I came across this on BoingBoing, so apologies to anyone who’s reading this for a second time. Senator Ted Stevens is the United States Senator for the state of Alaska. He has held that position since 1970, and was both a public servant and lawyer for many years before that. He served with distinction as a pilot in World War II. He attended UCLA and Harvard University. He is not, in short, just an average shmuck. But despite all of his distinguished laurels, Senator Stevens doesn’t have a really firm grasp on how the internet functions. (more…)

Montreal had what I thought was a lacklustre showing for Canada Day celebrations a couple days ago - I suppose everyone was already tired from the big Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day the week before. I went for a stroll downtown with Daniel and Kim, two people that I knew at Acadia who have also made their way to Montreal, and while it was a generally good time, there weren’t any displays or activities that really drew our attention. Still, it was a good walk. (more…)

I just came across this wonderful Firefox promotional website. I assume it was motivated by the SpreadFirefox affiliates program, and if so then it deserves any rewards that are being given out for creativity. There are five thumbnails at the bottom of the main page, each linking to a separate “episode” - really, a Firefox commercial done in miniature with still pictures, and acted out with Playmobil people.

There’s some funny audio-visual stuff floating around out there. YouTube, it seems, is the new.. uhm, well, thingy. Flickr or something. I stumbled across these over the past week, and thought they were worth sharing:

• New Mac TV Ads - a spoof of the recent Get a Mac television ad campaign, starring John Hodgman. Be warned that there’s some NSFW language at the end.
• Hey Ya! Charlie Brown Style - because really, what goes together better than classic American cartoons and urban hip-hop?
• Drum on Yo Back - I read recently on Tim’s blog that the infamous “Drum on Yo Back” music video had finally made its way into the mainstream, by being released on YouTube. So for those of you who missed it the first time ’round, don’t worry, there’s still room on the bandwagon.

Andrew recently wrote about an interesting idea - a standardized, open source DRM system. The rationale and motivation is thus: Microsoft and Apple (to name two companies with a large stake in pushing the DRM-envelope) have both already developed their own proprietary systems, which both (aim to) work within their own native environments. That is, within Windows and MacOS environments, respectively. This is fine if every consumer only works in one type of environment, and never decides to switch. But for the poor souls that do decide to move away from the corporations’ comfort zones, they’ll quickly find that there’s no support for their DRM-wrapped media on the outside. There can’t be - the systems are proprietary on purpose, ostensibly to protect the rights of copyright-holders, but with the added benefit of pressuring the consumer to stay in line. Things are no better outside of the Microsoft/Apple dichotomy. Any users of open source operating systems like *nix/*BSD will similarly find their content held hostage by over-zealous DRM. And so, Andrew asks, could an open source DRM system be the answer? (more…)