Posts by El Brad

Music industry cripples eDonkey network

What the?

I know what an eDonkey is, but what the hell's a phonograph?

Consumers confused by HD

You can count on "HD Ready"

Ironically, the only thing that's not confusing is "HD Ready."

It means "not HD."

We have a 50" 'not HD' telly at work. Strangely, it's brilliant for displaying computer desktops, but video is terrible. It doesn't matter if it's TV or DVD or even played on the computer, it's atrocious. We just try not to use it for video.

Cameraman drops first YouTube suit to join class action

BeelineTV and video piracy

I came across BeelineTV today.

http://www.beelinetv.com/

They carry streams of TV stations from around the world. After about a decade, I can watch CBC News again, and reconnect with my home and native land.

About a decade ago there were several businesses that were rebroadcasting Canadian channels over the internet. It was legal in Canada. The model was cable TV, which also began by "pirating" terrestrial TV and rebroadcasting it. There were hopes internet TV would be bigger than cable. However, the industry was killed in it's infancy by copyright suits brought by the US networks and the *cable* companies, ie. the same kind of people trying to bring down GooTube.

Keep that in mind the next time someone tries to BS you about "piracy" and the poor mega-media-corps that can't cope with new technology. As with copyright extensions - which amount to corporate pirating from the public - ask yourself who is pirating from whom.

Public internet threatened by private telcos

Doh!

"What has been missing is mobile wireless that works across the country - for the internet, not just for cell phone service.""

Overall, it sounds like the speakers and telcos are implying that we really screwed up: the public should have taken control of the basic infrastructure - much like we control our own roads, water, sewage, etc - and provided municipal fibre and WiFi at the outset. It would be cheaper, more timely, and we'd have avoided hitching our cart the old mule of the telcos and kooky wireless companies that want to charge us £5 for the IT equivalent of a glass of water.

(I went to Starbucks recently to check my email and found they didn't have WiFi! They had a T-Mobile access point. T-Mobile wanted to charge me £5 to use WiFi for 5 minutes! I choked on my expensive latte and foam came out my nose. Nice customer service eh? I don't think I'll see the inside of Starbucks again.)

T-Mobile and their ilk are exactly why an iPhone is a dodgy proposition.

Miserable Brits declare War on Comfort

Environmentalism not the problem

Enviro-freaks are inappropriately blamed for all sorts of curmudgeonly attitudes.

I certainly don't count myself as an environmentalist, and I'm not about to seriously inconvenience myself to shave off micro-amounts of personal contributions to global warming. For example, I'm not going to shut off my computer to save the 1W difference between 'off' and 'deep sleep.' It's not worth the inconvenience. (Although it is worth knowing what uses energy without providing any benefit.)

The problem with patio heaters is not simply that they contribute to global warming. The problem is they do so in such a stupid and inefficient way, for very little actual benefit. A camp fire built on a platform 8 feet in the air would be equally idiotic. The idea that you can effectively heat the outdoors is just plain asinine.

Similarly, you don't need to be an environmentalist to recoil at daft consumers buying bottled water. The price of bottled water is often higher than petrol. Increasingly, bottled water is simply tap water. Shipping water from Switzerland to California is just plain stupid, regardless of whether you like the taste, or mistakenly believe that it's safer. Seriously, if you are drinking bottled water because you're afraid of terrorists tampering with the water supply, we've got to re-evaluate just how effective terrorism really is. (Is terrorism the new marketing?)

And of course, you don't need to be an environmentalist to curse the intellectually challenged consumers pouring money into SUVs. Are they bad for the environment? Sure. But that's not the biggest problem. As they are trucks, lower safety standards are applied, which means they can be produced with rigid, single piece chassis that are much cheaper to make than the sophisticated chassis of cars. SUVs are essentially really cheap vehicles with pimped out interiors. They are less safe for their occupants than cars, and they are less safe for everybody else on the road than cars.

"Gee honey, now that we have kids, we better upgrade to an SUV. We don't want our kids crushed under an SUV."

There's an arms war of gas guzzlers, propelled by people who think the narrow streets of London are appropriate places to drive a fat-assed truck. Obviously, the car makers love them: skirting safety standards means the profit margin is immense, as consumers are fooled into thinking of SUVs as status symbols signifying a higher than normal degree of disposable income, rather than a symbol of financial naiveté and a low IQ.

The real issue with 'environmental nannying' often has less to do with environmentalism than whether it's possible to legislate against stupidity.

The only crazy behaviour that seems specifically British is the increasing dependence on air conditioning, you know, for those times when the mercury climbs up above 22 degrees. But I can't get into that. Once you've seen your partner weakly crawling across the Sahara desert of a hardwood floor in a desperate bid to make it to the dog's water dish before expiring in the blistering 28 degree heat, you can only come to the conclusion that being unable to adapt to a pleasant summer day may very well be a genetic condition. People in other countries routinely adapt to temperatures from -50 to +50. Why can't the British adapt to variations of plus or minus 10 degrees? (Perhaps the same genetic disorder affects the sales of patio heaters?)

75-year-old has world's fastest private internet connection

Stop network neutrality

Futher proof, if any was needed: we're running out of bandwith and must end network neutrality for good!

Russian copyright wars to continue despite AllofMP3 shutdown

Who do they think they are?

If other nations think they can get away without accepting and enforcing *our* copyright laws which are designed to allow *our* largest corporations unfair and unnecessary advantages at *our* public expense, then they leave us little choice but to explore military options. Who do they think they are?