I was googling for the tool I created last month called hexcompare. As it turns out, someone spoke a few sentences about it, and even included a picture of it working.
I could have turned to a FreeBSD system, but instead I decided Hexcompare was probably simple enough to compile by hand. It turns out the app was really simple, and I got it running quickly.
I wasn’t expecting anyone else to ever run it, much less indicating that they did so. That someone did was a huge compliment.
Rogers has just launched another wireless carrier to compete with the new generation of cheap cellular providers, a la WIND and Moblicity. It’s called Chatr, and it will offer a $45/month plan featuring unlimited talk/texting Canada-wide.
We’re getting into an interesting stage where we have three levels of carriers. Rogers/Telus/Bell for the expensive end, Fido/Solo/Koodoo/Virgin for the mid-range end, and now this budget-oriented grouping of WIND/Chatr/Moblicity.
The thing is though that nothing changes between these carriers except price. It’s like shopping at Food Basics instead of Metro: it’s owned by the same people, and they sell the same stuff, but one is cheap and one is pricey. If it wasn’t for the CRTC opening up Canada’s wireless sector to competition, WIND would not exist and Roger’s would have been content to not implement something like Chatr.
Instead, we now have competition. And we all win.
Someone told me recently that I appeared to have shifted my interest away from network security, and asked me if that was in fact the case. I told him that it was. The Botnet movie (still in development!) will be my last foray into the matter in the foreseeable future.
The fact is that people’s interests change over time, and I am no exception. Going out of high school and into university, I was all gung ho about network security. I wrote articles, including one for 2600 Magazine. I attended meetings that talked about it on a regular basis. But in the last two years, my interest really started to wane.
Now, I’m interested in LGBT issues. From a legal standpoint, Canada is at a great point in history. There is equality. True equality. This is something that only a few other nations in the world can claim. From a cultural perspective, work remains to be done.
I went to a friend’s birthday party on Saturday night, and the use of “fags” in a derogatory sense was often repeated. Among some highlights: “I don’t mind if a person is gay, just act like a man.”
I got tired of this, so Jay and I kissed each other – our default reaction to hearing stupid remarks. Comments were made comparing the kiss to a “trainwreck” that one couldn’t look away from. Something that wouldn’t be said of a hetero couple.
I don’t know what I’ll do in this field, but this is where my interest is, for now. And who knows, maybe I’ll move on to something else in a few years.
I’m in South Africa right now. The country I’m in has a 79% black population, and yet, you would never know it from looking at the makeup of the places I’ve been visiting. It’s so… black and white.
For instance, I’m visiting a geophysics company. Its sixty workers, safe for one man, are all white. It does not reflect the local makeup at all. Meanwhile, the staff of the hotel I’m at are all black, while its patrons are all white.
It’s just so odd to see this stark contrast. If I were to give a guess, I’d say that the economic damage to blacks caused by Apartheid-era policies lives on, maintaining the huge rift between the [white] haves and the [black] have-nots.
Its just so eerie to witness this inequality first hand.
