Thanksgiving Hangover

Well, its the Saturday after American Thanksgiving and Black Friday, our neighbors to the south are nursing turkey hangovers, and my Google Reader cue is dry, dry I tell you! So I have not much news to mock in this post.

I have finally finished unbending my artificial Christmas tree from its packed state into something resembling an actual tree, at least in shape. It's an old one and the needles are not at all convincing. I've been going trough the many, many ornaments my various relatives have given me and there are enough to do two trees. There are at least five strings of lights, two top pieces (both stars), a slew of ornaments, both balls and keepsakes and even some hand-painted plaster ones, plus garland. I have like every Star Wars ornament Hallmark has ever made. Its beginning to look like (dork) Christmas.

For those of you who are wondering, there are 31 shopping days left. Curiously, retail figures from the last few years show that, at least in the states, the Saturday before Christmas has surpassed Black Friday as the busiest shopping day. I suspect the same is true here, but come December 1 I start avoiding stores like the plague.

I find it curious that various activist groups in Canada lined up 'Buy Nothing Day', a day intended to protest mass consumerism and the waste it creates, with Black Friday, when many Canadians who live within day-trip range of the border head south to snag deals. On the one hand, you have various groups, including the left-wing Green Party, telling you to take a day, put the credit card down, and reflect on what you have, while corporate America is delivering a quite different message, and much more loudly. That being - "SPEND! SPEND LIKE THERE'S NO TOMORROW! BUY THINGS FOR YOURSELF, YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR RELATIVES, EVEN YOUR DOG! SPEND! WE'RE BEGGING YOU!" Just sayin' When stores are opening at three in the morning to get you out and shopping pre-dawn, things have gotten a bit out of hand.

Say what??

Happy turkey day (for those of you south of the border, at least). Three football games on a Thursday? Genius.

The BBC had a bit of a flub in a report from a couple of days ago about a giant fossil claw from an equally giant sea scorpion found in Germany. Based on the size of the claw and other known members of the same family, the estimate is that the scorpion was 8 feet long and weighed over 250 pounds. Unfortunately, the story's headline read "Man-sized sea scorpion claw found." This suggests that the claw was the size of a man. A better way to make that statement would have been "Giant sea scorpion claw found, creature was man-sized." Just sayin'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7104421.stm

Speaking of large animals, farmers in India have been successful in keeping marauding elephants out of their fields using a paste made from the world's hottest pepper, National Geographic reports. The paste is smeared on poles and apparently the smell is enough to make the elephant look elsewhere for forage. Which is good news except that the farmers now have to smell super-hot pepper paste all day long. Oh, how it burns!

The taser issue in Canada has gone into a full-blown furor in the continuing fallout from the death of a Polish immigrant at the Vancouver airport. Adding fuel to the fire is the death of a Dartmouth, NS man who was beaten, pepper sprayed, and THEN tasered. He died in hospital 30 hours later. Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and British Colombia are all beginning formal inquiries and there is talk of a national review. I'd like to think that this will result in an end to the use of excessive force by police, but I'm not that optimistic. At least it might lead to better training and rules for when the use of tasers is justified.

In technology, the Kindle is out of stock. Yeah, I know. No word on how many have sold. Amazon.com shows an availability date of December 5 for the next batch. Canadian sister site Amazon.ca features the latest pick from Oprah's book club. How lame is that?

Big Money 42, Democracy 0

Brace yourselves for a copyright rant. Ready? In 3...2...1...liftoff!

The Copyright Alliance, a lobby group which includes the MPAA and RIAA, among other industry clusterfucks (er.., conglomerates) has written a letter to the assorted US presidential candidates asking what laws they would enact to protect the "creative community", i.e. the big movie studios, record labels, etc. (indie types need not apply). This according to a report on Ars Technica. While it is not unusual for lobby groups to go to politicians before an election, ask "what have you done for us lately", and wave the carrot on a stick of campaign funding, this instance is especially undemocratic. I'm sure we've already established that the RIAA and Co. do not share the same interests as the voting public whom would feel the sharp end of more restrictive copyright laws.

This ties in nicely with a report on the same site the previous day were one university professor who happens to be an expert in copyright law found that, if one where to take the most literal interpretation (and you can bet the RIAA does), he would rack up $4.5 BILLION US a year in liability, as would most of us. This pretty much shows that the laws that exist are overbroad, overeaching, and out of date, nay, completely out of sync with the digital age.

But rather than push for reasonable and much needed reforms, it seems that the Copyright Alliance want to protect the entertainment industry as is and have its faulty business model enshrined in ever more draconian laws.

This is a strategy which seems oddly familiar to me. Over the past few years in Canada, several provinces have brought in government-regulated gas pricing. Just in case you think I've wandered way off topic, consider the following argument. Rapid rises and wild price swings (sometimes in excess of 10 cents a litre overnight) led to a very unhappy customer base who accused the big oil companies of price gouging. Pretty soon there were demands that gas prices be regulated and, social democracy that we are we love regulating everything, soon the laws were in place. The thing is that the oil companies never opposed a move that no longer let them directly set their own pricing, they actually welcomed it. You see, the way the regulations work is that the oil companies go to a government committee and basically feed them some (probably cooked) numbers and say, this is what our expenses are, this is what we need to be charging. The public is informed only after the decision is made. So really what big oil in Canada has done is kept its profit (the swings are a little less but on the whole gas is not any cheaper), changed its business model very little, and now the government takes the heat when people feel the pinch of peaks in the price of gas.

What the Copyright Alliance is attempting to do south of the border is much the same. By getting their current business model made into law they are legitimizing it and diverting the anger of the public from them to the politicians. Score another one for big money. I sincerely hope that this does not come to pass because it hurts consumers and subverts the democratic process, plus there would be an echo in Canada as big media here pressures our government to align our laws with those in the US.

In a related story, music stores in the UK are actually sticking up for the consumer. Say whaaa?
It seems that music and DVD retailers in the UK are feeling such a backlash from DRM that they've sicked their lobby group, the Entertainment Retailers Association, on big media. They say that fragmented and incompatible DRM schemes are confusing and frustrating their customers who can't get the content they own to play on all their devices and want DRM dropped entirely. It likely won't happen, but the fact that there is pressure coming at big media from other businesses is an encouraging sign that maybe it will all work out in the end. Hey, I can dream.

Big tip of the hat to Ars Technica for their excellent coverage of what's become the biggest legal issue of modern times.

Alien(ware) encounters

Like many of you, I was initially wondering why the Kindle has a keyboard - after all, its for reading, right? Well, it turns out that the device has (albiet limited) e-mail capability and you can apparently use it to write a book, using Amazon's Kindle Author service. Take that, publishing industry! Well, maybe not,
you could just get it out of your system by writing a blog.

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9820251-1.html

To combat the Kindle's general ugliness, may we suggest the new gaming laptops from Alienware, complete with an (optional) gloss black finish, a multi-colour backlit keyboard, and a flush touchpad the borders of which are apparent only because of another backlight? All I can say is ...pretty....... (*drools*)

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9820049-1.html

But what do you do with the old beige box you threw out when you got you Alienware goodness? Well, recycle it, of course, using one of the reputable services popping up in urban centers across Canada and the US. Because it seems that our junk electronics are killing the Chinese. A report from the Associated Press (via Wired) says that most of our discarded electronics end up in China where sweatshop laborers take them apart to salvage any usable components. The rest is thrown away, leaving high levels of mercury and other nastiness in the water and soil. I suppose some of you are yelling, "Take that eventual military and economic superiority!" but please have a heart.

In lighter news, National Geographic reports that wild turkeys have invaded New England. It appears efforts to re-introduce the walking Christmas dinners to forested areas have been so successful that the gobblers are now overpopulated and moving into suburban areas, where the brazen birds occasionally become aggressive towards humans and pets. Open season!!

Closer to home (mine, anyways), Irving-owned Cavendish farms has abandoned efforts to trademark the name "Freedom fries", which cropped up just prior to Iraq Invasion part duex when the French refused to support the US "coalition of the willing" effort. Why Irving would want the trademark is beyond me, we continued to call them
french fries up here, perhaps the wanted to one-up competitor McCain's "Super Fries", or maybe the Irving family has finally gotten so wealthy that they just don't know what to spend it on anymore.

Watch out for flying anachronisms.

As much as we all love CBC, they are a tad behind the times. While it is true that CBC is an institution in Canada and still one of the country's largest media companies, they don't seem to be up on the latest developments. Or even the latest developments from 10 years ago, at least in some local markets.

This morning, CBC Radio 1's Saint John proved to be a particular embarrassment to tech-savvy people within their broadcast range as the two morning show pundits reported with breathless excitement about the arrival of the first hybrid taxi (a Toyota Prius) in the Port City. They then felt the need to explain to the audience what a hybrid car was. As if we have all been under a rock and are unaware of the existence of gasoline/diesel-electric drives. Then, one of the uninformed pundits asked the driver of the cab, which was pulled up in the station's parking lot, if the electric portion of the drive was reliable and could stand up to the high mileage of use as a taxi. YES!! Morons! Hybrid drives have been around for nearly ten years now, and are already in use by taxi companies in other cities. One would think that the bugs have been worked out by now. And its not as if ordinary gas engines never break down, noooo...

Maybe this whole mess was brought on by the fact that Saint John is a very blue-collar town, where about 40% of the vehicles on the roads are pickup trucks. I can see reactions of "What do you mean, it has an electric motor? - I thought those were for washing machines." Perhaps it's just a case of dumbing the show down to the lowest common denominator. Which in the roughneck town is pretty low, it would appear. Then, to deepen the silliness, the exclaimed breathlessly about how quiet the car was a it drove away. Sounds different from a V-8 truck engine, doesn't it fellas?

In tech-not-available-in-Canada, Amazon is taking a crack at the e-book market with its first branded hardware offering, the Kindle. While it is not the sexiest gadget we've seen lately (in fact, it looks a lot like a leftover prop from 2001: A Space Odyssey), it seems kinda cool... using an EV-DO cellphone network (Sprint's) it can download books from an initial catalogue of 90, 000 titles, including new releases and New York Times best sellers, from a base price of about $9.99, plus newspapers, various blogs, and Wikipedia. Its a stand-alone device, unlike its competitors, and uses a very clear E Ink - provided screen. The reader, unfortunately, is $399, and due to high wireless data rates in Canada is unlikely to arrive north of the border any time soon. Much like that other wonder-gadget, the iPhone, which has been stalled by data rates and a trademark dispute with a Toronto-based VoIP provider. For those of you lucky enough to get the latest technology, which hasn't been happening to us lately, the Kindle could pay for itself if you (a) like to read the bestsellers and (b) don't wait for the paperback. Say you buy books at the bestseller price (let's use round numbers) of $10, and the average print edition (hardcover) runs for $30, thats a $20 savings per book, in which case the Kindle is paid for after 20 books. There seems to be a bit of instant gratification built into this business model, since you could just wait for the paperback and come up with the same savings and not have to shell out for anything up front. But hey, maybe their are enough impatient bookworms out there to make the Kindle pay off for Amazon. Instant gratification is good in small doses, and I wouldn't classify being well-read as a vice.

In oh-no-you-didn't (*snap*) news, Iran is once again threatening to stop selling oil for US dollars calling the once-mighty greenbacks 'worthless pieces of paper', according to a BBC report. Iran has for some time now been floating the idea of pegging the price of oil to the Euro, rather than the USD, hence reducing the influence of the American economy on theirs. Which is a feeling most Canadians can relate too. But the price of oil and a budding nuclear program gives two very good reasons (the first economic, the second politically expedient) for Bush et al. to send some Marines to knock down the door as it were and take over another southwest Asian state. Because, you know, some people seem to think that blood for oil is a good trade, especially when the blood isn't yours.

Power out? iPod dead? No Problem!

iPood - its the busness model, duh.

Those few of us using Linux have been watching with much concern since the new crop of iPods came out complete with a new encrypted checksum in the iTunes database file that basically broke all third-party applications for managing the iPod. As Apple continues its unfortunate and monopolistic iPod+iTunes business model, largely to ensure continuing profit from the iTunes store (and keep the RIAA et al. of their backs), I can't see why anyone was surprised. But take heart, the folks in the open-source community are at least as smart as the ones in the commercial programming world and now there are some apps coming out (in beta) that support the iPod Classic and 3G Nano, although the Touch may be a tougher nut to crack because of its markedly different interface. Some of the options are the newest versions of:

- Floola
- YamiPod (which works on OS X and Windows as well, for those of you who have the option of iTunes but just don't like it)
- Any Linux media player using libgpod (you'll need 0.6.0), such as Amarok or gtkpod.

Because, lets face it, the iPod itself is still pretty cool after nearly 7 years and 6 refreshes to the product line, its the business model that sucks, at least for the end user. Apple is laughing all the way to the bank, have you seen their stock price lately?

Yes, Apple's recent 'evil' behavior is upsetting, but I would rather have the choice between several big tech companies who are evil in different ways, than just have to deal with whatever crazy scheme Microsoft is pushing this month.

Just because everyone else it doing it...

doesn't mean its not a frickin' stupid idea. Chrysler, which Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler dropped like a hot potato due to its profitability, would like to introduce TWO HYBRID SUVS! GAAAAA!

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9818763-1.html

The new 'efficient' hybrids are versions of the new Chrysler Aspen and the until-recently-defunct (at least in Canada) Dodge Durango. In case you're wondering, the Durango was dropped from the line up after gas prices spiked and no one could afford them, instead trading them in for smaller models. So what do you do to your gas guzzlers? Put a hybrid drive in them and make them more fuel-efficient - as in only sucking Abu Dahbi dry instead of Saudi Arabia. Like that's even an improvement in the grand scheme of things.

I also find it interesting that the post over at Crave refers to these vehicles as "full-size." Since when was "full-size" redefined to mean the same as "huge".
We now have not only debased science, we have debased the English language.

She don't mind cocaine.

But apparently the RCMP does. The recent killing of a Polish immigrant at the Vancouver airport by four RCMP officers who tasered him at least three and possibly four times (which, let's face it, would have dropped an elephant) has brought police use of the taser into the spotlight.

CBC.ca posted a feature which reviewed all taser-related deaths in Canada since they were approved for police use in 1999. Turns out there have been 17. Reading through each one I found that the majority of the victims were found to have cocaine in their systems, often to the level of overdose (although this was not the case in the most recent incident).

There are two conclusions that I can see from this. (1) Being on cocaine makes your more likely to go into shock (no pun intended) if you are tasered when the police come; it certainly makes it more likely that someone will call the police to report you. (2) This is a tie in to the common police habit of beating up on people who are intoxicated, knowing that their complaints won't stand up in court. Don't believe me? Ever been at a party the cops broke up? Just sayin'.

As a little background, I should say that I take a dim view of police in general. The police in my home town consist of two basic types. The first are retired RCMP officers who get paid by the town in addition to collecting a federal pension, and for some reason seem damn cranky about it. The second are people who came out of high school roundabout the same time I did, and these folks tend to be the kids that were always raising hell and always in trouble, but now bigger and in possession of a badge and a gun. What do you think happens?

Nor do I say that all cops are bad, hell, some are downright heroic. I'm just saying that there are more than enough bad ones to make life difficult and dangerous for the rest of us.

The Machines Will Kill Us All.

Here's one for your conspiracy theorists out there. Remember in the Terminator movies there was a fictional computer system called Skynet that was intended to coordinate US military assets and make strategic decisions which became sentient and took over the world by using America's nuclear arsenal to basically kill off most of us.

Well, (gulp) there really is a Skynet. Actually, there are several. The biggest is a series of military communications satellites used by the British Ministry of Defense. The Brits wouldn't have been my first choice to cause the apocalypse, but life is full of surprises. There are others as well, listed on Wikipedia's disambiguation page (among other places). They include:

- Belgacom Skynet, a Belgian ISP
- Loral Skynet, a commercial satellite operator
- A private intranet operated by United Airlines.

So we have two satellite systems and two large networks called Skynet. This is starting to get creepy. We can only hope that no one links these systems together to get one big Skynet, with the inevitable result of a huge human-machine war. Or, at least, that we have a Dune-like future in which we defeated the machines and then only had to worry about fighting each other.

Here's the mutiny I promised you.

Engineering students get into some odd research, I've been in some pie-in-the-sky projects myself. Here's a great one from two grad students at Georgia Tech:

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9816998-1.html

The idea is to use sound to determine were a person is blowing on a computer screen and use that as part of the user interface (they call it BLUI). Which means that huffing at your computer might actually do you some good in the future. This technology has the potential to be really, really annoying. Imagine having to sit in a room full of people you may or may not know or like, such as a cube farm or airport terminal, with everyone huffing away at their screens. This could send the wrong signals...

"Are you upset about something?"

"No, I'm checking my email."

I'm not seeing much in the way of commercial prospects here.

Long time, no post.

Today is kind of a special day for me - it is my first paid vacation day ever! And it only took me until I was 26. My job came with a 6 month probationary period, which was up October 30. So I decided to make a 4 day weekend for myself. I get Monday off for Remembrance Day, although some people don't get anything since it is not a stat holiday, although it will be soon if a number of veterans groups are able to get the required amendments from parliament.

But enough rambling. I'm heading off to Nova Scotia this afternoon.

Referring back to my previous post, another phone that is making people bananas is the Google phone. The disappointment around the various tech sites was palpable when it turned out that the long-rumored gPhone was not to be an iPhone-slaying piece of hardware. Hey - Yankees - we know you're sick of the iPhone already, but few people up here have even seen one in the flesh at this point. Anyway, Google's entry is in fact an operating system which aims to make an operating system that is common to pretty much any manufacturer's phone. Right now each line of phones has its own setup, which makes life hard for third-party developers. So rather than Google vs. Apple, we can watch the fire fight between Google, Microsoft, and cell OS specialist Symbian. And possible Palm and Canada's own Research in Motion. Now if we can only drag the HD-DVD and Blu-ray consortiums into this, we can have a tech industry fight club! Ah, nerdiness levels in this blog just hit an all-time high.

In music, find Immaculate Machine's album Fables and buy it. 'nuff said.

In world news, the military took over Pakistan. Again. I'm suprised that even makes the top stories anymore, none of the last 7 elected governments in Pakistan have been allowed to finish their terms in office.

Somalia is going to the dogs again and neighboring Ethiopia is getting dragged into it.

And all the writers in Hollywood are on strike because they are not getting paid for every time their work is so much as mentioned on the internet. I'm not sure that you can even make a workable royalty system for the internet, since it is basically uncontrolled while TV and radio broadcasts are heavily regulated. The news is not all bad, though. With all the writers in Hollywood out walking the picket lines, the quality of movies may actually improve.

Speaking of improving, Cadillac is coming out with a hybrid version of the Escalade. You heard me. It has an electric drive sufficient to get it to 30 mph, combined with regenerative braking and a cylinder deactivation system gives it a 50% fuel saving versus the standard model (which gets 14 mpg - is it really fair to compare gas guzzlers and say that this one is better?), When the electric drive just won't cut it, the 6 litre V8 kicks in ... GAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! Just stop making hybrid SUVs - there is no point!! The whole enterprise is an abuse of what I'm sure are some very talented engineers, not to mention a debasement of science. These guys could probably drop similar technology into a compact and an average driver would only have to fill up once a month.

This song makes me ... bananas!

Rantings now powered entirely by Ubuntu

Well, I took the plunge and wiped my hard drive, followed by a clean install of Ubuntu. Which my machine really needed - after two years of running XP, my 60 GB hard drive was always running 50% full or more, with a clean install of Ubuntu (2.1 GB) plus most of my pictures and music, 13.5%. Not too shabby.

Installation was pretty painless, it did take DBAN (dban.sourceforge.com) about 5 hours to wipe my drive. The review on Cnet said to get a cup of coffee since it takes a while. I recommend starting the process before you go to bed and it will be done in the morning.