The Speech from the Throne was unveiled last night. Under the watchful eyes of U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins, PM Stephen Harper spoke about improving protection of intellectual property rights in Canada. Unfortunately, he considers copyright reform to be necessary. I agree with Michael Geist, it looks like we’re getting ready [...]

A new comic has found its way onto my links page. The Phoenix Requiem is a semi-fantasy, mostly supernatural/horror story set in an an alternate Victorian-era England. It’s done by the same person who did Inverloch, another well-done online comic, so everyone should go over and start reading. The first four pages [...]

If this doesn’t speak of the issues at hand, than nothing short of a major defection of current Microsoft employees or entertainment industry executives will. Jesper Johansson, who used to work for Microsoft as a security expert, first noticed problems when his 5-year old child complained that the cable TV wasn’t working. The fix was [...]

After a few years of using Ubuntu and all the benefits I’ve had with it, I figure that it’s about time I gave something back to the community that has helped me so much. As such, I’ve joined the Ubuntu Documentation Team and the Ubuntu Translation Team for Candian English. My efforts with [...]

I’m sure anyone who’s really been following the trend of topics has noticed that there’s fewer topics about politics in general and more about technological issues or in some way related to technology. I may as well officially say that there won’t be much from the politics world here. I find myself with [...]

I’m not dead, I promise Just insanely busy with school and work. So, like a good student, I’ve been totally neglecting my studies over the past few days as I go through the released MediaDefender emails, phone call, and source code. One of the wonderful things pulled out of the email [...]

In a wonderful display of common sense and thought, Microsoft’s attempt to have their OOXML Office format recognized as an international standard has been soundly rejected. Certainly they came close by one count, receiving a vote 74% in favour (75% is required for standards certification), but they failed to get two-thirds of a key [...]

It’s about time. Microsoft has finally had their poor attempt at hijacking an open standard voted down. Barely. They technically got more votes (which around here would actually get them second place anyway) but they failed to get the 9 votes in favour required for approval. I disagree with the title [...]

Continuing on from my first post about Jesus Camp, hat tip goes to Red Jenny for actually watching the Jesus Camp movie. Her review is here. After reading Red Jenny’s review, I’m even more scared of what these people are doing to kids, and I’m even more worried about leaving them in the care of [...]

It’s about time to touch on the second of the Taboo Topics: Religion. Has anyone else seen the trailers for the documentary Jesus Camp? Or maybe even seen the movie? I’ve only seen the trailers, but that’s enough to scare me. As a Christian, albeit a strange one because of my beliefs, the [...]

Last week, the New York Times posted an article proudly proclaiming "F.B.I. and Chinese Seize $500 Million of Counterfeit Software". $500 million is a lot of money, that must be a huge victory. The problem is, those numbers don’t quite add up. They seized approximately 290,000 discs and certificates of authenticity. That means [...]

Say it ain’t so! I used to enjoy Archie comics, but now I don’t think I’ll be able to read them anymore. Archie is now officially a tool for the RIAA. From the BoingBoing summary: Seems the RIAA has got to Archie too! The very first story in Archie #577 (September 2007) is a cautionary [...]

Many thanks to Andrew Hay for this example of how proper data protection (and common sense!) has resulted in sensitive data being stolen. Once again, we prove that "common sense" is arguably the biggest oxymoron of our time. It seems that at Nottingham University Hospitals, junior doctors like to carry around sensitive patient data on [...]

Yes, it’s true, a Microsoft office in Hungary was raided by the Hungarian state Competition Authority 8 days ago. Microsoft stands accused of providing "loyalty discounts" and using sales conditions to coerce software distributors into offering only Microsoft products. The Authority believes that this "could lead to the exclusion of competitive products". I’m sorry, [...]

No, really. Our kind government really will make you an offer you can’t refuse. If you’re like most students, you can’t afford to refuse this offer, even though you’ll end up spending more money in the end. Most students graduate with an already crippling debt load. If you’re lucky, you can get away [...]

Michael Geist points out that the television broadcasting industry has seen the third highest revenue gains out of the last ten years, with $6 billion in revenue. So with the recent trend of industry insiders claiming revenue problems and blaming piracy when the industry sees revenue gains, how much longer until the television broadcasting industry starts [...]

Many thanks goes to Dr. Dawg for noticing this one. We’ve long suspected it, and we’ve all said it needs to change, and now it’s been proven beyond any doubt. That’s right, our current "first past the post" system is broken. The New Brunswick Liberal party has recently decided that there shall be no choice given [...]

The FSF has officially released the latest revision of the popular GNU General Public License. The press release can be found here. Unfortunately, there are already people who have misunderstood the license. So let’s take a brief look at three of the common misconceptions: The GPL3 license strictly prohibits me from using DRM. Actually, no it [...]