The MPAA seems to treat bit torrent as the problem which it is not, it’s like saying the drug problem is because of cars, drug dealers use cars to transport their drugs. The car is not the problem and neither is bit torrent, it’s just the tool being used. If bit torrent just out of nowhere disappeared right now I guarantee you some other technology would pop up in one to two months that would replace bit torrent and pirating would continue without missing a beat.

So for now let’s just put the legitamite use of bit torrent to the side and concentrate on it’s illegal use. To download something using bit torrent you first need to download a torrent file that contains the necessary information for your bit torrent program so that it knows what to do etc. to download the file(s) you want to share. Those torrent files can be easily found on various sites that have huge lists of illegal bit torrents and those lists are updated frequently. Clearly these sites if they really wanted to could to some degree stop that, but they clearly are not even trying. That is one of the problems, of course if you managed to shut down every such site and somehow stopped anyone from starting a new one then the torrent files would simply move to some where else, there’s always a way. That’s a tough problem to solve.

What about the pirates themselves. Let’s first look at the pirates who sneak in a video recorder into a movie theatre and record the movie to share online. There is technology that can detect hidden cameras, some you point and if it’s pointing in the direction of a camera you will see a red light where the lens is. And some like this one http://www.spyshops.ca/hardwiredvideocameradetector.htm
Now this would be a good place to put some of that money they are wasting on drm. I bet you with a little reseach a solution could be found, all of a sudden boom anyone who tries to use a camera to record a movie in the theatre is detected and not long after arrested. Boom just like that, at least this part of the problem is solved. Then you just need to deal with cell phones, put up signs, maybe even do some tv/radio advertising spelling it out clearly that they are illegal to have inside a theatre period. Make it clear what the consequences will be if you are caught with one. Theatres could offer an area where visitors could drop off their cell phones, charge, let’s say a dollar to do so. Now the theatre has an extra income. It’s a win, win situation, even if you don’t charge for holding the cell phone. And this also will help solve the problem of cell phones going off during a movie.

Problem number two is those pirates who rent or buy a dvd or blueray and rip it, then share the movie online. Ok now I don’t really have a solution for this problem. DRM simply does not work and never will, so that’s just a waste of money and time. You could try to find those pirates and charge them but that’s not easy to do, so would not be very effective.
Even though I don’t have even a partial solution to this problem, I bet someone out there might have an idea, might be worth looking into it and maybe using some of that money being wasted on stuff like drm and using it to research some of those posible solutions.

One more problem is how most view the whole movie industry, they don’t see pirating their movies to be such a big deal after all they are still making boat loads of money. We still hear once and a while of some star being paid $20 million to act in this movie etc. So a public relations campaign might be in order. Put up signs/posters etc. at theatres showing how movie pirating has effect things. Maybe some tv and radio adds as well. If you can do this, there might be a small decrease in movie pirating. Well maybe this one for me at least is tough for call, but can’t hurt to try.

And my final thought, don’t do what the RIAA/ASCAP have and are doing, actually seperate yourself from them. They have already lost their war and here’s why. You can’t sue the entire world, long before you sue that many people they would revolt and oh my. You can’t shut down the internet. And a guaranteed way to loose your battle/war is to have most of everyone thing you are douche bags (to be polite). Right now what they are doing is giving them some small success, but eventually with time technology will again change and the RIAA/ASCAP will at some point realize to ultimately they will need to help of the people and what they won’t get it, because as I mentioned most consider them to be douche bags. I’m having trouble here explain my point, what I’m basically saying is if you are hated you’re business is doomed as the people decide where to spend their money and they can effect what happens with government, this has been demonstrated for decades.

And there it is, my thoughts and opinions on the whole movie pirating problem, does this mean I’m luny ? I hope so

A friend of mine needed to go to the grocery store to pick up a few items and I went with him. We went to the Independent Grocery store and I was just blown away that they have again increased the priced of many items, 2l bottle of pop went from $1.49 to $2.19 ouch and I think that’s the third price increase this year for 2l bottles of pop. That stuck in my head so the same day we went to visit a friend who works at a convenience store and asked her what the prices where on items he bought that they had in the store. The store only charges $1.69 for a 2l bottle of pop for example. When it was done we did the match and found that he would of save over $38 by buying the same items at the local store then the grocery store. That blew my mind away. Even the ice cream was cheaper that the local corner store.

Everyday I check out certain website from Slashdot.org to Digg.com and so forth, I read a lot about what this company is doing or what this one is up to and rarely is any of it good for the average Joe. One thing is companies want all the information about us as they can collect, that’s not good. Take a look at what you currently have, how much of that do you really need, how much do you still use. If you were to take a serious look, you would find that most of what you own is just useless junk. So why do you buy such item, marketing. They have gotten really good at advertising everything from what you see on tv to the box it’s in even where it’s places in the store even on the shelves. I also do not trust companies, and why should we with that huge amount of data they have collected.
Companies also want an incredible amount of control over us, they want to control what we share with others, word of mouth not just in person but on the internet. They want to have control over our rights, so they can collect more data and what they can do with that data and so forth. Think of it as they want us to be like zombies, they say buy this and we all go out and buy it.
Patents, trademarks, what a freaking nightmare of stupidity that is. Monster Inc. has been and as far as I know stil is sueing all sorts of companies for using the word Monster, are you kidding me, nope. And some of the stuff being patented just blows my mind away, I’m surprised nobody owns a petent on how to drink water from a glass, or does somebody it’s actually becoming that stupid. And for things to get that stupid it requires a lot of stupid people right from the ones who file the patents to the ones who approve it.
- Firearm With Whisky Glass Attachment US Patent 3450403
- http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6360693.html  this patent is basically a stick with a toy at the end to play with your pet.
There seems to be this attitude from USPTO to patent everything and if you have a problem with the patent hire a lawyer and fight it. What ever happened to patenting things with the help of simple common sense, or is that lacking at the USPTO ?

And I can could go on and on about the evils of companies, hell have you read some of the stuff Apple has been up to, mind blowing evil. And this brings me to downsizing, some companies are recording record profits have been for years but feel the need to downsize or even more parts or all of their operations to another country. Why, so they can increase their profits of course. So I can’t help but thing, if few people are left with decent paying jobs who’s going to buy all the stuff these companies are trying so sell ? Who could afford to ?  And that’s when I realized the answer, most folks can’t. They are buying these items on credit but can’t really afford to do so. So I can’t help but wonder, what happens when the credit bubble burst and I do believe it will then what will these companies do when a large part of their customer base disappears.

So I want to make a prediction, I believe that in under 10 years from now the credit bubble will burst, it has to as more people get deeper in debt and can’t pay for so bankruptcy’s go up and up it just has to burst. My prediction is that in less then 3 years after the credit bubble bursts that at least 1/4 of all companies selling products in the U.S. and Canada will also go bankrupt. Sounds crazy, sure but watch my gut says I’m right.
I only hope that this time, the governments around the world will not make the stupid decision to bail those companies out. We owe them nothing, consider it downsizing

Here’s my opinions on some of those products, Exact antiseptic mouthwash, horrible taste, burns and I really don’t think it does anything for bad breath. Equate denture cleaner, I like it, does a better job then Polident. NoName bbq chips, not bad about the same as any name brand chips I’ve bought Lays etc. but the NoName bags have more inside and are a bit cheaper.

Not only have I been trying out different name brands with surprising results in most cases but I’ve been checking out stores that I normally would just skip by such as Liquidation World, sometimes I’ll see a product with a listed price that is the same or even more then what it would cost at Walmart or Zellers etc. in most cases the products are a bit cheaper, not by much most of the time but still you save 10% here, 20% there and it starts to really add up.

Saving money has become more and more important for me, as I get older I start to worry about my retirement, I think everybody worries a bit here. So far I’m on the right track but just too many things can happen to change that, the recent recession being a really good example of that, I wasn’t hit all that hard with my invenstments but it wasn’t uncommon to hear some folks on the media talk about how they lost 30% or more overnight, scary. I also have no faith in government, I really do not believe they have the best interest in the people they are supposed to represent. And for companies, most are government by greed and have little or no care about anything else, so even though some are making record profits have no trouble downsizing or even moving their entire operation in another country.
Now I live in Sudbury, Ontario, the best way to explain this city is it’s not small and even thought it did have a small city feel to it, well that’s now long gone but at the same time it’s not really a big city but growing, maybe too fast. Because of the growth and a city infrastructure that wanted the growth but did not have the resources to handle the growth we have had some problems. We now have less then 1% vacancy rate, finding an apartment to rent is difficult but worst it’s a landlords goldmind so the cost of renting has gone up. A nice apartment will set you back about $650 a month and that does not include utilities etc. Also the cost of groceries has gone up big time in some cases that cost of an item has tripled. What was once something I bought on a regular basis NoName 24 ice cream sandwiches was $5.99 now it’s $7.99 and I’ve been told by a friend it’s even gone up higher closer to $9 ouch. As a result even at $8 I stopped buying it, and it just goes on from there.
So I’ve taken an interest in seeing how much money I could save by shopping else where, instead of shopping at a regular grocery store like Independent, Food Basics etc. to try shopping at places like Walmart, Liquidation World even Dollarama and see not only how much money I can save but is it really a big deal if I switch from Lay’s chips to some other cheaper brand, which so far I have to say not only is it not a big deal but I’m finding the other brand products to be slightly better in some cases.
I also have another thought I’ve been hearing from some folks who shop at Cosco and buy their groceries there that they are saving a bundle, so I’ll have to take a look at that store as well.
Something else I’m also considering is once I get the hang of buying from other stores and other products (not brand names so much) that maybe what I’ll do is then compare what it would of cost me if I bought the same items at what used to be my main shopping stores and see just how much many I’m saving. My gut feeling right now is that I’m going to be saving far more then I can even imagine right now.

I did buy a few programs, for example WindowBlinds. But the novelty would wear off after about a year or so and I never renewed, I don’t use it anymore. Acronis True Image is a program I subscribe too, it has saved my butt on many occasions. Several years ago I found True Image (this was before Acronis and I just can’t remember the name of the company then even though it’s sitting right there at the edge of my brain), there was a discount bin with outdated programs, I think I paid $10 for True Image can’t remember what version at the time but pretty old. It did not take long before I fell in love with the program, bought an upgrade and have been keeping up with it ever since. Also a few months later (I think anyways) I bought Paint Shop Pro v6 for $10 or $15, v9 I believe was the latest at the time. I mostly used Paint Shop Pro to crop images, today I use Fastone Image Viewer which does everything a simple person like me needs. I never bought another version of Paint Shop Pro or any other paint program, I just never had a use for such a program and lets face it using a powerful paint program to crop images is over kill.

Here’s a few programs I use a fair amount. Microsoft Visual C++ v6.0, I bought this one a while back and made good use of it, but I wasn’t programming all that much any more but my interest in programming has returned so I have dowload Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition, free. Right now I have to admit I know very little,  it has changed a lot from v6.0 and at least right now don’t know what the actual difference are between the express edition and others. I did buy a book Visual C++ 2008 from Ivor Horton’s so I am looking forward to reading this book and learning.
Notepad++, just beats MS Notepad hands down. I do have some friends who prefer other text editors over Notepad++ like PSPad and Notepad2. I use Real Alternative and Quick Time Alternative with Media Player Classic to view videos etc. I simply do not trust Real Netowrk and Apple from my point of view is dangerous, they like to install other program you don’t want or even have asked for through other software of theirs, so how can I trust Apple since they are already doing the wrong thing. As I already mentioned I use Fastone Image Viewer, I do have a friend who also really likes Google’s Picasa. I use Keepass to store all my usernames and passwords, this is very handy since I have some rules on passwords, no hacker will be able to brute force my passwords, of course there are other means. I used to use and to some degree still play around with TinyCad to draw out electronics schematics. I now use a program an uncle has writen. I don’t have a lot of games on my computer, that’s what the Wii is for but I do have Sokoban++ and I bought a box set of StarCraft, the original game and an extra expansion cd. VirtualDub, Ascii Generator dotnet. Google Talk, Yahoo and Windows Live messenger, Pigdin, Skype, SpamMotel, NetMeter (I bought and used to use Stat ‘n Perf but the company is defunct now) Gravity (for the grc.com news groups) and of course Firefox, Thunderbird. I’ve also recently download Google Chrome to try out, so far it looks like I’ll be sticking with Firefox. Stellarium, Winamp which is way too bloated so I’ve also download Aimp2 to try out and so far Aimp2 is awesome. Audacity and an old program that I can’t remember where I got it from Gram, it’s an audio spectrum analyzer. I also have FASM but have to admit I rarely use it, it’s been a long time since I’ve written assembly for a computer and right now don’t plan on changing that instead I’ve decided to not take on too much and just work on assembly for pic chips and Visual C++ for the computer.
And finally utilities some old some newer. InCtrl5, a few program from SysInternals and so forth.

I’ve also recently discovered a neat little program called Sandboxie, not sure if I’ll buy it or not. I have a growing interest in programs like VirtualBox. I also have OpenOffice installed on my computer, I did buy a long time ago Microsoft Office, needed it when I was in school but I have absolutely no need for such powerful programs today and only have OpenOffice on my computer just because once and a while I’ll get an e-mail with a powerpoint or excel etc. attachment.

Which brings me to cloud computing. I do have an interest in this, I would love to remove OpenOffice from my computer and when someone sends me a powerpoint or whatever attachment I can just go to the cloud to view it. I can do that now and it’s something I’m playing with. That’s not to mention Gmail etc.

That’s just a partial list of programs I use and you may have noticed most are freeware or open source. That’s something I wasn’t paying attention too until recently. Not that I don’t look at comercial software but in many cases they just don’t match up to the free ones, for example Fastone Image Viewer, I haven’t found another program free or otherwise as good. Chat program like Yahoo suck, Pigdin is the best alternative to all of them that I’ve found. I used to use Trillian but it was buggy so I never bought the pro versions and lately they’ve started to include the Ask.com toolbar which for me is a deal killer. I also used to use Digsby but they’ve started with spyware/adware so they are out of the picture. As for programs I did buy, well Microsof OS’s I’ll always at least as far as I can tell indirectly buy their OS. And for Acronis True Image, there’s DriveImage XML which free (that’s it before Acronis it was Drive Image from Power Quest woohoo) and it’s not a bad program but right now I still prefer True Image.

So what programs do you use, what one program per category must you absolutely have. Here’s mine.
For utilites it’s Acronis True Image
Graphics, Fastone Image Viewer
Music Aimp2
Internet Firefox, I love Thunderbird but I can use Firefox to check my e-mail online.
And for miscellaneous hmmm I’ll go with Stellarium.

So for me when I look at the world what is happening etc., I always see things from a simple perspective. The RIAA’s sue the world campaign to me is not about trying to stop piracy but to stop or at least slow down support of innovation, innovation that will allow current and future artists to go on their own, that threatens to take the music monopoly away from the record labels. Movies you buy that have the warning message about pirating, copyright and all that stuff, that message only exists in movies you have bought, the message has no meaning to someone who is going to pirate the movie, so why is it there ? Why do large companies do a lot of what they do, well some of it might be strange like a warning label that says to not eat the cotton inside the bottle but chances are there was a lawsuit and that’s why the label is there. But for the other stuff the answer is also simple, the companies are being run by lost souls, folks who have lost the common sense to do the right thing and are now possessed by greed.
Which then brings me to religion and god. So let me tell you a little story, my dad was and is a real peace or work, he was very abusive towards my mom and I had the displeasure of living with him for a year and experience that abuse. Because of his current girlfriend, she might go to church every Sunday but there is no place in heaven for her, she’s just plain nasty, and my dad’s abusive behavior I have no relationship with him, surprisingly I had no regrets when I made that decision. Now let’s go back in time, I’m 4 or 5 years old, my mom had enough of the abuse and decided to seperate from my dad. Now I don’t remember much of the details back then but there was this one event that I can never forget, at a church we used to visit regularly the priest told my mom that because she decided to seperate from my dad that this was going against god and that she was not invited to return to church, huh. Even at 4 or 5 years old I was smart enough to know what this priest was saying and doing was 100% wrong, but I made a mistake and thought that this really was gods wish. When I grew up, gained some wisdom, grew smarter I came to the conclusion this was not what god wanted but only what Catholic religion wanted.
And that’s when I started to put two and two together and started to see religions for what they are, an organization in it for power and using god as a means to achieve that power. Religion has nothing to do with living your life right and all that stuff, but to surrender to them, yeah like that will ever happen, well with me anyways. The more I looked at what religions where doing the more I started to find that I could not tell the difference between them, I couldn’t even tell the difference between religion and cults since they all had the same goal, to achieve power, rule over the people.
And take a look at the history of any religion and you’ll notice they seem to keep getting things wrong, or better yet take a look at how they handled things when they were wrong. Remember all the priests who molested young boys, those priests where being protected, moved to other locations etc. so that the church could avoid lawsuits. They were more concerned about the lawsuits and going bankrupt then to see justice served, more concerened about money then stopping the evil. Even today that blows my mind away.
So then I think, well how is with a bible, the writen word of god and all that stuff, and lets not forget the 10 commandments, how is that religiion could get simple common sense stuff so wrong time and time again. Heck just the 10 commandments alone should of stopped most of the “wrong”, but it did not. Well as archaeologists make and more discoveries they are also inaverdently proving that a lot of the contents in the bible never happened, there is no Noah’s Ark so that never happened. Moses (with some help ) parted the Red Seas so that the Isrealites slaves could excape their capters to freedom. Hmmm well except as it turns out the Isrealites were not slaves and did not need saving from the Egyptians, so another story that’s just fiction ? So how can one seperate the fiction from the actually story of god if there are any? I really don’t know. A conspiracy maybe or I’m I putting too much into this maybe a simple mistake at the time, you decide.
I don’t blame religion for everything exactly, for example when it was discovered that earth was not the centre of the universe but that earth evolved around the sun that theory did not sit well with religion, again more concerned about it’s grip on the people. It’s how religion handled the discovery that contradicted current belive. It’s how they handled anyhting, they imprisoning people, some were executed and other acts that can only be described as evil, how even if one truely believed that the earth really was the centre of the universe, improsnment or even execution not the actions of good people.
So what’s my believe on god and all that stuff, well I believe god is real and exists. It’s religion I don’t believe in, I think religion is really nothing more then an organiztion that has it’s own agenda, power and all that evil stuff and they are using god as a way to achieve those goals. I don’t think god has ever been inside a church or been part of a religion simply because there is no room for him, politics has taking up all the seats.
And when I live my life and want to stay on gods good side, which believe me I do, I live it with one simple rule, follow my heart, use my commen sense and my gut and that will lead me down the right path.
And now to possibly piss off religion but I really don’t care, here’s my thoughts on some stuff. Did god create the universe and who knows what else, yep but I also believe he has given everyone and everything freedom, even though on occasion he might interfere with something or someone we are free to make our choices, and live with the consequences of our choices as well. I don’t think if you go do something wrong and then ask to be saved from the consequences that god will help you. I think he’ll let you sufer the consequences to help you learn from your actions, but some people seem to be slow learners
Does hevean exist, yep. Does the devil and hell, nope. Turns out hell was just a story to scare us in the way of religion and the devil if you do any research is just an imaginary creature that Christians created from parts of other religion. Their way of saying other religions are evil.
So if there’s no hell etc. then why should I live my life on the good side of god, there doesn’t seem to be any consequences. Hmmm yeah well I think there are consequences be being a dick just not really sure what they are. One thought is that if you don’t deserve to go to heaven yet, you come back on earth as something else and try and try again until you get it right. Purgotory is another. So beats me, but doesn’t matter to me since my goal is to get in the gates of heaven.
There are things I don’t understand like homosexuals, well sort of. I just can’t see why one man would fall in love with another man, have sex with him etc. but that’s more my prejudice, just because I don’t understand doesn’t mean I have to hating, and it certainly doesn’t give me the right to start quoting some book and claiming god hates you. But then having said that I do find two women having sex very erotic. So why the difference with two men and two women, beats me, I’m just telling the truth here.
As I’ve said before I see no difference between any religions and cults, just an organiztion trying to achieve power, full control over the people, well good luck on that goal, corporations seem to winning that battle, well for now. I think corparations will be getting theirs in the near future.
I don’t always make the right decision, sometimes I for some reason ignore my heart, gut and even common sense get it wrong. What makes me different then religion is how I handle the situation when I come to realize I was wrong, I right away own up to it and whatever consequences that might result. Can’t say the same for religion, even when they know they were wrong they are more concerned about their money and power, so they continue to do wrong.
I’m going to make a bold statement here, forget about religion, you won’t go to hell or even be punished for not bothering with religion. Instead live your life with common sense and a good heart and you will do just fine. And remember this in the future, let’s say 10 years for now and compare what religion has done and what you have done and you will see you have been living your life closer to god while religion has not.

Which brings me to how many compact discs do I buy today, very few. Def Leppard one of my all time favorite bands hasn’t realesed anything worth listening to in a long time so the last cd I bought from them was Slang, they have released a few albums since and they all sucked. AC/DC also released a new album Black Ice and I only liked one song from it the rest not so much, so I did not buy their latest. Even my former god Ozzy Osborne’s new album wasn’t even good two songs that’s it. And that seems to be the theme with albums now a days, they have maybe one or two songs if you are lucky and the rest are crap and I’m not spending good money on mostly crap. But occasionally and to my surprise mostly in the country music scene I do find myself falling in love with most or all of an album and buying the cd. Toby Keith, Alan Jackson and so forth, but even so I rarely buy a compact disc.

So if I don’t buy many cd etc. then why do I have Aimp2 installed on my computer. I do occasionally buy an mp3 online, most come from iTunes but I have tried some others and have been very dissappointed. All the others are now gone and thanks to drm I have a few mp3′s that are worthless so I am very wary of buying a song online today, even from iTunes. I just don’t want to spend a lot of money and find in the future that all that money went to waste. So for now I mostly listen to music on the radio (Sirius love the 80′s channel). I do not pirate any music but if I ever find a way to remove the drm on my now useless mp3′s I will. And don’t use p2p, I did once. I record nature etc. videos and share those videos with fellow enthusiast online who also share videos they have recorded. We looked at p2p as a means to share those videos, too large for e-mail etc. but we found that p2p has the same problem as just running a file server, lack of bandwidth. As long as only one person was download from you it was ok, but when 2, 3 or more started downling from you oh oh. The current solution we have for this problem is we each have paid accounts with Rapidshare.com, we use hjsplit to split the file(s), after some discusion 150mbs per file size even though we can go much larger and that way we don’t have to worry about the bandwidth.

Now that brings me to RIAA and the record labels and artists that support them. Douche bags pretty much sums it up. Suing the world could not have been a dummer idea even if they tried. Their new idea 3 strikes and you loose your internet for a year is just as dumb, and on top of that they don’t even have to prove you did it, just say so and it’s done. I can already see this power being abused by the RIAA, Record Labels and so forth. Good way to eliminate any competition and increase their monopolistic hold. I feel pitty for any country that makes the mistake of adopting this law, it will direct their country down a dangerous path. Nobody will win except for the record labels, not the country, it’s citizens and especially not the artists.

The RIAA should of handled this problem in a much different way. One way would of been to work with services like Napster and so forth early on to stop the pirating and turn it into a revenue model, everybody wins, well except the artist they’ll continue to get screwed. iTunes proved that this would of worked, could you imagine where the RIAA and the record labels would be now if they had done something like this instead of suing the world, rolling in money I bet. Instead they have set in motion their own destruction. I just can’t imagine the RIAA, ASCAP and the record labels that are part of this being part of the future in music just because of the way they have decided to handle things, I think they have created a spiral that they now can’t stop that will take them out as the internet continues to evolve as more and more artists learn to use and capatilize with what the internet has to offer to release and sell their music. The RIAA have lost a very big edge here, they will never be able to say anytime in the near future, trust us. That’s a big one.

Other things that stick out in my mind when I think about the RIAA and their sue the world compaign, which they have now changed to put the world in police control with unlimited power, and they are the police, another 3 strikes and crap with time will fail and result in even more negative publicity for the RIAA and their cohorts. Early on Metallica spoke out with the RIAA on the pirating problem. Now let me say this now I do think that pirating is a problem but what got me with Metallica is that we would learn that they had little or no idea about what they were talking about. They had no or little experience with the internet and Napster at the time. That blew me away, how can you have an opinion about something you know little or nothing about ? Unless you are just a puppet, I think they have a song about that. So I lost a lot of respect for Metallica, I used to be a big fan. But now they are no more musicians to me then the Back Street Boys, they’ve become the puppets I disliked. What also struck me, also in the beginning when the RIAA tried to bring the whole piracy problem to the media/people. They made the claim that piracy was responsible for the very low sales of cassette tapes. What the heck, it was no secret to anybody with a brain that was total bull, the compact disc was the death of tapes, which had me thinking. Was piracy really such a big problem ? If it was the RIAA would not have had to say such a big lie. And this also set the tone for everything the RIAA had to say from here on end, I believe once someone lies to you, treat them as a lyier until enough time has passed of them just telling the truth. Like Dr. Phil says “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior”, so true. Well the RIAA have not done so well in that area and I still don’t believe anything they say.

While writing this entry I started to think how much music I have bought this year. Well I’ve only bought 2 compact discs, that’s it. Sugarland – Love on the Inside and Zac Brown Band – The Foundation. Right now I have no plans or interest in buying any other music, just nothing out there I really want.

So let me ask you out there, how many cd’s have you bought this year, what about mp3′s online. And do you agree, the RIAA and ASCAP could of handle things better and that they are douche bags ?

My problem with the potential early election is its a complete waste of money, is serves nobodies interest except for the Liberal party and the need for power. I have no problem with the Liberal’s being in power like I said I voted for them but not at the expense of Canadians. If I remember right there was some mention about the last election having cost over $300 million, that’s a lot of money. So an extra election before it’s time which no doubt will cost again over $300 million in a time when we need to be smarter with our money tells me a lot of the Liberal party, and it’s all negative. This has had a serious effect on how I now view the Liberal party, whether or not we do have an early election.

Like I said I believe the Liberal party is the main force behind wanting a costly election, one that I don’t think Canadians can really afford right now, and in my opinion is motivated purely by greed. So to show my disappointment with the Liberal party and what I perceive as them not caring for Canadian interests but their own need for power and assuming that they do force an early election I will vote for the Progressive Conservative party.

Ok one voted might not be noticed but I suspect I am not the only one who is not all that pleased with the Liberal move so who knows maybe we Canadians will speak in a very loud voice at election time. It can happen

The latest conspiracy is the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. The claim is that the U.S. government (or some super power secret group) orchestrated the attack, or that the attack really was from Al Qaeda and that the U.S. knew about it and decided to let it happen so that they can use it for their own evil goals later. Well I call bull shit on this one.

What I’ve always found interesting is that the conspiracy theories will make some wild claims that they can’t back up and don’t even make any attempt to back up, they’ll do stuff like show some carefully selected photos/video and so forth and make their claims from there. But when someone does take the time to take a look at one or more parts of their claims and actually do the tests etc. and the tests show they are wrong it’s how the conspiracy theorists (is that even a word) react, it’s the claims they make afterwards that in my opinion shows they are not playing with a full deck of cards, lights are on but nobody’s home etc. No matter how much proof you can produce that proves the conspiracy wrong they will just claim you are part of the conspiracy.  I see the same thing from some crazy street people.

So here’s my take on some stuff.

The moon landing, yep it happened if it did not it would of been exposed a long time ago. Their are countries out there that have the technological capabilities to verify this and they would benefit greatly on calling out the U.S. on this one, but they are not doing that because the moon landing actually did happen. The Mythbusters did a few experiments on some of the conspiracy theories that they used as proof that the moon landing never happened, and guess what the experiments the Mythbusters did proves that the conspiracy therorist got it wrong at least with those theories, and it’s safe to assume if they got it wrong there they got it wrong else where.

Was JFK assassinated by just one person, no I think there were others involved the whole magic bullet doesnt sit well with me. But it was not some secret organization that ordered the hit. I lean towards the mafia on this one. I don’t think it’s a big conspiracy, just a mob hit.

UFO’s Ok I do think something alien crashed in Rosswell New Mexico in 1947. There’s little doubt that those who saw the debris etc. knew it was not some balloon or anything of the sort. And the original press release from the base was the truth. And I can understand why later the story would be changed and the truth covered up at the time. At the same time I do not buy that we are being visited so much all the time, not even remotely close. I think aliens visiting earth are few. I don’t buy into the whole alien abduction thing. And I don’t think there’s a really big government cover up on the subject. I think all the folks who are keeping the whole alien conspiracy stuff going are pretty much handling the cover ups themselves, so the government doesn’t need to do anything. Just read/listen to some of the conspiracy theorists long enough and you will hear them contradict themselves, some will make claims so far out in the left field that you just know they are nuts, so the military/government doesn’t have to do much on this one.

The Illuminaty or whatever name is currently considered to be correct by the nut cases, eh sorry conspiracy theories. This one is so full of holes and wacky and I mean wacky claims.

And finally the whole September 11 terrorist attack. There’s no doubt in my mind that this attack was not planned, known etc. by any part of the U.S. government. Should they have known, maybe it’s clear each part of the government from CIA to FBI to military and so forth pretty much work independently, they share little or nothing between them etc. and I do think if their worked better and closer with each other they might of known about he attacks ahead of time. What I do believe thought is that at some point after the attack took place, maybe weeks or months afterwards that some opportunistic members of government did see the chance to use this to accomplish some of their rotten goals, but I’m not concerned with these folks, god will deal with them in due time and saying I’m sorry on their death bed will not help them. When you say sorry you have to actually mean it, not say it because you are scared.

So my take on the a lot of conspiracy theories, well maybe some of the poeple who started them might of believed in the conspiracy at first, but I also have no doubt if you do the reseach and that includes running tests etc. that you learn well it did not happen. I think what really keeps a lot of the conspiracy folks going is the money they make from stuff like selling books and so forth. That’s why you don’t see the theorists conducting experiments to prove any of their points, it’s why they always leave big holes in their theories, they don’t have to explain them etc. bull I say.

So I guess that now that I’ve expressed my opinion on this subject that the conspiracy nuts will just say I’m part of the conspiracy. My response to that, good that means I’m right and not insane

Which then brings me to blogger. When I decided to close my web server I wanted to continue blogging and since before I created my own web server and my own blog using WordPress I was using blogger. So at first I went straight to blogger to create my new blog, but I failed. To create my blog I would at one point have to enter a captcha but I could not read the letters in the captcha image.  Here’s a screen shot of one of the captcha’s I had to deal with.What the hell batman, so I took a guess lantleinz and guess what wrong guess. So on my second attempt I still could not read the captcha so I clicked on the disability icon figuring I’ll just listen to the letters and problem solved. Unfortunately I would of needed to install Apple Quick Time to use this feature and there’s no chance in hell I’m installing Quick Time. So I made a few other attempts and ran into the exact same problem, a captcha that no human can read and failed to be able to create a blog with blogger. But then maybe that’s Google’s goal, to keep all humans out hehe. Now there is good news in this, since I could not create a blog with blogger I did a Google search on blogs and found WordPress.org. Doh, I should of come to that result myself since I was using WordPress on my own web server. So now I use WordPress.org for my blog and I really do like it a lot, I even love the theme I’ve chosen, so this is where I’ll stay

And finally that brings me to Yahoo Messenger. ICQ was at first the chat program that ruled it all, but then AOL bought ICQ and pretty much messed up a really good thing so not long after we all migrated to Yahoo Messenger making it the number one chat program. Now Yahoo Messenger was not a well written program this was very clear, even using a simple program like Registry Monitor from SysInternals you can see Yahoo Messenger will read/write to the registry over 1,000 times per second which is an indication that Yahoo did not concern themselves with witting good code. And with every update and new release Yahoo Messenger it took longer to load and ate resources like it was unlimited. Then throw in the crappy software security which allowed spam bots and booters to have their way for years. As a result most folks had a love hate relationship with Yahoo Messenger and this allowed other companies to introduce their chat programs and have great success at the expense of Yahoo, it’s really hard to be loyal to Yahoo Messenger when you were being left with the impression that Yahoo just did not care about you. So I always believed that Yahoo did not care about security, then in August of 2007 Yahoo introduced Captcha’s to Yahoo Messenger, when you wanted to enter a chat room you first had to go through a captcha and if you were successful in the room you went. At this point it was no secret to anybody in security that this was not a good solution but I figured since Yahoo did not care about it’s users on Yahoo Messenger they did not bother getting the advice etc. from a security expert, they instead decided to just throw something at the problem to make it look good. At first the captcha partially worked, but surprise it wasn’t long before the folks who wrote the spam bots for Yahoo Messenger and the booters would simply add already available anti-captcha code to their programs and viola the chat rooms were once again ruled by spam bots and booters. Something you can see for yourself at anything, for really quick results with spammers enter one of the adult rooms. What’s frustrating here is that there are tons and tons of white papers and information of very effective solutions to this program that Yahoo could easily implement and have great success with both the spam bot and booter problems with only the once and a while problem that could easily be dealt with. Well was I ever shocked to learn that 2 months after Yahoo implemented the captcha’s, about the same time booters and spam bots started to make their slow comeback that on Yahoo’s own Yahoo Messenger Blog they announced that Richard Sinn, a software security expert who’s on the Yahoo Messenger team wrote a book about software security, check out the blog entry here and see for yourself http://www.ymessengerblog.com/blog/2007/10/23/kudos-for-the-team/

Aha that brings me back to the comment I made earlier about Yahoo not really caring about it’s users in their chat room but instead just throwing something at the problem to make it look good, to make it look for a new book release. So what about the book that Richard Sinn wrote, well not long after it’s release it was being ridiculed by real software security folks, I just could not find any reviews from anybody in the software/hardware security fields who had anything positive to say about the book. So I’m starting to get a real good idea on why Yahoo has not been able to solve their security problems even when a simple search on the internet will expose several white papers, example pseudo code and so forth of real solutions that are being effectively used.

So now that I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that the problem with spam bots and booters in Yahoo chat rooms will never be solved partially because of a security expert who is not and partially because I still believe that Yahoo does not care that brings me to the problems with the captcha’s I have to jump through to join a room, once again I do sometimes have problems with them. Here’s screenshots of two captions I had to jump through, check out what I entered.

Well it turns out I got both of them wrong, take another look what do you think the letters in the captcha are ? I do know that after making a few attempts to try and enter a chat room and failing because I just could not figure out the captcha’s that I just gave up closed Yahoo Messenger and went to a forum on electronics and chatted away there. I haven’t used Yahoo Messenger in a few days and I’m really not interested at least not right now to use it anytime soon knowing that I could end up finding myself frustrated again with captcha’s.

Ooh it does feel good to vent my frustration with captcha’s at least with Blogger and Yahoo Messenger