My inane life… in glorious details!
Archive for April, 2005
Ignorance Spreads…
Apr 30th
OVERLY-CYNICAL RANT ALERT! READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL!
“Blame Piracy” is the new mode du jour amongst corporations. No less for the RIAA and MPAA (Record/Movie Industry). Unfortunately, it would appear that their own minions are starting to believe the propaganda as well, as evidenced by this beauty at my local theatre:
Anyone who knows anything about the underground will realise that “filming in theatres” almost always necessitates the aid of a theatre employee (to get the sound feed). Even so, the activity itself is pretty rare in North America; occuring ususally in disadvantaged nations.
Why is that sign there? Because the manager (or his higher ups) believe the RIAA/MPAA lies that Canadian pirates go to theatres with a movie camera, film, leave, and spread their finds on the Internet. It simply isn’t so.
Furthermore, I do believe it is legal to tape movies in Canadian theatres. After all; the Americans whom we usually follow in this instance only explicitly passed a law banning such activity 2 months ago with the passing of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005. There were prosecutions before then using the DMCA; but it remains unclear if the act of filming (without distributing) was itself illegal.
Either way; we don’t even have the DMCA in Canada. You may believe that I’m writing this as to say “praise our lack of Intellectual Property enforcement!”. This is an incorrect assumption. I’m for IP protections (where valid), but I’m against screwing up our rights in the process.
Making filming in a threatre an offense worse than killing another human being (via manslaughter, sentences according to the FEC Act) is definitively what I consider a screw up of priorities and rights.
Re-Editing EYNTO Script…
Apr 29th
Just spent 2 hours re-editing the script for EYNTO’s second portion. I simplified much of the matters, removed references to unexplained content, etc. I’m really trying to keep the amount of new computing vocabulary down as to not lose the lesser computer-familiar audience, whilst still conveying the same amount of detail.
Tomorrow I’m going out to re-shoot some of the footage.
EXAMS OVER!
Apr 29th
1. WOHOO!!!!
Okay so my math exam (Calculus & Matrix Algebra) is over. I feel extremely confident that I did well.
In the next few days I’ll be putting my life back in order. I should be informed Monday as to whether I have a job or not. Furthermore, school being over now means that I have spare *conscious free* time. EYNTO, which was on hold for a month, can now progress and hopefully be completed soon (within weeks).
It feels good duh-da-duh-da-duh-dada…
Welcome (Again!)
Apr 26th
Well, if you can read this it means that I have succesfully restored the WordPress Blog files + database on the new server. For $2 more a month, I now have 100GB bandwidth (as opposed to 15GB) and 10MySQL DBs (as opposed to 1). FTP transfer speeds are also way up.
So all in all good news! With 100GB of transfer to spare it will also mean that I will have room to experiment with other bandwidth-consuming projects.
EDIT: Well there appears to be a few glitches. “www.jmcardle.com” still resolves to the old server, whilst “jmcardle.com” resolves to the new one.
Blog on Hold.
Apr 24th
I am in the process of switching hosting services. I am backing up the blog database now, and will not add in any additional entries until the move is complete.
Wish me luck!
Life Update [Again!]
Apr 23rd
I submitted 30 resumes yesterday, 10 the day before. Add that to the 30+ I’ve already submitted to the government. No replies. Exam in 6 days. EYNTO coming along; completed 2 chapters.
The first was on Malware which covered traditional viruses, worms, etc. and then went into today’s plague: spyware/adware. Unlike previous chapters, this one did not go into much detail of how these bits of code come to be, but rather stayed focused on the remedies.
The second chapter was film footage from the Ottawa 2600 meeting, in which I interviewed a few attendees and asked them to give tips on Internet Security.
System… Balanced?
Apr 22nd
According to the new bill passed in the senate:
The bill also calls for three years in cases where a person is caught recording a movie in a theater with a camcorder – and six years for a second offence. It also indemnifies theater operators against all criminal and civil liabilities arising from detaining suspects “in a reasonable manner.”
Sooo if I murder someone (manslaughter), my penalties would probably be less than the penalties for *gasp* filming in a movie theatre. I don’t approve of filming in movie theatres, but I certainly don’t think it worse than murder. Nor do I even think it worse than shoplifting. Nothing is actually stolen (oh no! a shaky copy on a camcorder!), and no one is hurt much less killed.
It’s ignorance really, the cam-rips in the piracy world do not come from consumers of the North American cinema market. Simply fact. So why instate such draconian laws? Ahh right forgot. The MPAA/RIAA owns the Senate.
Life Update…
Apr 21st
With exams nearly done, I’ve re-started my work on the EYNTO Show. My main objective however at this time is finding a summer job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job. Job.
Math exam on the 29th.
New Headphones…
Apr 21st
I have bad luck with headphones. I have had maybe 10 in my life time, all of which have been terminated in some form or another. Two pairs of earbuds got dragged on highways for an extended duration. Two other pairs of actual headphones have broken under the pressure of my huge head. Then the other pairs of earbuds were excrutiatingly painful to use, due to the overly large plastic digging into my ear.
In essence: bad luck.
Enter the Philips HN050. They’re different. Why? Because 1. they’re not painful to use and 2. I bought the warranty: if they break in two years, I’ll get them replaced!
They’re also noise cancelling headphones (and inexpensive ones at that). Its amazing how much ambient sound these buggers cut down. They do not eliminate most sounds, but the ones you do hear will be much softer.
However, it does cause pressure in the ear. Sound is essentially pressure variations. So that silencing destructive wavelength the headphones send out to your ear to cancel ambient noise still creates an additional layer of pressure to your ear. It cannot be heard, but is definitively felt.
Recent Comments