We've had Rogers cable for our internet connection for at least 6 years.

In the beginning, it was great. I'd tell the AOL-bies to get a proper internet connection, not a Mickey Mouse one.

Then Rogers started messing around with their network. Suddenly, DNS would stop working for hours at a time; email servers wouldn't work, or would take forever to send messages; stupid re-branding to "Rogers Yahoo!" etc. So, I installed my own SMTP and caching-DNS servers. Then Rogers started blocking port 25 outbound. So now I have to use webmail. Then Rogers starts frequently moving me around their IP space. I called them 3 years ago and they said they planned to introduce static IP's "sometime in the near future". Never happened.

"Their network, their rules", you may say. True. But when their own advertising states that their service is suitable for transferring large files, then they have no business traffic-shaping my connection to throttle BitTorrent.

This was the final straw. Aside from the fact that their internet connection prices are actually expensive, even after a bundled discount, I refuse to be screwed over any longer.

So, I am moving over to Caneris, a local DSL provider that is hobby-server and BitTorrent friendly. And, unlike Rogers, who didn't get a clue when I told them I don't like to be randomly moved around their IP space every so often, Caneris offers static IP addresses.

Another advantage to moving my internet away from Todgers (not a typo) is that I have one less reason to call them whenever my internet is down and have to speak to that god-awful voice-activated IVR system. On behalf of all the Rogers customers who have to spend ages on the phone talking to a deaf computer before even getting through to one of Rogers' inept script-monkey CSR's, thank you Ted Rogers.

It seems that there is an exodus right now too.

And it's not going to stop there: the next move away from Rogers will be to port my PAYG cell account away (probably to Primus Wireless, but not decided yet).

So, perhaps my blog title is not quite correct. It's not so much "goodbye", it's more like "good riddance".

Following on from a post I made on Who Called Us, that proves my theorem of never trusting a company that uses numbers in place of words in their company name, it suddenly occurred to me that I might be able to coin a new term: "numeric homophone".

Unfortunately, someone else beat me to it, hence the unique single Google search result (or Googlewhack). Of course, by the time this blog post gets archived by Google, the term will no longer be a Googlewhack! <edit>After posting this opinion, Google archived this blog in 7 minutes!</edit>

I could've coined this term back in 2006, when I opined on the Sony Root-kit Fiasco. Oh well!

<edit>Hmmm, after looking at the Googlewhack website, it seems that the term is not a true Googlewhack if the search result is from two words enclosed in quotes. Seems like a silly rule to me, as quotes makes the search specific, as opposed to finding links that contain the words "numeric" and "homophone" in any order on the sites. As the Wikipedia article says, most Googlewhacks are nonsense words.

What's also strange is that when I removed the quotes, I actually got a search result for the words "numeric" and "homophone" right next to each other. In theory, these search results should have come back when quotes were used. In fact, this appears to be a bug, as the two words are sequential, but only inside a PDF file.</edit>

For the Google archive, I am quoting a transcript of a telejunker's toll-free announcer:

<quote>
[1 second burst of music] You have reached our automated information system. You're probably calling one of our toll-free numbers that appeared on your display phone. Fund-raising efforts are now well under way and we will be calling you back to explain the programs we have for this year. Calling you is the most cost-effective way to reach our goal. If you prefer, contact our Customer Information Centre at [1-8xx-xxx-xxxx]. They will be glad to provide you with any further information. Those phones are staffed 9AM to 9PM Eastern Time. Goodbye for now.
</quote>

More information on this telejunker-for-hire can be found here (just follow the links, or search here or here).

If you've been contacted by a "charity" such as The Fraternal Order of Police ["FOP"] or a State Troopers' organisation, chances are you've been tele-spammed by Xentel DM, AKA Xentel Inc (in the US). Be aware that most of the organisations that Xentel calls on behalf of do not have charitable (tax deductable) status and even then, Xentel keeps ~80% or more of the donations.

Unfortunately, Xentel exploits/abuses a loophole in the law that allows non-profit organisations to harass scam call anyone, even if you have registered for the DNC list. The fact that Xentel makes millions of dollars a year in profit, doesn't seem to matter to either the FCC or the CRTC. It seems that only the state AG's do any real job of spanking these telespammers.

I love my VoIP service. In the bad old POTS days, we'd get 3, 4... 5 telejunk calls a day, 7 days a week, some days worse than others.

Now I can block the telespammers, my phone only rings for the occasional low-level telejunker: usually a local duct cleaner, or some 2-bit company trying to hawk windows and doors. All the toll-free numbers go straight to voicemail.

Repeat offenders get auto-forwarded to an out-of-service number. But, just as the email spammers ignore 5.5.x SMTP error messages and keep trying an email address that will never deliver, it seems the tele-spammers' autodialers ignore "number out of service" messages too:

SelectiveCallFwd   112595140000002    Unavailable 2007-10-20
SelectiveCallFwd   112595140000002    Unavailable 2007-10-27

Here are a few more parallels:

Email Spammer	Tele-Spammer
Ignores 5.5.x mailer messages.	Ignores "out-of-service" messages.
Plays numbers game: harasses millions of email users with unsolicited messages for one lousy sale.	Plays numbers game: harasses millions of phone users with unsolicited calls and voicemail messages for one lousy sale.
Sells "sucker lists" of email addresses.	Sells "sucker lists" of phone numbers.
Routinely forges "from" addresses.	Routinely forges Caller ID.
Uses rogue ISP’s to host their "bulletproof" websites.	Uses rogue SIP providers to host their VoIP systems.
Obfuscates messages to bypass spam filters.	Obfuscates Caller ID to bypass Privacy Guard.
Uses cost-shifted advertising to spam your mailbox.	Uses cost-shifted advertising to spam your cell-phone.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, including parallels between tele-junkers and fax spammers.

My personal favourite site for reporting telejunkers: Who Called Us.

A few weeks back, I purchased a Panasonic DMR-ES16 DVD Recorder. So far, I'm really pleased with it. The functionality is great and it's very easy to use, even for a beginner.

Of course, I needed discs to record on, so I bought a stack of 50 no-name DVD-R's for movies we edited in MovieMaker from our mini-DVD camcorder. I also bought a stack of 25 4.7GB 4x DVD+RW's, manufactured by CyberHome [more CamelCase].

So far, 2 of the 25 discs have failed to format. Even if none of the other discs fail, that's a fairly bad failure rate.

Naturally, I did not have the luxury of checking out CyberHome's reputation, as I bought the discs on impulse when I got my DVD Recorder. In hindsight, had I visited their website [or in this case, webshite] I would not have bought this brand anyway. Seeing a domain-parking page with their logo would not have inspired confidence in their brand. Perhaps they can't afford to maintain their webshite, after federal agencies seized more than 20,000 CyberHome-brand DVD recorders that allegedly used Philips patents without a license last year.

Just in case anyone's interested (since Googling for "authoring engine failed" yielded only 2 search results with no clear answer) I managed to get PowerProducer to work in the end.

Since I don't have the time to test each of these 3 remedies separately, I did all of them before re-attempting the burn:

(1) Although I had over 12GB free, I deleted the source .WMV files that I had used in MovieMaker to make the final cut - this freed up ~2GB.
(2) Pulled a different DVD-R from the stack.
(3) Ran PowerProducer under an Admin account.

I really don't know which one (or more) of these remedies worked, but now PowerProducer is working again. Still, I stand by what I said originally: that hardware manufacturers test OEM software before releasing it with their products.

When I purchased an LG multi-DVD rewriter drive, I acquired a software suite with CyberLink PowerProducer [their CamelCase, not mine].

Honestly, this program is a piece of crapware. Not only does it take HOURS for it to generate the DVD top-menu, it seems to take just as long to actually finish the burn process, so I usually set it to do its work overnight.

So I set this program running last night and find a cryptic error message this morning:
"Burning Failed
PowerProducer has failed to complete the task(s) because:
(e0080007)
Possible cause(s):
Authoring engine failed."

I mean, what kind of idiotic error message is this? It doesn't tell me the cause, only that it possibly, perhaps, might be due to the "authoring engine failed" (whatever the fsck that is - Googling for "authoring engine" yields many different types of applications, from 3D RPG's to DVD's). Was the DVD-R bad? Did I run out of disk space? Not enough memory? WHAT?

Of course, it couldn't tell me this shortly after I started the burn process (I had it running for about 30 minutes or so before shutting the monitor off).

LG and all the other manufacturers who bundle OEM DVD software: you really need to test these OEM software suites before bundling them with your hardware.

Reading a News Bar article today, about spam-fighters who close down spamvertised websites, I was amazed at the amount of sites project KnujOn has claimed to close down.

Apparently, 32,000+ sites are 404-compliant due to their hard work. And that's a lot of hard work, given that many of the big-player ISP's are still spam-friendly. Then it occurred to me: that's a lot of time and money these folks have invested in contacting these ISP's and webhosts. Must be a full-time job!

When everyone adopts tagged email addresses, the real culprits (the ones who sell your personal information) will be exposed. Turning off a tagged address won't prevent that first piece of UCE coming in, but at least it guarantees you won't be bothered again. Of course, there are some that believe that temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome. True, but not as cumbersome as JHD'ing or continually tweaking filters/blocklists.

The trouble with most anti-spammers, is that they like to in-fight. Very few will have anything positive to say, only comment that this won't work, that won't work. They're like the PFJ versus the JPF:

Naturally, project KnujOn hasn't closed down 32,000+ spammers, only 32,000+ websites operated by around 50 groups of spammers. Not that I'm not grateful, but this means that they are simply playing Whac-A-Mole, providing short-term relief from the current tide of spam flowing from rogue networks.

Another dumb advert using more tedious R&B nonsense. Of course, Pantene is one of numerous products made by Proctor & Gamble - the same idiots who use R&B for the Tide commercials. Just another reason to boycott P&G.

Here are some more reasons to boycott P&G:
WorldNetDaily: P&G boycott builds momentum
Gillette Pulls RFID Tags In UK Amid Protests

As if proof were needed that the CRTC has no teeth, the news today is that they are finally launching a nation-wide DNC list. Great news, huh? Well, wait a sec... according to The CBC, the same exclusions will apply as the US' version: quasi-charities, or the telespammers-for-hire who call on their behalf; political parties; public opinion surveys; newspapers of general circulation; businesses you have done business with in the last 18 months (thereby establishing an EBR). The CRTC also excludes B2B calls as well.

What this essentially means (at least for me) is that the same telescumbags that I've been blocking on my VoIP line will be able to keep trying to call me. The only telemorons that this will affect, will be your common-or-garden telescum who telespam for themselves (it seems that duct cleaning and windows installation companies seem to be predisposed to this type of abusive advertising).

Some relevant links:
Fact Sheet - National Do Not Call List
Fact Sheet - Information for telejunkers

Back on 2006-01-02, I outlined my disgust at Sony's rootkit fiasco. Today, I happened to be Googling around for the term astroturfing and chanced upon another (albeit old) story involving Sony's marketing around the PSP during Christmas 2006. Turns out that Sony hired an outfit called Zipatoni to create a fake blog (mirrored here) shilling the PSP amongst your stereotypical, leet-speaking gamers. Ironically, Zipatoni sounds like a character out of a Nintendo DS game... he could be Mario's long-lost brother!

Along with their patronising behaviour towards gamers, it seems that Sony's greed makes them believe that they are above the law when it comes to graffitti. This is the same sort of stupid viral marketing that big corporations with no scruples indulge in these days. This is why I tell everyone I know that I boycott Sony and now I have 2 more reasons to add to that list.

Hope the PSP and PS3 sales sink without a trace.

Disclaimer: I have Chinese acquaintances - this is not aimed at Chinese people per se, only the incompetent, dictatorship Chinese Government.

In these dangerous and difficult times with rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea testing nuclear weapons, it's easy to lose focus on other threats.

In the space of just over one month, I have heard and read about at least 3 stories involving tainted products from China... pet food protein tainted with melamine, fake blood protein and fake Colgate toothpaste contaminated with diethylene glycol (a toxic chemical used in engine coolants).

One has to wonder if this truly is the result of an incompetent, rogue nation dictatorship with no controls over its industries, or if the Mandarins are deliberately using this as a weapon to poison the West. In any case, one has to wonder why it isn't already time to stop doing business with these types of Governments. How Beijing managed to win the hosting bid for the 2008 Olympic Games, given their history on human rights violations, still amazes me.

Boycotting does work. When complaints about massive amounts of spam went ignored by the Chinese Internet Administrators (appointed by the incompetent, nepotistic, retrograde Chinese Government) half of the world decided enough was enough and started blocking emails originating from their IP net-space. When the Mandarins found out about this, they suddenly became very co-operative with Spamhaus.

Not that I particularly care about celebrities and what they are up to, but I have to admit a certain degree of schadenfreude when I heard that the horse-faced one received 45 days in the slammer.

Thinking of "Hilton" and "jail" within the same sentence, reminded me of the film Bankok Hilton. I'm sure as a segregated, high-profile prisoner, her stay will be a walk in the park.

Some anagrams of Paris Hilton:
Hi, A-List Porn
Ha, 'Til Prison
L.A. 'Ho In Strip

I'd sentence her to another 45 days for wearing those dumb-looking "Roswell" glasses.

Not sure what kind of demographic Tide is trying to reach in its latest TV ads for Simple Pleasures, but the R&B $hit they use is loud and annoying. Seriously, I have to reach for the remote control every time it comes on... usually when I'm watching Discovery.

Time to change my brand of laundry detergent, methinks.

An annoying trend emerging in advertising is the abuse of full stops ("period" if you're a 'Merkin). Recent examples of this silliness include, "Doing it right. Before your eyes." and "The Sportscast. Redefined."

Pedantic grammarians will state that it's grammatically incorrect to start a sentence with a conjunction. Whilst true, this structure is often used informally to give the air of an afterthought. This is fine if the following sentence is complete and not just a fragment.

Oftentimes, poster adverts are composed by semi-literate buffoons. An example of this was the local bus transit company's poster that stated, "Your home free New Year's Eve" - doesn't anyone proofread these days?

Season 2 of Canada's Worst Handyman started on Discovery last night. Brought to you by the same folks and hosted by the same smart-ass twerp who presents Canada's Worst Driver.

This time, the contestants are set to build an eco-shed, while Younghusband provides his sniping voice-overs and critique in front of the camera. True, these clueless DIY'ers should probably not be allowed within 50 meters of a power-tool, but let's see how Younghusband would fare in his handyman skills against the others. I'm willing to bet that he would not do much better.

A month on from last month's post, it appears that the Roll Up The Rim To Win "contest" is wrapping up: no more winning losing cups are being dispensed by the franchises I frequent, although you still have until May 27th to redeem your prizes, if any.

So, here's the over-all results:

Number of days worked from February 26th to April 14th: 30 (took a week off of work)
Approximate (conservative estimate) number of coffees: 68 (avg 2.25 coffees)
Number of coffees won: 3
Number of doughnuts/muffins won: 0
Number of iPods, plasma TV's, cars, cash won: 0

Not exactly a 1-in-9 win. Of course, YMMV and it appears people have had better luck. Seems to me that Tim Hortons needs to work on a better way of distributing the cups.

Spammers play the numbers game. They send millions of emails a day, hoping to hit at least a few marks. Any idiot that responds by doing business is pure profit for a spammer. The phrase "There's one born every minute" certainly fits there.

Since no-one wants to let go of their beloved SMTP and come up with a brand new, trust-based email protocol, the only logical step is to make CAPTCHAs an interstitial part of the SMTP handshake for unknown senders. I don't claim this to be my own idea - there's plenty of hits Googling for "CAPTCHA" and "spam". Most of the search results are for discussions on why CAPTCHAs are evil and why they should not be used for website sign-up verifications, because they apparently discriminate against blind users.

Of all the discussions and arguments put forward, there isn't one single FUSSP - only a blended defence (of technological and sociological measures) will make a significant dent in the spam problem. Anyone who tries to think differently from the net-intelligentsia, is labeled an Anti-spam Kook.

So here are the arguments and counter-arguments:

(1) Visual CAPTCHAs discriminate against the blind: yes, they do. But then, logic-test CAPTCHAs discriminate against persons with learning disabilities; natural language-based CAPTCHAs discriminate against persons who don't speak the language used in the CAPTCHA; audio-CAPTCHAs discriminate against the deaf. So, whichever CAPTCHA is used, it will inevitably impact a person with one disability or another. Just as there is no universal solution to the spam problem, there isn't one CAPTCHA that will tell a human from a computer without affecting a minority of people. Trouble is, there are so many vocal tax-payer-subsidised, minority pressure-groups out there, who'd rather tell us to eat our spam than allow one disabled person to be unintentionally excluded. Solution: make alternative contact methods available or have a person assist the user in decoding the CAPTCHA.

(2) Spammers will just hire people to decode CAPTCHAs: perhaps. But remember, spammers play the numbers game. Use this against them. When it becomes prohibitively expensive for even the biggest of spammers to hire manual decoders, the spam will stop. To send 1 million emails and hire X number of flunkies to decode even half of the CAPTCHA challenge-responses in order to reach a handful of marks would just not make it worth the cost or effort.

(3) Spammers will redirect CAPTCHA images/logic-puzzles to their own sites and have people decode the CAPTCHA in exchange for access to pr0n: perhaps. But again, it's all about the numbers. How many visitors (dynamic) could decode a CAPTCHA before it expires? Hot-linking of images is easy to disable anyway.

(4) SMTP challenge-response systems are evil and just add to the spam volume: sometimes. I believe a dynamically-generated 5xx SMTP error message with a CAPTCHA URL is an acceptable method of challenge-response. To accept a message and then reply to it with a CAPTCHA URL is not acceptable. Also, until the original unknown sender is CAPTCHA authenticated, no more 5xx messages should be sent.

It's unfortunate that it's come down to this. But let's not forget that people have been obfuscating (munging) information for a long time - even before spammers started harvesting email addresses from usenet, people used images of email addresses on their websites. Did anyone complain when a blind person couldn't privately email a usenet poster because they had munged their email address? I'm sure I would have noticed the noise from the pressure groups if that happened.

Talking of usenet, here's an extremely inciteful post* made in 2003 by a NANAE regular. I am not going to repost the contents here, as it's archived on numerous sites - just Google for "thank the spammers". Even in 2003, CAPTCHAs were being used to prevent access to WHOIS data miners.

In our zeal to bend-over-backwards to help people who are less abled than ourselves to get onto the 'net, the spammers have been exploiting that good will to pump out their spam. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be told to eat my spam in deference to the "politically correct" pressure groups.

And anyway, spammers themselves discriminate against the blind since there's a trend to circumvent text-based spam filters by using image text in their spams. Would the pressure groups complain about that? Didn't think so.

I bus it to work - 3 buses at ~1½ hours each way, five days a week - all for nearly the past 4 years now.

I want to do the right thing: save the environment, stop global warming, make the air more breathable for the next generation. All this without the influence of annoying media-whore enviro-kooks like Dr David Suzuki.

But it's becoming more difficult to do the right thing. So many things piss me off with the bus these days:

• waiting around for 30 mins in -20°C weather;


• iTards playing their "music" at the volume of a jack-hammer so that I can hear it all the way from the other end of a 40ft bus - some don't even bother using earphones at all;


• smokers who just have to take one last big drag and board the bus before emptying their deceased lungs;


• jobs-worth bus drivers who will drop me off right at the stop, where all the mud is, even though there is a patch of concrete just 2 meters ahead.

On their own, these are all things I could put up with periodically, even a few months of winter weather, but what actually bugs me the most are the inconsiderate iPod tuckfards playing their tinny $hit, usually R&B or cRap, every fricking day.

So, starting this Spring, I am going for my G1 license. Our little-used second car will help.

One thing that never ceases to annoy me are the flyers that street-spammers stuff into my mailbox. Unlike the email spammers (typically penis enlargement pills and other fake pharmaceuticals) and telejunkers (usually for quasi-charities, duct cleaning and windows) it seems that mailbox spam is not limited to hawking one particular thing.

Tonight, I get home from work to find a religious flyer in my mailbox. I won't mention the faith in question, because (a) it's largely irrelevant and (b) I don't wish to incite hatred by labeling one particular faith as more spammy than another.

The contents of the flyer itself are not worth commenting on - I didn't even waste any time reading it, but what is laughable is the one-liner at the top of the flyer that caught my eye: "Note: This publication uses the Holy Scriptures; discard it with the proper care". Of course I'll discard it with the proper care - it's on plain paper, so it went quite nicely straight into the recycling bin. What did they want me to do with it? Bury it? Cremate it? Mail it back?

The right tool for the right job: Windows for desktops, *nix for servers. I'm sure some *nix fanboys would disagree, but let's face it, despite the world-wide contempt for the behemoth that is Microsoft - its questionable business ethics and abuse of monopoly - Linux is never going to get a foothold in the desktop-of-choice market unless things work "out-of-the-box".

Here's an example: I'd consider myself fairly tech savvy - I code in multiple languages across multiple platforms. I've tried OpenBSD and NetBSD - my preference is still FreeBSD; tried various flavours of Linux - SUSE was sh*t (never got past the installer: it switched off the VGA card) and RedHat wasn't bad.

Bombarded with even more telejunk calls than ever, I recently decided to purchase an Asterisk PBX system from Digium. I ordered my TDM11B (a TDM400P, 1 FXS Module and 1 FXO Module) on a Sunday afternoon, Digium shipped it the next day and I received it the morning after that - very impressive! My only gripe: the FXS module required a spare 12v power cable, which didn't reach across without considerable effort/re-jigging. I put my concerns into email and 7 hours later, Digium CS acknowledged my suggestion of including one in their retail starter packs. Perhaps I've become desensitised to bad ecommerce customer service over the years - my last internet purchase before this one was from geeks.com and it took them 3 days to ship my order, plus another 2 weeks to receive it via the USPS (without any tracking numbers to check the progress). The online "purchase" before that was this sorry episode over a year ago. So, all in all, Digium exceeded my expectations. Anyway, I digress...

Although Asterisk is supposed to work on multiple *nix platforms, it's officially supported on Linux. So, I downloaded and burned the 5 Fedora C6 ISO's from Red Hat. Attempted a full install on a spare hobby server (IBM PL300, 600MHz P3, 128MB RAM, 10GB HD). Installer craps out halfway through with kryptic error messages. Tried again with a minimal install (no X windows). Success. Fedora Core 6 does not recognise my TDM400P at boot up. So then I download and burn ASTLinux. It works, but is so bare bones, I can't do anything like download and compile Pico/Nano. So I download and burn the AsteriskNOW LiveCD ISO from Digium. Boots up fine - recognises my TDM400P, but PC locks up when it gets to the main menu. So I download and burn the AsteriskNOW installation disc. 8 CD's later, it figures that the last thing I try works 100%! Some custom Linux distro called "rPath Linux". I have Asterisk up and running within 20 mins of using the config web interface.

I have an idea about how to expand the functionality. Actually, someone else had the idea before me, hence a successful search on Google for "Asterisk talking caller ID". I download and install Festival, an open source text-to-speech engine. Doesn't work, but doesn't give me any error messages - just no audio. Should've realised that audio support, despite using relatively old hardware, would be a challenge.

The rPath kernel recognises both the onboard (ESS Maestro3) and SB Live (PCI) soundcards, but there's no /dev/dsp or /dev/audio or anything that remotely looks like a sound device. So I waste a whole day (no exaggeration) visiting the ALSA website, downloading and trying to install the drivers for the Maestro3 and SB Live (AKA emu10k/emu10k1) cards. Running "./configure" works; running "make clean" appears to work; running "make install" returns dumb error messages, such as "cp: cannot stat `snd-page-alloc.ko': No such file or directory". Seems like ALSA is the only source for Linux audio drivers, yet their bull$hit configure script doesn't "make" the .ko files needed to copy to the modules directory. I can't even RPM them in, as rPath doesn't support that package manager.

Well, at least my Asterisk is working - just need to work on the config to send telejunkers to the "Torture Menus". Googling around, it appears that Asterisk works on FreeBSD, but now that I've finally got it working, I don't want to change back to FreeBSD - besides, the support appears to better for Asterisk on the Linux platform.

I'm a coffee drinker. I don't smoke, drink (much!) or gamble, so you could say that coffee and computers are my vices. Even better, the two aren't simultaneously mutually exclusive!

Breakfast isn't breakfast without coffee. Being a convenience junkie, I grab a coffee and a doughtnut or breakfast sandwich from Timmy's on my way to work. According to the Roll Up The Rim To Win website, this "contest" runs from February 26th while cup supplies last. The odds are apparently 1-in-9 (one in nine) of winning. Of course, that's 1-in-9 of winning something, be it a free coffee, doughnut, muffin, iPod, plasma TV or car. The odds of 1:9 are published in the "'Contest' Rules & Regulations" .PDF file on the website, which states: "the overall approximate odds across North America of being eligible to win one of the Thirty (30) 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid B Packages are one (1) in 9,007,900; the overall approximate odds of being eligible to win one of the One Hundred (100) Panasonic 42" Plasma Televisions are one (1) in 2,702,370; the overall approximate odds of being eligible to win one (1) of Five Hundred (500) cash prizes of $1,000.00 are one in 540,474; the overall approximate odds of being eligible to win one of Ten Thousand (10,000) Apple iPod nano digital music players are one (1) in 27,024; the overall approximate odds of being eligible to win a food prize are one (1) in 9. In the U.S.A., the estimated odds of being eligible to win the 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid B Package are one (1) in 11,359,000. NOTE: The odds of obtaining an eligible "winning" RIM TAB will vary by region based on cup distribution outlined above and will change throughout the contest as specially marked contest cups are distributed and sold in each Region. The total number of prizes available to be won will decrease throughout the contest as contest cups are distributed and prizes are claimed."

So, there you have it, in black and white. There is also a table of regions, showing that region 3 (Ontario) has a larger allocation of winning cups - most probably because Ontario is the most populous province.

Now, consider the following:

(1) I live in Ontario.
(2) I work 5 days a week, although it seems like more sometimes. Anyway, the point is, I don't generally buy a Tim Hortons coffee on the weekends.
(3) There are 13 (thirteen) working days between February 26th and March 14th inclusive.
(4) Between the coffee I buy for myself and for colleagues (who reciprocally buy me one) I have averaged between 2 and 3 coffees (medium to x-large sizes, no smalls) per working day. Let's be generous and say 2.5, no rounding up.
(5) That means that I have consumed at least 33 coffees since the "contest" began.
(6) As of March 14th, I have won: no coffees, no doughnuts, no muffins, no iPods (wouldn't want an i$hit anyway, but that's not the point) or plasma TV's or cars.

So, Tim Hortons, your Roll Up The Rim To Win "contest" is a crock. Seems the "rim" refers to something else, not a coffee cup.

Related link here.

Whilst Googling around today, I noticed a sponsored link...

Linux vs. Windows
Which do you choose when
reliability is key? Get the facts.
www.microsoft.ca/getthefacts

.... which redirects to this site. Allegedly, "an overwhelming 88% of corporations report that Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 operating system provides performance and reliability that are equal to or better than Linux in comparable usage scenarios".

Reading on, "corporate enterprises rate Windows security nearly on par with comparable Linux networks".

Nearly on par does not equal on par. These stupid assertions were made nearly 2 years ago, since this article is dated April 2005.

Microsoft, if you're going to dabble in negative campaigning, at least keep it fresh.

One thing that never ceases to annoy me are the flyers that spammers stuff into my mailbox. Unlike the email spammers (typically penis enlargement pills and other fake pharmaceuticals) and telejunkers (usually duct cleaning and windows) it seems that mailbox spam is not limited to hawking one particular thing.

Tonight, I get home from work to find a religious flyer in my mailbox. I won't mention the faith in question, because (a) it's largely irrelevant and (b) I don't wish to incite hatred by labeling one particular faith as more spammy than another.

The contents of the flyer itself are not worth commenting on - I didn't even waste any time reading it, but what is laughable is the one-liner at the top of the flyer that caught my eye: "Note: This publication uses the Holy Scriptures; discard it with the proper care". Of course I'll discard it with the proper care - it's on plain paper, so it went quite nicely straight into the recycling bin. What did they want me to do with it? Bury it? Cremate it? Mail it back?

Warning: the external links referenced in this article will most likely generate popups - do not click on them unless you are one of these fabled people who actually like popups, or if you have a popup blocker in your browser.

Whilst Googling around today, I chanced upon an (old) news article on The Times of India.

Luckily, I am running Mozilla Firefox, which has a built-in popup blocker.

According to my browser, "Firefox prevented this site from opening 7 popup windows". That's right, SEVEN popups. Clicking on "Options" shows 7 URL's off of 4 unique domains.

This is the sort of bullshit that makes the 'Net suck. Obviously, enough people made enough noise for Microsoft to finally integrate a popup blocker in version 7 of Internet Exploiter, long after Opera and Mozilla implemented it in their browsers.

I understand that most sites (especially those that have no corresponding offline presence) need to make revenue and I have no problem with small file-size banner ads in principle. If I am interested in a banner, I'll click on it, rest assured. I will never *EVER* buy or subscribe to anything displayed in a popup.

The same idiocy is practiced by the tuckfards at experts-exchange.com. They evade popup blockers by deliberately obfuscating the JScript to launch a popup, even fooling Firefox:


<script language=javascript><!--
document.write('<scr'+'ipt language=javascript src="http://a.tribalfusion.com/j.ad?site=*removed*
&adSpace=*removed*&size=468x60&type=horiz&noAd=1&requestID=*removed*">
</scr'+'ipt>');
//-->
</script>

[note the obligatory misnomer domain name, indicative of most dotcom-only junk-monger companies these days]

Particularly ironic - given that experts-exchange is a tech resource site, they should already be enclued into how annoying popups really are.

So, webmasters, get a clue: no-one likes popups, so lose them already!