Segacs's World I Know » Science and technology

We Canadians pay the highest mobile rates in the world, thanks to the entrenched Bell-Rogers-Telus oligopoly that for years has been gouging customers with impunity. The CRTC, the regulatory body...

https://www.segacs.com/2013/crtcs-new-wireless-rules-dont-go-far-enough.html

Steve Jobs, the man behind Apple, is dead at age 56. I’m not an Apple product aficionado. I don’t have an iPhone or an iPad or a MacBook Pro. I’m not part of the Apple cult(ure). But there�...

https://www.segacs.com/2011/rip-steve-jobs.html

You can tell it’s an election year when the government actually bothers to do something useful. Harper, seeing the writing on the wall after massive petitions and public outcry, has issued an u...

https://www.segacs.com/2011/federal-government-to-crtc-youve-gone-too-far.html

Imagine the surprise of a woman who was charged $47,000 by Bell for the use of mobile internet, after being instructed to set up her phone that way by Bell’s customer service department: “The...

https://www.segacs.com/2010/the-47000-phone-bill.html

Conducting breakthrough medical research, that is. This time, it’s a research team from Hebrew University that has developed a breakthrough in the fight against AIDS: a treatment that appears t...

https://www.segacs.com/2010/those-darn-israelis-at-it-again.html

A few things that have been on my mind lately: 1. Idiots are their own worst PR nightmare. Let ’em talk long enough, they’ll shoot themselves in the foot. No need to do it for them. 2. Lazine...

https://www.segacs.com/2010/things-ive-been-thinking-about.html

A new Israeli study suggests that smokers have lower IQs than nonsmokers: According to the researchers, 28 percent of the study participants smoked at least one cigarette a day, around 3 percent ...

https://www.segacs.com/2010/are-smokers-dumber.html

The study that had initially claimed a link between childhood vaccination and autism and had long since been essentially debunked as having no supporting evidence, has been formally retracted ...

https://www.segacs.com/2010/debunking-the-vaccination-causes-autism-myth.html

Big. Huge. Potentially game-changing. These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us ...

https://www.segacs.com/2010/googles-new-approach-to-chin.html

Why rely on information when conspiracy theories are just so much more fun? THE swine flu scare was a “false pandemic” led by drugs companies that stood to make billions from vaccines, a lead...

https://www.segacs.com/2010/more-h1n1-conspiracy-theories.html

Here’s an explanation for the unusually cold weather in parts of North America and Europe lately: The folks who run the National Center for Atmospheric Research have a great rundown of the det...

https://www.segacs.com/2010/deep-freeze-2.html

The death of opposition cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri has sparked more protests – which never really died down, despite strong-arm efforts from Ahmedinijad to stamp out dissen...

https://www.segacs.com/2009/meanwhile-in-iran-montazeri.html

‘Tis the season to be… generous. Of course, that’s a load of hogwash. Supporting worthy causes is important year-round, not just in December, when the idealists get all imbued with holiday ...

https://www.segacs.com/2009/how-not-to-ask-for-money.html

Is Vietnam the latest country to block access to Facebook? Since last week, it seems that way. Even though the Vietnamese government is issuing denials. Some Vietnamese Facebook users launched a ...

https://www.segacs.com/2009/facebook-blocked-in-vietnam.html

So, how do you like the new look? It’s the latest in the long list of changes that have been taking place around here. The first step was my move to my own hosting at segacs.com after Geocities...

https://www.segacs.com/2009/new-look-for-segacs-com.html

I’ve got the new hosting for segacs.com up and running, and the migration of this site is more or less complete. Most links should work, though if you encounter any broken links, please let me ...

https://www.segacs.com/2009/ch-ch-ch-changes.html

Geocities has officially closed. For the most part, this happened with a whimper, not a bang. You can continue to access this site for now, but stay tuned for updated information within the next ...

https://www.segacs.com/2009/end-of-an-era.html

The GSMA have announced measures to standardize mobile phone chargers by 2012. The post It’s about time first appeared on Segacs's World I Know .

https://www.segacs.com/2009/its-about-time.html

In a very un-Conservative move, Stephen Harper made a campaign promise today to regulate businesses more, cracking down on such unfair business practices as price-fixing, deceptive marketing, and...

https://www.segacs.com/2008/harper-promises-crackdown-on-text-message-fees.html

We knew it was coming, but that doesn’t make this announcement any more welcome: The new layout for Facebook doesn’t actually streamline anything. Instead, it forces a half-dozen clicks to ge...

https://www.segacs.com/2008/its-the-end-of-facebook-as-we-know-it.html

Responding to massive public pressure, including an online petition that garnered over 57,000 signatures, Rogers has announced a $30 data plan for the iPhone. It’s not the unlimited flat plan t...

https://www.segacs.com/2008/update-on-the-cell-phone-wars.html

Two related stories in today’s Gazette, referring to all three major players in Canada’s mobile phone market: First, a story about how Bell and Telus are both going to start charging for inco...

https://www.segacs.com/2008/price-gouging-the-cell-phone-market-in-canada.html

If Gore, Dion et al. are right and we really are about 10 seconds away from totally fucking up our planet beyond repair… well, maybe we’ll all have someplace to go: A new world has been disco...

https://www.segacs.com/2007/plan-b.html

As many of you know, Yahoo Photos, which I’d been using for some time now, is in the process of shutting down. Yahoo’s acquisition of online photo sharing and social networking site Flickr ea...

https://www.segacs.com/2007/online-photo-sites-close-but-not-there-yet.html

I’ve resisted as long as possible, and have finally caved to the pressures of Facebook Crackbook. See you when I emerge… Eventually… The post Finally caved in first appeared on Segacs's ...

https://www.segacs.com/2007/finally-caved-in.html

Last week I came home one day and turned on my trusty computer, only to discover that it was making a noise. A very loud noise. A very loud and scary noise, considering I had committed the cardin...

https://www.segacs.com/2007/scary-noises.html

So says this Gazette editorial about the government’s case against Paul Bryan for posting election results from eastern Canada on the internet before the polls closed in western Canada: It was ...

https://www.segacs.com/2006/information-wants-to-be-free.html

The latest Google takeover: YouTube. At least it wasn’t Yahoo, which means that the content on YouTube will probably stay relatively open and free of pointless Yahooisms. (I don’t use Faceboo...

https://www.segacs.com/2006/google-really-will-own-the-world-soon.html

So is it a planet or isn’t it? Pluto’s dubious status continues to cause debate among scientists, stargazers, and a lot of people with nothing better to do. In the meantime, it seems they’r...

https://www.segacs.com/2006/celestial-musings.html

I could’ve predicted this was coming. Oh, wait, I did. Six years ago. Sure took ’em long enough! (Via Damian Penny). The post Who called it? first appeared on Segacs's World I Know .

https://www.segacs.com/2006/who-called-it.html

There are some things in the world that you just take for granted. The sunrise. Gravity. There being nine planets in the solar system. Well, not anymore. Pluto has been demoted and is no longer a...

https://www.segacs.com/2006/and-then-there-were-eight.html

Seems that in addition to calling for Israel’s destruction, denying the Holocaust, and developing nuclear weapons, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s list of hobbies has expanded to incl...

https://www.segacs.com/2006/mahmoud-ahmadinejads-blog.html

Watch for the newest craze to hit the blogosphere: Prisonblogging: The prison blog of a New Zealand political activist jailed for the rare crime of sedition has outraged opposition politicians bu...

https://www.segacs.com/2006/what-happened-to-the-whole-one-phonecall-thing.html

It’s official: Google is a verb. The post About time first appeared on Segacs's World I Know .

https://www.segacs.com/2006/about-time.html

Something Damian Penny wrote the other day came back to me just now: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Damian was, of course, referring to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad�...

https://www.segacs.com/2005/belief-versus-facts.html

Google launched its new Talk service in Beta. From what I gather, it’s an IM service that allows you to voice call for free. Soon, it will likely be on every computer. I’m gonna wait a bit, a...

https://www.segacs.com/2005/soon-google-will-own-world.html

I can’t help but think that life before electricity must have been so much simpler. Earlier today, I had to break into my own car when my car alarm inexplicably stopped working. At first, I tho...

https://www.segacs.com/2005/age-of-electric.html

Yeah, it pretty much sucks. Tons of ads, extra buttons, useless features and nonsense clutter. If, like me, you installed it because you were tired of being reminded to, see here and here for way...

https://www.segacs.com/2005/new-msn-messenger.html

The Federal Government has been bogged down with AdScam, party switching and non-confidence votes, and as a result has been able to get precious little done. But it seems that instead of trying t...

https://www.segacs.com/2005/trying-to-curb-music-downloading.html

I’ve officially succumbed to pressure and joined the digital revolution. My new camera seems to be a lot of fun. I played tourist in Montreal yesterday, walking around all the places crowded wi...

https://www.segacs.com/2005/digital-revolution-update.html

With my convenient little pocket 35mm point-and-shoot camera stolen in Costa Rica, I’m faced with the prospect of having to replace it. And that means it’s decision-time: do I stick with the ...

https://www.segacs.com/2005/digital-revolution.html

A school district in Wisconsin will teach creationism in classes, claiming that it’s just as valid a theory as evolution: Members of Grantsburg’s school board believed that a state law govern...

https://www.segacs.com/2004/wisconsin-school-district-teaching-creationism.html

Well, 24 hours later and I’m more or less up and running. The Internet’s working, and so is the network between the computers to transfer files. I’ve managed to reinstall most of my softwar...

https://www.segacs.com/2004/computer-update.html

Blogging will be light for a few days, while I attempt to set up my new computer. So far, I’ve managed to connect to the Internet, but I’ve been incapable of connecting it to the old one to t...

https://www.segacs.com/2004/configurations-and-connections.html

Blogger’s new WYSIWYG editor gets a big thumbs-down from me. After spending a half-hour trying to fix the messed-up formatting of the links in the last post, I’m starting to wonder why it is ...

https://www.segacs.com/2004/bloggers-new-wysiwyg-editor.html

And speaking of important court rulings today, our supreme court at home has been tackling an important issue: music downloads. Today, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that ISP’s don’t have t...

https://www.segacs.com/2004/isps-dont-have-to-pay-royalties.html

Proof that Internet and website campaigns can make a difference (via Israpundit): When you search for the word “Jew” in Google, you no longer get an antisemitic hate site as the top result. T...

https://www.segacs.com/2004/googlebomb-success.html

A few months ago, the blogosphere was abuzz with the Onion’s satire “Mom finds out about blog”. The ultimate embarrassing nightmare. But this cool Mom not only knows about her 14-year-old d...

https://www.segacs.com/2004/a-mom-who-gets-it.html

Blogger, the tool I use to publish this site, just announced that they now have an Atom feed capability for all weblogs on the system. So I, naturally, went and immediately activated the setting ...

https://www.segacs.com/2004/confessions-of-a-non-techie.html

David Janes defends bloggers: One of the things I enjoyed about the blogosphere commitment most of the bloggers I read to “anti-idiotarianism”, a commitment to truth even if it doesn’t pr...

https://www.segacs.com/2004/in-defence-of-bloggers.html

I’m very proud of myself. As a technical neophyte, I think that purchasing a new CD-RW drive and managing to install it – and get it working – in under an hour is a pretty good achievement,...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/not-bad-eh.html

Forgive me but I have to rant. (If you’re a child or are sensitive, cover your eyes). Stupid-goddamn-fucking-MORONIC-idiotic-Dell Tech Support!!! First, Windows crashes. I nearly lose everythin...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/dell-tech-support-rant.html

Well, the good news is, I’m back up and running again. I had to reformat my hard drive this week, after all but killing my computer. To make a long story short, it rebelled against my attempt t...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/tech-woes.html

I don’t have any fancy RSS feeds or trackbacks on my site. (I don’t think Geocities supports them, and I’m not technically savvy enough to figure out how they work anyway). So I don’t alw...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/ego-roll.html

When you’re selling water in the desert and it starts to pour, sorry dude, you’re outta business, better start selling umbrellas instead. That’s marketing 101. Sometimes you have to rethink...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/its-raining-in-desert.html

Here’s a great way to get consumers to love ya: Sue them! If you’re the major record labels, apparently this makes perfect sense to you. The post Suing the fans first appeared on Segacs's ...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/suing-the-fans.html

I’m getting really fed up with this W32.Sobig.F@mm virus. (Link is to a description and removal instructions, not to the virus itself!) I had to clean it off my dad’s computer yesterday, and ...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/virus-annoyance.html

Still reading your horoscope daily? Well, you can stop now. 40-year-long research has concluded that astrology is a load of bunk: Extensive scientific research over more than 40 years has finally...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/its-official-astrology-is-bunk.html

The power outage that has shut down New York, Toronto, Ottawa, Detroit, Cleveland, and virtually everywhere in between somehow managed to escape us in Quebec, for once. Maybe the gods of power fi...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/power-outage.html

Michael J. Radwin has an interactive Jewish calendar on his site . . . for all those times when you’re trying to figure out if that dentist appointment you’re about to schedule coincides with...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/interactive-jewish-calendar.html

Everyone’s blogging these days it seems . . . even our next Prime Minister. The post Paul Martin starts blog first appeared on Segacs's World I Know .

https://www.segacs.com/2003/paul-martin-starts-blog.html

The Raelians are now claiming that the first supposedly cloned baby, “Eve”, is actually in Israel, not the United States as they’d previously claimed. Judging by the horribly antisemitic ch...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/raelian-clone-in-israel.html

Looks like Ray Kurzweil’s predictions are still quite a way off. Garry Kasparov beat Deep Junior in a chess game. Kasparov made headlines in 1997 when he lost to Deep Blue, a supercomputer buil...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/score-one-for-humans.html

This glossary of blog terms at Samizdata made me laugh. The post LOL! first appeared on Segacs's World I Know .

https://www.segacs.com/2003/glossary-of-blog-terms.html

Sorry about the delay in blog posts . . . my ftp server went berzerk on me. Everything should be fixed now so blogging will resume as usual. The post Back up and running first appeared on Sega...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/back-up-and-running-2.html

Honest Reporting points to some pretty disturbing hate speech on the Raelians’ website. This is what Damian Penny has to say about it: I used to think the Raelians were just a bunch of cranks w...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/raelian-hate-speech.html

Noah Shachtman in Wired.com writes about how bloggers are often breaking stories and bringing them to national attention, when otherwise they would be ignored by the mainstream press. He specific...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/when-blogs-become-news.html

The Raelians are claiming that a second cloned baby was born. Apparently there’s about as much evidence to support this claim as there is for the first supposed clone. The post Another Raelia...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/another-raelian-clone.html

Those wacky Raelians claim to have cloned a human baby, but suddenly there’s a question on whether a DNA test will be done after all. Of course, these are people who want us to take on faith th...

https://www.segacs.com/2003/those-wacky-raelians.html