rwmtest

Author John Degen has posted some fictional conversations between a writer and a reader on his blog ( June 9 , June 10 ). I say it is fictional as it ignores how the relevant technology works, and thus not only the lack of clarity of the relationships between writers and readers but also the fact that there is a technology company as intermediary that separates there from being much of a relationship at all between writers and readers. It depicts some rare moment where all the parties involved have the same understanding of the relationship, likely because this is really just a case of John having a conversation with himself. While I offered a serious response on the IT World Canada blog , I thought it might be amusing to offer a silly response here (using the same blogger he uses, so possibly might encourage some conversation here as well). The scene... It is the year 2010. With any new form of communications technology in the last 30 years there have been people who have claimed...

Please reply to this article with any comments you may have about the Bill C-32 Clause-by-clause notes I authored. My intention is to keep that document updated with whatever feedback I receive.

After the legacy phone companies effectively won at the CRTC with the Network Neutrality policy debate, and the nonsense of the Broadcasters vs. Broadcast undertakings in (Stop TV Tax/ Local TV matters), I decided to stop being a customer of any of these companies. I haven't been a direct customer of the phone or cable companies for Internet access for nearly a decade now. I had an ISDN line from Bell for a few years in the 1990's, and had an early ADSL from Sympatico until DSL service was available from other providers. I have since been a customer of third party ISPs as I have found the service from native Internet companies to always be superior to old-economy phone or cable companies. I'm still stuck with the connection from my ISP to my home being alleged to be "owned" by Bell. The CRTC has so far given Bell the ability to treat this wire as their property, even though the wires exist because of a right-of-way exception to property rights (to put the cabl...

Just tossing some ideas here, as I haven't solidified what I'm wanting to say. Please hit reply and join the discussion. This morning I am trying to read a paper by Carys J. Craig which Michael Geist referenced on his blog . Like many articles written by lawyers or journalists about "Digital Locks" or "technical measures" (TMs), it is a hard read as it seems to be talking about some science fiction Star Trek replicator stuff, while I am trying to map what they are talking about to real-world technology. Whenever talking about communications technology I try to break what is being said into the 4 things (and potentially 4 different owners) from my Protecting property rights in a digital world talk. I try to do the same thing when speaking with fellow creators-rights activists, such as what I wrote as comments on John Degen's blog on his article " weapons down, please ". Of the four things, they can each have locks put on them. The relevant q...

I consider it unfortunate that Google won't be selling the phone directly. I can understand other people wanting to go retail, but I didn't. I found using their online store quite convenient. Official Google Blog: Nexus One changes in availability I will see what Canadian retailers end up carrying the phone, and what I hope to be future versions of this phone.

After posting a comment to the CBC Spark blog about an interview with Jaron Lanier , I looked up his book You are not a Gadget , and added it to my future reading list on eMusic . I can tell from the CBC and other interviews that I'm not going to agree with this person on some pretty key things. Take what I've written publicly and what I think about the following quote : Collectivists adore a computer operating system called LINUX, for instance, but it is really only one example of a descendant of a 1970s technology called UNIX. If it weren’t produced by a collective, there would be nothing remarkable about it at all. Meanwhile, the truly remarkable designs that couldn’t have existed 30 years ago, like the iPhone, all come out of "closed" shops where individuals create something and polish it before it is released to the public. Collectivists confuse ideology with achievement. In my mind, his first comment is like saying that democracy isn't remarkable because i...

This morning I started to draft an article where I was going to start talking about how the identical hardware is transformed in whether it would have a positive or negative influence in our lives, and end with a question about our longer-term policies towards Haiti and whether our friendship there has overall been a positive or negative influence. The article was intended to be posted to either the IT World Canada or digital-copyright.ca blogs. I decided against that, given it may cause grief without benefit. Rather than tossing the article I decided to publish on this personal blog what I had as an early draft in case anyone wanted to pursue the line of thinking. I fundamentally believe that for many of the worlds issues, whether that be poverty, food security, or building of infrastructure better able to withstand natural disasters, that knowledge sharing forms an important part. Trying to work against those who believe that making knowledge artificially scarce is good for socie...