What you can do in the fight against pedophiles and child molesters

 
Originally posted on CanadianISP.ca

You're just an average Jane or Joe, right ? You're not in law enforcement, so you're thinking this article does not apply to you ?

You could not be more wrong.
 
Each and every hour of every day, children are exploited, harmed and molested by truly evil people and they are helped, unwittingly, by thousands of people who would be mortified if they knew just how big a role they're playing in the spread of child pornography and advocacy of pedophilia. 

So how can you make a difference ?

Secure your networks.

 

For one: Secure your wireless devices – Iphones, wireless routers, laptops and so on: Your networking setup should absolutely be using some form of encryption or network protection. Many, many pedophiles take advantage of unsecured wireless networks by simply driving around a town with a laptop, looking for unsecured networks. Once they find one (Many home-use wireless routers have more than enough range to reach clear through a house and across a street), they pull over and start sending and receiving child pornography images – or worse – engage in the solicitation or grooming of children for their “needs”. What is worse second only to the child abuse itself is that if and when law enforcement traces this heinous activity back to its source, they will find YOUR network as the source of the illegal activity.

Scan for viruses

 

Second: Run regular virus scanners. In addition to computer viruses that can harm your computer by deleting information, much more common are the viruses that turn your machine into a “zombie”, or a computer that sends out hundreds of thousands of spam messages. However – and more crucially – not all those spams are ads for penis pills or stock frauds: Many of these zombie machines are used to spread child pornography images in order to keep their pedophile authors and true distributors safe from discovery. Once again, however, if and when it is traced back to its source, the phrase “world of hurt” will not even begin to describe the scenario you will face in trying to prove your innocence through ignorance. Better to avoid it all in the first place.

Change your passwords regularly

 

Thirdly: Many, if not most, regular home users not only use the same password for years on end, not only do they use the same password for multiple online resources (Perhaps the worst example would be using your Facebook password as your online banking password) but people also use disgustingly easy passwords to guess (or rather: Brute force attack by a computer running your account through a dictionary): At the very least, your password should not be:

1. found in a dictionary
2. found in a baby names book
3. be a date of birth, phone number or address of anyone you know.

Those are the top three easy to guess/easy to find pieces information to get your password. In addition to cracked passwords potentially causing you to lose money from online banking accounts, your online game accounts or cause embarrassing posts supposedly made by you, your cracked account can then also be used to send and receive child pornography images by the very pedophiles you would rather see in jail, rather than helping them out.
It is not just the complaints about inappropriate postings allegedly made by you, or the complaints you will have to make to your banks and other online accounts you need to worry about, but the possible legal ramifications, the damage to your reputation and, most importantly, the fact that you've made it easier for pedophiles and child molesters to do what they do.
Avoid it all by following the common-sense advice above.

Copyright © - 2011 Internalysis.com / Marc Bissonnette, Beachburg, Ontario - All rights reserved -

Hockey: Bloodsport or National Icon ?

or
“No, Virginia, violence isn't the answer, unless it's hockey, in which case, beat the @*#^! out of him!”

Originally posted on Beachburg.com

 In this day and age of easy access to all forms of media at all times of the day, be it through your television, PVR, the Internet, movies or what have you, parents are expected to teach their kids right from wrong, real from fake, entertainment versus reality and so on. In reality, many parents these days never even have the conversations with their kids about what is “right and wrong”, other than “don't hit your sister” or “clean that up, so help me!” - So, the powers that be have little reminders to nag at the conscience of parents, to remind them that some content may not be suitable for kids under a certain age or, at the very least, a reminder to the parents to tell their kids that what they're about to see is not real, potentially scary/upsetting and wouldn't really happen (“No, Virginia, aliens don't burst from your stomach. Now, pass the popcorn”)

So, where are the warnings before NHL games ? I never see a pre-screen that says “Warning, may contain content not suitable for children under the age of 14” or “May contain gratuitous violence and coarse language”. What seems to be worse is that without these warnings, some parents sit right beside their kids and scream at the television screen for one guy to “kill him” or “beat the crap outta him!” or “Smash that @#$&^er into the boards, you idiot!”

What is even worse than that is these same parents take that same attitude to the little league rinks and scream the same brilliant “advice” ... to a bunch of ten year olds.

So the kids see their “heroes” doing it on TV, they see their parents worshipping those same “heroes” for doing it on TV and then those same parents again encourage the kids to emulate this behaviour in a game that is supposed to be “in the spirit of fun, team work and physical fitness”

Why is it that if you send a hockey kid to the second grade and the teacher advocates other kids to beat each other up for the privilege of getting out for recess first, that parents would be screaming bloody blue murder and it would be a race between the lynch mob to string her up at the gallows and the police to take her away for child abuse, yet when little league coaches (and the wannabe “coaches” in the stands) advocate it, it's cheered on ?

Why is it if a kid breaks another kids' arm (or neck) on the playground, in the classroom or on the streets, a police investigation and a lawsuit are highly likely, but if that same kid ends up in the paraplegic ward at the hospital, “it's just part of the game, eh ?”

People make the low-brow argument that hockey is a fast paced sport where contact is inevitable and fighting is “part of the game”. Well, basketball is a fast paced sport and contact is inevitable – but: Contact is called a “foul” and these things called “penalties” are given out and ejection from the game is given if too many fouls occur. If a basketball player were so colossally stupid as to actually raise a fist against an opposing team member, he'd be ejected not only from the game, but from the building so fast his head would spin.

Funny thing is: Same thing with soccer. And football. And cricket. All of those sports are just as high energy, just as high adrenaline, just as “testosterone-laden” as hockey, yet if you raised a hand against a fellow player: Out you go. Even in football, where part of the whole game is about tackles and ramming into each other, you do not see players throwing gloves to the turf and beating the living daylights out of each other, while crowds of moms and dads with their kids beside them scream “KILL HIM! KILL THE @#*^&ER!!!!”

So why hockey ?

And especially: Why a sport that is supposed to be our national sport, to which tends of thousands of kids aspire to ?

Many of the (again) low-brows claim that fighting and aggressive checking is “part of the sport”, “makes it what it is” and so on: Yet each Olympic hockey, fighting, violence and aggressive contact is severelydecades after some Olympic games. curtailed, at the risk of ejection from the game, yet tens of millions of people speak of games in hushed tones of awe for years and

Furthermore, finally and, perhaps most importantly: Thousands and thousands of doctors, nurses, health care practitioners, child health experts and sports safety experts are calling the advocacy of violence in youth hockey no different than child abuse. Because that is exactly what it is: When you advocate for a child to actively and consciously go out and harm another child: That is abuse.

Funny thing is, in anything but hockey, not only is that an arrestable offense, but it's one that will get you put into a segregation cell in prison, because even murderers and rapists won't have anything to do with child abusers.

Marc Bissonnette is the proprietor of CanadianISP, Canadas' largest Internet Service Provider search and comparison site.

InternAlysis - Customized, specialized, dedicated eMarketing specialist
CanadianISP - Canadas' largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) list and comparison web site

How "last mile" providers, telcos and cablecos, could improve the entire industry

(And how they could do better for the public, the ISPs and their share holders )

Originally posted on CanadianISP.ca


There has been a lot of controversy in the past few years over how last mile providers are operating with regards to consumers in general and wholesale ISPs in specific. 


Charges of monopolism, restriction of trade, unfair trade practices are rife, to name but a few. 


Just to be clear, a "last mile" provider is someone to whom a consumer pust pay, directly or indirectly, to get from their home or business, out to the rest of the world; This is through the physical copper (or fibre) connection from their home or business, out to the poles or conduits, to a switching station, then to the rest of the Internet.


Obviously, you cannot have multiple last mile providers for each home; No one would want to see a solid wall of telephone poles lining streets or having their roads dug up once every three months when someone new enters the market to provide service.


Someone has to provide this service. Nine times out of ten, this is your local telephone or cable company. This has been accomplished over the past century and more by grants of right-of-way by local, provincial/state and federal governments to ensure communications were available to all.

The problem

A monopoly made a lot of sense thirty years ago and more: As mentioned above, you don't want five poles in front of each house and frankly, POTS was such a simple service that having one (or very few) carriers simply made it easier for all to ensure thorough communications reach to citizens.


In todays world, however, communications is a lot more - a VERY large amount more - than simply converting a voice to electrical impulses and re-converting them on the other end to create a conversation circuit; We have email, web, VoIP, video conferencing, VPNs, and many, many more forms of multiple-way (note: A LOT more than simple "two way") communication.


To state the obvious, some companies do things better than others. Some companies are so specialized that ALL they do is one form of the myriad of communications options we have today. It would be the very height of hubris to state, or even vaguely suggest, that one company can do all of this better than all the rest. This includes the last mile providers.

The harm

So why is it that governments in North America, specifically in Canada and the United States, are allowing a BACKWARDS slide in this competitive world ? One does not need to be radical, left-wing, ultra liberal or a conspiracy theorist to know - and cite many examples of - the fact that monopolies, duopolies (any form of genuinely limited competition) in critical infrastructure in a capitalist society does not work. In fact, they cause harm to large segments of society, ALWAYS.


A look at the real estate bubble and it's root cause: The banking and financial corruption that caused not only millions of people to lose their homes, but the massive impact to the global economy that we are still feeling, today. A look at the rare earths market and Chinas' decision to cut back 30% of exports and the sudden panic on the effect this will have if Canadian and US mines don't start up because so much of the worlds' supply came from one place. WalMart, though a huge success for stockholders and consumers looking for the lowest price, has created entire 'business ghost towns' where there is literally nothing but a WalMart and residences - nothing else.


Without reasonable competition in an industry, the desire for greater and greater profits causes greater and greater harm to those around them; Choices are removed from not only consumers, but from businesses that provide jobs and contribute to the GDP and tax base, as well as the diversity of a community, be that on a local or provincial/state wide basis to weather downturns in a particular sector or unforeseen force majeures.


Obviously, calling for the end to all telcos and cablecos would be utterly foolish: They provide an infrastructure that both businesses and the consumers need to access the rest of the world at large. Where I think they are falling afoul of the "desire for greater and greater profits and causing greater and greater harm to those around them" is that they are looking towards the fact that entertainment content is moving entirely over to the Internet and they want a solely captive audience with zero competition. By entertainment content, I refer to television and movie content moving at an increasingly rapid pace to being delivered over IP, rather than over the air (By broadcast or satellite).


In my view, they see the profits in this not only from subscription-based content, but in bandwidth used for such content. At present, the global average for content usage is 11 gb/month ( "Cisco Visual Networking Index Study Finds Today's Average Global Broadband Connection Generates 11.4 Gigabytes of Internet Traffic per Month" newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/prod_102109.html ) - This is up from only a year ago where the average content used was between five and six gigabytes per month. This number is, obviously, going up and an exponential rate, year over year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

A solution

So, what is the solution ? The average price for DSL in Canada, for example, is $47.55 per month (Source: CanadianISP.ca pricing data) - This works out to roughly 43 cents per megabyte, per month, on average. What I believe the telcos and cablecos SHOULD be doing is encouraging MORE isps to get MORE customers to engage in MORE transfer. In other words: The telcos and cablecos could not only be the "White Knights" of the ISP industry by encouraging competition, they can PROFIT from it, as well as the ISPs. How do they do that ?


Right now, the average ISP pays a wholesale cost between $16 - $20 / month / loop to the telco for a DSL line. Given the average, bare bones DSL contact tends to hover around $24 / month for the consumer, that does not leave a lot of room at all for the ISP to profit not only to pay its bills, but to expand, invest or innovate. Telco and Cablecos could encourage - and profit - from this with the following model:


Change the loop access price to $5.00 / loop / month


Bill $0.0012 per megabyte, starting at meg 0 - With an average of 11 gigs / month used, the telco will see $13.20 / month plus the $5.00 access fee plus any overages. This not only encourages ISPs to aggressively recruit new clients, but for the public to consume more in terms of bandwidth, for which both the ISP and the local loop provider will profit from. It also encourages new entrants to the ISP market, with all of the related benefits of job creation, equipment purchases, taxes collected and so on.


Edit - January, 2011: After speaking with many people using the 'net more and more for TV, movies and other, high volume content, a better UBB model presents itself:

Speeds up to 6 Megabits / sec: ~0.0020 / megabyte (Assumes roughly ~10 GB/mo)

Speeds from 6-20 Megabits / sec: ~0.0005 / megabyte (Assumes rought ~120 GB/mo)

 (Plus monthly connection fee of $5 / month for <10 Mb/Sec, $10 / month for >= 10 Mb/sec)


At the rate this is going, the current model will not hold out; There will be a consumer backlash to the point where the current system will be overhauled. The worse case scenario is that foreign competition would enter the scene with even more money that the Canadian telco and cablecos, throwing a lot of the industry out on its tail, not to mention the massive fallout in stocks and bonds. The least worst (and it's still bad) is they'll be legislated into a scenario described above, but that will not rectify the intervening years of massive profit gouging, harm to the market and the dismal 36th place Canada currently sits at, in terms of broadband speed and availability.

-Marc Bissonnette, Beachburg, Ontario
CanadianISP.ca
October 29, 2010

Life in a small town and the knowledge economy

 Originally posted on CanadianISP.ca

By now, if you've looked over more than two pages on CanadianISP, you will probably have deduced that I live in Beachburg, Ontario. Many, if not most of you have asked where the heck is Beachburg ? That's okay if you did: A common joke around here is that you have to turn the map of Ontario over to find our little farming village of nine hundred people.

Given I grew up in Ottawa and spent a good part of my sales, marketing and Internet career in both Montreal and Toronto, many ask - Why a village of 900, more than an hour and a half from Ottawa and four and half hour drive from Toronto ?

There were two reasons, initially, though after nearly nine years, now, that list of reasons has grown a lot. Initially, however, it was: Cost of living and family. We moved here after our third child was born because Toronto was insanely expensive to live in and the thought of our children playing outside, unsupervised, without armed guards and an attack helicopter hovering overhead gave us the willies.

When looking for a new home, we hadn't even heard of Beachburg: Our methodology was to take a piece of string that represented 200km and trace a two hour circle around Ottawa. (We still hadn't heard of Beachburg at that point) - When looking at homes in Renfrew, Arnprior, Carleton Place, Almonte, Calebogie (all places we both knew about and had spent time in), the real estate agent said "I'd like to show you a couple of places in Pembroke and Beachburg".
Pembroke ? I'd seen the city name on the sign for the westbound 417, but that was about it. Beach - what ?!? A long drive later, we found a house and property we fell in love with. The price was right, the neighbourhood was amazing, school literally steps away and - best of all - 6 megabit DSL with a switching station (Heck, the actual telco itself) about 800 meters from the house.

SOLD

Some may think that two hours from Ottawa is too far to live from major shopping (Though Pembroke, a town of 14,000, is less than 20 minutes from here), but really, how long do you spend in rush hour in Toronto or Ottawa ? (Two hours in rush hour in Toronto ? That's an *amazing* time! Ottawa is certainly creeping up there, but is still no where close to T.O.)

With broadband to the home, a business like mine (InternAlysis, a virtual marketing director is my 'real' company) in the knowledge economy is a no brainer in a setting like this. As the global economy becomes more, well, global, cost of living is becoming an important factor for an awful lot of people. Before I started CanadianISP, the bulk of my work was in perl CGI scripting, MySQL application design and emarketing consulting. I charged $100 / hour and had *no* problem filling my billable hours. (In fact, I was middle-of-the-road in terms of rates. I knew - and learned from - some absolutely *brilliant* coders in T.O. who charged $350/hour with an eight hour minimum and they still had to turn clients away for lack of time)

Nowadays, however, you can get some extremely talented coders from Russia, Pakistan and India for as little as US $10/hour for their work. Why compete in what was once a unique and specialized area that had become commoditized ? This is especially true if living in a city like Toronto: Supporting a family of five on ten dollars an hour simply is not possible.

So, from my home in our little community of Beachburg, where, compared to my parents' place in Ottawa, I literally have ten times the property size, twice the square footage in the house, I pay less than a fifth of their property taxes, water rates and insurance costs. Yes, meeting up with the family or old friends takes a little more planning (Especially when one child with Angelman Syndrome is in a wheelchair), but overall, it is massively worth it.

If you run your own business and it does not rely on a lot of face-to-face on a regular basis with your clients, you may want to ask yourself if you really need to be living in the high priced urban areas.
Before we moved here, financially, we were making it happen, but things got tight from time to time. After the second month here in Beachburg, after the bills had a chance to come in, there was a ton of money left over in the bank account. Suddenly, luxuries we hadn't thought of were possible. We took our first trip to the Carribean. Our children have gone to Nova Scotia and Florida, amongst other places. Our kids can play outside and not have to worry about muggers, drug dealers, rapists or pedophiles.

Small town living ? Oh heck yeah!

Organic marketing versus, well, everything else on the Internet

 Originally posted on CanadianISP.ca

Organic, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Socila Media Advertising, Link Farming, print/paper/radio/television advertising, direct mail marketing, email marketing – The list of methods for getting your company's brand and message out there actually goes on even further.
So which is “best” ? Depending who you ask, this is where the blood gets ankle deep and children are turned into orphans. This commentary, however, will be on my observations of thirty years on Internet use, twenty of them professionally in all three of technical development, sales and marketing (All three of which, I still do today)
The quick answer, for me, would be “Organic marketing is the way to go, period.”

Why is organic marketing better ?

Why ? It takes longer to see results, the feedback loop is no where near as immediate, so evolving your strategy can often be a matter of months, rather than hours, and, in general, organic marketing is time and labour intensive.
Why ? Because it works. Not only does it work to bring people your message, thus bringing the people to you, but it's because it gives them the answers to the solutions they are actually seeking. Pay per click, push media like television and newspaper, mail or email marketing, most of those are typically a scatter gun approach, or “Throw enough mud at the barn wall and some of it has got to stick”. They rely on the sheer volume of people seeing the message and the hope that that message is good enough that that magical four percent conversion ratio, or view-to-click ratio, will be achieved.

So what is "organic" marketing ?

Organic, or “natural” marketing, is the process of getting other people, web sites, blogs, social media, word of mouth and private emails to not only link to your business, but recommend and endorse it because it is relevant to them and to those they think will benefit from it. Organic marketing automatically contains the subconscious recommendation-from-a-satisfied-friend benefit, because the chances are when you are reading a site that you already follow faithfully, you do so because you value and/or trust that sites' content: When that trusted source recommends another source, you automatically give that second source a higher chance of earning your business, rather than a random Joe along the street who happens to see the same thing.
Of course, organic marketing, when successful, also gives the same benefits as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, in that you're placed at the top of the search engine results. To be fair, this is not only harder to do, but also harder to maintain, but this is pretty standard: You can spend your entire weekend fixing your own car, getting dirty, cuts and scrapes, lost time that you'd rather spend on the boat, or you can pay someone else to do it in an afternoon in their shop.
Like fixing your own car, the satisfaction of having done it yourself is tremendous. Unlike fixing your car, however, organic marketing success also brings you financial benefits in the form of increased business. If you're doing things right, this is not only an increase in short term sales, but in the long term retention of loyal and repeat customers.

A little advice for successful organic marketing methods

The purpose of this commentary isn't really to get into the how-to's of organic marketing (I might put up something like that at a later date if there is enough interest), but I will make a few suggestions:

1. Content, content, content! Just like having a repeat customer come back to your store for new and interesting products, repeat visitors to your site are looking for new and interesting content. Never forget that most people do not make a purchase on their first visit to a site: Give them reasons to come back.
2. Don't insult your customers by telling them to buy your products on your say-so alone. This is related to #1, above: If your website is nothing but a catalogue of your products, along with their prices and a bunch of checkout buttons, you are insulting your customers by telling them “Buy our stuff because we tell you to”. When selling widgets or services online, you need to show, via your site, how to use your widgets, why people use your widgets, creative use of same, feedback from your customers on your widgets good and bad – that shows you listen to your customers.
3. The Internet is much more than just your website: You, your company and your staff should be all over the place. There are literally millions of forums, websites, blogs, social media sites and so on where your company's presence should be felt. HOWEVER: Be aware that sometimes, “presence” and “spam” can have a very fine, sometimes invisible, dividing line between them. If you're not sure about putting content about your firm on someone elses' site, try asking the site owner. At the very least, if you can't see other examples of companies doing the same on the site you'd like to expose yourself on, try asking the users. A message like “Hi everyone, I represent a company that is very much related to this forum and I think we've got a lot of insights and advice that would be of interest, but do not wish to have the appearance of spamming – Can anyone point me in the right direction for what is and isn't acceptable here in terms of company participation in the discussions and community ?” - That will give you a lot warmer reception than blatantly jumping in, head first, with an all-out ad for your latest product, no matter how closely related to the site's interests you are.
4. Email marketing and confirmed opt-in. This is critical to email marketing and communications: You should never, ever be sending email to any member of the public without whom you do not already have a business relationship, are answering a direct query or have a record of the confirmation of their permission for your to send them bulk email. Keep in mind that the first two, direct business relationship (i.e. They just bought something from you) and query response (They just asked if your products also come in pink) does not constitute permission to send other, bulk, email. Bulk email includes newsletters, site update notifications, sales or promotions mails, solicitations for new business and so on. Failure to adhere to confirmed opt-in for email marketing will very quickly find your company listed with Spamhaus or AHBL, which means your internet will quickly turn into an intranet – meaning you won't be able to email anyone but yourself.
5. Given the perception that email marketing is cheap, quick and 'has the potential to reach millions', read #4 again.
6. Cross-linking; The ideal goal is to have as many possible sites linking to yours as possible, in order to raise your profile both to the general public, as well as to the search engines. However: The concept of “pay it forward” or “Do unto thy neighbour” also applies, here: Don't be afraid to make your own recommendations for complimentary (but non-competing) businesses of your own. In fact, doing such is a great opener for getting in touch with the company you'd like to recommend with a note along the lines of “You know, we're really impressed with your product and would like to let you know that we are recommending your company on our site, here (URL here) – We would like to know if you would be interested in reciprocating the link because, as you know, the greater the cross links sites have across the net, the better we each appear in search engine results”. Of course, it is even better if you can actually pick up the phone and ask this of someone you have a business relationship with, rather than an “out of the blue” email.

There are so many other hints, tips and suggestions on true, successful organic marketing that it would literally take a book – a large one – to cover them all. Some of it is through trial and error (and yes, I have the benefit of twenty years of such for my own efforts), but the above is a good starter. You can also search for “Organic marketing tips” and similar terms in your preferred search engine and get a lot of healthy tips and ideas.
At the end of the day, Organic marketing success should be your ultimate goal, whether you've just started a new business or are a long term player in your industry. I guarantee you sales and profit from organic marketing are a lot higher in the long run than the quick injections from PPC or similar.
How do I know ? Well, running Canada's number one Internet Service Provider ( ISP ) list and comparison site, CanadianISP, from Beachburg, Ontario, a farming village of 900, should be an indication of just how well it works :)