Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

Something Awful was cooked up, and it’s taking CBC’s HNIC contest by storm!

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Many sports blogs are covering this interesting development of an obvious joke that is going horribly wrong. Freeping does work.

Meanwhile serious contenders are going under appreciated.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without an antiquated Copyright Act that lets artists retain sole rights to their creation until well after their own death. If copyright expired after approximately 10 years, the well known HNIC theme would be in the public domain already, and the CBC could continue to use it.

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Hat tip to Red Tory

I woke up on Saturday with a pain in my neck. More accurately, my throat (just one side of it) was making me wince each time I swallowed. After somehow managing to fall back to sleep for some extra shuteye, I woke again with the same problem. A trip to the doctor was looking likely, since my throat started to decide to rebel more than a week and a half ago.

I was still determined to do other chores today too, so after being distracted by writing a new blog entry for Sunday, I gathered up recycling materials, loaded up the car, and went first to Dutch Cycle. There I was expecting to find a Presta valve to Schreader valve stem adapter, since the tire they provided me with had the more unusual Presta style valve. One of the staff there explained how to fill a Presta by twisting the top, attaching the adapter, and then closing the Presta valve when done. There was no charge [free] for the cap or adapter they gave me — they’ll get me “for double next time” (wink). So I left there with a fuzzy happy feeling of accomplishment.

I filled my car with gas (which has dropped by about 6¢/L recently) at Regina Cabs [$39.95], and drove to SARCAN where I got rid of most of my car load. The staff mentioned that Crown Shred takes non-deposit plastic containers. At this point the skies opened up and buckets of rain started falling. I jumped back into my car, out of the SARCAN like a lightening bolt. I picked up just over $3 at SARCAN, which wasn’t even close to the $50+ the three people in front of me got, despite the discretionary $50 limit.

I had plenty of time to make it to CAA in order to pick up some $8 movie vouchers [$32]. And then I got a very quick appointment (both in wait time, and visit time) with a doctor at the South Albert Clinic. Ten minutes later I had a prescription for my throat infection [$16] and was ready to stuff my paper recycling into the blue bin in the adjacent Golden Mile Mall parking lot. The rain had other ideas.

I stopped my car next to a white doctor’s car in reserved parking, where the bin was facing the parking spots. I had two boxes to unload and hopped out of the car, popping the trunk as I did, into the rain. I scurried to the back seat door, and grabbed the first bag and ran to the bin. On my way back I saw the trunk wasn’t open, so I went in a hurry to the driver door to open it and pop the trunk again. It was locked.

I checked my pocket for the car key, remembering that I left it in the ignition. I pulled out my house key from my pocket, cursing its uselessness, and simultaneously tried opening the other doors. They too were all locked. I started to wonder if I should walk home in the pouring rain (25 minute walk) when I looked over and saw another white car beside the one I was trying to open. My keys were in the other white car, and the door to that one (my car) was still unlocked. Oops, I’d walked back to the wrong car from the bin. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that a troll on SaskLibertyTrain called me “Saskatchewan’s dumbest blogger“.

Now I’m going to watch the Riders mop up the Montreal Alouettes. Unfortunately the game is only on TSN, so a non-cable subscriber like me has to have friends and family who value TV a little more highly than I do.

Yesterday, I was telling you about the difficulties in getting what should be a slick MP3 player/FM radio to work. Just as you shouldn’t count your chickens before they are hatched, you should not count on the Zune to work until it’s patched. If you have dial-up and buy a brand new Zune, expect an 8 hour download before you can even use the FM radio in it.

I’m sure everyone has wanted a radio that needs to phone home to Microsoft before it will even tune. But the features of the Zune don’t stop failing to live up to their potential there! Yes, there’s more Digital Restrictions Management - DRM (AKA less)!

Features:
8GB of flash storage - This is a significant space upgrade over my 128MB flash drive, 1GB iPod Shuffle, and even 4GB minivault hard drive. There’s just one BIG catch though. The Zune’s storage space can’t be used like those other storage and/or MP3 playing devices, as a portable hard drive. When you plug it into a computer, you have to hack the registry to even SEE the device’s storage space. And if you try to copy files off of the Zune, it tells you that Access is Denied!

Your purchased files, and free ones you created yourself, wind up encrypted and inaccessible on all but your own computer(s) (maximum 3). Really, the limitations and caveats put on the features of the Zune’s hardware, are mind boggling and complicated. Here is a summary on Engadget (which is getting out of date possibly, although more restrictions may have been added/lifted since then).

Because the Zune can’t be detected as an external hard drive in any computer (including Macs and Linux) the designers couldn’t include a copy of the huge 41MB install file required to make the device work initially. By comparison, I plugged in my iPod Shuffle, downloaded iShuffle.exe (288KB) from Packard on the Web, copied a hundred MP3 files to a Music folder on the Shuffle, ran iShuffle.exe, and seconds later had a working MP3 player. I can also take those MP3 (and other) files off the Shuffle and put them on any, and as many, computers as I want (including Macs and Linux boxes).

WiFi communication - Geeks drool at the thought of wirelessly transmitting their music collection around. You could share with friends who have Zunes, talk to your library on your home computer or Xbox, or wherever. Time to stop drooling. The WiFi in the Zune is crippled, and doesn’t even work as a simple web browser like the iPod Touch. If you do manage to find someone else with a Zune to share music wirelessly, the transferred songs only play for 3 days, can’t be copied to the other person’s home computer, and can not be transferred again to that person. That goes for music you played and recorded yourself! (This is what Industry Minister Jim Prentice was talking about when the “market decides” how to handle Digital Restrictions Management.)

USB connection - The USB connection on the Zune charges the battery, flashes the firmware, and transfers the music/videos/photos. Like the iPods, they have a flimsy slim connector, instead of a mini-B USB like many cameras and cell phones use. The iPod Shuffle 2G also suffers from the same sort of specialized USB cable requirement.

Video and picture viewing - Something that my screenless Shuffle can’t live up to, is the ability to display videos and photos. I was able to transfer .wmv videos that I made using Windows Movie Maker, and play them on the Zune. The Zune software found the folder with my videos, and offered to sync them, which was handy. What isn’t so handy is that I can’t put my videos and photos onto another computer using the Zune as storage media, because of the digital lock lockout. I use my Shuffle as extra camera memory on vacations. The Zune is pretty much useless to me in that capacity because it wont’ work with my Linux laptop where I can transfer files around.

Bottom line - The Zune’s feature list is very promising, but it fails to deliver where it counts for me. I need control over my files, I don’t want control of them taken away from me. I want my portable media player to also work as a portable storage system. I want to use it on both of my computers (XP/Ubuntu Linux, and Sugar Linux XO) and my friends’ Macs. I want WiFi to not have bogus caveats put on its use, and it should include a simple web browser or email reader. The FM radio should work out of the box (like, duh!). The packaging should be minimalist and not a giant middle finger to the environment.

Why am I being so picky about something that was free for me? Because it isn’t free for someone else, and people need to know that they should expect more from (what are essentially disposable) electronics. This is 2008, and we may not have the flying car as promised, but we can have a music player that:
- transmits songs back and forth wirelessly (Bluetooth or WiFi)
- interfaces with a vehicle wirelessly (Bluetooth or FM) and/or with a universal USB connector
- plays and records radio and also records via microphone (video and photos for bonus points)
- plays most common and free video and audio formats
- includes a web browser if it has WiFi built in
- has a user-replaceable rechargeable battery (solar recharge for bonus points)
- has games, and firmware hackability
- works with existing software on most computers available today, without requiring a download

It’s devices like the Zune that convince people that learning about digital media is difficult and a specialized field reserved for 12 year olds and computer geeks. It’s nothing of the sort if standards are worked out, and digital locks are thrown out of the design plans. Then your wildest technological dreams become possible, because you can do what you expect, instead of being told “Access is Denied”.

I’m going to give my Zune a bit of time to grow on me, but at this point I’m fairly confident that I should offer it up as a booby prize or to someone who is looking to hack it and make firmware for it that actually fixes the numerous problems and complications.

If you don’t laugh your butt off when you see this video, you may need to adjust your speakers.

Who wouldn’t want a cool wooden horse?
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Hat tip to Red Tory

The Conservatives are coming! The Conservatives are coming!

I guess Jim Prentice is looking to lose his seat next election, or at the very least his Ministry. Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, Michael Geist, myself, and many, many others are going to take his political career down if he empowers the MAFIAA and their army of litigious lawyers.

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Also worth noting, is that CIRA (not the MAFIAA tied CRIA) has changed its WHOIS policy, and allows copyright holders to get your personal .ca domain registration information just by CLAIMING that they want to sue/contact you. Sick!

This won’t last, so watch it on YouTube while you can:

I’m a little disappointed to see such an outcry over a TV theme song for professional [Facebook link] sports. Sure, it’s something everyone is familiar with, but it’s not like it’s Happy Birthday. (That was a joke, because of course that song too is mired in copyright muck thanks to greedy Disney Time-Warner-AOL [Thank you Stephen for the correction.].) There are a few more important controversies that required broad based public outcry, but since this is a topic that even a 12 year old can get passionate about, it fits into Internet activism much better than Cadscam does.

I’m a little torn. While it’s good that the artist who composed the HNIC Theme Song has been well compensated for her creation, where should her right to capitalize on the song end? After a set number of years, or until she passes from the earth? There are good arguments for either, but for arguments sake I’d say after about 40 years of making money from one creation, perhaps it’s time to create a new golden goose. Not knowing her other work, I won’t call her a one hit wonder, but clearly her name isn’t ingrained into the average Canadian’s pop-consciousness like Oscar Peterson or Avril Lavigne.

So I think after most of a lifetime has passed, that the HNIC theme song should be in the public domain, and neither the CBC nor any one of us reading (or writing my words) should have to pay to publicly sing or broadcast the music.

Is CBC nuts for dropping it? Yes. But I have to agree with them that they were justified in using the distinctive theme in overseas broadcasts. The distinction when the theme is in theory available on the WWW, is outdated anyway. Claman killed, or at least sat on, her golden goose. Both sides should have handled the matter with more grace. CBC should have asked for permission, and Claman should have granted it at no charge.

This story is also a trap for the goons who would see CBC torn down for spending too much taxpayer money. Why should the public broadcaster pay for a theme song when they could save hundreds of dollars every broadcast by going with a different theme provider?

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You can Digg this post by Nunc Scio. Hockey nut Miss 604 of course writes about this too.

Chris Matthews gets fed up with a shouting right-wing talk show host, after he refuses to answer a question that underpins the basis for his support of Bush’s attack on Obama.

At the end of the clip, Kevin James retorts that people should watch a DOCU-DRAMA rather than take the word of Richard Clarke. Yeah, because a movie with actors trumps a non-fiction book any day, for people who can’t read (ie. Kevin James, perhaps?).

I admit, I was a little hazy on exactly what it was that Chamberlain did to appease Hitler in 1938. Here’s something that both Kevin, and perhaps you too should have a quick look at. It’s certainly nothing that Obama is in a position to do right now, and if he’s learned the lessons of history, he won’t repeat it as Bush’s parrots would have us believe.

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Hat Tip to Peter