Fungii.com

ISP's not liable

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 that ISPs do not have to collect royalties on behalf of media publishers for possible infringement that may occur over their networks. Yea for the Supremes, they got this one right.

Canadian Election Prediction

The Election Prediction Project has their final tally on how this thing will turn out.They supposedly have a pretty good record on predicting elections so we'll see how well they do on this one.

Not likely

Layton predicts historic gains for the NDP.

"You know we're responsible people," said Duceppe. "They heard me during the debates. We're human beings ... we're not eating babies for breakfast."

Right, puppies are for breakfast and babies are for dinner, silly.

Download.Ject

A new virus is worming it's way through the internet and installs a keylogger apparently. Not good. Here's how to fix it. It only affects Windows machines running IE and uses javascript to do its dirty work. Nasty, I checked my machine and it seems ok. I did the update thing to be sure. I think it uses the exploit in Windows where javascript opens a help file and then somehow the help file is used to circumvent any security measures you might have in place on your machine.

Dog saves the day

Some guy with a bunch of guns and ammo was planning to go on a rampage in Toronto yesterday, but decided not to because of a dog.

"He happens to be a pet lover, and he decided that if there was such a nice dog in the area the people were too nice and he wasn't going to carry out his plan," Det. Ashley said.

Wow, that's freaky. At least he turned himself in, unlike Briere who made the choice to follow through with his plan.

The ammunition, all 6,296 rounds of it, was gathered in tidy boxes of blue, grey and red. The guns included a .22-calibre bolt-action rifle with scope, a .30-calibre hunting rifle with scope and a pump-action 12 gauge shotgun.

Sounds like something out of the movie "Targets".

The man's automobile, a red two-door Subaru, was also on display. A yellow plastic dog's bowl, a quarter full with food pellets, balanced on the back seat. The upholstery was almost invisible under a mish-mash of food wrappers, packets of medication and assorted papers. In the trunk, a collection of CDs revealed a taste for the music of Mariah Carey, the Doors, Abba and Judas Priest.

I can understand Judas Priest, but Mariah Carey, Abba and Judas Priest? This guy's seriously fucked up.

The Nightmare Continues...

Christ, this shit with Rogers never ends. I just tried to use my Blackberry browser, not working again. Had to do the reset thing to get it back up again. Hooked up my old 950 to my computer to try and import my old contacts, couldn't do it. I saw a message flash on the BB's screen briefly, like it was trying to communicate, but after about 100 attempts, I gave up. Bogus. Then I tried to fill out the rebate forms for this thing. It requires a "proof of activation" form. I looked everywhere, no proof of activation to be found. I had a letter they sent, but apparently that wasn't it. Had to call Rogers, spent another half an hour with the bastards and they're going to send one out. This is getting ridiculous.

Mobile Messaging!

Looks like I can now blog from my Blackberry. Cool. I'm still not used to this keyboard, seems a bit different from my old 950.

Wasn't so impressed this morning tho. Went to use the browser on this thing and after hanging for five minutes, it gave me an error message. Tried to get Tom to help me but he gave me the Rogers support number. They were of no help, tho theu managed to use up an hour of my time. Eventually Shane showed me where the reset button is and that seemed to fix my problem.

Blackberry 7280

I finally got my Blackberry today, after a week of not having a phone! Had to call Rogers, they told me the package was at a Purolator depot on 17th avenue. So I booted out there right away and the damn place was closed. Wasn't busy, so I waited half an hour for them to open. Got the package [woohoo!], too big to carry around, so I brought it home. Checked it out a bit, but I thought the battery was dead so I left it at home to charge. On my old 950 you just click the thumb-wheel to turn it on, but on this new BB there is an "on" button. Doh! I've been messing around with it for about an hour or two now, seems much nicer than my old, decrepid 950. Nice colour screen, got the WAP browser to display html. It's gonna take awhile to figure out all tricks to this thing. On my old BB you could press 'M' to go to your messages, but that doesn't work on this one.

If you want blood, you got it, teach!

Japanese student caught napping during class, told to write apology in blood.

BC Governor?

Fox news reports that Vancouver vies to become 'Vansterdam'.

"Vancouver's mayor not only wants to legalize marijuana but wants the governor to grow, sell and tax it to keep it out of the hands of criminals and to raise money for drug treatment programs."

Weekend movies

Tried watching the Tomb Raider sequel, Lara Croft and the Cradle of Life. I liked the first one well enough, but I must say this second one blew chunks. Silly, aimless, I gave up on it halfway through. On the other hand, I watched Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines last night and it wasn't half bad. Not quite as polished as T2, but they could have done a lot worse. Some of the one-liners were hilarious, although I'd say about half fell flat. "Drop your weapon... and the coffin!" LOL And was it just me or were there a lot of continuity errors in this film? I think when Arnold was hanging off of the crane, they showed him on the crane in one shot, not there in the next and then back on in the next shot. A bit sloppy.

Hic!

I had the hiccups for about four hours today! Drove me crazy, had them for a couple hours, they went away for awhile, then they came back again. Ugh! It's tiring having your torso involuntarily contract every 7 seconds. Now I feel all dizzy and drained. At least they did stop, once I had the hiccups for two weeks. That was brutal, especially when you try to sleep at night. Went to the doctor, she said "It's just the hiccups, they'll go away after awhile!" Thanks, that's why I never go to the doctor, they do nothing but state the obvious. I read somewhere hiccups are caused by a brain infection. Really. Tried all the cures known to man during those two weeks, none worked. Eventually they just stopped.

Google

Google looks funny today. Father's Day I guess?

Brachypelma boehmei

Here's my little Brachypelma boehmei spiderling. Getting quite the belly, thought she might be getting ready to molt. But I offered her a cricket this morning and she snapped it up, the li'l piggy.

Rogers: We hate our customers

Still having problems with my phone, like it doesn't work! After getting the replacement sim the other day, I thought I was set. But no, the next day I went to use my phone and I got the dreaded "Unregistered SIM" message again. Phoned Rogers again, after 15 minutes on hold, they informed me that they had no idea why that happened and the new sim was once more "burned". So I asked her if I had to go get another sim?! She checked with Purolator and said "hey, your new Blackberry is on the back of the truck and will be delivered this morning, so why don't you just wait for that?" I stupidly agreed to her stupid idea. Came home on Wednesday, no BB. Thursday, no BB. Checked with local post office to see if they had it there, as that's where Purolator drops stuff off when they can't contact the receiver. Nope, ain't there. Friday, nothing. Now it's Saturday and I don't even know if Purolator delivers on weekends. And I haven't had a phone for almost a week now. Fuck I hate Rogers. :(

Stephen Harper is officially an idiot

I don't like Stephen Harper very much, but I must admit, he's run a pretty good campaign so far. By keeping his more radical party members silent and basically standing by while the Liberals self destruct, he's reaped huge rewards. A little underhanded, but good for him. But today, he screwed up, big time. They sent out a news release entitled Paul Martin Supports Child Pornography? WTF? Now, no matter how you feel about Paul Martin, that's just a totally fucked up thing to send out. It crosses a line that I think all politicians recognize and agree not to go there. I can't think of anything you could say that would be more unwarranted and despicable. And it reeks of political opportunism, trying to capitalize on the outrage over the Briere incident. Absolutely disgusting. You would think Harper would be smart and immediately pull the release and apologize. Nope, he refuses to apologize and refuses to pull the press release. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Update: apparently, they changed the headline and re-released the same content with a different headline. They also sent out another press release titled "The NDP Caucus Supports Child Pornography?", which they haven't retracted, at least yet. Idiots.

Update 2: they still have the NDP Caucus Supports Child Pornography story up on their website. Eek!

Update 3: somebody bought them a clue and the headline now reads "How Tough are the NDP on Child Pornography?"

Briere blames child porn, media laps it up

So this pedophile kills a young girl and then blames internet child porn for his fucked-up behaviour. Pathetic. As if that wasn't bad enough, the media laps it up, and calls for a crackdown, demanding that ISPs be held responsible. And the Ontario government is drafting some kind of legislation to crackdown on internet porn. This is such fucking bullshit, IMHO. First of all, Briere should be held responsible for his actions, this "but child porn made me do it" is a copout, and I'm totally disgusted that so many people have bought into it. Secondly, by all means, shut down child porn sites, but blaming ISPs for the problem is ridiculous. It's like blaming the phone company for bomb threats, they're merely the conduit. The way the media is pumping up the hysteria and outrage over this incident is sickening. Briere commited this heinous crime, not his fucking computer.

Messenger of Death

This morning was very busy at work, I kept getting all these pickups. I was running around for over an hour, picking shit up and unable to drop anything. Finally, I had one pickup left, then I could [hopefully] get everything written up and start delivering them all. Suddenly, I hear a hissing sound and my back wheel gets all woobly. Flat tire! Damn I hate that. So I do my last pickup and start working on swapping in a new tube. I pull the popped tube out and run my fingers along the inside of the tire to try and find what caused the flat. I found out it was a big, sharp shard of glass when it sliced my finger open and I began to spurt blood all over the place. Ahem. Anyway, I got the beast back on the road and all was well.

Although I did have a run-in with some asshole running-man who decided to suddenly dart out into the road where I nearly hit the bleeding idiot. Then he had the nerve to come up to me afterwards and start bleeting about how I nearly hit him. Yeah, that tends to happen when you run out into traffic without even looking first, ya fucking twat. Sometimes the urge to go completely psycho on certain people becomes almost unbearable. But I refrained.

Reconnected

I called Rogers from a pay phone first thing this morning to try and get my phone working again. After a good fifteen minutes on the line, mostly on hold listening to crappy muzak, it turns out the lady who upgraded my account switched it to the new sim I'm going to get get with my new Blackberry. Someday. Meanwhile, my current phone with the old sim does not work. I asked her to switch it back to my old sim, but she was unable to do that. [it was burned, in phone people lingo] She suggested that I buy a new sim for $25 at a local Rogers dealer and they would credit my account.

Luckily, one of my accounts is a Rogers dealer and I was able to get a new sim from them, gratis. [Thanks Tom, you da man!]

Just to show you how messed up Rogers is, I got my phone bill from them this month and it said my account was overdue. Mmmm, I thought I paid my bill last month. Checking my bank account history, I see a payment for Rogers in there. So I take a closer look at the bill, and I notice that they sent the overdue notice before the last bill was even due! What a bunch of jerks.

Election Debates

After watching the French debate last night, I thought all the leaders carried themselves fairly well, except for Stephen Harper who looked rather lost. Everybody was saying this was mostly just a warmup for the English debate, so I thought tonight's edition would be even more interesting. Ha! What a joke, all the leaders fared much worse in this debate, IMHO. Major suckage.

1. Jack Layton - I was surprised how well he did last night, but tonight he was by the far the worst of the four. The rude little prick was constantly talking at the same time as the other candidates, a smug, little smile on his face at all times and if he bends that pinky finger back any more it's going to bust right off. And if he loves Gilles Duceppe so much, they should go rent a fucking room. Ick, if this was Survivor, he would be the first one voted off the island. I hope he's not around for the next election, very irritating personality.
2. Gilles Duceppe - He did well last night in the French debate, and he started off well tonight but soon sounded the same on almost every issue: Quebec Quebec Quebec. Didn't have terribly much to offer in the debate tonight. He did say unequivocally that he will form the opposition after this election. Great Gilles, I guess we can just skip the whole consulting with the populace thing, eh?
3. Paul Martin - I thought he did very well in the debate last night, but tonight he seemed much more lost, much of it because of Layton talking at the same time as he did. Thanks Jack, for bringing this debate down to the Jerry Springer level. I think Chretien would have strangled this guy before the first five minutes was up. Martin stammered a lot, looked tired at times and clearly wasn't as focused as he was last night. I thought he made some good points last night but didn't manage to make those same points tonight, mostly due to the less structured format of this debate. Rather weak.
4. Stephen Harper - I thought he sucked pretty badly last night, and everybody seemed to attribute this to his problems speaking French. But then tonight he gave pretty well the same performance. Bleh. He's playing a stealth campaign, hiding in the shadows. If his party does form the next government, who knows what we'll get. Somehow, I don't think I'll like it very much.

So this debate sucked, the leaders sucked and I would much rather have watched Da Vinci's Inquest. Lamers.

And hey, I'm not alone.

Peruvian Green

My Thrixopelma puriens molted yesterday. And this time I managed to get pictures of it without deleting everything, I'm quite proud. She sat flipped over for a long time before actually begining the process of shedding her skin. When you see that bit of clear skin at the top of her abdomen, you know she's ready to do it.

You can see the skin has split away on her abdomen and the top of her cephalothorax has popped off.

She's almost done here, just a bit more leg to pull out...

Right after the deed, all wet and slimey.

Close-up of her white fang area.

And after all that, she looks like this. Even right after a molt, her butt looks like it has a bald spot. This might be because she's old, I bought her as an adult from a petshop and I have no idea how old she is. I've had her for about 8 years?

And finally, here's a close-up of her carapace. I'm not sure exactly what species she is, I found many, many photos of tarantulas that look very much like her on the internet. But after she molted and I observed this green sheen on her body, I concluded that she was most likely a Peruvian green, Thrixopelma puriens. Her black colour with green highlights fades away to a light brown over time, until she molts again.

Disconnected

Today I made arrangements with Rogers to upgrade my Blackberry 950 to a Blackberry 7280 and merge my phone bill with my Blackeberry bill. I just looked at my phone and it has a message displayed "Unregistered SIM"! Fuck. Now my phone doesn't work. I had a feeling something like this would happen, those bastards are so unbelievably incompetent, it drives me crazy. So tomorrow I will have to hit a pay phone and try to get my goddamn phone hooked back up. Arghh!

Ground Control II Demo

Played the tutorial in the single player Ground Control 2 [FLASH] demo. Pretty fun, simple, easy to pick up. Liked it a lot better than Generals, which never really hooked me.

Saturday: Day of Sloth

Slept in till noon today, sat around reading Quicksilver for awhile [I'm on page 200, woohoo, I should have this book finished by the turn of the century!], no food, went to seven11 for junk food, milk 'n eggies. Ate said junk food, felt sleepy, took a nap. Yes, a very lazy day. But hey, I just finished doing the dishes and I made bread in ye ole bread-making machine, so the day wasn't a total loss.

Road to Nowhere

In honour of Paul Martin's imploding campaign, I added the Talking Heads - Road to Nowhere to my radio.blog. Enjoy!

Liberal Attack Ads

Just saw the new Liberal attack ads on the CBC. Incredibly stupid move, if you ask me. [yeah, I know, you didn't] I don't think attacking Harper's policies is a bad move, in fact it's long overdue. The problem is the tone of the ads. They are just nasty, vicious, ugly ads and will likely hurt the Libs more than anything. Big mistake. Why the hell didn't they run these things by a focus group or something beforehand? They just had some viewer reactions to the ads, and every single one was negative. Martin, fire your campaign manager now, I think he/she might be a Conservative mole. [David Herle]

Canadian Election Feed

I setup an rss amalgamation thingy for the Canadian election, just a collection of rss feeds from people covering the election. Most of which I collected from here. I'll probably have to start a second page because the first one is getting too big. I'll put it in the rss section of my links page. Hopefully somebody will find it useful besides me. I didn't sort the feeds in any way, so you might find stuff you agree with and whole whack you don't. ;)

The British Library

Wow, this site seems to have a lot of cool stuff. ;)

Da Vinci's Inquest

This Canadian crime drama has been around for six years now, but I never sat down and really watched it till the other night, and damn, it's pretty good! One of the few shows I'm going to try and watch on a regular basis now. Tuesdays @ 9:00pm on CBC.
Da Vinci's Inquest

Epic Hockey

The CBC just played Faith No More's Epic in their intro to tonight's hockey game, so cool. They showed Nemo's infamous hit during the line "It's in your face but you can't grab it". Very funny, in a sick, twisted kind of way. In honour of Darryl Sutter, I've added AC/DC's Bad Boy Boogie to my radio blog. ;)