Riz’s Blog

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:

Hey Hey Hey, it’s Riz in Elf form!

OfficeMax has this cool site where you can upload a picture of yourself and create a dancing elf. The really cool thing is that they’ve integrated an automated call in number that allows you to record a message which your elf will say while dancing!

Update, 9:50AM: Ok, I’m a loser, here is another one I made with Star-trek characters. And another one I made with The Office.

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.

I feel like I’m in backwards land… Are the big carriers actually competing!? What? 

Sure, Rogers might be pulling out the $15/month plan, but apparently Telus is stepping up with nearly the same deal. Just like the new Rogers plan, you get unlimited BIS e-mail and BB Messenger usage on their Pearl for $15/month. Telus one-ups Big Red, however, with unlimited web browsing too, so not only does Telus have a better plan than Rogers, but they also have the shiny new BlackBerry 8130 to waggle in front of customers.

Of course this is only available on the Pearl so they can try and make sure that businesses continue to get the shaft and why not just say unlimited data in general? I mean e-mail+browser covers most of it… the only thing really missing are other messaging clients (e.g. google talk) and things like news readers (RSS). Hopefully these moves spark some more competition and get them to actually give us a catch all unlimited data plan/net neutrality on handhelds and bring Canada out of the wireless stone age.

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.

It’s funny that they still make Arnold jokes. For example, this article which talks about how Arnold’s law got “terminated” as unconstitutional:

Anyone else find it funny that he’s trying to ban the sale of violent video games to kids? He’s the Terminator gosh-darn-alrighty!

Just because I love pointing this type of stuff out. There’s a recent study released that’s touting the rise in piracy. From the Globe and Mail:

MR’s fourth annual Digital Music Survey, which polled 1,700 people in the U.K. last month, suggests that illegal music is more popular than ever before, with 43 per cent of respondents claiming that they are illegally downloading tracks, up from 36 per cent last year and from 40 per cent in 2005.

Using their own numbers and a small assumption (that the sample size in 2007 was the same as the sample size in the past), I calculate the standard error on between their 2005 and 2007 numbers to be 3.3% at the 95% confidence level. Given that 43%-40%=3% we now know that there is no statistically significant difference between the number of people claiming to illegaly download tracks between 2005 and 2007.

So the statement “illegal music is more popular than ever” has been debunked. Thank-you and have a good day.