Stupid Canadian Broadcasters

And not just broadcasters, but apparently artists as well. Michael Geist has written another great article titled "More Web regulation doesn't make any sense", on how Canadian broadcasters and artists want the CRTC to regulate the internet to protect Canadian content. To be fair, it may not be all artists or broadcasters, but the organizations that represent them sure want it.

There's not much I can add to what he said. His line "It is increasingly clear that the blossoming of new media is a threat to old business models, not to Canadian content" sums it up very clearly.

The internet is a huge opportunity for Canadian broadcasters, if they would only take it. They have the ability to put up all the Canadian content they want. I've written before about how CTV is turning away Linux and Mac users from viewing online material and making it difficult for Firefox users. I've also written about the CBC wanting to DRM promotional videos. CBC doesn't make it easy to link to individual videos, and won't even allow people to embed their Google videos in their websites.

That's a little like a real estate salesman talking to his boss:

"Uh, boss, you know all those flyers for new homes I've been passing out? People are copying them and passing them out to other people. How do we stop them?"

"Jerry?"

"Yes boss?"

"You're not very bright, are you?"

They aren't even doing the simplest things like using the internet to make it easy for people to find out what's on and where. The webmaster of TV, Eh?, an independant website dedicated solely to promoting Canadian television, has difficulty finding listings or getting the PR people to email her listings.

They don't know how to use the internet, but it scares them, so they want to limit how we use it.

In his first published story Life-Line, published in 1939, Robert Heinlein had a judge saying this:

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profits in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit.

Now that was a judge with common sense. Unfortunately he's a fictional character.

That's not to say I think the CRTC is going to try to regulate Canadian content on the internet. I'm hoping there are some people with enough common sense to realize how ridiculous these demands are. I'm just a little tired of old dinosaurs trying to stop progress, instead of using it for their advantage.

No Internet for Days

I'm going to be switching internet providers, and I can't have one set up before the other takes over. So my current provider should be disconnecting me tomorrow, but that's a Sunday so I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't until Monday.

Then I have to call the new provider to hook me up. I'd be very surprised if they were able to do it in a day. Two or three days is more what I'm expecting.

That's like going two or three days without food. It can certainly be done, but it's not something you do without a good reason, it won't be any fun, and I'll be miserable.

If I have time before my internet goes dark I want to post on the beta DVDStyler 1.5, and go into a little more detail than I went into on my Free Movies post. Some very nice stuff can be done with it.

Stupid Cat

Middle of the night, and the cat reminds me he's out of food. He's very good about it, doesn't meow or howl, just runs to his food dish and looks up at me.

Okay, stupid me. I knew he was out, and was going to pick some up earlier today, only I forgot.

I switched shifts with a co-worker, and have to start work at 10:00 AM tomorrow. I know. Boo-hoo. But that's 4 hours earlier than I normally start. That's like 4:00 AM or 5:00 AM to most people.

Now I have to make a decision. Knowing that he won't die if he doesn't have food for the next, oh, 22 hours, and that I have to try to sleep tonight or I'll be completely zoned tomorrow, do I make the run out in the rain to 7-11 to buy a small box of $22.00 cat food, or do I let him stick it out?

Yes, I made the right decision. He doesn't know or care if I don't feel like running out and getting wet and overpaying for cat food. He just knows his tummy is hungry.

What he doesn't know is that I'm going to rent him out for lab experiments to make up for the inconvenience.

Stupid CBC

My sister sent a link to Inside the CBC, apparently CBC's blog, which I didn't even know existed. Turns out they want to put DRM on their video clips here. First off, why are they worried about people pirating their little video snippets? Some would consider it promotion. I think before they start worrying about piracy they have to get people who want to watch their stuff first.

They also want opinions on whether DRM would be okay on full episodes of shows. Instead of giving you just my opinion, I'll give you samples of the comments left so far. They show that the public, or at least those that are inclined to leave comments on CBC's blog, are far more educated about DRM than I would have expected:

angrytrousers says: "All it seems to accomplish is to make the experience more annoying for Joe Consumer..."

From William Denton: "CBC should use open formats, without DRM, that anyone on any platform can use."

Dwight Williams: "I’ve considered myself lucky to have narrowly avoided such “guilt presumed from the moment of legit purchase/download” bullets messing up my computer gear so far."

Evan Young has an excellent suggestion: "A more progressive and community supportive stance would be to license your material under a Creative Commons license so that CBC fans like myself could share and promote your material freely but CBC would retain the right to prevent commercial use and disallow modification of it’s content."

Luke is the sole supporter (so far), and even he's lukewarm about it: "I’m not a fan of DRM generally, but if it would allow full shows to be made available online…"

The problem CBC is having isn't with piracy, it's with getting people to watch their damn shows. Why are they spending our tax money on a solution that will make it more difficult for people to see their shows, and will do nothing to stop piracy?

On Canadian Authors and Meaningless Labels

My review on Fast Forward 1 got a comment from A. M. Dellamonica, author of one of the stories in the book, Time of the Snake. She gave a link to the first story she had published about the squids at Strange Horizons. Read the brief bio at the bottom of the page, and was pleasantly surprised to find out she was Canadian. Not only that, but she lives in Vancouver, right next to my sister.

It's neat to find out an author that I like is Canadian (I enjoyed her story in Fast Forward 1, and found out after I wrote the review that I had also read a story of hers in one of David Hartnell's Year's Best SF anthologies, Slow Day at the Gallery, which I also enjoyed). I'm not sure why I find it to be important. I've never really been very nationalistic or patriotic.

Of course, the Canadianness of the author isn't nearly as important as the quality of the story she writes. Years ago I bought the first of the Tesseracts anthologies, a collection of speculative fiction by Canadian authors. I've learned to hate the term speculative fiction. It's an ugly phrase, and nearly meaningless. I also found out that I didn't enjoy most of what Canadian authors were publishing, and decided it was a silly and artificial classification to base a book on. Now I see that it's an important jump start for authors that might otherwise not get a chance to see print, but I've grown wiser since then.

Canada tends to lay claim to anyone who passes near the border. I've read about how Alexander Graham Bell was Canadian, when he really only passed through here on his way to the U. S. There was a time when every article about Michael J. Fox in the local newspapers kept calling him an Edmontonian, which is true in only the strictest sense. He was born here, but I'm pretty sure the family packed up and moved as soon as they could, never to return.

Because I tend to be a contrary person, I've generally bucked that trend, especially with authors. I cringed every time Spider Robinson was called Canadian. He's a New Yorker. William Gibson? Love it if he was Canadian, but he's really from the States. He's just visiting.

Of course I was wrong. Spider Robinson has been living in Canada for 30 years, although he waited until 2002 to get his Canadian citizenship. And Gibson has lived here even longer, almost 40 years. He's lived in Canada longer than I have. How long does a person have to live here before I consider them Canadian?

On the opposite side, I consider Cory Doctorow to be Canadian, even though he moved about five years ago to London, England and then to Los Angeles, California. How long does a person have to be away from Canada before they stop being Canadian.

And why does it matter? Short answer is, it doesn't. I was a fan of Robert Sawyer, Robert Charles Wilson, and Doctorow before I found out they were Canadian. The important thing was I enjoyed the stories. The fact that they're Canadian just gives me a little bit of irrational pride.

Linux Truths, Half-Truths, and Myths

When people find out I run Linux on my computer instead of Windows or even Mac OS X they sometimes have funny ideas about what it must be like. Some of it is historical; Linux used to be quite difficult to administer in its younger days. Some of it is misinformation, or no information at all. I hope to dispell some of the misconceptions.

Linux is difficult to install - Myth. For the most part. Depending on the distribution, Linux is much faster and easier to install than Windows is. A smooth install of Linux takes me about an hour including installing updates, and even less sometimes. This includes installs of Red Hat (before it was Red Hat Enterprise Linux), Fedora (after it was Red Hat), Mandrake (now Mandriva), and Ubuntu (still Ubuntu). Of course, there are some distributions aimed at more experienced users that seem to go out of their way to make the whole installation process a little more, shall we say, complex. I'm looking at you, Gentoo.

I just recently re-installed Windows on a friend's computer that had become so infected with god-knows-what that it was completely unusable. I didn't keep track of how long the install took, but it was hours and hours, not even including when I had to go to bed and continue the install in the morning. Downloading and installing updates, rebooting, downloading and installing more updates, rebooting again. On and on it went.

Of course, after the install all he had was Windows with some minor applications like Notepad and Wordpad, and some games like Solitaire and Minesweeper. Don't get me wrong, I've wasted plenty of time on both of those, but it's a pretty sparse selection.

When I install a Linux distro I get a complete, usable desktop. An office suite, CD and DVD burning software, image manipulation software, full featured email suites, and lots of games. All for no cost. And lots more easily available. Which brings me to my next point...

Programs are difficult to install in Linux - Half-truth. Most distibutions give you on-line access to repositories, large collections of programs picked and packaged by your distribution maintainers for easy installation. Installation this way is actually easier than in Windows. On my Ubuntu box I open up Synaptic, type in a search for the kind of program I want, select it, and it installs. And again, for no cost.

Compare this to Windows where I have to search the web for the program I want, check forums and review sites to see if anyone has been infected with spyware with it, download it, scan it with my anti-virus program, install it, and then find out it's a crippled trial version of what I want.

Where it can be more difficult to install software in Linux is when the software you want isn't available in your repositories, or you need a more recent version. Sometimes the writers of the program have made a package available for your distribution, in which case installation is still pretty easy. Sometimes you have to compile the program from the source code, though, which can be tricky.

There are very few games for Linux - Truth. Compared to Windows, there aren't many commercial games available. Games such as World of Warcraft can be run under Wine, a program that allows Linux to run some Windows programs, but if you are a hard core gamer you'll either have to dual-boot with Windows or use a game console to get your fix.

That's not to say there are no good games available. PlaneShift, Alteria, America's Army, Sauerbraten, Battle for Wesnoth, and Frozen Bubble are just a few of the great games you can get for free.

I need an anti-virus program for Linux - Myth. One of the most common questions from Linux newcomers is which anti-virus program to use. They simply can't believe that one isn't needed. That's not to say viruses don't exist for Linux, there must be dozens and dozens of them. Very few exist in the wild, and those that do fizzle out very quickly.

One of the common arguments against this is that Linux has such a small share of the desktop that not many are written for it; if there were more Linux desktops there would more Linux viruses. This argument ignores the fact that Linux is fundamentally structured so that you have to work very hard to allow a virus to thrive. If you're interested, this guy goes into a lot of detail as to why that is.

The one time you may want to run an anti-virus is if you're running a Linux server that has Windows clients, for example an email server. This is not to protect the server, but rather to protect the Windows boxes from email borne viruses.

The people you find recommending Linux anti-virus software are usually working for the anti-virus software companies. I'm sure they have your best interests at heart, and aren't only interested in selling more product.

Linux is hacker proof - Myth. Just like any piece of complicated software, vulnerabilities appear and need to be fixed. You must keep your operating system updated, and if you're running servers you must understand how to configure them securely.

Having said that, when vulnerabilities are reported they tend to get fixed very quickly. And keeping your system updated is actually very easy.

Linux users are a bunch of commies and hippies - Truth. I needed to get one more truth in this list.

Getting hardware to run on Linux is difficult - Half-truth. Linux actually supports more hardware than Windows does. There can be problems with some newer hardware when the manufacturer hasn't released Linux drivers, but usually there are Linux gurus working hard to get it working. You may have to wait.

There are also devices that are designed to use Windows to do some of their work. Cheap modems (called winmodems by Linux users) are particularly infamous for this. It is possible with some work to get some of them working, but you are probably better off getting a real hardware modem.

Linux is difficult to use - Myth. There are those who say free (that is, open source) software is hard to use. If you're used to doing things a certain way there may be an adjustment to learning a new way of doing things, but that doesn't make the new way more difficult, just different.

One small example is the difference between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office. In OpenOffice if you want to insert a header or a footer into a document you go to the "Insert" menu, then select "Header" or "Footer". In Microsoft Office if you want to do the same thing you have to go to the "View" menu. One isn't necessarily more difficult than the other, but to me the OpenOffice way makes more sense. If you were used to the Microsoft Office way, though, you may find that hard to get used to.

My programs won't run in Linux - Half-truth. No, your Windows programs probably won't run (although they might under Wine or Crossover Linux) but chances are there exist replacement programs in Linux.

The Gimp will replace Photoshop for 95% of people, although it does take getting used to. I've already mentioned OpenOffice as a replacement for Microsoft Office. There are dozens of different media players, many different web browsers and email clients, peer to peer file sharing programs, DVD and CD burning programs, and so on. All of them are free, and many of them actually better than the ones you've already paid for in Windows.

What are your experiences with Linux like? Do you disagree with me? What else do people get wrong about Linux? Let me know in the comments, or by email.

Warnings for Stupid People

Rediscovered this image of a jar of peanut butter I had scanned a couple of years ago because of the silly warning on it:


Here's a closeup of the warning:


It contains peanuts. People need to be warned that peanut butter contains peanuts, because if they aren't they will sue. "Your Honour, there is no way my client could have known that jar of peanut butter contained any trace of peanuts. She is willing to be branded an idiot for the rest of her life on the chance that you will believe this and make her rich."

Here's another silly one that I just noticed today:


A perfectly ordinary bag of raisins. You can see the real raisins in the clear window in the bottom left of the bag, and the picture of raisins on the bag. In the lower right is this statement:

"Photo Enlarged to Show Texture."

"Ma, get the shotgun. We're goin' back to the store. We bought these new space-age giant raisins and they put little itty bitty ones in the bag instead."

What kind of freakish radioactive genetic experiments would they have to perform to get raisins that large? I don't think I'd eat them even if they did come in that size. Well, I probably would.

[Edit: I guess I didn't make it clear that I've taken the photo of the raisins and the scan of the peanut butter myself. I actually own these foodstuffs. Well, the peanut butter is long gone, but I did own it at one point. Some people seem to think I've taken these photos from some email or website.]

True Story

Had lunch with the girlfriend while we were shopping the other day, and started reminiscing about old times.

My favourite story I like to tell others about her happened a couple of winters ago. We were leaving my building and as I stepped out I saw a sheet of ice on the ground around the door. Very slippery. I said to her, "Be careful, it's slippery."

She stepped out, and promptly fell on her bottom. To my credit, I did not take any pleasure at all in this. I did not laugh or even smile. I was genuinely concerned for her as I helped her up and asked if she was okay.

"You could have told me it was slippery!" , she barked at me. I was a little surprised by the unfairness of this.

"I did tell you it was slippery!"

"You didn't tell me HOW slippery!"

In a small, small way she reminds me of this guy's girlfriend. But only in a small way. Really.