For those of you interested in the success/failure surrounding the One Laptop Per Child programme, I thought that I'd pass on the following links from a linux feed I follow:

• OLPC in Ethiopia Week One
• Flickr Photo Stream
• OLPC in Ethiopia Week Two

I spent most of my day today at Barcamp Vancouver 2008, the third incarnation of its kind in this city. For some of you, the name might ring a bell since I blogged about going to the Toronto Barcamp back in 2006. The ideas behind the Vancouver version were similar, though the experience was quite different. For the sake of brevity though, I'm going to do the rest of this post in point form... in part because the sentence structure of this paragraph is painful to me:

The Good Stuff

• Lots of people using Twitter, Flickr, blogs and wikis to their full potential. It's so nice to see technology being implemented the way their creators (and pushers) hoped.
• Really smart people who like talking about stuff. I sat through a lot of really interesting presentations regarding the mobile web (and how it doesn't exist), django-bloom (REALLY fucking cool), and cloud computing (it may not be as cool as you heard, but it's still really cool).
• Had some really great conversation outside of the presentations. I met Karen Quinn Fung, an activist and organiser for the upcoming Skytrain Security UnConference. She's a striking young woman with a solid understanding of social media and community activism and with a few others in a small group we all tackled the touchy subject of activist infighting and community outreach.
• Granville Island doughnuts. Best I've found in this city. Seriously. Go there. Now. ...and bring me back a few ;-)

The DoublePlusUnGood Stuff

• Really short presentation times. Seriously, who holds an unconference in three separate buildings, offers no time to move to different venues between talks and then makes each session only a ½ hour? There was no time to actually flesh out any ideas in any session.
• Presentations, not conversations. The Barcamp I went to in Toronto was all about multi-way communication. You didn't attend a presentation, you joined a conversation. All parties contributed to the greater whole that was Barcamp. This was much more in the form of a unidirectional dialogue and therefore far less interesting.
• No mixing space. They got three buildings, and four rooms to hold presentations, and barely a hallway for space for people to talk about stuff. Barcamp is supposed to be about people talking to each other, not just listening to speakers... If I just wanted to hear one person's opinion, I'd read a blog.

So yeah, good things and bad about Barcamp this year. I hope that they're not all like this and that some of these things will be remedied in future incarnations. Until then, I'll probably be hitting other unconferences around town as I hear about them. It seems that they're becoming pretty popular lately.

The Twitter user FakeSteveHarper started following me today, so I checked him out. He's hilarious. If you use twitter, check him out.

I just watched this amazing video on the future of how we'll use the Internet. For the nerdy among you: remember how people are always saying stuff like "this will make it a web service that other people can access for whatever they like"? Well this is the end result:

The problem with the way the web stands now, is that I have to go to services to use them.

Such a brilliantly simple observation. These guys are doing a great job.

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.

CBC.ca: "Net neutrality bill hits House of Commons"

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.

A lot of people are still lost as to what Net Neutrality is, let alone why it's important. I posted about it a while back, so I won't reiterate here.

What's new and exciting on the Neutrality front however seems to be the brewings of a perfect storm of sorts. Just as the CBC announced plans to release some of it's programming via bittorrent, Rogers decided to put new bandwidth caps on it's downloads, and Bell started throttling bittorrent traffic to all of it's users as well as all of the companies reselling Bell service without their knowledge or consent.

The result is that the general public is finally starting to wake up to the fact that ISP consolidation and their willingness to abuse their power for their own profit might be a problem. More importantly, we're all starting to feel like there might be a solution. Say it with me boys and girls: Regulation.

I just found out today that the an NDP MP is taking up this issue, and the Council of Canadians has issued a press release on the subject. There's also been considerable media coverage on the mess from mainstream sources like The Globe and Mail. Small beginnings to be sure, but you'll forgive me if I'm just a little hopeful :-)

I just read this on Michael Geist's blog and had to share:

Sources indicate that the CBC is set to become the first major North American broadcaster to freely release one of its programs without DRM using BitTorrent. Next Sunday, CBC will air Canada Next Great Prime Minister. The following day, it plans to freely release a high-resolution version via peer-to-peer networks without any DRM restrictions. This development is important not only because it shows that Canada's public broadcaster is increasingly willing to experiment with alternative forms of distribution, but also because it may help crystallise the net neutrality issue in Canada.

The CBC's mandate, as provided in the Broadcasting Act, requires it to make its programming "available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means." Using BitTorrent allows the CBC to meet its statutory mandate, yet with ISPs such as Rogers engaging in non-transparent traffic shaping, millions of Canadians may be unable to fully access programming funded by tax dollars. If the CBC experiment is successful, look for more broadcasters to do the same and for the CRTC to face mounting pressure to address net neutrality concerns.

Ahem, GO CBC!

Happy Christmas/Solstice/Kwanza/Eat-food-sleep-and-get-presents everyone!

I'm up in Kelowna with the parents for a few days so don't call me unless you're willing to buy me dinner in exchange for the cost of the phone bill ;-)

This was a nice laid-back couple of days, with my parents spoiling me with lots of nifty presents that will likely be rediculously difficult to haul back to my apartment from the bus station. I got to see the family, and meet my cousin's new boyfriend who is actually pretty cool as well as see my Aunt and Uncle's new place in slightly - less - than - the - middle - of - nowhere - but - still - nowhere - I'd - ever - want - to - live. Fun and food was had by all.

Oh, and to get to the subject of this blog post, check it out: INVADER ZIM RINGTONES!. The site uses an AJAX-type system to download the mp3s which makes it really hard to just download the whole lot, but still, it's all there. You can even search the list by speaker or keyword :-)

THE PANTS COMMAND ME! DO NOT IGNORE MY VEINS!

However, one area they've always been very good at has been the low-wattage boards like the hardware in my firewall. While a standard desktop computer drinks down about 60-80W just sitting there doing nothing, my Via box uses ¼ of that.

Via has since come out with a new benchmark for those of us interested in the amounts of carbon we spew into the air as a result of our computer purchases. They call it Tree Mark™:

To underscore the importance of the environmental impact of computing, VIA is introducing a new benchmark, TreeMark™, intended as a useful tool for organisations looking to balance environmental impact in their computing purchase decisions. The methodology behind the calculations, validated by independent consulting firm Best Foot Forward Ltd, take into account average use of a PC and derive the amount of carbon dioxide created as a by-product of the electricity generated to power the processor over its operational lifetime – and, thus, the number of trees required to offset that amount in the environment.

The math works out like this. If you're using an Intel or AMD based machine, the chip in the computer you're reading this site with will put about 26 trees worth of carbon into the air over the course of its lifetime. A Via chip on the other hand needs only 4 trees to make up for the CO2.

I guess I know from where I'm getting my next computer.

In my time at Rydium, I came to be known as the office environmental fascist, a mantle I wore with pride, and something that came in handy when Max needed someone to write an article for PCStats about what to do with your old computer hardware after you're done with it. The focus of the article was to be about new environmental standards in Europe, what they mean and what your options are when you're dealing with this stuff.

Anyway, if you're interested, the article was finally published a few days ago.