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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
_wastrel's LiveJournal:
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| Monday, August 31st, 2009 | | 6:54 pm |
This journal is being kept for archival purposes, but will no longer be updated. | | Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 | | 2:02 am |
Dissolve the CRTC Petition
I'd think that my Canadian readers might seriously want to consider signing this, because it's relevant to pretty much anyone who uses the Internet up here: http://dissolvethecrtc.ca/The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was created for the purpose of ensuring broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public and ensure that Canadians have a wide variety of options to create and view works of media or communicate across the country and the entire world.
We, the undersigned, believe that the CRTC has become a burden on the Canadian public and are failing to perform their duties in the interest of the Canadian public and that of a fair and unbiased telecom policy.
In the last 3 years, we have seen the CRTC give undue preference in the interest of commercial entities and their preference for traditional business models over competing models that would create competition and help ensure that new business models can be created to entice and prosper original Canadian productions.
In the case of Bell Canada vs CAIP, involving the use of deep packet inspection (DPI) on Bell wholesale clients, the CRTC ruled in favor of Bell Canada to allow them to continue the use of deep packet inspection activities on wholesale customers without their permission or consent regardless of the implications for the end user customers. We believe this action greatly impacts the Canadian public’s choices, competition in the broadband market and may violate privacy laws based on the Privacy Commissioners findings.
In the case of Cybersurf requesting to match speeds of that for Bell retail customers, the CRTC ordered Bell Canada to produce a new tariff to match speeds for wholesale customers. Bell submitted a revised tariff to the CRTC, however the revised tariff did not fulfill the requirements as set out by the CRTC in Telecom Decision CRTC 2008-117. Bell proposed to offer lower speed tiers and introduce UBB (usage base billing) in lieu of matching speeds. The CRTC decided to accept the tariff on an interim basis with no logical explanation. This is not only anti-competitive but shows a clear bias towards Bell Canada.
These are only two of several instances in the past few years that show the CRTC is incapable of upholding the telecom act and the interest of the Canadian public. We demand that the commission is immediately dissolved and a new commission created and appointed based on the following criteria:
1) The commission members must not be appointed solely based on their career history
2) The commission members must not only be comprised of ex-telecom employees
3) The commission should be more transparent to the Canadian public about regulatory issues
4) The analysts should be more involved in the regulatory process to ensure that decisions are handed down in a fair and balanced manner
We hereby request that the CRTC be dissolved and a new commission formed immediately to ensure that the regulatory process and competitive environment remain in tune with the needs of the Canadian public. | | Saturday, May 30th, 2009 | | 5:39 pm |
Green Stains
My boyfriend ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) starchyldskunk put together a video clip set to a track he composed earlier this week. I've got to say I'm impressed with what the finished result came out like. The voices in it are from a radio play of a Lovecraft story. Watch and listen to Green Stains, why don't you. | | Friday, March 27th, 2009 | | 11:02 am |
I know I've already said this before but this seems like a relevant time to repeat it: at any point, anyone who feels like leaving my journal has an open invitation to, with no further explanation necessary, required or even expected, and no questions asked. | | Monday, September 8th, 2008 | | 12:50 am |
http://ioptout.ca/Here is something that everyone who has ever been called by a telemarketer in Canada will probably want to be aware of. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any transnational counterparts to this, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. Telemarketing executives might think that inflated numbers of people called look good on paper, but the truth is that if you don't want to talk to them, the employees themselves usually would rather not have to talk to you either. It's limited for now, but the further they end up being able to push this, the better. | | Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 | | 9:38 pm |
Paraphrased from memory: A father enters a village and starts going down the street with his son riding their donkey next to him. Two older villagers see them and one tells the other "Look at that boy, hogging the donkey that his father worked to pay for. Isn't the young generation lazy and selfish?" The son gets off the donkey, and his father climbs on its back instead. Further down the street, two younger villagers see them and one tells the other "Look at that man, leading his son on a forced march next to him from the comfort of his donkey's back. The child will grow up to feel undeserving and resentful." The father picks up his son and brings him on the donkey with him. Deeper into the village, two concerned citizens see them and one tells the other "Look at those two humans, over-burdening their poor donkey's back by both riding on him at the same time. Humans can be so cruel." They both get off the donkey to keep going on their way. As they've almost finished getting through, a teenager by the side of the road looks at them passing by and shouts "Hey, if you went to the trouble of spending the money to buy a donkey, why aren't you riding it, stupid?" | | Monday, June 9th, 2008 | | 1:33 am |
If you live in Canada, you may want to e-mail your area's political representative about this: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=558674http://michaelgeist.ca/If this went through, copyright laws intended to restrict commercial uses would be applied on an individual level, mp3 players and IPods would lose basically all form of legal use, music and video would be permanently stuck in whatever box it would come in, people who work and study in media fields will be almost completely paralyzed, and millions of ordinary citizens will be financially crippled for the rest of their lives, probably affecting the economy on a national scale. The conservatives who have it in mind have already tried to make information about themselves disappear from online, too. Smooth. As if net neutrality wasn't enough for us to have to deal with as it was. Current Mood: political | | Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 | | 3:08 am |
My boyfriend starchyldskunk has been working on a science-fiction series with The Movies, Out There Somewhere, for a few weeks now. He told me I could write an episode of it if I wanted to, and after having seen the first 7 episodes he'd done, this is what I ended up coming up with for episode 8 of it, The Lizard Planet: The writing of the dialogue itself was a collaborative endeavor between the two of us, and the scenes involving the Edenites are his work. Since the previous episodes naturally lead up to this one and it doesn't really stand alone on its own, the full playlist for the first 7 can be found here. I think they total about 23 minutes in all so far. I'm really happy with how it turned out. Hope you like it! ^_^ Current Mood: accomplishedCurrent Music: Blehorkestar Bakija Bakic - Pobjednicki Cocek | | Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 | | 2:28 am |
Re: Torchwood
Before you decide to watch this, you should probably be made aware of the fact that it is in all likelihood the most possibly disturbing show which has ever been on TV. I can't seem to stop watching it. o.o Current Mood: oooeerrr...Current Music: Torchwood Opening Theme | | Sunday, January 13th, 2008 | | 3:50 am |
A friend of mine recently had to move into a building in which the rattlesnake he owns isn't allowed, and he's been looking for someone who might want to take it in. He is currently located in South California. I was not asked to do this, but I figured that, although it's unlikely anyone will respond, it still didn't hurt to ask, just in case. Pictures available upon request. Current Mood: snake | | Sunday, November 25th, 2007 | | 5:42 pm |
http://www.poormojo.org/cgi-bin/gennie.pl?Rant+355+biI found this through a link from an article someone on my friends' list pointed out, and I remembered having thought that the Daily Show interview it referred to had left something unresolved. I'm not sure whether this interpretation of what happened is the correct one or not, but I at least like that someone would have gone to the trouble of trying to come up with one, and this one seems as compelling to me as any. ( Old Left vs. New Left? ) Current Mood: I voted for Kodos | | Monday, August 13th, 2007 | | 6:20 pm |
Republicans VS Ferrets
Link via loosechanj: Giuliani was on a talk show when a man called to contest his ban on ferrets. He told the woman, among other things, that her love of ferrets meant there was “something deranged” about her. “The excessive concern you have for ferrets is something you should examine with a therapist.” He also told her she has a “sickness” and is “very, very sad.” All because she wanted a ferret.Show of hands - I can't be the only LJer in this crowd who thinks anyone who would support and enforce a ban on ferrets is pure undiluted evilness. Because come on, you can never have too many ferrets, am I right? If you value small mammals at all, you know how to vote in 2008. Current Mood: my ferrets! :O | | Thursday, June 7th, 2007 | | 9:05 pm |
So, _wastrel, your LiveJournal reveals...
You are... 1% unique and 2% herdlike (partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy yoga). When it comes to friends you are popular. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are wary of trusting strangers. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is intellectual.
Your overall weirdness is: 33(The average level of weirdness is: 27.
You are weirder than 73% of other LJers.)
Find out what your weirdness level is! | | Saturday, May 26th, 2007 | | 12:17 am |
A few days ago I received an e-mail from someone on my friends' list about something called Flixter. If you receive anything mentioning this, don't open it. I usually delete spam the moment I see it. However, the criteria I usually use to determine whether something is spam or not is who it's coming from. Since this came from an LJ friend, I didn't realize at first that it was spam, and assumed it was something like a regular LJ quiz people fill out and post the results of. I specifically checked off the boxes with my friends' names next to them when it asked me if I wanted to e-mail the quiz to anybody else, because I didn't want anyone else to be spammed by it. Of course that didn't do much good because it just borrowed my address to send messages to just about everyone on my list without my consent after that, as I was somewhat dismayed and disappointed to find out. I don't remember having said at any point that I was computer smart, and this is one of the reasons why. It's true that I should have known better than to think it wouldn't do that, I'm not denying that, and I sincerely apologize for anyone on my friends' list who's been inconvenienced by it. | | Saturday, May 12th, 2007 | | 2:53 am |
book excerpt
"If you aren't familiar with the scientific process, you might think that such diametrically opposed opinions when looking at the same piece of evidence have no place in the precise world of science. Ralph Harvey put the arguments over ALH84001 into perspective in the following piece that he wrote for the Internet: It is a completely normal part of science for researchers to 'try on' various theories and interpretations, and at this stage utterly natural that groups might hold to contradictory interpretations. Normally the public doesn't see science at this stage, and I'm disappointed that they did in this case, because some might draw the conclusion that scientists are morons who can't make up their minds. In fact, that's the power of science - we take our time, examine all the possibilities, try hard to learn which data to trust and which data to mistrust. In the end, no theory answers all the questions, but usually a theory develops that successfully interprets the majority of the data, and offers predictions that are later seen to be fulfilled. Perhaps the most important aspect of science is that there's always some data somewhere that goes against the favored theory. Scientists don't ever discard those findings, because even though they are 'sand in the gears,' they often prove to be very important pieces of the puzzle in their own right, clues to phenomena we just didn't understand when we collected the data." - Anne Simon, "The Real Science Behind The X-Files", p.97 | | Friday, February 16th, 2007 | | 3:29 am |
I'm sure most of everyone already saw the capoeira video on Yahoo on their own, but come on, being me, there was just no way I wasn't going to look at and post a link to that, was there? To me, capoeira's a daily reminder that even people in bleak and desperate situations can still have the power to take back their freedom - and that that freedom is worth fighting for in the first place. _wastrel Current Mood: malandroCurrent Music: olele-ilaila, olele... olele-ilaila, olele... | | Thursday, February 8th, 2007 | | 10:58 am |
| | Thursday, January 25th, 2007 | | 2:22 am |
Laurentian Bank ads
http://francite.infinit.net/infos/quebeccanada/archives/2007/01/20070114-093101.html (article in French only, for which you have my apologies) The gist of it is that the Laurentian Bank put out advertisements on billboards which are being targeted as offensive by renters' associations, and quite rightly so at that if you ask yours truly. The signs show children doing the :O face saying things like "How can you still be renting?" or "What? You still don't have a house?" It's been observed that the ads are insulting to people who have to rent their living space instead of buying it because they simply don't have the financial means to do so, which makes it a rather classist statement to have made, and really, it's not that much of a leap to make, is it? Their excuse is that come on, it's got kids in it, it's cute. Well, Lord of the Flies had kids in it too, and tell that to the renters' kids being made fun of over it during recess, why don't you? I mean, I'm generally someone who thinks the phrase "think of the children" is funny in any context, but for once will someone please think of the freaking children? They're already cruel enough without encouragement. -_- If I'd had any money in the Laurentian Bank by now I'd have already taken it all out of there and told them why. Spread this around, if you feel so inclined. _wastrel | | 2:06 am |
By Saturday
http://www.avaaz.org/en/global_peace_march/act.phpI have to admit that no, I don't know whether signing these things ever accomplishes anything or not either, but on the other hand it doesn't cost anything and it only takes a minute or two, so I didn't think I had anything to lose by doing so and I figured a person or two on my list might not either. | | Thursday, December 28th, 2006 | | 4:38 pm |
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