Inside the mind of Jamie Starke

For the last year, I have been on one of Shaw's Student promotions, which in and of themselves they are pretty good.  I have been getting Highspeed internet and Basic Cable for $41.16 a month, which isn't bad.  Sound to good to last?  Apparently, because of a mistake by one of their Reps, I'm now facing a greater than 65% increase on my monthly bill.

This Fall I decided it was a pretty good deal, so during the first week of classes, I decided to go down to their booth, give them all my information (Credit card number, Student ID Card, Confirmation of enrollment, phone number on the account), and they said to me "Oh ya, you've been with us before, we just have to enter it in the system".

So I get to the end of September, and there still hadn't been a charge on my credit card, so I figure, maybe I should call them and make sure that everything went through alright.  I talked to some nice lady who told me "Oh you still have a credit on your account from when you had the Summer Student promotion, so once that runs out it will just automatically charge the 8 months to your credit card.  But when you get your next bill, if there is a problem, give us a call and its really easy to fix it." Seemed reasonable enough, so I took her word for it.

Today I got my Shaw bill, and instead of the regular Student promotion, I was being charge $68.20, for the exact same service!  I called them up, and their response was, there is nothing on your account, do you know the Rep ID of the guy?  I'm like, no?  Who remembers those kind of things unless you've had a problem with the person?  After talking with the guy for about 40 minutes, and him putting me on hold a number of times, he basically came back to say, the promotion code is no longer available, so there is nothing we can do.  I told him, this is what I agreed to, so if I couldn't get it, then I would be cancelling my service, to which he responded "You can cancel it if you want, but there is nothing we can do"

Does this sound a bit like a scam to anyone else?  Hook you in with a great deal so you don't go else (when by the way, Telus was offering something like High Speed internet for $19.95 a month) and once your in, Jack up the price and claim there is nothing you can do.

Oh, and if anyone knows of any good deals on Internet (and possibly cable) else where, let me know, I'm in the market

Update:  I just got off the phone with a Shaw rep.  Unlike my previous experience, this one was quite pleasant.  I barely finished explaining the situation to this representative, before she put me on hold.  When she came back, she appologized for the situation, and explained to me that she would be Manually be crediting my account the difference each month, up until the end of the school year. 

This webcomic (http://xkcd.com/488/) was released today, and I think it has a very valid point specifically in the context of what Mr. Prentice is trying to do to the Canadian Copyright system.  Although I myself still purchase large numbers of CD's and DVDs, there are those out there that do pirate media, or purchase their media through legal means which use some kind of Digital Rights Management (DRM).

The problem with what Mr. Prentice has proposed with Bill C-61 is that there are 3 Major operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux).  The truely unfortunate thing is that these DRM based companies usually leave 1 or 2 of these operating systems out of their schemes, meaning, should any of these individuals that purchases their media through legal means end up on one of these systems (such as mac os x or linux), their media is now inoperable.  Lets look at one of these legal media systems.  For instance, lets take the Walmart music site.  This system uses WMA supported DRM.  Now, lets say when the user signed up for the site, this worked perfectly well for their needs, but last month, they purchased an iPod (The largest mobile music player on the market).  The music that they have legally paid for would fail to play on this major music system. 

Walmart is a classic example of why DRM is bad.  For DRM to function correctly, a server needs to maintain who is the legal owner of a music file.  Last week, Walmart decided to shut down their Music store, thus turning off this server, which in essense, made authentication of these users files impossible, and they lost the ability to play them, through no fault of their own.  Should one of these users try to 'break' this DRM to play a song that they legally purchased, under bill C-61, they would be liable for $20000 in damages. 

Now back to the cartoon (http://xkcd.com/488/).  As you can see, this cartoon is very truthful in reality.  Many users are faced with two choices, those that download illegal, DRM-free content (see piracy) or those that purchase their content legally.  Those that purchase legally have a chance that the situation will change (sometimes beyond their control, see http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/10/wal-mart-will-c.html), and their purchases will become obsolete, and be unusable, and any action to render these files playable, would be a violation under bill C-61, and would could face a $20000 fine, and thus make the person a criminal.  If the person instead downloads the content illegally to begin with, but DRM free, they will face a much smaller fine if caught ($500), but their content will be consistently, and often universally playable, no matter how their circumstances change.  Is this really the message we want to send to our citizens?  It is better to do the illegal thing first off, because if you purchase legally, and someone else changes how they feel the media should be used or your circumstances change, you'll still be more of a criminal anyway?

To anyone that things Bill C-61 is behind us, your wrong.  On October 7th, with the Conservative Party's platform they made a "pledge to reintroduce copyright reform".  This will likely again mean lots of Closed door discussions with Media lobby groups from south of the border, and no consumer involvement. 

Make a stand for Canada, and Tell Mr. Prentice that you think Canada deserves and Open Democracy, where Everyone gets a say.

Like everyone else I know, I was happy when I heard that the iPhone would be coming to Canada, but that happiness quickly turned to reluctance when I found out that Rogers and Fido (a subsidiary of Rogers) would be carrying the iPhone.  Of course, this was not really a big surprise, as the iPhone is a GSM phone, and neither of the other 2 big Wireless companies in Canada (Telus and Bell) are GSM.  

Rogers has this way of taking something good, and screwing to make a really good profit.  For instance, the iPhone 8 GB in the states will be going for $199 on a 2 year contract.  With Rogers, of course, its on a 3 year contract.  You can't tell me that with the Canadian dollar and the US dollar being at almost parity (they seem to flip flop with who is on top) that the iPhone costs so much more that they need to subsidize it by another years contract.  Exactly, pure profit.

As I told everyone I know, the big thing I am waiting on to decide if I get the iPhone is, of course, the rate plans.  I have been on 3 year contracts for years so they don't scare me, they just piss me off with the discrepency.  This morning, I finally found Rogers rate plans (Fido's are identical) .  I've included them below

Wow, so not only are they not unlimited, but they include very little air time, and additional air time is Exorbident!

I wanted to include a comparison of the basic plans between the US and Canada, however I found that someone else had already done it in the blog iPhone Costs UK vs US vs Canada. Rogers Ruins it for Canada!  I have included the image below.

So why do I say the 'iPhone is coming to Canada, kind of'?  Well in true Rogers Style, Everyone else has 2 year or less contract, Rogers opts for a Full 3 years!  Everyone else has over 400 minutes of daytime Airtime, Rogers 150.  Everyone else has Unlimited Data, Rogers has 400 MB.  Everyone else includes atleast 200 Text Messages, Rogers includes 75 (Wow).  Everyone Else includes Call Display, but not Rogers, thats extra.  All said and done, it costs you about the same in the US, UK and Canada, but with Rogers you get a lot less.

Thanks Rogers, Way to Ruin a beautiful thing!

No surprise that someone has already set up a petition, which is available at http://www.ruinediphone.com/

Before you read on. Take a deep breath. Don't panic.

I have received reports of messages like the following one:

Subject: virus alert ! Anyone-using Internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on. This information arrived this morning, Direct from both Microsoft and Norton. Please send it to everybody you know who has access t o the Internet. You may receive an apparently harmless e-mail titled "Mail Server Report" If you open either file, a message will appear on your screen saying: 'It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful.' Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC, And the person who sent it to you will gain access to your name, e-mail and password. This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon. AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the anti virus software's are not capable of destroying it. The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself 'life owner'. PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS E-MAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, And ask them to PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY! THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY SNOPES http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/mailserver.asp

Before dismissing this message I decided to look into it. By actually looking at the link above, it was Obvious that this was a hoax, as the page it self, with regards to a message similar to the one above said:

In March 2008, a new warning began circulating that erroneously linked
the name of the 'Mail Server Report' worm with elements of the Life is
Beautiful virus hoax and claimed that the resulting amalgam "HAS BEEN
CONFIRMED BY SNOPES", thereby creating yet another hoax virus warning

This is a hoax. Said virus is not in the wild, and has not been confirmed by Snopes, infact, their message above said that the message people contacted me about is infact a hoax.

Let me just take a moment to remind everyone some email safety:

• Consider the source: Is this source credible in this area? Do they have the sufficient knowledge in the area? If they said that "X" said something, do they provide references to the source of this comment, such as links to "X"'s website? Does "X"'s website even say this? If any of these do not apply, its probably not a good idea to send this email on to anyone.
• Is an attachment something your actually expecting: Is the message from someone you don't know? Is the message from someone you know, but contains an attachment that is unexpected, or seems fishy? If any of these apply, its probably a good idea not to open these attachments.

If you can't answer these questions yourself, ask someone who knows.

When I was working on this article this morning, someone asked me, "Well, why would someone send these kind of messages out in the first place?"

Thats a very good question, one to which I really don't have a definate answer. This question is similar to "Why would someone make a virus?". Realistically, the only reason that I have for either of these two is, because they can, and they want to see how well it will work. If no one sent these messages on, would they go very far? Probably not. If the messages didn't go very far, would someone want to make one of these hoaxes in the first place? Probably not.

So for that reason, if we all just follow these simple rules, We will get less hoaxes, we are less likely to spread viruses, and we are all more likely to have a safe internet experience. Do the right thing, follow the rules.

Today while having some free time, and getting sick of remote desktopping into my Windows box to print things, I decided to take another stab at getting my Lexmark E210 to work with my Mac OS X Leopard laptop. Unfortunately, I found a long time ago that this printer had neither driver support from Lexmark, nor Apple.

The page I found on how to Make A Lexmark E210 Printer work with Mac OS X detailed extremely well the steps for hooking this printer up via USB (and if you are looking at this for USB, go there now!).

If on the other hand, if like me, your using a Lexmark E210 that is shared from a Windows Machine, these steps seemed to work for me.

First off install the Samsung-GDI-Foomatic driver and the GPLGS (GPL GhostScript) both of which are available on that page.

Second, install Gimp-Print Printer Drivers. As it said on the other page above, neither Lexmark nor Apple have driver support for this printer, so this will act as what you need to be able to print.

Finally, Open System Preferences, Print & Fax. Hold Option while clicking the + sign (add, I don't know why, don't ask, again from the page above). Now select this Windows Button. With any luck, your workgroup will show up. Select the computer the printer is attached to, and then the printer. Once you have selected the printer, in the "Print Using" drop-down select "Lexmark E210, Foomatic+gdi".

You should now be able to print, and you won't just get blank pages, or the first page of documents.