I've been getting thousands of pieces of trackback spam per day and nobody from the Pebble mailing list wants to help me with it so I've just turned them off.
I'm too busy to get my website in order at the moment, so this is the only thing I could think of. I can't stand fucking spammers. It's bad enough I get so much spam on my cellphone, but my wonderful (read: worst company in the world) cell phone provider also says there is nothing they can do about it.
... and so will pretty much everyone else in Canada.
The Canadian DMCA as recently tabled this week in the House of Commons will make criminals of us all. Share files online? Get ready to pay or go to jail. Unlocking the cell phone you paid for? Get ready to pay or go to jail. Encrypt your e-mail to have some semblance of privacy? Get ready to pay or go to jail. Buy a CD or DVD and then copy it to your iPod? Get ready to pay or go to jail.
The DVD player in my house is on a Linux-based computer that uses an open-source DVD player. Soon, everytime I watch a DVD (that I legally bought from a store and OWN) in my house I'll be committing a Federal crime.
Please help stop this insanity. Write your MP and join the Facebook group. I've done both - it takes two minutes.
Read more at Copyright for Canadians.
P.S. - Strike two, Mr. Harper.
You can read the article online. The Governor General's office has the press release online as well.
We're in our Ottawa hotel room right now getting pretty for our meeting with the Governor General!
Update: it was AMAZING. The RCMP's press release as well as the Governor General's speech is online.
Update 2: photos on the GG's website are now available (but my dad isn't in any of them).
We received some great news this weekend: my Dad will be invested with the Order of Merit of the Police Forces next Month in Ottawa. He'll receive the honour in person from the Governor General at Rideaux Hall. The Order "honours a career of exceptional service or distinctive merit displayed by the men and women of the Canadian Police Services, and recognizes their commitment to this country. The primary focus is on exceptional merit, contributions to policing and community development." In short, it's kind of a big deal.
I'm going to do my best to be there.
I have tickets for Oasis!!!
List of artists to see before I die:
- U2
- AC/DC
- R.E.M.
- Oasis
- The Tragically Hip
Soon I'll be scratching one more off the list!
A lot of people ask me for advice when they buy computers, or ask me for advice after they have already bought one when it's too late. "Windows, Linux, or Mac?" they say.
I say buy whatever you want - the OS is a total commodity. Apple probably makes the best ones, but you'll pay for it - almost double the cost of a PC. Don't believe me? Check this article out:
In unit sales, Macs represented 14 percent of sales last month, up from 9 percent for February 2007. The dollar share, however, is a full 25 percent of the market.
Yep, that means they are twice as expensive. I'll stick with Linux, thank you very much! All of the functionality with none of the price (or the proprietary bullshit).
I only have a few more days left before I return to Canada from Mexico. I've been here for a whole month and this has been my longest consecutive stay. I've been here probably 20 to 30 times and have probably spent 3 to 6 months of my life here. Through the magic of high speed Internet, VOIP, and working for the world's first globally integrated enterprise, I have been working remotely from here while we visit family. I have also been able to take a little bit of vacation.
During this trip, I have visited one of the seven wonders of the modern world, swam in an underground river, danced the night away at a club "that puts Vegas to shame", walked on one of the best beaches in the world fed by the 2nd largest coral reef in the world, watched a giant cockfighting tournament at Colima's Megapalenque, bathed in a natural sinkhole with the clearest water you can possibly imagine, watched a movie in a VIP theatre with leather Lazyboy recliners and a personal waiter, watched Mistico (who recently signed with WWE - watch for him after June) and some of the finest luchadores in the world perform, and eaten some of the best food of my life. That is just on one trip, and visiting only 4 of 31 states.
If you are one of those people who "have never set foot in a third world country, and [plan] to keep it that way", that's your prerogative. It's also my prerogative to say that I truly pity you.
If you do plan to set foot in a third world country, don't be scared. What the media reports in Canada as people "getting thrown off of balconies" really means people "getting drunk and/or high and falling off of balconies". When they report a lady "getting stabbed in the face by screwdrivers by a roving gang at 6AM", it really means a lady who forgot to look both ways before crossing the street. Don't kid yourself - a third world country is dangerous and lawless, but if you don't go looking for trouble, it probably won't go looking for you. Millions of people visited Mexico last year, and a statistically insignificant number of them didn't come back (re: you have the same chance of being killed by lightning than being killed on your visit to Mexico) - and I would venture to say that most, if not all, of those that didn't were looking for trouble or weren't smart enough to realize things like "not all countries give pedestrians the right of way". Classifying the whole of a country based on one place is unfair. Mexico shouldn't get a bad rap just because Tijuana is basically hell on earth. What if the whole of Canada was judged after one visit to Surrey?
p.s. - (Bias) My wife is a Permanent Resident of Canada and a Mexican citizen.