Archive for March, 2007

The telco’s have been getting a lot of attention the last couple weeks. On the 22nd of March the Globe & Mail reported that Telus was taking BCE to court over an ad run in Western Canada, were Frank and Gordon (the lovable Bell spokesbears) were bragging that Bell had the most powerful network. The only problem, was that Bell runs off of Telus networks in the West!

This past week BCE was rumoured (on the front page of the Globe) to soon be the target of a takeover by KKR — an American private equity firm. BCE quickly denied the reports, but the very next day were reported to be in talks with Telus for a possible merger. The following script (it’s a joke) from a Bell Mobility TV commercial was in todays Globe:

Bell Mobility’s latest TV commercial, take 23. Action:

Gordon: So, Frank, did you hear about the company being taken over by Lenny Kravitz?

Frank: That’s Henry Kravis, Gord. And by the time he’s finished with us, you can forget about your lifetime supply of jelly beans.

Gordon: What would an American leveraged buyout company want with us? I was checking BCE stock yesterday on my new phone using our unlimited calling plan, and apparently the share price hasn’t moved since Alexander Graham Bell last called his mom on her birthday.

Frank: That’s just it, Gord. It doesn’t matter how well you and I do at attracting the elusive 14-35 demographic in the face of intense competition from hipper, nimbler providers such as Rogers and Virgin Mobile, the fact remains that our shareholders are fed up with BCE stock stinking up their RRSPs.

Gordon: So that nice man, Michael Sabia, who interviewed us for the job, is he in trouble?

Frank: Let’s just say he might just want to think of posting his résumé on workopolis.com. You too, my furry friend. I hear they’re thinking of replacing you with a possum.

Gordon: Oh yeah? Well, don’t count your chickens, because when they find out how much Norm McDonald is getting paid to do your voice, he’ll be the out the door and you’ll be talking like Ryan Seacrest.

Frank: Seacrest’s cheap. He’s got no class.

Gordon: Maybe, but I’m scared, Frank. Very scared. I can’t afford to go back to building dams for a living. Can’t Ottawa step in?

Frank: That’s an idea! Hey, why don’t I call Stephen Harper using Bell Mobility’s amazing family and friends plan?

(Close-up on Frank holding the ultracool LG Fusic phone. He dials.)

Frank: Prime Minister’s office, please. Oh, hi Mr. Harper. Say, I wondered if you could do something to stop Americans taking over Canada’s most prized telecommunications network and infrastructure? Hmm-hmm. Yep. Uh-ha. OK. (Hangs up.)

Gord: What’s he say?

Frank: He said he’d like to help us, but there’s no Quebec or 905 votes in it.

Gord: That’s it. I’m outta here. Screw those monkeys, I’m heading over to Telus.

Frank: Me too.

Exeunt, pursued by a bear.

Earlier today I decided to head down to the Indigo at Bay/Bloor after work to see an interview with Chris Gardner. In 2006 Chris published a book on his memoirs titled The Pursuit of Happyness — as many of you probably know, that book was also turned into a movie. The interview lasted from 7pm to 8pm and was conducted by the founder and Chief Indigo Book Lover Heather Reisman.

I got there exactly at 7pm and had to stand for the interview. I couldn’t take a clear picture from that far back, so near the end I tried to make my way to the front, along the sides. I couldn’t really get a good shot, but here are a couple:

As I touched on in my bio, I work at IBM on the team which develops the WebSphere Development Studio Client (WDSC). Yesterday my team/area launched our team blog (WDSC Development Team). As the name implies, this blog is a collaborative effort amongst numerous people in my area. We have big things planned for this blog, and hope to facilitate a lively discussion amongst members of the community.

This is interesting, though on a small scale, it’s still relevant. I run Google Adwords (display ads on specific search terms with Google) for a service I created called WebBasedCron. A little while ago, I decided to start tracking what ads were really being clicked — i.e. when an advertisement was clicked, it would send them to a special URL (ex. www.webbasedcron.com/?action=advwbc). Then I would use PHP code like the following to record the persons IP, the date, time and their session id.

if ( $read_action == "advwbc" ) {
        $session = $user->db->quote(session_id());
        $ip = $user->db->quote($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
        $date = $user->db->quote(date("'Y-m-d'"));
        $time = $user->db->quote(date('H:i:s'));
        $sqlInsert = "INSERT INTO webcron_google(date,time,ip,session) VALUES ($date,$time,$ip,$session)";
        $user->db->query($sqlInsert);
}

The session is important because it tells me if the advertisement was clicked in the same instance of the browser or not (when you restart your browser, you get a new session). So lets look at the results for March 9th (yesterday). I changed nothing, only hid half the persons IP address.

2007-03-09  	04:16:35  	211.30.xxx.xx  	9fbe09012f7ce71854b1e040b0b0fe3c
2007-03-09 	04:17:20 	211.30.xxx.xx 	9fbe09012f7ce71854b1e040b0b0fe3c
2007-03-09 	04:17:47 	211.30.xxx.xx 	9fbe09012f7ce71854b1e040b0b0fe3c
2007-03-09 	04:18:07 	211.30.xxx.xx 	9fbe09012f7ce71854b1e040b0b0fe3c
2007-03-09 	04:18:10 	211.30.xxx.xx 	9fbe09012f7ce71854b1e040b0b0fe3c
2007-03-09 	04:18:13 	211.30.xxx.xx 	9fbe09012f7ce71854b1e040b0b0fe3c
2007-03-09 	04:18:34 	211.30.xxx.xx 	9fbe09012f7ce71854b1e040b0b0fe3c
2007-03-09 	04:18:36 	211.30.xxx.xx 	9fbe09012f7ce71854b1e040b0b0fe3c
2007-03-09 	07:47:21 	193.71.xx.x 	 1895a2c135512d29fa7002e6a8126e65
2007-03-09 	09:51:47 	59.144.xxx.xxx 	b5c090a6f26d83b890fd2faf79c17464

You may notice, that the first 8 lines were from the same IP address (211.30.xxx.xx) clicked between 04:16:35 to 04:18:36. It’s easy to see this person got pretty click happy, clicking the ad, hitting back, clicking the ad, etc. Furthermore, the session id is the same for all the 8 clicks, which means he/she was using the same browser instance. I would expect Google to be able to detect this type of click fraud and only charge me for 2 legitimate clicks, the ones placed at 07:47:21 and 09:51:47 (not from 211.30.xxx.xx). The strange part, is I was charged for 4 clicks that day. That means of the 8 illegitimate clicks, Google charged me for 2 of them.

Believe me, at an average cost per click of $0.11, it really doesn’t matter, but I can imagine for larger companies, Google must be making a fortune off these people. Its really hard to side with Google on this, I mean if they deemed 6 of those clicks illegitimate, why not the remaining 2?? Do people really click the same advertisement 8 times in 2 minutes, with many of them 3 seconds apart? It’s easy to see that even through blatant click fraud Google shamelessly makes money.

This Friday (March 9th) the film adaptation of the graphic novel 300 by Frank Miller comes out. The movie is about the Battle of Thermopylae, largely regarded as the most famous last stands in history. This is really an amazing story of courage, passion, pride — and the ability to overcome insurmountable odds. If you have time, read about it.

In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC, an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae in central Greece. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the enemy in one of the most famous last stands of history. A small force led by King Leonidas of Sparta blocked the only road through which the massive army of Xerxes I could pass. After three days of battle a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks, revealing a mountain path that led behind the Greek lines. Dismissing the rest of the army, King Leonidas stayed behind with 300 Spartans and 700 Thespian volunteers. Though they knew it meant their own deaths, they held their position and secured the retreat of the other Greek forces. The Persians succeeded in taking the pass but sustained heavy losses, extremely disproportionate to those of the Greeks. The fierce resistance of the Spartan-led army offered Athens the invaluable time to prepare for a naval battle that would come to determine the outcome of the war. The subsequent Greek victory in the Battle of Salamis left much of the Persian navy destroyed. Xerxes was forced to flee to Asia and left his army in Greece under Mardonius, who was to meet the Greeks in battle for one last time. The Spartans and other Greek allies assembled at full strength and decisively defeated the Persians in the Battle of Plataea, putting an end to the Greco-Persian War and with that, Persian expansion into Europe.

The performance of the defenders at the battle of Thermopylae is often used as an example of the advantages of training, equipment and good use of terrain to maximize an army’s potential, as well as a symbol of courage against overwhelming odds. The heroic sacrifice of the Spartans and the Thespians has captured the minds of many throughout the ages and has given birth to many cultural references as a result.

Read more about this

I’m giving a tech talk today at work on a JavaScript Toolkit called Dojo. I made the slides based off of the dojo.book documentation. I uploaded the slides to Zoho, you can see them below. Hit the button in the bottom corner to maximize the presentation.