CBC Censorship Out of Control!

It wasn’t the first time today when the 3rd post I’d made to a CBC News article in the past 2 months got censored for some unknown reason. I was responding to another comment by “John Thomas Cromarty”, who posts quite regularly to CBC’s news story comments about the article entitled “Should people take Russia’s new COVID-19 vaccine? Increasingly, experts say it’s probably just fine” and I’d responded with the following:

Reply to @john thomas cromarty: I have very little patience for those playing politics with the vaccine and I think we should keep a list of these bastards for later consequences to follow. That said, the bare fact we participated in the development of the vaccine should result in some percentage being made available to Canada immediately – the effort spent in its development wasn’t some kind of academic exercise, after all. Then again, China loves to break the treaties it signs and the Communist Party of China needs to be destroyed. They’re guilty of atrocities unheard of since the end of World War II (where the Uighurs are concerned) to say nothing of the human rights travesties that are visited on its own people interested in greater democracy. Maybe we should’ve thought of that before pairing up with the Chinese government to develop anything!

As for now, we shouldn’t compromise on Weng’s (the Huawei CFO that was arrested in Canada which China has demanded we release). We have a long-standing treaty with our ranking ally, the United States, and regardless of the circumstances, our obligations under that treaty are clear. And let us not forget the two Canadian hostages China already took to retaliate for Weng’s capture. I for one will never support moving away from the US as an ally – and becoming some kind of Chinese sympathizer isn’t gonna help much either. It’s not as if China is anything close to making itself a worthy replacement for the US! 

— CBC News, http://cbc.ca/news, 28-NOV-2020 (in reply to comments by John Thoms Cromarty)

I am unsure what the rationale was, but apart from one word which (arguably) could have been disallowed due to the use of an expletive – the entire article was censored about 10 minutes after being made available publicly.

In fact, I’ve twice taken the time to write letters to both the CBC ombudsman and CBC content folks about the censorship issue without so much as the courtesy of an automated reply. And I’ve started to question whether CBC even takes such comments and questions seriously. I’ve certainly taken the time to read the posting rules and other pertinent literature and can find nothing in any of the aforementioned posts that was technically “out of bounds”, according to my reasoning. Also according to that reasonsing, either I’m missing relevant information or something in CBC’s process is flawed. If they don’t want end-users commenting on stories, why provide a “fake” comments section where 30% of the posts are disabled for some unspecified reason? It feels a little arbitrary and contrary to the public transparency so often decried as the fault of governments to provide when the CBC doesn’t even adhere to that same standard itself.

And I, for one, tend to disdain hypocrisy…

Lest we Forget!

Rememberence Day has just passed and I thought one story I caught on http://cbc.ca/news worthy of mention this year in particular:

Ottawa announces new Hong Kong immigration options as committee warns Uighurs face ‘genocide’

Earlier today, members of a House of Commons committee looking into the plight of ethnic Muslim Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province cited their recent conclusion that the Chinese Communist Party is guilty of perpetrating a genocide against the ethnic minority.

The all-party Commons subcommittee on human rights heard harrowing testimony from survivors of China’s imprisonment of Uighur Muslims. They shared accounts of mass incarceration, rape, forced sterilization of women and mass surveillance.

Critics say China has detained as many as one million Uighurs and members of other Muslim groups in what amount to mass prisons, where they are subjected to “re-education.”

The Chinese government has denied any abuse of human rights in the region and insists that reports claiming that are false.

— John Paul Tasker, CBC, Parliamentary Bureau (November 12, 2020)

The words decrying concentration camps setup by Nazi Germany following World War II come to mind: “Never again!” It made me reflect on the loss of Canadians who fought the kind of thing China is now obviously committed to and how those words ring hollower the longer we let their failing tyranny continue unopposed here in our nice, comfortable western democracies. Just as at the beginning of World War II, the Nazis setup concentration camps where they didn’t gas Jews to death along with the homosexuals and others the ‘master race’ decried as inferior. That came later, after the horrible living conditions and abuse had settled in. Now here we are again letting conditions deteriorate for the Uighurs. How long will it be before China decides on its own “final solution” to the Uighur problem? Do we in the free world continue to do nothing?

If so, I have just one question: do we really honor those who have given their lives for the freedoms we now enjoy? Something tells me, they didn’t dream of freedom and security for just Canada and its allies facing Nazi tyranny but even if they did, can we really be so naieve to think we’re secure from any future date where the Chineese Communist Party (or its surrogates) decides it is in its own interests to take them away?

Yelp E-Mails Rooking in Small Business!

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perating as a small business owner, on a couple of occasions in the past I’ve encountered people that are something less than honest.  This is not the norm by any means — and yet one realizes early on to keep a wary eye for those few wolves who fashion themselves guardians of the hen house, so to speak….

A bit of research can be an eye-opener too, which is why I’m kind of kicking myself for not seeing these folks coming from a mile off: Yelp.com

 

 

I recently received a $300 advertising coupon, alike the sort I’ve received from advertisers like Google.com in the mail.  You enter a coupon code somewhere and get to try out the service.  I took advantage of such an offer from Yelp in late October of this year — only to start getting transactions mysteriously showing up on my credit card earlier this month, contrary to expectations.

I had taken advantage of the coupon at the time, which did not explicitly advertise there would be debits automatically starting once the $300 had been used up.  Nor was I able to readily determine at any point how much of the credit was used.

Finally, when a December bill appeared, I immediately contacted Yelp to cancel any advertising services that might have been procured.  I was concerned that it wasn’t generating any business for me and that they were keeping records of user credit card numbers (a practice with which I have issues for both reasons of personal security and privacy).

Contact with Staff was Terse and Unhelpful

The amount of the bill wasn’t too substantial – less than $100 in Canadian funds.  However, despite taking this as an opportunity to build a positive customer experience, they responded to my concerns as “threatening” them (when I mentioned I would be describing my interactions with customer service here on my blog) and trying to get out of paying the bill, stopping short of calling me a thief outright.  This attitude was evident despite my attempts to voice my concerns to two different parties by phone – the only emails I could receive from them seemed to be automated messages aimed at billing.

After encountering two highly confrontational staff I thought it incumbent to characterize my experience as objectively as I could for the benefit of others seeking a review of the Yelp service.

 Doesn’t Follow its Own Advice on Handling Complaints

Yelp’s own advice on the subject of end-user reviews is as follows¹:

Either way, when responding to reviews it is important to have good practices established to make sure your organization and your [customer]’s privacy are protected. In both scenarios, the goal should be to take the conversation offline and to a private channel.

It’s my considered opinion Yelp did not follow it’s own advice in my particular case, nor does it do so when it comes to the privacy of others; whether they are customers or simply users of its service(s):

• retaining credit card information can be a license for the unscrupulous to simply debit amounts indefinitely regardless of customer intent; such as when a company doesn’t bother to take the spending intentions of customers into account and charges for services they don’t want; effectively taking a nickel-and-dime approach to earning profit rather than promoting & selling services on the strength of their own merit, and
• allowing customer service staff to become confrontational with customers is both unnecessary and inexcusable.  Worse still, Yelp made virtually no effort to “take the conversation offline”, instead calling my intention to review my interactions with them a “threat” and insisting they’d continue with the charges.

It’s certainly accurate to say I can’t describe my own experience with Yelp as necessarily representative of those one would have with the company and it does appear many have had positive experiences with them.  However, I can equally accurately say that my experience was anything but positive from the perspective of a customer and there are many on Facebook and other alternate online sources who report difficulties as well.  I can also state with certainty that given my concerns, treated as they were, will result in my never considering business with them again in the future.

Epilogue

My experience also left me with the impression that Yelp is a company governed less by technology innovation and more by a very single-minded focus on earnings from its advertising business.  (Although it was not necessarily my intention at the outset to demand no-cost settlement of the bill they sent me, this became an issue when they declined to discuss my concerns in good faith.)  In the future, I’m likely to seek out Microsoft, Google or WordPress when considering online advertising.  Even should this prove to be more expensive, both companies seem to be paying a lot greater attention to their advertising clientele.

Follow-ups to this story may appear here, should any occur.

¹ See https://www.yelpblog.com/2016/12/experts-guide-patient-privacy-online-reviews near the subheading “Example 1” for source.

Project “ARTeRMis” Site Published

Link to “Edgewater” Tenant Site Prototype

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roperty Management Application(currently code-named Project “ARTeRMis”) moved a step closer to delivery of a much larger property management tool based on Microsoft SharePoint today with publication of one of the trial components: “Edgewater“. This component is simply an amalgamation of a number of different elements native to SharePoint, but hosted in the Office 365 environment and is setup to product test the suitability of them for inclusion in the TRM (Tenant Relationship Manager) application delivery going forward.

Artermis will ultimately be heavily dependent on Office 365, SharePoint and ASP.NET MVC when it ships; currently forecast for initial delivery sometime in 2017.

Fresh New Look for The AppRefactory Inc.

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fter 3+ years hosted at Weebly.com, it was time to finally take The AppRefactory Inc. company website into a modern hosting environment with features and integration potential that would allow us to demonstrate, albeit in brief, what ASP.NET MVC could offer.  Dynamic product listings with breadcrumb sub-navigation, upload sections for partner contracts and résumés; and database-driven contact forms that make it easier than ever (and convenient) to stay in touch are all just the beginning.  In the days ahead we still expect to add:

The AppRefactory Inc. website redeployment announcement graphic: http://apprefactory.ca

• Links to customer features site (requiring login) via Office365, Visual Studio (online ed.) and SharePoint,
• Highlights and links to ongoing software development currently being undertaken by the company,
• Book time online with a consultant to review your software service needs or setup an in-depth remote service session online through HackHands.com,
• Subscription for partner companies and contacts looking for email updates consultant availability and/or major site & service offering revisions, and
• Links to WindowsStore.com and related sites for specific product integrations (Windows desktop, server and phone all to be included).

So stay tuned!  There’s much more yet to come….and you won’t want to miss any of it.

(Additional graphics related to the new website can be found on our Yelp.ca listing.)

CBCsports.ca | 2011 NHL All-Star Game | What Canadian city most deserves a team?

• CBCsports.ca | 2011 NHL All-Star Game | What Canadian city most deserves a team?.

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o you don’t see many posts from me under the heading “Sports” (actually there’s not enough content here at the moment to justify having a sports category); but as a tenacious Winnipeg ex-patriot, I thought I should make my viewing audience aware of a little poll on CBC Sports’ web site asking Canadians to vote on what city should win the next NHL franchise.  Of course, the only competent argument that can be made in answering this question would favour the resurrection of the Winnipeg Jets — yes long, long before we get around to redressing any plans for the Québec Nordiques.  And since I want to return to Winnipeg at some point in the future and would rather have a city that’s happy and prosperous to live in ahead of one that feels as if the life  had been sucked out of it by a wraith or some other paranormal entity, there’s an element of selfishness in my wanting Winnipeg to once again have attractions (like the Jets) which offer both spectacle and excitement.

So cast your vote without delay!

The Social Corporation: Nobel Novelty or Non-Profit Novation?

While cheerfully coding away this afternoon (delving into the intricacies of Commerce Server 2007‘s Staging subsystem), I had the television on in the background again monitoring the world through the lens of CBC Newsworld when on came Muhammad Yumus, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who brought forth his concept of "Social Business".  Perhaps Mr. Yumus is a better writer and academic than a presenter, because from the dialogue in the short piece on Newsworld, I couldn’t readily distinguish the difference between his concept and an existing institution (that’s been around for quite a while): the non-profit corporation.

So, curious to find the answer to my question, "what is the difference?", I tried to find other sources of information through Google that could provide an answer.  And, good ‘ol Google, jackpot!  A nice, new-age, granola-crunching, health-oriented cycling website provided some meaningful analysis:

"Social business departs from the current for-profit structure that places profits above social needs. It also departs from the non-profit structure because leaders improve products, inventory turns and marketing instead of leaning on fundraising."

— One Street Newsletter, February 2008.

To learn all about Yumus’ ideas, one would have to read his book "Creating a World Without Poverty" and, to be fair, I haven’t yet had the chance.  However, while Yumus has aptly characterized the merits and basic strength of the structures that support capitalism, I’m concerned that simply mirroring those structures isn’t going to offer much additional success for non-profit endeavours.  If his basic thesis is that non-profit organizations are merely institutions that generate fundraising drives for one cause or another because they aren’t organized with the same operational structures as their for-profit counterparts – I think he may have actually overlooked the basic forces that are responsible for the success of capitalism: starting with greed.

By creating artifacts like stock markets and other such metrics to replace currency in this model (he suggests a number of alternatives), there is no guarantee that anyone will be any more interested in achieving charitable ends.  But, even so, the idea is fresh and interesting.  Hopefully, these new ideas aren’t pillaged by hype peddlers on the Internet or elsewhere to serve distinctly non-charitable ends.