Bell's Traffic Shaping and Net Neutrality

It seems Bell has walked into it's own pit-trap. Can it get out?

globeandmail.com: Kapica's Cyberia: "Bell announced this morning it has opened the online Bell Video Store, which will sell and rent movies and TV shows, and it has already run into an issue that has little to do with buying or renting videos."

The new and cool way to a Cottage-Area-Network

While sharing a DSL or Broadband connection in is not what the ISP wants to hear about, in cottage country if one person can get high-speed on the lake, this little gem might be the answer to the local LAN-Party getting interesting.

$318 WiFi network bridge connects two locations up to 5 miles apart - Engadget: "WiFi network bridge connects two locations up to 5 miles apart"

I haven't tried this thing out, and you need to pay attention to the "direct line-of-sight" stipulation but in cottage country or in Canada's vast wilderness, this might be a very economical solution for the neighbourhood that is at the limits.

ASUS Eee PC: Add Color to Your Life!

ASUS Eee PC: Add Color to Your Life! - $299

Canada Computers is one of many stores selling the ASUS Eee PC. The 2G Surf is deal for those wishing to do basic e-mail, browsing, and document editing. You might do yourself a favour and pick up a USB key for storage and transfer of files to/from this sweet little PC, and perhaps a SD card of three for storage of music and/or movies, but the device will suit the needs of most students, light PC users, and those road warriors that don't need a monster.

Aside from the fashonable colour range, I prefer basic black myself, these are a reasonable start to mobil computing, though you will want to find a decent case to carry it in, and that might be as simple as locating a non-descript lunch-bag from your local WAL-MART or Zellers.

A good buy.

The ASUS Eee PC 4G...

Hands on use, that's what I really needed to give an honest, non-speculative review of this thing.

It's great! Both for me and my girlfriend, we love the 4G. The built-in wireless, OS, usability of Xandros, the practicality of UnionFS in this application and the extreme difference between how we use it.

It's practical. While I've got PICASA on mine, (I don't recommend this in reality, though I store pictures to my external 40Gb drive. I can safely say I can do the following very well:

• Watch movies
• Play Music
• Keep My iPod Shuffle up-to-date
• Browse the Web and handle my GMail and Google Calendar use
• Blog
• Keep track of my time
• Create documents
• Use a full-sized keyboard and monitor (though I typically use Synergy)
• Toss my need for a PDA

If thet's not enough, what do you expect for the size and cost ($399.99 at Canada Computers, ~$450 incl. tax.)?

There's the 9" version on the horizon (May 12th), but I'm happy with what I bought. If you're looking for a system to do basic e-mail and browsing do two things:

1. Get a Google Mail (GMail) account
2. Buy an ASUS Eee PC.

Which Eee PC? If you're not going to upgrade the RAM (there's not much need to) and don't figure on using the built-in camera on the 4G, consider teh savings of buying the 4G Surf or 2G Surf, either will be fine for the base user, though if you expect to add any significant software get the 4G Surf.

There is an 8G. 8 Gigabytes of disk space. I think I could have found this useful, but the creative use of USB keys, external drives, or a larger SDHC card (say 4 or 8Gb) will allieviate any stress there.

BTW: to do Video Skype calls, upgrade Skype through the Eee PC default interface. For better video playback, get VLC.

A Simple Clock...

Click here to see it.

It's just kinda neat, nothing earth-shattering.

Having trouble searching for things?

My friend and colleague (not said in the manner most lawyers say this, with sarcasm), Brian, found this method to allow the Windows Search to actually WORK!

1. Click Start, and then click Search (or point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders).
2. Click Change preferences, and then click With[out] Indexing Service (for faster local searches).
3. Click Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced). Note that you do not have to turn on the Index service.
4. On the toolbar, click Show/Hide Console Tree.
5. In the left pane, right-click Indexing Service on Local Machine, and then click Properties.
6. On the Generation tab, click to select the Index files with unknown extensions check box, and then click OK.
7. Close the Indexing Service console.

You will have much better results.

Wait don't leave! Resisting user navigation.

When looking for a really nasty bit of trickery I found this article that allows you to manage a user's navigation from the current page to prevent pre-mature departures. I suspect this can be used for good or evil, but it's cool nonetheless.

How to stop browser from closing using Javascript? - Dev Articles

Derived from that article is the simplified version we will use:

<script>
   var needToConfirm = false;
   window.onbeforeunload = confirmExit;
   function confirmExit()
   {
       //alert(needToConfirm);
       if (needToConfirm)
       {
           window.open("http://cstech.no-ip.com");
           //return "[Unremark this line to show the customized confirm dialog with OK/Cancel options.]";
       }
   }
   needToConfirm = true;
</script>

Currently this fires a new window with my site but with the prevelance of pop-up blockers don't expect this to be terribly effective.