Bell has officially announced to one of it’s biggest resellers that they plan to throttle all P2P by the 7th of April. We can’t let this happen. This is a CALL for ACTION!
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Monthly Archives: March 2008
Holy crap… seriously, did you read this?
According to Michael Geist Blog, which by the way, is probably my favourite blog on the net, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation or CBC will be releasing its new season of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister online, the day after it airs through bittorrent. The kicker? The file will be:
“…high-resolution version via peer-to-peer networks without any DRM restrictions. “
Excerpt from the Michael Geist Blog
Unfortunately for millions of Canadians, many ISPs here including Rogers & Bell Sympatico are using traffic shaping, that may make downloading the content difficult, or nearly impossible. Downloading this program would be a great way of using your Videotron 50 Meg download connection (as long as you don’t hit the cap)
Great news to Linux users as well!!! Because its not wrapped in some DRM wrapper you two can enjoy it. Add to that all the other CBC content that is available on their site from the news, to their various shows and you’ve got some enjoyable entertainment.
One would hope that other broadcasters and content producers take note of the CBC expierement. As well, what could this mean for jPod? A program that was actually viewed online by more people than tuned in to see it on TV?
—-UPDATE—-
The CBC is distributing the Torrent on mininova! (seriously…) To download the torrent and enjoy the first network program legally released online click HERE
Technorati Tags: CBC, Michael Geist, Geist, jpod, Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister, bittorrent, drm, drmsucks, Rogers, Bell, Sympatico, traffic shaping, linux
First off, I must just say that in the real world I am in the middle of opening a new 15,000 square foot store, and I have been there pretty much every day, all day, so I have not had the opportunity to do any research, or blogging really at all this month, but this was just too good.
Battlestar Galactica fans have been patiently (and in my case impatiently) waiting for almost a year for the continuation of our favourite program Battlestar Galactica to begin its fourth and final season. This past week however, we were given another gift. The official announcement from SciFi that Caprica, the Galactica prequel set 50 years before BSG was to be made. Production begins this spring on the pilot movie in Vancouver and the series could follow.
Awesome?? YES!
The show will be different from the original Galactica. Ron Moore who worked on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and then Deep Space Nine commented that Star Trek series are relatively the same, but Caprica will be very different from Caprica.
“This is really more of a sci-fi Dallas,” Moore said. “It’s a political story, a family story. It’s about the creation of the Cylons, and it’s about a company. It’s planet-based. It’s very character-oriented, very serialized and very much about the characters. It’s a whole different genre, and that’s what makes it exciting.
Excerpt from SciFi Wire: March 20, 2008
This should be good! Ron Moore has said he will be ‘very involved’ with the production of the pilot, but that it is too soon to say whether or not he will be involved in the series. The gang also discussed the re-introduction of new webisodes to follow as well!
Technorati Tags: television, scifi,, battlestar galactica, bsg, caprica, ron d moore
Hail, hail, all hail Jonathan and Linux users rejoice!
As an Ubuntu user I am constantly rewarded to the site of “Your OS is not supported” when I try to watch video online, well, one more site has fallen away from that list with CTV’s new online player for its MAIN CTV Network!! And in my opinion (which is based on minutes of in depth research) it is all thanks to Jonathan and his team over at CTVDigital!
He’s moved the next version of the CTV online portal away from silverlight, and over to a more user friendly open system that works on more than just windows. This makes CTV’s improved portal now available for:
Discover Channel
The Comedy Network
TSN
CTV
Once again, CTV is showing us that it cares about Linux and Mac users and isn’t interested in creating a windows only, internet explorer only, sliverlight running crapfest.
Sadly however, some shows are viewable to users running windows only under silverlight.
Some of our shows on CTV have Microsoft DRM due to prior agreements. Trust us, we know it’s irritating on Macs and Linux. A lot of us use Macs at home, so we get it. But without Silverlight support for DRM (yet), there’s no way for us to display those videos on non-Windows operating-systems.
Jonathan – Excerpt from his blog posting March 7, 2008.
He goes on to politely ask that the hate mail be limited to a bare minimum. I myself have dropped down to just three angry rants per week now (kidding). Clearly this is a person who understands there is more to computers than just XP. (Vista doesn’t even count) In my view, he and his team are worthy of our support, thanks and praise.
Shows like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles are still not supported on Linux, being wrapped in a nice Microsoft DRM wrapper and shows like Lost are still not available at all. I would hope that CTV’s team could get their butts in gear and license that content as well. But that has nothing to do with the technical side, and everything to do with the money-men. (and women…. )
I am sure its because of people like him [Jonathan] that CTV is even looking at alternatives to silverlight, and its locked down architecture. Thanks Jonathan! Keep up the awesome work.
This is a follow up piece to earlier great work CTV has done that I talked about here
Technorati Tags: silverlight, silverlight sucks, ctv, discovery channel, tsn, comedy network, terminator, sarah connor chronicles, linux, ubuntu, drm, drm sucks,mac, Jonathan Keebler
These words of course, not my own but those of Claude Dubois who told the Canadian Press:
“Imagine a gala where we invite several anglophone artists but we take them off the air because they’re anglophones,” Dubois told The Canadian Press.
“We call that racism.”
Quote from Globe & Mail Article
Actually Claude… you call that putting a program on the air that your audience wants to see. In Quebec, for those that are not familiar with it, the people in Quebec are generally very supportive of their arts community. I would not be surprised in anyway if what Dubois suggested actually happened in Quebec had RDI been preparing a show for its Francophone audience.
Claude must find it ‘elitist and wrong’ (great quote from Love Actually) that the Technical Awards at the Oscars are not only not shown on television, but take place on a completely different night, in a DIFFERENT ROOM.
The article on the Globe & Mail site which was actually quite entertaining, (I suggest you read it) goes on to say that Dubois was shocked when he tuned in to see all of the francophone singers had been removed from the English broadcast of the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame gala.
This led to a tirade in a Quebec paper where Dubois proclaimed that francophone Quebeckers are “like a stain for the anglophones of Toronto.”
“Fuck you, Toronto,” Dubois told Le Journal de Montreal.
First off Dubois, don’t say Fuck You, Toronto… that’s not very nice. And secondly… well, I won’t say anything nasty back, I’m sure people from work read this 
Dubois went on to say that it goes beyond racisim.
“It goes beyond racism,” he said. “It’s a bit like saying we want Quebec without the Quebeckers.”
Well… I don’t know anyone thats saying that, but I guess I don’t mind saying now, that I want Quebec without Claude Dubois.
The CBC of course denied the charges, stating simply that they had to condense a 3 hour gala into 44 minutes. They also lost considerable time to a tribute on Oscar Peterson, who died this past year.
The CBC went on to say that the show was prepared for an Anglaphone audience.
I say kudos for the CBC for thinking of the audience first, I dare say that they seem to be doing that more and more this year.
— Sorry, an addendum to the original entry,
One might find it quite comical if an article about a rant some ‘celebrity’ has publicly is actually longer than his wikipedia entry… three lines…. Wow… you must be important if you have three whole lines.
Technorati Tags: Claude Dubois, CBC, Racist, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame,
Monday brings us the 2 hour season finale of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I had always intended this blog to be about television programming that I enjoy as well as the topics I’ve covered so far, I just haven’t had the chance.
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The Sarah Connor Chronicles, (SCC) for those of you who have not seen it yet begins a short time after Terminator 2, our heroine, the very lovely (really very lovely) Lena Headey, is in hiding, protecting her son, played by Hero’s Thomas Dekker from the evil robotic killing machines from the future. This time, instead of a soldier from the future, or Arnold, John sends back a really hot Terminator to look after him. Obviously thinking with his head (Hmm… if I were a teenage boy, who would I rather have protecting me from an unstoppable killing machine in human form him… or… oh yeah, her… yes yes… )
Of course, all of this leaves us in a bit of a pickle… how do we get our heroes up to the present day…. sweet, the hot robot from the future has a time machine. Ok, so its a little sci-fi hockeyness… Just let it go and enjoy.
After the action packed pilot, which I loved by the way, the show continues to exude a high energy and adrenaline pumping story line that leaves you wanting more each week. Originally scheduled to have a full 22 episode season, the series is breaking here with a 2 hour finale. The question however, will it be back?
With the exception of The X-Files, (which if you ask me was a complete accident on Fox’s part that this show even lasted long enough to find an audience) scifi has not faired well on our fair and balanced friendly network.
In fact, one might question whether Fox’s inability to commit to scifi is what drives people away in the first place. Remember Harsh Realm? And how that never bothered to end? Space Above & Beyond? What about Firefly… no? That’s because Fox canceled them all.
Terminator however is different. While those programs relied heavily in scifi, Terminator seems to be relying more on the action adventure component. It’s this I believe that makes it so much fun to watch. With the loss of 24 for the year, it was really feeling like Terminator had that manic feel.
I strongly hope that our friends at Fox look at the merits of the program and bring it back again. It may be time for netwoks to stop looking at shows as a season, but more as a series. How many episodes do we need to tell our story. If we need to, lets do them in shorter bursts, 8, 10, 12 eps a year. I’m ok with that, as long as we are treated to the full story.
Terminator raps up tonight on Fox, and CTV (in Canada) at 8pm Eastern.
Those of you in Canada that want to catch up, can do so by checking out CTV’s broadband network. A warning, the CTV portion still requires Microsoft Silverlight, so Linux users will need to use …. alternate means to see the shows.
Technorati: CTV, firefly, fox, fox network, harsh realm, lena headeym, sarah connor chronicles, Silverlight Sucks, space above and beyond, summer glau, terminator, terminator the sarah connor chronicles, thomas dekker, x-files
