The GazerBlog

You really want to read this article if you care about the F-35 costing debacle or about open and accountable government or both.   It’s defence policy to do “full lifecycle cost accounting” and McKay it seems would have known this, or his department most definitely did.   If he didn’t himself he’s at best careless and at worst inept or incompetent, according to this writeup.   I had a lot of hope for Stephen Harper when he was running the minority governments, and felt he was a good alternative to the Chretien Liberal old boys club.   The problem is, it seems as he has been in power, he’s actually succeeded in creating a government that is less accountable, less transparent and less competent than the one he replaced, and he has completely abandoned everything he stood for as a reform member, as a Conservative member, and as the leader of the opposition.   He has become what he decried, and has actually become worse than what he opposed at this point, as has his government.

Coyne: The F-35 scandal — when governments lie, how do we respond?: “”

I’m terribly disappointed.   In most of our politicians, but actually most of all in the populace that brushes this off.   We complain about cutbacks and budgetary mishaps and policy degradations.   We complain about tax hikes and fees and many other things.   We complain about our military being improperly equipped.   But we fail completely to hold our elected representatives, those who we put our trust in to guide our country and create the laws with which we will govern ourselves, to any level of accountability for their actions.

The Conservatives talk a lot about running government like a business.   If you change the accepted accounting principles ad hoc of a major corporation, or if you willfully or even accidentally mis-state a budget estimate on a major project expenditure by 60% under the actual, accepted accounting guidelines your policy states, you are fired.   You might even be charged in some cases, but you certainly don’t apologize and carry on, and the project certainly doesn’t just meander along without any serious re-examination of the decision and budgetary costing.

Our Conservative leadership is not running the government like a business.  At least not an effective or successful one.   They are running it like a playground without any supervision.  We deserve better, but we need to demand better at the polls.

[Update: The link in the cited article to the Auditor General's report on the helicopter audit that shows the exact same sort of issues, and that was accepted by McKay's ministry, has an error in the link.  http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/docs/parl_oag_201010_06_e.pdf is the correct link (the article has a trailing period in the URL]

Intriguing editorial on CBC.

Brian Stewart: The F-35 fiasco and Ottawa’s culture of secrecy – Politics – CBC News:

I just go back to my comments around the PCs being accused of being in contempt of Parliament.   The attitude hasn’t changed, but the majority makes it a lot easier to get away with.   It seems the majority voters really don’t care if they get lied to.   Very disheartening.   I have to end the post now as closure has been invoked.   AGAIN.

It’s not about iTunes, or last.fm, or the piracy, or any of that.   It’s about disintermediation allowing artists to sell their work directly without a bunch of middlemen, without long contracts or expectations of marketability or needing to compromise your work to satisfy some agent or label.   You make your work as accessible as you want, or completely let it speak to your passion.   The beauty is, as this article from over at CBC points out, it’s working and allowing artists to earn a living again without needing to be the hottest, latest act on the charts.

Canadian bands from the ’90s enjoying digital era freedom – Canada – CBC News:

Yet the government and the labels either don’t understand or they see only threat, not opportunity.   Perhaps we can just work around the nonsense and artists can serve their fans and customers and the old business models can fade into the sunset.

Well, the Apple TV got a bunch of 1080p HD capabilities.   And some new software.   No standalone base station, but a friend noted that if you are looking for an isolated network, you create the network on your mac and connect the apple TV to it and Airplay that way, and still you don’t need a base station.  I overlooked that possibility although I’ll claim it’s because I’ve set up too many small and mid-sized networks in my life to think about using the device as the router.  

On the other side, in Canadian politics, it looks like we’re about to have the new copyright bill hammered down our throats by the Conservatives.   They actually have overall done a decent job of it, minus, as has been the sticking point from the beginning, digital locks.   If you break a digital lock, even for a non-infringing, personal use (like getting your Microsoft “Plays for Sure” media you purchased converted to MP4 you can still listen to on your Windows laptop for instance) you’re breaking the law.   Period.  If you break the lock to get into your own purchased goods, you are guilty.   It’s still so fundamentally foolish I really can’t conceive of what they or the corporate lobbyists and companies are thinking.  But there is a way out, to better show the displeasure.

If you really care, you vote with your dollars.   Many decried the iTunes DRM as well and refused to buy from the iTunes store, instead buying the CDs and ripping them in and owning the music properly.  (Transcoding legality gets hazy at times here too but I digress.)  As with Sony attempting to install a root kit on your computer when they were DRM-happy and having people simply not buy the albums (or in some cases just bypass the nonsense) caused them to abandon the fools’ errand.

It’s the same case here.   If you really don’t want to have your goods locked behind a vendor-imposed selective barrier, then don’t.   Don’t buy it.   Otherwise, you may one day have those goods lost to you if the company that created the device decides to no longer support the format and it has a lock on it.   You can’t get it out.   You can’t get the lock rekeyed to your house once you lost the key or had the key stolen.  Rekeying access to your property is illegal according to this bill.

I can only hope that the media companies will avoid this, or better yet that independent artists and studios will, like many of the professionals have, release their works at fair prices and through convenient channels for us all, and trust us to be honest and grant them a well deserved good standard of living for sharing their time and creativity for our benefit.  iTunes created a huge digital music marketplace, and it has been very successful.   Criminals still pirate and don’t pay and if you think DRM and C-11 are going to change their ways, you fundamentally do not understand the problem, the people doing the piracy, or the economics of the situation.

As for the conservatives, you’d really better hope your election campaign videos don’t get DRM’d and then that company goes out of business, or you’re going to have to create them all from scratch.   Or did you actually get the rights to use and own the original copies in perpetuity without DRM?   That’s all people are expecting, is the right to use, personally without commercial aspects, the works they have purchased a copy of from the artists and their representatives.   They aren’t allowed to distribute or profit from it, but why it needs to be tied to a specific technology or company’s systems is really beyond me as a part of copyright legislation.

But that’s what’s about to be enshrined into the law of the land.

There’s these persistent rumours that Apple is building an iPad mini, and largely from supplier leaks saying they are buying 7.1″ screens.

I don’t buy the mini form factor personally.   Possible, but I really don’t see the advantage as they split their own market for no real serious benefit.   If cost is the driver, odds are you’re going to get a bare-bones low-end tablet or enhanced ebook reader.

But as a different idea, what if it’s the next “Magic Trackpad” idea?   What if the next trackpad beside your mac also has an integrated display to act as smart/software buttons, or as a screen for digital signatures with a stylus, or as an additional info display for some other reason?   Or as some very enhanced surface that has different input modes that uses a screen and possibly a scanner or camera with a touchscreen to boot?

Seems more useful to me than an iPad mini, but heck, it might be some bizarre AppleTV überremote device.   None of them seem compellingly plausible.   I just think a visual trackpad has some potential for a lot of different reasons.

Rumours abound around the iPad 3 coming out on March 7th, and an updated Apple TV to go with it.   Being the little AppleTV box, not a TV with Apple branding.  It’s due, but here’s what I’d like to see, and what I think makes some sense as a net new feature and differentiator that matters to the people it’s targeting:

Mesh it with an Airport Express.   That way if a person is limited, has no computer, no real network, you get a wireless base station and firewall you can just plug into your cable or DSL router and with a no-computer iPad or iPhone, you’re fully enabled to AirPlay, network, and go “post-PC”.

Additionally though, you open up the explosion of it as the substitute for meeting room projectors and network chaos and cabling.   People already take the current Apple TV around to plug into the large display monitors and such, but there’s no network with it.   That’s another box or it’s a link onto the local network and all the IT peril that can imply.   If you have an AppleTV and Airport Express in one box, and you have the “Apple AirTV” able to be the base station, you plug it in, have an autonomous non-connected network there to hit with your iPad or iPhone or the like, and you AirPlay to the monitor and your presentation is off to the races.   Plus you get a VERY portable ad-hoc network router for just about anything from ad-hoc meetings or meet-ups to lan parties away from the Internet to anything else.

Most importantly though is that first feature.   Apple networking and setup without a Mac, and without needing two systems.   You increase the utility of the AppleTV by an order of magnitude and get the non-tech consumers a very simple solution.  They plug in and get everything integrated and connected in one unit, with a few cables.

Just a thought.  I’d see a use for a lot of those devices in meeting rooms, and in homes, and on the road in hotel rooms for the road warriors.

It’s actually the anniversary day for Dad today, and I’m as close as I’m going to get for the moment to Yuma.   I’m in Phoenix, and flying in yesterday so much came back to me of impressions, and emotions, and worrying so much about mom and Eva, and all the roller coaster around that getting down here and getting the car and heading to Yuma.   But also the landscape, the smells and sights and environment of this area and in an around Yuma, and feeling and remembers so many things about Dad at the time.

A lot of really good memories are coming back now, and so many of the events and feelings that were rolling through my head 6 years ago down here.   Much of the sorrow too as always happens this time of year, but finally a bit more confidence in what I’ve done beyond that day and without his active guidance and support.   So many of my decisions and actions I still can trace pretty quickly back to things he taught me about business and people.  I see it a bit more in perspective now seeing all the other people that influenced and influence me in my family and friends and colleagues, and how I shape those influences through my own choices and opinions.

It’s not a full circle, but there’s a higher level of understanding and perspective this year, and I think a lot of it is due to being down here.   I’d really like to get to Yuma, but it’s simply not in the cards between a busy conference schedule and obligations to family and band this weekend.   I’ll be back here in the future though.   Hopefully around February 7th at some point, but I’m always with Dad in my heart and mind, and he’s always with me.   He still takes pride in my accomplishments and laughs with me and helps me learn from my failures.   But the choices are mine, and mine alone, and that is something I learned from him a long time ago, yet never really quite realized fully for many years.

Thanks Dad, for everything.   I miss you.

I think Cory Doctorow puts some of his best writing in this piece.   He withholds his more zealous rhetoric and paints a reasoned progression of logical consequence and capability, going from the origins of copy protection to where it is all headed as more and more pieces of technology and our lives becomes micro controller and microcomputer based.

Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing – Boing Boing: “

I still think it comes down to respect, something that is lost more and more.   Anonymous taking down the law enforcement websites for taking down MegaUpload, a group that at first look at least appears to have profited excessively and illegally from copyright infringement of others works by charging their download customers and running ads.   What I don’t get with that is why is Anonymous on the side of MegaUpload and the like?   That’s commercial piracy.   The people that created the works you like enough to download aren’t even benefiting, some useless middleman is that’s screwing over everybody.

When customers are respected, and artists are respected, as Tim O’Reilly pointed out in his SOPA explanations for the O’Reilly web properties, when you forego DRM and treat your customers well, you are most often treated well in return.  Yes there are idiots, parasites and even those that simply can’t truly afford to pay for your works, but the majority do value and respect what you create, and your time and effort in doing so, and will compensate you reasonably for that work.   That’s all it’s really about.   iTunes doesn’t make money from lock-in, it makes money from making it really, really easy for me to purchase the goods I want efficiently, and know the benefits are largely going back to the creators and those they work with.   If I can buy from an artist directly for music or the like, I will and still do, but iTunes greases the wheels for the majority.

It’s hard to explain that the copyright war is spitting in the wind as if you can authorize the computer, you can crack the authorization if you control the hardware or the output ultimately.   It’s a fools’ errand.  The law is already there to prosecute the commercial pirates, and other than clarifying some fair use and closing some loopholes, it’s actually working pretty well in reality.

You can ignore me, you can ignore Doctorow, you can ignore Geist, and countless others trying to educate you.   But please, have respect for the creators of things you value, and show that respect for them when they show it for you.   That’s all it takes to make the problem inconsequential.  And we can get on with things that don’t threaten our freedoms with horrid laws and misguided thinking.

Well, the Conservative government is going to introduce the budget (again) and ram it through the commons with their majority in all likelihood.   It’s not a bad budget, but there’s a very poor choice and a selfish one at that made by the Conservatives.   The ending of the per-vote subsidy for political parties.

You can read one story on it from cbc over here.  The short version, any party that gets over a few percent of the national vote is entitled to $2 per vote per year in funding for their party.   This enables those parties to fund staff to more deeply examine information and policy as well as fund their operation as a part of our democracy.

The Conservatives states it was a waste, and wasn’t useful.   He said at one point “Canadians don’t want their money going to parties they don’t vote for” [my interpretation].  The point is this is the ONLY money guaranteed to go to support the party you voted for if it’s got a reasonable chunk of the national vote.   Win or lose.   It allows minority parties to be more effective in debate and policy formation.

There’s no good reason to remove this.   It’s not enough money to affect the budget, and the value of it is very high compared to the cost.   But removing it gives the advantage to the well-funded business-oriented Conservative party.

The Harper government is going to slam this through as he’s never been one to lead on principles, just on what’s good for his party to get and retain power (not unlike the Liberals of the last majority government).   So the funding for parties we voted for (including the Conservatives if you voted for them) will decrease.   Your money will go into the general revenue from your taxes and you won’t even direct those $2 every year.   That little bit of power is lost to us all now.

So turn it around an take $10 a year, or an election, and donate it to the party you voted for in the election.   Keep your views supported financially so they aren’t lost.   Put your money where your vote is directly.   You don’t need to buy a membership in the party, you don’t need to support just one party even.   You are free to support the party or parties you agree with.   But don’t let the government decide who gets the support of the voters.   That’s our job.   Whether the current government wants us to perform that job or not.

Maybe, just maybe the Conservative majority will do something useful for consumers and give our oligopolies a severe kick in the hind quarters.   MAYBE.  Have a read over on Seeking Alpha:

Why Canadian Cable Companies and Telecoms Are in Trouble – Seeking Alpha: Liberalization could prove disastrous for incumbent Canadian telecom and media conglomerates, including Bell, Rogers (RCI), Telus (TU) and Shaw (SJR).