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  • Another study blames lack of options for piracy. That makes how many now?

    written by

    james

    The piracy is evil camp’s been producing study after study the last couple months in an attempt to reinforce the idea that the world’s just chock full of evil no-good baddies with laptops and external hard drives out to find an out of the way network from which to download all manner of free and supposedly illegal content. However via Techdirt, we learn not so much. The majority of people who do their illegal downloading would much rather have a legal alternative.

    All week people have been submitting variations on the news that a study commissioned by NBC Universal, and promoted by the MPAA, shows that 24% of web traffic involves “piracy.” If you look through the actual methodology, done by research firm Envisional, there are all sorts of problems with it, including the fact that they seem to bootstrap these findings based on research done by others. Another problem is that the source Envisional used, the PublicBT tracker, does not include many of the legal BitTorrent uses, meaning that they may have significantly undercounted legal usage.

    Of course, the MPAA is using this data to suggest that piracy is a big problem, and governments need to step in and help (of course). Yet… if you actually look at the data, as Rob Pegoraro at the Washington Post did, you get a very different picture. It really suggests that all that movie piracy is the industry’s own damn fault for not making legitimate content available online. This is not news of course. One of the main reasons why people access unauthorized copies is because they can’t get legitimate copies. The movie industry is so infatuated with “windows” that it doesn’t seem to realize that restricting how people can access their movies only drives more and more people to unauthorized means.

    Movies, TV shows, music, computer games–it all boils down to the same thing. People want to access these medias in their own way, on their own time. They don’t want to wait 6 months for it to be available in their country if it’s available in the US. They don’t want to wait to download it online if it’s available on CD now. Or, they want the option of downloading it, even if it’s available on a CD. It’s largely why I have absolutely no problem justifying my own piracy. We want to be able to access this TV show, this movie, this album, this computer game in a particular way. We may not want to wait 15-30 days for a company to ship the CD to us. We may not want to wait 6 months for this album to be available in Canada when it’s already available in the US. So we don’t. It’s available, we want it, we go get it. And that pisses the movie/music/TV/gaming industry off. Funnily enough, I don’t particularly lose a whole lot of sleep at night over it. Guess now we know why.

  • Another bright idea out of Quebec. I should stop being surprised.

    written by

    james

    This one, also not surprising, involves slapping yet one more tax on anything they decide is bad for us. This month’s target of choice, soft drinks.

    A Quebec coalition wants the federal government to impose a new tax on soft drinks and energy drinks to help pay for the fight against obesity.

    Representatives of the Coalition Quebecoise sur la Problematique du Poids made their demand Thursday in front of a Parliamentary committee on health.

    Coalition director Suzie Pellerin said that a tax of, for example, one cent per litre on these products would put about $36 million into government coffers.

    According to the coalition, this revenue could then be invested in preventative projects related to health.

    Pellerin said the tax would allow for the “denormalization” of these products by clearly identifying them in a way similar to alcohol and tobacco.

    Is this a bad time to point out to these folks that neither alcohol nor tobacco have exactly been denormalized by any of the taxes etc that have been slapped on them? Yeah, I kind of thought it might.

    I know this is Quebec we’re talking about, but what ever happened to individuals being perfectly capable of deciding for themselves what is and isn’t good for them, or whether or not doing x is a contributing factor to their eventual downfall into uncontrolable bouts of insanity? We do not need government entities, or people wishing to shove their own opinions in the laps of government entities, slapping a naughty naughty tax on anything with any kind of remote trace of something sugar-based just because they don’t think we should be allowed to have it. I can’t speak for the majority of Canadians, by any means, but I’m perfectly capable of determining for myself whether or not something will eventually kill me. And if I determine, or have determined by someone with a clue in more than just asking governments for new taxes, that something’s going to eventually kill me, I’m not stupid enough to keep doing it. I don’t need yet another organization from Quebec deciding for me in Ontario that this is a bad thing.

    Folks, even if there were a valid point here, and I’m questioning whether there actually is, the answer is hardly to drive the price up with what amounts to our own answer to the sin tax. If you really must drive your point home and want people to actually take it seriously, give education a try. Give advertising a try. Give researching what you’re trying to fight against a try–most soft drinks, for example, don’t actually use straight sugar as the current demand would have folks believe. But it’s just generally easier to say “sugar bad, sugar tax” and be done with it. Which is why I’m not surprised this came out of Quebec. Now, please for the love of cheese, send it back there.

  • Returning to highschool humour. Bring on the boob and butt jokes!

    written by

    james

    Most of my readers were probably either right in the middle of, or just getting close to, their teens when Beavis and Butt-Head were actually coming out with new shows. And the rest were right about there when they went almost eternally into reruns. Now there’s a nasty little rumour floating around the intertubes that they’re coming back this summer. Just when you thought it was safe to grow up, too. Just remember, folks, they made words like “shlong” popular. And they may very likely be back to do it again. Who says there’s never anything good on TV?

  • Better than a calling card.

    written by

    james

    It’s been proven, over and over again, that there’s absolutely no such thing as a smart criminal. Most if not all of them leave a little something behind, some folks call a calling card–it’s a way investigators can trace the crime back to the one committing it. There’s only one thing investigators like better than a calling card–your cell phone. And, as Cody Wilkins learned real fast, they like that a lot.

    A major snow storm had gone through Silver Spring, leaving much of the area without power, two days before he thought it’d be fun to go get himself some free stuff. So he had a dual purpose for breaking into one gentleman’s home–the obtaining of free stuff, and to juice up his phone. He figured he’d have time to grab it on the way out, after he’d loaded up on what he came for. So he plugged it in, and went about his business. The owner’s son came home unexpectedly, cutting his not very well planned routine just a touch short. Wilkins promptly took off for home and, unfortunately for him, neglected to stop long enough to collect his phone, which was still happily charging when police showed up. They picked a random number, and happened to get hold of his girlfriend, who gave them Wilkins’s name. They showed up at his house to personally tell him he left his phone, and invite him to jail to talk about it. He’s now up on 10 other burglery charges besides that one. But his phone’s charged.

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  • A year later, Quebec still hasn’t let go of the olympics.

    written by

    james

    After the opening festivities of the olympics last year, my take on which can be found in its asociated category, the Quebec language police were up in arms because almost no french was actually used in the event. Neverminding the fact that if it had been, it would have gone pretty well not very understood by the majority of people actually there. That was around this time last year. Here it is February 2011, and wouldn’t you know, they’re still at it. And once again, they’re ignoring the fact that the rest of the world, with the exception of Quebec, pretty much speaks english and some other language that isn’t french. And that’s assuming they speak more than one language at all. Personally, I rather enjoyed the fact I could actually understand most of what went on at a Canadian event for a change.

    Okay, I get it–everything that may remotely involve Quebec must be completely bilingual, french first, and must shine a light on just how wonderful and glorious Quebec is. Yes, even if it’s a factual account of Canadian history–can’t have Quebec coming out like the spunge it is, after all. But really, now. This was 2010 when it happened. And it was one evening. That Quebec is still to this day going on about it, I think, says more about Quebec than the events they’re complaining about. Thankfully I’m no longer surprised the ones doing the complaining are the pro-Quebec, anti-Canada political parties currently in opposition in Quebec’s “national” legislature. But still, you’d think they’d glom onto an issue to beat dead that’s a little newer than this. After all, regardless to who’s side holds the more truth, if any of them actually do, you can’t undo the cerimony. It still happened the way it happened. And hey look, Quebec would still be complaining about it. And the rest of Canada’s tax dollars are paying for the complaint. Only in backwards Quebec.

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  • Once again. Twitter, please don’t sell out!

    written by

    james

    For not the first time, that website which I use for random passing thoughts that don’t warrant their own blog posts is being talked up as a potential purchase by Google. Or this time, also by Facebook. For a very impressive $10000000000. They talked about selling out to Google in early to mid 2009, after rejecting a previous offer from Facebook to buy them out–that prompted this entry.

    Don’t get me wrong, I love my google, and I’m just now starting to love my twitter. But I don’t think I could get to love the idea of twitter.google.com or something. I’m all about supporting the newcomer to the field. You turned down being bought out by facebook, and I cheered (even though I didn’t post about it here). I can only hope the talks you’re entertaining now are solely to form some sort of partnership… google does not need any more services under its umbrella. I’m halfway inclined to think they’ve already spread themselves a little bit too thin in some areas.

    Once again, Twitter, for the love of cheese don’t sell out. At least not to Google–or, for cryin’ out loud, Facebook. I like you just the way you are. Plus, Google’s still already everywhere else. Keep it outa my timeline.

  • Protecting the country’s a stressful job. You should see the bar bill.

    written by

    james

    According to information recently released, Canada’s politicians spent over $600000 on booze over the last 4 years. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so, most of the booze money went to our very own department of national defense. Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen. I dunno about you, but I feel a lot safer with this knowledge. No really. Okay, no, not really. Defense folks? They have meetings for that.

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  • And sometimes, there are entire evenings of awesome.

    written by

    james

    So yesterday was the epic get-together of win. A dozen of us crammed into one of the local restaurants and pretty much had a table or two entirely to ourselves, and an epic server of awesome to boot. Why? Simply because we could. There was me, Jessica, Heather and a whole crap ton of others, most of whom I’d never even seen before then, sitting around a huge table, eating and generally doing all manner of cutting up. The layers of awesome just kept coming–and so did the very nearly doubling over laughing at quite probably the absolute most random crap going. The food was awesome, the friends were epic, and when I came back to the apartment last night, I honestly questioned for about 10 seconds how the hell it was I’d be fitting through the door. It’s been a small age since I saw that many people get together and no punches were thrown. And the flirtation, oh the flirtation. I’m convinced that was half the hillarity in and of itself.

    Everyone was all in general agreement last night we should do that more often. Which probably means I need to start inventing money to get myself back down here for another one of these parties. And, well, hell, because I can–why not? I have all kinds of reasons to keep coming back here, and surprisingly–or perhaps not, if you’re keeping score–not all of them are Jessica-related. Just most of them. This stuff keeps happening, I’m gonna start to wonder just which of my two apartments I should be staying in. Now to get through the week so we can do something just like this all over again, except potentially with a different group of people and for possibly different reasons. This should get real interesting real fast.

    Related: Heather, we’re getting you a blog. Yesterday. Because we can. Yeah, I said it. Wait for it.

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  • Canadians 3, Maple Leafs 0.

    written by

    james

    Things I did not want to see when I woke up this morning. The 0 is on the wrong side of the scoreboard. Versus those bastards from Montreal, even. Seriously, something just broke. I dunno what, but something just broke. Bright side: Ottawa’s in last. That deserves a special place in mockeryland. Now where’d I put that article from The Onion?

    • Wins: 23
    • Losses: 33
    • Shootout Wins: 4
    • Shootout Losses: 3
    • Points: 52

  • Devils 2, Maple Leafs 1.

    written by

    james

    Our goaltender? Awesome. Our coatch? Okay. Our team? Uh, where were they? Yeah, again, missed this one. But at least this time I didn’t miss much. Apparently we didn’t actually play, or so reports go. Sigh. Oh well, I’ll take the point. So long, last available playoff spot.

    • Wins: 23
    • Losses: 32
    • Shootout Wins: 4
    • Shootout Losses: 3
    • Points: 52

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