Globalive Launch Delayed Due To CRTC Probe

Here’s a plot twist that I didn’t see coming. Remember when I told you about Telus making a request to have the ownership structure of Globalive reviewed because Telus is afraid of competition? It appears that the CRTC has decided to look into this further. Public hearings into the matter will be held on September 23 and September 24th of this year in Gatineau. That will guarantee that they won’t launch this year.

The weird thing is that this sort of review has been done before. Industry Canada did a review prior to the company winning the wireless auction that put them in position to challenge Bell, Telus and Rogers. So in my mind, this is a waste of time and money.

But I guess if you’re Telus, it’s a good thing. After all it saves them the need to compete straight up by screwing them by using government regulations while having it paid for by taxpayer money.

Clearly for Telus, the future is not so friendly if you compete against them.

Mac Users To Get BlackBerry Desktop This Fall…. About Time!

If you’re a Mac user and you’ve have a BlackBerry, Research In Motion hasn’t shown you any love in the past. You’ve had to make do with either Missing Sync or PocketMac to sync your BlackBerry to your Mac. That’s changing this fall. Research In Motion has announced that a version of its smartphones’ desktop software will be released this September for Apple computers. Here’s the quick feature set:

• Sync your iTunes playlists, calendars, contacts, notes and tasks (I assume they got the blessing of Apple)
• Add/Remove applications
• Update your device when new software becomes available
• Backup and restore your device data with such features like automatically scheduled backups and optional encryption
• Manage multiple devices

And it will support Mac® OS 10.5.5 and above.

Cool. Go to www.blackberry.com/mac and sign up so that when it hits the streets, you’ll be the first to know.

Yahoo And Microsoft May Have A Deal… Maybe…

All Things Digital is reporting that Yahoo and Microsoft are putting the finishing touches on an online advertising deal:

Top executives at Microsoft–including SVP of the Online Audience Business Group Yusuf Mehdi, search head Satya Nadella and top digital exec Qi Lu, as well as others–have all flown down to Silicon Valley from their Redmond, Wash., HQ today to iron out the remaining issues, which seem to have to do with the deployment of technology.

“It is an entourage,” joked one exec.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is also deeply involved in the talks, although he is not with the group.

If all goes well, the deal could be announced within the next week, sources at both companies said.

Wow. Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz did say in May that she was open to a deal if she believed in the partner’s technology and they provided said boatloads of money. I’m guessing that her ship just came in if the talks are this serious.

Check in next week to see if this actually happens (which I think it will).

Mozilla Releases Firefox 3.5.1 To Fix Serious “Self Inflicted” Security Issue

Firefox has been updated to version 3.5.1 to fix a number of security and stability issues according to the release notes. However one of those issues was apparently self inflicted. However security issue in question was “self inflicted”:

“Looking at the exploit code and our test cases, I think this is self-inflicted and we should have hidden the bug earlier,” argued Andreas Gal on Bugzilla. Gal is a project scientist at the University of California, Irvine, where the technique called “trace trees” was developed. Firefox 3.5′s TraceMonkey engine is based on that technique, and builds on code and ideas shared with the open-source Tamarin Tracing project.

Another contributor agreed. “It would seem that the Milw0rm exploit code is based on the test cases for this bug,” said someone identified only as “WD” in the same Bugzilla thread. “When you look at the crash details in a debugger, it’s pretty clear that it’s exploitable with a heap spray to the access violation address in question.”

At least they fixed it quickly after taking responsibility for the issue. That’s refreshing. I highly recommend that you update to this release now if you’re Firefox user.

Facebook Violates Canadian Privacy Law….That’s Not Good For Facebook

If you’re a Facebook user in Canada, you should pay attention to this story. According to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Facebook violates Canadian privacy law:

[Privacy Commissioner Jennifer] Stoddart said Facebook breaches federal privacy law by keeping users’ personal information indefinitely – even after members close their accounts.

She also raised concerns about the sharing of users’ files with the almost one million third-party developers scattered across the globe who create Facebook applications such as games and quizzes.

If Facebook doesn’t change things, it faces the threat of legal action. Facebook appears to be keen on avoiding that:

In a statement, Facebook said it would “soon be introducing a number of new additional privacy features” that will address any remaining concerns the privacy watchdog might have.

I wonder what soon means. I guess we’ll find out “soon.” But they haven’t agreed to everything:

The report recommends technological measures to ensure developers have access only to the user information actually required to run a specific application. It also says Facebook should prevent disclosure of personal information of any of the user’s friends who are not themselves signing up for the application, unless they consent.

Facebook hasn’t agreed to the recommendations on third-party access.

I’m guessing that’s because Facebook makes some cash off of third-party access to developers. Perhaps a facebook developer can fill in that blank.

I think this serves as a warning to users of social networking sites. You don’t know where your personal info goes or what might be done with it. Perhaps it might be a good idea to read the terms and conditions first before you sign up. That way you know what you’re getting into.

Poll Says Canadians Support Bandwidth Management….. Or Does It? [UPDATED]

Someone once told me that there are lies , dammed lies, and statistics. Here’s an example of the latter. According to the Globe and Mail, 60% Canadians supports some from of reasonable bandwidth management as long as “users are treated fairly.” But the telling figure is this one:

Most — 54 per cent — said they did not know whether traffic management affects them personally. Just 15 per cent said they are affected by the practice.

So let’s recap: 60% agree with the question. But 54% didn’t fully understand the question.

Am I the only one who sees this survey as being flawed? What do you think? Please post a comment and share your views.

UPDATE: Here’s a PDF to the press release from Harris Decima. It contains a better breakdown as to what was asked and far more statistics for your reading pleasure. While this does provide some insight into how these numbers came into being, this survey still seems flawed to me.

iTunes 8.2.1 Breaks Palm Pre Syncing…. Why Am I Not Shocked By This?

I had a feeling that this wouldn’t last long. iTunes 8.2.1 hit the streets today. Here’s what the read me from Software update says:

iTunes 8.2 now supports iPhone or iPod touch with the iPhone 3.0 Software Update. iTunes 8.2 also includes many accessibility improvements and bug fixes.

iTunes 8.2.1 provides a number of important bug fixes and addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices.

So, what does “addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices” mean? If you’re a Palm Pre user, it means your smartphone won’t sync with iTunes anymore. Don’t buy it? Here’s what Apple said to BusinessWeek:

“iTunes 8.2.1 is a free software update that provides a number of important bug fixes,” says Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris. “It also disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre. As we’ve said before, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with unsupported digital media players.”

So if you’re a Pre user you should not update to the latest iTunes. Of course you can expect Palm to come out with some kind of firmware update to enable syncing again. At which point you can expect Apple to come out with another iTunes update that breaks that ability. At which point, lawyers (or iLawyers if you’re Apple) may get involved.

So here’s a question that I’ve got for you guys and girls. Is Apple justified in doing this or are they acting kind of Microsoft like (seeing as they control the majority of the digital media player market)? Please leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.

Man Who Caused Ballmer To Throw A Chair Is Leaving Google For VMWare

According to Tech Crunch, Mark Lucovsky who is Google’s Engineering Director is leaving the company that will do no evil for VMWare. Lucovsky is best known for his departure from Microsoft back in 2004 that according to him (via court documents) caused Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to not only toss a chair across his office, but to call Google CEO Eric Schmidt a “pussy” and say that Google was “a house of cards” when he found out he was leaving for Google.

The only thing that I have to say is that if Schmidt doesn’t toss at least a table across his office over this departure, then perhaps Ballmer was right in calling him a “pussy.”

Bell Shows Up At The CRTC Hearings…. Their Testimony Just Stinks…

Today was the last day of the CRTC hearings into Bandwidth Management, and Bell must really be smoking some grade “A” crack. Because they made this statement to the CRTC:

Bell must slow the downloads of certain other internet providers’ customers to stop them from congesting its shared network and hurting Bell’s retail customers, the company argued Tuesday.

The only way Bell could allow those smaller ISPs — which buy network access wholesale from Bell — to manage their own internet traffic is if they used exactly the same method as Bell, as other methods would conflict, said Jonathan Daniels, the Montreal-based company’s vice-president of regulatory law.

“And if [they're] going to do that, why don’t we just do it for them?” Daniels asked at a hearing before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in Ottawa.

Gee… That sounds like your retail business is hurting, so you decide to screw your wholesale customers to level the playing field. After all, why would you assume that your wholesale customers would want to throttle their customers? Did it ever occur to you that they may not want to do that? Of course not.

Oh yeah, Bell claims that they can’t tell the difference between their traffic and their wholesale customers traffic. But according to the article:

Bell’s testimony contrasted with that of MTS Allstream, which sells wholesale internet service similar to Bell’s in Manitoba. The company told the CRTC last week that it was able to distinguish between its wholesale and retail customers in Manitoba.

Hmmm… Sounds like Bell is at best playing fast and loose with the truth. However, Bell does have an option for ISPs who buy bandwidth from them if they don’t want to be screwed like a prison bitch throttled by Bell:

They could buy Bell’s high-speed access (HSA) wholesale service, which uses the same shared network and costs roughly twice as much, but is not subject to Bell’s traffic shaping. For example, Primus has purchased that service in some parts of Ontario.

Oh sure. Buy a service that prices most of these ISPs right out of the market. That’s a great plan… If you’re Bell.

So this closes these CRTC hearings. Hopefully the CRTC sees through the BS that was spread around by Bell, Rogers, Telus and other ISPs who throttle and restrict if not eliminate this practice.

Six In Ten Companies Will Not Deploy Windows 7… That Can’t Be Good…

Windows 7 isn’t Vista by any means. But perhaps the ghosts of Vista are having an effect on how Windows 7 is being perceived. Of 1,100 IT administrators who responded to the survey, 59.3 percent said they didn’t have a plan to deploy Windows 7. Microsoft can’t be surprised by this, but it’s likely not good news for them as they plan to send Windows 7 out to the world. What do you think? Please leave a comment with your $0.02 worth.