June 14, 2008

Mr. Gary Schellenberger House of Commons Parliament Buildings Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6

Dear Sir,

The Supreme Court once ruled that intellectual property laws exist in order to serve the people. It’s a shame that the Copyright bill presented on June 12th (with almost no consultation with the Canadians whom the bill is supposed to serve) appears to be more concerned with restricting the freedoms of Canadians than it is with serving them. This law does not take into account the needs of consumers and Canada’s creative community who are exploiting the potential of digital technology. I’m disappointed that this bill adopts an American approach to digital copyright laws, instead of crafting a unique Canadian approach.

Intellectual copyright laws are necessary to create innovation. When I look out at what it happening today in Canada (with our existing laws) I see that innovation is happening. Indeed, even Apple recently announced that it was extending online movie downloading to Canadians. The proposed laws won’t spur innovation, instead we will see a Canadian version of the consumer file-sharing lawsuit strategy that has failed so spectacularly in the United States. Consumers should not be seen as the enemy of business.

Please ensure that this bill really is made for Canadians by allowing all Canadian stakeholders a say in its final contents. That means meaningful consultation in the coming months, and opening up Canada’s copyright policy to more than just the special interests that lobbied behind the scenes for this law. As my MP, I urge you to represent my interests in the copyright debate.

So, put your bitching in a format that counts. Write our MP, the Federal Industry Minister, and the Canadian Heritage Minister.

This site will facilitate the process, and even offers a sample letter (which my own is loosely based upon). If we don’t act now, the Canadian DMCA will become a reality. We’re almost all of voting age now - it’s time to make our voices heard where it COUNTS.

EDIT: There; just finished stuffing the three envelopes. Neat fact: You don’t even need a stamp!

EDIT:
This letter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

But, I think I managed to purchase just that.

The Aeropress Coffee Maker is awesome.

Made by the same guys who make Frisbees; it’s a bit strange that they’re also in the coffee-maker business - but this is no ordinary coffee maker.

The core of the machine is something that basically looks like a giant syringe, except without a point or needle at the end, what you’ve got is a coffee filter. You put your grounds into the syringe, with a bit of water, and then push the water through.

You know what? Just watch this youtube video:

What you get, at the end of the process, is a “coffee concentrate”. This concentrate is magical.

Supposedly, you can use it just like espresso - so as a shot, lattes… other coffee products…

Add some boiling water to the concentrate and BAM! Full cup of awesome coffee. I don’t even bother with sugar - there’s none of the bitterness that I’m used to finding in coffee. Sometimes I put in a little milk; but it’s hardly a necessity.

Where I find the coffee concentrate really ups the awesome ante is that it’s all “micro filtered” and is a pretty stable substance (no coffee bits sitting at the bottom of the container). I’ve been putting a few “shots” into a container and taking it to work with me. When I want some coffee, I pull it out of the refrigerator, add some boiling water, and I’ve got great coffee.

This process DOES take a lot of grounds to make a single cup - I figure it takes about twice as much as traditional “drip style”, but it’s faster to make, faster to clean up, tastes better, and is a heck of a lot cheaper then Tim Hortons or Starbucks (and I’d say that the coffee is on-par or better than either of those).

I picked mine up in London for about $30 and it came with a year’s supply of filters. Another year’s supply would set you back a whopping $5 (drip style filters cost more than that!)

Just in case you were thinking that prices for cabling were fair and reasonable, I give you this:

Ethernet, at $100/foot

“High quality” cables don’t make any sense in most modern home entertainment setups. As soon as your signal is digital, you’re dealing with packets - packets with checksums and resends and all of the techniques that let me send an email flawlessly to Australia on a whim, even over a crappy dialup connection.

Unless it’s an analog signal, or perhaps a crazy-long cable run, the quality of the cable should be almost entirely irrelevant.

… a point release for a media player newsworthy?

Apple’s “We won’t tell you anything” is really starting to creep me out. I’m tired of relying on dudes in a forum saying, “yeah man, the click wheel seems to work better!” in order to figure out what the hell that iPod update is supposed to do.

Man up, Apple. Tell us what you’re doing with your updates. That way, we can say, “Yeah! It really does work”; and so we can say, “No, you’re full of dumbasses. This thing doesn’t do shit”; as is required by the situation.

One thing you can say about Microsoft. Sure, they do their fair share of bugfixes - but you know exactly what each of them is supposed to do!

Here’s the translation:

New OSX!
iPhone
iPhone
iPhone
iPhone
iPhone
iPhone
iPhone
iPhone applications
iPhone
iPhone
iPhone
iPhone developers

Fin

There; I just saved you two hours.

(I expect Niamu can provide more balanced and relevant commentary) (EDIT: Yep; he came through. I have more insightful commentary there)

Well, looks like negotiations have fallen through - Hockey Night in Canada will need a new theme song.

I’d also like to congratulate the copyright holder of the song - you’ve strangled the golden goose. That takes either a lot of guts or a lot of stupidity.

Who else would even TOUCH the Hockey Night in Canada song? Every time you play it, people will think of CBC! Good job CBC - you made the song famous; let the copyright holder keep their worthless piece of iconic music.

Besides the history channel or CBC wanting to use it in a “History of Canadian Hockey” segment 10 years down the road, I don’t see who’d want it.

EDIT: Ah… looks like CTV wanted it. Well… there you go.