We’ve recently been breaking things to the nth degree. To the point of we’re still not entirely sure what’s broken. This is just one of those things we test occasionally to make sure it’s not broken. That, plus one of our abilities to outbound trackback appear to be shot. Is it mine, or Shane’s? Let’s see.
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This is a test. This is a post. This is a test post.
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3 strikes, and the RIAA’s out?
some of you may have been following the developing story about the Recording Industry Asociation of America (RIAA) trying to convince ISP’s to implement a sort of 3-strikes policy that would see people the RIAA believes were involved in downloading music kicked off the internet. They’ve been threatening that for two years or more, and at a few points, it looked like they might have had some pretty intense backing to implement it. Then the ISP’s chimed in. Suddenly, the RIAA found itself summarily flipped off.
It’s been a little over two years since the RIAA dropped its strategy of suing music fans for sharing files online — a strategy that was an unequivocal disaster for the record labels. Of course, when the news came out, the RIAA suggested that the reason they had done so was because of a backroom deal with various ISPs to implement three strikes plans. And yet, here we are, two years later with no major ISP having put in place such a policy. Greg Sandoval has been following this story closely, and his contacts at most of the major ISPs indicate no interest in putting in place such policies, and a widespread recognition that the ISPs have enough lobbying clout to push back on the RIAA if necessary.
And why would they? Nothing quite says screw the customer like kicking them offline because they may, or may not, have been involved in downloading music. Particularly when the may or may not relies almost entirely on whether or not the RIAA’s getting a little suspicious–which they’ve been doing way too often, and way too easy, lately. Don’t look now, RIAA folks. But I think you’ve just struck out.
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Yet another study states the obvious. Private rooms in the ICU can reduce infection.
I didnt know we still needed scientific studies to confirm what common sense usually tells us, but in this case, I guess they figured it couldn’t hurt. From the McGill University Health Center, research that’s been on-going since 2000 into whether or not private rooms in the ICU, as opposed to their multiple bed equivalents, might contribute to a reduction in hospital-aquired infections. And, no surprise to anyone who isn’t part of that research team, they do.
For the study, Dana Y. Teltsch, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University, led a team who compared the rates of patient-acquired infections before and after the change from multi-bed rooms to private rooms.
As a control group, they also used data on patients at a similar multi-bed facility at a second university hospital. The authors then compared infection rates of a total of 19,343 ICU admissions at both hospitals between 2000 and 2005.
Rates of infection were reduced anywhere from 43 to 54 percent at the hospital with the private rooms during the study. In addition, patients in those private rooms were in for shorter stays than those still in the multi-bed arangements. And again, the only people who might have expected different results were on the research team.
Yes, private rooms are likely to cost more–at least if some of our hospitals and/or health insurance companies have anything to say about it. But you’re not then spending your time in a state where your immune system’s already pretty much broken sharing a room with 4 or 5 other people who’s immune systems may also be equally broken, some of whom may have been broken by default. Granted, my immune system works quite well–too well, some might say, but even for non-intensive care, if I can get away with it, I’ll stick myself in a private room. It’s not that I’m antisocial–well, okay, that might be part of it. But I’m in a freaking hospital overnight. There’s a reason for it. That reason likely has something to do with the fact I’m in no shape to be dealing with whatever other people happen to be carrying in with them. Nor would I want to be carrying something, knowingly or not, and risk handing it off to someone else while there. That, to me, is the height of asshole. Yeah, even if the assholes are the insurance folks who say you can’t have a private room because they’d really rather not pay for it. Common sense should, by all accounts, dictate that if you’re in a hospital, you should probably be in a private room if they can manage to spare one. And now common sense has a scientific study on its side. Now comes the fun part–watching to see if anyone actually does anything about it. In the meantime, I’ll stick to requesting my private room if ever I end up needing a room in a hospital at all.
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The catholic school board’s IT department is *not* smarter than an 8th-grader.
From the department of IT Security 101, courtesy the Peterborough Catholic district School Board, comes this real life lesson of what happens when you don’t tripple check your security. you end up hacked by one of your own students.
John Mackle, education director at the Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic District School Board, said the Grade 8 pupil at St. Anne’s School in Peterborough’s north end found his way — via his laptop, a piece of downloaded software and the board’s internal network — into a board file server containing provincewide test results.
“To be honest, I don’t know that he would have understood what he was seeing,” Mackle said.
“The information that he was able to see wouldn’t have made a lot of sense to him.”
Mackle said the incident occurred when the server in question, which isn’t located at the school, was turned back on after undergoing a service upgrade.
“We normally have two levels of security,” Mackle said. “In this case, level 1 was turned back on, but level 2 was not. This allowed the boy to gain access.”
Security for all servers has been upgraded in the wake of the incident, he added.
By “upgraded”, does he mean “reenabled”? And, really, just what kind of security do they over at the Peterborough school board consider to be level 1? Inquiring minds want to know. If the system was secured, the kid shouldn’t have been able to access it. On second thought, I’ve come to understand the school board’s definition of secured and the rest of the world’s definition are usually two pretty different things. If given enough time to work at it, most school board security systems–at least up here–could probably be compromised with a minimal amount of effort, if someone with a problem with that school or the board really wanted to.
Let this be a lesson for aspiring IT people. Secure your shit. Twice. And for the love of chese, if you’ve got a system installed, tripple check that it comes up when the server you’re trying to protect does. I should not have to point that out.
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And the TekSavvy downward spiral continues.
Right on the heels of their change in attitude, Ontario-based TekSavvy continues to come apart at the seems from a customer service standpoint. This time, in the form of a new activation so utterly disorganized that at time of posting, all of the initial issues–including the service-related screw-up that prompted the first phone call– remained unresolved. And in not resolving those issues in the first place, they had the new customer’s service shut off for a few days, claiming a new order needed to be generated. And then they wound up right back on the service they were trying to upgrade from. When a company who usually prides itself on customer service starts requiring multiple calls to follow up, restate, regenerate and follow up again, there are problems galore. When it happens to a customer who’s just activated service with that company? I don’t even know. We’ve been seeing more of this over the last few months–it’s what caused me to jump ship. When your reason for leaving the old ISP becomes worse than your old ISP, it’s time to reexamine who you’re dealing with. I suspect these folks may be thinking about doing exactly that.
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Verizon gets to end up with the iPhone. I’m sorry.
Verizon’s been building up over the last week to this supposedly major announcement to happen today. Today came and went, and the biggest thing to come out of that announcement? The iPhone. Naturally, there’s a sort of but not really appropriate level of fanpeopleism over it–it’s an Apple product; what’d you expect? Or rather, it’s a kind of dumbed down version of an Apple product–what you get when you cross a supposedly advanced piece of technology with a network that was advanced in 1997. Naturally, you do that, you wind up with half a dozen irritating limitations–things people who actually expect to be able to *use* the iPhone probably aren’t overly happy with.
- The phone runs on CDMA only, which is escentially older hardware–even Bell up here is moving entirely away from CDMA. Quickly.
- They’re saying it won’t run on Verizon’s 4g, LTE network. Because, apparently, people want it now now now. Hey, they waited this long.
- Being CDMA and CDMA only, if you’re on the phone, you can’t be doing anything on the internet–like, for example, looking up an address the person you’re talking to just gave you. Conversely, if you’re checking your email, or looking up that address, you can’t make/receive calls. Nifty. Except no not really.
- And don’t even get started on reception–of which Verizon has very little in supposedly well-populated areas.
And that’s just the issues we know about after today’s announcement. There will probably be more. All told, Verizon’s major announcement isn’t entirely all that major. Unless you’re an Apple loyalist–but then you’ve probably already got an iPad or something anyway. But, hey, someone might enjoy themselves. Just don’t ask them if they can map something out for you.
Update: If you really really really want an iPhone with one of these carriers, I’m sorry. But if you still do, the folks over at Wired have, as always, put together a pretty good comparison of what you can expect on each carrier’s network. Some of the limitations on that list for Verizon are in this entry, but it’s worth a read anyway. Just in case. Hey, you never know.
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major record labels get beat over the head by their own tricks. Oopsies.
Every couple days if you’re paying attention, you hear some story or another about a record label in either the US or Canada gearing up to sue a bunch of people for supposed copyright infringement for daring to download and/or do whatever they please with the music of whoever the victimised artist is this month. The lawsuits usually amount to somewhere in the neighbourhood of millions of dollars in supposed damages. And sometimes, they actually get people to pay them. So imagine the surprise on the faces of some record label execs when a copyright lawsuit on behalf of several artists comes across their desk, to the tune of $6000000000. No, scratch that. Don’t imagine.
We’ve noted the irony of the fact that the largest copyright system supporters are frequently found to infringe whenever possible. One of the most amazing examples of this concerned the major record labels, who for years were directly infringing on the copyrights of various artists, by putting their songs on compilations and mixes without first getting permission as is required by the law. Instead, the labels would put those artists on a “pending list,” but they rarely seemed to get around to taking them off that “pending list” and paying them. After years of trying to get the labels to pay up, a lawsuit was finally filed, where the artists pointed out that the labels could be on the hook for $6 billion. Kind of amusing to see the ridiculously large infringement penalties thrown back at the labels. After some negotiation, it appears that the labels have agreed to settle the case for $45 million and they’re also promising to make sure that artists on the pending list will get paid in a reasonable amount of time. Now, can we finally stop pretending that the major record labels ever have the best interests of the artists in mind?
RIAA/CRIA: looking out for number 1, where number 1 = anyone not actually involved in creating music, since its foundation. And yet folks wonder why people are starting to lean more towards supporting artists by attending concerts/other such events that don’t actually involve giving money to the record labels. And why certain artists are starting to lean away from the major labels and, in some cases, starting their own. Now how long before a press release or something shows up that says the major labels are still looking out for their artists? I’m betting not very.
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OC Transpo is playing around with reverse economics again.
For the fourth year in a row, OC Transpo, better known as that thing what used to get me to work anywhere from 10 minutes early to 15 minutes late, has decided to increase fares. The reason? According to the current chair of the OC Transpo commission, low ridership is to blame. So to offset the lack of revenue prompted by dropping ridership numbers–which probably wouldn’t have happened if the city and OC Transpo union hadn’t screwed us all over the place re: that bus strike, the remaining riders will be given a very good reason to look elsewhere for their rides–higher prices. A monthly bus pass now costs about $91. And for their increased fees, they get the privilege of riding buses that just so happen to be a little more empty. Reverse economics has hit Ottawa in 2011. And just in time for that other city what perfected the art of reverse economics to cancel its own fare increase. Impressive, Ottawa. Except for that part where it’s not. Please to be leading by example. Oh, wait–I forgot who I was talking about. Forget I said anything.
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It probably isn’t very smart to publicly admit to hacking a cellebrity.
Even if the cellebrity in question could probably benefit from spending a little more time in daddy’s shadow. Just ask Josh Holly how that worked out for him, assuming you can get a hold of him. He admitted to having hacked Miley Cyrus’s MySpace profile as well as her Gmail account. He’s subsequently been arrested on unrelated creditcard charges. Way to paint a bullzai on your forehead, Josh. No word as of yet whether or not he’s been charged with anything related to the hacking offenses, if they’re even true, but I’ve got $20 saying the charges he’s on the hook for will make up for it. Perhaps next time, he’ll reconsider getting into the advertising business.
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Maple Leafs 3, Kings 2.
Okay, that was good. Awesome, even. Probably better than tonight’s game will be vs. San Jose, but you’ll have that. And hey, we actually didn’t implode in the third. How’d that happen? Probably still hanging out in the league’s basement, but we can’t have everything. Hell, some years we can’t have anything–we cheer for Toronto, after all. Oh well. Just be happy we get to sit at:
- Wins: 17
- Losses: 24
- Shootout Wins: 3
- Shootout Losses: 2
- Points: 38