I might have to agree with Joel's logic here on hiring the top 1%.

Since Gmail's slick web UI, I've been seeing more and more talk about remote scripting.

Brent and I came up with these ideas in mid 2000 and Brent fleshed out JSRS for use in an online tutor service we were developing back then. JSRS was used very successfully for that service and has been used on other projects since including BlogChat.

Of course, since then remote scripting in general has come a very long way. See Brent's Remote Scripting page and likely google searches all the other techniques being used. There might be a resource someone can point to. If so, just comment on this post.

It is just interesting to see people taking a real notice now (some 5 years later).

I've used a free eFax number as my main fax number for many many years now. I only receive the occasional fax and having a separate line and a fax machine of some sorts just wasn't worth it.

Looks like eFax might be phasing out the free service. Recieved this on my second eFax number by email today:

At this time, we will no longer be able to offer you eFax Free service on: 1-630-xxx-xxxx. To keep your eFax account open, and avoid service interruption, you must upgrade to the eFax Plus service.

It is possible that they are killing it cause of inactivity. I haven't received an email about my main number just yet.

Whats the big deal with everyone getting excited about the Amazon Yellow Pages. I've been waiting since the early to mid 90's for something like this. In fact, this is one of the first useful things I thought I'd see on the net back then. There have been a lot of attempts over the years to put something similar together but nobody has really done it right.

The images are a nice touch but the whole thing will likely fail just like all the others when they have just a fraction of the businesses and locations available in the directory.

Here is a post from a guy who worked on the team.

Tyler Hamilton inteviews Dermot O'Carroll, senior vice-president of network engineering and operations at Rogers Cable as stated in his blog here.

The actual article is published in the Star here.

I'd like Dermot to explain how Rogers can make claims as stated in the article:

"Rogers is promising eight hours worth of back-up power in case of outages, as well as 911 calling in the event of an emergency. And unlike services from Vonage or Primus, which are designed to piggyback high-speed access services they don't control, Rogers will be in solid control over the access points and network its telephone customers will rely on."

I've been asking Rogers for 3 years to remove their dependance on FCI Broadband (also known as Futureway Communications) that provide the infrastructure and network in my area that Rogers piggybacks on top of. They have told me over the years there is nothing they can do about it and they certainly haven't been helpful in anyway in resolving any issues whatsoever with this problem and FCI Broadband. Do you know how many times Rogers tech support tried to get me to call FCI Broadband (even though I am not a customer of FCI Broadband) to look into issues in the area?? Why should I have to do that? Why would Rogers not call them on this? Simple, they couldn't care. Why would Rogers care now that VoIP is being rolled out. They won't. The service will be horrible and unreliable especially in this area.

You'll see a number of Customer Service categories on the left hand side of this blog. All of them have stepped up to the plate to try to resolve problems as posted here except for Rogers. I know a great number of people at Rogers read this blog and I'll take their silence to mean they still don't want to deal with this issue 3 years later.

You certainly won't find me using the Rogers VoIP service. Two tin cans and a piece of string would be much more reliable.

As a side note, FCI Broadband (Futureway Communications) offers digital phone service in this area and a number of people were conned into signing up with the service as FCI Broadband (Futureway Communications) told people that Bell could not bring their own lines in. I had Bell string in a line and I don't think it has been down since I moved in (over 3 years). Even during the big blackout I'm pretty sure I had phone service the whole time. I can't tell you how many times people asked me if my phone was working. Theirs were out for days at a stretch many many times. I have no idea if things are better in the last year or so but I can just imagine how lousy their phone service is.

Update: Mark Evans has a post on this as well.

Update: Mark Evans has a post on FCI Broadband (Futureway Communications) entering the VoIP market!!! My comments above should tell you how far away I'm staying from that one!!!!

As predicted in this post the dam has broken and the connection was totally fried for a period today. Serious degredation in cable TV reception in the last 2 weeks as well. Was down for an hour only today but this is likely a sign of more downage coming up.

ISP typically take the way too aggressive approach as Verizon seems to be doing. This certainly doesn't surprise me.

From this article:

Since mid-December, users have complained on Internet message boards and to Verizon customer service centers that they are not receiving legitimate inbound e-mail from Europe and Asia. Verizon, they say, has taken the unusual step of blocking nearly all mail from certain geographic areas because some networks in those regions are used by spammers.

At SimpleFilter the decision to block email that is either low, medium or high probably of being spam is entirely up to the customer.

I have to admit that we've been tempted to globally block all mail from Asia but we have other measures in place to deal with it efficiently.

According to this article, Google is looking for a job candidate that include the following duties:

"Identification, selection, and negotiation of dark fiber contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network; contracts and negotiation for managed metropolitan services and long haul wavelength services to fulfill capacity and redundancy requirements in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Europe"

If my neighborhood is any indication of why there is dark fiber laying all around then Google might not want anything to do with it. Apparently FCI Broadband (also known as Futureway Communications) was not able to get fiber working in this subdivsion (likely not anywhere else either). So it sits there dark as can be in the ground all the way to my house. I doubt it will ever be lit unless someone drops a bucket load of money on it to make it work.

Then again, maybe we need Google to frighten the heck out of the telecom providers into actually making this stuff work.

I know Google isn't looking to light up the last mile but I just thought I should point out an instance of dark fiber that will likely go nowhere.

Note: FCI Broadband (Futureway Communications) provides the really lousy infrastructure for the cable company in this area ( Rogers Cable Internet ).

Looks like Adam is having the time of his life with getting Internet connectivity at his new place.

I know how he feels. I went through the same thing here with Rogers and FCI Broadband (used to be called Futureway) when I first moved in. I've written about these idiots before here.

I would have gladly paid $200/month for decent Internet access during the dark days. Are any other providers listening??

For those of you looking for legitimate uses for BitTorrent and also looking to download Redhat Fedora Core 1, 2 or 3 you can find the torrents here.

They are downloading extremely nicely for me right now. Be nice to see a lot more legal uses of BitTorrent like this. Perhaps I should start a directory of legal only downloads.

Update: I should have looked a little closer at the website pointed above. They already have a directory going. See the homepage here.