mattm

A little talk with Jim Carrol who brings up a very good point:

Carrol warns the cable companies not to make the same mistake as the music industry did by “going to war†with it’s (geeky) customers.

In his talk he advised cable engineers to embrace new technologies like file-sharing and Ip-tv and Voip instead of fighting new technologies like the music industry did with MP3’s.

“Do you really want to go to war with your customers?†he asked. “The music industry went to war with its customers and look where it got them. Do you want to repeat that history? [color:red]The geeks will always win because they can always rewrite the codeâ€

Sunshine here in Nepean!

I too have been pushed around all day by that same bully, wind. There should be lots of folks on the canal to keep things warm though (and I hope like mad they do me the favor of cutting the wind).

Yeah, I haven't been on here that long but I was thinking the same thing. Not only that, he's got an algorithm for finding exactly the right show, site, etc in record time. I can search fast but I've been blown away by good old bradm. And he can record well. Good job dude. I'm going to grab that show tonight when I get home.

Then we're all fucked

Nero, I don't use anything else and haven't for years.

Here in Nepean she's still raging.

According to the Weather Network:

AFTERNOON

EVENING

OVERNIGHT

MORNING

Yeah, I'm bored. Looks like the snow will stop but the wind will keep up. This is Ottawa, the windiest place I've ever lived. I've heard people here claim it's calm out when at the same time I'm thinking about the fairly strong breeze so 25k/hr shouldn't bother ottawaonians.

PS: I called the NCC and they said the show's on. I said even with weather like this and she said yup, rain or shine, it's on.

haha bradm, I think we hit that at the same time.

Same here, I'm heading out alone as well. I work for the city of ottawa (website, ottawa.ca) so I'll keep my eyes open all day. So far I haven't heard anything.

February 17, 2006

Canada’s Capital Region -- The NCC has temporarily closed Snowflake Kingdom located in Jacques-Cartier Park, in Gatineau. The recent freezing rain has rendered the site unsafe for visitors.

Weather permitting, the NCC and the Ville de Gatineau will reopen the park tomorrow, Saturday, February 18, 2006, as of 9 am, and the Ice Hog family will be waiting to welcome the throngs of Winterlude festival-goers.

Activities in Confederation Park, home of the Casino du Lac-Leamy Crystal Garden, and at the [color:red]American Express Snowbowl continue as scheduled. The Rideau Canal Skateway is open today from Laurier Bridge to Dows Lake. Please note that the ice surface conditions are poor.

For further information, contact the NCC at (613) 239-5000, 1 800 465-1867, or visit our website by following the link below.

Link below is this

From here

Do you think He'll still go on? Last time I was out it was incredibly windy (pushing me around a bit), seems like a pretty strong storm out there.

It's not technically a problem, it's the same as everything else. Torrents are a major part of the internet and the ISP's have no way to cash in on it so they slow it down. TV got popular so they loaded it with advertisements, P2P got popular so they loaded it with advertisements. You can't advertise in torrents all that well other than including little shortcuts in the torrent which most people won't click on.

I also forgot all about porn. I bet if someone really was able to verify and produce proper statistics, porn would be the number one use of the internet. I was watching Bravo the other night and they had a show about internet porn but it was focused on portable porn. Video iPods, iPod porn. They were saying that because of the internet and the slow withdrawl of hardcore belief in religion (westerners), it's much more acceptible. They found that the Suicide Girls sold tonnes (tonnes) more videos than the iPod site. Here's a little article that talks about it. I think it's odd and neat at the same time. Portable porn, hehe.

The best thing is to make sure you have at least one computer geek in your group of friends so you can stay on top of the latest shit like this.

Just remember: If you like it, buy it.

my torrent client has been running for almost two months. Sometimes I turn it off when I have to take my laptop somewhere but mostly it's just downloading shit. I know lots of people that download a gig a day at least.

That's the bandwidth. If you look at what the internet is being used for I bet email and general browsing have higher percentages. It's the massive file sizes of the torrents (4 gig dvd's, 10 gig full seasons, shit like that) that uses all the bandwidth.

I'm not sure if anyone can actually measure that though. It's like surveys and polls. Notice around election time newspapers and shit will say one party is in the lead by xx% but if you read the fine print there's a good chance that only 3000 or so people actually got polled. There was an article in some newspaper I read a while ago that talked about this exact thing with the play on numbers.

The major companies want to slow down the torrent and such packets so it's easy to just jimmy up some numbers. Survey 10000 teens/college age kids that you know damn well are using torrents and you'll get a nice number like 80% which you can then publish. On the other hand, grab 10000 baby boomers and ask what they use the internet for. No longer is 60% of it being used for torrents.

The only way to check would be to put deep packet scanners on every ISP (hardcore invasion of privacy but it's already being done, I think Rogers put it in a while ago) and actually count the percentage of packets that are connected to a torrent. That would cost a lot.

Unfortunately torrents are for the most part illegal so it kills the good torrents from sites like etree

But there'll always be something on these lines. Before torrents you had the loads of p2p programs (imesh, kazaa, etc). The problem with these was that they were stupid and put ad/spyware in the programs. Before these there was Napster. Unfortunately for it, it was the first major p2p.

Newsgroups and IRC have always been the best way to get files but due to the complexity they aren't as well known. BBS's started it all.

What I'm getting at is that if they find a way to kill torrents, someone will figure out a way to make a file sharing application that looks like email, lets say, or something to bypass the scanners.

My two cents

What's the point of putting the Ç when censoring fuck? They pretty much look the same, granted it is rather funny though. I need to go to sleep.

When obstinate countries declare their unwillingness to negotiate with Secretary of State Condi Rice, all we have to do is roll out Deadeye Dick."

Good ol' Deadeye Dick, I like that.

C'mon guys, be serious here. It would cost a fortune to lower CO2 emmision and regulate pollutants. You also have to take in the fact that the oil tycoons don't really have all that much money so they need as much as they can get.

I'll prove it:

"There is some new money in the Advanced Energy Initiative that President Bush announced last night, but it pales in comparison to the tax breaks he's offering the oil companies," says Susan Joy Hassol, an independent climate analyst who has written several major international assessments of global climate change.

"Compared to the incremental increases he is offering for the development of new energy technologies — increases of millions or tens of millions of dollars — in the overall energy bill, the president is giving billions in tax breaks to the oil and gas drillers — and all this at a time when oil company profits are soaring," Hassol says.

See, why would bush do something like that if it was a serious problem? He's got lots of scientific advisors doesn't he?

The quote is really from a site the rest of the post is me being sarcastic but I can't find a sarcastic html tag so this message will have to do

Someone needs to buy that dude a set of drums.

you're in the clear

One might try a program called Easy CDDA Extractor which might just have the capabilities to do such a thing (works for me, shhhhhhh). So far the only CD I've come across like that was the new Green Day a buddy of mine wanted mp3'd for his iPod.

If one was so inclined, one might also visit astalavista.box.sk where he/she might stumble upon a crack for said program (although he/she would need an older version of the program as the cracks seem to come out a couple months after a version change).

msg me if you need or want a hand. always remember that if you like a program, pay for it but so far as I'm concerned you should be allowed to preview it for free. I think the limitations on the free version are 5 songs per cd and I think it picks them randomly.

PS: This program kicks ass. It will rip anything I've tried so far and it will also do conversions. It's linked to freeddb so you don't have to worry about ID3 tags. You might need to get the Lame mp3 Encoder but I think it comes with it. Pretty much everyone I know that likes to backup their cd's (say for an ipod) uses this.

You know, if I shot someone in the face while hunting illegally (he didn't by the hunting ticket so by law he shouldn't have been shooting anything, innocent birds or innocent lawyers) I'd probably be in jail by now and there's no way they would have given me 24 hours to sober up.

My buddy has been doing it for years with things like columbia house records. Just makes up a name and when they call says the person never lived there. He just keeps the initial free ones and never talks to them again. It's not a credit card though, they will catch you and they mean business. Remember, they have your address and phone number. Now, you could take the chance, spend the money and if they come after you just plead ignorance, then get pissed off then say fine, I'll pay!! (and save up a grand or so while doing this and pay it). You never know, they may never find you. They need your social insurance number to really get you though.

PS: My vote is NO, not worth it. Fraud is very bad to be charged with as it's your credibility at stake. No one will hire you if it's proven you're willing and capable of scamming like that.

Not sure, I got home last night and the link was waiting for me in an msn chat box. It was from Mike (git, WTTS) but I don't think he's on here to answer.

Anyone read the little info blurb to the right of The Rawker's vid?

"...So, the band finally buys some monitors and can now hear what their lead singer sounds like. He is fired immediately. These videos are “the rawker’s†attempts to get into a new band."

nice

If the house you're in has already had cable at some point and there's a box on the outside wall then you can install it free yourself by sticking a butter knife in, jimmying it open and rejoining the wires. The box should have two or four wires in it that will be joined in pairs with a piece of metal. Replace the piece(s) of metal with a joiner(s) and you're set. Don't call the cable company after this and make damn sure you don't leave any really revealing marks on the box. If the cable comes from one of the green boxes that sit by the road this will not work.

If you want high speed internet or more than basic cable, don't do this.

Another thing is that if you get your cable from a green box by the street and get a rogers guy to come out and he/she looks cool, see if you can slip them $20 or something to hook up the slightly better cable. At some places it's all in the joiner they put on in the box. If it's the right one, you get more channels but the cable company can't tell, they go on what the installer says (I think blue is basic and gold is better). Some buddy's of mine got cable and the installer only had the gold joiners left but they only wanted basic cable. He said he'd go and grab one and that's when the $20 offer came out which was fine by him. he put a gold one on and marked it down as the blue one.

PS: That suggestion is for educational purposes only and I take no responsibility for it. Also, this stuff might only apply to old places as I don't know anyone who's tested it since around 2003.

At the very least, it's nice that they have all these hacks "concentrated" into one band, rather than having one member infecting each of four or five other bands...

I never thought about it that way, just laughed. Good call

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5103298305013044818&q=worst+band

The singer rocks

I tried looking for those guys and bonnaroo 2006 and not really anything. I know it's mike's made up band from outside out but there I get stumped. I think I'm just going to give up and use mike's page for the link.

Not sure, to tell the truth I volunteered to help bouche with the articles (he posted a thread asking for it) and the article I'm working on is for Bonnaroo. While trying to find links to info for the bands I was able to come up with a link for everything but Ramble Dove.

I'll confess, I don't really think it's Phish, I'm just really bored and decided to throw a little conspiracy into the mix. If anyone can help, that'd be nice.

thanks,

mattm

Yeah but it's way more fun to pretend they're phish. According to phish.com:

Mike and a handful of Vermont's finest twangers will take the cozy confines of Honky Tonk Tuesdays to the big stage at 2006 Bonnaroo, where they will pay tribute to giants like Hank Williams, Lefty Frizell, and George Jones, as well as modern greats like Jim Lauderdale and Gram Parsons. Have beers at the ready for twang and tears.

It'd be nice to know more though. Why doesn't any site I go to list off some of VT's finest twangers?

As Carl Perkins once sang, "let's give ol' Tennessee credit for music." From the whiskey-soaked wee hours of Burlington, Vermont's Radio Bean Cafe flies Ramble Dove. What began as a weekly hang paying homage to honky-tonk music, capturing the essence of dancing, drinking and losing the one you love, now makes its way to the backyard of Nashville, country music's capital city.

That's from mike's site but still no names. The poor guys must not be important enough to name off (or they haven't decided who's going perhaps) but I'm still going to pretend it's phish.