This story on Salon has brought back some fond memories from my early days of BBSing in the basement of my parents home.

Somewhere in the early-to-mid-eighties, my cousin Chris and I had been messing around for a number of years on our VIC20’s and Commodore64’s, learning the ins-and-outs of computers the hard way: line-by-painstaking-line… Chris was the first to take the leap forward when he bought himself an Atari 520 ST computer – and it was the bomb! We spent entire weekends staying up all night playing games like Leisure Suit Larry and Ultima IV. When Chris got his first 300 baud modem, the world of BBSing opened up before us. What a mindfuck – you could actually connect to another computer through your phone line, and send messages to other people who did the same thing! Suddenly, video games weren’t the only reason to own a computer – we could communicate with people! People we didn’t know! And these people would open up their communities to us and share information and software!

Around this time, I bought an Atari 1040 ST of my own – with 20MEG Hard Drive – the thing seemed like a bottomless pit! BBSing became an addiction. Chris even began running his own BBS: The Sword’s Blade – the most popular hangout for Atari Users in all the land. Many late nights were spent posting messages, sharing files, playing online text-based games. I even ran a small part-time BBS called The Cave – it was nothings special, but it was mine, and people visited it. BBSing was about connecting people – they were the first online communities.

What fun. So many great memories. I learned so much back then – those days laid the ground-work for everything I am doing today. It’s amazing to think about how far technology has come, but that one central purpose of connecting people is still very much alive.

FROM : Dave Samojlenko (dave@blogbynight.com)

SENT : Wednesday, June 05, 2002 11:04 AM

TO : Mac Harb (Harb.M@parl.gc.ca)

SUBJECT : The Federal Liberal Party

Dear Mr. Harb,

I have been a resident of your Constituency for over 25 years. I have been of legal voting age for the last 11. You have never received a letter from me. I have never called your office. I never felt I needed to, until now.

I feel I need to express my outrage at the recent events unfolding in the federal Liberal government, and in particular, the actions of our Prime Minister, Jean Chretien. Amidst allegations of corruption, deceit and ethical lapses, Mr. Chretien’s arrogance is growing. His dismissal this week of Finance Minister Paul Martin is a blatant slap in the face to all Canadians who have supported the Liberal Government for the past three elections – and it may very well be the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

Mr. Martin was arguably the most popular politician in the Liberal party, and most certainly a major part of why the Federal Liberals have won the past three elections. Mr. Martin has been widely credited with this country’s economic turnaround, and as long as he was by Mr. Chretien’s side, Canadians were willing to put up with our Prime Minister’s shenanigans. Our confidence in Mr. Martin at the financial helm of our great country superceded our disgust with Mr. Chretien’s public antics. There was also a wide-spread belief that some day, Mr. Martin might be given the chance to lead the Federal Liberals, saving us the ebarassment of a fourth term with Mr. Chretien.

Now the Federal Liberal Party is in turmoil. Mr. Martin’s supporters are calling for Chretien’s head, and Mr. Chretien’s supporters are desperately looking for a way to remain on top. Mr. Chretien’s actions get more desperate every day, and it is becoming abundantly clear to all Canadians that he cares more about his political career and legacy than he does about this country.

Mr. Chretien has lost the confidence of half of his party and a growing majority of Canadians. His days are numbered. The end of Chretien’s reign will come either from within the party before the next election (ie: losing the coming leadership review) or it will end by mandate from the electorate in the next election if Chretien chooses to lead the party into it. The polls are showing a shift in the electorate that the Federal Liberals will never recover from if they don’t do something now. Canadians will not put up with Chretien’s blatant arrogance any longer. If Liberal MP’s are smart, they will get behind the right man in this fight.

If you want my vote in the next election, you will get behind the right man in this fight.

Sincerely,

Dave Samojlenko

Ottawa Centre, Ontario

Some links relating to our Prime Minister’s ignorance:

(and to the current turmoil in our government)

Bank wanted quick decision on Martin: PM

How can anybody believe or trust a guy who talks like this? “I had for him to make a decision before six o’clock or eight o’clock … because anticipation of his possible resignation, the governor of the Bank (of Canada) had advised me through (a) person — I did not talk personally — that it was much better to have a resolution of this problem before the market opening in Tokyo at eight o’clock (Sunday night)” … “And on top of it, the governor was preoccupied that because (Tuesday) was the day where he had to fix the interest rate. So you know, the affair of the nation had to be carried out in the interest of the nation.” Not to mention that the Bank of Canada is supposed to keep itself divorced from political matters. Can’t wait to hear what they have to say about Mr. Chretien’s remarks.

Martin refused to be a Cabinet eunuch

At a luncheon with Chretien in the 80’s: “…there was one odd thing about his conversation. In 90 minutes or so, no one, no matter how hard they tried, could get him off the subject of Jean Chrétien. It was the only topic that interested him and he seemed to believe sincerely that it obsessed everyone else as much as it did him. At that moment, since he was so far removed from power, his enormous ego was no more than a psychological curiosity.

“When he left the room, the people at our table chuckled over his narcissism. Someone said that lunch was one thing, but being with him for much longer would be unendurable.

“Everyone seemed to agree. We of course had no idea that one day the monumental self-regard of Jean Chrétien would be a grave problem for the whole country.”

The plot to make Martin a nobody

PM threatens rebels with snap election

Chretien getting poor advice, Liberal MP says

The Prime Minister will be brought down

‘Part-time’ minister juggles jobs

Amazon.com is planning to launch a Canadian on-line site towards the end of this month. I have mixed feelings about this news:

I love the technology behind Amazon.com’s site, and have maintained a wishlist there for the last year or two – their recommendations system has pointed me towards some great books and products that I otherwise would not have known about. But until now, I haven’t really ordered anything from them, because between duty, shipping and the US exchange rate, it just wasn’t worth it – instead, I would place my book orders with Canadian on-line retailers like Chapters/Indigo. This felt good to me – in the end, I got some great recommendations from Amazon, but I was supporting Canadian business – something I feel very strongly about.

Now that Amazon is coming to town, I’m faced with a dillema – I know they’re going to be extremely competitive price-wise, and you already know how I feel about their technology. I really want to continue supporting our Canadian retailers, but there’s something to be said about convenience and good user-experience. I will certainly try to continue the same way I have been – if something is available at a comparable price from a Canadian retailer, I’ll send my business their way. But unless Chapters/Indigo and other Canadian online retailers begin to focus a little more on the technology behind their sites and learn some lessons from the Amazon model, I fear that their business may begin to dwindle.

In the online world, if you don’t fulfill a users’ expectations lightning-fast and transparently, you will lose that customer. The convenience of shopping through Amazon, where they carry just about everything under the sun at great prices, will be hard enough to compete with, but when you mix in their recommendations system and wishlist and other user-centered site features, Canadian retailers are in for some serious trouble.

Inneraction, a local training/production centre launched their new site today. What a horrible disaster. This site epitomizes everything I detest about Flash and Flash Developers.

My first complaint is the fact that it takes over your entire screen, obscuring your desktop and taskbar at the bottom of the screen. From a usability standpoint, this is a huge mistake (not to mention rude) – removing the users’ familiar desktop environment, and taking over the entire screen with no obvious way to flip out of the site.

The navigation within the site is over-complicated and horrendously counter-intuitive – it took me a good 5 minutes of exploring to figure it out. Upon my second viewing of the site, I realized that there was a little animation that plays at the beginning that explains it, but if you miss it (as I did on my first run), you’re SOL.

The content within the site is poorly organized, and sometimes barely readable – between the colours they chose and the font sizes, I found myself squinting to read.

The entire site runs pigishly slow – even on a DSL connection – and there is no Low-Bandwidth option for dialup users. And when I tried to submit my comments in their comments section, the damn forms didn’t work! All-in-all, a horrible user-experience from a company that is out there training people to work in a business that relies on good user-experiences.

I don’t actually hate Flash or Flash Developers. I believe Flash has its place on the web. I’m not one of those all-text-no-fun-web-designer-types… I just think that there are some basic principles of usability that publishers should stick by, especially if your site is content-driven. It’s one thing to want to do something new and fun, but if users can’t access your content, what’s the point?

You can be David Still! Mr. Still has offered up his identity for anyone who would like to use it. You can send random email using his identity if you’d like… or you can reply to email that has been sent to him. He gives you all of his background information so you can really get into character. how much fun is that?

“Our entire culture has fallen into the hands of a few multinational corporations, taking with it our right to tell our stories, our right to exchange our information, even our right to heal our sick. It’s time for us to take back what is ours.” Read this article. Just do it.

David Cronenberg has a new movie coming out: Spider. yay!

Irreversible, directed by Franco-Argentinian director Gaspar Noe, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this week. The film, which describes a woman’s rape and her boyfriend’s bloody quest for revenge, proved so shocking that 250 people walked out, some of whom required medical attention. wow. A movie that inspires physical ailments – that’s my kind of movie!

Maverick and Vivendi Universal want to sell you an MP3. In what appears to be a giant leap in the right direction for the recording industry, the label giants are going to offer a dance version of “Earth” by Meshell Ndegeocello online for 99 cents. What makes this step particularly bold is that they will be selling it as an MP3, an insecure format which the recording industry has been adamantly avoiding for fear of digital piracy. What makes it particularly smart is that this is what the public wants – up till now, the recording industry has been obsessed with finding a secure digital format for their releases, but have been finding, not surprisingly, that people don’t want to pay for music that can only be listened to on a limited number of devices or for a limited amount of time. So while they’ve been scrambling to find a secure format which would offer them the control they want, online piracy has been running rampant, leaving execs scratching their heads and blaming music services like Napster, Morpheus and Kazaa for their troubles. I think the labels may find, if given the chance, that people are not so dead set against paying for music. People want to be able to support their favourite artists, but they don’t want to pay a ridiculous amount for a bloated CD that contains one or two good songs and a pile of filler. They also want to be able to listen to the music they buy wherever and however they want. “I think you’ll be able to count the number of sales on one hand. As soon as one person gets it, its all over the (peer-to-peer) networks for free,” laments one critic. He may be right. Piracy is always going to be a concern – peer-to-peer technology is here and it’s not going anywhere, no matter how many lawsuits are brought. And that’s a big problem for the way the labels have been trying to do business in the internet economy – they’ve been trying to impose their old-world control on a medium that is grounded in a very different philosophy. Rather than giving people what they want, they’ve been giving people what they want to give them. Until they learn the difference, the internet pirates will be calling the shots.

An excerpt from Geeks by Jon Katz:

“For me, writing this right now, being a geek means being a willing member of a growing community of social discontent, an intelligent community of libertarians, artists, dreamers, and builders. Technology is just the ticket in, the magic is the discontent and imagination, never being satisfied, and being creative about it. Everyone can use a computer, not everyone is a geek.”