blinkit

Bargains and lack of choice

WMD: I've discovered Costco. I've gone perhaps once before, some years ago, but never shopped on my own. Last week, I embarked on a journey into warehouse land, where I spent $123 to ensure that I have enough tissue, cat litter, garbage bags, porridge, pasta, tomato sauce, tomato paste, whole wheat bread and buns to last me for at least two months. I also have 20 new fancy coat hangars. Just this past weekend, I returned to ensure a similar supply of toilet paper, paper towel, mushroom soup, Raisin Bran and other items. By buying at a wholesale level, I am saving money. But choice of goods is quite constrained. Quality is not assured. The ginger snap cookies I bought will last all week, but they are moderately enjoyable. The cat litter was less than $8 for 50 pounds, and it's subpar. But just one box, about one fourth of the supply I have now, of my regular litter costs $9, so the cat will have to deal with it for the next few weeks. And that's what Costco is about. Note: the tomato sauce is just fine ...

Today's bLINKit: Tor is offering free science fiction and fantasy e-books for download. And need to sync bookmarks over two or more computers using Firefox? Try Foxmarks. I was sceptical, but so far, works well between my main PC and my laptop. And a site with headlines about how Barack Obama has added you as a friend/carries a picture of you in his wallet/thought you could use some chocolate. Click on what you find here and keep clicking.

Canada and saving the Internet

WMD: A column from May based on an interview with Matt Thompson of Savetheinternet.com. Every time I read another story about the shenanigans of companies like Rogers, I shudder:

Big Internet providers control on-ramps to information highway

Bell, Shaw and Telus well-positioned to dictate shaping of Internet in Canada

Barry Link, Vancouver Courier

Published: Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Imagine ordering a pizza over the phone from the locally owned pizza shop a few blocks away. You try calling but find it takes forever to get a dial tone. Frustrated, you hang up and call the nearest pizza chain and are instantly connected.

Now imagine the next day you learn that the chain corporation cut a deal with Telus to provide super quick phone service, while the local guy, as a much smaller pizza maker with limited funds, refused or could not afford to pay for a similar deal and was given an inferior phone line. As a consumer in search of open and equal pizza choices, you'd be outraged. And so would the local guy.

Of course, this scenario is a fantasy. Anyone of us can order from a small independent pizza place as easily as we can call Dominos or Panagos. But according to Internet defenders like Matt Thompson, this kind of imbalance could soon occur on the Internet thanks to the monopolistic cable and telecommunications companies that now control almost all the on-ramps to what we once called the information highway. In the U.S., giant Internet providers want to charge a premium to web destinations which have the potential for high traffic. Those who pay the premium would be offered a fast lane for Internet users to patronize to their websites and services. Those who don't pay the premium will find their traffic relegated to a second tier of inferior service on a bumpy and winding dirt road.

The issue has become known as net neutrality, which Thompson highlights during a talk Friday at VIDFEST, Vancouver's annual geek gathering of digital new media. The Vancouver-born Montreal resident, a consultant with the U.S.-based SavetheInternet.com campaign, will share the podium with John Perry Barlow, the former Grateful Dead member who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Net neutrality is a complicated issue to wrap our heads around. We gripe about monthly fees for broadband access, but most of us don't care about the technical workings behind the scenes of the Internet as long as we can poke friends on Facebook and watch cats play piano on YouTube.

But the pizza by phone analogy, which Thompson used when I talked to him last week, is useful to remember. The Internet is as much a key part of modern economic and social life as the telephone, Thompson argues. And just as consumers expect certain rights involving phone usage--such as the ability to easily call any number in the phone book--we should expect the same rights online.

Canadian Internet providers such as Shaw and Telus haven't made noises--yet--about providing premium service to web destinations that can afford to pay. But they are messing with the Internet in other ways. Telus infamously blocked a union website to its subscribers during its last labour dispute--the equivalent of cutting off phone service to the union office. Most providers routinely throttle the connection speeds of users who engage in peer-to-peer file trading. And Bell, a major provider in Eastern Canada, recently admitted slowing down connection speeds for third-party providers that legally lease the use of its network.

In the U.S., similar moves by American providers have sent geeks to virtual barricades. Last year, Thompson produced an award-winning online video that was part of a massive campaign to thwart legislation that favoured the giant Internet providers. The campaign went far beyond geekdom to include hundreds of organizations--from conservative Christian lobby groups to artists--and hundreds of thousands of individuals. That same diverse and powerful coalition has a shot at passing genuine net neutrality legislation in the U.S. in coming months.

But in Canada, net neutrality is an emerging issue at best The CRTC has washed its hands of Internet regulation, and Thompson believes the federal Conservatives will let Bell, Shaw and Telus dictate how the Internet will be shaped in this country.

Thompson, who says the economic importance of net neutrality can't be emphasized enough, notes the Internet was built as an open and equal marketplace. Anyone with an idea--or service, company or political position--has just as much a chance of promoting that idea to the world as anyone else.

Thompson hopes Canadians wake up. We developed a plan for the 19th century railway lines which built the country in its early years, he says. We need to have a similar plan "for the most important invention since the printing press, and the public needs to have a role in that plan," he says. If we don't, better start preparing for limited choice in pizza.

See VIDFEST at www.vidfest.com.

Today's bLINKit: Life getting you down? Learn how to do things to make life better, or at least how to repair your roof or dye wool, at Diylife.com.

B.C. will do OK, says Bernard

WMD: Frequent Blinkit reader Bernard weighed on my previous post and column about the economic future for Ireland versus that of B.C. (He sent the comments in on email, since I've turned off comments until I'm satisfied Typepad has dealt with comment spam sufficiently.) We're not going to see a recession in Western  Canada, he says, but Ireland might. His reasons:

1) Ireland has a current account deficit - and it has been high for some years now. We have a surplus.

2) Ireland uses the Euro, but is too small to impact the value of the Euro and therefore interest rates.   Ireland had interest rates that have been too low for about ten years, this has lead to a horrific overpricing of housing because interest rates were too low. We are likely to have this problem in BC and Aberta for the next two to three years as the recession in Ontario and Quebec will lower interest rates in Canada.

3) Ireland has been running a budget deficit for years and a rising national debt. Canada has been the opposite.   Ireland is going to have major governmental financial problems over the next few years. Canada meanwhile will be doing very well.

4) Ireland was built on subsidies coming from the EU that has now come to an end.   In Canada we have no one funding internal subsidy. Canada is also a major global destination of investment dollars.

All I can add is good thing I didn't buy any vacation property in Westport. My thanks to Bernard for the comment. He, of course, is currently best known for singlehandedly boosting fertility rates in B.C. and for his most recent campaign to improve what he says is the miserable state of hospital food in this province.

Today's bLINKit: Apple gets more massive free publicity from a product-blind media, says John Dvorak. Kind of like the Obama campaign.

Economic denial in Westport and B.C.

WMD: My column from last week, musing about economic uncertainty here and in the Emerald Isle. Text follows below:

Economic chill looms heavy over Ireland, Vancouver

Warning signs ignored by many spend-crazy British Columbians

Barry Link, Vancouver Courier

Published: Wednesday, July 09, 2008

"You guys should stop spending money on gadgets," said my father to my brother and me last week. My brother was examining my sleek, video and wireless-enabled MP3 player.

"You're going to need your money for gasoline and food."

My father, in his 80s, doesn't understand why my brother and I are interested in sleek, video and wireless-enabled MP3 players. But he also went through the Depression, the unimaginably bleak 1930s which as far as post-millennial public collective memory goes might as well have been the 1830s. Having grown up on a farm where the family at least had food but no cash, Dad is intimately acquainted with scarcity. His warning about an impending need for thrift, a notion also long disappeared from collective memory, is part of an increasing unease in the land about our economic future. Canadians are wondering if they should be scared.

Gas has gone up dramatically, with signs home heating fuel will follow. Food is more expensive. Last week, I noticed at least two local restaurants near my office had raised prices and, I suspect, cut back on portions.

Car sales are plummeting. Transportation fees for taxis and ferries are going up. Frequent Courier contributor Michael McCarthy, our resident prophet of doom who's been writing about energy issues for years, likes to hammer home the point that this is just the beginning. It's going to get worse.

Oh joy.

I sensed similar unease while visiting Ireland last month. The Irish, a pleasant people who live on a rainy flat bog ringed by mountains and overrun with what seem like hundreds of millions of sheep, are experiencing a hangover after years of partying as the Celtic Tiger. They beat up economically just about everyone for nearly a decade and a half, building up high-tech industry by day while downing gallons of Guinness and Jameson by night. Things were so good that Ireland's traditional population loss through migration reversed itself. E.U. citizens, especially from Eastern Europe, came in droves to take service jobs the locals no longer wanted or needed, which is one reason why many of the servers in restaurants during my trip were Polish, Slovakian or Italian.

Now, the Irish told me, the party is over, and after spending a couple of nights in County Mayo pubs, I believe when the Irish finally leave a party, it really is over. A recession has emptied the kegs and reduced the construction cranes over Dublin to a fraction of their number a few years ago.

But is it a recession, and perhaps merely part of a regular economic cycle, or is it something more profound? And is anyone paying attention to the warning signs? In Westport, a tourist town of 4,000 near Ireland's west coast, the word "bustling" was the only description that fit. The place was alive with pedestrians, cars, trucks, tourist buses and cadres of German, American, and French visitors. The French perpetually smoked, the Americans filled shopping bags and the six Germans at breakfast when I entered the dining room one morning in my B&B looked at me like they'd just committed a major crime. I asked no questions.

If they'd done anything, maybe it was simply to dare enjoy themselves at a time when the economic wheel is turning. Or perhaps their denial was showing. The Irish, too, appear to be in denial. Gas is well over $2 a litre, and has always been pricier than here, but the Irish drive everywhere, and quickly, which is something considering their roads are little wider than the shoulders on the No. 1 Highway. The local newscasts and newspapers were dominated by Ireland's stinging rejection through referendum of greater integration with the E.U. But there was little official talk of economic uncertainty, whereas some of the locals I met were nervous about what lies ahead. This year, the Irish and other Europeans are still going on vacation, moved forward by past financial momentum. But next year, as jobs go, household budgets tighten and prices rise, all bets are off. The Irish might soon want those service jobs back from the immigrant Poles.

We have similar or even greater denial here. In Kelowna last weekend, where everyone is highly pleased with the expensive new bridge spanning Lake Okanagan, I was shocked by the luxurious new condo towers going up. The ambition is to create a Yaletown-like neighbourhood along the waterfront north of the city's downtown.

This is hardly the stuff of food riots. If we're headed to a peak-oil meltdown and a reduced standard of living my father would recognize from 70 years ago, no one--from Galway to Gibsons--is preparing for it.

A berry good feeling; driving in Ireland

WMD: Catching up. Yes, I arrived back in Canada after a successful trip to Ireland. My two last locations visited in Ireland were an archaeological site, at 5,000 years the oldest known farming site in Europe, and Skerries, an incredibly charming seaside resort a short hop north of Dublin. I'll be writing an "official" story about my trip for my employer sometime later this month and will post it here. Note: it will be largely cribbed from posts here, so regular Blinkit readers will see some overlap.

Meantime, I'm enjoying summer, especially the local farms, which in my case are 5 to 10 minutes drive away, a fantastic situation. I've already frozen strawberries for the winter and hope to do the same for some green vegetables, although the search for a suitable small freezer continues to be a bit of a journey. I was all set to buy a 5.5 cubic foot model at Future Shop, but the $55 delivery charge on an item that cost $229 made me choke. I still might get it, thanks to there not being much available in this freezer size, but Costco has a smaller freezer I'm going to check out. It's $199 with delivery included.

Today's bLINKit: If you're driving through Ireland, this trip planner might help. Driving in Ireland requires assistance like this, and a good map, because signs in that country are not always helpful. And the locals, at least in the countryside in the west, tend not to say "take the N51 to get to Dublin" but instead talk in folksy tones about "take the Longford road, which is shorter than the Charlesport road, unless you want more scenery." Which of course has you looking at your map wondering where the heck Longford is. And if you drive, you'll want to know the weather, which in Ireland is one of damp, wet, moist, drenched or flooded.

'Worse yet'

1. At breakfast I came across three of the German guests, all burly men, sitting at their table in the B&B dining lounge. I said good morning, and they replied in kind, but with such guilty faces that it was like I'd interrupted their secret planning for their next invasion. I'll give the Germans credit though: they're all on a cycling trip, and four of them today rode to Croagh Patrick, climbed it (about a two hour ascent), came down and then went swimming.

2. When I die, I want it to be on Achill Island in the arms of an Irish maid. Preferably two. And she/they will just as likely be Polish or French. "You're a lovely young woman, and I hope you have good luck in Ireland," I said to to the waitress, who told me she was Polish, at a Westport restaurant. "Well, I've been here six years so far, so we'll see," she said. Something like 10 per cent of the population now is non-Irish: mainly foreign workers, most Eastern European, coming in through the EU to fill jobs when the Irish economy vaulted into the stratosphere (it's since come back to Earth). One of my tour guides today at Achill Island was from Germany. She had come here as a tourist, got addicted and decided to stay. I've heard more than a few stories like that here.

3. Spent an hour at Matt Molloy's, reputed to be the best bar for traditional Irish music in Westport. They had music going in two rooms: one with traditional musicians (a flutist and a banjo player) and another with more modern stuff. I sat in the traditional room. "What are you? American?" asked an old man who directed me to my seat when I first made the mistake of sitting in the corner where the musicians play. "Canadian," I replied. "Worse yet," he said and laughed. On my left were a couple from Germany. On my right a trio from England. Before long, a guy from New Jersey on his college graduation trip with a friend sat at our table. "I'm the only one in this bar who's Irish," said the old man. But before that, I met a group of young guys from Kerry -- "from the kingdom" said one,-- and they'd come up to Westport for a stag because one of them was getting married. At first they thought I was very tall and wondered how I fit under the doorway. Then they thought I was American, and when I explained I was Canadian, they asked me: have I been to Niagra Falls, what do I think of New Yorkers, do we have our own government. Most of it was joking. Much of it I couldn't understand. They, and the people I met after, suggest one never need be lonely in a traditional Irish gathering spot.

4. Achill Island: after a six hour tour today, I can confidently say: this is a place to holiday or retire. Relaxed pace of life, friendly people, scenery to take your breath away, excellent broadband.

Into the west

1. The "road" from Galway to Westport is more like a path someone paved over and decided to use for cars. No one told them it would also be used for trucks, buses, two cars passing each other in opposite directions, tractors, pedestrians and sheep. The latter begin to show up right at the side of the road about midway along the journey. They are either the most fearless sheep in Ireland or the dumbest. "Hi there, are you an oncoming mass of metal and glass? Let me have a good look at you!"

2. The route is undeniably scenic: lush farm fields, stony farm fields, stone fences, stone bridges, stone farm houses, guys in yellow vests fixing stone fences, road construction crews, emerald mountains, quaint little villages and B&Bs and even quainter tourist traps.

3. Each village has its own weather system. You go from sunshine, to rain to sun again merely by rounding a corner.

4. Some Germans are watching soccer in the B&B. Germany is winning, barely.

5. Out my B&B window, I can see Croagh Patrick, where St. Patrick apparently spent 40 days and 40 nights (a not very original number) impressing the locals with this devoutness. It's now a pilgrimage site, attracting thousand of Catholics from around the world who scale it in the last week of July. Kind of like a Grouse Grind for the faithful. Archaelogical digs reveal the top of the mountain was a sacred pagan site dating back to the Bronze Age. Pat knew what he was doing.

6. The local Anglican minister (the vast majority of the locals are Catholic, so his congregation is tiny) plays gigs in one of the local pubs on Wednesday nights.

"Give way to the right"

1. Driving in Ireland is easier for North Americans than it seems. "Take 'er easy, give way to the right," advised my taxi driver (London born, returned to the country of his parents) on the way to the rental office. It was good advice. Driving UK-style is like a mirror world: the steering wheel is on the right, the rear view mirror on the left, turn signals on the right, faster traffic on the freeways takes the right lane. Signs are great on the freeways, eccentric everywhere else. Roundabouts are frequent (sometimes you'll get three or four in the space of a mile) and confusing at first but the advice about yielding to the right at roundabouts is invaluable. Less than five minutes after renting my car, I was on the road. It was easy (Dubliners complain about their traffic problem, but it's country driving compared to Vancouver's roadway combat zone), but I also had no idea where I was going, which was interesting. But I finally figured it out, using a map and after taking a long scenic tour south when I should have been going west. It also rained. A lot.

2. Irish men are short.

3. In Ireland, taxi drivers speak English. Unlike in Vancouver.

4. Irish people are easily pleased: "Thanks a million!" said the woman at the highway toll booth. "Thanks a million!" said the cashier at the gas station when I paid for a drink and croissant. "That's grand!" said the woman at the ticket counter at the Guinness Storehouse. Things here are described as being either "fantastic!" or "brilliant!" The ultimate compliment: "That's brilliant! Thanks a million!"

5. Irish dancing is goofy. The dancers look like they're paralyzed by stage fright from the hips up. But it's also athletically and rhythmically impressive, especially when they stop the damn fiddle (one jig and reel sounds much like every other jig or reel) and go right to the tribal drums and feet. Makes you want to paint yourself blue and charge a Norman column.

6. Accents in the west sound like the speaker is comatose or really, really relaxed. And I understand people here even less than in Dublin. "Oh, yes, it's beautiful here mmm hhh mmmm hhhh my mates hhh mmm hhhh had a pint mmm hhhh mmm blue water hhhh mmmm hhhh trees mmm hhhh mmm zzzzzz."

7. Everyone in Ireland has a mobile phone. Everyone texts, constantly. Everyone also has their own website. Free wifi in the cities is easy to find. They're more wired than we are.

Catching up: Zunes to the barricades!

Pic at left: one of hundreds of signs, for and against a recent referendum on further integration with the EU, still up in Dublin. Irish voters said no, and apparently, that's not good for the EU.

WMD: It's taken me two days to learn that: a) my hotel is right across from the building where Oscar Wilde lived and barely two blocks from both the Irish parliament and the birthplace of the Duke of Wellington. For that, you have to walk around, and also swallow your pride and hop on one of the ubiquituous but worthwhile tourist buses that do a continuous circuit of notable points in the city.

WMD 2: Some months ago, Microsoft sent me an advance review copy of its Zune. I mostly liked it, but instead of doing a review, meditated on the revolutionary utility of little machines. That column is here. Text is as follows:

'Little machines' weaponry of brave new world's battlefields

All quiet on Canada's technological front

Barry Link, Vancouver Courier

Published: Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Celebrate, comrades, the Zune is coming to Canada. It's a tiny part of a larger and necessary revolution we all need to join.

The Zune is Microsoft's answer to the iPod, the Apple-produced device that dominates the MP3 player market. I've used a review copy of the Zune for the past month. I like it. The 80-gig harddrive version has an attractive metal casing and a generous 3.5" colour screen. Its interface is clean and smooth, and it ably plays music, videos and pictures. It has a built-in FM radio and syncs wirelessly with your home computer network. The software required for your PC to work with the Zune can only be used with a Zune, but its design is bold and clean.

If I didn't already have a couple of MP3 players I like and use, I'd consider buying a Zune, which Microsoft tells me will be sold in Canada this spring. But its availability north of the 49th parallel comes nearly two years after the first version of the Zune was unveiled in the U.S., and that's a problem.

Canada is becoming a technological backwater. Once we were world leaders in telecommunications, and brave enough three decades ago to try failed experiments like Telidon--a very limited but forward-thinking early kind of Internet. Now we sell off our advanced satellites to the American arms industry and hobble our national space program with lack of funding and vision.

On the consumer level, we're no better. We still don't have iPhones, Apple's revolutionary cellphone and pocket computer, even though they're in widespread use just over the border. Our domestic cellphone companies wrap their fees within incomprehensible pricing plans and charge mobile users ridiculously high rates. Check American websites of consumer retailers and place them alongside the smaller inventories of Canadian retailers. Compared to Asia, Europe or the U.S., we're Sierra Leone when it comes to price and choice in consumer technology. Compared to Sierra Leone, we're Nigeria.

The lack of consumer technology matters. Yes, we're talking about little plastic and metal devices that people use for listening to stolen Aerosmith tunes. But the key social and political battle in the next two decades will not be Senate reform, gas taxes or daycare subsidies. It will be the use of information by governments and corporations to corral and monitor every aspect of our lives. In past years, people resisted such measures with stones and Molotov cocktails. Our weapons of resistance will be the Internet and devices like iPods and Zunes.

These little machines let us fight back. Governments install security cameras on public streets. People use cameras on cellphones to record and place on YouTube the tasering deaths of innocent people by over-zealous police. Governments introduce "enhanced" driver's licences and passports with data chips. People use Facebook--itself the biggest corporate threat to personal privacy in years--to organize anti-war rallies and consumer boycotts.

Millions of people are setting up their own entertainment, news, and information networks and systems through tools such as Bit torrents, blogs and podcasting, the latter of which is a big use for MP3 players like the Zune. It's most obvious in the field of consumer technology itself, where thousands of blogs and audio and video podcasts produced by amateurs and individuals aggressively influence debate and markets. In consumer tech, companies that attempt to cheat consumers pay in bucket loads of bad publicity.

An iPod nano, Sansa player or Nokia smartphone is a funny thing to lift up on the battlements as an instrument of liberation. But we're in a post-AK-47 world. It's now a cliche that personal digital devices have allowed information to filter out of closed societies. Practically the sole source of uncensored images of violence in Tibet this month, and last year in Burma, came from individuals using cellphones and digital cameras.

Zunes and the vast flood of toys in our daily life are problematic, because they are meant to be tossed into landfills once they break, which is frequently. And consumer tech doesn't guarantee democratic resistance. Asia is awash in small computing devices, and yet is an underfed model of democracy.

These tools also come from corporations with little interest in individual liberty. As a recent Wired article pointed out, Apple is notorious for a corporate culture of secrecy and control. But as profit-driven entities, Apple and Microsoft must offer what the market wants. And what the market wants--whether it's privacy protection and continued personal freedom or videos of cats playing piano--is up to us.

Beginner's Dublin, Day Two

1. Irish women tend to have small noses and cute, almost lipless mouths.
2. Irish men, at least the ones who drive the tourist buses and work the numberous constructon crews around the city core are not to be trifled with. Heard in passing from a crew hanging out on the side of the road: "...he was a criking little English f---." OK.
3. bicycles share the major roads here more easily than in Vancouver
4. there are more scooters and motorbikes here. The cars are small. Hardly any SUVs.
5. people who work the tourist concessions are fairly easygoing, and about a third encountered so far are not Irish.
6. Irish tourism likes visitors to drink, so it's good that they also want to shuttle visitors around in what seems like several hundred tour buses jamming the city core: you get a "free" pint of Guinness after touring the Guinness Storehouse and you get a "free" glass of Jameson's after touring the Old Jameson Distillery. Neither is free because you pay admission for the tours. As far as tours go, the latter is the better deal, although the former is apparently Dublin's most popular tourist destination.And it does have a magnificent view of the city.
7. The James Joyce Centre is small and modest (see pic above), and like Joyce in his lifetime, considered important but not popular outside of the university crowd. I was one of six visitors the 45 minutes I was there. But worth the effort finding off the beaten tourism path.

Irish TV: stunningly the same as American TV, especially the news shows, with the same template of young female anchor paired with one or more avunculur or veteran male anchors. Morning show has sunny saxophone tune. Weatherman runs pictures from viewers, especially kids. Top stories: continued fallout over Irish voters' rejection of an EU treaty; scandal involving a former PM; contract killer for hire trial; Irish school children are happy, smart and active; hundreds turn out in Cork to pose nude for art photography. The last story on two different newscasts created an opportunity for male anchor to turn to female counterpart and say  something like, "Too bad you missed that one." Sex roles seem more conservative here, with news segments on fashion and weddings openly targeted at women. Also, dairy commercials are frequent.

Note: Guinness is spelled with two n's. I knew that.