Riz’s Blog

Today the Governor General inducted 37 new Canadians into the Order of Canada. For various reasons I wanted to watch it live today and assumed that our trustworthy Canadian CBC would be showing it.

As I watched the CBC (and quickly checked all the other 200 channels I get), the following news apparently took precedence over even mentioning the Order of Canada:

• The Oscars
• The Dem Debate (how many times do we need to hear that Hillary has to win Texas and Ohio?)
• A cube of water in Beijing for the Olympics
• J-Lo had twins (OMG!)
• The Weather

I know it’s not possible to expect any of these things to take a back seat to Canada thanking Canadians who made a real difference in the world but you’d think at least the CBC would pay some lip service to this event… I was really hoping for a live broadcast but I guess I’m just too unrealistic.

Buggerer! I got my Rogers Wireless bill on the same day that Valleywag posted this information about wireless plans offered by Verizon:

$99 - Unlimited voice  

$120 - Unlimited voice, SMS text messaging, MMS picture messaging

$140 - Unlimited voice, SMS, MMS, VZNav, VCAST, email

$150 - Unlimited voice, SMS, MMS, and data)

$170 - Unlimited voice, SMS, MMS, and international data)

My Rogers bill was $103 this month before adding on things like long-distance charges or taxes and trust me, I don’t get unlimited anything. How much longer must consumers bare this type treatment? We aren’t stupid, we know we’re getting screwed and none of the “powers that be” seem to want to take action to change it. In fact, the generally seem to want to continue to see consumers get screwed.

Why is technology seem to be designed to prevent me from doing things that are perfectly legal but could be used for illegal activities? Examples:

• iPods not allowing you to copy your music back to your hard drive. I don’t use my iPod to send my music to my buddies; what I do use it for is a backup system to ensure that my music never gets lost (if my hard drive crashes) but I have to hack it to get this functionality.
• Macrovision making it a pain in the butt for me to setup my home entertainment system in useful ways.
• Preventing screenshots from DVDs which doesn’t really matter since I can just crack the DVD but it’s annoying.

The reason for this post? I was just watching a DVD that I OWN and that I PAID good money for. I saw something funny, a marking on the ground that indicated where the actor should stand and was not meant to be caught on camera. I wanted to post this on my blog to share with others; this obviously falls under fair use if not journalistic freedom. Are we so paranoid of this evil thing call piracy that we’re willing to give all our freedoms up to a handful of major corporations? Is it really such a big deal to prevent the average person from doing what they want since the real pirates (in every instance) have ways around all known protection measures? “If I can read it, I can copy it.”

I’m very annoyed. Here’s the error message I got and am just too lazy to rip the DVD for one screenshot:

Over the last year I’ve increasingly been hearing about problems in Russia. Some include: the lack of a free press, consolidation of extraordinary power under Putin, and the inability to freely protest (which is what got Garry Kasparov recently arrested). If you want more details, listen to this podcast where Kasparov describes the problems in more detail. Here’s a new development related to the recent parliamentary election:

Nor was there any doubt that the poll was rigged. “The election was not fair and failed to meet standards for democratic elections,” concluded the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe in a joint statement. Nothing was left to chance to ensure a high turnout. In Moscow your correspondent spotted several “tourist” buses stuffed with people from far-flung regions. They voted early and often. The buses were guarded by men in black leather coats and ski hats who, every few minutes, would let a small group out of the vehicle to cast their ballots. They would move to the next polling station and repeat the exercise. The “leader” of the group said the men were workers from a nearby factory. But, despite strict instruction to keep silent, some admitted that they were free labourers and came from as far away as the Kemerovo region, some 3500 km from Moscow. “We have been going around polling stations since lunch time,” grumbled one man, “and they have not paid us yet”. 

What a sad state of affairs. 

Part of the fun of getting presents is the surprise. Facebook, aparently, hates Christmas according to Vallywag. Their privacy invading beacon “service” is spilling the beans on everyone’s christmas present. I’m just waiting till someone buys an engagement ring online their partner finds out. Here are some stories from the article: 

• “Oh my gosh, my cousins entire christmas shopping list this week was displayed on the [Facebook news] feed. thats so messed up. This has gotta stop!” — Tasha Valdez from Michigan
• “I bought some shoes and a dress on Overstock.com and was shocked to see it on my news feed the next time I logged onto facebook. The next day I had several people come up to me and comment on the things I bought. It was really creepy. I wonder what would have happened if I had bought underwear?” — Rachel Hundley
• “i found out what i was getting for Christmas from my sister…sadness.” — Annie Kadala from north Carolina
• “I made a purchase yesterday for my wife for Christmas…When my wife logged onto Facebook, there was an entry in her news feed that I had bought a ring from Overstock. It had a link to the ring and everything. Christmas ruined.” — Sean Lane from Massachusetts
• “I saw my gf bought an item i had been saying i wanted … so now part of my christmas gift has been ruined. Facebook is ruining christmas!” — Matthew Helfgott

There’s also a great poll on the site, the results so far: 

Some great news was just announced on Michael Geist’s Blog:

Industry Minister Jim Prentice has just announced that the government will put in place measures as part of the forthcoming spectrum auction to encourage greater competition within the Canadian wireless market. Prentice acknowledged that Canadian wireless pricing is too high, particularly for data. Accordingly, they will set aside a significant chunk of spectrum - nearly 40 percent of the auction - solely for new entrants and mandate tower sharing.

Of course this is legislative but combined with the $15 post I made a few days ago we could really be seeing the start of a large change in the Canadian wireless industry, one with less gouging and more choice! I think I’m going to faint.

So a buddy of mine lives in London and was chatting with me on his BlackBerry at noon (my time) on his tube ride home. His answers stopped for quite a long period but that’s not unusual given that he’s on the tube. Anyways, finally I get a message saying: I just got searched by the cops as a suspected terrorist.

Gah?

Let me see… that guy is  typing on his BlackBerry during rush hour and [insert blank] he’s gotta be a terrorist.

At first I thought they had to have probable cause type laws in the UK but apparently it’s more police stateish than I thought: 

Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows the police to stop and search anyone in a specific area.   

Before Section 44, the police could only stop and search individuals if they had ‘reasonable grounds’ and certain criteria were met. That is no longer necessary, and we have seen Section 44 powers used against anti-war, anti-weapons and anti-capitalist protestors.  

Now there don’t appear to be any stats on how effective this is in actually stopping terrorists vs stopping protestors vs stopping BlackBerry users. Lets just hope that this law is actually effective and not just a way to anger me. I’m guessing it’s the latter though.

Make sure you go out and vote in the provincial election. This election is quite important, not because we are voting in our provincial representatives, but because we are voting on the future expression of democracy in Ontario (and possibly Canada down the line).

A proposal spawned from a Citizens Assembly (comprised of 130 random Ontario citizens) which evaluated possible changes in our electoral and representative system in Ontario. They’ve decided to propose to the Ontario people that we adopt MMP over FPP. This is something we will be voting on and rather than prattle on about the differences myself, I’ll let a group of very smart people share the process and the issues with you.

I strongly suggest you listen to the above panel discussion. I originally thought I knew how I’d vote–I’m not so sure any more.

This is something from Slashdot but it’s an important issue for me so I’m posting it:

But an analysis of the publicly funded spy network, which is owned and controlled by local authorities and Transport for London, has cast doubt on its ability to help solve crime.

A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.

Even though these are the type of results I want I still have to point out that I have some serious issues with the study itself:

• They are using the absolute number of cameras in a region rather than some more objective measure that accounts for the size of the region like cameras/sq-ft.
• They are using the ratio of crimes stopped but we shouldn’t be as interested in that number (in isolation) if we’re trying to see the effectiveness of the cameras. We have to compare the ratio of crimes stopped before versus the ratio of crimes stopped after the cameras were installed while controlling for things like police force size, population in the region, etc.

Anyways… I like the conclusions of the study but I don’t like the study itself.

I’ve got a post over at my Rotman blog that has a “we’re all going to die” type of feel to it. I thought I’d promote the kill joy post.

Enjoy!