apeman.org » politics

Don’t Tax My TV!

apeman — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:22:04 +0000

With all of the recent changes on the Canadian television landscape, its hard to tell what is currently going on. On September 1st, the CRTC ruled that Cable, Satellite and IPTV services would have to remit a 1.5% fee to the new “Local Programming Improvement Fund”. At the same time, the CRTC also opened the door for “fee for carriage” which basically translates to around $6/month per household to pay for the channels that currently, and will continue to show commercials! So the recap, you will be paying more money per month for television service in Canada, but you will not bet getting anything in return.

Keep reading after the jump….

Since September 1st. The CRTC has recieved 1000′s of letters from upset Canadians demanding that they not be taxed in order to fund a bailout of the big two Canadian Broadcast networks (CTV and Global). On September 17th, the Heritage Minister asked the CRTC to review their decision and consider the consumer in the debate.

With the above said, the CRTC still needs to hear from you! Please send your MP, the Heritage Minister and the CRTC a letter or email expressing your opinion. CTV and Global are lobbying very hard to try and charge you money for a service that is supposed to be ad-supported. (You are actually doing them a favour by watching on Cable and Satellite as they no longer need to build out terrestial transmitters…. think rabbit ears).

Shaw Cable has a great website with sample letters that you can send to your MP in the mail and via email (remember, postage to an MP or Minister does not require a stamp).

Please speak up!

Novell Screws Linux, Ballmer spews FUD

apeman — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 20:43:52 +0000

Our favorite monkey dancing vitriolic FUD spewing idiot, Steve Ballmer, finally speaks about the specifics of the MS+Novell deal.

Ballmer:

“Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered,” Ballmer said. This “is important to us, because [otherwise] we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability.”

Microsoft is giving Novell $440 million, and Novell is giving back $40 million to pay for patents that it thinks Linux is infringing upon.

Thanks Novell! You sold out the whole Linux community, who’s work you have been busy trying to use to resuscitate your dying business. No one who has been using Linux for more than one year was surprised by your actions, but now we have caught you with your hand in the cookie jar. And we have the proof we need to tell people why they should not use SuSE Linux.

At least I do not have to rebuild any of my servers or workstations, none of them run SUSE, if they did, I would have already formatted and re-installed with a better distro a long time ago.

If you use Linux, please boycott SUSE. If you currently use SUSE, please try a free alternative such as CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora. My personal combo is CentOS for severs, Ubuntu for Desktops.

[Thanks to BoingBoing for the Ballmer quote.]

HD Net comming to Canada!

apeman — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:22:18 +0000

Wow, I never thought that I would see the day. HD Net is comming to Canada. HD Net offers 24/7 high definition programming. Currently, we have only been able to see HD Net programming in Canada via pay per view on Bell Express Vu.

The reason this is such a huge suprise to me is that the CRTC actually made a decision that is going to benefit viewers like us. Almost all of the Canadian networks (CBC, Global, CTV, SportsNet, etc) were opposed to this. Likely due to the fact that they are finally going to be forced to produce content in HD.

The previous federal liberal government pressued the CRTC to postpone making a decision on HDNet for the past three years.
No idea as to when we will see HDNet in our programming guides, but it is refreshing to hear that they have been added to the “list”.

Good move CRTC, I applaud you.

[via Digital Home Canada]

Eagle Ridge Bluffs protesters arrested

apeman — Fri, 26 May 2006 07:23:39 +0000

Its a happy day, one that I have been looking forward to now for quite some time. The self serving, lying residents of West Vancouver who are opposed to the over land route for the Sea to Sky highway finally were removed from the bluffs — by the Police.
Now let me give you some history here. When this fight first started over a year ago, there were plans to build a bunch of luxury homes and a golf course on the West Vancouver city website. Now if the Eagele Ridge Bluffs are such enviromentally sensitive lands, why would they want to build a Golf course of all things?

The media found these plans on the city of West Vancouver website and they were quickly removed. Now the Eagle Ridge whack jobs claim that the plans for the Golf course were “A Campbell Government mistruth”. I don’t think so!

A lot of these protesters live near the bluffs, and obviously have something to loose. (Property value for one) by having the highway so close to their homes. It bothers me that they would use the enviroment as their cause when it is obviously a case of NIMBY. A small group of residents would rather the provice spend an additional 100 million dollars just so we don’t ruin the views of their multi million dollar homes.

Kudo’s to the supreme court of BC, the West Vancouver Police, and the Province of British Columbia. Its nice to see a goverment that dosen’t cave in when approached by the smallest of special interest groups. I for one prefer to see the needs of the few put aside for the majority, and the future economic prosperity of the province.
I will say however, that I do feel somewhat sorry for the few old hippies that came out from Vancouver to be arrested. They were told that they are trying to save the bluffs for enviromental reasons, when in fact it is actually just rich West Vancouver people who want to save their property value. I noticed that a lot of West Vancouver protesters decided not to get arrested, instead letting the real enviromentalists take the fall instead.