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Blog

Net Neutrality Bill Hits The House of Commons

The NDP has tabled a bill to legislate net neutrality:

The four-page bill seeks to amend the Telecommunications Act and "prohibit network operators from engaging in network management practises that favour, degrade or prioritise any content, application or service transmitted over a broadband network based on its source, ownership or destination, subject to certain exceptions."

It also looks to prohibit "network operators from preventing a user from attaching any device to their network and requires network operators to make information about the user's access to the internet available to the user."

The proposed bill makes exception for ISPs to manage traffic in reasonable cases, Angus said, such as providing stable speeds for applications such as gaming or video conferencing.

"There are areas where telecoms have to be able to exercise rights, but that doesn't give them the ability to arbitrarily interfere or discriminate," Angus said.

I know that I've not been a fan of the NDP of late, but they've really done some great work here. This is an important issue that affects the future of democracy and debate in this country and around the world, and the NDP are the only party that has cared enough to do something about it.

Please, read up on net neutrality and then contact your MP to get their support for it. With the combined support of the NDP, the Liberals and the Bloc, the Conservatives will have no choice to let this happen.

And it should happnen.

Central Station Freeze

Margaret sent this to me today and I thought that I should share. The way they managed to organise this is really quite impressive:

On Suburbia

Lately, I've come to dread my weekends, which is odd, because I'm so very busy during the week, but nonetheless it's happening. It took me a while to deduce from where this sense of desperation was coming, but it finally donned on me: it's the suburbs.

I don't think that I can accurately explain my discomfort with suburbia. Sure, it's completely wasteful and unsustainable, but my political reaons for hating that way of life are separate. No, it's the... emptiness. Standing in a field of parked cars in blistering heat, surrounded by pickup trucks and SUVs all humming along with their heat-generating A/C units. The acres of big box stores, parking lots and big box stores, all separated by pointless little medians and mock "nature" in the form of a tree in a concrete box or a wood bench facing yet another parking stall. It makes my nerves itch just thinking about it.

I've been out to the suburbs (yes, that includes Kelowna) every weekend without exception for at least 5 weeks now. Obviously, it's not out of a sense of masochism, but rather because I have friends out there. I guess, part of me secretly hoped that they'd all get the hell out of Langley and Surrey before I returned from Toronto and that I wouldn't have to endure a personal hell just to be with them, but it would seem that Fate is a sadist: rather than leave, they've entrenched themselves.

Jeanie and Ruth have moved into a pretty house in White Rock, and Chris and Trish have bought a house out in Langley. Quinn and Michelle seem to like it there and my parents moved to Kelowna because of the lifestyle. The truth is though, I don't begrudge any of them for their choices. They've chosen that life for themselves and barring the inevitable major financial collapse hinging on oil scarcity, they'll probably continue to enjoy it for years to come. I just hate having to go there to see them -- and by hate, I mean hate. The mere thought breeds contempt in my veins, I get bitter just boarding the Skytrain.

It's probably all a mix of the horrible memories I have of that place and my knowledge of the socio-economic-environmental implications of such a lifestyle that does this, but knowing this doesn't make it any better. I miss my friends. I'll continue to see them. But I just need to vent.

I hate it so much.

Edit: 2008-05-28

It's been brought to my attention that this post might be construed as bitterness toward my friends for making me come out to the burbs all the time without them making the same sacrifice for me. Nothing could be further from the truth. Chris Rhodes and Trish especially have made the trip on many occasions and I've appreciated the visit every time. This post was, more than anything, about how much I hate the suburbs.

Catching Up on my Messages

Some of you may have noticed a distinct lack of updates both here and in my email. I've taken to marking things as unread and letting them sit while I look for time to sit down and write out a proper response to each one.

The obvious problem with this however, is the more messages to which you do this, the more time you need to sit down and get them all out the door... Well, now that I'm up here in Kelowna for a few days, I'm finding that I suddenly have the time and I'm working my way through.

I'd like to take a moment though to issue a request: Please stop sending me Facebook messages. Val is right, it's an obvious attempt to privatise email and in the end, it's just another place to check. Email works, lets all use it k?

I have a big post about a neat idea I have that I want to make in the near future... I may even make it this weekend. Ooh, and quick note: I'm learning Python. It's fun.

Wall Paintings Come to Life

Found via Bill's Blog, this is one of the coolest examples of graffiti I've ever seen. To echo his comments, "wow":


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
Forbidden Kingdom (4/5), Iron Man (5/5), Speed Racer (5/5)

Alright, so I've been hitting the movie theatre an awful lot lately. Can you blame me with all these great flicks playing and Triple O's "Dinner & a Movie" deal for $13? I can't help myself.

Forbidden Kingdom

When I saw the poster, I was a bit confused as to how Jet Li and Jackie Chan could be in the same movie. I mean, Li is a terrible actor who tends to do action flicks and Chan mostly does comedy. But 20min in I realised the brilliance of this one. To use a term Melanie would understand, this movie is awesome in it's badness. They made no attempt at a serious movie and instead went all out with some fun fantasy kung-fu, magic and drunken humour. Chan is excellent in this one -- if you have the time, I muchly recommend.

Iron Man

After Xmen 3, Spiderman 3 and Ghostrider, I walked into this one with few expectations. I mean, I didn't know much about Iron man, except that Tony Stark was a dick and that RDJ would be perfect for the role. When I walked out of there though, I was totally stoked on Iron Man. Really. Awesome. Flick. Great even if you don't dig comic books, though it'd help. And stick around post-credits!

Speed Racer

The trailers looked cheesy, but with the Wachowski Brothers running the show, I wasn't about to miss it. Poesy and I saw it tonight and damn that was one impressive flick. It's a fine example of movies-as-art, in the same way as Sin City was brilliant, Speed Racer puts a Dick Tracy-esque spin on it all: bright, vibrant colours, cheesy dialogue and fucking awesome oneliners. And there's a monkey! And ninjas! Better than Iron Man. Don't miss this one.

Prettifying Simpletest's Command Line Reporter

I just wrote this nifty wrapper for Simpletest, a unit testing suite for PHP and thought that I'd share it here.

Basically, the text output for Simpletest is ugly. And it's kinda lacking in output for those of us who are visually gratified. I like to see my tests pass and I like to see something green when everything is ok. Mock me if you like, I dig the pretty :-)

To use this, just put the following block into a file and call it something like TextReporterWithPasses.php and then, where your test suite script looks something like this:

  $test = new GroupTest('MTV API Layer');
  // Some $test->addTestFile() stuff
  $test->run();

Do this instead:

  require 'TextReporterWithPasses.php';
  $test = new GroupTest('MTV API Layer');
  // Some $test->addTestFile() stuff
  $test->run(new TextReporterWithPasses());

And behold the pretty ;-) Here's the code:

<?



  /**
  *
  *   Author: Daniel Quinn (daniel.quinn@donatgroup.com)
  *  License: GPL-3 "Information wants to be Free"
  * Function: Prettifies Simpletest's text output
  *
  */


  class TextReporterWithPasses extends TextReporter
  {

    private $_colours;
    private $_testCount;
    private $_errors;

    public function __construct()
    {
      parent::__construct();

      $this->_testCount = 0;
      $this->_errors = array();
      
      $this->_setColours();
    }


    public function paintPass($message)
    {
      $this->_passes++;
      print ($this->_testCount == 0) ? '  .' : '.';
      $this->_manageWrapping();
    }


    public function paintFail($message)
    {
      $this->_fails++;
      $error = new stdClass();
      $error->message = $message;
      $error->breadcrumb = "\tin ". implode("\n\tin ", array_reverse($this->getTestList()));

      $this->_errors[] = $error;

      print $this->_colours['red-light'];
      print ($this->_testCount == 0) ? '  x' : 'x';
      print $this->_colours['grey'];

      $this->_manageWrapping();

    }


    public function paintHeader($name)
    {
      if (!SimpleReporter::inCli())
      {
        header('Content-type: text/plain');
      }

      print "\n  ". $this->_colours['white'] . $name . $this->_colours['grey'] . "\n  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\n";

      flush();

    }


    public function paintFooter()
    {

      if ($this->getFailCount() + $this->getExceptionCount() == 0)
      {
        print "\n\n  ". $this->_colours['white'] .'[ '. $this->_colours['green-light'] .'w00t!'. $this->_colours['white'] ." ]\n";
      }
      else
      {
        print "\n\n". $this->_colours['red-light'] ."  The result was less awesome than you might have hoped :-(\n\n". $this->_colours['red'];
        foreach ($this->_errors as $e)
        {
          print "  $e->message";
        }
        print "\n";
      }

      $status = array(
        'run' => $this->getTestCaseProgress() ."/". $this->getTestCaseCount(),
        'passes' => $this->getPassCount(),
        'failures' => $this->getFailCount(),
        'exceptions' => $this->getExceptionCount()
      );

      print $this->_colours['white'];

      print "\n  Test cases run: $status[run], Passes: $status[passes], Failures: $status[failures], Exceptions: $status[exceptions]\n\n";

      print $this->_colours['none'];

    }


    // Private methods -------------------------------------------

    private function _setColours()
    {
      $this->_colours = array(
        'black'       => "\033[0;30m",
        'blue'        => "\033[0;34m",
        'blue-light'  => "\033[1;34m",
        'green'       => "\033[0;32m",
        'green-light' => "\033[1;32m",
        'cyan'        => "\033[0;36m",
        'cyan-light'  => "\033[1;36m",
        'red'         => "\033[0;31m",
        'red-light'   => "\033[1;31m",
        'purple'      => "\033[0;35m",
        'brown'       => "\033[0;33m",
        'grey'        => "\033[1;30m",
        'grey-light'  => "\033[0;37m",
        'pink'        => "\033[1;35m",
        'yellow'      => "\033[1;33m",
        'white'       => "\033[1;37m",
        'none'        => "\033[0m"
      );
    }


    private function _manageWrapping()
    {
      // Poor man's wrapping
      if (++$this->_testCount == 76)
      {
        print "\n";
        $this->_testCount = 0;
      }
    }


  }


?>

Isn't it cool that I work for a company that supports the Free distribution of code?

pit-faulty