Aaaaaahhh, sweet, sweet vindication.

Just as I’ve been saying for years, DRM can and will never work.

Booyah!

Someone will aways be able to transfer in an analogue way, unless incredibly invasive laws come into place regulating that digital divices should never be able to convert something to analogue (Just TRY using headphones in that world though). Of course, all it takes is one talented person to mess with their digital TV tuner to add an analogue out, and it’ll be free to the world. Hell, they could point a video camera at the TV screen and get O.K. results if they absolutely had to.

Besides, all it takes is one person to crack it at the software end and it’s done for forever.

Bring it on corporate content providers!!!

… I got a cell phone.

I do, however, refuse to become one of THOSE people. You know the ones. The ones who don’t seem capable of removing the damn things from their ears. The ones who, in the middle of a conversation with you, will pull it out, and flip it open and walk away from you while talking into the phone (EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE VOICEMAIL AND KNOW THE CALL ISN’T IMPORTANT!) Or, (you see them a lot at university) those people who sit in class fiddling with the damn things for an hour on end. No, I don’t intend to be one of those people.

The phone, for me, is serving a very limited purpose. Our family (formerly) had one cell phone. We did, however, have two cars. This created a problem when paranoia about dying on a regular trip required a cell phone be carried along any time a car left Stratford. For example, when I would go up to Erin’s house; I’d have to wait for my Dad to arrive home so that I could bring the cell phone with me (the beautiful part about our cell phone is that it’s battery is garbage, so in the event of an emergency it’s highly unlikely I’d be able to get it to work anyway).

My sister, deciding that pay phones weren’t for her anymore, was the first one to decide to get a cellphone. I’ve looked into cell phones in the past, and was completely unable to justify the costs involved. There’s no way it’s worth $30/month for me to have one.

What she found (and I hadn’t counted on) was a new player entering the cellular phone market, namely Virgin Mobile. As stupid as I feel walking around with a phone that says “virgin” on it, you can’t beat the price.

Virgin has three different “pay as you go” plans (one of which is stupid and won’t be addressed here). The first one is the “day-to-day” plan. They charge you a 40 cent fee per day for the “privilege” of advertising yourself as a member of Virgin; and in return you get a minute rate of $0.10/minute. That’s pretty good, if you talk for a few minutes every day the costs aren’t too high.

However, I intend on using my phone very little, so I decided to go with the “minute-to-minute” plan. No fee per day, just $0.25/minute for the first 5 minutes of calling every day, then $0.15/minute after that. For anyone who has ever used a pay phone, you’d have realized that most calls last less than a minute, and almost certainly less than two (usually, they seem to consist of, “Yep, it’s done, pick me up” or “Hey, I’m gonna be late”)(Pay phones only give you three minutes to complete a call for 25 cents, have you ever had your time run out?). This makes the cost almost reasonable.

One of the big benefits of this phone, however, is that incoming text messages are free. Why’s that good? Well, I redirected some of my email accounts to send a message to the phone when one is received. That means that people can contact me for free in a timely fashion, simply by sending a SHORT email to my gmail account. Free is good.

Additionally, an advantage to Virgin is that, unlike Telus or Bell, their cheap, $15 top-up cards last for 120 days. That means that I can have this phone for less than $5/month.

At the price point of $5/month, I can handle it. Just don’t call me; text me.

If you cannot convince them, confuse them. - Harry S Truman

I think this quote demonstrates why there’s such pressure nowadays to get “intelligent design” taught in the classroom.

The religious right (right, of course, being the side of the political spectrum, not as another word for “correct”) knows it can never win at this point against science, so it’s trying to get into the classroom and just terrorize it.

They want kids to be so utterly confused about things that they’ll be completely unable to weight the pros and cons of given arguments, and, throwing up their hands in frustration, they may turn to religion, or at least become agnostic.

And maybe, just maybe, those agnostic kids won’t care too much if they put the 10 commandments in a court building, or if Bush sits there saying “God bless” all the time.

I think getting rid of the boarders between church and state is the ultimate goal of all this, giving religious figures direct influence on the state and what it does.

That’s all we need, a religious government controlling the most powerful military in the known universe.

Still think the bird flu is scary? I don’t. Not compared to the religious right in the US.

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it’s another nonconformist who doesn’t conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity. - Bill Vaughan

Howdy!

We’ve got something cooking up….

No, it’s not food. It’s a PODCAST!

Check out our current site, it’ll have all the up-to-datest news about it, we want to have our first one done and hosted, ready for distribution before March break.

Here’s the link, by the way

Hey all (see, I’m using plurals, that means the blog’s popular!)

So, Christmas went well for me. Managed to get all the presents wrapped up that I needed to, which was good, and spent time with the family. As for material goods, the banner items were a new laser printer (HP 1022) and a keyboard (microsoft media pro keyboard).

Also, New Years has happened. A good time was had by all, so far as I could tell. We even remembered to stop for the ball drop (or, elevator rise, as was done in Niagra Falls; where we were watching). One glass was broken at Kings (Someone banging it with their fork, as is done successfully at weddings the world over, time after time). Other then that, no damage.

As for the party, it was good. One thing that was a bit annoying was that nearly everything I brought was unused or completely unnessisary (why did I have to lug a DVD player around? He had one right on his main TV, and we had a PS2, which doubed as a DVD player). I mean, I understand that backups are sometimes a good idea, but why bring things which cannot be forgotten (like, say, a DVD player at the person’s house we’re going to). Another annoying “bring” point was the wireless router - no one but brendon actually brought a computer at all. So, I had brought a backup router for a LAN party that it seemed no one actually intended to have.

Other then that, it was mostly good. I did think that Jordan hit the nail on the head when he said, “Playing videogames has lost much of its alure”. I’m at the point now where the only reason I’ll pick up a video game is either because of symplistic yet enjoyable gameplay that’s a good diversion (like, maybe, half hour games) or as a group activity (a la mario party or smash bros). One thing I did like was a demo we had of Sid Meier’s Pirates. It’s incredibly symplistic, and very addictive, with games lasting less then a few minutes.

till later