For years now we’ve heard almost no end to the rhetoric from the media industries that piracy is devastating their businesses and causing untold economic pain and suffering by forcing countless people out of work. Interestingly enough, we never hear about the damage to the executive’s paycheque or the number of executives who find themselves out of work because of piracy; most likely this is because there are no executives out of work because of piracy and the “common person” will always be fired before anything happens to executives, but that’s more speculation for another time.

A popular axiom in society states that Lady Justice, the personification of the democratic justice system, is blind. The implication is that the the identity, influence or connections of both accused and accuser are irrelevant; both will receive equal treatment under the law with no special treatment accorded to the wealthy or to those with friends working in law enforcement.

Please note: This post deals with religious, specifically Christian, subject matter that some people may find offensive. If you continue reading, please do not blame anyone but yourself if you are offended.

In today’s world, is there really a need for physical signatures? Is there a real need for you to be present and put ink to paper? Most people won’t hesitate to say that yes, we actually do need to sign paper documents. Of course, this presupposes the necessity of physical paper documents. If we could tie together just a few elements of technology already in widespread use, and update our laws to recognise the security of these methods and permit their usage for official documents, the need for physical paper documents could be reduced to just what is required for people who are unable to electronically sign documents or departments that are not capable of running computer systems.

Capitalism, at least as Western countries practise it, it a funny thing. Consumers and businesses have very different ideas about what makes a good Capitalist market. Sadly for consumers, it is the businesses who get to make the rules that govern them and the resulting legislation easily reflects this.

There’s a few essential things that anyone using a computer must do. Perhaps the most understated and most important, certainly the most ignored, is to always keep a backup of anything important. It’s not enough to keep making backups though, you also need to verify them. It’s no good backing up your family photos if you make a mistake and copy them to the wrong place.

After a reminder from @pleia2 I’ve finally gone and updated my GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) key to a shiny new 4096-bit RSA key.

The current debate surrounding the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) usage-based billing decision has led to a polarised debate the likes of which are rarely seen outside of political or religious debates.

It’s a question that has been asked more than a few times, most recently in the wake of the relatively recent Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) decision to permit large Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to throttle Internet traffic, even traffic from smaller ISPs who used their lack of throttling as a competitive distinction in the marketplace. Now that the CRTC is allowing those same large ISPs to remove yet another competitive distinction, by allowing them to almost literally force smaller ISPs to either implement the same usage-based billing that Bell and Rogers use or make prices unacceptably high, calls for the CRTC to be disbanded are being renewed. Unfortunately for both sides of that debate, our problems won’t be fixed by simply dissolving the CRTC, or by keeping it.

The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) has decided that Canadians don’t actually need to keep up with growing demands on the Internet, nor do we need competition or diversity in a supposedly-capitalistic market. Metered and capped Internet is fine with them, and one style of undifferentiated Internet service offered by two (three if you’re lucky, sometimes just one) companies is plenty of competition. And I can see where they’re coming from. After all, it’s a lot easier for Canadians to walk into the Rogers store or the Bell store (Telus or Shaw for my friends in Western Canada) and say “I want Internet access” than it is to ask truly competing companies what makes their Internet access the best deal around.