prior to which air was fresh)?Nope. No picture at all, just words. You can read them yourself, all you have to do is list the bristol board cover that says "This covered sign has been Censored by the City of Ottawa ANAL By-law #2004-239."
And lift it is what a number of people did when I was in the area recently. Young couples, middle-age couples, individuals. Universally, they read the sign and had a giggle:
"Put a smile in your ass with our anal douches :*)"Of course, the by-law officers mindlessly followed this guy's complaint--you know, 'just doing their job to enforce by-laws'--and forced Wilde's owner, Robert Giacobbi, to cover the sign.
Of course, had they really been doing their job, they would have noticed the boobies on display across the street at Wicked Wanda's. (Then again, maybe they did notice, but aren't quite so hard on Wanda)
Quoted in Capital Xtra, the complainer, Richard Cormier, says that "children don't have to see that." Also on the list of things children don't have to see is grown adults breaking shop windows to keep them from speaking freely. Which must be why Cormier smashed the window in the middle of night, while children are asleep.
Now if only we can get them to stop advertising those white vans...
- RG>
Saturday, July 24, 2010
BBC Rail Safety applies to cyclists, too
BBC show Top Gear's host Jeremy Clarkson has an important safety message about level train crossings:
Of course, this life-saving lesson applies to cyclists and pedestrians, too. If you're going to ride the wrong way across a bus route or walk across a restricted-access freeway, always wear a helmet and high-visibility jacket.
- RG>
Of course, this life-saving lesson applies to cyclists and pedestrians, too. If you're going to ride the wrong way across a bus route or walk across a restricted-access freeway, always wear a helmet and high-visibility jacket.
- RG>
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