I’m listening to my music library on random right now, and a song just came on that was playing on my digital audio player when I was arriving by bus at the Mathausen Concentration Camp a few years ago. When it started to play on the bus then, it sent […]
Technology
219 posts
[This originally appeared on Techdirt.] Legal trouble for Girl Talk — an artist named Greg Gillis who released a “mash up” album using the pay what you want model — is almost inevitable, but the situation gets even more interesting when you consider how the music is licensed. Girl Talk […]
I have a new post at Techdirt, from the nobody-likes-anti-features dept: Rogers Looks For New Ways To Annoy Customers, Hijacks Failed DNS Lookups. Yeah, I’m just a little bit annoyed. I’m working on a post to detail how to circumvent it with OpenDNS, which is my short-term solution while I […]
I thought I’d celebrate the official launch of the iPhone in Canada by noting a few of the reasons I won’t be caught dead with one. The iPhone isn’t free software, like the Android or OpenMoko. As the FSF points out, why take a device you can’t control when there […]
This is getting just a little bit ridiculous. Rogers’ rates are already insanely high since they have a GSM monopoly in Canada. Their absolutely unrealistic pricing plans for the iPhone appear to have even got the attention of Cupertino. Now, despite the ongoing investigation by the CRTC into Bell’s throttling […]
I’m proud to be a member of both the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) and the Canadian Music Creators Coalition (CMCC). Both organizations have expressed their disappointment with Bill C-61. It’s not that hard, really, but it’s noteworthy since the bill is supposed to be “protecting artists.” The SAC is […]
We’ve arrived. After parting with family in Toronto, we barely made it past airport security. That is, as Heather picked up her bags to walk away after being cleared and she dropped her boarding pass and stepped on it. She was ready to keep walking too, if I hadn’t spotted […]
I’m posting this quickly from the Vancouver airport. I’ve thrown together a page at http://blaise.ca/australia as a home base for updates from my trip to Australia over the next month. There’s nothing really there yet, but there will be soon. I’ll be blogging intermittently and updating Twitter throughout the trip […]
Given the tabing of Bill C-61 this week (aka “the Canadian DMCA”), I’ve decided to put the coverage in context with some practical examples and questions. Under the new legislation: It will be illegal for anyone in my house to watch a DVD on a computer, since we run GNU/Linux […]