Help to keep broadband competitive in Canada.

Earlier today, I received an email from my ISP (Internet Service Provider) TekSavvy Solutions Inc. . In short, it states that the CRTC recently made an interim decision that would likely cause all wholesale ISPs to go out of business. This would leave us with only Telus and Shaw in B.C. and Alberta, Bell and Rogers/Cogeco in Ontario, and Bell and Videotron/Cogeco in Quebec.

With no competition, they would be able to use DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) to detect the sites you view and create direct advertising in your browser based on your site views and file downloads. Using these same technologies, they could also turn the internet into a pay-per-website service similar to how you pay for different TV channels.

Go to the website mentioned within their email to send a message via email to Industry Minister Tony Clement, Prime Minister Harper, Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff, and your MP. The website describes the issue in a nutshell, and gives multiple reasons why cabinet should reverse the decision.

See the body of the email after the jump.

Ubuntu 10.04 .....

Ubuntu 10.04 is codenamed Lucid Lynx. That is all.

A little bit about Haiku

In it's current state, there isn't much to say about the Haiku Alpha 1. The network adapter wasn't recognized in Virtualbox, it didn't recognize the virtual SATA drive, and there aren't really any applications included with it

but...

A look at Haiku coming up soon

I was originally planning on looking at/reviewing Debian Linux 5.0 (Lenny) after my Arch Linux review, but I'll be looking at Haiku next. I downloaded the ISO file of Haiku Alpha 1 on Sunday when it was released and have been seeding since then, but I haven't tried it yet. Haiku is an open source operating system compatible with BeOS. It is not Linux or Unix. Apparently it's REALLY fast and lightweight.

After Haiku, I'll be looking at Debian 5(.0.3) .

Arch Linux 2009.08 Review - Part 2 of 2

I decided to keep the screenshots to a minimum in this post. I mainly followed the very detailed Arch Linux Beginners Guide and since nearly everything I did is enter commands, I didn't think screenshots were necessary.

Windows 7 beats yet another OS!!!

Turns out there's more about Windows 7 that I'm not aware of. According to Microsoft, Windows 7 is also better than Mac OS X. I didn't know that. Well, it's a good thing I'm not using a Mac... wait a minute... I AM! I apparently need to give Windows 7 another try and never use Mac OS X or Linux again... or not.

Watch out Best Buy employees, I might soon be coming to your store to test you.

Windows is better than Linux, no questions asked

Microsoft is sending out training materials to Best Buy employees in preparation for Windows 7. One course in particular is titled "Comparing Windows 7 to Linux-based PCs".

The objectives are for employees to understand "how Windows 7 can provide a richer and more engaging experience than Linux", and to understand "the specific benefits of running Windows 7 on a netbook" bullshit.

One slide mentions that Ubuntu Linux takes a lot of time to maintain and has hundreds of updates each month. I don't think I've ever seen more than 100 updates in a month. Many, if not most of Ubuntu's updates are easily less than 500KB and these updates are release ASAP. Windows updates are usually sent out on "Patch Tuesday" (Second Tuesday of the month [... wait, that's today. Time to run Microsoft Update.]) Additionally, updates in Linux are done within the Package Manager and can update all installed applications and libraries. Windows on the other hand, can only update Windows itself and Microsoft applications, which makes its updates smaller than those for most Linux distributions.

On the same slide, it says "It can be unclear to users whether or not software updates need to be applied immediately or are optional". I guess that means the priority categories in Ubuntu's update manager are completely useless.

I could go on, but it's pretty useless since nearly every slide, if not all, is full of BS.

Microsoft internal slideshow for retailers targets Linux

Update on Snow Leopard

I'm not seeing any major improvement from Leopard, if any. At least it's not any slower. Maybe I should try doing an Erase And Install at some point. I'm still stuck with the Windows way of thinking after using it for so many years. 15 years to be precise.