| Monday, November 8th, 2004 |
| 9:04 pm |
me, myself, and i
In a bit of narcissism, I have added the feed from one of my blogs, Paper Vote Canada, to my LJ friends. Paper Vote Canada is a blog about electronic voting in Canada. More specifically, opposed to the expansion of e-voting in Canada. Current Mood:  giddy |
| Saturday, December 14th, 2002 |
| 10:26 am |
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| 10:26 am |
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| 7:28 am |
PM blog??
Apparently Paul Martin has a blog. Excuse me for a moment while I boggle. Can you imagine in the future, when you will be able to review every politician's blogging from their angsty tweens through drunken teens through experimenting 20s? I am deeply disappointed by what appears to be Martin's west-pandering (on Kyoto, gun reg etc.) However, he did save the country and all with his fiscal policies, marking him as the only sensible politician the Liberals have had in that position. He certainly, surely to god, has got to be better than Mad King Chretien. |
| 7:19 am |
roger that, roger roger
Rogers is having a grand opening thing at their new store at 300something Bank, across from their old store on 300something Bank. The good news: They did a great job of renovating a nice old building. Kudos Rogers. The bad news: Wierd video store window practice. For some reason, both Rogers and Blockbuster have hit upon a brilliant sidewalk advertising strategy. They block their windows off completely (yellow for BB, diagonal white and black for Rogers). I don't know how many times I've been strolling down the street and said: "wow, look at that totally blank, blocked off window. I think I'll go in there." So if I understand the marketing brilliance of this it is: screw the street. we don't care about having a friendly sidewalk presence. we assume you will know our brand name so you have to come into the store to look at the vids. Yeah, that's much better than bothering with say, windows where people could see into the store, or interesting window displays. Elgin Video does awesome window displays and, incidentally, has a way better MST3K collection. Rogers has 1 (one) MST3K The Movie. That's it. Also, they have grouped all their SF, fantasy, anime into a single glob category called something like "fantasie" or some damn thing. Very annoying for SF / Fantasy purist. |
| 6:55 am |
... the punishment fit the crime ...
Finally, someone in Canada has decided that a logical punishment for drunk driving is take away the car. The amount of time it has taken us to arrive at this point is simply boggling. Unfortunately, the Globe's stupid response
In any event, doesn't this kind of punishment offend our sense of equality under the law? Compare the value of a Suzuki Swift with that of a Cadillac Seville, or a 13-year-old clunker with a car fresh off the lot.
And if the point is to make sure the offender won't drive again, that too is unlikely. There's nothing in the revamped Highway Traffic Act to stop drunk drivers from borrowing or stealing vehicles.
indicates why this is a problem. Ok 1. I don't give a f--- how expensive the car was. I want the car to be taken away. No car, no driving. How complicated is this? 2. Um, stealing a car is against the law. That's like saying "if we impose fines for stealing, the criminals will just steal the money to pay the fine". This is a ridiculous argument. And if they borrow the car... unlucky. No car, no driving. "Friends don't loan their cars to friends who drive drunk... because if their friend gets caught, they lose their car." Stupid car-obsessed society. |
| 6:51 am |
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| 6:13 am |
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| Friday, December 13th, 2002 |
| 10:42 pm |
irony
The media empires talk about "piracy" as if you were stealing an actual physical thing, but they hate physical things. They don't want you to ever own anything, ever again. They want you to have to pay for access every time you access anything. This is because of Harvard MBAs. They hate the idea of having to create new sales. Their fantasies are full of steady revenue streams. So, you don't "own" anything anymore. You license it. And oh, by the way, you have to renew the license every 12 months / 12 days / 12 minutes. Or it will stop working. The exciting new Quicken XG? "Minimum 12-month commitment applies to all Quicken Advantage packages. Prices guaranteed for contract term. Full License Agreement can be found at End-user License Agreement." And you thought you were getting a CD. You're actually getting some sort of 12 month license contract thing. InfoWorld: Software goes extinct. |
| 10:36 pm |
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| 10:15 pm |
on a related note
I am very grateful to the library for giving me the opportunity to read tons of books when I was a kid. Since then I really haven't gone back. I had a Halifax Library card but I never used it. I am ashamed to admit I don't even know where the Ottawa Library is. Double shame because I work at a library. My library becomes more electronic by the day, which is good, because it keeps me employed. The Ottawa Library also offers electronic access to a variety of online resources. This is a very popular library thing: the central organization purchases a huge sitelicense or whatever, and you get the benefit. Dal CS has this with access to Safari, which I think is a great idea. |
| 10:13 pm |
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| 10:08 pm |
blacker
status.blogger.com on their past hacking incident. There haven't been any major events since then so... Things I like about LJ: can blog from bus (not that I ever do), interface rarely does weird stuff. Problems with Blogger: interface tended to eat my posts, got hacked. Hmm. Basically my decision hinges on the fact that I had gotten everything all customized to my liking with Blogger and the surrounding page, whereas I haven't actually tried to do any customization of LJ. The two main things I would like to do with the LJ are have a good search, and each entry easily bookmarkable (would a different template do this latter one?). I find my desire to fiddle with tech decreases as I grow older. I am about at the point where I just want everything to work without me having to jigger with it. Working with tech all day doesn't help this either. |
| 9:53 pm |
our friendly dictator
(just to prove there is more to me than IT links:) Chretien is great. Finally his madness is working for us. The more people are opposed to something, the more he likes it. Also the more the Americans dislike something, the more he likes it. Thus: Kyoto forced through. The more the provinces complain, the more gleeful he becomes. And: Relaxation of the Mary Jane laws. This makes the Americans so mad. It's great. And remember kids: smoking looks cool. But you have to inhale smoke into your lungs. Think about it. If you think it sounds like that much fun, become a firefighter. |
| 9:47 pm |
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| 9:21 pm |
hot to get past your inability to complete your thesis/project
Do a Survey on People's Inability to Finish their Ph.D.sUpdate: erm, supposed to be "how to..." And since you asked 1. No I'm not done yet 2. Really 3. I have filled out the May graduation thing 4. I will be registering for my um lucky 14th term as a remote, part-time grad student at Dal. I really must finish next term, or just give up. PS On a quick skim of the completion report, I read "it now takes generally more than 30 years to complete a PhD" and thought, wow, that's even longer than I am taking :) Current Mood: um, insufficiently erudite? |
| 9:12 pm |
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| 9:11 pm |
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| 9:03 pm |
searching
The non-searchability of LiveJournal annoys me. Anyway, I don't think I have posted it. This is the kind of stuff I worry about: TCP/IP port 2034 is listed as "scoremgr". But nowhere that I can find does it actually document what "scoremgr" was supposed to do, and whether it is still used any more. I don't suppose any of you know? So far no one on comp.security.firewalls and Broadband Security Forum knows. |
| 8:59 pm |
hit on me
My blog hits are about evenly split between Martha and the evil telemarketer people. So I guess the Internet is a mix of lust and anger. Seems about right. |
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rakerman's journal