rwmtest

I was invited by eMail to join CBC's InCanada Panel , which included a series of questions. They asked about radio and television networks and my viewing/listening/reading habits. I didn't know what to say as they didn't define the terms as clearly as I think they need to in order to get the information they need. For instance, when asked about television I gave an estimate of video I watch on a television screen. Later questions spoke about viewing on set-top boxes, but included that as Internet which suggested the estimates I gave were wrong. A few months ago we dropped Cable TV, with most of my viewing already being via DVD's, Netflix, or other online content. I purchased an ATSC tuner and aerial for a television we have upstairs, and other than the watching I did when I set it up I haven't watched it. That tuner sits there for that case when we might want to be watching something on a "live" broadcast (some emergency or event like we saw in Sept 1...

Yesterday I was called about a story a CBC Television journalist was doing on car-free living in Ottawa. This was a follow-up story sparked by Ottawa city Councillor Katherine Hobbs giving up her car after going car-free for a few months. While my wife drives, so there is a car in the household, I do not drive it or have a drivers license. I consider myself as (or possibly more) car-free as those who don't have a car in the household, but who have memberships in car sharing services like Vrtucar . There will always be exceptions to the general rule for a car-free person, but we are all people who as a general rule don't drive. When I was a teen in the 80's, it was a matter of laziness. I couldn't afford a car, and didn't have the motivation others did to get their drivers licenses anyway. I had a 365 (as they were called in Ontario in those days) learners permit a few times, but never bothered doing the driving test. In the 1990's I met up with some more po...

I'm re-posting this here as http://www.flora.ca/status/350 may not be available over the weekend. --- The FLORA.ca services may be down all weekend, possibly starting some time Friday June 8 and continuing to some time on Monday June 11. Background: The FLORA.ca servers (flora.org, digital-copyright.ca, etc) are hosted on a service I have been receiving from NCF.ca , who up until recently was reselling TekSavvy.com services. The NCF decided to transition to Bell. Since I wish to minimize the services I receive from the incumbent phone/cable companies (see other articles on this blog), I am now trying to switch back to TekSavvy. I wasn't given enough advanced notice of the timing, so I made an IP address transition on Tuesday May 29'th. Some services were likely down for people as DNS propagated across the network. Some people, ironically NCF.ca email users, have noticed that email messages from the mailing lists have not been able to be received as there is a ro...

Very frustrated with Internet services today. My DSL service with NCF.ca that was previously a reselling of TekSavvy transitioned to Bell on Tuesday.  I didn't have time to transition direct to TekSavvy, only being told the transition date at the end of the work day last Friday (April 25'th). Reverse DNS is still not working with Bell, which means email from my servers are likely being rejected as untrustworthy. I have quite a few mailing lists hosted on these servers... I figured my transition back to TekSavvy was a good time to upgrade service, so I tried to sign up for the DSL25 service which has a 7M uplink.  Seems that this is not available in my location, so I'm signing up with a DSL12 which has a 1M uplink. A 1M uplink is mildly better than the 800K of the current service. TekSavvy this afternoon contacted me to let me know I had to cancel my current service before TekSavvy could enable the new service.   Funny that there was no permission required to switch to Bel...

The subject of my post comes from a May 20, 2010 post of the same title where I discussed my progress with moving away from legacy phone/cable companies. Last weekend I returned my rented Rogers Digital Cable tuner, and cancelled my cable service. The stations are still there until the end of the next billing period next month, but the decision is finally made and paperwork done. Since 2010 I decided to experiment with something between Rogers Digital cable and what I would ideally have considered. I obviously don't like technology that is "sold" to me that I don't really own (IE: that I as the owner aren't given all the keys to), but I made a compromise between that ideal and the many wrongs of Rogers and Rogers Digital Cable. In May 2011 I ordered a Boxee Box (made by D-Link) , which was the most open of the Netflix compatible devices at the time. Since we have an older TV I ordered an HDMI to Composite /S-Video Converter so I could use regular audio/S-Vi...

Federal political news this weekend is focused on the Liberal party convention, as expected. They are speaking of renewal, having been pushed to 3'rd party in the house during the last election. Since I was voting age I've been a member of the Progressive Conservative party of Canada and Green Party of Canada, donated money to individual NDP MPs and campaigns, and voted Liberal. There are things I agree and disagree with each of the parties with seats in the house, and there are individual MPs I respect and some I don't that are not dependant on party lines. I believe that the Liberal party, as it was in the past, will no longer work. If their intention is to regain what they once had, they have no future. They focused on trying to build their Big Red Tent, inviting everyone inside. There was nothing other than their tribal colours that could be said about this group. They had people that crossed nearly all political philosophies. This meant you had to focus on the indi...

I've been asked over the last decade how my activism will change once Canadian legislation that includes Paracopyright passes. Will my activism be finished, and will I admit "defeat" if a bill abrogates the government's responsibility to protect IT property rights ? At one level this could be a question about whether I will honour the law, which isn't really a fair question. Conservative MP Lee Richardson ( Calgary Centre ) suggests my honouring the law is optional , saying "If a digital lock is broken for personal use, it is not realistic that the creator would choose to file a law suit against the consumer, due to legal fees and time involved." I suspect the fact one of my early submissions to the government in 2001 involved documenting my circumvention of a TPM for an otherwise lawful purpose suggests that I will continue to do the same. The more important answer is to state that our activism can not discontinue, and any passage of legislation i...