Welcome to Nowhere

Home ยป Page 92

  • Legal entities are catching on, just not in Canada or the US. File sharing is not illegal in Spane.

    written by

    james

    I’ve been saying it for months. And, indeed, so have several others. Now, a Spannish court has effectively agreed with me (thanks, Techdirt). Since music, the written word, etc existed, people have been lending/sharing/finding ways to copy it. Predates the internet, predates CD’s, tapes etc, predates PVR’s. And yet, in 2010, the entertainment industry backed by governments is trying to say it’s always been illegal/a violation of copyright law/immoral/equivalent to breaking into a store and robbing it/the leading cause of death second only to cancer. everyone’s been saying we should be more like the US when it comes to piracy, copyright law, etc. Screw that–let’s be more like Spane. At least they recognise the difference between reselling a CD and copying it for a friend.

    Note to US politicians: take your DMCA and hang yourselves with it. Then give me, the average consumer, a reason to buy as opposed to torrent.

    A note to Canadian politicians: stop trying to please the US. We’re not the US. We do not answer to the US. And I’m certainly not going to support legislation that looks like it came from the US. Here, have a clue by four.

    ,

  • Now there’s a model parent if ever I saw one.

    written by

    james

    Suddenly, all the bad parenting stories I’ve heard in my life–yes, including the one about the kid smoking 2 packs a day–don’t seem quite so bad as this. Mom physically abuses her two-year-old, gives him crack for 14 months, nearly kills him, and winds up with 8 years in jail. Meanwhile, the kid’s pretty much, according to the article, not going to amount to a whole lot of anything–he’s pretty well brain fried, among other things.

    Excluding the fact she had to have child services called on her before she took the kid to hospital for broken bones they’re saying she caused, what kind of brain dead thinking would make someone believe cocaine would do anything but screw this kid up? Granted it doesn’t look as though she particularly cared one way or another what it did, but still. There are more than a few things wrong with this situation, not the least of which being in the list of charges she was found guilty of, I don’t see attempted murder listed there. Granted I’m not a parent, but geebus criminy. There’s something broken with this system if a situation like that lands someone with a light sentence. All I’ll say is thank the divine power of the week we got rid of 2 for 1. Now at least she’ll be in there for 5 years, as opposed to significantly less. Yes, I already said it. But I’m gonna say it again. This system is broken.

    ,

  • Twitter, you need this feature.

    written by

    james

    Or, if you’d rather, you need to fix this bug. As most readers know, I’ve been a fan of the whole Twitter scene for a while–hint: if you’re reading this on the website, right sidebar, bottom. I like a lot of what they’ve done with the service over the last couple years, including the ability to not see every random reply people send to folks you’re not following. But here’s where I think improvements might very well be needed.

    You’re following A, C and D. If A sends a reply to B and C in that order, you won’t see it even though you’re following C. Which means you can’t contribute to the conversation going on very well–which is Twitter’s entire point, I thought. However, if A sends his reply to C and B, you’ll see it. But anyone who’s just following A and B won’t. Confused yet? It gets more so. A replies to C and D, you see it. Because, surprise, you’re following all three.

    Since Twitter’s started calling replies mentions, and encouraging folks to stick them anywhere in the tweet other than just the beginning, it’s going to make integrating people into a conversation very much easier–if Twitter decides to support it. How they could support it is like this.

    • Four people have a following arangement like this. A is following B, C and D. B is only following A and C. D is only following A. And C is only following A and D.
    • A and D get into a conversation re: local politics. The only person who can see it under the current situation is C.
    • C joins the conversation, prompting a mention from A that gets sent to both C and D.
    • Under the current system, if D is first on the replying to list, B won’t see it. Contrarily, if C is first on the replying to list, everyone in the current group will see it.
    • If B sees the conversation, he has the opportunity to contribute something to it–thus, possibly, finding one more person to follow and doing what Twitter’s intended to do–spread the conversation. Hey, I know it’s cheesy. I didn’t come up with that.

    That eliminates the problem I see frequently in which you only see a small part of the conversation in question, if any at all, in spite of the fact you may have a few people you follow involved. But, because of the relative handful of people you don’t follow and how the reply system is currently set up, you won’t see replies that get sent to them from people you’re following, even if one or more people you follow are mentioned. Since in most cases, you would only follow people you come across in a conversation for the duration of that conversation, most noteably if you don’t find anything else about them particularly interesting–I can talk politics with the best of them, but I have no interest in, for example, reading about the latest weekly music obsession taken hold of by that same person–it wouldn’t make much sense to follow, have a 15-minute exchange with everyone in the conversation, unfollow. The current system doesn’t allow for avoiding that, though. If the proposed idea was actually implemented, you would only be aware of exchanges with that person as they apply to conversations being had with multiple people you’re following. Thus, giving you the opportunity to decide on a case by case basis which conversations to join, and eliminating the need for temporarily following.

    The problem is partially solved by the idea of retweet functionality, but not completely. Now, you’re relying on people involved in the conversation to take an active role in circulating the tweets of others to people who may only be following the one doing the circulating. The exchange is probably less relevant to most of those as it would be to individuals following at least two participants in a conversation. The system I propose above keeps it confined largely to that group where possible.

    It’s awesome to see Twitter easily supporting mentioning multiple users, thus drawing those specific users into a potential conversation. But, it excludes a lot of folks who may only be seeing a part of the exchange, and that only based on current order of replies between people being followed. I can see reasons for doing that, but I can see plenty more where improvements like what I’ve outlined above could come in really quite handy. If the whole point of Twitter is social interaction, I’d like to think something like this would be common sense. I’m not sure how it would be implemented code-wise, but that’s why they don’t have me on the dev team. If they did do this, though, I could probably find several dozen more uses for Twitter than what I currently have. Not to mention it’d just be several kinds of nifty.

  • Because 2 years of “file not found” is long enough.

    written by

    james

    Every so often, I have such an idiot moment that it takes me forever to realise I was a complete moron. One of those moments happened, sadly enough, during the rebirth of the blog on this domain. For folks who’ve been keeping score, I’ve actually shifted blogging platforms twice–once from Movable Type to LiveJournal, and then from LiveJournal to WordPress. In all that time, while folks could always see the old blog over here, that left a gigantic hole on this site–one that quickly filled up with requests for pages that no longer existed. Enter the moronic that is me.

    Being that I deal with computers, the interwebs, and things that make both tick on a regular basis, you’d think I’d of clued in on this a lot sooner than I did. Turns out–and I should have known this–search engines, other websites, random spambots etc don’t actually stop looking for a page just because said page stopped existing in 2008. Nor, for that matter, does anyone actually correct broken links it would appear. And, since until this morning I didn’t even have a clue how to go about doing that, they just kind of sat there returning the standard 404 request.

    Fortunately, because the year I was on LiveJournal meant I wasn’t using this domain for it, there’s that much fewer posts I had to worry about correcting. That just left the 600 and change from the old MT install. Three hours on Google, various message boards, and other asorted sites later, I came across what I think might just be the almost right solution for that particular problem. After testing it on a handful of posts that I’ve been able to confirm were tossing back 404 errors, and finding them no longer doing so, I can safely say the blog now works entirely–or virtually so, if nothing else–the way I originally intended to.

    The how and the why is semi-technical, though if anyone’s interested in the boring details I’ll be more than happy to elaborate. But, the short version goes something like this. Movable Type, for all its usefulness, had one huge drawback. It built static HTML files. Which, okay, made serving posts etc pretty much amazing. But once you got up to a certain amount of activity–the publishing of new posts and comments–the rebuilding of those static HTML files took about a hundred years. It also didn’t allow for a whole lot of flexibility in how you linked to those files. If you changed the post title and wanted to update the permalink to account for the change, MT didn’t give you much support for redirection to the new URL. You pretty much had to change it manually, then provide the redirection manually. Adding to the complication that is MT’s way of doing things, the directory structure it came up with was something like: https://www.the-jdh.com/2010/06/05/some_post_title_here.html . WordPress, on the other hand, goes more along the lines of: https://www.the-jdh.com/2010/06/some-post-title-here/ . Ignoring the arguments as to which one’s better than the other–I don’t really care to be honest, it presented a small problem post-migration. Problem solved.

    A little addition in plugin form to WordPress, and the URL you request from the server suddenly serves a secondary purpose. It gets handled in this way.

    • If the post and/or page requested exists, serve it as per normal.
    • Failing that, scan the current list of posts/pages for a post who’s title matches the keywords available in the URL.
    • If a matching post is located, redirect the browser to that post and hope that’s the one they were looking for.
    • If nothing is found, return the standard 404 page as per usual and get on with the normal routine.
    • If more than one option is found, then, optionally–meaning whenever I get around to implementing it–provide a list of suggested entries similar to what was detected in the URL.
    • If none of those applies, then we have a bigger problem than I thought and I really should consider not tweeking the site while half a mile from no sleep.

    Since nothing’s blown up at me during my testing, it’s a pretty safe bet things are at least 90% not broken. Or they’re clever about hiding their brokenness. Now, about that half a mile of sleep thing. Time to go fix that next.

    , , ,

  • Popular posts (May, 2010).

    written by

    james

    Not even officially summer yet and I’ve had to keep the remote to my AC close by. This isn’t pretty. If you’re sweating it out like I am, here’s a nifty little way to keep semi-cool. crack open something cold–I recommend a bottle of rum–and have a look at what folks were interested in last month, as always, courtesy Google Analytics.

    • The “piracy is evil” camp got a bunch of renewed memberships this month, in the form of our new copyright legislation and its supporters. I wonder what for, and point out the obvious. As long as the pirates offer a better service than the legal alternatives, piracy wins. And no, I don’t lose sleep at night.
    • Administrative bodies absolutely hate making things headache free. Noteably when it comes to certain highschool transcripts. I guess 1995 was a good year–folks are surprisingly still stuck there, at least technologically.
    • Earlier in the month, Ottawa and area received a gift from the phone companies in the form of a new area code. It only took them 4+ years since they enacted ten-digit dialing.
    • Humidity? Here? Nah. Can’t be. If you’re me, you’re probably about ready to call it quits on this whole overly sticky thing already–and it’s only June. And if you’re Xup, you’re probably crazy enough to actually like it. I’m sorry.
    • Speaking of Xup, a debate over on her blog a bit ago left me with an essay in my head, and I’m way too nice to stick the whole thing on her blog in a comment. It got dropped here instead. I keep forgetting to do my follow-up post to this one. Maybe today at some point. Or tomorrow. See? Told you lazy is bad for me.

  • Tony clement still doesn’t get it. Is anyone else surprised?

    written by

    james

    I thought it might be more of an advantage having folks with a hint of tech savvy thinking working on Canada’s answer to copyright legislation demands being tossed at us from the US and other countries. turns out, not so much.

    Industry Minister Tony Clement says cracking down on people who break “digital locks” on DVDs and video games brings Canada in line with many countries, despite criticism from Internet experts.

    So, let me kind of see if I can’t maybe wrap my head around this one. Copying CD’s to your computer, to then put them on your iPod, is not illegal under the new bill. Purchasing music online to then put on your iPod is not illegal. So long as the said music from either source isn’t protected by DRM. Which escentially means we’re going to start seeing more companies employing DRM in order to prevent folks from copying, now that they have legal backing up here to do so. In spite of the fact DRM only ever actually makes things worse for people who actually *do* want to pay for it. Nice thinking, Tony.

    With the appropriate props given to the originating blog, I explained my theory behind tactics like that as it applies to TV. The same can easily be expanded to music. I want to be able to listen to an album I obtain where, when and how I choose. Why? Because if I legally purchased it, it’s legally mine to do with as I see fit. The copyright bill as it stands right now escentially grants record labels the freedom to decide, simply by including DRM on a purchased CD, that by law I’m not allowed to do so. Hence, it’s then off to another illegal realm–I either break the digital lock on the CD, pay for yet another copy to put on my MP3 player, or just to have on my computer, or obtain the album the not so legal way via torrents. Which do you think I’m gonna pick? And I haven’t even addressed the case of an album only ever having maybe 1 or 2 good songs on it, but you’re still required to cough up $20 for the whole thing.

    It was no doubt a common practice pre-internet for folks to copy a tape, or part of one, for a friend/family member. Or, for folks to copy songs off the radio onto tape for themselves. I’ve done both, and had both done for me–so have doubtless many others. With the advent of the internet and file sharing, that’s kind of the natural progression of that same practice. Under both the old and new copyright legislation, that practice–in spite of the fact it predates the internet–would still be rendered illegal. I’m pretty sure there are folks in government on both sides of the issue who’ve done the same thing I have. I’d lay odds minister Clement is one of them. I guessed as much already, and questioned whether or not he’d begin to see file sharing as it stands right now as a natural progression of that habbit. Given his viewpoint on this particular bill as it stands right now, my money’s on not likely.

    In spite of statements etc up until this week that were shying away from the kind of copyright legislation being challenged in various forms on the other side of the border, Tony Clement still doesn’t quite get it. It’s sad, but I can’t help but wonder if anyone’s surprised. For about thirty seconds, I admit, I was. Now? I’ll be surprised if he switches.

    , ,

  • More corporate cost cutting. There goes your phone book, Ottawa.

    written by

    james

    If you’re used to picking up your residential phone book on an anual basis and are an Ottawa resident, you’ll now have to ask for it. Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City and probably others are no longer getting copies of the books, effective… well, immediately. Their reason? Most people go online for their info anyway. And if you don’t, they’re now suggesting you do. Or, you can call the Yellow Pages Group to request they continue delivering it to your address. Me, personally? I’ll stick with online–I can read that, at least.

  • Gordie Howe is now ‘doctor Howe’. The essay topic lives on.

    written by

    james

    When I was in highschool, I wrote an essay on those people I considered to be highly influencial Canadians. I don’t even remember exactly what the content of the essay was, and I’m not sure I even still have the original copy. One of the topics in question was hockey awesomeness personified, Gordie Howe. And why not? The man made most players today look like the kind you’d see in a rookie league. More than his share of Stanley cups, MVP nods, and still the model of comparison folks use when describing what could be the next great player in the league. Now, he’s not just the guy they call Mister Hockey–he’s an honorary doctor of law thanks to the university of Saskatchewan. I may not have the original essay, but I still remember the awesome that was doing the research on him. The awesome continues. Congratulations, doctor Hockey. You still rule.

    ,

  • Woman’s failure to use her brain lands her in a legal fight with… Google?

    written by

    james

    Why you would go walking along an interstate highway at 6:00 in the morning is anyone’s guess. Why you would do it in an area you’ve never been? That’s a leap of logic I don’t feel safe making. Yet, that’s what lead to an LA woman being hit by a car in Utah. Now, she’s suing Google–who’s map directions she was following, and the driver of the car who hit her, for upwards of $100000 in damages. Her lawyer’s reasoning? It was dark.

    The woman in question was following walking directions from Google, who’s service has for, like, ever had a notice on it that it was in beta and routes may or may not have sidewalks. She chose to try and cross the highway, at 6:00 in the morning, expecting there to be a sidewalk. She could not see the lack of sidewalk, however. Not that that ended up making a whole lot of difference–she didn’t actually make it across the highway before getting hit anyway. The logic behind that decision?

    “She was in an area that she’d never been to before. It was pitch-black. There were no streetlights. She relied on Google that she’d cross there and go down to a sidewalk,” Young explained.

    So. Basicly. She relied on a beta service. A service with a warning of possible lack of sidewalks. And she just assumed there’d be a sidewalk on the other side. And she had the misfortune of not timing her crossing such that, in spite of the street apparently not being busy at that hour, she still got smoked. And this is Google’s fault? Or the driver’s, for that matter–it’s a highway; there’s going to be fast-moving vehicles.

    I don’t want to have to say it. Really, I shouldn’t have to say it. Okay, I’m gonna say it. Your stupid does not constitute an emergency on Google’s–or anyone else’s–part. This lady chose to go for a stroll down an interstate highway. In the dark. In a city she’s never been in. Looking for an apartment building she’s probably never been to. She got run over. Yes, it’s tragic. Yes, it’s a little tiny bit–okay, a lot–frightening. But if she’d used her blackberry to maybe call a cab or something instead of follow map directions that came with a “may not be accurate” disclaimer, she wouldn’t be in the situation she’s in now. Or in court, really. She didn’t. She got hit. And it’s Google’s fault. Somebody explain this one to me. My brain just broke.

    , ,

  • Poll: Coffee. Yay, naye or who cares?

    written by

    james

    I’ve already gone over my opinion on the study, and why–in summary: coffee, sleep, or death; your choice. I’m interested in your take on the same study. You can mark your opinion off in the below poll, or drop me a comment to either post. Comments, and voting, will not be closing. If you’re reading this in an RSS reader, you’ll need to click over to the actual site to vote. If you’re reading this on LJ, you may have to do same. Let me know if something breaks.

    [poll id=”3″]

recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives