I’m really starting to hate all these music copyright people. I don’t know what the answer is, and the situation is fairly complicated, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. But seriously - these people are getting annoying…

Like anyone, I have a healthy sized music collection. I prefer buying a cd, ripping it, and then listening to it how I want rather than downloading a rip and always feeling like I should go buy it. Now these copyright freaks are making that hard, and it makes me want to switch to the old days of piracy. They might shut down the big networks, but you can always find ways to download music…. ;)

Last night I bought the new OLP disc and it has some sort of whacky copyright protection. My computer couldn’t read it - and by couldn’t, I mean hardware. Most “copy protected” CDs achieve protection via software, but in this case, my cdrom just spun and made weird noises. This is very frustrating to me. I managed to rip it by finding a cdrom at work that would do it (which cdrom I now want to inherit, heehee), but this is very frustrating to me. I wreck CDs all the time during normal use, and if I can’t rip them, then thats $15 wasted.

What’s the problem here? I don’t know what the answer is, but it seems like they are going down the wrong path. “Copy Protection” seems like more of an annoyance than a deterant. It’s like guarding your house with mosquitos - they’re really not going to stop you if you want in - they’ll just annoy the crap out of you. Anyway, I don’t know.

On another note - if anyone actually knows what they are talking about with all this new-fangled “copy protection” crap, let me know. Cuz right now it’s just guess and check :) grip in Linux seems to rip anything, provided the hardware itself will read the disc… but I only have a basic understanding of whats going on, and it seems most people think they know what their talking about, but are just idiots.

The Rain People are intelligent beings. They are like ourselves in many ways, but they are very different in that they are made of drops of water. I call them people, for like us, they have dreams, desires, ambitions, emotions, aspirations, and are quite intelligent. You know, compared to ant-eaters [whoa - HUGE ant-eater slam out of nowhere]

A Rain Person is just a droplet of water. It can move around and do all sorts of funky things. Puddles? Those are just huge gatherings. They’re usually dancing and stuff (hence waves.)

There are some subtleties here. First, the Rain People exist only in large bodies of water. If we forcibly take then from a body of water, it usually kills them - especially if we run them through purifiers and stuff like that. They really are only a threat when they attack as rain. They don’t usually last too long though - they get absorbed by the earth, the sun comes out, or we kill them in our cars. I think there may be some other types of beings that the Rain People fight against, but I’m not sure who they are yet - likely something just as elemental, though.

I believe for the most part we are made of pure water, which the Rain People have no influence over. But I do think we’re at risk from an infiltration - if they could replace the pure water with Rain People in our bodies, I think they might be able to kill us off. Or maybe control us, who knows.

But don’t let that fool you. They’re incredibly resourceful and have been known to use thousands upon thousands of their numbers to setup a huge landing area for other plummeting Rain People. These “puddles” and similar bodies of water enable them to land safely and walk around to attempt to complete their missions. They are subtle and insidious beasts.

What kind of missions?! I can only guess. I hope to enlighten you with stories of their activities as time goes on.

My first guess is that the Rain People are trying to take over the earth. They’re doing a pretty good job, really. Each droplet of water is a Rain Person, and they are commanded from a secret base deep within the ocean.

As you’re driving along, and it starts to rain - those are not harmless droplets of water! Those are elite soldiers attempting to infiltrate our world! To infiltrate your very body! Take pride in their utter ruin. See a puddle ahead of you? Jump in it!

When it rains? This isn’t as simple as water evaporating and then cooling down again. This is a well organized and coordinated attack!

Even as we speak, there is a massive attack against us being launched from the Gulf. New Orleans is sinking, and I don’t want to swim. In the North, we have had a number of attacks against us this year. Calgary in particular was subject to quite a few attacks, but we managed to fend them off.

I will keep you all posted. In the meantime - CONSTANT VIGILANCE.

I have always been pretty skeptical of product claims. When ever I see commercials for things like toothpaste and they say “Clinical proven to blah blah blah…”, I snicker. What does that mean? I know they can skew the results of anything to make any point they want. It won’t be long before we have a toothpaste that can predict the future.

So when I visisted the website of a popular energy drink, I was expecting to see some scientific evidence to back its outrageous claims. I invite, no, I beg you to visit this website. Please help me understand. Red Bull claims to be able to improve performance, concentration and reaction speed, vigilance (wtf?), emotional status (?!), and stimulate metabolism. Pretty lofty claims for a little can.

But ladies and gentlemen, where is the proof? At least some testimonials if you are not willing to back your claims with actual evidence. I am absolutely insulted by this website. And so I wrote an email to the folks at Red Bull to see if they could provide me with any evidence to back these claims.

Dear Red Bullies,

Your prodcut claims to improve performance, concentration and reaction speed, vigilance, emotional status, and stimulate metabolism. Do you have any actual evidence to support these claims besides a silly video game?

Any information you could provide me with would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Brent Garner

I will keep an eye on my inbox for you all.

Neptune:
1 - The planet.
2 - The God of the Sea.
3 - The most socially akward person ever known to mankind, likely born on Neptune and raised by the cold vacuum of space.

I have no problems with the planet, or the greek God. For the purpose of SE, unless otherwise noted, we’ll describe (3).

A note on walking:
- wtf is up with Neptune keeping his arms completely rigid against his body while he walks?! No fluid movement. The arms are kept against the body at ALL TIMES. Control is essential, I guess.
- Walking is a fluid motion. It is not an army march. Neptune manages to stomp everywhere. Need to get a drink? You can almost hear “Must get water, must get water” being repeated as he flies by. Neptune has been clocked at over 10 mph in the office environment.

A note on eavesdropping:
- Lots of people are curious. Wanna know what person X is saying to person Y?! Sure, that’s natural. But I would recommend against standing up very near to the people in question (sometimes even walking up to them) and just STANDING THERE … staring … watching … waiting … listening …
- When someone is talking/working with someone you want to talk to, DO NOT stand right beside them, arms crossed behind your back, each hand grabbing the alternate elbow, and just stand there. Take the hint! Interrupt, or come back at some later time. I mean, it’s cool that Morpheus held his arms like that, but he was dressed in leather, and his cool factor was infinitely greater than that of Neptune’s.

A note on conversations:
When someone is talking to you, and you finish the conversation, don’t fucking keep standing there staring. Neptune has this ability to finish a conversation, then just stand there and look at the person he was talking with. Something else to say? No. The eyes shift around, then focus back on the other person. Finally, after a minute or so, Neptune flies away … “Must get to my desk, must get to my desk,must get to my desk”

A note of warning:
Do not anger Neptune. He does not take criticism well. Once, a coworker remarked on his slack work ethic (or some such inane sarcastic joke), just after Neptune had said the same joke to him. The smile flying off his face faster than a greased pig at a country fair, Neptune throws a punch at the unfortunate co-worker (no contact was made), and storms off. Neptune is just on the verge of cracking, methinks.

I hope to entertain you with more stories as time goes on … this will do for now …

Yes. It’s true. I want google to own you!

Note: This isn’t in response to Brent’s post. “Google Owns You” just seems to be the phrase these days :)

When I came back home from Oregon in 2001, I hadn’t used a computer or the Internet in over two years. And the world had changed since the old days when Netscape ruled the ‘net and “Front Page” was a “cool”. That summer, everyone was talking about “The dot-com meltdown” (a stupid term that annoyed me), and hotmail accounts had taken over the universe. Nobody was on ICQ, and every page had creepy spy-cam adds. Search engines we whack, too. My favorites, Lycos and Hot Bot, had been almalgamated under some Terra-something company, and AltaVista’s homepage had totally barfed.

What was really nuts was when I went back to school - 5 Linux machines had become 50, and everywhere I looked people were using Mozilla (with a few using Phoenix or Opera). In all their ‘net browsing, I noticed one thing in common - the now-familiar coloured letters of Google

Well, wtf is ‘Google’? I pulled out my trusty Excite search engine. That’s when I was introduced to it, and like everyone else, I love it. I learned about Google Answers, Google Groups, news, and eventually started playing around in Google Labs. Today, gmail is becoming the webmail standard, Google Desktop Search can tell you anything, and Google Maps has blown MapQuest out of the water.

Yesterday, Google launched Google Talk, and today gmail became open to anyone with a cell phone (don’t need an invite). As Brent said, face it - Google owns you.

But a few hate-mongers out there are starting to rip on Google, and that worries me. The whiners say that Google is the next Microsoft. Let’s be very clear. Google is not Microsoft, it’s totally different. Anyone who starts whining that Google is becoming Microsoft is uneducated, and simply has a wannabe chip on their shoulder because they hate big corporations for no good reason. I hate Microsoft, but not because they are a big corporation or because they control everything, and not cuz it’s ‘hip’ to hate Microsoft. I love Google, and here’s why…

(note: I’m just using MS and Google as examples. They aren’t, exactly opposed.)

Open standards are important. They’re important because we are in a very complicated world, with very diverse people - not all of whom like things the same way, nor compute at the same level. Microsoft pretty much created personal computing, and we owe them. Linux couldn’t exist if it weren’t for a forum of personal computing which was, essentially, created by Microsoft, Intel and IBM. We need a standard, and somebody big and trusted to get everyone to use it. Let that be Microsoft, let it be Google, I don’t care.

Except Microsoft has made a mistake. Mom doesn’t want to choose from one of 15 different ways of doing things - she wants one clean interface that just works. That’s what Microsoft gave us, and that’s what Googles doing today. The difference is that Microsoft is doing it on closed standards, and Google on open standards. Sure, MS said they’d be more open - and that’s why MSWord uses XML, right? Psha … what a lie. For the average user, they don’t care about standards. How it works in the back end is not their problem, and I clearly understand that. But for me, and a lot of my friends, open standards are great. I can write and use all sorts of interesting tools which, Holy Grail, even work with what everyone else is doing - if everyone else is doing it based on open standards.

That’s why I Want Google to own YOU! :). I really like Googles way of doing things, and I’m excited when they come out with a new technology that everyone will use. It brings Open Source to the world without letting them know that, and without them having to think about it. There’s no way to get everyone on the same standard, unless someone big and trusted builds easy to use software based on it. And once everyone uses credible, reliable, and simple software built on open standards, the average users can do their thing, and the geeks can still do their thing, and the two can actually interoperate without the geeks bending over backwards (which is what we do now. My Jabber pyMSNT transport still breaks, and every time someone wants a word document, I shudder hoping that OpenOffice will do it right)

Anyway, that’s my opinion, and I give props to Google for having the nuts to go out there with open standards. I understand, at least partially, the economic problems behind making money on open software, but someone’s got to be able to figure it out, and companies like Google seem to be doing a great job. I believe that the MS closed-software model will go the way of the mainframe and the department store, and it’s people like Google who are leading the way. It’s awesome!

So, go out there, download Google Talk, switch to gmail, and install Google Desktop Search. Do it. Do it now! haha

Well, this is long overdue -

On August 13, 2005 - My sister Kylee was married to Ben Sauve. The wedding was absolutely fantastic, which I will attempt to share here.

The wedding took place at my parents place. They have a big backyard, which had 4 huge tents setup. One of the tents had a dance floor, the rest had a number of tables. Lights were strung everywhere. Citronella lanterns were setup all over the yard. Between the tents and the house, is my mom’s beautiful garden, and a large stone patio, where the actual wedding took place.

That saturday was a wonderful, hot, sunny day. I spent it repairing stairs, then golfing with the men in the wedding party and my dad, brother and uncle Tom. We had a great day out in the sun, then headed home to get ready for the wedding. Kylee and all the women involved in the wedding hung out at home with the hairdresser and seemed to have a nice day.

People started showing up around 7:30, and I figure we had about 150 people as the night went on. Most of my family was there, a bunch of Ben’s and some of Kylee and Ben’s friends. The wedding ceremony was awesome, the weather was fantastic, the mosquitos were murderous, and the lighting was just spectacular. The vows were said as the sun went down, and Kylee and Ben were pronounced Man and Wife just as darkness fell.

What followed was just a huge party. There were some amazing speeches (kudos to my little brother for a hilarious speech), including a fantastic speech by my dad. In fact, everyone who got up seemed to just know what to say. It was great. The best part of the whole thing was how happy my sister and Ben were. I haven’t seen Kylee that happy … well, ever. She looked absolutely radiant - and I’m not just saying that as the older brother. She looked amazing and when you see the pics, you’ll totally agree.

Some of the highlights of the evening: Hoolahoop contests to get the bride/groom kissing; aforementioned speeches; dancing on the platform; Russ and I dancing in rainboots to “these boots were made for walking” … uhhhhh that was rough; the bus to Amanda’s Slip in Kemptville where we danced to Petunia (old blue grass band) and had a fantastic time; seeing almost the entire family; running into the old neighbours from Navan who made it out for the party; and everyone being so damn happy.

Anyway - it was a very awesome night. Congrats to Kylee and Ben, and all the best!

Sweet Jesus.

Check out this funky toy:
BlackDog offers open source developers an exciting new platform for mobilizing software applications. BlackDog represents a new breed of device that redefines what a ‘computer’ is. It can be programmed to carry your applications, data, web sites, desktop look and feel, with you, wherever you may go.

To access and use your BlackDog, you merely plug it in to your host computer’s USB port* and BlackDog takes over! Your host machine’s monitor, keyboard, mouse, and Internet connection are taken over by BlackDog for the duration of your session, when you are done, you simply remove BlackDog and everything on the host is returned to its original state.

BlackDog

Bored? Want to make your microwave do cool things? Hate grapes?

This is cool stuff. Compliments to Jeff for showing it to me.

Microwave Grape Plasma

It’s true, they do:
screenshot of my browser

I was never really into portals, even though I helped develop one: (yuck!). But once again, Google has shown me how simplicity is beautfiul. The portal shows my Gmail, Google News, and a number of RSS feeds that I chose (including this site, fark, the essentials)

They also showed me how scary they are. Google is keeping track of everything I search for:
Google Search History

So, of course, the paranoid will be in a panic. But honestly, I think this is the sweetest thing I have ever seen. It showed what I searched for, when I searched for it, what links from those results I clicked on. Google owns me…..and I like it!

You can get owned by Google here: http://www.google.com/ig

The Daily WTF

“Curious Pervesion in Information Technology”

I have to admit, this is possibly the geekiest website I have ever come across. But, I will also admit, it was one of the funniest…


//Load Page Data
LoadPageData();


Now that’s good commenting!