Many of you have likely heard this term on the news or read about it somewhere online. There are many websites discussing Net Neutrality and what it means to internet users. Generally, Net Neutrality pushes for an “open” network with no discrimination. The leading advocate is savetheinternet.com and I urge you to visit this site and read their frequently asked questions section to find out more.

Now, this website advocates Net Neutrality in the United States, but Shift+Backspace is based in Canada. Well, the leading Canadian advocate, neutrality.ca, was recently shut down. I had visited this site many times and it provided many Canadian-focused details on Net Neutrality and how to fight for it. It is a tremendous shame that neutrality.ca has been shut down, but other Canadian technology sites have taken notice and are trying to get the word out. First and foremost, Amber MacArthur, a well-known Canadian-born technology expert, has posted a fantastic article on her website about the shutdown of neutrality.ca. Read the article and response from neutrality.ca’s creator here.

Dr. Michael Geist, a Canadian expert on technology and the law, recently wrote an article titled “The Canadian Net Neutrality Debate“. If you live in Canada and have an internet connection with a large service provider you should read Dr. Geist’s article.

Dr. Geist mentions large Canadian telcos such as Telus, Rogers, VideoTron and Bell Canada and their involvement in Net Neutrality and belief that because they deliver the content they should be the gatekeepers of the content. It is unfortunate to say that I have been a co-op student for Bell Canada twice and worked solely with the Sympatico ISP. I had always enjoyed my time with Sympatico and had hoped to return in the future but as long as Bell is involved in censoring and prioritizing internet traffic I will refuse to work there. I recall the time when Rogers began regulating bit torrent traffic and how many users were switching to Bell because they wanted network access with no discrimination. It looks like members of Bell and the Sympatico team did not notice this trend and have decided to follow suit.

If you are interested in reading more please visit these sites:

Wikipedia - Network Neutrality

Telcos force neutrality.ca to shut-down

Save the Internet

Google’s take on Net Neutrality (some great stuff here)

neutrality.ca (please come back!!)

Dr. Michael Geist on Net Neutrality in Canada

If anyone has anything to say regarding Net Neutrality please comment below or email me at cole@shiftbackspace.com.

Thanks for reading,

Cole

Well, exams have completed and school does not start again until May 1st. I will be at home and away from my computer until next Monday so I will probably not be writing many articles this week although I it is my intention to get a few small ones out. If anyone sees any technology news that you think myself or fellow readers may be interested in send the link to cole@shiftbackspace.com and if I like it I may post it for others to read.

To those of you who have finished school (either for the year or for good) enjoy the summer!

Cole

I apologize for the lack of activity on the site the last few days. As some of you may know, the latest installment of Ubuntu was released today (April 19th). However, on the 16th the release candidate version was released and I jumped on this opportunity to get Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn installed on my desktop.

I am happy to say that since the installation I have not even once booted into Windows Vista. This was, by far, the simplest installation and configuration in all of my experience will Linux. Now I have spent the last 3 days playing with configurations and settings but that is because I have been playing with so many new features and added functionality from better hardware support. In the past I have had the hardest time getting and Linux distribution to function with accelerate support from my ATI video card. I always spent days trying new techniques but not once did I ever get my card to work with the wonder that is Beryl (I had no issues when using the Nvidia card in my laptop). The first time I booted into Feisty Fawn I was presented with the option to use the open-source ATI drivers currently in use or to use the proprietary drivers. I tried using with along-side Beryl but got the best performance out of the default drivers and have been using them ever since.

What else did I like? Well, the Feisty installation has a “Windows migration tool” which recognizes that you want to perform a dual boot and asks you if you want to pull bookmarks, wallpaper, etc. over from your Windows installation! I thought I would give this a shot and guess what? It worked.

Unfortunately a lot of computer users are unwilling to switch to Linux because of the lack of gaming support. This is actually the main reason I required Vista to remain on my machine. However, I was actually able to install the system-heavy Battlefield 2 by using Wine (allows installation of many Windows programs in Linux).

Possibly the coolest thing I have done so far is customize the desktop. I am getting close to perfecting the look but am not quite there yet. Here is a sneak peak. I will be posting an article with the sources I used to perform this transformation along with more screenshots and hopefully a video showcasing the power of Beryl (read previous article for more on Beryl).

I am really hoping to get a video showing the power of Feisty+Beryl up within the next week. The application dock at the bottom of the screen works almost identically to that of Mac OSX.

Hopefully this article has sparked some interest in Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. It is a tremendous operating system and I am hoping to remove the dual boot and work exclusively with Ubuntu in the near future.

Get Ubuntu (or read more about features) here.

Guide to OSX’ify your Ubuntu desktop here.

And as always, if you have any questions or comments either comment below or email me at cole@shiftbackspace.com.

Cole

UPDATE: Apparently Michael Dell is running Feisty Fawn on his Dell Precision M90 notebook (not even a dual boot!). Way to go Michael! Read more at Engadget.

Here we go! The first open-source program recommendation. Have you ever had the problem where you open a media file in Windows Media Player and you see it looking for something called a codec but then it either fails to find one and the video does not play or the audio begins to play with some useless visualization in the video window? No longer will that happen to you!

Let me introduce the software to you. It’s called VLC media player and comes from the VideoLAN organization. It is released under the GNU General Public License, aka it’s open-source and free. Basically, if you install VLC it will install nearly every codec (coder/encoder or compressor/decompresser of digital data) that you will need to play your media files. It comes with its own stripped down, very resource friendly, media player. However, just installing the VLC will allow Windows Media Player and other media players to use the codecs from VLC, thus allowing you to use Windows Media Player to watch DivX and other media files.

If you do choose to use the VLC media player (which I highly recommend), the interface may not be quite like what you’re used to. Below is screen shot showing the VLC media player interface.

You open a file like you regularly would with File, then it just works! Unfortunately my media remote control does not work with VLC, but I am sure I could configure it if I dug deeper. If you are watching full-screen and access to the controls simply right-click anywhere.

Well, there you have it! The greatest multimedia package I have ever come across. Oh, did I mention just how cross-platform it is? It runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, and BSD. Get VLC or learn more here. You’ll be glad you did.

Cole

The Apple keynote at the National Association of Broadcasters is starting at 2pm EST. Apple recently launched their 8-core MacPro’s as well as announcing that the updated operated system, Leopard, will be delayed until the fall, everyone seems to be unsure what they will be announcing today. Speculation has it that it will be an updated version of the Apple Final Cut Studio. Of course, I am hoping for 12″ MacBook Pro’s.

After the keynote I will post an update of what has been announced. For now, visit the Engadget live-coverage. How am I suppose to watch the Wings game, Jays game and stay updated on Apple!!

UPDATE:

All of the updates today really only affect studio production professionals, however, the software and hardware announced sound sweet. First off is Final Cut Server. This software is designed to help manage assets and aid work-flow in organizations where there are many people working concurrently on the same projects. Also, updated versions of Apple’s video and audio editing software are being released. Next up is a piece of hardware called IO-HD, which allows users to edit HD content on their MacBook Pro’s. It’s a pretty sweet looking box but sells for $3495 US (once again, this is all professional equipment and the prices are actually extremely good compared to alternatives).

Even though I will probably never use any of this software, it is all really cool to read about. One thing that came up in the news I was reading is that the new video editing software will allow users to edit video filmed in full 4K and 2540p from the RED ONE camera. I have been following the news on RED ONE since the announcement of it quite a while ago. It comes from the RED Digital Cinema company which was founded by Jim Jannard (founder of Oakley). I urge you to check out this camera here.

2ND UPDATE:

Well, the Apple Store website just came back online. I have been reading the page on Final Cut Studio 2 and even though I do not know what I would use it for I want it! Check it out here.

Cole

April is generally a very busy time for students and the reason why I have not been updating Shift+Backspace as often as I had hoped. I have received suggestions regarding site design and what readers would like to see. All of these comments are considered and I am hoping to follow through with every one I have received so far. Please keep them coming!

Those of you that know me realize I have the attention span of puppy. However, this has lead me to researching many different articles simultaneously. I would like to take this opportunity to share some of my ideas. Articles I am currently working on include:

• Open-source and free software
• BitTorrent + clients
• Net neutrality
• Big-box vs. local computer stores - where to buy technology
• Terminal vs. command prompt
• MSN client face-off
• Google Apps
• Lots of Ubuntu and Linux propaganda
• Joost (no invites left, will let you know when I get more)

I have recently become a huge fan of open-source software projects. The plan is to first post an article as an introduction to open-source and then each week post a review on a specific piece of open-source software and comparisons with retail software (trust me, you will be surprised how good open-source software is).

Of course, if you have any recommendations or just want a private answer to a question email me at colemason@shiftbackspace.com.

Cole

I have a sneaky suspicion most of you have noticed a little orange logo in the address bar when you visit certain websites. Go ahead, look. Not sure where to look? Here you go:

Have you ever clicked on the logo? Go ahead, click. Whoa, eh? Takes all of the articles from a website and organizes them into a nice format.

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. The purpose of using RSS is so that users can aggregate their favourite article/post-based sites. There are many different pieces of software and login-based websites to combine all of the “feeds”. I have not tried many of these and ever since trying Google Reader I doubt I will ever consider any others.

There really is not much to using RSS. If you are looking for a reader, I highly recommend Google Reader as you can access your feeds wherever you go.

The purpose of this article was to introduce the basic goal of RSS. I hope that those of you who have never tried this will test it out. As always, if you have any questions please email me at colemason@shiftbackspace.com!

Cole

This is the title of an email that I received early this morning. At first I thought “This is strange, I do not have an account at First United Bank & Trust!”. However I then realized that there may have been a time when I was in the United States and decided to open an account at First United. The sender of the email was security@security.com, but then again don’t all banks send emails from domains clearly not associated with them? I would like you to look at what was contained in the body of the email message.

Dear First United Bank & Trust Member,

Your account has been randomly flagged in our system as a part of our routine security measures. This is a must to ensure that only you have access and use of your First United Bank & Trust Credit Card ( Debit ) account . We require all flagged accounts to verify their information on file with us. To verify your information at this time, please visit our secure server webform by clicking the link below:

http://210.51.7.47/icons/.MyFirstUnitedBank/login.htm

If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to temporarily suspend your account.
Thank you for your patience as we work together to protect your account.

Thank you for using First United Bank & Trust.
First United Bank & Trust Customer Service

For some reason they do not know my name and their website is coming from a folder out of an icons folder on someones web server. At this point I figured something was up! I recommend that you visit this URL. If your browser does not warn you that this website is known for phishing (tricking someone into giving confidential information) then I urge you to upgrade to the most recent Firefox or even IE7, but then again most you probably are not dumb enough to fall for this sort of thing.

What did I learn from this fiasco? I learned that in America-land banks offer a free BBQ accessory set when you open an account.

Please feel free to share your funny stories like this in the comments section!

Cole

At this point in the early stages of Shift+Backspace I have only written one technology-related article; however, I would like to take this opportunity to ensure you that I am indeed a technology enthusiast. In order to accomplish this I want to present the technology-related bookmarks I have within my browser, which is of course Firefox. Many of these websites have RSS feeds, which I do use instead of visiting many sites throughout the day manually. For those of you who do not know how to effectively use RSS or do not even know what it means I will be writing about it in the near future. I decided to breakdown some of the websites to show which I read most often and those I simply glance over.

Frequent Sources

Gizmodo - up-to-the-minute technology news; from cellphones to computers to USB parrot clocks

Engadget - about the same as Gizmodo, but slightly more serious in tone

Ubuntu Forums - everything you ever want to know about Ubuntu is just a question away; users will help you with anything

Slashdot - the classic ‘geek’ news site; requires you to be quite tech savvy; trust me, its really nerdy

The Apple Store - because I need to get a Mac and pretty much dream about the day I do every night

Canada Computers - quality computer parts at crazy low prices; big-box stores are ripping off so many consumers (particularly on memory cards and cables)

Digital Photography Review - extremely well written and thorough reviews of pretty much any digital camera worth buying; very friendly forums for users of SLR and DSLR cameras

Other Sources

The Inquirer - similar to Gizmodo but focused more on computer hardware and software rather than all technology; presented without images = somewhat boring to read

PC Stats - computer hardware information; extremely well written reviews; Canadian!!

[H]ard|OCP - for the hardcore computer hardware enthusiasts; great reviews and benchmarks

Well, there you have it! These are the technology websites that I visit daily. Many of them have articles that link to other technology sites and some of these are great places for specific knowledge.

If anyone has and questions or comments or suggestions for future articles please email me at cole@shiftbackspace.com.

Cole