I’m firmly in the men’s rights camp at this point, especially because I’ve seen the way women can profit immensely from crying rape, or winning a man’s hard earned money in a divorce settlement forcing him to work until death or flee to a non-treaty country, simply because she has to leave the marriage to find herself yet can’t bear the thought of pulling her socks up and getting a job.

The law particularly in Ontario creates a blind bureaucracy that automatically robs men of power and security – even a relationship with a woman can end your freedom. Cohabit for 6 months and she wants a free ride? Common-law marriage. Your money is hers now.

Object to all this? You’re a dinosaur, a throwback who hates women.

The protesters in this article don’t surprise me in the least.

Read more: http://www.torontosun.com/2012/12/07/shrill-backlash-to-mens-rights-advocate

The new technology allows Samsung’s Smart TVs — including Series 7 and Series 8 sets — to display IPTV services provided by Elion (part of the TeliaSonera group) in Estonia. The solution comes with full support for key linear, recording, catch-up and on-demand features.

From a technical point of view this is stupid. Swearing off set top boxes without a standard way to deliver to an IPTV means vendor lock-in at a time when competition is key.

Read more: http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2012/12/06/samsung-and-teliasonera-drop-the-set-top-box-with-launch-of-worlds-first-iptv-solution-for-smart-tvs/

I’ve noted that while a lot of the talk of the UN “taking over the Internet” is American business interest hyperbole, international telcos have been using the upcoming talks about Internet governance to push the international telco dream of forcing content companies to subsidize network builds. It’s a cash grab by government-pampered monopolists, plain and simple.

Right now a secretive organization is meeting in private to make this and other decisions that could have a disastrous impact on the economic potential of the Internet and your freedom to use it.

Arab nations are pushing for regulation against blasphemy. To them, everything is blasphemy.

Though the United States has vowed to vigorously oppose regulation affecting freedoms, they do not have a vested interest in protecting all Internet freedom. Thus, they will have to abide by whatever is decided. All governments will.

Google is operating a site intended to educate people and call for them to speak up about this outrage. They have it here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/takeaction/whats-at-stake/

Read the original DSLReports article: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/European-Telcos-Feebly-Try-to-Justify-ITU-Cash-Grab-122259

“If Mr. Ford had shown some contrition before the the judge – some minimal respect for due process and the law – he might well have gotten off. But he did not. The judge, by all accounts a man of probity, was scathing and blunt. He condemned the mayor’s “stubborn sense of entitlement,” and he was exactly right. Mr. Ford’s serial abuses of power were trivial, but they were also relentless and profoundly stupid.”

I find it hard to disagree with this opinion piece. Rob Ford had good ideas, such as the long term plan to expand the subway, and bicyclists really are an unwelcome, reckless and arrogant presence in the downtown core. One need only be a pedestrian or driver for a brief period of time to know this to be true.

The author is also correct in pointing out that the alternative candidates, both at the time of Ford’s election and in the present day, are not attractive. I’m personally of the opinion that anyone who feels the need to gain political power is a sociopath and thus a bad person, making the decision on whom to vote for even more difficult.

But I don’t think Ford took the job seriously in the slightest. Commandeering two buses (the second because the first one wasn’t timely) after dumping their passengers on the sidewalk is a signature of his overbearing personality. It’s difficult to bear having a city run by a cartoon character.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/rob-ford-too-stubborn-to-be-mayor/article5707594/

Interesting insight into the multitasking model for Windows RT apps.

The implication is that desktop apps follow the old model – this is borne out by my experience – after prolonged periods of time in a metro app, upon return to the desktop, nothing has to resume or reconnect.

The more I watch these videos, the more I get the sense that Microsoft culture has placed the desktop firmly in the past. For them, “modern” (metro) is the future.

Read more: http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Inside-Windows-8-Arun-Kishan-Windows-App-Model

This is a follow-up of sorts to the original post, iPhone.

Since having bought an original iPhone, shipped from Manhattan in 2007, a lot has changed. As time rolled on, updates to the iPhone OS, now dubbed ‘iOS’ enabled many of the features I had hoped for in the original post – over the air calendar and contacts sync, third party applications, unlocked iPhones sold directly from Apple, and so on. It’s been good times for iPhone users.

Some time after the iPhone I upgraded to the iPhone 3G, and this lasted me a good two years, for a total of four years as an iPhone user. I had no practical complaints either – the phone sent and received e-mail, properly processed calendar invitations, properly listed all my calendars in all my various e-mail accounts, had a great selection of apps, you name it. I then made a curious decision: I switched to an Android phone.

I became enthralled with Google’s professed idea of a smartphone that put me in the driver’s seat – access to the filesystem, multitasking, browser plug-ins, the trappings of a desktop computer. Free and open source, which I also liked. I was so interested in this that I overlooked the obvious faults of my first Android phone, a Sony XPeria X10.

This phone lacked a lot. It had no ActiveSync support built in, instead shipping with a poorly executed third party app called ‘Moxier Mail’ which could connect to only one account at a time. The phone was terribly slow, frequently refusing to respond to the touch for seconds at a time while performing tasks such as loading a web page or synchronizing e-mail folders. The battery lasted maybe 3 hours. Android applications were simplistic and quickly abandoned by their developers, with few exceptions.

I stuck it out, believing this was the dawn of a truly free handheld – one whose operating system and software applications I could completely control, just as I do with my desktop computers. I bought it, I’d own it. I blamed Sony for all the XPeria’s faults and waited for the dawn.

Time went by – the battery died completely, and I replaced it with a Samsung Galaxy S Infuse 4G – one of the last of the original Galaxy S phones. Sporting a big beautiful 4.5 inch screen, it was quite a striking looking device.

It too had obvious faults. It had an updated version of Android (2.3) which now supported multiple ActiveSync accounts, barely. The phone lagged severely during the initial sync, and during each periodic sync after that. The calendar client was disappointing, permitting only the primary calendar in each account to be seen. E-Mail search was unavailable. The E-Mail client did not respect the reply-to field, nor did it properly reply to messages when the body of the message was very long. Sometimes it would crash, sometimes it would randomly insert message header lines in the body of the message, and at other times it would insert random characters or snippets of the original message to which you were replying. What a mess. Completely incapable of coherent communication. Android applications remained primitive, ugly – a clear demonstration that their designers lacked interest and motivation to create quality software.

Shortly after I bought the Samsung, it came to light that they would no longer provide updates. I looked to community forums and found insufficient interest in my handset, and thus no custom ROM was developed to a reasonable degree of completion. As a final insult, on a day on which I was travelling the phone crashed and drained the battery that morning, stranding me with nothing but dependence on payphones. I blamed Samsung for their inattention to long-term support.

The phone met a sticky end. Greatly frustrated I drowned it in the kitchen sink. I didn’t know where to go next. Insistent that the next phone I buy should support my free software ideologies, I went in search of a fully updated Android device. I tested the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich (and also Jelly Bean) to see if they could do the things I expected. Search worked. Reply seemed to work. Finally. I debated the Galaxy Note 2 and the newest kid on the block, the Google Nexus 4.

Both phones offered striking feature sets – the Galaxy Note 2 with its S-Pen stylus and note taking applications which synced to the ever popular EverNote service, and the Nexus 4 with its extremely low price, the fact that it’s carrier neutral and unlocked by default, and most importantly, it received operating system updates from Google itself, similar to the way the iPhone receives frequent updates well into old age.

Serious doubts remained. I had already invested in two high-end Android phones and both, in retrospect, were bitter disappointments that I continued to use in the hope that the ecosystem would self-correct. It did not. On review of the latest Android devices and system software, it became clear that a litany of basic issues remain. Android remains incompetent at business communication. The applications and media available for them are juvenile at best. The Android ecosystem itself has failed to deliver on its promise of freedom through open-source – handset makers and carriers kept crucial components close to their vests, making the operating system as good as closed-source.

Heading off all the potential Android fans out there: Yes, I tried all the alternative mail clients. Yes, I looked extensively through the Google Play Store for high quality applications. Yes, I investigated the alternative ROMs available for my phones and many other more popular phones at length. You’ll think I’m a staunch Apple fan who went into the Android world with impossible expectations – I stuck it out patiently for almost two years.

I have simple requirements – as I mentioned before in regard to the iPhone and iPhone 3G I had previously owned:

I had no practical complaints either – the phone sent and received e-mail, properly processed calendar invitations, properly listed all my calendars in all my various e-mail accounts, had a great selection of apps, you name it.

Though I blamed Sony and Samsung for the issues surrounding their products, Android was Google’s idea. They failed to execute. To maintain control. To demand that the handsets remain open source, with properly documented drivers.

It is at this point during my deliberations on where to go next that I realized I had made a mistake. I let ideology get in the way of productivity in an ecosystem that doesn’t care for ideology at all. I let ideology get in the way of personal enjoyment of devices I had spent hard earned dollars on. I even made the mistake of persuading a few other folks to give Android a try.

But I had been much happier with an iPhone.

While I had spent nearly two years stamping about in what can only be described as a digital ghetto, I looked behind me. The iPhone had grown. It had made Apple an even more monumental success. It had made missteps of its own, but even these battle scars didn’t come close to the inadequacies of today’s latest and most powerful Android devices.

Decision made, I ordered an unlocked iPhone 5, black. It gets delivered to me December 4. I’m counting the days.

Despite Intel’s claims to the contrary, Linux support in their new Clover Trail atom chipset will not come into play where it matters.

You will not see a Windows 8 tablet onto which you can install Linux. Graphics and power management drivers will not be provided and are not part of Intel’s open source portfolio.

You’ll buy a tablet that can only run Windows 8, and perhaps a second variant that WILL run Android, but the bootloader will be locked, and it will only be sold by phone companies.

And that’s how you’ll like it.

“To some, this repetition is now boring. But I think Apple looks at it the opposite way: they’re perfecting their trick.”

Refining and perfecting have always been some of Apple’s best methods. Consumers often expect a revolution with every new computing device – Apple takes the appliance approach. This is a device you’ll want to use for the long run, and it shouldn’t change radically until it’s time for change.

As for why each subtle refinement costs $500 is a subject of another blog post. Design wisdom, something the rest of the consumer technology industry sorely lacks, is what Apple has in spades.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/13/the-iphone-5-event/

The new iPhone is an incremental improvement over the previous generation. Highlights:

• A thinner phone with a software update.
• A 4″ screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio, as previously featured by the Sony XPeria line of smartphones
• Panorama mode within the camera, as previously featured by Samsung and other Android vendors
• Facebook integration, so they can collect information on what you do with your phone
• The offensive remark that they know best how to make a comfortably sized phone, and the consumer just doesn’t get it. Apple, as a prospective buyer I think your new phone is too small.

What the iPhone does have going for it is a far more sensible e-mail client and groupware tools than all other mobile platforms. This is eclipsed, however, by the wide selection of software available in the App Store, announced today to have surpassed 700,000 titles. Much of this software comes with unintended and unrestricted consequences to the user’s privacy.

The amount of potential harm to personal privacy is rather staggering.

I remain convinced that with the advent of the iPhone/iPad and their obvious success, Apple has abandoned all interest in the empowerment that’s possible in personal computing.

It’s now a high-fashion cash grab and the entire PC industry is too stupid to avoid following suit.

Depressing.

Windows 8′s new start screen would likely not affect my workflow a great deal, as I typically run applications by banging the Windows key and typing the name of the program I want to start (this works for me under GNOME 3 and Windows 7 alike).

Microsoft’s policy of restriction is what is absurd. They know that if systems administrators were given a group policy to disable the new Windows 8 start screen, or at least push it to the background, they’d do it en-masse. Thus, they’re victimizing corporate customers by forcing them to make the enterprise desktop a showcase for their new consumer look and feel.

Enterprise workstations are not billboards – people are trying to do real work, not just dicking around.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/81197