Google has been posting “Search Stories” videos on its YouTube channel since November 2009 and they’re really quite touching. The original search story was “Parisian Love“, about a man who apparently finds love in Paris while studying abroad.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Although I’ve seen Parisian Love before, some of the newer search stories are just as moving.

“High School” – a girl works to fit in

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Father and Daughter” – a hardworking father makes time to be a good dad to his little girl

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Graduation” – a mother from Vietnam moves to America to provide the best for her son

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Brother and Sister” – siblings grow up together

Click here to view the embedded video.

I hope these short clips bring smiles to your face as they did for me.

While I’ve promoted other online backup solutions before, IDrive is an established online backup service that just caught my eye for some of their advanced features.

Like the competitors, IDrive offers personal and business plans for syncing to their servers. With continuous backup, every 10 minutes, modifications are uploaded over 128-bit SSL for security. In addition (for data security), files are stored using 256-bit AES encryption with a user-specified key that is never retained by IDrive’s storage servers. For larger files, or if you choose to disable the automated “Continuous Data Backup” feature, you can set schedules and no data on the server will be changed until you run a synchronization.

IDrive transmits files securely AND stores them safely.

The desktop app also makes it easy to restore old versions of files — up to 30 revisions are kept, and all versions except the newest don’t count towards the storage limit. (Isn’t that cool?)

Automatically keep track of old revisions of files so you can "go back in time" before a disastrous edit or deletion.

The basic free plan includes 2 GB of storage, while the the personal plan includes 150 GB for $4.95/month, or $49.50/year on a yearly plan (essentially two months free).

IDrive is available for PC and Mac, and there are even apps to backup and synchronize contacts with BlackBerry, Android and iPhone devices.

One of their advanced features that I find very enticing is the ability to backup WordPress sites via a plugin:

The WordPress backup feature will keep copies of the site’s database and content files, extremely useful in the case of a server crash or hack. Note: it looks like the WordPress backup feature is free and does not require a paid membership.

If you’re looking for online backup, it looks like IDrive offers it all.

Disclosure: IDrive sponsored this post. However, all opinions are my own.

« Read how it all started in Part 1.

Synopsis

While the initial controversy about the Thesis-not-being-under-GPL issue was focused on themes and derivative works, an unclear area that probably needs to be resolved in court, it seems there is a far sounder reason why Thesis has to be released under the GPL: it blatantly copies WordPress code.

It all started with this tweet by Andy Peatling (@apeatling):

Not a clear GPL violation, because it’s extending WordPress classes, which, in effect, copies WordPress functionality into Thesis.

Code analyses

Andrew Nacin (@nacin) started going through the code of Thesis and started to make some encouraging/discouraging tweets:

I just found a line of code I wrote for #WordPress, but in #thesiswp. Funny, when I wrote it, it was under the GPL. #

And then, an initially uncorroborated claim:

This is really pissing me off. I’m up to a few hundred lines directly lifted from WP. A part of me is crushed. #thesiswp #

And then Drew Blas (@drewblas) did an automated analysis (like I suggested ) and found clear evidence of copied WordPress code:

Clear evidence of GPL code in Thesis

Impact

At this point, it seems clear: Thesis isn’t merely building on top of WordPress, it literally incorporates WordPress code through copy-paste.

That makes Chris Pearson liable to fulfill his obligations under the GPL and distribute GPL derivatives under the GPL.

Most damning

Andrew Nacin eventually found this in Thesis:

* This function is mostly copy pasta from WP (wp-includes/media.php),
* but with minor alteration to play more nicely with our styling.

GPL test case? YES.

Chris Pearson indicated during his interview that he is fundamentally opposed to the GPL and will absolutely refuse to license Thesis under the GPL. By the end of the dialogue, he was practically saying “sue me”.

Matt Mullenweg responded:

Matt: Are you saying you want to be a test case for the GPL? You want us to sue you? I mean, that would break my heart. I’d rather you be part of the family.

While the themes = derivatives basis might have been shaky for a legal trial, I think the fact that there’s copied code clearly indicates one outcome in the end, in favour of the GPL.

Temporarily back to the case for themes = derivatives

WordPress isn’t the first community to issue the directive that extensions (themes, plugins) are derivatives. Joomla! did so a few years ago (I recall because I used Joomla! before finding WordPress) and Drupal makes it extremely clear.

If this matter can’t be determined by the GPL’s applicability to themes/plugins, maybe WordPress should just re-license, starting with a future version, with GPLv3 and add a specific requirement that themes/plugins are licensed under GPL.

Twitter erupted into argument last night in a fairly important battle for open source, the GPL, and WordPress. At the centre of the issue is a theme framework called Thesis which plugs into WordPress, sold with a restrictive license that does not permit redistribution.

Background

To provide some background, WordPress is a blogging platform licensed under the GPLv2, which specifically forces all copies of a work licensed under GPL, as well as derivative works, to be licensed under the GPL:

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

The Free Software Foundation explicitly addresses plugins in its FAQ, making it clear that plugins that share data structures with the main program and make function calls to each other are derivative works to which the GPL also applies.

Themes were an uncertain matter prior to last year’s legal opinion from the Software Freedom Law Center, because these works from third parties certainly build on top of the WordPress platform, but often extend it with original artwork and programming. The analysis states clearly that:

… it is our opinion that the themes … contain elements that are derivative works of the WordPress software as well as elements that are potentially separate works. Specifically, the CSS files and material contained in the images directory of the “default” theme are works separate from the WordPress code. On the other hand, the PHP and HTML code that is intermingled with and operated on by PHP the code derives from the WordPress code.

Though almost all of the other theme foundries have adopted the GPL license for their PHP code, Chris Pearson stands nearly alone in asserting the GPL’s viral clause is inapplicable to him.

Initial controversy

On a live webcast with both Chris Pearson, the developer of Thesis, and Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Automattic and the WordPress project, Chris expressed his personal belief that the viral nature of the GPL goes against his personal freedoms and rights as a developer:

Chris: One, it would require me to make a concession about something that I don’t think that I need to concede to. Why should I change? I’m protected right now. My work is protected, which it should naturally be. I want to retain that right. If I go GPL then I am ceding that right. The number one issue for me is the personal concession that I would be making. Not of any real impact to my business. I don’t want to make that personal concession, because I don’t have to. Okay?

Note: it is possible, in terms of the GPL’s legality, that Chris never had the right to prevent users from redistributing his code; if the GPL applies, a developer cannot restrict redistribution.

Matt, on the other hand, debates to defend the applicability of the GPL to themes and plugins:

Matt: … If you build a module for Drupal or a module for WordPress or a theme for WordPress or anything like that, the license says that you do have to follow the GPL. I think that it’s just a matter of choosing the platform. If you disagree with the GPL, just use a platform that doesn’t have the GPL.

I listened to all of the long back-and-forth encounter, which was interesting until Chris began to assert his importance in the community:

Chris: I’ve done great things with WordPress since 2006. I have been arguably one of the top three most important figures in the history of WordPress. You, Mark Jaquith, and myself, are the three people that I am talking about.

Wait, what? A developer whose theme accounts for such a small fraction of WordPress’s usage puts himself in the top three figures in WordPress history? Jane Wells had a similar encounter with his ego.

» See the top 10 figures in WordPress history.

Analysis of this part of the controversy

The crux of the controversy is summarized by Chris’s sentences here:

Chris: I think the license, the GPL, is at odds with how I want to distribute my software and what I want it to be. I don’t think that it necessarily should inherit WordPress’ license when over 99% of the code within Thesis is Thesis code based on the actual process of building a website.

As someone who also contributes to open source software, I can certainly understand his sentiments on the ‘infectious’ nature of the GPL, which forces derivatives to inherit the GPL. It’s pretty hard to release projects under even more permissive licenses (for example, the Apache License), or in Chris’s case, extremely restrictive proprietary licenses, when so many open source projects enforce the GPL.

That really is, though, the purpose of the GPL: to keep open source open by prohibiting its inclusion in fully closed-source or proprietary (and restrictively-distributed) projects.

Are themes derivative works?

A lot of the open source advocates and lawyers seem to think so. After all, themes do things like:

<?php if ( get_comment_pages_count() > 1 && get_option( ‘page_comments’ ) ) : // Are there comments to navigate through? ?>

and

<?php if ( $wp_query->max_num_pages > 1 ) : ?>

which show clear integration with WordPress core functionality, much like a program in C would use the MySQL library with

mysql_real_connect()

Granted, the MySQL developers explicitly allow derivatives to use non-GPL licenses even though MySQL is GPL, through an additional license exception. The reason such an exception is necessary is that they understood that works which link to library code are derivatives.

The biggest problem is that the GPL was written with compiled code in mind, where derivatives would have to bundle the libraries (e.g. DLLs or SOs) in their releases. It’s sort of unclear for interpreted languages like PHP; is it an indication of derivation if one piece of code makes a function call to another?

It’s a bit unfortunate WordPress wasn’t licensed under GPLv3, because version 3 is much clearer about what it means to make a “modified version” or a work “based on” another work. It would also make for a better court case.

Caleb Jenkins (@CalebJenkins) iterates an interesting point: dependent != derivative. While I can see this being an interesting legal argument, it would have a lot of implications for open source in general, completely contrary to the way things have been operating.

If using a dependency is not being a derivative of that work, then it is conceivable that one can produce a C application which links to a GPL library (for example, the FOSS-licensed version of the MySQL client library) without bundling it and is released commercially under a closed-source, restrictive license. It is conceivable that a PHP program might require() WordPress to use its functionality, but simply not bundle WordPress, and would then avoid classification as a derivative.

I’m afraid I can’t entirely lend my support to that argument.

People have argued that making function calls to WordPress is akin to making system calls to the underlying operating system. Unfortunately, only GPLv3 is clear about distinguishing the system and compiler libraries from other general code; of course it doesn’t make sense that every application on the GPL Linux kernel must be open source. It’s a valid argument.

However, I agree more completely with Matt’s contention that a dependency = derivation when it gets to the point that a WordPress theme without WordPress will not work (just try loading any theme’s index.php in a browser) while WordPress without any themes will still function — it won’t show anything, but its backend is still fully functional.

Chris Pearson is wrong when he says “I think that what I’ve done stands alone outside of WordPress completely.” Interestingly, read the context of this quote:

Chris: How is that? I think that what I’ve done stands alone outside of WordPress completely. Why should I respect that? It’s not that I don’t respect WordPress. I do. I only build on WordPress and push people in its direction…

» Now here: Part 2 of Tracking the #thesiswp matter.

» Also read: Why WordPress Themes are Derivative of WordPress by Mark Jaquith (@markjaquith), a lead developer.

Sharing a YouTube video is as easy as copying the URL into an e-mail or instant messaging conversation, right?

Note: this is being posted from Windows Live Writer Beta, so please forgive any layout or text issues; if there are any, they speak to the interoperability of Windows Live Writer Beta and WordPress 3.0.

I’ve been using a subset of the new Essentials suite (beta) for the past few days. There are good things, and there are bad things. In this post, I’m only going to focus on the new Windows Live Messenger, about which I have numerous complaints.

Overall UI

Messenger has been cleaned up a lot since the previous version. The look is brighter and simpler — I dare say, cleaner. Microsoft went with a simple, bright white look instead of the faint blue gradient that was featured in Wave 3.

Full (social) view

The default look in Messenger is a large window showing contacts on the right and a wall of updates on the left relating to status messages and social networks. Windows Live profiles can now aggregate content from Facebook, Twitter, Digg, other networks, and even RSS feeds, and this full view seems to support Facebook and Myspace.

The full view takes up a lot of space with things I could care less about

I dislike this view a lot, because in my mentality, Windows Live Messenger is an instant messaging application; I could care less about status updates. Certainly, I do not want status updates to take up more of my screen real estate than my contact list. Of course, if you link WLM to Facebook, you get a slightly more useful updates as follows:

When Facebook updates are shown, the space is used more effectively

As a result, I use the compact view. There is a button in the main window to switch between the two views.

Use this button to switch between views

Compact view

This look is more akin to the old-fashioned contact list we’re familiar with. The view here, of course, is customized to my liking. While I appreciate the no-nonsense look here, the ads at the bottom are just slightly distracting and annoying.

Compact view is essentially the traditional contact list

One of my minor complaints about the new look is the coloured ring around the display pictures of contacts. In previous versions of Messenger, they were bright and distinguishable. Now, it’s rather difficult to distinguish the green of ‘online’ from the blue of ‘offline’ and the orange of ‘away/idle’ from the red of ‘busy’.

The faint colour of these rings is difficult to scan quickly

Tabbed chats

This is one of the best innovations in this version of Messenger, and it conveniently eliminates the need for unofficial hacks like Messenger Plus (although Messenger Plus is still useful for encrypted chat logs, which Messenger does not support to this day).

Chats with new messages flash in a highlight colour

Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to drag a tab and detach it from the window. Ars Technica reports that it is possible to do so only by right-clicking a chat and choosing to undock it, but it is not possible to then combine undocked chats to create separate windows for separate categories of instant messaging dialogues.

Windows 7 integration

It was extremely annoying in Wave 3 that Messenger was identified as 2 windows by the taskbar (and by the Flip 3D window switcher). Wave 4 has fixed this issue and added better taskbar integration, with coloured icons to change one’s status.

Windows Live Messenger has better support for Windows 7's taskbar

The right-click menu on the taskbar icon in Windows 7 also has quick options to start chats with favourite contacts, sign out or exit the application. This is really useful when the main window isn’t open, and is also a quick way to terminate Messenger (there’s no Exit option in the File menu of individual chats).

Windows Live Messenger Wave 4 has a capable and useful right-click menu on the taskbar

Critical changes that may make me stop using Windows Live Messenger

Handwriting

In previous versions of Messenger, there was always a Handwriting tab in instant messaging chats so that one could quickly and conveniently send ink messages. I don’t think anybody uses it nowadays for handwritten messages (considering the small number of Windows-based tablets in the market) but it has come in quite handy for mouse-drawn sketches.

I’ve used it extensively for illustrating simple graphs, diagrams, or even flowcharts. Example: curves in economics:

Windows Live Messenger used to support handwriting / ink messages

Not having this in Windows Live Messenger Wave 4 means: not only I can’t send them, no one can send any to me — even if they really are just sent as images.

Update (June 27): there’s a thread on one of Microsoft’s sites where this is discussed; a Microsoft representative explained why it was removed.

This is inconvenient to the point that I need to draw things in Paint and send them over photo sharing or look for 3rd-party online whiteboard tools.

Link redirection

This is the biggest issue I have with Wave 4. It seems that clicking on links in Messenger chats sends me through a transparent* redirect through a Microsoft-owned domain called rdir.us. Generally, it turns a hyperlink like http://www.google.ca/ into something more like http://rdir.us/?l=http%3a%2f%2fwww.google.ca&h=P7EAwkjXoRug38Nw8P6JID7b86dBALSnm4DSbAQcGQs%3d&p=1.

* transparent only in certain instances. On other occasions, harmless URLs (like this one) have an intermediate page: (all of the following screenshots are from Mozilla Firefox)

This is an annoying instance of unwanted interference

I can understand why this redirect may be necessary. For example, when I click on a malicious link, the redirect prevents me from going through and instead shows a warning screen:

rdir.us blocks me from visiting an unsafe URL

However, this is worrying for a few reasons. First, I have no idea what that hash in the URL is; does it identify me or the person who sent the link? Secondly, is Microsoft logging all the click-throughs, and knowing what sites users visit? (I suppose they could do this already by keeping records of all instant messaging chats, but this takes it even further.) Thirdly, why is this redirect necessary, if most modern browsers (Firefox, Chrome and even Internet Explorer) already have this filter?

I don’t want Microsoft to intercept my visits, nor show me a Bing search bar whenever something breaks.

Shameless promotion of Bing.

Conclusion

While I readily admit that Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 has made strides forward in certain areas, like integrating social networks, I also think Microsoft has made some pretty notable blunders in their conscious decisions to add link redirects and remove handwriting support. If you want to avoid these things, it looks like you need to stay on older versions of Windows Live Messenger.

For more reviews, read Ars Technica on Messenger Wave 4 or Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows.

Haha. xkcd does a really good job with satirizing current events.

I just discovered this amazing series of music videos, created by running catchy quotations from notable scientists through Auto-Tune. They seem like a new generation of religious art.

The Symphony of Science is a musical project headed by John Boswell designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.

With Carl Sagan, David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins among many, these inspiring videos communicate the value of science.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Beautiful.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Just like “unlimited” really means subject to limits, the marketing guys at Rogers seem to communicate that “any” doesn’t mean any.

Any tier

Yesterday, I got an ad in the mail from them for their digital cable service, offering a free HD receiver. On the reverse side of the ad, it says that I can sign up for “any tier” of their high speed Internet or phone service to get an HD personal video recorder for free.

Sign up for any tier ... get an HD PVR for free.

Apparently, the fine print specifies that “any tier” really means “Rogers Hi-Speed Internet Lite and above”, which excludes the Ultra-Lite tier valued at $27.99/month.

Hi-Speed Internet Lite tier or above also required

I don’t think I’m the only one who would find this a little bit misleading.

While it doesn’t really look good on paper to say “sign up for Lite or above” in the big bullet, it would be a lot more honest than defining “any tier” as “not any tier but this one and above”.

And while I would certainly die of broadband withdrawal if I had the Ultra-Lite package, I still think there are people who will probably sign up for the cheapest tier and discover that they do not, in fact, get a free HD PVR.

Here’s the entire scan; click on the image to view in full size.

Get a free HD PVR!

(As of more than a year ago, I no longer use Rogers cable Internet because there’s something cheaper out there.)

What are the tiers?

On a semi-related note, Rogers seems to be doing a great job at market segmentation. Instead of providing consumers with economical plans comparable to those in France (20-30Mbps connections, VoIP service, and HDTV with a DVR included for just $45 a month), Rogers Communications has decided to split a service as important as cable Internet into… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 different plans.

1. Ultra-lite @ $27.99/month; 500 kbps down, 2 GB limit
2. Lite @ $35.99/month; 3 Mbps down, 25 GB limit
3. Express @ $46.99/month; 10 Mbps down, 60 GB limit
   This used to be the highest plan back when it was only 5 Mbps.
4. Extreme @ $59.99/month; 10 Mbps down, 95 GB limit
   This means $13 extra for 35 GB of transfer.
5. (new) Extreme Plus @ $69.99/month; 25 Mbps down, 125 GB limit
6. (new) Ultimate @ $99.99/month; 50 Mbps down, 175 GB limit

(all plan information current as of April 7, 2010)

Theoretically, creating these tiers of service maximizes revenue by differentiating between groups of consumers with dissimilar willingness to pay for Internet. (There’s also a supposed benefit to charging more for faster speeds and more bandwidth: curb torrenting and illegal file sharing. That’s a more reasonable justification.)

In reality, it just makes consumers jealous of users who can afford $100/month Internet. In addition, I’m rather wary of a company that has the capability to offer faster speeds overall to match the top countries (South Korea has average broadband of 14.6 Mbps, and Japan has an average of 7.9 Mbps), but which suppresses broadband for its corporate gain at the cost of consumer benefit.

This is probably one of many reasons why consumers, particularly Canadian iPhone users (albeit not for cable Internet), despise Rogers. It plays like it dominates the market. After all, broadband Internet in Canada is an oligopoly; Bell, Rogers, and Shaw are essentially the only big players in the market (and Shaw isn’t even available here). We don’t have much choice.

My conclusion

My personal perspective of Rogers, from a consumer view, is that they don’t deserve most of our business.

I don’t understand how any (supposedly) responsible news organization could do the things that FOX has done. Furthermore, I don’t see how they could honestly call themselves “fair and balanced” — their slogan — after all the stupid things they’ve done and continue to do.

I’m gonna focus on one thing in particular (and hopefully destroy them on it): biased polls and a horrifying abuse of statistics.

If there’s anything that you learn in a basic data management or statistics course, it’s that surveys can be easily engineered to be biased; to produce intentionally skewed results.

That’s what FOX does.

Anger poll

Questions

Take the following poll question as an example:

Does the ‘Reconciliation’ Gambit Make You Angry?

What does that question do, in terms of data collection?

• Sampling bias. The question is clearly targeted at those who feel strongly about the issue, because those are the vocal minorities interested in persuading others of their view. Now, since FOXNews.com is a clearly conservative news source, the visitors to the site will, logically, not include many liberals who would have voted negative to this poll question. As a result, the sample is not representative of the population, producing skewed results.

Choices

What did that question look like on their site?

How biased are the choices?

“You decide”: are the choices biased?

• Yes, yes of course.
• Unsure, but if you’re asking, doesn’t that mean it’s biased?
• No, but maybe it’s biased.

Obviously I’m satirizing their choices. If you read the wording of each option, TWO of the options support the data that FOX wants to collect.

Since when did unsure agree with yes?

Moreover, since when did no contradict no?! “No, it doesn’t make me angry, but they’re still using a loophole.” That’s definitely a biased choice.

The “Other” Choice

All right, so this is probably the choice that someone would pick if they, like me, disagree with all the options and their wording. What if I think “it doesn’t make me angry because it’s not a loophole, it’s a procedure?”

The problem with that is, other is substantially underrepresented when FOX airs results or makes a big deal of them. Right now, 94% say it makes them angry, and that’s the only data they care about when they’re publicizing the results.

Who cares that some extremist decided to write a lengthy explanation of their choice under “other”? That’s not a statistic that matters.

So the “other” choice is just there to give the poll a guise of fairness.

The Extraneous Text

Everything they’ve posted in front of the poll question is designed to steer voters towards one option. For the question above, they asked:

President Obama unveiled his revised health care reform plan on Wednesday. The buzz word is “reconciliation,’ a rarely used legislative maneuver designed to resolve budget differences but one that could also be used to push through the Democrats’ health agenda by a simple majority vote. Are you angry that Obama and the Dems are resorting to using “reconciliation”?

I added emphasis to the key manipulating words above.

I think it’s plainly obvious that words like “maneuver”, “resorting to”, “agenda” (as in hidden agenda) have subtle connotations that the voter’s subconscious mind picks up on.

UPDATE: How could I have forgotten to analyze the word “gambit”? The concise Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “an action or remark calculated to gain an advantage.” You tell me that isn’t a loaded question.

In Short…

That particular poll was biased. Let’s briefly critique another one.

Victory poll

Statisticians would shoot them for this one. Well, not as much as for the previous one.

The question is fine here (except for the ambiguous definition of the term victory), but the choices are terrible. Again, there’s the issue with the “Other (post a comment)” choice because it is far easier for someone to pick another option than to take the effort to write a comment — that choice basically means nothing.

Irresponsible or is it just me?

The “No” option is an exaggeration. 2700 pages, apparently, is a lie (or a gross exaggeration). The official H.R. 4872 (reconciliation) bill is 2310 pages, and the Senate bill previously passed by the Senate weighed in at around 2400.

Sampling bias

Again, this poll will not yield accurate results for three reasons (I’ll admit that they overlap):

1. The visitor demographic of FOXNews.com is largely conservative. This may not be the same proportion as in all of the United States.
2. Furthermore, through the efforts of liberals who are attempting to get their voice heard, young Twitter users are flocking to this poll to vote “Yes”. THESE votes will, again, fail to reflect the population, which is perhaps why this is labelled “not a scientific poll” by their own admission.
3. Lastly, the unsure option is quite unimportant in this poll because those who are unsure, generally, are not the vocal participants in these kinds of forums. A lot of Americans are unsure because they don’t know all of the facts, and this poll simply cannot deal with that part of the population that is underrepresented.

How to spin the results

Currently, “Yes” and “No” are nearly tied at 47% and 49% respectably. What would happen if “Yes” had the majority vote?

Given the wording of the choice, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to claim that “over 95% of respondents believe that the bill is flawed”.

After all, even the “Yes” voters have to concede that it’s “not perfect”.

What is this. Yes, I’ll readily concede that it’s not perfect, but that’s because I like the Canadian system better. There might only be one way to be perfect but infinite ways to be wrong or imperfect, and putting that there doesn’t help anyone determine how to get better health care reform. Moreover, it deprives voters of the chance to vote “Yes, it’s awesome.”

What can we do about this?

Nothing. If “freedom of the press” and “freedom of expression” are interpreted in such an unlimited way, any of these ugly tactics can be defended as their view on things.

Freedoms come with responsibilities, of course, and it is irresponsible for this kind of polling and the kind of news reports that FOX News airs to claim to be “fair and balanced”. Boycotting FOX News doesn’t really work, because one would be leaving FOXNews.com with all the conservatives who would love to dominate their polls.

“Fair and balanced” might well be a joke; it would be a perfect sarcastic tagline for FOX.

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I never thought the day would come when I would acknowledge that I like modern music.

A year and a bit ago, in December of 2008, I decided that I would solicit music suggestions. A week afterwards, I acknowledged that I appreciated Viva la Vida and soundtrack music.

In the time since then, I have become an aficionado of Taylor Swift’s country pop music, among other artists. (I’ve also developed a liking for Owl City’s Fireflies and Vanilla Twilight.)

Swift’s award-winning You Belong with Me deserved its prize.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It is worth acknowledging that her songs, with few exceptions, are almost exclusively about rosy romance (think Love Story, You Belong with Me) or broken hearts (e.g. Picture to Burn, White Horse). Which means that they’re about the same thing.

Love Story is quite overplayed, so I’ll leave you with Fifteen.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Watch more Taylor Swift music videos at VEVO or track my taste in music.

So. It’s been quite a while since I last posted, so I decided to put up something that’s been on my mind: coffee.

McDonald’s Canada (@McD_Canada) has been offering free coffee all day from March 1 up to March 14, and they claim it has nothing to do with Tim Horton’s Roll Up the Rim promotion.

I went to try it, but I don’t really have an opinion about the taste or quality of McDonald’s coffee. (I haven’t bought coffee at a coffee shop for more than 3 months.) Apparently “experts” say it beats Starbucks and Tim Hortons.

Free coffee? Sure, try it.

Stay awake!

I don’t like coffee. However, I can understand why people might like it, or need it. I can’t think of anyone who could be happy and energetic all day, unless they’re on drugs—and that’s my point. Coffee serves as a drug; caffeine, of course, is a narcotic. It’s a psychoactive stimulant that makes you more alert and aware. You already know that.

If not for this wonderful effect of caffeine products like coffee, the demand for coffee would probably be rather low.

Health risks benefits

I guess caffeine could have benefits; apparently it has a role in preventing Parkinson’s disease. The fact that caffeine doesn’t directly cause any health concerns for most users explains why it is one of the only unregulated drugs in the world. (Of course, that’s partly because the lawmakers are staying awake on it too.)

Taste

In any case, I’m not a coffee person. This brown … substance … is too bitter, too caffeinated.

I don’t understand how people get used to the bitter taste (even with a few creams and sugars). Sure, it might smell great, but smell ≠ taste. The most popular foods in life not only smell good, they have to taste good. (Unless you go by this definition of delicacy.) Coffee just doesn’t taste good.

Tea

Personally, I prefer things like tea. To me, the bitter taste of coffee can never match the aromas of Earl Grey, orange pekoe, rooibos & honeybush tea (more easily acquired in South Africa), or the easily tolerable green tea. I take it with a little sugar and sometimes a little milk. The result, of course, is something that smells wonderful, tastes great, and is much more natural and healthy than coffee. (I should note that while true teas from the Camellia sinensis plant do contain caffeine, rooibos & honeybush tea is herbal, ‘red’ tea that lacks caffeine.)

In this, I’m not alone. Coffee might be ‘enjoyed’ by 90% of North Americans (or so Wikipedia tells me), but tea is the second most popular drink in the world after water. I’m also glad to know that I’m consuming something that originated from processes as natural as immersing plant leaves in boiling water, as opposed to the complex process that involves roasting and grinding.

Different kinds of tea

What do you like?

Everything I’ve just talked about is only my preference. You’re free to feel differently, to enjoy your bitter beverage and to convince me that coffee is absolutely delicious.

At the end of the day, though, if I’m in need of a boost, I won’t be turning to coffee. I’ll boil some water in the kettle, find my container of tea bags, and make myself some soothing, delicious, and natural tea.

There are so many computer features that we’ve become accustomed to. Who hasn’t used Ctrl+F to search for text on a Web page or a document? Who hasn’t used Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V to copy and paste something? (…obviously, I’m not targeting people who have never used a computer before, or who manage to use them without a keyboard)

If you could have any of these keyboard shortcuts as a real-life (super)power, which one would you want? Vote below.

So far, the results have been interesting. Looks like most people don’t want to deal with real life.

It’s the end of another year and the end of a ground-breaking decade. Let’s look back at what’s been accomplished in the years of 2000–2009, focusing on technology.

Technology

Windows has entered a new era

The decade—indeed, the century—began with Windows 2000, which I consider the first great version of the operating system. XP was the version that brought widespread success, and people just seem to refuse to upgrade; even today, almost three quarters of the computers on the net are on XP.

Despite the dismal failure of Windows Vista, it too brought change, which was followed by the enhancements of Windows 7. Compare my desktop today to the ugly screens of a decade ago:

Apple deserves an honourable mention for the ground-breaking work they’ve done on the Mac, elevating it to a newly trendy status.

Portable media players have completely changed

A decade ago, CD players and tape-based Walkmans were still the norm for ‘portable’ audio players. The iPod, launched in 2001, entirely changed the game. (I suppose this and the iPhone were the “comeback of the decade”.) It was no longer a device that played removable media. That was followed by thousands of other portable media players, to which the public generally refers inaccurately as “MP3 players”, reflecting the popularity of the 15-year-old MP3 format that has also been notorious for illegal file sharing (see below).

Cell phones and mobile devices have become ubiquitous

These devices used to be ugly, huge and heavy objects. As we move into 2010, cell phones have become more compact (usually this means thinner and lighter) and more powerful.

In China, about 739 million people have cell phones; that’s more than there are Internet users in China (which is about 360 million).

Mobile devices have become truly powerful. The iPhone, purportedly the most popular cell phone of 2009, is one of the biggest platforms for software development. And it has a touch screen. RIM’s BlackBerry, initially launched in 1999, is the most popular smartphone among business users.

Ordinary people begin to embrace ultra-portable netbooks for lightweight computing. The move to mobile is probably the most noticeable trend in end-user gadgetry in this decade.

Illegal file sharing has emerged

I don’t personally think of torrenting itself as a major problem, and it’s difficult to sympathize with big companies when the RIAA is being stupid. At the same time, it’s pretty easy to see how having hundreds of movies, TV shows and music albums distributed through torrents can take away from earnings for content producers. (Some dispute this and argue that those who pirate movies and TV shows are those who will purchase related memorabilia or boxed sets.)

In any case, it is virtually undisputed that new technologies have made distribution of such content much easier. In the previous decade, pretty much everyone was on dial-up Internet and only the students at universities with blazing connections were able to do it (think about the controversial Napster).

The best known site for illegal content

YouTube happened

YouTube and hundreds of other video sites have revolutionized the way we watch video. What used to be distributed on tapes and discs has moved onto the Internet in a way that allows ordinary folks—not videophiles or geeks—to share their multimedia with the world.

YouTube is also the icon of the so-called Web 2.0, which is oriented on user-generated content. (Flickr deserves an honourable mention for high quality pictures, just like Vimeo for high class videos.) It has made it possible for teens with crazy personalities and high-pitched edited voices, artists who post music videos, and crazy dancers who travel the world to reach out to a vast audience. Above all, it’s a legitimate new form of entertainment.

Following the success of online video, major content producers began to license music for online distribution (think Pandora or Last.fm, not to mention Internet radio) as well as movies and TV shows (think Hulu).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Open source projects have become worthy challengers

More than a decade ago, in 1996, the Apache HTTP server became the most popular web server in use; today it has surpassed 100 million web sites served.

Mozilla Firefox, having risen out of the ashes of the Netscape browser, although not the most widely used browser in the world (it’s 2nd), is apparently used by 32% of the market analyzed by StatCounter.

While I still use Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org is also a notable alternative to the proprietary and dominant office suite, especially on non-Windows operating systems.

And then there are the programs used by geeks, like the Eclipse IDE or Aptana Studio, that are depended upon. (For all of you multimedia geeks, there are open source programs that do the job much better than their closed source counterparts; think about Handbrake, VLC…)

Businesses can now also depend on open source projects like Sugar CRM that build their revenue model around support and premium features.

News has moved onto the Web

My primary news source  now is the Web. Google News is one of my frequently visited sites, as it is a fantastic aggregator of headlines. I subscribe to e-mail summaries from the Toronto Star and breaking news alerts from the New York Times. ArsTechnica and TechCrunch are my sources for technology-related news, and occasionally Mashable and Neowin. Those pesky short links in the tweets of people I follow also make for engaging news articles.

Wikipedia happened

At the beginning of this decade, I was researching in books and print encyclopedias. The conventional wisdom today of “just Google it” didn’t work so well then. And certainly there wasn’t a Wikipedia for the wealth of human knowledge that it now contains.

Today, I can near-instantly read up on the history of Wal-Mart or read up on the Beslan school hostage crisis and its media coverage. If I truly need it, Wikipedia connects with Wikisource, the free library and Wikibooks where I can read Anna Karenina online (and I wouldn’t, because Constance Garnett’s translations are really lacking).

It’s truly amazing that the sum of all human knowledge can be collaboratively archived and updated through the likes of Wikipedia. Perhaps they need your support this holiday season!

What do you think? Did I miss out on something big that happened in this decade in the world of tech? Write a comment!

(I did, however, intentionally exclude social networking—i.e. Facebook—because I don’t think it’s been revolutionary in any major way. Sure, it has connected people in new ways, but it’s still relatively fresh and more time is needed to see where it goes. Similarly, I omitted touch because it hasn’t entirely caught on yet; tablet PCs were a dismal failure a few years ago and I haven’t yet seen their widespread success. Furthermore, I omitted cloud computing because it doesn’t directly affect a large number of people. Feel free to disagree with me in the comments.)

Worldly Matters

I think September 11, 2001 marked the start of a new era of warfare and international affairs. The terrorist attacks, inasmuch as they have been abused to justify ill-advised battles, did shock the world.

I recommend you head over to the Big Picture where you’ll be dazzled by splendid photos of this decade, including commentaries on the World Trade Center attacks and war. And dozens of other things like natural disasters (remember Katrina, or the Sichuan earthquake?), the Beijing Olympics, and terrorist attacks in London.

2009 has been a fantastic year. I look forward to the future.

Happy holidays and all the best in 2010!

It’s a sad week (well, two weeks) for web hosts. First, the company with which I have been a customer for over 2 years encountered issues after migrating to a new datacenter; these problems broke a number of my sites and caused me unending headaches. Then DreamHost, which hosts this blog and a number of other sites, had to perform network hardware maintenance, which was followed by sporadic periods of network failures. Finally, today I received an e-mail saying that the first company was shutting down in January and that I’d need to find a new place to host those sites.

What happened? Why do I feel like the Internet is collapsing? Aiya!

I’m really disappointed. I’d always had uptime of over 99.96% with the first company and amazing pricing (okay, now that they’re shutting down I can reveal that I’ve been using ResellerScene). I used their reseller services to host over a dozen web sites on independent cPanel accounts.

(Begin nerdy section)
Earlier this month, they moved to new server setups; apparently the new servers are virtualized—it’s pretty obvious when WHM says the server runs on Xen. Code that had worked for years broke down because of new PHP security settings, misconfiguration of PHP as an Apache module, and file permission errors. Their help desk was really helpful because they quickly moved to PHP-CGI, which helped with permission errors and custom configuration, but which broke more things as a result of php_flag and php_value declarations in .htaccess files.
(End nerdy section)

Those were the first signs of trouble.

I didn’t immediately switch hosts. I had been a customer for more than 2 years and support was always quick and helpful. Then there were the awesome discounts I’ve been enjoying because I signed up as customer #6, before prices went up.

Today, I got a sad e-mail which began as follows:

I regret to inform you that due to financial instability, ResellerScene LLC will be going out of business. Due to the economic downturn, ResellerScene operations have greatly slowed down and it no longer seems viable for ResellerScene to continue.

I now have just over a month to migrate my dozen sites (and client sites) to some new host. Some I can move to DreamHost, but I’ll need to find another cPanel reseller service for some of the client sites.

*sigh*. Life sucks.

As for DreamHost, their services are awesome: great balance of features and price. Over the past year, I’ve been able to set up my custom-compiled PHP installation, use up gigabytes of storage and run important sites without much downtime. It’s a service I’d recommend to anyone… seriously! But I can’t get over the fact that they’ve had so many network failures in the past few days.

It’s not like DreamHost’s shutting down. Yet. But the downtime makes me wary of migrating my old sites to DreamHost, at least until they resolve these issues.

Now I have a headache. Thinking about migrating a dozen sites without breaking anything. Gotta go drink some tea… listen to some music… relax. Relax, relax, relax!

What do I do?!

I need your input. Let me know (@FrederickDing) of any (reliable!) and reasonably-priced web hosts with good reputations. Most importantly, I need to find a place where I can host client sites and provide them with control panel access.