Videotron’s VOIP trials

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Videotron’s VOIP trials:

« Videotron Ltee’s telecom division, the company has more than 1,000 customers
testing its Internet telephony service in Montreal. ‘The tests are very
conclusive (+++), and Videotron with Videotron Telecom are currently
poisitioned to become the first major telco to provide IP TEL over a high
speed internet network in Canada,’ a Videotron Telecom executive wrote in a
recent e-mail after AOL Canada received plenty of media attention about its
new TotalTalk telephony service.
Videotron may be getting close to its Internet telephony if a meeting today
with analysts in Toronto is any indication. Rogers has set its VOIP launch
date for July 1, 2005 while Shaw Communications will likely go live in the
first quarter of next year. »

A source article would have been nice though.

[Lifted verbatim from Mark Evans.]

Update: More from Mark. I suggest reading it with his article on a possible CRTC poilcy shift and VoIP perspectives in Canada.

Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0

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Ars Technica reviews Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0. Although I’m a very happy Firefox user, I’m still sitting on the fence with regards to Thunderbird: email is a critical app for me and I’m running well with Entourage.

It certainly ain’t broke (until the DB dies on me again), and I’m not sure I want to fix it.

An email client is not like a browser where I can easily switch between Safari, Camino, Firefox or even OmniWeb and, surprisingly infrequently, Internet Explorer: my email universe is only partially in IMAP and I have quite a large offline storage archive. In comparison, my bookmark list is tiny (that function was mostly transferred over to my news reader) and just a bunch of useful links, or tentative reading list, that don’t need to be synched together; even the plugins are installed once for all browsers. Additionally, although I don’t use Entourage’s integration with Office much, I do use quite a few Applescripts, support for which seems to be absent from Thunderbird. Address book import is also an issue: Entourage has a rather rich set of fields and any import process would have to be checked by hand.

Conclusion: email clients are a segment where the switching friction is larger than for browsers.

It does look like an excellent piece of software though and I view switching as an inevitable event in the long term, along with the retirement of any POP-only account and throwaway Hotmail addresses.

[Thanks to Pseudo for the reminder]

On War

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The New York Review of Books: On War.

Chris Hedges reviews Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War by Evan Wright and The Fall of Baghdad by Jon Lee Anderson. Many excellent thoughts and observations, and this moment of lucidity taken from Generation Kill:

One of the Marines in the book returns to California and is invited to be the guest of honor in a gated community in Malibu, a place where he could never afford to live. The residents want to toast him as a war hero.

« I’m not a hero, » he tells the guests. « Guys like me are just a necessary part of things. To maintain this way of life in a fine community like this, you need psychos like us to go out and drop a bomb on somebody’s house.

I don’t know if I’ll ever read the books, but the review itself is worth 5 minutes of your time.

[Via MeFi.]

Babble

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Babble promises free calls to landlines in the UK, USA Mainland (including Canada according to their number tester), Australia, New Zealand and Europe)

If the hype is true, I can’t understand why the self described Broadband VoIP Telephone Service with FREE calls! is not currently #1 on Google for Babble. Not that Rabble is not a worthy cause, especially with all the stories on Bush’s visit (plus, they work with OneWorld.ca, which works with Alternatives… But I disgress).

Could it be because I can’t seem to connect to the network with their client and I’m not alone? Or maybe it’s a firewall problem: Skype works fine from this network, but MSN file transfer does not. I don’t dare to probe around too much…

But I definitely want to get it to work though though, as free calls home is a sweet promise (Calling Grenadine at work from home, when were both reasonably awake! And calling her from home, without having to go to the payphone on the street corner a block away would be a bonus too). The promised MacOS X client will most likely make me more proactive, in the meantime, there is Skype and a bunch of other, with a clearer revenue stream.

But I still have to send my PowerBook back to the mechanics: they forgot to repair the sound-in port the first time around (on the other hand, I don’t get that gentle electrical tingle while my skin bridges my charging laptop with a grounded object anymore, and that’s a plus).

Maybe I should just bite the bullet and get pots, for which I might get more options soon.

[Babble knowledge is a courtesy of Om Malik and VoIP watch.]

It’s 18h40

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It’s 18h40 and I can take a few minutes to read my news.

Boing Boing has a post titled Tis the season to STICK IT TO THE MAN which I would have skimmed over if not for the featured image, which seemed familiar:

20041130mallpg6.jpg
[source]

Compare with future hooligan forwarded to me in an email titled « Why men shouldn’t baby sit ». A meme in the making? An obscure reference? A freak coincidence?

20041130babysit.jpg

Disclaimer: I do not condone taping a kid’s fingers together to allow him to « stick it to the man » when he’s too young to have the coordination to fold his fingers correctly. I might have laughed if that was done to a friend’s son though…

Barkavin

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Barkavin, c’est une soirée de dégustation des vins de Genève sur le Henry-Dunant; c’est pas l’Alsace pour la quantité, mais il y a des produits à découvrir, notamment le Gamaret, intéressant cépage très suisse, que je ne connaissait pas.

Très sympa tout ça et ça m’a en plus permis de me procurer les verres a vin qui faisaient défaut à ma cuisine (logement meublé mon oeil).

Alsace

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Je laisse la parole a Grenadine, qui s’exprime ainsi pour décrire notre escapade en Alsace:

J’ai (enfin) déposé mon mémoire de maîtrise il y a quelques semaines, spécifiquement le 26 octobre.

Pour célébrer, j’ai pris une petite semaine de vacances qui a dégénérée en escapade Franco-Suisse où nous avons pu voir d’où viennent vraiment les bébés:
041119choux.jpg
041119cigognes.jpg

(Maintenant que ce grand mystère est dévoilé, permettez-moi de vous apprendre que semble-t-il que le sapin de Noël décoratif est aussi natif de l’Alsace…)

Pour ce faire, et surtout pour passer incognitos, nous avons loué une voiture TOTALEMENT discrète…
041119autolocation.jpg

Dont la couleur du texte permet un camouflage très harmonisé avec les vignobles. C’est dans ce rutilant bolide que nous avons exploré une certaine portion de la route des vins, mon genou ne me permettant pas d’explorer les Vosges à pied. Notre principal exercice fût donc d’essayer de prononcer les noms des villages dans le genre de Niedermorschwir (et ça c’est un facile), la population locale ne pouvant nous aider dans cet effort de prononciation puisque distraits que nous sommes, nous avions oublié que le 11 novembre se fête en France, et il n’y avait, donc, aucune âme qui vive sur notre chemin… Par contre un festival de maisons sorties tout droit d’un compte de fées nous a accueilli partout où le regard se posait, ce qui a égaillé la grisaille qui régnait en permanence.

Et un chateau aussi, celui du Haut-Koenigsbourg, où la vue, totalement splendide, permet de voir jusqu’aux Alpes :
041119vue.jpg

Mais la chose la plus intéressante à faire en Alsace quand on a mal au genou demeure profiter des vins locaux. Personnellement, je préfère les vendanges tardives:

041119sourceduvin.jpg

Sur le point de faire une indigestion de foie gras/choucroute garnie/munster/tartes flambées/kougelhopf/foulards et sacoches motifs Burberry/vin blanc (surtout en dégustation à jeûn le samedi matin à 10h00… ) nous sommes rentrés bien gentiment à Genève. J’avais un avion à prendre aussi.

Sur ce, un chaleureux merci à tous et à toutes pour le support et les encouragements tout au long de ma maîtrise, je n’aurais pu le faire sans vous. Je lève donc un verre de marc de Gewurztraminer (comme on nous a répondu: « c’est de l’alcool monsieur ») à votre honneur.

Grosses bises

Perle

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Dans un article, par ailleurs intéressant, Le Spam dans la ligne de mire de l’UIT portant sur les efforts de l’UIT pour susciter un consensus multilatéral sur le pourriel, on mentionne comme objectif la conclusion à terme d’un « MoU, un Memorandum of Understatement ».

Le terme habituellement utilisé est « Understanding », on entend aussi parfois ironiquement « Declaration of mutual appreciation ». Over plus souvent que Under donc.

GIN

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Geneva Intern Network: The GIN has inexcusably bad web design for a organisation launched in August 2004 (yeah, no such luxury when I was an intern…), yet it could be very useful if it was more well known.

Plus they have a party right by my place on Saturday…