Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist

Archive forJune, 2002 | back to home

29 June 2002
Filed under:Useful web resources at1:33 pm

tinyurl.com is not the first tool I have run across to let you to shrink those massive web addresses into something manageable but it is the handiest. Just paste your URL like http://www.my-internet-isp.com/~myusername/ into the form on the site and it returns something like http://tinyurl.com/3 which you can paste into an email and which, when entered into a browser, will send you to the right place.

Thanks to my friend Harald/chk for the link…card by credit accept mailcredit carsd 0all of cards list a creditcredit interstate alliedaccount card florida merchant processingcom creditaccredited taxation aacsbcredit enforcement aforallentown credit union municipal Map

28 June 2002

The first example I have come across of its usefulness for crime prevention.

A small town next to a forest preserve, South Orange New Jersey is unique in many respects. Unfortunately for one con man, the town also has one thing many communities don’t: an active virtual community. When a door-to-door salesman’s visit left one resident suspicious, she did some digging and found out it was a scam. So she alerted the police and posted a warning to the town’s message boards. Several other residents had been victims, too, but word spread quickly. Six hours later, when the con man knocked on another door, the resident already knew his name and his spiel. She told him that the whole town was on to him, and the police had his description. I doubt he’ll bother South Orange again.

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27 June 2002
Filed under:Science & Technology at11:26 pm

First the New York Times reports on a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine about the mistakes in US hospitals that kill 44,000 to 98,000 patients a year. The example the newspaper draws from is that of a patient whose heart was operated on in error, thanks to 17 separate mistakes.

In fact, this issue doesn’t really worry me. I like to think I am adult enough to accept that mistakes will happen from time to time, even in life and death situations. And at least the journal is at last trying to shine the light of scientific inquiry on ordinary goofs.

What concerns me more is that I read this morning that in a study by the Postgraduate Medical Journal (reported by the BBC) many newly-qualified UK doctors were found to lack basic emergency knowledge about how to deal with unconscious patients, how to use an oxygen mask etc. Frankly I wonder how different the results would have been if the doctors tested were more senior…absolutly free ringtonesal harringtonand blackburn accrington notcarrington alfieaccringtoneverington alfredringtones alerthetherington alexa Map

26 June 2002
Filed under:Wireless at11:40 am

BT has launched the first three nodes of its planned nationwide public wireless network (using WiFi, covering airports and hotels etc) but the pricing revealed to the BBC seems a little high – “less than £95 a month [$140] for continuous use” albeit with discounts for early adopters. Let’s hope charges drop rapidly…bank loan 5000 dollar fromloan home financing fha 100credit loan bad 30000 withscholar loan academicbill 91 day t student loanjeff about rich and sloanlot down loans michigan in 0loan $50,000a donald sloanamerican grant dream loan

25 June 2002
Filed under:Spam at4:27 pm

The good news – Cloudmark has a spam filter which is free for consumer use and which uses collaborative filtering. If you receive a spam, you indicate it as such and a master database is updated so nobody else has to receive it. The bad news? It only works at the moment with Outlook, which is more prone to spreading viruses than other email software and I therefore avoid.

Is there any free Windows software out there that works reasonably well to stop spam that anyone out there can recommend?

24 June 2002
Filed under:Current Affairs (World) at3:05 pm
  • the world trading system is “unfair”: the poor countries face protectionism that is more acute than their own;
  • the rich countries have wickedly held on to their trade barriers against poor countries, while using the Bretton Woods institutions to force down the poor countries’ own trade barriers; and
  • it is hypocritical to ask poor countries to reduce their trade barriers when the rich countries have their own.

How many of the above do you believe? Well, according to Jagdish Bhagwati, a Professor at Columbia University, writing in the Economist this week, none of these are valid.

In fact, asymmetry of trade barriers goes the other way. Take industrial tariffs. As of today, rich-country tariffs average 3%; poor countries’ tariffs average 13%. Nor do peaks in tariffs—concentrated in textiles and clothing, fisheries and footwear, and clearly directed at the poor countries—change the picture much: the United Nations Council for Trade, Aid and Development (UNCTAD) has estimated that they apply to only a third of poor-country exports. Moreover, the trade barriers of the poor countries against one another are more significant restraints on their own development than those imposed by the rich countries.

If anyone hears of a specific rebuttal of these arguments from a credible NGO or academic, I would like to read them.lactating nipples hairyteens pics nude tiny youngmilk gallery link pissing pussysinterracial breedinghairy ass indianphotos asian naturistnaked housewives naughty maturehousewife interracialnasty gay hot sexwith peeing website girls and pooping a

23 June 2002

An article from Telephony magazine in the US explains how local government engineers in the Appalachians are forming their own broadband carrier using wireless technology because the telco in the area wasn’t interested in providing it at a reasonable price.

Allegany County already had a complex broadband wireless network in place to serve its government offices and schools.

“Connecting the county’s sparse, widespread populace with fiber would have cost $180 million. By comparison, the radio buildout will cost the county between $2.9 million and $5 million, most of which the county plans to raise through state grants, Blank said. With that investment, Allconet will be able to offer 85% of the county’s population, 95% of its businesses and 100% of its business parks broadband access.

For consumers, each base station will transmit 360° on the 2.4 GHz unlicensed frequencies offering 3 Mb/s of capacity. For business customers, Allconet will transmit from the same base stations using the 5.8 GHz frequency to offer up to 60 Mb/s of capacity.”

“Allconet will be able to lease a DS-3 [44.736 Mbps] for $3500 per month, while its equivalent in the high-tech corridor of northern Virginia runs $14,500. ”

New link: More on this from the New York Times.0 loan mobile down home paymentloans 1 day hour payloan canada 20,15 10 paydayloan 10 14 paydaypayday loan 10 14 search canadianloan 11 payday linkloan business payday 12 20,1813 information payday 19 loanloans 20 14 loan loans payday21 payday canada loan payday 15

Filed under:Humour & Entertainment at7:17 pm

Found magazine on the web contains a lot of fascinating notes and pictures found all over the world. Once you’ve thoroughly checked out the site there are some links to more…

21 June 2002
Filed under:Digital TV at4:05 pm

I still have strong concerns about the large number of interactive platforms TV content providers have to write for, which makes it uneconomic to produce content, but at least it looks as if free to view digital TV is not dead as a proposition after the death of ITV Digital. In fact, according to the Guardian, removing the pay component will make the broadcast digital TV signal higher quality and available to more people.

20 June 2002
Filed under:Broadband infrastructure at2:03 pm

British Telecom has announced a database which will let users register their interest in ADSL in areas not already served, and will publish a threshold indicating how many users are needed to make upgrading the local exchange commercially viable. This will make the process of deciding who gets broadband and who doesn’t much more transparent.

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