Cole's Notes - The Sunday Journalist

Or is there an anti Western Canada bias in this CBC Story? 2 Quebec children survive hostage taking CBC News MONTREAL – A Quebec man is breathing easier today after learning that his daughters survived a hostage-taking incident in Cambodia. Bernard Loyer's daughters were taken captive Thursday along with dozens of other children at their school in the town of Siem Reap. Gunmen shot and killed a two-year-old Canadian boy, Maxim Michalik, who was born in Victoria, B.C..... That's a Strange way to write a lead - but it is the CBC, who really don't like the people they report on anyway. Now if I compare that to CanWest News Service and the National Post . and the Globe and Mail stories. The Post leads with the Boy's death, but the Globe simply recycles an Associated Press story, which is not unusual. Looking around the web at various weblogs these days, I see a lot of huffing and puffing about the anti Western Canada Bias conspiracy in the "liberal" media. But...

Followup to the previous post - Starbucks doesn't accept returns on opened CD's. Serves me right for buying music from a coffee shop.

Recently - (a couple of Days ago actually), I was in the local Starbucks and spotted the new live Studio Album " Stand Up " from the Dave Matthews Band . I bought the CD and took it home to listen to. I haven't bought a CD physically for the last couple of years, mainly buying online or burning my own mix CD's from my music collection. Well, my main CD player is a laptop PC and when I put the CD in - a EULA page popped up wanting me to install a bunch of RIAA spyware and DRM faldercarb on my machine (secure Windows Media files?) . I clicked NO to installing this crap - and the CD ejected itself. Unusual, I thought - so I moved to another machine and the same thing happened again. Maybe it's a glich in the CD - but I took a trip over to the Dave Matthews Band website - and low and behold - it's not a glich. The CD is "protected" with a really poor implementation of a DRM. I went over to the site and on the page for the studio album - I foun...

It's a bit of a long post today - as I've appended an editorial from the Financial Post by a lawyer on the recent file sharing decision of our Supreme court. I've been following the copyright issue in the US and here over sharing media files sampling and such - since being a Web Producer these affect the content of the web sites I work with an on. Music file reopens: An appeal court ruling has made individuals who engage in music file sharing a little less confident. They should be Julie Thorburn Financial Post Friday, June 10, 2005 When Federal Court judge Konrad von Finckenstein ruled, more than a year ago, against the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) in its attempt to force Internet service providers to reveal the identities of large-scale swappers of copyrighted music files, the judgment was described by one observer as a shot 'heard round the world.' While this may have been somewhat of an exaggeration, the story did receive significant attenti...

Internet2 By Alexander Russo - Slate Magazine Higher speed connections - more of the IP stuff coming down the line and getting faster and faster. Applications anyone?

A Cross post from the AVS Forum . I was just thinking along these lines the other day. I haven't been into a movie theatre in ages. The last movie I saw was "Ray" in the second run at the local art theatre. Now I don't have a home theatre per se - but I do have a Moto PVR and a large screen (27" TV) and my toys in the office are getting set up with a PVR software and a Haupagge TV tuner. Most of the stuff I like to watch is from the IFC and various other channels - very few from the main networks. And I've recently invested in a Portable Media Device Are Home Theaters Killing Off Movie Theaters? - AVS Forum : "With Popcorn, DVD's and TiVo, Moviegoers Are Staying Home By LAURA M. HOLSON The New York Times May 27, 2005 LOS ANGELES, May 26 - Matthew Khalil goes to the movies about once a month, down from five or six times just a few years ago. Mr. Khalil, a senior at the University of California, Los Angeles, prefers instead to watch old movies an...

Road kill on the information Superhighway?