This is a rant, I admit this up front.
Since I moved to Quebec five years ago, I've spun up two business: a sole proprietorship and Corporation. I've always felt like I had to prove something to the province, as opposed to them helping me succeed. Most recently with the corporation I've run into a slew of problems:
- Quebec corporations are issued an NEQ (Quebec Enterprise Number (numéro d'entreprise du Québec)) when started, this number is used when dealing with Government agencies, it's also a requirement for dealing with several heavily regulated industries like Banking. Despite registering WonderProxy Inc. a month ago I've yet to receive one due to some "upgrades" they're putting in place. Not being able to open a bank account is a serious detriment to any business operation. Lacking a bank account prevented WonderProxy from verifying PayPal status, allowing partners to invest in the business, and GoDaddy from issuing an EV Certificate.
- When obtaining tax registrations for WonderProxy I picked up a booklet on taxes to ensure that WonderProxy could charge taxes correctly within Canada (note to american readers: even online we charge taxes in Canada when the purchaser is also in the country). This booklet contained incorrect information for Canada's three most populous provinces (British Columbia, Quebec, and Ontario). If I had charged the taxes as indicated the business would have been liable for the difference, and possibly faced fines.
- The search engine that allows interested parties to research business has been failing silently intermittently for at least a month. When searching for "WonderProxy" you'll occasionally receive the correct results, and occasionally a "No Results" message. When the search engine breaks they simply return zero results, rather than an error. Leaving some groups to determine that WonderProxy Inc. doesn't exist.
- The tax office allows businesses to log in and pay taxes, correct forms, etc. This website was down today from 2:30 -> 3:30, at least that's what it said initially. At 3:45 that message was updated to indicate it would be down until 4:30, then around 4:50 it updated to indicate that the site was simply down. I'm working to resolve some other tax issues, so being able to check on the state of things might have been handy.
I'm beginning to regret opening a business in this province. I've also spun up two businesses in Ontario and found the entire process much easier. I'd like to point out that none of the issues I've presented here have anything to do with language (though the French error messages on English pages does get a bit grating in time).
Wow, this is my fourth registered business. Also: my last in Quebec.
I travel a fair amount, I've been to a lot of conferences all over the place, and I occasionally work from a Cafe or other shared internet situation. I've always been rather cautious but I do have to admit that the release of Firesheep has made me even more aware of where I'm using the Internet. While Facebook is migrating over to HTTPS is migrating over to HTTPS connections, there's plenty of sites that haven't or wont. There's also a selection of internet enabled applications on my computer, applications like: GChat, AIM, IRC, Flickr Photo Uploader, application update checks, etc. that I have little control over, that may connect and pass privileged information in an insecure manner.
Luckily, owning a business with VPNs made solving the problem for myself quite easy.
Then some pesky friends came along and insisted I offer this as a service. So now we do: WonderProxy - VPN. I'm targeting the service at people, like me, who use their laptop on the go and want to protect their communications. When you "VPN Up!" all of the communications between your computer and our server are encrypted, there's no need for individual applications to support anything, the process is effectively invisible to them. Your communications are decrypted at our server, and sent out onto the Internet at large. This does mean that, in theory, we could be eavesdropping on your communications, but we're not. I'd like to think that I'm a bit more trustworthy than the hipster with skinny jeans sitting in the corner smirking when you open your laptop, plus our very expensive lawyers wrote a privacy policy.
My partner Will put a lot of hours into configuring the software just right, it works with the native VPN clients in WindowsXP, Windows 7 and Windows Vista, as well as the built in client on MacOS X. He's a linux user, but configuring there happens to be a bit of a pain (we can share instructions, but these are developer/sysadmin level instructions, not for the casual end user). It also works when you've got a public IP, or when you're behind a NAT. If you're in a hotel that sells "VPN Internet" as an up-sell you probably won't need it (I never have).
I've had perfect success using the VPN in Hotels and friends WiFi, great success using it in independent coffee shops (or ones that band together on some lightly branded WiFi), and mixed success using it in big brand shops.
So, protect your communications and sign up: WonderProxy - VPN
p.s. We're currently offering a single VPN endpoint on that plan, and it's remarkably well connected in Fremont California. If you're in Europe and don't particularly feel like waiting for your packets to cross the pond twice, drop me a line after you sign up and I can transfer your access to our London server. I've got a limited number of slots I can open there.
Luckily, owning a business with VPNs made solving the problem for myself quite easy.
Then some pesky friends came along and insisted I offer this as a service. So now we do: WonderProxy - VPN. I'm targeting the service at people, like me, who use their laptop on the go and want to protect their communications. When you "VPN Up!" all of the communications between your computer and our server are encrypted, there's no need for individual applications to support anything, the process is effectively invisible to them. Your communications are decrypted at our server, and sent out onto the Internet at large. This does mean that, in theory, we could be eavesdropping on your communications, but we're not. I'd like to think that I'm a bit more trustworthy than the hipster with skinny jeans sitting in the corner smirking when you open your laptop, plus our very expensive lawyers wrote a privacy policy.
My partner Will put a lot of hours into configuring the software just right, it works with the native VPN clients in WindowsXP, Windows 7 and Windows Vista, as well as the built in client on MacOS X. He's a linux user, but configuring there happens to be a bit of a pain (we can share instructions, but these are developer/sysadmin level instructions, not for the casual end user). It also works when you've got a public IP, or when you're behind a NAT. If you're in a hotel that sells "VPN Internet" as an up-sell you probably won't need it (I never have).
I've had perfect success using the VPN in Hotels and friends WiFi, great success using it in independent coffee shops (or ones that band together on some lightly branded WiFi), and mixed success using it in big brand shops.
So, protect your communications and sign up: WonderProxy - VPN
p.s. We're currently offering a single VPN endpoint on that plan, and it's remarkably well connected in Fremont California. If you're in Europe and don't particularly feel like waiting for your packets to cross the pond twice, drop me a line after you sign up and I can transfer your access to our London server. I've got a limited number of slots I can open there.
I’m exceedingly pleased to be speaking at the PHP Community Conference next month. I’ll be speaking about two projects I’ve been working on for a while WonderProxy, and XHProf. Apart from these being new talks, asking people to speak about their passions and projects, rather than something interesting they’ve stumbled upon as of late.
To be honest, as much as I’m looking forward to speaking, I’m looking forward to Andrei’s talk on what happened with Unicode and PHP 6 more than I’ve looked forward to a talk in a long time. Despite being saddened by the decision, and affected by the lack of great unicode support, I’ve never fully understood what happened. I’m looking forward to changing that.
Most of why I was looking forward to going before the speaking line up had been announced is simple: PHP needs this conference. User group conferences don’t seem as prevalent as they used to, and the ones that have survived seem to have either shrunk and become hyper-local, or grown to mimic the larger commercial conferences. There’s just too much value in the connections you make, and the conversations you have in a reasonably sized community conference to let them fade away. Thanks to Ben, Lisa, and Nick for making sure this doesn’t happen.
(I might be remiss if I didn't mention the cost, only $300USD, even in snow-pesos (CAD$) that's not a lot of money)
To be honest, as much as I’m looking forward to speaking, I’m looking forward to Andrei’s talk on what happened with Unicode and PHP 6 more than I’ve looked forward to a talk in a long time. Despite being saddened by the decision, and affected by the lack of great unicode support, I’ve never fully understood what happened. I’m looking forward to changing that.
Most of why I was looking forward to going before the speaking line up had been announced is simple: PHP needs this conference. User group conferences don’t seem as prevalent as they used to, and the ones that have survived seem to have either shrunk and become hyper-local, or grown to mimic the larger commercial conferences. There’s just too much value in the connections you make, and the conversations you have in a reasonably sized community conference to let them fade away. Thanks to Ben, Lisa, and Nick for making sure this doesn’t happen.
(I might be remiss if I didn't mention the cost, only $300USD, even in snow-pesos (CAD$) that's not a lot of money)
