Walter Moore, Canadian Eh!

2011 Avening and Glencairn Cleanups.... NOT!

2011-08-18T13:45:00.000-04:00

I haven't been to Avening or Glencairn parks much this year and hadn't done any cleaning so I decided last week to check out he status of the 2 parks. Below is the results, what a contrast.

Avening
This park is always a dream to clean. It is maintained by the community and they have people that care. I haven't cleaned this park since last year and was impressed with how little garbage there was. After going through the entire maintained area I only ended up with a very small amount of garbage. It was hard to even find a cigarette butt ;) This community should be proud of their park, it is very nice.

This as all the garbage I found in the entire park. Next to nothing ;)

This is Avening park. One of the cleanest parks around.

Glencairn

And now for the other side...

This park is not maintained at all or at least not regularly. Like Avening I haven't cleaned this park since last year(cleaned both parks on same day). What a mess. If you read previous years entries on this park you will remember I already removed over 10 tires from the woods and water. Guess what.... there are now 6 more tires in the water and garbage throughout the park. I was so frustrated I just took pictures and left. I spent so much time to keep that park clean and it was destroyed by only a few people. Here are some pictures of the crap that is everywhere... Keep in mind this just shows the big stuff, there are a lot of cigarette butts and beer bottle tops as well...

Might be able to excuse this junk. It was at least in the fire pit.

Tire #1

Tire#2

Tire #3 & 4

Actually quite a solid table. would be great for putting heavy plants on in a greenhouse.

Part of a tent just thrown in the woods.

Very large plastic tarp stuffed away.

Somebody decided to create their own firepit.

This is what virtually the whole property looks like now... garbage everywhere ;(

Tire#5

Tire#6

Lots of hidden garbage around every corner.

Even the small beach is a mess.

If I had a truck I would have taken this table. Looks in great shape.

Some kid is looking for their chair right now ;(

Just more crap in the woods.

The biggest stock market screw over

2011-02-10T10:05:00.000-05:00

So you thought Bernie with his $50 Billion dollar scam was taking advatange of poor investors? Have a look at just one of the things brokers can do to investors LEGALLY!

How many of you know what "shorting" is and how is it allowed? Read below and you will get upset over how this works and even madder that it is even allowed.

"Shorting" a stock is selling a stock that you don't own anticipating the stock will go down so you can buy it cheaper later... but how can you sell a stock you don't own... That is illegal isn't it???? Well technically you can't sell stocks you do not own, that is called naked short selling and that is illegal. So how do the brokers do it? THEY LOAN THE STOCK THEIR CUSTOMERS BOUGHT!!!! For a fee of course.

So here is how it works... The brokers charge you fees to buy a stock for you and they hold the actual stock certificates. The broker then "loans" those stock(for a fee of course) to someone else who wants to short the stock. The broker is making money off BOTH customers and the broker has no risk!

So now you gotta ask... What the F*(&*&**^!!!!! .... Your broker is actually using the stock you bought against you. Allowing others to "borrow" your stock to short in effect drives the price of the stock DOWN! That is totally against your best interests.

Are you a littl upset now? You should be. What can you do? If you purchase indiviual stock you can request the actual certificates which ensures the broker can't loan your shares. This unfortunately creates headaches for you to manage your stock certificates. When it comes to mutual funds you can't get the individual stock certificates so you have no control.

If this ticks you off start asking questions of your brokers. The reason I got on this rant is one of my mutal funds is applying to be able to do this for the entire fund of stocks. If you are wondering which company.... AGF is about to do it on all their funds.

Supporters of shorting will tell you it stops irrational exhuberance of stock going through the roof. However, they don't mention that shorting causes stocks to drop much faster because it is almost a self fullfilling prophecy. Shorting can easily take a company with a little difficulty and wipe it out. Look at what was going on with AIG nd CITI during the crash. There was huge volumes of shorts almost causing both these companies to collapse.

SHORT SELLING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL FOR EVERYONE!!!!!

Kinect Games - EA Sports Active 2

2011-02-01T19:04:00.000-05:00

Other than a heart rate monitor this game is junk as far as being Kinect enabled. You need a controller at several points which defeats the benfits of Kinect.

I did not find the program itself to have as many features as Your Shape and if possible I would have returned this game because of it's cost($100) and my disappointment in the quality.

Of the 9 games I have tried this was the one I felt I really over paid. I do not feel it has been worth the money.

However, if you need to integrate a heart rate monitor into your exercises this is still better than the WII and Move versions. The reporting on heart rates was interesting ;)

Kinect Games - Your Shape

2011-02-01T18:54:00.000-05:00

If you don't care about the hearrt rate monitor this exercise game is much better than EA Sports Active 2 game. You can see it was built for the Kinect and really helps you perform exercises properly.

It will show you exactly which parts of your body are positioned right for an exercise(they show in green) and which are not(shown in red). From the start a controller is not needed. It also provides several exercise games, TiBo and Zen exercises. There is a lot to this exercise game.

If you want to get into shape this is a good game to get. It is much better than EA Sports game except it doesn't come with a heart rate monitor.

This was the frst game I purchased and it still is very good. Expect to sweat and feel good that you are performing exercises properly.

Kinect Games - Kinect Adventures

2011-02-01T18:42:00.000-05:00

This game came with my Kinect controller. It is simple yet a lot of fun, especially for multiple people. None of the included games require any special skills.

When I show people the Kinect quite often I use this game first because it is easy and fun. Anyone can understand the games yet they are challenging for experienced players.

I like all the games but I prefer the white water rafting as it provides a high level of interaction. Although it can be frustrating when playing with 2 people for serious gamers(One person goes left, the other goes right ;) It is just so much fun.

However, if this game did not come with the Kinect I am not sure I would buy it. I prefer the games that specialize in one thing because they are much more detailed and the quality is usually better.

Kinect Games - Kinect Joy Ride

2011-02-01T18:14:00.000-05:00

Of the 9 games I tried this was the simplest to play yet among the most fun. Since I like racing games anyway me liking this is no surprise.

If you are looking for an advanced racing game this is NOT it. You do not control brakes, gas or shifting. However you do get Turbo boost, and you can do tricks when in the air.

I am not sure if it is me but I notice no difference in upgraded cars in regards to performance or handling. Maybe I should read the manual(that thingy no one reads) more about cars ;)

This game is just fun. Especially with 2 or more people. You can compete against each other in certain races and need to work together in others. There are lot's of race types including tricks, run over stuff, race each other, race online, race computers and more.

Getting into tricks can really rack up the points and I found this takes up a lot more energy and makes you glad you don't have to shift, brake or accelerate.

Of all the games I have played I have spent the most time on this game. I have virtually every car now and most tracks I have gold. Sometimes I wonder why... then I play it again ;)

This game could certainly benefit from being able to control braking and acceleration but I found I got used to it. Also I found standing all the time does get tiring. I never tried sitting down while playing it might have worked.

Kinect Games - Deca Sports Freedom

2011-02-01T17:48:00.000-05:00

Of the games I tried this was the cheapest and quirkiest of them all. Although several sports are similar to the other 2 all in one sports games there just seemed to be a lot of delays and problems in movement recognition. Further I found the quality to be lower than the other 2 all in one sports games. However it does have a lot of sports to try and probably had the best selection of interesting sports.

Overall I found the all in one sports games to be good for group playing because of their simplicity but not very good for the serious gamer. Regardless, they are all still more fun than stupid controller games.

Kinect really makes you feel you are part of the game.

Kinect Games - Fighters Uncaged

2011-02-01T10:35:00.001-05:00

Of all the sports games this is the most realistic and challenging. There are around 70 moves you can do. They include using your legs, knees, elbows, fists, and head.

You better expect to get in shape if you want to play this game. Of all the games I have played this is the most intense and you will break out in a sweat... but it is a lot of fun.

This game really shows the Kinect off. You really get more of an idea of the games that will be coming in the future. This game will really benefit when they come out with a "force feedback" suit that will have you feeling the punches.

As it is this is by far the best sports game if you really want to get into the game. However if you don't like the fighting you won't like this game.

I can tell you I get very tired playing this game for even 15-30 minutes. It really requires a lot of energy as you get further into the game.

If you are a real gamer that likes great detail this is the game for you. Don't waste your time on the all in one games that have boxing... They just don't have the advanced details and options.

Kinect Games - Kinect Sports

2011-02-01T10:23:00.000-05:00

This all in one sports game is the best for smaller kids but is still good for adults. Although not quite as good as MotionSports for adults this game is very similar. Whatever you do don't waste your money on more than one of these all in one sports games.

If you have 5-10 year old kids around get this game. If not get MotionSports. The 3rd all in one game is not worth the money as far as I am concerned.

This is a great game to get up and running quickly. No real time learning anything as movements are rudamentary and as long as you know the basics of the sport you will have no problems mastering the game.

Of the 3 all in one sports games this is a close second to MotionSports.

Kinect Games - Dance Central

2011-02-01T10:14:00.000-05:00

If you are looking for a dance game this one is pretty good but if you are a good dancer this can be frustrating... Everything has to be done the way the game wants it done.When talking freestyle dancing I find this defeats the whole concept of "freestyle".

If you are a newbie or are willing to do things the way the game demands this is actually quite fun. However you can't just jump into the middle and expect to do well. You have to learn the moves that the game knows in the way the game wants them done.

If you want to learn to dance this can actually show you a lot of moves as you get further into it. Another good game for small groups of 2-4 people.

I did not review the other dance game so I have no reference if this is the best one. I have found it to be fun once I realized I had to start from the beginning... I had thought I could start in the middle with all my dancing experience... I was wrong ;)

If you like line dancing or following someone elses lead or you just wat to learn this is a great game. If you like to dance "freestyle" this will not let you... You must dance the way it says to do the move.

Kinect Games - Motion Sports

2011-02-01T10:04:00.000-05:00

Of the 3 sports games I reviewed this is probably the most adult version. In all these sports games I fnd they are at best limited but are very good for group play. These games are great for getting 4-8 people together and having friendly competitions.

You need a lot of room for these games because they involve a lot of movement. The first time I played this game I hit my foot on my metal framed bed when playing soccer... It recorded the video of me hopping around after kicking the bed ;) Quite humerous.

I was not impressed with any of these all in one sports games as each game is limited. If you want sports games go for ones of the specific sport you are interested in. For example Fighters Unleashed is a fighting game that has over 70 different moves and is very complex and full featured.

These all in one versions really stand out in groups. They are easy to get started and do not take a lot of training. Virtually anyone can do well right away. Games like Fighters Unleashed take some time just to learn all the moves that are available.

If you are thinking of the all in one sports games for adults this is probably the best choice. If you are looking for kids this is good but Kinect Sports is better.

Internet TV.... Not yet

2011-01-13T23:32:00.000-05:00

I have been waiting forever for Internet TV but it still isn't quite there yet. Sure you can watch TV via the web now but the infrastructure is not there to support all of us watching web TV.

Just look at bandwidth limitations currently in place.... Even the high bandwidth providers limit bandwidth to around 60gb per month which is fine for most current users but if you are watching basic digital TV you are looking at approximately 600mb per hour of TV... Watching 2 hours per day on one TV will take up more than half your bandwidth... If you watch 4 hours you are going to be paying overage charges... If you have 2 TV's get ready to pay big time even if you watch the same shows. If you are like me and are on wireless highspeed you haven't got a hope... It costs a fortune for anything higher than 10gb per month on wireless. My house runs 3 TV's at least 4 hours per day so even with the best available options I would have to pay a lot for bandwidth. What if we talk about HD quality with 7.1 sound.... the bandwidth goes through the roof.

The infrastructure is not in place to support all of us getting on at 9pm to watch our favorite show. Just think of the bandwidth required for everyone to watch something like the Superboal in full HD? The entire system would collapse under the strain. We can't handle anything close to the required bandwidth yet but that is just a technical problem that will be resolved.
There is also the issues of content quality, availability and management. However, all the big players are setting up their own systems for content at a furious pace.

Whether we like it or not the web is merging all communication mediums. Soon we will laugh at the way people used phones and had to be home to watch a TV show. How did they do it... ;)

Just think, YouTube users are apparently posting 31 minutes of video to the web every minute... and that is just one video content system... Many more are coming soon. Question is do we want to watch it?

XBox360 Kinetic - What the WII should have been

2010-12-23T08:38:00.000-05:00

If you think the WII or Playstation Move were cool you really need the new XBox360 Kinetic. I just got one yesterday amd got exercise and dance games at the same time. Now this is the way gaming should be for most games... You really are in the game now.
I started with the exercise game and quickly worked up a sweat. Found it really forces you to not only keep up but also to do the exercise properly. It corrected me when I didn't squat far enough, step in beat with insstructor, or raise my arms far enough when required. That is a huge advancement from the WII and Playstations that only detect the controller movement. When I was doing exercises I did not know it would show me on screen and voice confirmation when I got it right. Talk about a game changer. This game in itself made the Kinetic controller worth it... Great exercise tool.
When I played the Dance game I was not as impressed with the game...Although I dance a lot I found they really presume you pick things up very quickly and since the system monitors your entire body you can have the entire move right except one arm and it will show you everything except the arm is correct(arm will show in red). Found this to be quite complex and if you didn't know any dance moves this could definately make you feel like you at least know how to dance ;) I will have to play this game a little more before I reject it. It might get better with a bit of practice.
The Adventure game that comes with Kinetic is not the best but it is kinda fun for kids. Again I haven't had time to try the whole game but what I have played has been fun.
Voice recognition seems to work fairly well but I did have to repeat a few things for it to work but I think that was more me getting used to the interface.
It detects different people so you don't have to change players... The system knows who is playing ;)
If you walk away from the game it pauses automatically. When you come back it automatically continues.

With all this great stuff there are some negatives...
1. You need at least 6-8 feet between you and the Kinetic and at least 6-8 feet in width to play. It will not work if you are in a small room and anything blocking the view between the controller and you will have adverse affects.
2. Requires a brightly lit area to play. Dim areas can cause the game not to recognize you or your movements. However, too much direct light can also cause problems.
3.Some games seem to have a little delay but that was a very rare occurence. Most times there were no delays.
4. Requires games that support the Kinetic. This controller will not work with games not built for it so you have to buy a bunch of new games.
5. Changes the XBox primary screens which takes a little getting used too but no big deal.
6. It is definately not for the couch potato... You really are in the game and several times I broke out in a sweat so expect a workout for most games.

All in all this is an awesome advancement in gaming and I strongly recommend getting one for your XBox360. This might even be enough to justify buyig the XBox360 if you don't have it. If you are thinkig of buying the WII or Playstation Move don't waste your money on them... This interface is so much better than either of them. Once more games get released I expect the Kinect to become part of the basic XBox360 but don't wait... Get yours now!

Cleanups Update Sept 2010

2010-09-25T11:08:00.001-04:00

Well the summer was going along great and both Avening and Glencairn parks seemed to be very easy to maintain this year... Until mid August then the only party this year was held. They cleaned up all the beer bottles and cans(they are worth money) and at least a lot of the garbage. Unfortunately the park was at a level where there was hardly a speck of garbage. Just the bottle caps from way over 100 beer were a pain to pick up. I have really come to hate the labels on beer bottles. Why does everyone tear them off then rip them into little pieces and throw them on the ground. Then the cigarrett butts of course and a bunch of other tiny peices of garbage. Although there only ended up being 5 small bags of garbage each bag is full of hundreds of small pieces of garbage. I am happy to say that Glencairn is almost back into shape... I ran out of garbage bags so there are a few pieces left to cleanup... and of course there will always be tomorrow.

I did a little experiment of my own after the party... I did not clean the park up intentionally. Why? When I go to the park and am cleaning I run into people and many proceed to tell me how they clean the park all the time as well. So I thought I would give them the chance... Plus there is a group from the community that publishes that they maintain the park so I figured surely these people could at least pick up the bigger garbage that was left before I do the rest... Of course I was dreaming, I new that ;) .... After 3.5 weeks I couldn't stand it anymore and cleaned the park a few days ago. Not even the most obvious garbage right on the main path was picked up(pop bottle and McDonald's junk), nothing, nada. Please, when you see someone else cleaning don't tell them how you clean that unless you really do. You might run into someone like me who knows you are lying.

Of course Avening has been a dream. Sometimes I wonder why I bother since there is so little garbage. At Avening I can clearly see the community(at least a few people) realy take pride in making their park a beautiful place. I go to the remote sections if I want to cleanup anything because everything else is a already so clean. No beer bottle caps, not even cigarrette butts. It is quite amazing. Avening should get an award for the way they maintain their park.

Electric Cars...Are we really ready?

2010-07-15T15:53:00.000-04:00

Although I think electric cars are the future I have some major concerns.

What happens to dead batteries??? Right now we don't manage this well. What are we going to do with these monster car battery packs? What about the spent lithium? Is there any environmental issues?
How much supply of lithium is there? Can it support the current/future demand? To go all electric will require a lot of lithium.
We are experiencing electric brown-outs now due to high usage. What happens when we all want to charge our cars? Surely the current infrastructure can't handle the load. A more distributed design MUST be in place to support electric cars.
What about the fine metal dust from the generators? The friction wears the pads which creates dust that floats in the air or cakes to machinery.
Does the electric noise or battery discharge affect animals/humans?
Is there any affect having all that electricity surrounding us?

You would think with all these concerns I would be saying slow down... but I am NOT! Athough there are issues with electric it is still far superior to the fossil fuel choices. I want to make sure we don't just switch to a different pile of crap. We need to do this for our descendants and it has to come quickly to ensure we actually have descendants.

Park cleanups 2010 update

2010-07-11T10:18:00.001-04:00

Well I have been cleaning both Avening and Glencairn parks this year and there is quite a difference between the two. Glencairn requires much more of my time for cleaning. Each week this year the Glencairn park has built up a garbage bag full of crap plus at least one large item(like tires/metal). Avening on the other hand requires picking up 10-20 small peices of garbage each week with no large items. Although Glencairn is a busier park the problem seems to stem from only a very few people. There is at least one person that smokes at least 5-10 cigarrettes per day in the park. At least I pick up that many butts of a specific brand almost daily(plus other butts). Another lets their dogs(multiple large dogs) crap all over the park. Fortunately this year there hasn't been any major dumping going on and there has been a few people actually picking garbage up. Glencairn does not seem to be having any major parties this year(usually there are 5+ already) so the garbage has been dramatically reduced this year.
No matter how I look at it the parks are cleaner and easier to maintain this year than previous. The amount of garbage I see is noticably less than previous years. Especially butts and beer bottle caps. However since the outhouse has been removed from Glencairn some people have used the park as a bathroom and left toilet paper in several places(not nice).
Oh well, there will always be something that could be improved.

Soccer / Football... why I don't like it

2010-06-12T10:50:00.000-04:00

I have been watching the world cup and it reminds me why I don't watch soccer. There are 2 primary reasons...

Low scores. Too many games end in ties and the ball basically is bounced around center field most of the game.
Wining. Any sport I know if the players faked penalties that obviously they would GET the penalty. The players seem to wine and cry all game long about penalties that should have been called. Suck it up! I have seen hockey players get booed off the ice for trying to fake a penalty.

These 2 issues really make it hard for me to get interested in the sport. I do like to play the game... just don't like watching it.

Wireless Internet Sticks

2010-05-05T11:37:00.000-04:00

If you are looking at getting the Rogers RocketStick or Bell/Telus versions of the same thing(Wireless Internet) here is some helpfull stuff I have found...

1. Rogers is by far fastest. I tested Bell and Telus sticks(latest) against Rogers HSPA(7.1mb) from the same computer in the same house using several web based speed testers. Rogers was consistently 10+ times faster then Bell and at least 8 times faster than Telus. Rogers has since gotten even faster with HSPA+(21mb)

2. DON'T GET YOUR STICK FROM ROGERS! If you go to Futureshop right now you can get a free netbook($299) if you sign up with the 2 year plan.

3. Make sure you get the HSPA+ stick even if service is not available in your area yet. It s a better quality stick. Model MF668... I think the old one is MF638.

4.If you don't watch video on the web you probably can get away with 500mb plan. You can always upgrade later without problem but you are penalized if you downgrade. You can get a real idea of your usage in first 2 months when downloads are "free"... Be careful, that is not quite true... They don't tell you that they will charge you if you go over 5gb(so I heard).

I got my HSPA+ stick from Rogers on Sunday only to find the deal at Futureshop on Tuesday. Deal only on for short time so if your interested go now. This might get more convoluted when I take the stick I bought on Sunday back to rogers today. Update you if there are any issues.

Avening Cleanup 2010

2010-05-01T11:24:00.000-04:00

After picking up 2 full bags of garbage at Glencarin I went to Avening park on Thursday to check it out and found it to be very nice and exceptionally well maintained. I could see that at least a few people take care of it already but it looked like a spring cleaning had not been done so I decided to do a cleanup. This park is much larger than Glencairn with a lot more public area. It even has a covered pick nick area.

In a few hours I covered most common areas of the park. What a difference between this and Glencairn park. There was only one tire found throughout the park and NONE in the water. The only "wierd" thing was the truck seat(pic below) but it looked like it was used at one time. Virtually no cigarette butts or beer caps. Most garbage is cans, bottles, plastic, paper and cloth. Not the funky stuff encountered at Glencairn. However, since this is the first time cleaning Avening it is possible I may find funky stuff in future visits.

In total there was approximately 5 bags of garbage, one tire, one plastic bucket, one rust metal piece, and one truck seat. I consider that extremely clean for a first cleaning. Especially considering the size of the park. Glencairn has more garbage than this every month. What a surprising pleasure Avening park was.

If you are passing through Avening I recommend you check out this park(just north of bridge on west side). Avening is located on Airport Road 2-3k south of CR#9.
Below are pics of the park and garbage collected at Avening...

Sign with park name out front

This was all the garbage I picked up. Relatively nothing.

Here is the truck seat found in the woods

Dirt road into the park

Covered pick-nick area and my bike ;)

Park area

River looking north

River looking south

Park area

Nice large tree just starting to bud.

More park

There is much more park here than the pics show.The only way to know is to check it out yourself.

Glencairn spring cleaning 2010

2010-04-26T23:02:00.000-04:00

Well I am back from Florida and one of the first things I did was get my motorcycle out and went and cleaned Glencairn park. After keeping it clean last year until I left for Florida(see other "cleanup" posts) it was actually quite easy to clean it up this spring. There were very few large items this year with most stuff smaller than a pop can(lot's of those). As you can see by the pics below there were only a few bags or garbage this spring. However there are now 2 new tires in the river(not in pics) plus another one cleared from the woods. I will have to remove them later in the year when water warms up. There does not appear to be anything else in the water at this time. Not sure why everyone throws tires in the water. It would be much easier on me if they just threw them in the woods. On top of everything you can dispose of tires for free now. Anyway, right now it is hard to find a cigarette butt in the park again... clean again... except the 2 tires ;)
I am going to look at cleaning Avening and/or EdenVale parks in next few weeks. Anyway here are picks of the garbage and Glencairn park after cleanup. This only took 2-3 hours. You could probably clean your local park in the same amount of time... Give it a try, you might be surprised by how good YOU will feel. Screw every one else... THINK OF YOURSELF ;)

Florida - Winter 2009-2010

2010-04-09T10:01:00.000-04:00

In a nutshell... IT SUCKED!!!... But still better than weather up north ;)

One of the coldest winters ever. Numerous broken records related to cold. When it was warm it rained and it was windy the entire winter. March was the 2nd coldest on record at Saint Pete, broke the previous longest cold spell(temps do not reach 60F) of 7 days by a long shot reaching 13 consecutive days this winter, numerous individual day records, January and February were also among coldest on record. There was a lot of crop damage and many plants and animals died due to cold. I personally saw numerous dead fish and plants in my travels. Even the manatee stayed in their winter areas much longer than usual.

To top it off it was actually WARMER at the winter games in B.C. than Saint Petersburg Florida.

Of course in the last 2 weeks the weather has been fantastic. Sunny and warm(75-85F) but not too hot. Water has warmed up to at least tolerable temps(70F+). Usually it gets very hot here(90+) around this time but this year it is much more pleasant. To bad I am going home on Sunday.

Business has really suffered here this year as there has been less vacationers. As if they needed this with the problems they already have. Virtually all resorts/hotels had vacancies all year with a very few filling up during spring break. At least the last few weeks have picked up and maybe there will be enough late comers for them to salvage at least something. I expect there may be a lot of businesses failing this summer into next winter.

House prices are back down to a reasonable value and there are some really good buys. I have heard of discounts of 40%++ off already discounted prices on foreclosures. There are still some that price their houses high but there are many more that are willing to take anything they can get. Common to see 50% off "boom time" asking price. In the complex I am staying houses were selling for $450-550k like hot cakes during the boom now they are listed for $200-300k and not selling. A huge number of vacant properties.

On the positive side...We never had snow ;)... STILL MUCH BETTER THAN -40 :) Canadian dollar makes it worth while coming down for even short trips. If you have been thinking of coming here come on down! They need the business and you can get cheap accomodations(look in CraigsList).

Hopefully next year will be more accomodating... The things I suffer with ;)

Outdated Information

2010-02-27T13:11:00.000-05:00

Lately I have been doing a fair bit of research on the web and I really notice that a lot of content is old and outdated. Particularly when it comes to coding. What was the cool solution 2 years ago is integrated into IDE's and done in a couple of clicks today. You could spend hours implementing this "cool" function only to find another newer article telling you it is really simple to do now with a few mouse clicks.
As time goes on I think the date of creation and last updated date are becoming much more important in search results. So, now I am starting to perform a lot of advanced searches with date filters set. You might want to try it to reduce the crap in search results. For that matter using any other filter also gives you a little better results.

MagicJack is worth the money

2010-02-24T11:27:00.000-05:00

I bought a MagicJack in 2009-09 and it has definitely been worth the value. In case you don't know what a MagicJack is here is a simple explanation. This little device allows you to use your computer with Internet to make phone calls anywhere in Canada/USA. Plus it gives all types of features like call display, conference calls, 3 way calling and more... OK, this is starting to sound like a sales pitch... Lets break it down...
Benefits:

All phone calls within Canada/USA for $20 PER YEAR!!! That should be enough. It cost more per month for long distance and then there is the basic line charges and additions like call waiting and call answer. If you can get away with $50 per month that is cheap... $50x12=$600 per year!
Call quality is usually as good as land lines but periodically works more like a cell phone(may not be perfect).
Simple to install. If you can connect a phone and use a computer you can do it.
You can register the phone number in most cities within USA(I registered mine in St.Pete, Florida.
Comes with lots of accessories for free. Things like call waiting, forwarding, display, answer, 3way, even your own hosted conference calls are free.
You can send a MagicJack to someone in another country and they can use it like a local area phone... Example: I, a Canadian living in Ontario, registered my MagicJack phone number(727-827-8295) in St.Pete, Florida. Now, no matter where the MajicJack is physically located it acts as if it is in St.Pete. Anyone that calls my MagicJack is billed as if they called me in St.Pete(it may be in Canada physically). I could send my MagicJack to Japan and it still works like it is in St.Pete.
Can send you an email when any voice message is left. Email will include the actual voice mail.
You can use a regular phone or computer headset.
Disconnect your current service and you can plug MagicJack into any phone jack and all phones in your house will work.

Disadvantages:

If you are looking for 100% quality on every call this unit is not for you. I would think of it more of a cell phone. Once in a while call quality is less than perfect. Try the call again.
When I registered I could not register a Canadian phone number. Only USA cities are allowed.
Once in a while there seems to be an echo.
While calling out seems to work well sometimes people calling in have problems.
Requires high-speed Internet and could get costly if you pay for your downloads.
A certain degree of nagging to buy other items when registering.
911 services are only available in USA.

Summary:
If you already have high-speed Internet then this unit is definitely worth it. You will probably save the money it cost in the first month. Do not disconnect your current phone service until you have fully tested the MajicJack. Excellent as a second line(ensures you have 911 services(not an issue in USA)).

Installation Tips:
Just plug the phone into the unit then plug the unit into your computer. It will automatically configure for you but be careful when reading the prompts. There are constant little things trying to get you to buy additional services. This was one of my dislikes.

Do NOT save passwords if using Google Chrome

2010-02-22T13:43:00.000-05:00

If you are using Google Chrome as your personal browser(which I have recommended and am questioning now) DO NOT ALLOW GOOGLE CHROME TO SAVE ANY PASSWORDS!!! Why you ask? Simple. In their infinite wisdom Google decided that anyone that has access to the device can look up ALL the passwords you have saved in it.
This is CRAZY!!!!! Wasn't anyone thinking of security....AGAIN! I found this by fluke but if you choose "Options" from menu, then choose the "Personal Stuff" tab, there is a button called "Show saved passwords" that like it says shows a list of the sites, the userid AND password you entered. Talk about giving away the farm. Why would you ever allow ANYONE to see the password!!! Defeats the whole idea of security.
Now you know why I m quickly taking back my recommendation of Google Chrome. These bimbo's don't seem to understand the first thing about security. Anyone I know with a couple of years experience could see all types of problems allowing this... And they want to replace Microsoft??? Things are not looking good folks ;(

HTML5 - JavaScript LOCAL SQL Databases

2010-02-18T16:41:00.000-05:00

I just built a demo at http://wmoore.ca/basic/localdbdemo.htm to show some of the possibilities with the new client side databases(that's right databases on customers device) that are part of HTML5(sort of). It shows you most of the common database functions and the code to do it. You can easily learn to utilize databases in offline mode so you can allow customers to work while they are offline and update the online systems later. Or you might want to create a 100% offline tool. If your solution requires a local database you can now use this database structure natively in JavaScript. I am already working on ideas.

Internet Explorer.... The modern Edsel? Don't write it off yet ;)

2010-02-14T20:52:00.000-05:00

First off, I use Google Chrome V4 now and am a recent convert from Microsoft's Internet Explorer(IE8). I have noticed a lot of IE bashing lately particularly related to standards support. I find this rather ironic since most of the things mentioned as non-standard are items that IE implemented as far back as IE3 but because the standard didn't exist they created their own. Things like opacity and shadows that everyone hypes in CSS3 were all working fine in IE3!!! Things still being worked on like transitions in CSS have been in IE since beta3. HTML5 items like databases and custom tags were all part of IE3 & 4. My demo site that was made exclusively for IE4+ used these and many other cool capabilities that were not available in any other browser. That is when all the competition disappeared and IE got slower and sloppier with every release.
Now I see many people writing IE off. I do not recommend this for business at this time! Microsoft is too large a company to just roll over and let this happen. Remember when Netscape said the same thing... Netscape was going to be the browser... Woke up Microsoft who then crushed Netscape. IE9 is going to reduce the complaints by being faster and more standards compliant and by IE11 I suspect they will be in the battle again, maybe even dominating. I also think the versions will be coming faster now there is competition.
Now on the other and... It would make sense to me for Microsoft to totally drop the browser and let others build them to run on Windows systems. After all they don't make any money on the browser. It would be quite an achievement to put something like Firefox on all Microsoft systems(I can't see Chrome with the Google/Microsoft wars ongoing).
This war really doesn't matter so don't invest to much into any specific browser. Try to go with browser neutral code or at least code that degrades gracefully like CSS.

CSS3 will really make things better

2010-02-10T12:36:00.000-05:00

It has been a long time since much has made me hype technology but CSS3 is one of them. This version of CSS really implements some time saving options. If you haven't noticed this site is utilizing CSS3 in several ways...

Using box shadow to create the cool shadow around each section.
Using text shadow to create the nifty fire shadow underlining text.
Rounding corners without graphics and a lot of code or complex tables.

On my website at http://wmoore.ca/ I also implemented the above options plus...

Using Rotate to rotate both the text and pictures 45 degrees left or right.
Using Opacity to dim pictures until mouseover, then brighten image.
Using Transforms, positioning and rotate to put text sideways.
Of course the old demo site built for IE4 has extensive use of CSS1&2 including dynamic themes. All built around 1999-2001(more than 10 years ago). Still works if you have IE or Opera.

There are even more that I have not implemented... Here are a few...

Multiple backgrounds
Gradients
2D & 3D transforms
Template layouts... What tables should have been. While difficult for those that learned tables already(like myself) to comprehend value these are much simpler and powerful than current tables.
Even Speech which really came out in CSS2 is covered.

Maybe this time people will pay more attention to CSS's value. It was really underrated when IE3 Beta was released(when I first saw it). And few adopted CSS for several years... I of course was telling everyone of the great value they are missing. Unfortunately this was not a battle that was winnable at the time. Business still wanted to support every browser EXACTLY the same so we were all limited to the very basics. Even when repeatedly, new browsers/versions would appear requiring in some cases almost entire rewrites of some systems. Business would not compromise on a "works for everyone but best in XX browser" model which was needed. Once we got past that unfortunate situation CSS took off. Business started realizing the potential of CSS to support everyone in at least a basic form. Now CSS is the standard and soon you will not be allowed to code design descriptors(like height,width,color...) in HTML tags. Most design tools are switching to this model in front of the curve.

If you see my web site in Chrome then look at it in IE you will be able to see what CSS3 is doing for me... IE8- does not support CSS3(IE9 will) but did have some options(like opacity) implemented BEFORE the standards came out. I am sure that IE9 will be a dramatic improvement in supporting CSS3 standards but it will take sometime for IE9 to be adopted by everyone. The site does not look very good in IE... much better in Chrome, Safari or Firefox.

Adopt CSS3 now!!! That way we can all reduce the bandwidth glut and provide the customer with a better experience.

Browser memory usage at startup

2010-02-07T18:35:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder how much memory the various browsers are using when they start? Well Chrome has a nice feature from the address bar... Type in about:memory in the address bar and press enter. If you did like I did and started the 5 top browsers before entering about:memory you will get a display something like below:

This display had to be refreshed one additional time in Chrome so technically it shows using more than it really was by about 1mb. As you can see the more features available the more memory is being used. IE8 is surprisingly the stingiest in memory. I was surprised that Opera used so much memory but I guess with all the extra features like voice it needs the resources.
Please note I took caution to start each browser in a blank page to ensure no extra load was recorded for memory usage. Each browser was started only once beforehand.

IE8 is Really SLOW... compared it to Chrome..

2010-02-01T15:49:00.010-05:00

Well after switching to Chrome I performed a standard test from Sunspider(http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html) using various browsers and this was the results... Chrome & Safari are clear winners. For that matter, in performance, they beat IE & Firefox easily.

Here is the results... Chrome is on average 10.2 times faster than IE8. These are generic tests of JavaScript and other resources that Microsoft recommends! Microsoft touts that IE9 will be faster(only 2x as slow instead of 10x)and tests of IE9 do reflect the improvement but who cares... Microsoft is STILL the slowest of all 4 tested browsers(IE9, FireFox3.6, Chrome4, Safari4). Chrome/Safari are the fastest regardless if you are using older versions or the latest builds. Firefox is around 30% slower. IE... putt putt putt ;)

This chart compares IE8 and Chrome3 where you can clearly see how slow IE8 really is. All times in milliseconds. IE9 is faster but still slower than Chrome!

Test	IE8	Chrome	TimesFaster
3d:	1,268.6	139.6	9.1
cube:	415.6	43.0	9.7
morph:	347.0	47.4	7.3
raytrace:	506.0	49.2	10.3
access:	1,525.2	65.2	23.4
binary-trees:	315.4	5.2	60.7
fannkuch:	600.2	21.8	27.5
nbody:	437.6	32.6	13.4
nsieve:	172.0	5.6	30.7
bitops:	1,018.6	58.4	17.4
3bit-bits-in-byte:	159.2	4.4	36.2
bits-in-byte:	168.6	11.4	14.8
bitwise-and:	468.8	17.4	26.9
nsieve-bits:	222.0	25.2	8.8
controlflow:	246.8	4.4	56.1
recursive:	246.8	4.4	56.1
crypto:	650.0	53.6	12.1
aes:	275.0	21.6	12.7
md5:	187.6	17.0	11.0
sha1:	187.4	15.0	12.5
date:	943.4	138.4	6.8
format-tofte:	449.8	62.8	7.2
format-xparb:	493.6	75.6	6.5
math:	1,077.8	87.8	12.3
cordic:	390.6	29.4	13.3
partial-sums:	315.6	41.2	7.7
spectral-norm:	371.6	17.2	21.6
regexp:	293.4	24.8	11.8
dna:	293.4	24.8	11.8
string:	2,096.8	321.6	6.5
base64:	397.2	31.0	12.8
fasta:	502.6	44.2	11.4
tagcloud:	372.0	76.0	4.9
unpack-code:	406.2	93.8	4.3
validate-input:	418.8	76.4	5.5
Total:	18,241.2	1,787.4
Average:	521.2	51.1	10.2

USA Dollar Needs to Go Down

2010-01-21T20:45:00.000-05:00

I bet there are a lot of you that think there is no way the USA dollar should go down any further. Matter of fact you probably think it is too low. WELL IT DOES NEED TO GO DOWN!

The USA dollar has been inflated for years which wasn't a problem during the tech' hay days. Then everyone was reducing costs dramatically but the field is relatively level again. Everyone has cut cost through technology, there isn't much left to benefit from.

So now it often gets down to cost of labor. If the USA dollar is high the labor cost is high and companies move elsewhere. If it is low costs are lower and companies hire in the USA. Pretty simple. It also applies to all the products USA exports & imports... A lower USA dollar makes imports(stuff USA buys from others) more expensive and exports(stuff USA sells to others) cheaper. This inherently creates jobs and fuels the economy.

If the USA dollar stays up USA business can't sell their products to others and others can dump their products on the USA market very cheaply making it even more difficult for USA to grow.
Is this a perfect solution... Absolutely not. This means a lot of people have net-net less buying power. However, it would drive business in the USA.

It is obvious to me that the USA government wants the dollar to stay low. They could easily step in and stabilize it but they choose not too. On the other hand they want a controlled reduction not a free fall. You can see this in the USA government moves and in reverse for the Canadian and other governments(warn against gaining to quickly).

If the USA government was smart they were buying other currencies to assist in devaluing the dollar. Then later when the dollar gets really low, pay off all the debts(they are all in USA dollars), then buy back the dollar by selling the other currencies they bought previously and drive the dollar back up. That would be a very sneaky move that would gain them a lot of money and may even bring them out of the currently inevitable financial collapse.

Again these are my rants, you can have your own ;)

Obama - 1st Year From a Canadian's Perspective

2010-01-21T19:33:00.001-05:00

Originally published on 2009-12-07
I am amazed at how quickly Americans have forgotten where they were when Obama took office just 11 months ago. The republicans had put the country to the brink of collapse( I blame them most because they are the ones put in place to ensure everyone else doesn’t do what they did). The USA was crashing taking the rest of the developed world with it. The potential for all banks crashing if something wasn’t done was almost 100%. If the banks crashed everything else would go with it. USA money would be worthless and unemployment could easily hit 75%++. Some countries had already taken over their banks due to the spin-off of the USA crash. To top it off the weak car companies were finally forced to bankruptcy looking like that sector was going to be destroyed which would take the USA in to a depression situation for sure. Of course there are the miscellaneous things like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Health Care, Unemployment.. the list goes on.

The final piece that I wish wasn’t there but do have to recognize is he is black. This undoubtedly has and will create difficulties within his own country. On the other hand I think it helps him in International issues.

This is the toughest position a US president has ever walked into by far in my opinion. As “a world leader” this US president has a responsiblity to think of more than his own country(although USA is his priority). Especially with whole countries like Iceland going bankrupt due to investments in USA. Previous presidents could say screw everyone else, he can’t.

So now you can remember SOME of the mess let’s look at where USA is 11 months later… The banks are making money and paying back their loans(made money on that one), the car companies went through orderly bankruptcies and came out leaner and meaner(might get money back), the unemployment appears to be peaking at 10.2%(no where near 75), AIG’s possible impact has been dramatically reduced(they alone were going to make everything collapse), housing market is stabilizing in some markets(at least not free-falling), the dollar has depreciated enough to start making USA exports competitive(was way over valued to make US products competitive) and possibly reduce cost of payment of debt. unfortunately (or fortunately – sell more USA products), imported products cost more.

That alone would be enough for most countries to praise the president. But Obama has done this while dealing with Health Care, Iraq and all the other issues noted above. The guy has been in power for 11 months and accomplished more than virtually any other president in their entire tenure. Cut the guy some slack. USA is lucky it is not in a depression and to avert a depression and start coming out of the crash within 11 months is awesome.

Are things perfect? Absolutely not. USA has just averted probably it’s worst crisis to date and all some are saying is “ARE WE THERE YET?”. USA is not going to fully recover for years(if ever) but maybe you should be thankful that you are not where you were going to be if republicans were still in power.

Why not try asking some of the republicans why they didn’t do anything before? It was obvious to all of us, why didn’t they see and address the problem? They took the easy way out because they wanted votes, that’s why. Anyone with any legal/accounting background could see big problems coming. I am quite sure there were some staff in the offices telling them what they were putting in place was crazy. However, they got a lot of votes by implementing ways for people to buy houses they could not afford. There are a lot of people who were fine in their old house but were told they could sell their house and get bigger/better so they did, only to find they lost the house because they could not afford the upkeep of the new house.

I hope Obama moves to Canada after serving the USA and runs for Prime Minister. Many Canadians I know(including me) would vote for him.

My personal opinion on the reasons for the crash are multi-folded.

I think the car companies were a problem that was going to happen anyway…Just happened sooner with the crash.
The US government created ways for people that could NOT AFFORD a home to get one, then instead of realizing the problems actually added more ways people could get homes they couldn’t afford.
The real estate system for figuring out ways that people who could not possibly afford the house could buy it(knowing full well people would be kicked out of their house later).
The stock market packaged up these obvious bad debts and promoted them as safe and backed by the government(sort of) so they could sell them.
The ratings agencies rated these junk assets way above their true value.
Everyone for assuming the price of real estate would never go down.
People bought homes they knew they could not afford. Real Estate system played their dreams perfectly.
Everyone else(like me) sat around and let them do it!!!!! WE KNEW BETTER!!!

There are a lot of pieces to this problem that didn’t occur in other countries, but they still crashed. Mostly because of investments directly or indirectly in USA and USA’s sudden drop in purchasing their goods… countries like Iceland,China, Europe, Australia and especially Canada(85% exports go to USA). Countries that emulated some or all of the US model for real estate really got hit and they can’t afford or get a trillion dollar loan.

How many of you knew that something had to give when they came out with sub-prime and other loan options. Sure prices of houses were going up but that was an unrealistic supply/demand issue driven by the ability of those that could not afford houses to buy a house. The whole market was a farce. Without the artificial housing there is no need to build/sell all the products related to housing(a lot). However, how many thought it would get as bad as it did? I didn’t… I thought it would be more localized to the USA and not as bad as things were at the worst times.

Cleanups - GlenCairn

2010-01-21T19:26:00.001-05:00

In October 2008 I decided to take it upon myself to clean up a local community park I frequent. More specifically I decided to clean up the approximately 10 acres that most people use(park is over 100 acres). In this area many people partied and there were bottle caps, cigarette buts. more than 3 cases of beer bottles, cans and the normal junk you find floating around parks. This is a summary of my year of cleaning…

<=Some of the garbage picked up in the fall.

I cleaned the park once in the fall of most large garbage on land. Then came back in the spring to find just about as much garbage as in the fall. I then picked up all the large garbage again. This included some funky stuff like Kotex, condoms, bicycle, tires, boxes full of garbage and used diapers. I picked up all the large garbage on land but there was a lot of small garbage(like beer caps) still on th ground. This major cleanup ended with 6 large green garbage bags plus at least 20 small grocery bags full of garbage. Since I was driving my motorcycle I had no way of removing the garbage from the park so I stacked it all in one location figuring someone would arrange to pick it up. After 6 weeks I found out the official park reps, notified them and they finally arranged to have it removed about a week later. It felt really good to see the park much cleaner.

More garbage collected.
Now I really got motivated… I decided to pick up every stick of garbage I could find. Over the summer I scowered the park for anything that looked like “non-natural” items and removed them. By August the park was spotless. Even the cigarette butts were al picked up. I started noticing that other people were picking up garbage as well and putting it with the stuff I picked up. Even better was there was dramatically less garbage being dropped. Don’t get me wrong there were some jerks still around(see below) but the majority of people were very good. The park had no garbage cans so I asked the reps to install one to reduce garbage. They agreed and put 2 large oil drum cans in place and chained them to a tree to stop theft. Things were great for a while until someone broke the chain and stole one of the cans. I informed reps but nothing was done(I even got attitude from one rep saying that garbage cans should not be there and what did I want her to do). This really upset me. It wasn’t like I wasn’t trying to help. So, I sat back and waited for what I knew would happen… Sure enough in about 2 weeks someone(I presume kids) tipped the remaining can over(now over half full of garbage others and I collected) and rolled it across the property into the river. In the process all the garbage fell out of the can onto the property(nice straight line at first). Needless to say I was not happy. I went back to the reps(the same one with attitude), informed her of the issue and requested the garbage be cleaned up. I was not going to do this primarily because this should never have happened if the rep would have acted in the first place. After 2 weeks someone finally came and picked up the mess and removed the garbage can. During this time I had not done any cleaning so I had to do another round of cleaning to return the park to pristine condition.

<= This picture shows SOME of the tires that were removed.

More pictures of other tires below. While cleaning up the land I noted there seemed to be a lot of tires in the river but decided to wait until the water got warmer to look at removing these. This was the biggest mess I found. In a 300 meter distance of river there were 17 car/truck tires(plus the 2 tires on land). I could not believe there were so many tires in such a short distance of water.

This picture shows some of the stuff taken from the river.

When I got around to the tires 3 guys on ATV’s helped by removing 3 of the tires at first. That meant I had a pile of 5 tires waiting to be picked up(2 from land). While waiting fo someone to pickup the tires some kids had a party and sure enough the tires were thrown into the woods and one ended up back in the water. The next day I went to the park and again I was not too happy. I found booze bottles and garbage everywhere. However at least someone had a garbage bag which was full of bottles, etc. A woman with her son were there looking for items he had lost while attending the party. I informed her of the situation but apparently her son was not involved. However, to my surprise a few days later I found the tires all picked up and piled again(plus 2 other tires were picked up). I like to think it was the son who came and cleaned up. I do not think he was the one making the mess but it was nice to think he cleaned it up. Now I finally got to the river. In addition to the tires there was a huge shovel(like one from construction trucks-not a hand shovel), bricks, bottles, cans and a few other trinkets. In one afternoon I took out all the rest of the tires and garbage, stacked them up ready for pickup and informed the reps. Also noted that it was important to remove them before some other kids decide to thow them back in the river. Two weeks later the tires were picked up.

So at this point(around August) I had cleaned up the river and land and everything was great(or so I thought). Sure enough I come back to the park and find an entire pick-up truck load of garbage dumped in the park(left picture). At least it was piled in one spot. Lot’s of boxes, a toilet, pipes, kids toys, binders, bottles, cans, etc. Again I was upset and went through the garbage to see if there was anything to identify the culprit. It appears they were very carefull not to leave any identifying papers. Given the amount of garbage I thought for sure I would find something. Contacted the reps again(must be getting sick of me by now) and requested it be cleaned up. While waiting for cleanup I noted several people had looked through the garbage looking for any identification so I know others were not happy about this either. The garbage was picked up and last I saw the park was clean again. At least no one threw more tires and garbage in the river.

I am in Florida now so I won’t know how the park is fairing until next spring. Hopefully it will be cleaner than last year One thing this has confirmed to me is that people will keep things much cleaner if it is already clean. I definitely noticed the difference once the park was cleaned.

One of the prime reasons I wrote this is to motive others to do something. Sure there are headaches and often you feel like “why me” but the feeling of accomplishment and giving back to the community far out ways the problems. Will I do it again…. YOU BET! I am looking at doing the same thing in this and other parks for next year. So get out there and help clean up an area that you frequent. Forget about “others”. Sure they made the mess. One thought that really helped me stick to it was thinking about the number of times I dropped garbage(accidentally or not) plus the times I was not aware I dropped garbage. Let’s not forget I smoked as well. I thought this is making up for some of the mess I personally have created(others cleaned up after me). I am quite sure you can think back at times when you weren’t perfect. Especially when you were younger… Ever smash bottles with rocks?

Escalation

2010-01-21T19:23:00.002-05:00

Published 2003-03-31
Just ranting about escalation….
The objective of escalation is to bring something into higher priority and focus resources. In small business escalation is not usually an issue, there are usually only a few people to inform and everyone knows everybody. In enterprise class systems escalation becomes much more complex. Escalation is usually associated with problems but not necessarily(you can escalate good news). There are 2 sides… the escalator(person escalating a problem) and escalatee(person problem is being escalated to for investigation).
When talking about problem escalation I find many enterprises lacking. Some have done wonderful jobs but most need work. Many shops have binders with contact lists, memos and hand written notes. Half the time is spent contacting the wrong people and often required contacts are never made. Other shops have rigid rules for escalation that often create excessive escalation. One shop I worked for used memos that would say something like…

If you have problems…
    Call 416-999-2222 Sun-Thu between 11pm-7am. No more than 4 rings!
    Call 705-555-1212 on the weekend
    Call 416-555-2244 at all other times.
I am unavailable Mon-Fri from 6-7pm, I will call you back after 7pm if paged.

That was just the first level support contact, then you had to contact business and suppliers that each had their own escalation… And people were wondering why escalation took 90+ minutes at times.

Escalation needs clear guidelines – Rules are inherently inflexible and escalation requires extreme flexibility. Even if your internal escalation is rigid you have no control over external escalation.

Escalation Intervals – How long do you wait for support to call back? How long do you give first level support before escalating to second level? You need an escalation matrix that considers priority and impact. Example: Critical problems need faster escalation than others.

Does the problem need escalation? Some businesses escalate everything immediately. Although this may sound good it easily creates problems. An impact assessment should be completed before escalation is implemented. Perhaps the problem can wait to avoid costs like over-time. Others only escalate when everything crashes around them.

Once it is determined a problem should be escalated the escalation process should have structure to provide 1st, 2nd,3rd… level contacts for customer, internal support and suppliers but allow flexibility to “skip levels” as needed. Often internal support escalation is handled correctly but the ball is dropped when contacting customers and suppliers. How many times have you missed informing the right people? The escalation process must ensure ALL related contacts are informed.

Don’t call Jim “because he knows the solution”. Call the appropriate support and inform them that Jim has the solution. This ensures that bugs are worked out quickly… no one wants to be called at 3am. Another common problem for effective escalation. If you call Jim and bypass the escalation process the real issue of having the wrong contact never gets addressed. Next week(or day) Jim will get called again. Jim is probably not going to be very happy. Escalators must follow escalation as defined to ensure bugs in the process are addressed.

Escalation process should allow a flexible contact solution. Requiring specific contact types(like pager) are limiting and should be avoided. The contact person should have the ability to maintain how they are to be contacted(home,pager,cell…) but the process should not attempt to support memos like noted above. Since contacts have the ability to maintain their contact details they assume the responsibility for the information.

Escalation requires constant reviewing to ensure the appropriate contacts are defined. Some companies think that once their escalation is defined they are done. Wrong! Escalation constantly needs fine tuning. I have seen many great systems fail because the data became outdated. A distributed ownership model is critical to a successful implementation. Contacts own their personal information, management owns the resources. Each is responsible to ensure their data is accurate.

Escalation requires ownership/responsibility. One of the most frequent problems I have seen is the lack of ownership when problems arise. A clear path to ownership must be maintained. Owners are responsible for the resource, they didn’t buy it! Ownership ensures at least someone is prioritizing the issue… they may not be the ones to do the work.

Escalation process must be accessible from various platforms(mainframe, PC, server, PDA…). No use having a great system that escalators can’t access. In addition it needs an API to integrate with standard business management tools like problem management.

I can go on and on about this subject… I think you get the idea so I will stop now.

XHTML

2010-01-21T19:22:00.000-05:00

Updated 2009-11-25
Most development software now codes XHTML compliant tags. There are many smart phones that require XHTML to display properly. Welcome to the XML world. Was it really that bad? Now get ready for CSS3 and DHTML5.0.

Published 2003-03-31
XHTML is the evolution of HTML. The concept is simple… Make HTML documents into an XML compliant document.

Why should I convert?
XHTML is the “new” HTML and many new devices require compliance. XHTML applies strict rules which enforces standards. XHTML can be used as XML. The only choice you have is when… this is inevitable.

Why not?
If you only intend to support PC type platforms with standard browsers there is no value in converting. Every page in your site will have to be converted with no visible improvements… How do you justify the costs. You may be able to wait until your web development tool automatically generates XHTML compliant code. If you do not intend to support PDA/Phones there is no reason to convert.

Problems….
Virtually all web tools at the moment write standard HTML. After converting documents all future HTML edits will have to be reviewed for XHTML compliance manually until your tools write XHTML. In XHTML ALL tags must have a closing tag(

must have
). In XHTML tags that do not have closing tags must end with a “/” symbol(
must be
). This includes meta tags as well..
Even if you are diligent and always provide closing tags in your HTML you will have to do many adjustments. All tables must have a TBODY tag. All tags and properties must be in lowercase. Inline CSS & Script encapsulated in comments must be in a CDATA block. These are just some of the more common issues. If you use strict XHTML, style properties only exist in CSS and will require even more adjustments. I recommend you review W3C standards for XHTML at http://www.w3c.org/

How to Convert
There is a lot more than most people think to convert DHTML to XHTML but I have found some good cheats…
There are several tools out there that will automatically convert DHTML to XHTML. I strongly recommend you use these rather than manually adjusting your HTML. You can convert the core site pages immediately then convert the rest as time permits. For tools you can use http://cgi.w3.org/cgi-bin/tidy that provides an online solution or you can download WebMatrix from http://www.asp.net/. I think Tidy provides the best implementation. There is a version of Tidy you can download and run from your PC… look on W3C site.

No matter what you decide, start writing all new documents with XHTML standards. It will save you having to re-write them later. That said you might notice this document is NOT XHTML compliant. I intend to convert the entire demo site at one time so I am waiting till then…

The Environment

2010-01-21T19:20:00.002-05:00

Updated 2009-11-25
The problem is still the same, we are just 6 years later. The effects of global warming are escalating and various environmental issues are getting larger. Species extinction i at the highest rate ever. Even the frogs and bees are dying. Things are not looking good. All our alarms are ringing yet we are still debating the issues. Maybe we are wrong and global warming is not an issue but the mass extinctions, disappearance of the ice caps, and record-breaking extreme weather around the world doesn’t point that way. Our planet is in trouble and we need to take care of it NOW not next decade. We can’t even get our government to agree to reduce emissions so it is unlikely we can rely on them. Greenpeace’s militant actions are starting to look like a necessary evil to get any attention from governments.

Published 2003-03-10
The environment should be the number one priority of every human. Without our environment we die, simple. You would think that business would focus on this and be more environmentally friendly. After all, the decisions are being made by people. So why does business continue to create products and packaging that are so environmentally unfriendly? Simple, money!

Money seems to cloud our vision. We know numerous things that are bad for our environment but we still use them. We knew when they were first created there would be future problems. Take cars, styrofoam cups, and virtually all packaging. I can’t call this a lack of vision since from the beginning we new these would create problems. It is greed that has motivated our decisions. The usage of environmentally unfriendly products saves money. Maybe less product is damaged or spoiled but it is a cost decision. I don’t think larger issues like environmental impact even come into the equation. Business is slowly changing but the real problem creators have put their spin doctors on the case and have twisted reality so the public doesn’t know what is real.

As long as consumers buy the product business will make it. However, with multiple companies making virtually every product the consumer has much more power. What products you buy makes more difference than you think. If you buy environmentally friendly products that use minimum packaging business will make the change or go bankrupt. Either way we all win.

The 3 R’s
Why is it everyone seems to have forgotten about 2 of these. Everyone knows “Recycle” but what about “Reduce” and “Reuse”? There is a much larger bang for the buck with either of them. Remember when most liquids came in reusable bottles? Remember when people were buying fuel-efficient cars and driving less? Remember rationing in wars? My parents seem to be the last generation that recognize the importance of reducing and reusing. Current marketing promotes single use, disposable products with no regard for environmental impacts.

Packaging
It’s weird that product packaging accounts for more garbage than the actual products. Unfortunately packaging is almost exclusively a consumer problem. We demand the pretty package, every cookie be individually wrapped and other stupid things. If everyone bought items that were not packaged(like bulk food) business would adjust. Since packaging costs money most businesses would love to avoid it. Unfortunately as long as packaging sells business has no choice. Standardizing which packing material can be used and how needs to have more practical implementations.

Human Waste
A great natural resource going to waste. On top of that we are removing the best natural filters available… bogs and marshes. Using marshes to purify the water and create top quality soil has been demonstrated to exceed expectations so why aren’t we doing it? Even the modern toilet is a poor method for handling this resource. Contaminating gallons of water to dispose of what should be considered a valuable resource is not feasible. Even worse we use clean fresh water instead of recycled water.

Water
Is there anyone that thinks there is an unlimited supply of fresh water anymore? So why do people act as if there is. We water our lawns, flush toilets & clean our walks with fresh tap water. We pour all types of toxic cleaning solutions into water, dump oils and other contaminants, and more or less use waterways as garbage dumps. Toxic solutions have been found in virtually all underground water sources. Perhaps the oceans are showing the impacts we have seen in Canadian lakes due to things like acid rain. There are now many lakes in Canada that have no fish or other living animals due to this pollution. If so we can only expect there to be less fish available.

Cradle To Grave
This concept is long overdue. It is simple… You make it, your responsible for the environmental impact throughout the life of the product. Including impact to manufacture, use and dispose of the product. When a product comes to market it is assessed for environmental impact and charges are applied to cover these hidden costs society currently pays. Products are continually reviewed for impacts and charges are adjusted accordingly. Companies that create unique problems must provide solutions BEFORE the product can be released for sale. This transfers responsibility from society to the rightful owners. Furthermore it would reflect a more accurate “true cost” of a product.

We can no longer dump garbage somewhere else. I hope we have learned that everything happens in our backyard. The problem can be created on the other side of the world but we still feel the effects. This is a global problem that requires ground roots implementation. No one government or business is going to make a change but millions of us screaming in politicians ears can get some action. The longer we wait the harsher the impacts will be.

We have the ability to eliminate garbage and clean the air, water and land. Now we need the commitment.

Power Solutions

2010-01-21T19:18:00.002-05:00

Updated 2009-11-25
Well oil went to just under $150 which really makes the original publication even more relative. Even now oil is around $80 which is 8 times as much as it was in 2003 when I originally posted on this issue. This is one of my pet peeves. We can do something, it is simple if the political will was really there. You just subsidise the good with taxes on the bad. It is amazing how money seems to suddenly find a way to make things work. We have subsidized the bad for far to long. Let’s try something different and promote the good for a change.

I am embarrassed by the Canadian record on environment and wildlife. The reality is most Canadians don’t know what large corporations are doing to the lands. properties are clear-cut just to a point where you can’t see it from the road. Many companies work away from the public so we are not aware of the damage being done. Once we find out the company simply moves to another country and leaves the mess for us to clean up($$$). We need the agencies that are supposed to protect these things to have the power and ability to enforce the rules. It seems virtually all these agencies have been destroyed either by no budget or no enforcement power. The people in these roles are trying but there is only so much they can do until the government motivation clearly shows them that they have the power, money and backing when push comes to shove. Like many other governments ours seem to talk the talk but is barely crawling let alone walking. Things like the tar sands are not helping things. Sure jobs are made but at what cost. Companies have to be held accountable for the damages their products create. We really need a “cradle to grave” solution so companies that cause the most damage pay the most.

Published 2003-03-10
It’s funny to think that numerous cultures, hundreds of years ago had better power solutions than we have now.

First off, we have more available power than we need in the foreseeable future. All we have to do is look outside the oil/nuclear box for far superior solutions. Once governments around the world subsidize clean, renewable sources instead of oil/nuclear the advances will be far beyond any of our expectations.

The biggest problem I see in providing clean, renewable sources of power is governments lack of commitment. Sure they all talk environment but then subsidize the large corporations creating dirty, non-renewable sources of power. In Ontario, Canada the provincial government subsidizes Hydro… Technically they don’t… They tell Hydro what the rates will be to the consumer and if Hydro over spends it can borrow the money from the government. This has been going on for over 30 years and now Hydro owes our government billions and is forced into charging $0.043 per KWH for the next 5 years. Far less than the “cost” of the power and it’s distribution. How can renewable sources compete.

Furthermore, infrastructure has to be put in place to promote better solutions. Perhaps a surcharge for non-renewable, dirty fuel that directly passes to discounts for renewable, clean sources. The only way to succeed is to make the old ways expensive and the new ways profitable. Only then will society change in mass numbers. We could also expect more investment would create cheaper methods of harnessing power. Thus creating an increasing demand for cleaner power.

The key to future success for any society will be their ability to create infinitely renewable environmentally neutral power sources. Societies that base their power solutions on oil, nuclear or plant sources will eventually fail. Societies that generate more power than they use will become much more powerful in the near term future.

Given what we already know about future power requirements wind, solar, water and lightning are going to be in demand. Once electric cars become more popular these renewable sources may become a necessity.

With Canada’s resources we should be one of the largest power generators in the world. We have large space to put up wind and solar farms, huge water sources, geo-thermal sources and of course then there is lightning. I would like to see us provide enough power for the world. If it were possible to get all the world governments together just think of the solutions… Desserts, mountains and oceans would become huge power generating locations.

We have everything we need to provide unlimited clean, renewable power. Now we just need the political motivation. Countries like Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden are leading the way. As a Canadian I am embarrassed at our lack of commitment. I would easily pay double the cost if it ensured future generations had clean renewable power sources. It will never be cheap but sometimes you have to consider more than money. I do not want future generations paying for our lack of foresight. In this case even the stupidest person can see clean renewable sources are the way to go.

Internal combustion engines must die. Inherently they “burn” fuel and create emissions. Even solutions like fuel cells may increase precipitation as they emit water droplets. There is little need to use “burning” solutions given all the available options. They have demonstrated long-term unacceptable impacts on our environment.

Below are several power sources and my simplistic assessment of each.

Oil/Natural Gas Sources
Sucks up valuable natural resources, creates an environmental nightmare and there is a dwindling supply. Is there anyone that thinks this is a long-term viable solution any more? I certainly do not! The recent mess where oil has gone from $10-$40 only emphasizes how little supply is really available. To rely on this power solution will only ensure a collapse of a society… Just a matter of when. A transition away from this form of power must be immediate. Dwindling supplies will only increase the cost unless alternatives are found.

Nuclear Sources
What are you crazy??? They have demonstrated their impacts already… Just waiting for the next disaster.

Plant Sources
To burn plants for fuel does not make sense. They can be used for much more productive uses. “Burning” for power will create problems even if it is as slow as global warming and should be avoided where possible. Besides we need these sources to enrich our current soil without chemicals.

Geo-Thermal Sources
Taking heat generated from the ground is a great power source as long as we only take heat from the first 1km or less of earth. If we start going deeper for thermal sources I have concerns about eventually lowering the earth’s core or creating a man-made catastrophe. Countries like Iceland where this source of power is everywhere are showing us how to benefit. They have so much extra heat they heat roads and sidewalks in cities. No one has a hot water heater in their house, hot water comes direct from city water. They also use it to generate electrical power. Unfortunately not many countries have the abundance that Iceland has but this concept can be applied in every country.

Wind Sources
The next 3 of these were used thousands of years ago to harness power but somehow we got sold on the “cheaper” bang for the buck in oil. Wind is infinitely renewable and has no known environmental impact. It does have some draw backs… You need wind to generate power, the current wind mill is not pretty and consumes real estate. I have often wondered why no one has created a fan similar to venting fans you see on house roofs. It would seem to be a more effective solution to catch cross flowing winds. Used with solar or water sources makes a complete solution.

Solar Sources
Solar is infinitely renewable and has no known environmental impact. It does have one draw back… You need sun. As technology improves this solution will certainly become common place. Used with wind or water sources makes a complete solution.

Water Sources
Water is infinitely renewable and has no known environmental impact. It does have one draw back… You need constant flowing water. The problem is not in the power source but our implementations to harness it. Large power plants like Niagra Falls and super damns should be a thing of the past. They were implemented so only certain people would control power. We need to integrate into the environment to obtain our needs, use the natural flow of water, not force it. As technology improves this solution will certainly become common place. Good water flow can make a complete solution by itself.

Lightning Sources
The power of lightning is awesome. Working on ways to harness this power would seem to be a worthwhile adventure. Creating a world net that draws power from lightning could in itself provide all the power the world needs in the foreseeable future. This has the potential that usage of power is promoted rather than conservation(at least for a while ). Only concern is that we might draw too much electricity and somehow our planet becomes negatively charged.

Which Browser to Use?

2010-01-21T19:17:00.000-05:00

Updated 2010-01-21
Well things have really changed but then again it has been 7+ years since my last update . The desktop has a smaller market share. With 3G/4G finally getting rolled out smart phones are quickly becoming the surfing method of choice. Everyone uses the custom browser that their smart phone comes with. On the desktop there are now 5 main competitors(what a change from the 1-Microsoft-in 2002). In my opinion...

Chrome is best for personal use.
Safari is best for developers/designers and people that want the absolute best graphics(more failures than Chrome in my experience).
Firefox is a close 3rd.
Opera has some interesting otions(like voice)
Have to wait for IE9 to see if it is going to catch up with the rest.

What’s next? Who knows on this one. I would expect that voice will finally start to gain ground but people won't adopt technology that doesn't work near 100%. For sure CSS3 will be widely supported since virtually all browsers(even IE9) support at least 95% of the standard. Standards are really starting to win because of the number of vendors. Now that is a surprise... Usually standards are the first thing to get sacrificed in competition but in this case all the vendors have committed to them so it is difficult to back out and the group force everyone else to support the standards.

Updated 2002-12-17
Most Netscape(NN) supporters have not backed version 6 thus NN is stuck at version 4 and has fallen out of favor. Meanwhile IE has now gobbled up 80%++ browser share. Wireless devices are rapidly taking market share from both browsers but these devices aren’t ready to be smart clients yet. They are advancing quickly however and are great where screen space is not important. There is no doubt the “browser” issue has now become even more complex with many new devices supporting only XHTML, WML or proprietary languages. NN is now relegated to the “Other browser” category for most sites that attempt to support multiple browsers… You know, basic web site with no advanced features… Like this site. Future updates will probably deal more with wireless devices like phones and PDA’s than NN. At less than 10%(for all versions) NN is no longer worth supporting a customized site.

Updated 2000-09-02
A new Netscape is in town. It is going to shake things up a bit. It might even take some market share away from IE(not much). Anyone that hates Microsoft will for sure use the new version. But much more important is that developers embrace Netscape’s guts to really attempt to support W3C/ECMA standards. I have updated this site and know both IE and NN6 enjoy the same experience. Let’s not kid ourselves. IE is still a better browser but Netscape V6 is a real step forward. I want to ensure that IE isn’t the only browser in town. I just don’t want to write 2 sites to support each browser.

Updated 2000-03-26
Well IE 5.0 has been released(with patches) but where is Netscape(NN)? Since AOL took over the browser it has gone to never-never land. Comparisons between the two browsers shows NN is starting to fall behind Opera(browser) in standards support. When looking at DHTML or CSS Netscape falls way short of meeting the standards. The object model is much more difficult and limited. The browser crashes repeatedly and I even found a JavaScript bug that corrupts Netscape. That’s right, you would have to re-install to get it to work again. It looks like AOL purchased the browser to ensure it gets buried…..But I could be wrong. Around 75% of traffic seems to be using IE4.0 or better at this time…..My how things change…..Just not as fast as I would like.

Updated 1999-02-25
Both Netscape and Microsoft say they will support the W3C DHTML spec. Ya, right… Anyway, IE 5.0 Beta has been exceptionally stable. Matter of fact it has been more stable than IE 4.01. I really like the auto-fill capabilities but from a user perspective that is about all you notice. It does load certain pages faster if they are built for IE 5.0. For some quirky reason I have to start it twice before the browser will display on one of my systems. Once it goes to a full release I would get a copy, but wait till then.
As for Netscape….I have not tried the 5.0 version so I can’t comment.

Updated 1998-08-23
Microsoft has all but closed the doors on Netscape. It is no longer a question of which is better. IE4.0 comes with Windows 98 and is integrated into the system. Businesses will use IE because it will require less administration and integrates into IIS servers easily. Critical mass has built up on the client base for IE. Soon Microsoft may have to support Netscape like Apple just to ensure they don’t get those nasty law suites. It would be strategically sound for Microsoft to throw away a few mil. As for the active desktop you can install it but make sure you do not select the option to show window contents while dragging. This option only creates a lot of overhead for your system and no real gain.

Updated 1997-11-01 originally published 1997-09-25
With IE4.0 released and NN4.03 you can upgrade both but do not install the Active Desktop(IE4). Both are as stable as previous versions(yes, they still crash). The advances made with DHTML take browsing to a new level and are definitely worth the upgrade. Even if you surf strictly for content you get advantages. The ability to hide and display content dynamically in itself gives great advantages.
Both browsers support Cascading Style Sheets(finally) and DHTML expands CSS capabilities. The differences between browsers referencing CSS will probably be resolved with a little from both sides(not exclusively one side). JavaScript has become the standard scripting language and with DHTML extensions is going to create havoc on Java’s future. Many things you just can’t do with JAVA can be done easily with DHTML. Securing scripts from the client is still a major stumbling block for scripting languages(You can’t stop clients from stealing code). Layer technology will not likely survive standards committees. VBscript will not survive as a client scripting language unless Netscape^® adopts it or Microsoft^® create a free plug-in(to bad). Netscape^®has new life(for now). NN4.03 is not as good as IE4.0 but is very close. It has a prettier interface than IE4.0. This has become more a personal choice than ever.

Actually, the browser war is over, Netscape^® just doesn’t know it yet;)
There are really only two browsers, Netscape^® Navigator(NN) and Microsoft^®Internet Explorer(IE). I know about Lycos, Mosaic, etc. but they are so limited in usage that it is hard to count them. At this moment use BOTH(Netscape^® and Microsoft^®)! But use V3.*, neither has a stable V4 yet. I suspect that IE4 will be stable but let’s wait till October 1st and see.
If you have to choose I would recommend Microsoft^®’s Internet Explorer(particularly on Windows95/NT). Microsoft^® has the standards, the money, and a free browser. Not to mention I personally think the capabilities are far superior to Netscape^®. By no means is Microsoft^® perfect. I have several issues with things they do(you might see a few on different pages), but they have the best browser.
Netscape^® makes a very good browser. They used to be first by a long shot. Now they are a close second. IE Version 4 will shut the door but it will take years to take effect. Remember….this is today, tomorrow an even better browser could pop-up(but would it be good enough to buy it?). IBM^® will probably buy Netscape^®’s browser before Netscape^® gives up(they need A browser for junk OS/2).
As a technician I cheer for Netscape^®’s cause but as a business owner I buy Microsoft^®.

Domain Registrars

2010-01-21T18:53:00.000-05:00

Updated 2009-11-25
I am still with Domainsatcost.ca but Registryfly.com had to stop registering domains. They were doing something that was not allowed but never affected me. Moved the COM sites to Domainsatcost.ca.

Published 2002-11-12
Picking a good Domain Registrar(DR) is more important than you might think. I mean what do they do? They register your domain name right? That used to be the case but things have changed in the past few years.

What you are about to read is my personal experiences with 3 different DR’s. Specifically www.DomainsatCost.ca, www.registryfly.com, andwww.networksolutions.com (now owned by Verisign).

DomainsAtCost.ca
After 2 years of using DomainsAtCost.ca(not .com) I would definitely rate this the best DR out there for .CA domains. Their price can’t be beat but there is much more. Their service is excellent. The website is fast and easy to navigate(It could bet even faster and more efficient with a few minor performance tweaks). The site is great for managing multiple domain names at once. They make the process as painless as possible. In addition they provide what I consider an invaluable FREE redirect service that can redirect to a folder in a website (critical for multiple domains and only one website). They also provide the best search engine for common Domain Names I have found. It includes a “similar” name list on each search. Just the search engine is worth checking out their site. I highly recommend them. The only negative comments I can say is that their price on US domain names is a higher than their US competition($14.95) and for some reason more than DomainsAtCost.com (but still a good price) and email response on weekends could be improved(maybe it has, rarely need email). Compared to other Canadian DR’s DomainsAtCost.ca has no competition.

Registerfly.com
This company just keeps getting better and offering more services. I first used their service 2 years ago. They are great for general use except for .CA domains. Register with them and you may not need any other service providers. They provide many FREE services at a very cheap price but again it is service that is important. Everything works through the website and is fast and fairly easy to navigate. The problem with navigation is they have so many options(not a bad thing). For $8.99us per year you can have your domain registered, have email, and a very simple website. Now that is tough to beat. They have lot’s of other FREE options with registration. They do not offer .CA domain registration unfortunately. I prefer DomainsAtCost.ca but this company is a close second. If I needed more of their free services I think they would be #1… tough call.

NetworkSolutions.com
You knew there was going to be an exception…
Originally I started with NetworkSolutions(NS) back in 1995 when I registered my first domain. They were the only DR available. It was simple to register because my web service provider did it for me. The cost… $70 per year, services, absolutely none. You would think paying such a premium would get you top service… HA!!! Here is my 7 year nightmare… There was no problem until I changed email addresses several years after registering. That is when I actually had to get involved… Since I no longer had my old email ID(dropped acount 6+ months before) it was virtually impossible to communicate with NS to renew my domain. At that time they did not accept anything unless it was from email. Go to their website and forms were very complex and almost impossible to find the right form. Navigation was one of the worst I have seen. It took 6 months to finally get my email changed with more back-and-forth than I care to remember. After that I moved… another nightmare trying to get my information changed… another 4 months… Their price has always been among the highest (until recently they were $30 per year…now $15.00/year-if you register for 2 years). A year ago I finally got fed up and went to change DR’s before I had to renew. After 2 months of messing around the domain was expiring and I had to renew with NS. This year I decided to get a jump on transferring. I started on September 27th(renewal is April 2003) … Good thing… I am still screwing around with the new “Verisign” to get this accomplished. I have requested it be transferred 3 times now and it still hasn’t happened. Each time the whole process works except the confirmation email from NS(now Verisign)… I even get email stating the request was rejected because I did not confirm the request. Each time the response I got when I contacted Verisign was “try again”… On the 3rd attempt I wasn’t going to wait around for it to be rejected… Requested transfer yesterday everything proceeding like other times… no response from NS by 9am today… I called them and someone(David) actually looked into it… “for some reason” they can’t see where they are sending the confirmation message. They should be able to… they just can’t… appears to be sending it to a blank email address?? Good someone actually looked at this AFTER my 3rd attempt. When I called Verisign I did note that it was quick to reach someone and David was very polite and responded to my issues as best he could. I was informed the account would be moved within 2 days. If this doesn’t get done you know I am not going to be very happy and this article will be updated for your reference. Just a thought for you…. 100 domains here= $7,000/year… 100 domains registerfly.com = $899/year
Hopefully Verisign can salvage the client base from NS. It will be a difficult challenge given the abuse NS’s customers have had to endure. Verisign will have to adjust very quickly and add a lot of options and I’m not sure they are prepared for the scope. Verisign is a big company and this integrates well with their other services to provide complete end-to-end solutions. Please note that Verisign has inherited a mess, they did not create it!

There are many good DR’s for US domains now, not so many for .CA domains. You no longer have to accept poor service and high costs. Shop around, the difference can be extreme. I have seen registration charges as high as $100 recently.

So like I said…
Picking a good Domain Registrar is more important than you might think

At time of publishing the only relationship I have with any of these companies is as a customer. The comments here are my personal experiences with 3 companies, you may have a totally different relationship with any or all of them. Due to experiences with NetworkSolutions I spent countless hours reviewing many DR’s before deciding. I think my choices have worked out well. There are DR’s that are a few dollars cheaper but guaranteed good service is worth more than $2 per year.

Like always, these are my opinions…. I could be wrong.

Spam Email... Enough Already

2010-01-21T18:52:00.001-05:00

Updated 2009-11-25
This is not a big issue any more. Most email is filtered for spam at various levels and there is much less spam getting to my Inbox. However I know they are still sending it and clogging up the networks.

Published 2002-09-24
Enough already. This is killing the only valuable part of the Internet that is left for the public.

I was noticing even with all my efforts to block spam email I still get around 30 every day. In case you didn’t know spam email is unsolicited email. Like online junk mail but worse. If you combine the viruses with the spam I wonder why anyone uses email anymore. I admit I have more than one e-mail address so the numbers I am about to give you may be a little high…

I was wondering how much junk mail was being passed around so I did a little analysis on my own email accounts. Here is what I found…

With all filtering on I get an average of 30 spam email and 3 valid email per day. This works out to better than 90% of all email is spam. Pretty bad you think?… Just wait…

I then turned off all my filters for one day and checked…WOW!!!
I had 273 spam email and 3 valid email in 24 hours. This works out to 98.9% spam email and only 1.1% valid email!… and it is getting worse not better.

If you’re wondering where all the bandwidth is going this might be a good place to look.

If there were any place I wish hackers paid attention to it would these sites. I would love to see a concerted effort by hacking groups to totally trash spammers. Wouldn’t it be great to send all the spam mail from one spammer to another spammer, and so on….

Some good ISP’s are putting in spam filters and at least they help dramatically reduce the problem. Perhaps they could join together on this issue and share their spammer lists. Quite often the ISP is hosting a spammer and they are not aware. Any assistance they can provide is greatly appreciated.

Maybe like several other people I know we should just use the phone. At least it doesn’t spam us much. If the Internet was here first spending $0.10 or less a minute to talk on a phone would certainly be the rage. Just think, in one minute you could communicate several minutes of typing and have real-time response. No typing, no waiting for responses, no spam. Wow, why didn’t somebody think of this before?

HTML Email

2010-01-21T18:51:00.000-05:00

Updated 2009-11-25
Outlook and other mail programs have implemented most of what I previously recommended and the new spam/junk filters really help out. However, I would still view email in plain text because some junk still gets through.

Updated 2002-01-07
There is a way to at least stop HTML email from attacking you. See Secure Emailunder the How To Demos for details and instructions. The instructions protect you from all the viruses I have seen being generated by this HTML email… without having virus protection software.

Published 2001-02-24

This stuff really sucks! It is so intrusive and there is no way to turn it off in Microsoft Outlook. Before you had to worry about attachments in your email… now you have to worry about your email. Companies are sending their website to you. With non-HTML email you were safe(except attachments)… with HTML email anybody can tell if email was sent to a valid email address, whether you read the email and they can get your IP address. Just about everything they could detect in the browser. All very easily. They can even use ActiveX, Java and JavaScript to extend what they can do. With this information they know who you are and can then track your movement in the site and relate that to you specifically. THIS IS NOT GOOD!
I find that 95% of my HTML email is some form of junk mail. How many people do you talk to that use HTML instead of simple text for email? Other than business ads not many?
SPAM networks can use HTML email to confirm email addresses are valid much easier. Once your email ID is on their network(and validated) you will see even more junk mail.

It was headache enough with attachments and all the SPAM you had to wade through… now you have to worry about what that SPAM email is doing.

How do you stop it?

I haven’t figured out a way yet. Anybody got any ideas. It should be simple for Microsoft to put one of the filter options as “content type” for message rules. Then we could do this easily. Until then I create new rules and keep trashing stuff.

On a side note all this HTML email is making it difficult for companies that don’t SPAM you. Now I have to compete with people that intrude on your life with this HTML email as well as other web sites.

Do us all a favor and yell at Microsoft. This is something that can easily be fixed.

Netscape V6... Now Firefox

2010-01-21T18:49:00.002-05:00

Updated 2009-11-25
Netscape died/transitioned to Firefox and has now taken around 40-45% of desktop browser market. Firefox is fast to load pages and more standards compliant than Microsoft and it is free. Advances in technology and surprisingly the adoption of .NET for a development platform has actually helped Firefox’s adoption. This is because .NET attempts to adjust for the various other browsers on the market automatically. Keep going Firefox

Update 2002-01-07
Well it has been over a year and most sites do not support it. Even fewer users are switching to it. I have abandoned supporting it here as well. This is not good. I would like it to succeed now that they seem to have their heads on straight even though as a developer it creates a lot of headache for me.
Update 2001-02-15
Oh, Oh…. Final version has been out a while now… Many sites are not supporting it. This is not good. It looks a lot better, and really does support W3C/ECMA as much as you can expect. Is it because everyone is used to working with the previous crap they don’t want to change? Come on people, if you ever wanted Netscape to succeed now is the time to back them up!
As a developer I would like to have only one browser… simplifies things. As a user I want choice. It may be I just don’t like a particular company. Whatever, I want to choose. Besides I want to make sure people who use systems other than Windows** can still use the Internet.

Published 2000-09-02
Netscape Navigator Version6(NN6) Preview 2 is out. What an improvement… and this is still beta. The browser fails less often. It has a smaller footprint(size), is faster and more efficient. My hat is off to Netscape. They realized they made several key mistakes with NN4 and have done an about-face. Ever since NN3 I have not supported Netscape. They continually created their own proprietary tags that made no sense. A prime example of this was the LAYER tag. At that time I realized they did not have the expertise to create a top-notch standard. They were too busy trying to keep up with IE. Things got thrown in that would have never have passed cooler heads.

Netscape thought they could tell everyone else what to do(sound familiar). They thought everyone would follow whatever standard they put out. Were they ever wrong. That is not to say that IE has not tried the same thing(they have), IE just drove the standards committees to adopt IE standards using logical arguments.

Well with Netscape V6 NN is supporting the W3C/ECMA standards very closely. They have dropped tags that were not adopted and they have included IE tags that have got into the standards. I am finding that IE5 requires more non-standard code than NN6. IE now has to get rid of the “document.all” script tag and we are closer to a standard browser than ever before. That is not to say there aren’t coding work a rounds required….just not near as many.

I want to support Netscape’s venture in being 100% standards compliant. That is why this site was built for both NN6 and IE5. Previously I just let NN in but a lot of stuff did not work. With NN6 only some demonstrations don’t work. All the cool buttons and configuration etc. all works.

On the down side Netscape is going to alienate a lot of developers since they have removed tags like LAYER from NN6. Also it’s “simpler” client interface is not very pretty which may take some people time to adjust(if ever). The toolbars could be better. NN6 actually works better on IE sites than sites built for NN4. Hopefully developers will forgive Netscape and recognize it took a lot of guts for Netscape to do this. It was not an easy decision.

Congratulations Netscape…. Get the final version out please…. I want people off NN4.

Gun Control... Wake up United States!

2010-01-21T18:48:00.000-05:00

Updated 2009-11-25
At this time virtually any large USA city has 2+ times more murders than the entire country of Canada. Yet gun control is still not a major issue in the USA. I hope posting it on the blog will drive more communication on the issue.

Published 2001-09-10
A touchy subject… As a Canadian citizen I can tell you that gun control works. The mentality that we need guns to protect ourselves from others only ensures that everyone has guns. I know that if I had a gun available “at the moment” the possibility of me using it in rage or personal defense is conceivable. Please understand, I think anyone in rage/defense can do things they would not normally even think about, so to me anyone could pull a gun. Now I consider myself a reasonable person who is not likely to do this kind of thing, but when I think about someone that is not quite so stable carrying a gun I get very nervous.

As a Canadian I don’t even think about “Do they have a gun?”(except for Police). Currently I live in Toronto, Ontario, a city with approximately 3 million people living in a diverse multi-cultural environment. Comparable to many major cities in USA yet our homicide rate is far lower. We live next door to Buffalo/Detroit who both have less people and many more homicides. WHAT CAN YOU ATTRIBUTE THE DIFFERENCE TO??? Funny thing is that I would expect everyone in USA to be on their best behavior knowing everyone else has a gun… Instead it seems to bring out the more “macho” attitude.

I think being a cop is tough in Canada… I would not be one where anyone can carry a concealed firearm or where firearms are so readily available. No wonder cops shoot so many people in USA.

I have lived in the country and know the value of a rifle(groundhogs are pesky critters), I also like to use guns for target practice(fun). In no way does gun control stop these things. It helps control them. Key benefits of gun control is it reduces the availability of guns. Most gun controls are targeted to stop hand guns, and AK47 type assault weapons(or bigger). I know that some of us would just love to play with one of these but in Canada we understand controlling guns can save our lives! Just a little more important to us. It would probably be cool to have your own tank or nuclear bomb but I know that if I can have it so can everyone else. In these cases I would rather no one have it. I know it is not perfect and we should all be able to do what we want… but we have a responsibility to the society as well.

“Guns don’t kill people, people do”…
Atomic bombs don’t kill people either but you don’t see me saying everyone has the right to one.

“The Constitution”…
Wake up! That is how gun makers and criminals are sucking you into stopping gun control. Do you really think with your basement full of weapons you are any match for the military of the USA? Canada is no match for one of their aircraft carriers… If the military was put in place the first thing they do is disarm everyone so where are your guns anyway. This part of the constitution was written during a very different time and meant to cover situations that no longer exist. Please, give up the guns, for all of us.

There will always be someone who wants to own a tank. It is up to those with a little more sense to say wait a second, I don’t think it is a good idea for anyone to own a tank… At least not unless it is controlled so we know you aren’t going to shoot us.

Don’t believe me…
Here is statistics from StatsCanada on Homicides occurring between 1966 and 1999 in Canada. We are not as good as many European countries on a per capita ratio but are no where near USA. For that matter all violent crime is reduced with gun control. I think that our violent crime statistics would drop noticeably if USA installed some form of gun control. We still have approx. 30% of homicides using a gun… We just have a lot less homicides.

Don’t even think about how many less robberies and other non-violent crimes would be committed with gun control. Just think… less jails, less costs, less crime, less murders, less fear… LESS GUNS!

Is your “target practice” worth the cost to society? Speak up… send email and letters to your congress.

If you want to do something good with a gun…

CHARLTON HESTON comes to mind

I will never watch his movies again! He personally set back gun control immeasurably.

Of course this is my opinion…. I could be wrong.

Which Coding Language to Use?

2010-01-21T18:47:00.000-05:00

Updated 2009-11-25
My how things have changed. Java appears to be going the way of OS/2, Microsoft is now .NET instead of ASP, and many unix servers are using PHP(even some Windows servers). XHTML and XML are both extensively used. Netscape is gone and replaced with Firefox. Smart phones have finally replaced WAP. DIV and SPAN tags are the predominate tags now. Many more servers are now Windows based instead of Unix. .NET is dominant in large business sites. Browsers are all over the place and then there are smart phones. I expect everything to change to video/3D over next 10 years so don’t spend too much time on this stuff At this time I prefer the following:

.NET for server. Can be C#, VB, PHP, Python or other language but .NET handles various browser issues(mostly).
CSS – now the standard. Actually standards are recommending all layout should be in CSS format and not included in HTML tags.
JavaScript – The standard for years.
Ajax or similar – dynamic communication as well as saving bandwidth.User gets virtually instant responses.
MySQL – for databases. Open source.
Flash – for dynamic graphics sections.
Look into video and 3D tools – I see most sites going to interactive video/3D instead of text.

Updated 2001-02-15
Well, if you consider that AOL is a version of Internet Explorer(IE) then IE version 4+ now controls 85%+ of the browser market. Microsoft owns 98% of the operating systems. With this combination it should make your decisions easier. Now the potential to use VBScript, ActiveX etc. is feasible on the Internet. Is XHTML or XML going to win? Not sure, probably neither. Each is the “new” language that will allow everyone to communicate together… heard that before??? CSS is here to stay. It will be improved but it is a base for layouts to come. WAP is not going away for awhile… bandwidth may change that so I would not invest too heavily but it is necessary for several sites(like stock brokers, banks…) right now. You can trash all the tables and start using DIV and Span tags. Java is actually gaining ground since more powerful computers and faster bandwidth are available. Microsoft owning everything defeats the one real benefit of Java though. There is always going to be the next language that will solve everything for us… we buy it then figure out it can’t do ???? that the other product could. These of course will be solved in the next version…;-).
A big step is Netscape’s support of standards. Now if we could get Microsoft to do the same and drop that *&*%$# document.all method we could really get grooving. It might surprise many of you to know that Netscape6 is a better standards based browser than Explorer5.5. Explorer is much more forgiving for developers where Netscape is strict.

Published 1997-09-25
For Intranet(because of it’s controlled concept) I would use Microsoft^® supported languages exclusively. These would include DHTML, CSS, Jscript with server code mostly in ASP files. Limited use of VBscript, ActiveX and JAVA. This of course won’t work if you are an OS/2 shop but will work for MAC and some Unix operating systems.

For Internet I prefer to recommend more platform independent languages at this time. Unfortunately many languages are needed to truly develop a site. Unless you use at least some of the capabilities specific to the browser you limit your potential gains.
DHTML is now a must.
JavaScript(Jscript) is best for scripting simply because both browsers support it(sort of).
Pure JAVA is best for advanced requirements but is limiting and slow(this is improving very quickly).
CGI is still my choice for server side code but only because most servers are still Unix. If you can, I recommend using other languages(VB,C++,REXX, whatever).
Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) for those with requirements for specific positioning of elements. Or at least extensive use of small tables(large ones are slow to load).
All above can support both Netscape^® and Microsoft^® browsers if designed correctly.
After all that is said, I have found you need ALL languages above to provide the client with the best solution. More importantly, how(or if) they work on different browsers.

Banner Ads

2010-01-21T18:45:00.002-05:00

Updated 2009-11-25
Still feel the same way even with faster Internet. It is getting worse with ads down the sides of the page as well. On the other side I do run Google Text ads. Since these met my criteria of low-bandwidth and no effect on page loading I have tried them. I don’t get a lot of traffic so they haven’t worked out that well but I have accumulated some credits . I have not seen any tangible value in over 2 years.

Updated 2001-02-15
Apparently the “click through” rate for banner ads is in the range of 1 in every 1000. This from people who track these things. Now think…. each banner ad is at least 30k… If you are running these things then 999 people are inconvenienced by having to download an additional 30k to visit your “awesome” site. If you run these on every page you must really like to punish your customers. I really do hate these things.

Published 2000-10-07
You might have noticed this site does not run any ads. There is a very specific reason. I take the time and effort to actually get you to come to this site. If I ran ads you could possibly leave my site on the first page because you clicked an ad that was of interest. All the work and effort I put in to get you here and I just sent you somewhere else for a fee of maybe 15¢. It just doesn’t seem to pay off. My site would be slower(all the graphic ads). I would lose a lot of valuable screen real estate displaying these ads. In addition I find customers tolerate these ads. They certainly don’t like them.

In my personal experience this has happened more than once…… I went to a site looking for something, saw an ad that was of interest, clicked the ad and forgot about the original site. That original site just gave away a potential customer for 15¢. Often sites pay more than that in promotion just to get the customer to visit.

Banner ads can be beneficial for sites like Microsoft, Netscape, Disney, Yahoo and others. They are so large that they know the customer will be back. They are also good for free sites that provide various services “for free”.

Banner exchange ads aren’t much better. You have to show other site ads usually twice as many times as you have yours displayed. Again, do you want to promote other sites more than your own?

In summary it seems foolish to run these ads when it cost you more than the revenue they produce. The problem is the costs are not easily quantifiable and not that obvious. The ads do produce tangible revenue……but at what cost?

Anyway, that is my opinion…..Others have had great success with Banner Ads.

Flash 5.0

2010-01-21T18:43:00.000-05:00

2009-11-25
I never did get back to this and spent little time with developing Flash. It is still very popular particularly for ads and media companies. I may review the newest version to see what has changed in 10 years.

2000-10-07
I have recently been playing with Flash 5. I am not sure yet whether I love it or hate it(probably somewhere in between). Either way I am going to start to use it. Please note since I am just starting with Flash 5 some information may be inaccurate.

What is it?

In a nutshell it is an animation software and player. The player is “built in” to virtually all new browsers. It has been extended beyond that to interface with other HTML components(like JavaScript/Java…). It’s three biggest advantages are browser independence, animation, and vector graphics. If used properly it can produce a very efficient and pleasing site.

What I like

Browser independence. No special code for Netscape or IE. Both browsers support Flash and newer browser versions come with Flash preinstalled.
Object Oriented. Instancing can really improve your sites performance while giving you cool effects.
Animation. Need I say more. There is lot’s of it. Too bad it doesn’t support 3D(yet). Then it would be even more interesting.
Timelines. Match up that music to the animation, create object instances each with their own timeline.
Vector graphics. Extremely efficient graphics method. Flash 5 allows some very nice effects.
Single file with at least basic protection of developers code.

What I don’t like

Coding view. You can only see the code for a specific object at anyone time. Would be nice to have option to see code for entire layer/scene.
Proprietary coding standards. There are so many it isn’t funny.
Abuse. Some people make Flash pages that are 1meg+ in size. Eventually this will be fine but right now this is abusive.
Not fully robust yet. It is getting there but working “outside the box” can get tricky.

I still have to get used to the interface and how it works. The flash tutorial and samples are invaluable for newbies. There is no question Flash 5 has a place in most web sites. Even to a point of being the entire website. There will soon be an entire section for Flash at this site. Many written by an affiliate that is a much better graphics/Flash person than I.

Title Parameter

2010-01-21T18:40:00.000-05:00

Updated 209-11-24
Notice no one uses the status bar for help anymore. It used to be used on almost every site. Everyone now uses the Title parameer or new custom modules that perform these yellow popups allowing very complex displays rather than the simplistic text display available with the Title parameter…some even look like the classic “balloon help”. I suspect that these more advanced help module concepts will eventally make it into HTML standards(maybe reference a section of the page like a DIV or snippet of code as the title parm). I have been noticing that sometimes the help flashes on/off when movong over plain text that is in a SPAN with a title parameter. Quite frustrating.

Published 2000-09-02
The title parm is now available in both IE3+ and NN6+. What is it for? It provides those little pop-up help tips when you move the mouse over something. In previous NN browsers this was only available for pictures(Alt parm). This help is now available on ANY tag. For example, move your mouse over this text. Notice the pop-up help appears. Move the mouse over IE3+ or NN6+ to get a better idea of a more common usage. Another reason I supported NN6.

Title is what help should be. None of this writing to statusbar. Clients do not have to look anywhere, help hits them over the head. I had created a Form 7 process for IE3(only) that did the exact same thing before this was built in. This site is changing to exclusively Title help.

How do you do it? Simple, just put TITLE=”What you want to say” on virtually any tag.

I have more stuff on this in How To demos at my website.

IFrames... What Frames Should Have Been

2010-01-21T18:37:00.000-05:00

Updated 2009-11-25
Iframes are everywhere now. Unfortunately they are being abused by advertisers. They are still a great solution and have provided me with numerous benefits. Still no autosizing capabilities ;(

Updated 2002-01-07
My demonstration site uses IFrames exclusively. Without them there would be no “FloatAway” toolbar. Now if they only had an automatic resizing and true transparency… Never satisfied

Published 2000-09-02
Ever use a frames design? Restrictive aren’t they? You can’t have a frame anywhere you want. A frameset document is a particular type of document. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a frame anywhere you wanted in a window. Wouldn’t it be nice to have frames that can be moved around the window at will? That is what IFrames improves on the old frames(among other things).

The biggest drawback with using IFrames was that they were only supported on IE3+. Not anymore. Netscape V6 now supports them. It is not quite as complete as IE’s version but still it is a major step forward.

Their biggest advantage is they allow a developer to create a site with multiple small windows interacting…just like many Windows applications. This is really cool and opens up the potential for a true client server model on the web.

Don’t get me wrong, frames are great. This demo site still uses frames because when making a simple 3 frame page the Frameset means you do not have to code for resizing and other weird things. I could have used IFrames, but they are not best for this particular site. I do use them on sites that need more complex interaction between many frames.

If you have a choice and you only need to support IE and NN6 think about IFrames. There are a lot more possibilities once you use them.

Microsoft FrontPage

2010-01-21T18:33:00.000-05:00

Updated 2009-11-24
Well there are so many FREE choices with the capability of FrontPage it is a waste of time. Many free online hosting sites have advanced online site development utilities that include advanced modules like search, rating, breadcrumbs, themes, etc. available with just a few clicks. Even shopping carts & e-Commerce are simple drop-ins. Compelling web sites can now be created without any coding knowledge. Why would you pay for any basic web site development tool.

Update 2000-09-02
FrontPage 2000 has been out for a while now… not sure if I like it or hate it. I know that several other products have stepped ahead. Particularly when it comes to positioning and database connectivity. FrontPage 2000 seems to be trying to be middle of the road. They improved sections where there were problems(like options when publishing site) and you can open more than one web at the same time but the redesigned sucks. Opening more than 1 document at a time means you better know about Ctrl+Tab or read it somewhere in the manuals(someone actually reads those?).
In a nutshell it has some good features, it is not as good as NetObjects(or others), and it has some noticeable drawbacks if you are accustom to 98. If you have 98 don’t waste your money. If you are looking at buying one… There are now a lot of competing products. Some free ones are as good as FrontPage. See sites like CNet/ZDnet for their reviews on these products.
I currently use FrontPage2000 simply because it doesn’t reformat my code like ‘98(big problem). In addition I only use these products to draw the page. I then go to code to make things happen. The less code they produce the better for me.

Published 1998-10-17
Well it has my best recommendation……I use it! Of course I also use other tools as well. FrontPage98 is not my first choice for database driven systems.

FrontPage98 Benefits

There are so many. First off I have virtually removed all requirements to work with CGI. I know CGI is a powerful tool but it is not that easy to work with. Site administration has become a breeze. There are so many prebuilt options that used to take me days that now take me minutes(like discussion groups, forms, search, guestbook, etc.). Shared borders and navigation are what every developer wants. There are many more reasons I just haven’t listed them. With all these options it still lets me do more complex things that it does not support. Alas, nothing is perfect……see below…..

FrontPage98 Disadvantages

It doesn’t work well with complex CGI sites(like my old site). These will have to be converted. You have to work within Navigators limited design if you want to use all functions. Navigator functions do not always do what you would logically think. Shared borders do not support script in headings. Using variables in Explorer are limited to text only values. Numerous quirky problems, especially when working with Unix servers. But I think I have most of them figured out(they all have work arounds). Database functionality is very limited. I wish vendors would stop using us developers to work out their buggy software.

FrontPage98 Summary

Buy it! It is simple enough an eight year old can build a very nice site yet capable enough to handle much more complex web site requirements. It supports a limited team work environment on it’s own but works even better with integrated tools like SourceSafe, VB6.0, Visual InterDev, and IIS 4.0. There are other contenders. If you want a lot of database design then NetObjects Fusion may be a better choice right now.

Y2K Reviewed

2010-01-21T18:31:00.000-05:00

The infamous Year 2000(Y2K). It figures we techies had to come up with an acronym for it. Anyway here was some of my input into the problem at various times.

2038 is already solved

2009-11-24
With the mainstream deployment of 64 bit hardware and operating systems ongoing now any issues with 2038 should not occur. This presumes that all 32 bit systems will be replaced in the next 29 years. Of course with our history there will probably be at least a few crtical systems still running software/hardware from 1980. Dates will not have any problems until at least the year 10,000. This is my last update on this issue.

The Biggest Non-Event Ever?

2000-03-26
Well, we have completed the quarter(almost) with relatively no problems. I have heard of lot’s of reporting problems and a few systems failures but nothing that we as customers will ever notice. Every problem I have seen so far has a fairly simple solution. This has to be the biggest non-event in history of mankind. On the other hand there was an awful lot of fixing going on for years before the event.

Hopefully the Final Update

2000-01-02
Whew, we made it. With no major impacts related to Y2K I am not concerned any more. Sure there may be some problems for specific companies but they will work around them. As long as hydro and water works we will go along just fine. I have heard of some trivial problems but nothing that hasn’t been worked around. Have to question our panic in many cases though. It appears that countries that did very little Y2K preparation are not having any major problems. Will have to wait for a few weeks/months to see full results. Also, many computerized systems were shutdown over Y2K just in case. Many systems with problems were just restarted with 1971 date and things went without a hitch. I am amazed how little impact there was on the clock change. I expected at least a few countries with problems. Everyone that thought there would be no problems ended up right. Of course, if no one actually fixed any of the problems that were there things would have been a mess for sure. A lot of work by many people helped get us by a major hurdle. Now we just have to wait for 2038 and the next major date related hurdle. That is when virtually every program currently built that uses dates will not work. We can’t even start to fix it till we get a 64 bit operating system.

Investing?…Watch Out

1999-09-26
The US government has created legislation that allows a company that provided non-compliant Y2K systems 90 days to resolve any problems. Although this will help let’s think about this for a minute……..
Companies like IBM and Microsoft may be forced to give away a lot of free upgrades. In addition they may have extensive costs in assisting implement the upgrades. Let’s take a minor example. Windows95 is not Y2K compliant. Your company invested and put Windows95 on every desktop. You do not upgrade to new versions before Y2K. When Y2K arrives and you have problems. You could easily argue that Microsoft sold you a defective software and they must resolve this issue. Microsoft could then be held responsible to upgrade all your desktops to Y2K compliant systems. Not only provide the software but also absorb the cost of implementing the new software. It could get even worse if your PC’s have to be upgraded to run the new Y2K software. Who is responsible for that? Again you may be able to argue that you do not intend to change all your PC’s so you can run the Y2K software. Microsoft may have a difficult negotiation position. Once this gets out virtually every company with Windows95 would expect the same solution……Think it could get expensive for Microsoft? You bet.
Companies like IBM and Microsoft could go bankrupt just trying to fix this mess. I don’t think an argument that you did not upgrade would be defensible on their part. You paid a lot of money for software that should work.
Apple suddenly looks really good since they have always been Y2K compliant.
So if you are investing you may want to keep this in mind.
As for the Stock Market itself…..Don’t worry….Everything I have seen is that the NYSE and NASDAQ are 100% Y2K compliant already.

The Latest Update….Relax…Sort of..

1999-09-18
Has anybody had any problem getting historical data from any businesses they deal with? Have you tried? If you did have problems that company is probably not ready for Y2K at all. Raise a big flag so everyone else knows. The rest of us will not have noticed anything since 1999-09-09.
Overall I think we are in pretty good shape in Canada. Our society will survive the Y2K mess. With most of the Hydro issues covered and the Banks primary systems Y2K compliant I do not expect any major catastrophe to hit us on 2000-01-01. There is still a lot to do but it only affects specific companies and not Canada.
My biggest concern at this time is over public reaction to this problem. Let’s get real,the sky is not falling. The impact this should have on you will be minimum. There may even be an employment boom for a while. Let’s presume that many major companies had severe problems. They will revert to some form of manual methods(which require lot’s more people). This could create a huge demand for data entry and customer service people. Plus additional people to fix the problem. For that matter most jobs that have become redundant could be in demand. Just think, you got laid off 2 years ago and may be back at 2-3 times the salary.
On a business note…If you had any problems whatsoever with 1999-09-09 tell me(so I can sell your stock). You should have all critical systems fully Y2K compliant by now. Trying to fix those “other” systems is priority. The biggest problem with this whole mess is the unknown. You must have all resources available to resolve any of these unknown issues on 2000-01-01. They can’t be loaded down with tasks already. Most companies I have been involved with have created contingency plans for the loss of various systems.
More business stuff – Reports are going to be interesting in the new year. Make sure you can trust the data. Otherwise you may make some bad decisions. If your systems are true Y2K compliant this is not an issue but if you put band-aids make sure those systems provide valid reports. This is almost always forgotten about by IT. In most developments I have been involved reports are the last thing completed.

An Update….major test about to hit us

1999-07-07
Well we are about to hit our first Y2K issue that could affect many businesses. On September 9,1999 some companies may have many of their mainframe files wiped out. Why? Think about it…..99/9/9 was used by many people to specify an indefinite expiry date. The problem with this is even if you fixed the dates to reflect a 4 digit year these files will still get erased since the expiry date is still 1999/9/9. I hope someone in your company adjusted all these dates to 9999/12/31 or at least some time in the future. If not, even your backups might not save you. At the same time you might as well do the 1999/12/31 files as well. Otherwise you will have the same problem again on that date. You have about two months to make sure this is covered. Fortunately it is not that difficult.

An Update….wait for 2038

1999-02-25
Very Few Companies are Really Fixing the Problem!
Most are putting band-aids on their programs counting on them(or the program) not being there “later on”. They are being counted as Y2K compliant. This is a technicality. Many of these systems will fail, just not on 2000-01-01. We will see problems for the next 25-50 years because of the limited vision.
2038 WILL MAKE Y2K LOOK SIMPLE
You have been warned of this! Will anything be done before 2030+? Not likely. The operating system won’t be here for several more years. Then all the programs have to be adjusted. 2038 will be a real killer…..literally. All programs written for current PC systems will fail. This includes “Y2K Compliant” PC’s like Macintosh. Not just reporting wrong dates, actually crash any program that uses a date routine. It is all to do with how dates are stored(again). Technically the date is stored as a number in milliseconds. Current computers only store a number that is 32 bits. Once we hit earlier 2038 the number gets too big for the system to store. To fix this we need 64 bit systems. You know the ones that “are coming”. Only then will we be able to truly fix this mess(at least for 8,000+ years).
The Rant
Why hasn’t everyone standardized on YYYY-MM-DD date format. It is the ISO standard and has been a standard in many countries for years. No confusion and about half of the 2038 problems could be resolved before we get there. Sorting dates would not require special routines. I guess it is too logical.
If you have standardized on this format you have some vision, great job.

Some companies have stated they are Y2K compliant. Not many though….and we in Canada are better off than most countries. In my more recent evaluations I have come to the conclusion that as long as Hydro keeps working and no nuclear plants(or something of that nature) collapse we as a society will survive just fine. Some companies will be out of luck but that will only be a few large businesses.

There is an awful lot of built up spending coming. The mad dash to upgrade PC’s is here! Now who is going to install all this equipment?

Y2K – Who is Affected?

1998-08-23
Actually if you are an individual(or most small business) the impact should be minimum. Does the date on devices really matter that much to you? I couldn’t care less as long as they still work. Besides you can usually replace devices(PC, software, VCR) pretty quickly. Although on the other hand, I won’t be flying when the clock changes. My recommendation is play it safe when the clock changes. Don’t be using any device that requires computers. These include trains, planes, cars(traffic lights), elevators, escalators, subways, to name a few. Although in most cases things will be fine do you need to take the chance for the sake of 5 minutes? Your major problem is how the large business problems will affect you. If we get the domino effect of business failures you could be out of a job, consumer goods might not be on the shelves, that kind of thing. If the worst were to happen most governments will step in with assistance(if they can). Now if you are a mid-size to large business this is a whole different issue. Your business depends on this. You can’t go to manual methods and survive. So if you haven’t covered every base you can think of by now…. PANIC!!!!!

Y2K Status Update

1998-08-23
I do my own unofficial poll of Y2K and Euro readiness of many major Canadian companies(and some International) through my associates and reviews. Although Canada as a whole is in good shape compared to most countries(Including the US) we still have a long way to go. I have only met two people that in private discussions truly felt their systems would be ready for Y2K and many go “Huh?” when I mention the Euro. I do not know anyone that is 100% ready. It is just now becoming obvious that you have to look outside your company as well.
A Thought… If you are lucky(rare) and are ready, your major client/supplier is probably not…..maybe you better help….to save your business.

Y2K testing anyone?

1998-08-23
There is only one way to truly ensure your company is Y2K compliant. Set ALL clocks to 11:55pm 1999-12-31(not just that old mainframe), wait for the clock to change to 2000 then run ALL batch processing streams including daily, weekly, monthly…., test all applications, software, hardware, customizations, environment(like elevators),CHECK YOUR DATA, pray you have covered everything, set the clock back….and wait.
Now as the CIO, do you have the manpower to even prepare for test like this? Not likely.
Why “ALL” clocks? Unless you can guarantee that every PC, mini, micro, LAN, mainframe…. system is configured exactly the same for anything related to dates you don’t have much choice. It is easy for someone to configure different date formats.

Y2K ain’t over at 00:01

1998-08-23
This caught me off guard. There are some people that believe this problem is over the moment the clock changes. WRONG! This problem will be ongoing for years. There are so many bypasses being put into systems you will wonder if anything ever really got fixed. The most common bypass currently being done is assuming any two digit year earlier than some year is later than 2000. If later it is 1900.
Example: If the year is 25 assume it is 2025 but if it is 26 it is 1926.
This may actually work for a few systems but the mentality that got us here in the first place is still going on………”This system will be replaced in 5 years”! Maybe somebody should go Hmmmmmmmmmm(or actually replace the system).

Y2K is it simple?

1997-09-25
It could be if you have systems that are all built within the last couple of years. But even if your business is 100% Y2K compliant are your business partners? For most companies it is going to be much larger than most people think. It affects all computing systems from PC’s to mainframes. It is a worldwide problem.
Background:
At one time disk storage was extremely expensive($60,000+/meg). At that time the computer people informed the clients that due to additional space required to store a four digit year it would cost an additional $240,000+(in 1960’s). Plus the client would have to enter the additional two digits for dates. Guess what decision was made? You guessed it….save cost now, fix it later. Now we have the two digit year. Continue this concept with all programs, built for any computers over the last 40+ years and presto you have a major mess.
The Issues:
First myth….The information(data) is a big problem. Wrong! It is simple to convert. It does take extensive processing but can be coded very easily.
Second myth….We have till 2000-01-01 to fix all these problems. Wrong! The problem is already here and will be here after 2000-01-01. Some systems have had to handle this already(like mortgages). As we get closer to Y2K more systems are going to show errors. Not all problems are going to happen on 2000-01-01 at 00:01. Some may take a year or more before they show up. Already many temporary fixes are being employed that give an additional 10-20 years before they have problems.
Physical hardware is a problem for many old computers. The vendor may not even be in business anymore. Most PC’s previous to Pentium’s are not Y2K compliant and will not work properly on 2000-01-01.
The biggest problem is all those systems that were built to access the data. There are billions of lines of code. Again, some vendors may not be in business anymore. Through the years the source code may have been lost so the program will have to be totally rewritten. Even trying to determine which systems are affected is daunting.
The Impact:
I expect every large company will come out of this with some problems. The best prepared will not have much impact that costs the company revenue. The worst will be bankrupt very quickly. Lawsuits are going to be everywhere when damage control takes hold. Everyone will be pointing at others for their problems.
What to Do:
As of 1998-01-01 if you haven’t completed 80%+ of your conversion you are in trouble.
Get Y2K compliance contracts with all business affiliates that are critical for your business. No matter what, keep staff that have experience with your systems(you are going to need all of them)! Hire as many support and development staff as you can(you will find it isn’t easy to find good staff right now). Contract out as much as possible but keep control of the project within the company. Target critical systems first, including all associated programs. Extensive contingency planning. Plan for the unplanned. Panic!
Just a Thought:
If humanity survives past the year 9999(I think it will) think how much will have to change. It will make our current problems seem trivial.
Think of the savings that occurred because of the two digit year. Storage space, processing power, even paper was saved. Sure it is costing a fortune now but I think it did return value.
Most computing systems working today were built with the intention that they would be scrapped within five years of their installation. Many have been running for over thirty years. If a business had any other equipment that performed this way they would be thrilled. Computer software systems are just like any machinery. If they are not kept up they fall apart. They eventually need replacement even though at the moment they are working fine.

Government Debt Is Killing Us

2010-01-21T18:27:00.002-05:00

Updated 2009-11-24
Little did I know when I originally published this how bad things would get around the world. We in Canada are actually looking good(and that scares me). We are still around the same debt as when I originally published this but at least we have not gone further in debt over that time. Paying off debt during surplus years has saved us from spiraling further in debt during this worldwide recession. The USA on the other hand just went 1.2 TRILLION dollars in debt for ONE year!!! That is around $4,000 in debt for every person in the USA. Your family of four owes $16,000 to pay for the debt the government racked up just in 2009. Don’t forget about the other approximate 14 Trillion of previously accumulated debt of the USA. Added up each person in the USA owes over $40k. Got the $160k for you family? What about your neighbours, do they have their money? And of course we are only talking about Federal debt…don’t forget about state & local debt.

Published 1999-07-08
This should be no surprise. Here in Canada our federal debt is 600 billion(+- a dollar) and we have around 30 million people. This works out to a debt of $20,000 for every person in Canada. So if you have a family of four you owe $80,000. Cough it up. Or pay the $8,000 per year interest in taxes forever. Oh ya, don’t forget your provincial debt.

Close to 50% of all the money our government takes in goes to paying interest on the debt. Think if your personal debt ratio was so high….ya right, as if anyone would let it get that bad(can you say bankruptcy). If the debt was cleared today the government would only need 1/2 the tax money it currently grabs. Not just income tax, all taxes. Our entire society gains, not just one individual or group.

I guess it is me me but I just can’t understand how any government is allowed to get this much in debt. Even stranger is that Canada is actually quite well off in the global economy(says something for the rest of the world). If you walked into any bank and wanted to borrow money and told them that every person in your household was already in debt $30,000 I am fairly sure of the response.

For any person bankruptcy would have occurred long ago. We would not be able to go further in debt. Furthermore we would have to budget ourselves, cut out unnecessary expenses, and probably have items repossessed. We would not like it, but it is a necessary evil.

Now our government actually got a surplus for one year. This only means we didn’t spend as much as we took in. Big deal, we are expected to act this way in society. Instead of taking as much a possible and reducing the debt everyone talks about spending the surplus. That is how we got into this mess. Pay off the debt! Our children and country will be better off for the sacrifices we make now. Although I have been saddled with this debt does not mean my children have to as well. We can make things better for everyone if we are just patient and apply everything we can to reducing the debt. It sucks in the short term but somebody has to pay for this mess.

Government can’t make money……
I have worked for federal and provincial governments at one time or another and this is beyond my comprehension. This is a pervasive situation that needs resolution. At various times while working for governments we would develop a solution that was easily marketable. As IT we would demonstrate the potential to sell the solution. Sometimes we even had a company willing to purchase the solution. We couldn’t do it. Repeatedly I heard “The government is a service, not a business. We don’t make money.”. Personally I think the government is put in charge of Canadian assets and is responsible to maximize their potential. Failure to comply is grounds for dismissal. There is no reason a country as rich as Canada should have any taxes if assets are managed properly.

We can’t go back…..
I hate when government talks about new initiatives. It’s not that I hate the initiative, rather it is that once implemented it is almost impossible to remove it. Even if it is a total failure. Also that future maintenance is rarely calculated or at least under estimated and government income is always overestimated(that is how we got in debt). I would love it if we could support everybody that needed something but we can’t. We must choose carefully where society should intervene. Society provides schools, if you want a special school then it is up to you and your community to support the special school. In no way does society support the special school since the special school takes resources away from society.

Boy am I on a rant today……I could go on forever but I will shut up now.

Best Seldom Wins

2010-01-21T18:25:00.000-05:00

Published 1999-07-08
In the computer industry it is very rare that the best product/company wins. Usually what wins is a combination of marketing and price. This also applies to most other areas.

Examples:

Xerox actually made the first PC as we know it. They also created Ethernet and Object Oriented technology. Management didn’t know what to do with them. Steve Jobbs came in, stole the PC, and presto we have Macintosh. One of their staff quit and took Ethernet to market.
In early 80’s Macintosh makes the best PC. IBM finally sees the potential, takes garbage parts from current PC manufacturers and sticks their logo on it. Suddenly all current PC manufacturers are “IBM Clones” except Macintosh. IBM compatible system dominate the market even with the crappy command line interface. IBM PC’s with their cheap parts are now perceived as superior to other PC’s even though other PC’s have vastly superior product.
Billy gets someone to hack CMS and pays them $50,000 for what is called QDos. Then sells it to IBM for $80,000 while still keeping the rights to use QDos. IBM drops the Q. Billy becomes Microsoft.
Macintosh had the best user interface(by far). Billy came with Windows(crap). Suddenly Windows was on everyone’s system. IBM came with OS/2. Technically superior system to Mac and Windows. Never got market share. Microsoft came with Windows95 and NT. Still not as good as OS/2 but guess who won?
STK made an awesome hard disk system for mainframes but could not market it until IBM replicated most of the features.
Amdahl made some of the best CPU’s in the mainframe but had difficulty marketing because IBM had total control of the market. Same thing with AMD and Intel in PC world. To bad, I really think they had great systems.

There are many more examples but I think you get the idea.
Almost always better products were ousted by lesser products with better marketing.
So what wins…..best product or best marketing?

Society Values

2010-01-21T18:23:00.002-05:00

Published on 1999-07-08
This is one of those things that make me go hmmmmmmmm…..
Why do the people that matter the least get paid the most? Why do people that matter the most get paid the least?

A baseball player gets $8million per year. That is more than the budget of many schools. Sure the person is a great baseball player. So what? The teachers and facilities are far more valuable to us as a society.

Does anyone actually think Bill Gates is worth $90 billion?

Why is it that the people that deal with the customer are almost always the lowest paid? This is the bread and butter of the business. If the customer doesn’t like the service they don’t come back.

There are four professions that I think deserve a lot more recognition from society.

Police – Without them teachers would not be able to teach. I wonder about these people. Sometimes I think they are crazy. These people routinely go into situations that the rest of us run away from. I would not walk into a hostile domestic dispute, or ongoing bank robbery, would you? Even worse we question every decision they make and they better have made the right one. When a criminal threatens a cop in uniform with a deadly weapon we put the cop on trial for shooting the criminal. We have to support those that protect us. They are not the enemy. Sorry, but if I were a cop I would shoot first and ask questions later(probably why I am not a cop).
Teachers – Close second. I do not limit this to “school teachers”. They are catalysts for change. What they teach our children is critical. Truly gifted teachers provide immeasurable value. The one problem I have with teachers is that they protect other teachers instead of the students. There are numerous teachers that should not be teaching. Other teachers know this but do nothing. To be a teacher requires a passion to affect minds. If you have that you will always figure a way to do it.
Nurses – Actually all medical staff except doctors(they make enough). I don’t know one nurse that is in it for the money. They could do much more of a doctors job if someone would let them. For that matter I personally would trust the nurse. They are the “care” in medical care.
Firefighters – Your sure glad they are around when needed. They risk their life for others. Truly an honorable profession.

There is one group of people that I have the most respect for……Tibet Munks(or similar). Anyone that gives up all possessions and seeks only to better the world deserves respect above all others.

I think we should boycott all movies and professional sporting events. None of these people deserve the amount of recognition they have recieved. Of course with all the new sports entering the market I suspect that there will be payback by fans for numerous years of price gouging by players and management. As for entertainment? The internet is changing all that as we speak.

About Channels

2010-01-21T18:22:00.000-05:00

Updated 2009-11-24
Nobody talks about this "Microsoft" technology anymore. Has been replaced by RSS.

Updated 1999-02-25
Well this technology really hasn’t been used much yet. Most of the sites mentioned below do have their own channel but it is a waste for most sites.

Published 1997-09-25
Cool, but how many sites do you want updates from that often? Big value to specific industries(like stock, weather, etc.).

About DHTML

2010-01-21T18:20:00.000-05:00

Updated 2009-11-24
The new standard is XHTML. This new standard just enforces strict rules on DHTML. Forces every DHTML tag to have an end tag. DHTML has been great and has been a valuable tool. It has been a great technology investment. Might as well get used to XHTML before HTML5.0. Then things get really interesting... Almost every language can "Do It All" ;)
Published 1997-09-25
Dynamic HyperText Markup Language(DHTML) adds zest to your pages. Finally, they have opened the object model. Now you can code for just about anything. It really isn’t anything new. You could dynamically change things before but you were extremely limited in the objects you could manipulate. All that has changed. DHTML allows you to change anything, you can have layers, redraw a section of screen at will, make animation without gif89a, and lots more. In addition the pages can work with older browsers easier than before. As a technician I think this is excellent. I am having fun learning all the new options.

Net Security

2010-01-21T18:15:00.000-05:00

Updated on 2002-08-28
OK, this is really getting out of hand. Things have gotten so bad I physically disconnect my cable internet connection when not in use. Even though I am only connected 2-3 hours per day lately my firewall shows I am getting port scanned at least 5-10 times a day. Plus the hundreds of other attack attempts per day. I use dynamic IP but it makes no difference… there is no place to hide when scanners are being used.
Everyone seems to have lost focus on this issue. The problem isn’t the “software”. The problem is someone abusing the software. Blaming the software is like blaming Ford because someone intentionally crashed their car into a wall. It is not possible for a manufacturer to stop potential abuse of a product.
Unfortunately in the virtual world a reasonable hacker can make it impossible to trace them so there is no punishment. One solution seems to be removal of “anonymous” surfing. This is not something I want to see happen! I also see it creating a whole new set of problems.
We need a central security net to stop the most predominate attack methods. These include things like port scans, IP scans, spoofing, denial of service to name a few. We have to tighten security then punish those that would attack us, not those that enable us to do wonderful things.

Published on 1998-03-03
There are a lot of security issues being brought forward lately regarding both Netscape and Microsoft browsers. This should not be surprising. Both have enabled you to have a dramatically improved browsing experience. A major disadvantage of enabling features is that there is always going to be someone figuring ways to abuse the features. This does not mean we should all pack up and leave the net. It does however mean that we should keep ourselves informed about potential risks and possible protection. I am surprised by the number of people that have very little understanding of security on the net. There is no place that is 100% secure. Not the net or even your house. If someone wants to get to you badly enough they can find a way.
There are several things you can do to make your browsing safer. I have two Dhtml demos that show you what can be detected by the server and browser. Everyone should check the server detected page at least once. You probably are not affected but you should make sure.

PC-NC-Mac Which is best?

2010-01-21T18:12:00.001-05:00

Updated 2009-11-24 originally published 1997-09-25
Well many people now have higher than 1.5mbs connections and guess what… Network Computers(NC) are getting attention again. With the explosion of the Internet NC’s are becoming very viable. With Google going after Microsoft this could get very interesting. NC’s could come into favor much quicker with Google’s assistance. Many applications are already either 100% web based or have extensive interfacing with the web. A conversion of 90% of users could happen within 10 years due to the much cheaper systems and advantages of computing anywhere.

As for PC-MAC comparison… looks like many people are going to MAC’s to avoid so many viruses and attacks. Microsoft is still dominant but has lost share to Mac. These two have bigger issues than each other… Smart phones have become the choice of younger surfers. These new devices are chewing up both PC & MAC market share.

Updated 1997-11-01
Which is best? A delicate question. Depending on requirements.
NC’s(Network Computers) taken as a concept should be adopted by business wherever possible. All applications should reside on central servers. As a physical computing unit NC’s have a limited focus right now. They are great for appliances like the WebTV, specific business functions that do not require intense data processing(like data entry), and others. The big advantage is in the concept not the physical unit. The concept will reduce cost of ownership dramatically for the business if applied correctly.
PC’s(including MAC) are going to be around for a long time. Personally I don’t have confidence in bandwidth to download my operating system every time I start the computer. PC’s also allow intensive applications like CorelDraw to run without problems. Business has already tried to implement the NC concept with only applications but with limited bandwidth most have found it unacceptable. I expect eventually when everyone has 1.5mbps connections and the Internet supports the required speed NC’s will become more of a reality. If you only want to surf the Web an NC is the way to go(cheap). Otherwise I would stick to the PC.

For PC Vs MAC, previous to Windows 95 I ran the following rule….PC’s are for those that want to know about computers, Mac’s are for those that don’t. That said, Windows 95 interface has really changed this. Both are now easy to use and each has it’s advantages. Apple’s MAC has very good quality hardware components(much better than most PC’s). MAC unfortunately has limited, expensive software.

IBM® versus Microsoft®

2010-01-21T18:05:00.000-05:00

Updated 2010-01-21

Well, IBM is gone from this arena but now there are several other players. Of note is Google with their oodles of money ;). Apple has taken some share, on the other hand Unix has never seemed to catch on unless you run web sites. I know technically Apple is Unix, etc... but it is not the same as the FREE Unix. The players change but the game is the same.

Published 1997-09-25

I was around when IBM^® was the only good large system in town. At first, they were great. I supported no other vender. No one was as good as IBM^®. Support was excellent. Alas, all good things have to come to an end. Other vendors got better and cheaper than IBM^®. Then things got nasty. I remember IBM^® stating that if we put any other vendors hardware on the floor they would not support us. There were many, many times IBM^® flexed it’s muscle. After all, why should they support those little guys, they were the only vendor in your shop and early times saw many companies shy away from other vendors. IBM^® eventually lost.

Very early in 1995 IBM^® sold their hype to a company. Said that Windows95 was never going to work. Of course, NT was still a joke(but for some unknown reason people were switching to NT). They had information Microsoft^® couldn’t get Windows95 to multi-task. They said there were numerous stability problems. No Windows3.1 software would work. That’s only a few reasons why Windows95 was delayed. OS/2 was the way to go. Only OS/2 could do everything and do it now. Besides the company already had 1,500+ workstations from IBM^® that required OS/2 for an IBM^® application
previously acquired. Of course the company bought it, after all it is from your trusted vendor. Now the company is trying to figure out how to get out of the mess. IBM^®bet their PC operating system(OS/2) on JAVA, ignored the competition and lost.

With all above and their slowness to adapt, sorry, IBM^® has lost my confidence.

In my opinion IBM^® and Microsoft^® are where they should be in the PC market. Microsoft^® has clearly demonstrated they adjust to the clients, not the other way around. Microsoft^® is not perfect or even close, but compared to IBM^®, they are noticeably better. Microsoft^® PC products are more stable and robust than anything IBM^® offers. Microsoft^® understood Keep It Simple Stupid(KISS) does not mean your client is stupid(just the opposite). IBM^®built for technicians in tech-ease(complex technical junk) that few understand. Yes OS/2 can do things that Windows95 can’t, but so far not one of those things have been important to me. Things that Windows95 does that OS/2 does not(like run new programs) are very important to me! I have no doubt that Microsoft^® will flex it’s muscle at different times and make us all unhappy but someone is always going to be the leader. Eventually Microsoft^®

will get tagged with monopoly and have to split up anyway. For some reason(beyond me) that hasn’t happened yet. Personally I don’t care. I decide on best product, which in the case of numerous software is not Microsoft^®. Microsoft^® has one major drawback, if the top CEO’s died would they recover? On the other hand if these two settle their fight it could work out to both companies advantage, and screw the rest of us at the same time.

What Standard Platform?

2010-01-21T16:53:00.001-05:00

Updated 2010-01-21

I have had time to try out 5 of the current top browsers and compare them in several aspects. Chrome & Safari are best. For developers/designers I think Safari wins, for basic users Chrome wins. Firefox comes in a very close 3rd. Opera is the "cool" toy of the bunch especially the voice component but it's CSS3 seams to be quirky. Finally IE8 which has fallen drastically from first to last n a few years. With the release of CSS3 Chrome, Safari and Netscape really rock. IE9 is going to support CSS3 but that will be a few months away. This blog has been customized specifically to take advantage of CSS3. There are numerous nice styling features you will not see if you are not using one of the top 3 browsers. One of the CSS3 features that could really help out display issues is the multi-column layout. It will allow applying different layouts very easily to accommodate displaying the same page on numerous different interfaces(something like having multiple XSLT files for one XML file but XSLT used html code where this is all within very simple CSS structures). The next few years should be very interesting... I expect Opera's voice interface(or similar) to become the rage. It actually works pretty good.

Updated 2009-10-27

We have new versions of all browsers, operating systems and just about everything else. Unfortunately we are in more mess than ever. Firefox(Netscape) has gained alot of ground but the real changes are the 3G mobile devices like iPhones. They mostly have their own version of some browser that simulates another browser ;( and they can rotate the screen. Screen sizes have gone crazy. Anything from 120X120px past 4120×3096px and new wide screens are everywhere. Even Mac’s are becoming more popular(about time).

If you want to talk about development platforms that is a whole other discussion.

The standard Computer web user….Current

Microsoft Windows(89%), Linux/Macintosh (11%)
Internet Explorer(40%+), FireFox(47%+), Other (13%+)
- CSS
- XML
- DHTML
- JavaScript
Supports 24 or 32 bits(display 16,777,216 different colors).(95%+)
Has at least 1024×768 screen resolution(87%+).
Has at least High Speed(80%+)

Updated 2001-06-08-merged from Standard User

We still have a lot of difficulties in web development but at least some of the issues have been
resolved on the PC client front. We will never have a 100% standard. This is
about as close as it gets. Of course other interfaces like WAP create a whole
new temporary issue(until 3G round 2).

The standard web user….

Microsoft Windows (95%+)
Internet Explorer Version 4.0+ (86%+)
- CSS
- XML
- DHTML
- JavaScript/VBScript
Supports high quality graphics(93%+)
Has at least 800×600 screen resolution(90%+).
Has at least 56kbs modem(82%+)

These stats are based on users that saw banner ads on millions of US sites.
You may have a site that caters to other configurations but anytime you have
better than 80% following the same standard it makes business sense to adopt
it.

On a future note the adoption of broadband access is growing very fast
where it is available. Eventually interactive video will become the standard
and we will be on to a totally different client interface.

Published 1997-09-25

Ya, right. Anyone that thinks that is dreaming. If you want to create an absolute minimal
page then it should work on any browser, but as soon as you want to do anything
cool you are into specific browser issues. It is now to a point that for a developer you
have to consider three browsers(Netscape^®, Microsoft^®, others)
with Microsoft^® and Netscape^® each having several versions that
all support different functions. Then you have to think about the different operating
systems like MAC, OS/2, Unix and Microsoft^® Windows V***, again each with
their own supported functions for each browser.

What are the users settings? Do they have JavaScript enabled? What if they specify their
own fonts, background or other options?

After all that you still have to worry about screen resolution and browser window size.

My old site at one time had three views(one for each browser). In each view there was code
required to handle different operating systems and versions of each browser. Without this
I couldn’t show many functions available to the specific browser. I have now enhanced this
site to demonstrate IE version 4.

As for JAVA? Most companies making development tools(Symantec^®, Microsoft^®,
etc.) have added functions only available on a specific platform. Unfortunately without
these added functions JAVA is limited to the “sandbox”.

So what was that about standard platform????? Ya right.

Rapid Application Development(RAD)

2010-01-21T16:26:00.000-05:00

Originally Published 1997-09-25
Rapid Application Development(RAD) is tools and methodologies. Here are a few opinions on both.

I have been using RAD tools since 1995 but have used the methods long before there was a name “RAD”. I have seen RAD benefits and abuse. Whether you like it or not it is today’s development platform.
I have created a short list of things to keep in mind when you step into RAD. They include requirements, benefits, disadvantages and a summary. In no way should this be considered a complete list.

Requirements:

Excellent leadership. Somebody has to point the technicians in the right direction and let them go.
Top skilled technicians. If you don’t have the motivated people to do the work it won’t get done. They also have to understand business requirements and be able to interface with clients.
Supportive infrastructure. This is two sided. You have to inform others of change ASAP, others must be co-operative in supporting your goals.
Co-operative clients. Some clients want everything yesterday or do not calculate business value.
Everyone has to “buy in” to the process. It requires extreme dedication by all involved.
Best tools for the environment. Because a tool is great does not mean it is best for your site. On the other hand the environment should be open in structure to allow the best tool.
Compensate staff. If you don’t recognize these achievers you will loose your most valuable asset, your staff. Make sure no one steals your investment!

Benefits:

You get business benefits very fast($$$$).
Time boxing really allows you to focus on deliverable components.
Due to factors like iterative development more client satisfaction. Clients are involved from beginning to end.
If done right you work out more initial requirement bugs before installation.
You reduce the moving target syndrome.
Focalizing data into one view instead of many screens.
RAD’s usual focus is on high return developments. Usually related to the financial sectors of the business. In my experience 10-1 payback in first year is easily obtainable.
Reusable objects make future developments even faster.
Did I mention very FAST and very high client satisfaction.

Disadvantages:

It is like college development projects. You would produce something that performed the required functions, looked good, but usually was not the best quality. Due to time constraints you submit what you have accomplished and take credit.
The client usually gets a shell of what they want with several sections to be added in future projects(if you get to them).
Poor leadership can result in projects failing to achieve objectives.
If the technicians are low skilled you will never achieve objectives. Regardless of leadership.
It burns out good technicians at an alarming rate.
Because RAD is usually used on projects that have never been attempted many “work around” coding methods are used.
Initial project requirements are usually under estimated.
Time boxing makes technicians compromise on solutions.
The target still moves, just faster.
Client expectations go through the roof. Suddenly they can’t wait six months. Even though before RAD you told them two years or more.

Summary:

Sounds pretty negative doesn’t it? Surprise….
RAD can be great for your business. Although it has some drawbacks the return on investment(ROI) can’t be beat. Time boxing is a mandatory element(unfortunately)! If you use top notch leaders and technicians, keep them happy and make sure no one steals them without a fight you can reduce the disadvantages dramatically.
Using the methodology and tools for Internet development is a logical evolution of the client server model. Recommend you implement Object Oriented(OO) methods regardless of tools. Make it challenging, rewarding and above all, FUN!
Something to think about….
You look at a piece of machinery. It cost $2,000,000 and maintenance will be another $2,000,000 a year. It saved or makes $10,000,000 benefits each year and will last five years before you dispose of it. Would you buy it? Would you be happy? Probably, 500% ROI per year would make most of us happy.
Now, you have employees, some who have produced solutions that either saved or made the company $10,000,000(plus subsequent years). Would you pay them $2,000,000 per year? I doubt it. If they are lucky they get a bonus and/or a raise of $5,000. What is the difference? You made an investment and got back the same return either way.
The opposite is true as well. If the machinery keeps breaking down or not performing it’s function you replace it.
I know it is not feasible to compensate at this level but doesn’t the compensation most companies give seem inadequate. Loosing good investments because you won’t pay an extra $10-20,000 just doesn’t make sense. The costs just trying to find another good employee would be substantially higher(plus training etc.). In my experience good employees produce 5-10 times the average employee(more for below average). They are extremely valuable assets. Treat them that way. If they are good, your payback is worth it.
The key truly is the people.

About Ultra RAD

You heard it here first. That is because I have termed this type of development. It is different than RAD in that it is specifically designed for projects that take less than 5 months. Once you have implemented several RAD solutions using OO methodologies many new projects suddenly can shift from 6-8 months to 3-6 months. Although the tools are the same the methodology changes. The process is streamlined even further. Timelines are tightened. Reusable objects are a must.

It's a New Year & I am in Florida ;)

2010-01-21T16:19:00.000-05:00

Well the new year is upon us and I am in Florida again. Life is great
However, it has not been very warm this year and when it has been warm most days it has rained. virtually the entire month of December was cold and wet and the start of the New Year isn’t looking better(highest temps this week are 55F-13C). Given this is the only thing I have to complain about things are great. For comfort I just look at the weather up north and remind myself how relatively warm things are here

Have had a lot of birds on the dock. Of course I had to feed them… Not used to these birds in Canada
Every day there are unique birds around. Osprey, pelicans, cormorants, various unusual & common ducks, blue herons, egrets(large and small) and many others I do not know. I love watching them, especially pelicans.

Did you make a New Years resolution? If so what was it? Have you kept it so far?
I have kept my New Years resolution now for 30+ years… What was it? NEVER make another New Years resolution

Welcome to my Blog

2010-01-21T16:13:00.001-05:00

Hi, welcome to Walter Moore’s blog.

I am a Canadian born male residing in the Barrie, Ontario area during the summer and Florida during the winter. I am divorced with 2 grown children and 4 grandchildren. Surprisingly, having grandchildren has been great. I get to spoil them then send them back to their parents . Unfortunately I don’t get to see them as much as possible as they are around 270km away but I try as often as possible.

I am a computer consultant by profession and have a passion for all things techie. My website(http://wmoore.ca) used to be a conceptual design to showcase various ways to achieve high-speed processing with limited bandwidth and save screen real-estate.(my specialties). It also shows all types of things you could do with just the browser using JavaScript. It hasn’t been kept up much since 2004 but showed true client/server processing on a web site since 1999(Something that is being touted by Ajax(finally) in the new version 4.0(still in beta)).

On the side I live on my 1986 GoldWing or any other motorcycle I can get my hands on . I also like to Rollerblade, bicycle, and dance(r&b, modern top 40). In the fall of 2008 I decided to cleanup a small local park that I like to visit. Read the blog I posted

Transitioning from WordPress

2010-01-20T14:11:00.004-05:00

I have done enough testing to know that Blogger allows me to customize the entire design by accessing the CSS without having to pay for it. Things are also a little more intuitive here although the original designs are often very basic compared to WordPress. Having access to customize the CSS is much more valuable however. Will have to migrate all my posts once I complete customizing site using CSS3. Removing several graphics when using CSS3 plus getting some really nice presentations. Very cool.