Home Network explained

HTG Explains: Understanding Routers, Switches, and Network Hardware

Today we’re taking a look at the home networking hardware: what the individual pieces do, when you need them, and how best to deploy them. Read on to get a clearer picture of what you need to optimize your home network.
When do you need a switch? A hub? What exactly does a router do? Do you need a router if you have a single computer? Network technology can be quite an arcane area of study but armed with the right terms and a general overview of how devices function on your home network you can deploy your network with confidence.

Understanding Home Networking Through Network Diagrams

Rather than start off with a glossary of networking terms—and in the process slam you with a technical terms with no easy point of reference—let’s dive right into looking at network diagrams. Here is the simplest network configuration available: a computer linked directly to a modem which is in turn linked through a phone line/cable/fiber optic uplink to the individual’s internet service provider.

It doesn’t get less complicated than this arrangement but there is a price to pay for the ultra-simplicity of the setup. This user cannot access the internet with a Wi-Fi device (thus no access for smart phones, tablets, or other wireless devices) and they lose out on the benefits of having a router between their computer and the greater internet. Let’s introduce a router and highlight the benefits of using one.  In the diagram below we’ve introduced two elements to the network: a wireless router and a laptop connecting to the network via that wireless connection.

When should you use a router? Given the low cost of home routers and the benefits gained from installing one on your network you should always use a router (which almost always includes a firewall feature).
Home routers are actually a a combination of three networking components: a router, a firewall, and a switch. In a commercial setting the three pieces of hardware are kept separate but consumer routers are almost always a combination of both the routing and switching components with a firewall added in for good measure. First let’s look at what the router function does.
At the most basic level a router links two networks together, the network within your home (however big or small) and the network outside your home (in this case, the internet). The broadband modem provided to you by your ISP is only suited to linking a single computer to the internet and usually does not include any sort of routing or switch functionality. A router performs the following functions:

• IP sharing: Your ISP assigns you one IP address. If you have a desktop, a laptop, a media box on your TV, and an iPad, that one IP address clearly isn’t going to cut it. A router manages those multiple connections and ensures that the right packets of information go to the right places. Without this function there would be no way for a person on the desktop and a person on the laptop to both browse the web as their would be no distinguishing between which computer was requesting what.
• Network Address Translation (NAT): Related to the IP sharing function, NAT modifies the headers in packets of information coming into and out of your network so that they get routed to the proper device. Think of NAT like a very helpful receptionist inside your router that knows exactly where every incoming/outgoing package should go and stamps the department on them accordingly.
• Dynamic Host Configuration: Without DHCP you would have to manually configure and add all the hosts to your network. This means every time a new computer entered the network you would have to manually assign it an address on the network. DHCP does that for you automatically so that when you plug your XBOX into your router, your friend gets on your wireless network, or you add a new computer, an address is assigned with no human interaction required.
• Firewall: Routers act as basic firewalls in a variety of ways including automatically rejecting incoming data that is not part of an ongoing exchange between a computer within your network and the outside world. If you request a music stream from Pandora, for example, your router says “We’re expecting you, come on in” and that stream of data is directed to the device that made the request. On the other hand if a sudden burst of port probing comes in from an unknown address your router acts as a bouncer and rejects the requests, effectively cloaking your computers. Even for a user with a single computer a simple $50 router is worth it for the firewall functionality alone.

In addition to the inside-to-outside network functionality outlined above, home routers also act as a network switch. A network switch is a piece of hardware that facilitates communication between computers on an internal network. Without the switching function the devices could talk through the router to the greater internet but not to each other—something as simple as copying an MP3 from your laptop to your desktop over the network would be impossible.
Most routers have 4 Ethernet ports which allow you to plug in 4 devices and have them communicate via the switch function. If you need more than 4 Ethernet connections you’ll need to upgrade to a router with a larger port bank (a rather expensive proposition that will usually only boost you up to 8 ports) or you can pick up a dedicated switch. Note: You only need to upgrade if you’re running out of physical ports for hard line connections. If you only have one computer and one networked printer plugged into your 4 port router (and everything else on your network is Wi-Fi based) there is no need to upgrade to gain physical ports. That said, let’s take a look at a network with a dedicated switch.

Although the 4-port limit on the super majority of home routers was more than enough for most home users, the last 10 years have brought a significant increase in the number of networkable devices within the home. It isn’t uncommon to have multiple computers, multiple game consoles, media centers, printers, file servers, and more that all connect to the Ethernet LAN (while you may get away with putting your Wii on the Wi-Fi network for things like dedicated video streaming and media server access it is much preferable to have a hard line connection). Once you’ve reached that level of device saturation it’s necessary to add in a switch with 8, 16, or more ports to properly support your growing home network.
As a side note, historically people often relied on hubs because they were so much cheaper than pricey switches. A hub is a a simple network device that does not examine or manage any of the traffic that comes through it—it’s a “dumb” network device—by contrast switches actually interact with the data packets and actively direct them. Because hubs have no management component there are frequent collisions between packets which leads to an overall decrease in performance. Hubs suffer from a number of technical shortcomings which you can read about here. Consumer grade networks switches have fallen in price so steeply over the last 10 years that very few hubs are even manufactured anymore (Netgear, one of the largest manufacturers of consumer hubs, no longer even makes them). Because of the shortcomings of network hubs and the low prices of quality consumer-grade network switches we cannot recommend using a hub. When you can pick up a perfectly good high-speed 8-port switch for $25 there’s no good reason to use an outdated hub on a home network—if you’re curious why a network admin would ever deploy a hub you can read about it here.
Returning to the topic of switches: switches are an excellent and inexpensive way to increase the size of your home network. If you outgrow the bank of 4 ports on the back of your router the simplest thing you can do to expand your network is to purchase a switch with an appropriate number of ports. Unplug the devices from your router, plug all the devices into the switch, and then plug the switch into the router. Note: switches have absolutely no routing functionality and cannot take the place of a router. Your router likely has a 4-port switch built into it but that does not mean your new 8-port dedicated switch can replace your router—you still need the router to mediate between your modem and switch.

Decoding Network Speed Designations

Now that you’ve got a clear picture of how exactly your network should be physically configured let’s talk about network speeds. There are two primary designations we are interested in: Ethernet and Wi-Fi. Let’s take a look at Ethernet first.
Ethernet connection speeds are designated in 10BASE. The original Ethernet protocol, now 30 years old, operated as a max speed of 10 Mbit/s. Fast Ethernet, introduced in 1995, upped the speed to 100 Mbit/s. Gigabit Ethernet was introduced shortly after that in 1998 but didn’t gain much traction in the consumer market until recently. As its name suggests, Gigabit Ethernet is capable of 1000 Mbit/s. You will commonly see these designations noted on networking gear and its packaging as 10/100 or 10/100/1000 indicating which Ethernet version the device is compatible with.
In order to take full advantage of the maximum speeds all the devices in the transfer chain need to be at or above the speed rating you want. For example, let’s say you have a media server in your basement with a Gigabit Ethernet card installed and a media console in your living room with a Gigabit Ethernet card but you are connecting the two together with a 10/100 switch. Both devices will be limited by the 100 Mbit/s ceiling on the switch. In this situation upgrading the switch would boost your network performance considerably.
Outside of transferring large files and streaming HD video content across your home network there is little need to go out and upgrade all your equipment to Gigabit. If your primary computer network usage involves browsing the web and light file transfers 10/100 is more than satisfactory.

Understanding Wi-Fi Speeds

Wi-Fi speeds are designated by letter, not by number. Unlike the easy to translate number-as-network-speed designation we find with Ethernet the Wi-Fi designations actually refer to the draft versions of the IEEE 802.11 networking standard that dictates the parameters of the Wi-Fi protocol.
802.11b was the first version widely adopted by consumers. 802.11b devices operate at a maximum transmission of 11 Mbit/s but the speed is highly dependent on signal strength and quality—realistically users should expect 1-5 Mbit/s. Devices using 802.11b suffer from interference from baby monitors, bluetooth devices, cordless phones, and other 2.4GHz band devices.
802.11g was the next major consumer upgrade and boosted the max transmission to 54 Mbit/s (realistically about 22 Mbit/s accounting for error correction and signal strength). 802.11g suffers from the same kind of 2.4GHz band interference that 802.11b does.
802.11n is a significant upgrade to the Wi-Fi standards—devices use multiple-input multiple-output antennas (MIMO) to operate on both the 2.4GHz and relatively empty 5GHz bands. 802.11n has a theoretical maximum of 300 Mbit/s but accounting for error correction and less than ideal conditions you can expect speeds in 100-150 Mbit/s range.
Like Ethernet, Wi-Fi speeds are limited by the weakest link in the direct network. If you have an 802.11n capable Wi-Fi router but your netbook only has an 802.11g capable Wi-Fi module you will max out at the 802.11g speeds. In addition to the speed limitations there is a very pressing reason for abandoning the oldest popular Wi-Fi protocol 802.11b. You must use the same level of encryption on every device in your network and the encryption schemes available to 802.11b devices are weak and have been compromised (WEP encryption, for example, can be compromised in a matter of minutes by a moderately skilled child). Upgrading your Wi-Fi router and wireless equipment allows you to upgrade your wireless encryption as well as enjoy faster speeds. If you haven’t done anything to secure your router now would be a good time to read our guide to locking down your Wi-Fi network against intrusion.
Also like Ethernet, upgrading to the maximum speed—in this case 802.11n—is best suited for people moving large files and streaming HD video. Upgrading to 802.11n will have a negligible impact on your web browsing speed but will have an enormous impact on your ability to wirelessly stream HD content around your home.

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At this point you’ve got a handle on how your home network needs to be laid out and you have an understanding of what the network speed designations mean and how they impact you and your network. It’s time to upgrade your switch, roll out some new Wi-Fi bandwidth, and enjoy a better optimized home network.

17

17 is a very special number, being the smallest number greater than one that is the sum of a square and a cube in two distinct ways. It is also one of the few known Fermat primes. It is also the number of different possible symmetries of wallpaper patterns (ie. biperiodic tessellations of the plane).

Best Poutine in Sudbury

Leslie's Charbroil and Grill (located at 661 Notre Dame)

“Leslie's (located at 661 Notre Dame) had the best gravy, best curds and the fries were a very close second,” Devyn Courvoisier, poutine expert and systems administrator at Northern Life, said. “ It was very close, but I would say their curds were my turning point.”

Following close behind Leslie's was GP Poutine at the corner of Main and Errington in Chelmsford — a mere three points separated the two. The winner of the value category, served on the what the judges unanimously called the best fries of the day, GP offered up a tasty second.

Next on the scorecard came Poutine Palace, located on Lorne Street. The chipstand offered a unique gravy, creamier than the rest, as well as top-notch service.

Rounding out the top five were Vespa Street Kitchen on Riverside Drive, which provided a more upscale rendition of the classic, then Poutine Express on Douglas, which offered the squeakiest of all the curds — which earned the judges stamp of approval.

http://www.northernlife.ca/news/lifestyle/2012/07/20-tour-de-poutine-sudbury.aspx

I would never go to Vespa, that place smells and tastes like what they serve....canned food. Canned mushrooms, canned tomatoes,... . I don't know but that place has left a gross taste in my mouth as if they tried to empty a can of mushroom, sprinkle some basil on it and call it a mushroom salad. I don't understand why people like it so much. 
Leslie Langen of Leslie's Charbroil and Grill shows off a sample of the top poutine in the city, as selected by a panel of Northern Life poutine connoisseurs. Northern Life Facebook fans picked the top five poutine destinations. Photo by Jenny Jelen.

Audio formats explained

MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD

By John Atkinson • Posted: Mar 8, 2008 

http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/

As Wes Phillips recently reported on this website, CD sales are down and legal downloads of audio files are up. Stereophile has been criticized more than once for not paying enough attention to the subjects of MP3 and other compressed file formats, such as AAC, and for offering no guidance at all to readers about how to get the best sound quality from compressed downloads. These criticisms are correct. We don't.

The reason is simple: Although they are universally described in the mainstream press as being of "CD quality," MP3s and their lossy-compressed ilk do not offer sufficient audio quality for serious music listening. This is not true of lossless-compressed formats such as FLAC, ALC, and WMA lossless—in fact, it was the release of iTunes 4.5, in late 2003, which allowed iPods to play lossless files, that led us to welcome the ubiquitous Apple player to the world of high-end audio. But lossy files achieve their conveniently small size by discarding too much of the music to be worth considering.
In the past, we have discussed at length the reasons for our dismissal of MP3 and other lossy formats, but recent articles in the mainstream press promoting MP3 (examined in Michael Fremer's "The Swiftboating of Audiophiles") make the subject worth re-examining.
Lossless vs Lossy
The file containing a typical three-minute song on a CD is 30–40 megabytes in size. A 4-gigabyte iPod could therefore contain just 130 or so songs—say, only nine CDs' worth. To pack a useful number of songs onto the player's drive or into its memory, some kind of data compression needs to be used to reduce the size of the files. This will also usefully reduce the time it takes to download the song.
Lossless compression is benign in its effect on the music. It is akin to LHA or WinZip computer data crunchers in packing the data more efficiently on the disk, but the data you read out are the same as went in. The primary difference between lossless compression for computer data and for audio is that the latter permits random access within the file. (If you had to wait to unZip the complete 400MB file of a CD's content before you could play it, you would rapidly abandon the whole idea.) You can get reduction in file size to 40–60% of the original with lossless compression—the performance of various lossless codecs is compared here and here—but that increases the capacity of a 4GB iPod to only 300 songs, or 20 CDs' worth of music. More compression is necessary.
The MP3 codec (for COder/DECoder) was developed at the end of the 1980s and adopted as a standard in 1991. As typically used, it reduces the file size for an audio song by a factor of 10; eg, a song that takes up 30MB on a CD takes up only 3MB as an MP3 file. Not only does the 4GB iPod now hold well over 1000 songs, each song takes less than 10 seconds to download on a typical home's high-speed Internet connection.
But you don't get something for nothing. The MP3 codec, and others that achieve similar reductions in file size, are "lossy"; ie, of necessity they eliminate some of the musical information. The degree of this degradation depends on the data rate. Less bits always equals less music.
As a CD plays, the two channels of audio data (not including overhead) are pulled off the disc at a rate of just over 1400 kilobits per second. A typical MP3 plays at less than a tenth that rate, at 128kbps. To achieve that massive reduction in data, the MP3 coder splits the continuous musical waveform into discrete time chunks and, using Transform analysis, examines the spectral content of each chunk. Assumptions are made by the codec's designers, on the basis of psychoacoustic theory, about what information can be safely discarded. Quiet sounds with a similar spectrum to loud sounds in the same time window are discarded, as are quiet sounds that are immediately followed or preceded by loud sounds. And, as I wrote in the February 2008 "As We See It," because the music must be broken into chunks for the codec to do its work, transient information can get smeared across chunk boundaries.
Will the listener miss what has been removed? Will the smearing of transient information be large enough to mess with the music's meaning? As I wrote in a July 1994 essay, "if these algorithms have been properly implemented with the right psycho-acoustic assumptions, the musical information represented by the lost data will not be missed by most listeners.
"That's a mighty big 'if.'"
And while lossy codecs differ in the assumptions made by their designers, all of them discard—permanently—real musical information that would have been audible to some listeners with some kinds of music played through some systems. These codecs are not, in the jargon, "transparent," as can be demonstrated in listening tests (footnote 1).
So to us at Stereophile, the question of which lossy codec is "the best" is moot. We recommend that, for serious listening, our readers use uncompressed audio file formats, such as WAV or AIF—or, if file size is an issue because of limited hard-drive space, use a lossless format such as FLAC or ALC. These will be audibly transparent to all listeners at all times with all kinds of music through all systems.
Putting Codecs to the Test
Do I have any evidence for that emphatic statement?
For an article published in the March 1995 issue of Stereophile, I measured the early PASC, DTS, and ATRAC lossy codecs and put four of the test signals used for that article on our Test CD 3 (Stereophile STPH006-2). For the present article, I used two of those signals, tracks 25 and 26 on Test CD 3. But first, to set a basis for comparison, I used that most familiar of test signals: a 1kHz tone.
The spectrum of this tone, played back from CD, is shown in fig.1. The tone is the sharply defined vertical green line at the left of the graph. There are no other vertical lines present, meaning that the tone is completely free from distortion. Across the bottom of the graph, the fuzzy green trace shows that the background noise is uniformly spread out across the audioband, up to the 22kHz limit of the CD medium. This noise results from the 16-bit Linear Pulse Code Modulation (LPCM) encoding used by the CD medium. Each frequency component of the noise lies around 132dB below peak level; if these are added mathematically, they give the familiar 96dB signal/noise ratio that you see in CD-player specifications.

Fig.1 Spectrum of 1kHz sinewave at –10dBFS, 16-bit linear PCM encoding (linear frequency scale, 10dB/vertical div.).
Fig.2 shows the spectrum of this tone after it has been converted to an MP3 at a constant bit rate of 128kbps. (The MP3 codec I used for this and all the other tests was the Fraunhöfer, from one of the original developers of the MP3 technology.) The 1kHz tone is now represented by the dark red vertical line at the left of the graph. Note that it has acquired "skirts" below –80dB. These result, I believe, from the splitting of the continuous data representing the tone into the time chunks mentioned above, which in return results in a very slight uncertainty about the exact frequency of the tone. Note also that the random background noise has disappeared entirely. This is because the encoder is basically deaf to frequency regions that don't contain musical information. With its very limited "bit budget," the codec concentrates its resources on regions where there is audio information. However, a picket fence of very-low-level vertical lines can be seen. These represent spurious tones that result, I suspect, from mathematical limitations in the codec. Like the skirts that flank the 1kHz tone, these will not be audible. But they do reveal that the codec is working hard even with this most simple of signals.

Fig.2 Spectrum of 1kHz sinewave at –10dBFS, MP3 encoding at 128kbps (linear frequency scale, 10dB/vertical div.).
But what about when the codec is dealing not with a simple tone, but with music? One of the signals I put on Test CD 3 (track 25) simulates a musical signal by combining 43 discrete tones with frequencies spaced 500Hz apart. The lowest has a frequency of 350Hz, the highest 21.35kHz. This track sounds like a swarm of bees, but more important for a test signal, it readily reveals shortcomings in codecs, as spuriae appear in the spectral gaps between the tones..

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Footnote 1: Something I have rarely seen discussed is the fact is that because all compressed file formats, both lossless and lossy, effectively have zero data redundancy, they are much more vulnerable than uncompressed files to bit errors in transmission.

MP3 vs AAC vs FLAC vs CD Page 2

For reference, fig.3 shows the spectrum of the signal on the CD. Other than the well-defined green vertical lines representing the tones and the uniform background noise, the spectrum is clean. Important points to note with this graph are that 1) all musical fundamentals lie to the left of the 4000Hz (4kHz) mark; 2) the region between the next three divisions, 4kHz, 8kHz and 16kHz, is where musical harmonics and the "air" on a recording reside; and 3) the region above 16kHz—more than a quarter of the horizontal scale—will be inaudible to most adults.
Fig.3 Spectrum of 500Hz-spaced multitone signal at –10dBFS, 16-bit linear PCM encoding (linear frequency scale, 10dB/vertical div.).
Fig.4 shows the spectrum of this demanding signal as preserved by lossless coding, in this case the popular FLAC codec (at its slowest "8" setting). To all intents and purposes, it is identical to the spectrum of the original CD. The lossless coding is indeed lossless, which I confirmed by turning the FLAC file back to WAV (LPCM) and doing a bit-for-bit comparison with the signal used to generate fig.3. The bits were the same—the music will also be the same!

Fig.4 Spectrum of 500Hz-spaced multitone signal at –10dBFS, FLAC encoding (linear frequency scale, 10dB/vertical div.).
How did the MP3 codec running at 128kbps cope with the multitone signal? The result is shown in fig.5. The dark red vertical lines represent the tones, and none are missing; the codec has preserved them all, even those at the top of the spectrum that will be inaudible to almost every listener. But the background noise components, which on the CD all lay at around –132dB, have all risen to the –85dB level. With its limited bit budget, the codec can't encode the tones without reducing to almost half the 16 bits of CD resolution. Even with the masking of this noise in the presence of the tones implied by psychoacoustic theory, this degradation most certainly will be audible on music. Yes, this kind of signal is very much a worst case, but this result is not "CD quality."

Fig.5 Spectrum of 500Hz-spaced multitone signal at –10dBFS, MP3 encoding at 128kbps (linear frequency scale, 10dB/vertical div.).
How about other lossy codecs? I looked at how the iTunes AAC codec (a version of MPEG 4, a later development than MP3) performed on this test, running at the same 128kbps. The result is shown in fig.6. At first it looks very similar, to fig.5, but there are significant differences. Note that almost all the tones above 18kHz are missing and that those above 16kHz are increasingly rolled off. The designers of the codec obviously decided not to waste the limited bit budget by encoding information that would most probably not be heard even from the CD. Instead, they devoted those resources to a more accurate depiction of the musically significant regions at lower frequencies. You can see in this graph that, below 4kHz, the noise level is 10–20dB lower than with the MP3 codec (though perhaps more "granular"). In effect, in the frequency region that is musically most important, an AAC file with this test signal has 2–3 bits more resolution than an MP3 file with the same bit rate. The AAC noise floor is higher than the MP3 noise floor between 8kHz and 18kHz, but given the physics of human hearing, this is insignificant.

Fig.6 Spectrum of 500Hz-spaced multitone signal at –10dBFS, AAC encoding at 128kbps (linear frequency scale, 10dB/vertical div.).
The degradation is dependent on bit rate—the higher the bit rate, the bigger the bit budget the codec has to play with and the fewer data must be discarded. I therefore repeated these tests with both lossy codecs set to 320kbps. The file size is three times that at 128kbps, though still significantly smaller than a lossless version, but are we any closer to "CD quality"?
Fig.7 shows the spectrum produced by the MP3 encoder running at 320kbps. (This is the format used by Deutsche Grammophon for its classical downloads.) Again, all the tones are reproduced correctly, and the noise has dropped by around 6dB or so at higher frequencies and up to 15dB at lower frequencies. But it is still not quite as low as AAC at 128kbps below 1kHz or so.

Fig.7 Spectrum of 500Hz-spaced multitone signal at –10dBFS, MP3 encoding at 320kbps (linear frequency scale, 10dB/vertical div.).
AAC at 320kbps now encodes all the tones, even the inaudible ones at the top of the audioband (fig.8). The noise floor is quite high above 18kHz, but—and it's a big "but"—the noise-floor components have dropped to below –110dB below 16kHz, and to below –120dB for the lower frequencies. Though some spectral spreading can be seen at the bases of the vertical lines representing the tones, it is relatively mild. Given the bigger bit budget at 320kbps, the AAC codec produces a result that may well be indistinguishable from CD for some listeners some of the time with some music. But the spectrum in fig.8 is still not as pristinely clean as that of the original CD in fig.3.

Fig.8 Spectrum of 500Hz-spaced multitone signal at –10dBFS, AAC encoding at 320kbps (linear frequency scale, 10dB/vertical div.).
For my final series of tests, I used Test CD 3's track 26, which replaces some of the tones in track 25 with silence. The spectrum of the CD original is shown in fig.9. You can see clean vertical lines representing the tones, with silence in between. You can see the random background noise below –130dB, as expected. Also as expected, encoding with FLAC gave the identical spectrum, so I haven't shown it.

Fig.9 Spectrum of multitone signal with frequency gaps at –10dBFS, 16-bit linear PCM encoding (linear frequency scale, 10dB/vertical div.).
MP3 at 320kbps gave the spectrum shown in fig.10. All the tones are present, but if you look closely, you can see some extra ones, at low levels. The noise also leaks into the spaces between the groups of tones. AAC at 320kbps gave the spectrum in fig.11. Again, there is much more noise and less resolution above 18kHz, where it doesn't really matter. Again, the noise around the groups of tones is lower than with MP3 at the same bit rate. Some low-level spurious tones can be seen in the spaces between the groups of tones; though there are more than with MP3, these are all lower in level. The noise floor between the groups is also higher in level than with MP3, but is still low in absolute terms.

Fig.10 Spectrum of multitone signal with frequency gaps at –10dBFS, MP3 encoding at 320kbps (linear frequency scale, 10dB/vertical div.).

Fig.11 Spectrum of multitone signal with frequency gaps at –10dBFS, AAC encoding at 320kbps (linear frequency scale, 10dB/vertical div.).
What does all this mean?
Basically, if you want true CD quality from the files on your iPod or music server, you must use WAV or AIF encoding or FLAC, ALC, or WMA Lossless. Both MP3 and AAC introduce fairly large changes in the measured spectra, even at the highest rate of 320kbps. There seems little point in spending large sums of money on superbly specified audio equipment if you are going to play sonically compromised, lossy-compressed music on it.
It is true that there are better-performing MP3 codecs than the basic Fraunhöfer—many audiophiles recommend the LAME encoder—but the AAC codec used by iTunes has better resolution than MP3 at the same bit rate (if a little noisier at the top of the audioband). If you want the maximum number of files on your iPod, therefore, you take less of a quality hit if you use AAC encoding than if you use MP3. But "CD quality"? Yeah, right!

I’m a Mom and I’m Stoned Right Now

I wanted to get my husband to watch our daughter so I could get stoned and pound out this essay about being a mom who smokes pot. But when I stepped back into our apartment after smoking about half a bowl of something called "purple train wreck" out on the terrace, I knew I'd never be able to get any work done with this cute ass baby around to distract me. In the middle of playing some totally vacant, rule-less game that involved pretending to chew stuff, making growling noises, and giggling, I realized that she's like the funniest fucking person I've ever met. Anybody who thinks that weed makes parents ignore their children has clearly never been high around one.
Once upon a time, back when I was young and stupid enough to think that 30 was old, I thought that one magical day in the indeterminate future I'd just naturally age out of my predilection for smoking pot. That never happened. And why would it? Weed is awesome. I've always preferred it to alcohol. It doesn't have the calories or the hangover.
And I've never had a glass of wine and been captivated by children's books like I have after smoking a bowl. Staring at a page for God only knows how long, I caught myself saying very seriously, "Where is Waldo? I don't think he's in this one. Is he definitely always in it?"
I turned to my husband for an answer. He was cooking in the kitchen and I caught him trying to smash up garlic cloves with the end of some kind of broom handle instead of the Pampered Chef garlic press my aunt gave me at my wedding shower. See, that is exactly the kind of shit that would've irrationally pissed me off if I hadn't smoked. Instead, I just laughed.
Weed takes the edge off of my fatigue-induced bitchiness. It helps me not care so much about things. Wait, that sounds bad! I mean, it helps me not care about the stupid little unimportant things that I have a habit of getting hung up on and stressed about, like how my husband chooses to crush garlic. I don't mean to shatter your world view or anything, but being a lifelong pothead doesn't mean you're relegated to living in your parents' basement or being a deflated sack of skin on the couch, as many anti-marijuana PSAs would suggest. In fact, I'm a highly (pun intended) functioning member of society.
I have a full-time job. I'm a taxpayer. I'm a registered voter. I'm regularly contributing to my 401k and IRA. I'm married. I'm a homeowner. I'm a mom. I'm a stoner. I'm never going to find Waldo.
My husband grabbed the book out of my hands. "I have amazing scanning abilities. He's right here. Do they have races for these? I'd win." He tossed he book back to me and the baby.
"I don't know. Hey, is the Special Olympics every four years, too?" I asked sincerely as he went back to cooking. Pot really enables free association.
"Yeah, if they don't lose count."
It took me an embarrassingly long time to get what he meant by that, that's how slow I was. But slow people can take care of babies! If you don't think so, then you're ableist. If you don't know what that is, look it up. That's the best way to learn something and retain the information.
Anyway, half-laughing at a stupid Special Olympics joke might make me a bad person, but it doesn't make me a bad parent. And neither does occasionally smoking weed. I'm not getting all crazy, hanging out of limo sun roofs, smoking weed off of hookers' tits. I tend to ride out my buzz by giggling with my family, eating dinner, doing the dishes, putting the baby to bed and watching an episode of Friday Night Lights. One of the more exciting developments for me in recent weeks is when I started following Fuck Yeah Taylor Kitsch on Tumblr. If that isn't some boring ass mom shit, I don't know what is.
The point of all of this is that I know I'm not the only one, and I know I'm in good company, but I wish that more parents were open about smoking pot in order to reduce the stigma associated with it. You know, I'm a mom, but I'm also a person. Don't put me in a box. Unless it's a hot box.

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The reason is b/c the Harper Conservative Party is a neoliberal political party.

Neoliberalism is the economic theory that was implemented in Britain by Thatcher, the USA by Reagan, and Canada by Mulroney. It's purpose the reestablishment of upper class power, by transferring wealth from the lower and middle to the upper class.

In Canada, this is done by privatizing public assets and reducing the responsibilities of corporations (environmental and tax-wise), while transforming the social safety-net into a pay-as-you-go system, whereby you get the services that you can afford.

Why are the Harper Conservatives spending like drunken sailors? Because the point is to create as much national debt as possible, to justify future cuts to social programs by claiming that they are unaffordable. All that money that we see wasted adds up - and we pay.

How much bailout money did Canadian banks get? Why did they get this money and then post record profits? Why can't the media get a grip on this story? Who controls the journalists? Why did the government not give bailout money to people who have lost their homes? Lost their jobs?

The capitalist economy is a stacked deck. Harper represents the interests of the capitalist bloc. What makes it worse is that while there is evidence of widespread voter fraud, the government continues to pass legislation that is just killing Canada's spirit, turning it into a giant-foreign-owned-resource-extraction zone.

By the time we vote in a new government, all valuable assets will have been sold to foreign entities, undemocratic entities who will protect their legal assets at all costs.

How can a possible illegitimate government do this? What is going on?



by ratiocinari cbc.ca

Effects of Coca Cola on your body...

In the first 10 minutes:
10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.)

Within 20 minutes:
Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst from your pancreas. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat.

Within 40 minutes:
Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your BP rises, and your liver dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This effect of Coke is physically the same way heroin works.

The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.

The effect of Coke's caffeine diuretic properties comes into play - you have to urinate. It is now assured that you'll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolytes, and water.

Within 60 minutes:
As the "high" inside of you dies down, you'll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You've literally urinated all the water that was in the Coke, but not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for nourishing your system or building strong bones and teeth, etc.

This will all be followed by a caffeine crash in the next few hours. That could be a shorter time frame if you're a smoker. But, there's a way you can make yourself feel better.

You can alaways have another Coke!

Mulclair feels like a crook.

 I look at Mulclair and think...Harper in a few years.



from: By Murray Dobbin, 26 Mar 2012, TheTyee.cawho summed it up as I would have:

NDPers will be analyzing the various campaigns of the frontrunners, looking for weaknesses to explain how they could collectively have let Thomas Mulcair, the right-wing Liberal, pro-Israel, political bully become head of their party.
Two things shocked me about this race and its final two days. The first is that so many NDPers, part of a tightly-knit, hyper-loyal political culture steeped in progressive values could so casually elect a man who contradicts so many of their principles. Besides the disastrous result for the party and all progressives in the country, the election of Mulcair raises profound questions about the health of the party. There are two possibilities, neither attractive. One is that NDPers, like increasing numbers of Canadians in general, simply don't read as much and that information about Mulcair did not get through to them. To what extent did NDPers devote time and energy to finding out about the candidates? In general, what is the state of member education and engagement in the party?
More worrisome is the possibility that many thousands of NDP members had indeed heard the negative aspects of Mulcair's politics and voted for him anyway. That's a very different problem. It reflects what I have observed about the NDP for decades now: its decreasing emphasis on policy and philosophy and the increased -- political machine driven -- preoccupation with winning seats in elections, often out of context of the political moment and oblivious to unintended consequences. One prominent NDPer I spoke to responded to my shock that he was supporting Mulcair with a sort of football game enthusiasm. "I think he can take on the bastard [Harper]."
Facing a ruthless tough guy? Get your own ruthless tough guy. And possibly create a monster you can't control. It is as if policy, philosophy, and vision for the country have simply been devalued to the point where they are an afterthought or some vaguely interesting historical relic. There seems to have been a kind of "We'll worry about policies later, let's pick someone who can win first."

Will Zimmerman, the Dr Jackson of Sanctuary?

Many have drawn the comparison, as of course it can be drawn, in more fan like-extracurricular backed ways.
However I am just someone who recently discovered the show and simply fail to understand why I did not jump on the wagon at the get go. The show is simply amazing and a great way to fill the void of the stargate saga. A simply comment on the current stargate; it simply is a different kinda show.
But back to our comparison.
Both characters have the most amazing things happen to them. Encounters with higher beings to becoming so close as to be with their power, death, rebirths, great losses, and always having the most phenomenal events revolve yet not around them.
The lead, Magnus/O'Neill, are not the ones undergoing these awesome journeys. This allows them to remain in their character, their role, to abstain from evolving beyond what it is that makes them the likeable characters to carry the show.
But for the show to evolve there must be transformation. So it the entourage that must evolve, grow, develop to expand the boundaries of the show.
Zimmerman and Jackson both serve the purpose of being that character around which the main group can evolve. Once it is established that the audience can accept change it the character, the changing aspect of the character eventually becomes the character.
Both Zimmerman and Jackson have in some elevated to a greater understanding, are pure of heart, and strong-willed. They both saved the world, but then again they do that everyday, and have both died, had life changing afterlife experiences, and came back.
They are doctors, but not medical but of understanding, thus setting the course for greater understanding by nature and desire to communicate.
Yes, it could be argued that Zimmerman is the Jackson of Sanctuary. But could he leave and then get asked back under fan pressure?
Would fans and the show miss him so much?
Yes, because remember, most of the development was always based on this character so this part of the show is missing.
But would it be as crucial to the show and is he as awesome as Jackson?
Well...I don't know.

BELL porting out - 30 days notification to switch cell phone provider

Long Story short; I wanted to go to a different provider after contract expiration.

If you just go to new provider and sign up with them you will have to pay for another month with current provider. This is because they require you to provide them with 30-days notification.

After several calls and half hour recorded discussion I was finally allowed to give notice to avoid double paying two bills.
Port notification code Bell: NTFYWNPP2

This "feature" code must remain on your account for min 30 days. After which you have 30days (60 days from date of notification to port) to port over. This will avoid you to have to pay the penalty of failure to provide 30 days notification.


Koodo told me to call Bell to give notice so I dont pay the 30 days notification.
Bell told me I cant give notification (yes actually said I cant) and that I just have to go to the new provider and they will take care of everything, including notifying them. After which I will be ported over and will start being billed by new provider, but I will also have a bill from current provider (BELL) for 30 days of service from date of port (actually from date of port notification)

I was repeatedly told there was NO WA TO AVOID PAYING the 30 days notification. I kept at it and told them it did not make sense. "All I want to do is give you the notification that you require me to give you by your terms that you are referring to."

Eventually they fingured out that they can add the feature or code of port-notification on the number and after 30 days you can port overr and pay only up to the day of porting.

This way you dont end up paying Bell for service not provided as you stay with them for the 30 days during the notification period and then they bill you up to the day you go switch/port.


Key word and concept:
Port notification and then be willing to wait 30 days to go to new provider.

RMR: Rick's Rant - Online Privacy

Buying digital movies is...impossible?

OS for the last week now I've been trying to figure out a way to get movies that I can watch on my playbook or on my PC or on a DVD (from my PC). Sounds easy enough and should be simple in today's day in age...but no.
Not unless ou live in UK or USA.
Most places that offer some sort of digital purchase of a movie make you use their player or you need to use Internet Explorer, so no good for my playbook or to make a DVD.
The thing is I dont know what format these movies will come in and I dont know if I can just convert them or if they will be protected. I am pretty sure that it owuld no t be easy to convert them to lets say an MP4 format.
Cineplex for example offers the download but then you have to use explorer and DIvx you have to use their player ( or a device with Divx installed) others like Youtube stream the content, so you dont actually ever get what you buy.

This is my issue with this;
I pay for it so give me what I pay for, Let me be free to watch it when I want, where I wnant with whom I want. That is why I buy something...to own it.
So please let me be free to view your movie, that I paid for
Let me be free to view your movie, with whomever, whenever, and however I please.
Let me use what  I buy without having to subscribe to other services, I want to watch the movie I bought without conditions.

I reallly tried and looke around and it seems the best option is to download movies illegally because then you have the ability to watch them on any device and you can transfer them around. This is not what I want.
I just want to click, pay and own it. Just like music files are today....why is that so hard?

Oh is it hollywood...probably. But Fuck man, you used to rent out movies and sell them on tape, which was toooooooo easy to copy and do you know how many bootlegs were around? lots! Didi I ever own one? No. Why? Because it was too easy to rent or buy one. And if I was worried about degradation I could always make a copy. Today its like you are trying to restrict access to your content?? why? How many people still download music illegally? I think a lot less than 10 years ago (speaking relative and percentage of users wise)
When CD's came out it was ok, you could make your own mix tape from the CD  or you could somehow rip a CD(but that seemed pretty badass) and if you were rich you could make a CD.
I would record radio sometimes, but mostly buy music.
Then came napster and I could finally listen to some alternate music and get a copy of any stupid song I was told of. (Trust me, most of it was stupid shit I would never buy like weird al this or natioanl anthems)
This i could keep up with, and then came limewire. Same thing. But it was the only way I could just get one song I like without having to buy the whole CD for 20$ and out all the time into ripping it and converting it (cause somehow it didnt seem to work everytime for me and not for every CD player)

When limewire died it was the last time I downloaded music because I could now BUY ONE SONG online to use and keep like a real song from a CD or I could listen to many songs online (streamed) which many times is all that was desired; to listen to that old weird al song or to find out why people talk about Stompin Tom Conners, or why Fishermans lament is about the fisheries Dept Canada.
That kind of stuff. Of course I have friends who probably owned every song on earth and never paid for it, but so what? That were one person. And not me.
Todaqy I still have most of those shitty songs on my pc. With bad or no title (from the old CD ripping days) no track#, loud BEEPS halfway in the song, or simply 10 secs of repeat for 2:41 mins (yeah those were my favs) but I dont care, they are junk that remind me of how things were.
Today I just get a song if I want to make a mix CD and if I get a CD gift fo xmas I rip it and put the CD in the CD shoe box I have. Because really I just want to listen to songs from a digi format or on my LP's (which are not easily copied lol)

This will be daily occurence once copyright bills exist

Megaupload users face data deletion US prosecutors warn

30 January 2012   BBC 2012

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16787486

Visitors to megaupload.com are now presented with a message from US law enforcement

US prosecutors have said that data belonging to Megaupload users and stored by third parties could be deleted as soon as Thursday.

Users have been unable to access data since the file-sharing service was raided.

The warning was made in a letter filed by the US Attorney's Office, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Megaupload's lawyer Ira Rothken told the agency that at least 50 million users had data which could be deleted.

Mr Rothken said that freezing of Megaupload's funds meant it was unable to pay those who were storing its data.

In the letter prosecutors said that the data which might be deleted was being held by the storage companies Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications Group.

Neither they nor the US Attorney's Office have responded to emails from the BBC.

Mr Rothken told the agency that he was "cautiously optimistic" that a deal could be done to save the data from being wiped.

He said that the data would be needed by the defence.
Legitimate data
Megaupload was shut down on 19 January.

It had about 150 million registered users, making it one of the most popular file-sharing services in the world.

US authorities are seeking to extradite founder Kim Dotcom, also known as Kim Schmitz, and three other defendants from New Zealand to the US.

Prosecutors have accused it of costing copyright holders more than $500m (£320m) in lost revenue.

But a number of users have said that they have been unable to access legitimately uploaded material as a result of the legal action.

After the shutdown one user tweeted, "I'm vehemently against copyright infringement: the files I lost were created & owned by me for my job."