May 5, 2002.

Oh, no!  Not again!

More snow...  Tuesday morning was unusually cold.  Cold enough for the snow to reach our level before beginning to melt!  It was quite a nightmare!  Luckily it didn't stick around for long.  And yes, this is highly unusual weather for Montreal.  Normally we just get a spot of snow at the start of April, but that's it.  This year, it reached us all the way to the month of May!

I am going nuts!

Battery X-rays

Well, not quite.  A contributor to the ongoing IBM 600 battery headaches has just submitted a series of digital photographs showing just about everything you need to know about the internal construction of the battery pack.  If you ever wondered what a notebook battery looks like from the inside, please go to this page and take a peek.

April 30, 2002.

For those who submitted feedback about their IBM notebook battery's behavior, please go to the IBM 600 page.  I already have some interesting results.

April 28, 2002.

It's snowing!

I'm not kidding!  It's been snowing all day long in Montreal!  Our weather system is really upside-down!  Can I go nuts now?

The battle over Grey Market satellite systems.

Last Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada delivered a unanimous ruling in the BC Superior Court appeal between Bell ExpressVu versus Can-Am Satellites which you can read here.  From that document, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled:

68     In the result, I would allow the appeal with costs throughout, set aside the judgment of the Court of Appeal for British Columbia, and declare that s. 9(1)(c) of the Radiocommunication Act creates a prohibition against all decoding of encrypted programming signals, followed by an exception where authorization is received from the person holding the lawful right in Canada to transmit and authorize decoding of the signal. No answer is given to the constitutional questions stated by order of the Chief Justice.

The way I read this judgment, this means that both grey market and black market satellite systems are illegal in Canada because a) the American service providers are not authorized to distribute their programming here in Canada, and b) the owners of the equipment are not authorized to decode these encrypted signals because they haven't received the proper authorization to do so.  This includes those who pay the full cost of subscribing to an American service via an American mailing address because it's being done under false pretenses.  As for those who follow the Quebec judgment that states the decoding of American encrypted signals is "not illegal" because the satellite services don't have proper representation here in Canada, that argument is also being thrown out the window.  The ruling defines "authorized distributors" as both CRTC license holders and distribution rights holders.

The judgment is pretty much all encompassing.  However, one doorway has been left open.  The Supreme Court did not pass a decision on whether the current law infringes on the freedom of expression clauses of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and has practically invited the parties to bring that item up for discussion.  From my point of view, the argument that the current law infringes on our freedom of expression will simply collapse, but for entirely different reasons.  The problem is that the concept of freedom of expression may extend to the point where one may have the right not to have their message heard by certain parties.  If you're not authorized to receive and decode a satellite system's signal, it is the service provider's right to deny you their programming.  Just because you have the right to freely express your thoughts without the fear of criminal repercussions (unless it's libelous of course) doesn't necessarily mean you have the right to listen to everything someone else has to say if they don't want you to hear their message.  However, you still have the right to bitch as much as you want about this situation as dictated by the Charter, which makes me wonder why so many DBS related Web sites felt they had to shut down once the Supreme Court decision has been delivered.

For now, should you worry about having the RCMP busting down your door in the middle of the night?  I don't think so.  You should at the very least plan for the possibility of receiving a "cease and desist" letter from one or many companies who feel your satellite installation may violate their licensing agreements.  This procedure could be as simple as spotting all the satellite dishes that have a "DirectTV" logo painted on them and sending letters to the households to which they're attached.  In fact, any dish with a logo on it is a target for verification, even the dishes painted with the logo of an authorized Canadian distributor.  Dishes with no specific logo on them however would become a minefield because no single company could confirm their signal is being pirated from one of these installations without first performing a visual inspection of the installation inside the house.  You need to obtain a valid search warrant to do that, and only if you have enough evidence to clearly indicate the installation is most likely illegal.  Unless ExpressVu and Star Choice start sharing client information, there's no way to know if the non-branded dish on someone's roof isn't simply a third-party dish purchased to improve the reception of the satellite signal, or replace an old dish blown off during a severe storm.

That pretty much covers the Supreme Court decision.  But how did we come to this point in the first place?  According to the cable and satellite industry, about a third of the satellite installations in Canada are grey market and black market installations.  To the industry, these people are seen as criminals who must be stopped at all cost regardless of how the law sees them.  But in all this time, the industry has never addressed the real reason why there's so many grey and black market satellite installations in the first place.  From my point of view, it's all a question of quality and selection, and what many Canadians are willing to put up.

One battleground is the choice in specialty movie channels.  In Canada, the East gets TMN while the West gets Movie Central as dictated by the CRTC.  However, based on what I was able to pick up off the Internet, there are many Canadians out there who don't want a watered-down Canadian substitute of an American specialty movie channel; they want the real thing!  Unfortunately, American movie channels such as HBO and Showcase are simply not available to legitimate Canadian cable and satellite subscribers because of both CRTC regulations and rights issues.  Even among the readily available American broadcast channels such as NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX, many Canadians would rather pick up the American stations without seeing them being substituted with a Canadian station when both stations have the same TV show on the air at the same time (known as "signal substitution" or "sim-subbing").  Again, it comes down to CRTC regulations and rights issues.  Then there's the other specialty channels Canadians would love to have such as The Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, ESPN, Sci-Fi Channel, Disney Channel, Comedy Central...  Many Canadians would rather watch these quality stations instead of their weak Canadian counterparts when available.  Some Canadian counterparts will even go as far as declaring their camouflaged infomercials as legitimate TV shows just so they can satisfy their Canadian Content requirements.

In order for an American station to legally broadcast their signal in Canada, they must have permission to do so by the CRTC, and they must possess the proper Canadian broadcast rights for the shows they carry.  This is why some shows on American specialty stations such as Court TV USA and TNN are blacked-out by the cable and satellite companies.  They may have CRTC approval to broadcast here in Canada, but they don't have the Canadian broadcast rights for that particular show because they're already in the hands of a Canadian broadcaster.  Some American sister stations such as TechTV Canada and TVLand Canada do a reasonable job of providing content similar to their American counterparts, but you still end up having the occasional American show replaced by a Canadian Content filler program, in their case usually a rerun of a very old Canadian TV show canceled a long time ago.

With the exception of the CBC, most Canadian broadcast TV stations are already flooded with plenty of American programming..  But despite this varied selection, there are still many quality shows missing from the Canadian schedules, and those that are available are sometimes very difficult to locate because they're buried among the dozens of different Canadian broadcast and specialty channels.  Most Canadian TV stations' idea of Canadian Content is, as already mentioned, based on a mixture of very old TV shows and infomercials.  Even worse, legitimate Canadian made TV shows often appear to have been made on the cheap and are of a dubious nature, often adapting to an American style in order to be marketable in other countries.  The only exception to this rule is again the CBC which happens to broadcast all the Canadian shows I'm personally willing to watch because I find them to be excellent in the first place and not riddled with too much Americana.  The shows created for networks such as CTV and Global often resemble  American shows, relying on good old greed and violence in order to develop an ongoing story.

How can you force a population to purchase a product that many don't wish to purchase?  The short answer is you can't.  Already, many Canadians would rather go through the trouble and expense of replacing ruined pirate access cards and even risk legal action in the courts than pay for a watered-down "legitimate" service just so they can get the TV shows they want to watch without any "Canadian interference".  And the extent at which they'll pursue this venture can be quite startling, going as far as some people creating "antenna farms" in their own back yards in order to grab and decode every satellite signal they can locate in the sky.

Now how can this mess be resolved following the Supreme Court ruling?  For starters, instead of simply tightening the screws on the illegitimate subscribers and forcing Canadians to view their entertainment off only strictly authorized Canadian broadcasters who will continue to broadcast the same pabulum mixture we've had to tolerate for years, maybe it's time the regulations are loosened up a bit to allow more unrestricted American content, going as far as allowing American specialty stations on Canadian cable and satellite services even when an equivalent Canadian specialty channel is already available.  Another good change would be to eliminate the practice of signal substitution or "sim-subbing" where an American broadcast station is substituted with a Canadian one when the same broadcast is available.

The goal here is to offer Canadians freedom of choice.  I have no objections in receiving my programming from a Canadian distributor; my experience with Bell ExpressVu has already shown how reliable they are as a service provider, often avoiding the mistakes already committed by their American counterpart, Echostar.  But I would feel much better if Bell ExpressVu was free to carry all the specialty channels their clientele wanted to watch without any unnecessary restrictions.  Personally, I would prefer to subscribe to the American service HBO than put up with the poor selection of movies currently available on TMN.  I would also like to subscribe to Comedy Central, yet maintain my current subscription to The Comedy Network because of their decent choice of shows.  As for The Space Channel and The Sci-Fi Channel, I'll probably keep Space since I've yet to find anything better on The Sci-Fi Channel's schedule.

There are many more examples where I would choose one station over another, and I'm not the only person who thinks this way.  We don't want to eliminate all of our Canadian stations because many of them do offer quality programming that I enjoy to watch.  But at the same time there are many American stations we would rather have than their Canadian counterparts.  Isn't it about time we were given a choice in the matter?  If some Canadian stations go broke in the process, then so be it.  If they were reasonably competitive in the first place, they wouldn't need all these anti-competitive laws and regulations in order to stay in business.  And we wouldn't have to subsidize these stations with our tax dollars anymore.

So please give us our American programming, and stop with these persistent protectionist measures before Canadians will be dealing with organized crime in order to obtain the programming they want (we're already almost there), and the Canadian broadcast industry is left with no more viewers.

April 24, 2002.

Not enough updates on the Web site.

I know the updates have been slow in coming in the last few weeks, but the work at the office is keeping me unusually busy these days.  As a consequence, I'm not updating my Web site as often as I should.  This will continue for another few weeks until the current backlog of work has been cleared.

One of the changes I did do is switch Web Hosting services.  Yahoo GeoCities changed their "free" policy in recent times and removed the ability to update a Web site via FTP unless you're willing to pay five bucks US a month.  This means I can't use the FTP capabilities of the Internet to transmit my new and updated pages to the GeoCities Web server.  Web authoring packages such as Microsoft FrontPage exploit the FTP capabilities of the Internet to upload all the changed pages of your Web site.  As a consequence, you don't need to keep track of which pages must be uploaded, moved or deleted; the Web authoring package takes care of this automatically.  But with GeoCities removing the FTP capability from their free Web hosting service, updating a Web site has now becomes a tedious operation.  And I simply don't have enough traffic to justify paying for a Web hosting service at this time.

The Middle-East

I'm trying to make some sense of what's happening in the Middle-East.  Unfortunately, it's very difficult for me to put into words what I consider to be nothing more than a complete waste of human life for no valid reason whatsoever.  And I'm not ready to choose sides on this issue because I find that both Israelis and Palestinians are behaving like mass murderers, totally unreasonable and deadly.

I've heard all the arguments, but the only message I'm getting is that neither side is willing to come to an agreement.  So now one side is busy demolishing homes and lives with tanks and planes while the other side is busy blowing themselves up in crowded neighborhoods.  And I really don't give a damn anymore on what one side has to say about the other side.  No matter how many crocodile tears have been shed up to now, the only hard fact is that people are dying every day because of the mutual hatred.  It's come to a point where I actually tune out whenever a news article on the Middle-East comes on the air.  The situation has become so fragmented that it has lost all meaning.

Anyway, that's my rant for now.  I just had to get this off my chest.

Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan

Last week, four Canadian soldiers were killed by "friendly fire" when an American F-16 pilot dropped a 500 pound bomb on Canadian troops out on a training exercise near Kandahar, Afghanistan.  Killed in the incident were Sgt Marc Daniel Léger of Cornwall Ont., Corporal Ainsworth Dyer of Montreal PQ, Private Richard Anthony Green of Edmonton Alta., and Private Nathan Lloyd Smith of Halifax N.S.

At this time, there's still no explanation on why the pilot of the F-16 dropped his load.  An inquiry will be held in both Canada and the United States in order to determine exactly what happened.  Neither country's military is interested in whitewashing the incident.

My sympathies to the friends, families and fellow recruits who have lost their loved ones and comrades in arms.

You finally reviewed it?

Not yet!  The Vista Series edition of "The Sixth Sense" will be reviewed this week.  I promise!

March 31, 2002.

Many deceased personalities this week

In one week, we've lost four well known people, three in the entertainment industry, one of them member of the British royalty.

It all started when Dudley Moore passed away last Wednesday at the age of  66.  For many years, he's suffered from a degenerative brain disease which left him completely incapacitated.  He was a composer and a very popular comedian, having made movies in both England and the United States.  One of his biggest movies had to be "10" where he played a composer suffering from a middle-age crisis, who chases after a woman he believes to be the most beautiful creature he's ever met, played by Bo Derek.

On the same day, "Mister Television" himself, Milton Berle, passed away at the ripe old age of 93.  "The Milton Berle Show" back in 1948 was actually instrumental in increasing the sale of television sets across the United States.  He was an actor, a comedian, a writer and a composer, having performed in many movies in the last decade.  My personal favorite has to be "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" where he played the owner of an edible seaweed canning company who recently suffered a mental breakdown not without some help from what has to be the worst nagging mother-in-law in the world played by Minnie Pearl!

Two days later, we lost famous writer, producer and director Billy Wilder at the age of 95.  His most famous directing jobs had to involve the movies featuring Marilyn Monroe (real name: Norma Jean Baker).  He was also responsible for writing and directing such classics as "The Apartment", "Stalag 17", the original "Ocean's Eleven" and the original "Sunset Blvd.".  His career in movies began right on the eve of the Great Depression and has continued on until the early eighties.

The final known figure to leave us comes from across the Atlantic Ocean.  Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, or Queen Elizabeth I.  Born in 1900, she officially was born in the 19th century.  Her life spanned the period in human history where civilization progressed from oil lamps and horse drawn carriages all the way to high speed air travel, worldwide communications and space travel although it's still pretty much a "local" exploration job.  She married Prince Albert in the 1920s and became Queen of England alongside her newly crowned King when his brother King Edward abdicated the throne for the woman he loved.

The Queen was involved in many social events and charities, and had a fondness for horse racing.  During World War II, she stayed in London alongside her husband, toughing it out while the city was being bombarded by the Germans.  When Prince Albert passed away a few years later, their daughter Elizabeth II became the Queen of England.  Elizabeth I became the Queen Mother, a title that elevated her charm.  She became many nations' unofficial beloved mother, commonly known as the "Queen Mum".

She visited Canada eleven times in her lifetime.  At every visit, she was always impressed by the warm greeting she received from Canadians across the country.  She was a witness to the growth of the nation from the early part of the 20th century up until the present day.  In respect for her passing, all Canadian flags have been lowered at half-mast across the country.

HI-FI Expo review completed

It took a while, but it's finally finished.  My show report of the 15th edition of the Montreal HI-FI Expo is finally on-line and you can find it at this page.  Since I'm not much of a music fan, the report focuses mainly on the home theatre rooms.  If you're looking into setting up a front projection system, was this ever a year to start looking into it!  Happy reading!

New ThinkPad 600 battery page now up

On another angle, I created a new page where information related to the IBM ThinkPad 600 notebook batteries can now be catalogued.  If you're one of the many whose ThinkPad battery is failing way too prematurely, even manifesting a sudden and instantaneous power drop at a certain percentage, this page is for you.

Upcoming review

Coming up in the next few days, a review on the Vista Series edition of "The Sixth Sense".

March 25, 2002.

Montreal HI-FI Expo 2002

I'm currently working on the report for the 2002 edition of the Montreal HI-FI Expo which was held this weekend at the Delta Hotel.  If you want to read what I wrote up to now, you can find it over here.  Please be patient, there's a lot of material to write down.

March 25, 2002.

Oscar Awards Round-up

I was curious to see what would happen at this year's Oscar Awards.  It's no mystery that the selection of movies in the past years was on the most atrocious with very few good movies reaching the theatres.

Notice I didn't say that good movies weren't being made.  They are being made all the time!  But Hollywood has such a stranglehold on the big theatre chains that lesser movies are simply being squeezed out!  The next time you go to a multiplex, count how many movies listed on the board are big Hollywood productions, and count the number of movies that don't fit in that category.  Ever notice that not only are there very few independent productions listed on the schedule board, but the same big Hollywood movie titles are often being shown on multiple screens at the same location!

Anyways.  What was in store for this year?  Quite a few unexpected awards.  We now have the first African-American to win in the Best Actress category, namely Halle Berry.  To top that off, we have a repeat for an African-American winning Best Actor -- Denzel Washington -- on the same night Sydney Poitier is given a Lifetime Achievement Award.  I'm not certain about Berry's talents (I haven't seen her performance), but I certainly have no doubts of the abilities of both Poitier and first-time winner Washington who should have won an award years ago for his past roles.  He really is that good an actor.

Randy Newman was nominated sixteen times for various music categories awards in the past.  Tonight, he finally wins one for best original song in "Monsters Inc.".  The French movie "Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain" however was pretty much shut out of all categories including the Best Foreign Language Award which many expected to be a shoe-in for this highly unusual flick.  Instead, "No Man's Land" won the award, a movie that was rarely mentioned on the Internet.

"Fellowship of the Rings" and "Behind Enemy Lines" won a few awards during the night, but most of them are for technical merit and not so much for artistic impression.  "Moulin Rouge" only won in the "decoration" categories, namely Best Art/Set Decoration and Best Costumes.

Best Picture and Director Awards went to the movie "A Beautiful Mind" and it's director Ron Howard.  It wasn't necessarily the best choice for these prizes, but based on public reaction over the Internet, the other nominations weren't that much better or worse.  The movie also won Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay for a total of four awards, making "A Beautiful Mind" the clear winner for the night in spite of the many attempts to discredit this movie on the Internet.

And the biggest loser of the night?  Whoopie Goldberg of course!  Unfortunately she simply can't carry an entire Oscar show.  Her jokes were for the most part stale and not very funny.  It's a mystery why she was chosen to host the big event in the first place.  As one person has commented on the Internet, "she should go back to the Hollywood Squares!"

It was a highly unusual awards ceremony, with both great moments and highly puzzling ones.  In a year that saw many turkeys and teen exploitation flicks, we should be lucky there was a few worthwhile movies made at all.  The awards show itself was scheduled to run three hours and thirty minutes, but ran for a total of four hours and twenty three minutes.  It ran late as usual, but this time by almost a full hour!  Ouch!  Either the show needs to start a bit earlier, or the speeches seriously need to be shortened.  Either way, I'm very tired and I'm going to bed.  Good night!

March 6, 2002.

Suspected cop killer found

And the circumstances of his arrest could become the movie of the week!

Early Tuesday morning, the police received a call from a woman stating that the suspect Stéphane Boucher was on his way to her apartment located in St-Jean-Sur-Richelieu south of Montreal.  Later on, the police called back the woman with the help of her father and received confirmation that the suspect was at the apartment.

While the police were figuring out how to arrest the suspect without the whole situation turning into a bloodbath, they quietly surrounded the area and told the woman to get out of the apartment.  She came out and handed the police her purse which contained... the suspect's gun!  With that problem out of the way, the police went into the apartment, woke up the suspect, and promptly arrested him.

The timing couldn't have been better.  With the slain police officer's funeral being held in the afternoon, the arrest of the suspected cop killer along with a couple of accomplices has offered the entire police department closure over this whole affair.  The suspect Stéphane Boucher has already been arraigned on first degree murder charges.

March 5, 2002.

Funeral for a slain cop

Last Thursday, Montreal police officer Benoit L'Écuyer was gunned down while pursuing a speeding car on a local highway.  Despite wearing a bullet-proof vest, the impact of the bullet shot from suspect Stéphane Boucher's high powered gun left the officer with fatal internal injuries.  He is survived by his wife and two young children.  Officer L'Écuyer comes from  family of police officers which include his father and brother.  The funeral will be held today at the Notre-Dame Basilica and will be attended by police officers from across the country and from the USA.

The shooting suspect, Stéphane Boucher, is still on the loose.  Despite managing to get away from the scene of the murder, he is now among the most sought after fugitive in Canada although the local police believe he's still on Montreal Island.  Boucher is 24 years old, 1.75 meters tall, weighs 78 kg, has brown eyes and brown hair, is a known heroin addict, and is presumed armed and highly dangerous.  If you have any information on his whereabouts, please contact the Montreal homicide squad at (514) 280-2052 or Info-Crime at (514) 393-1133.  Do NOT try to apprehend him on your own.  It may be the last stupid thing you'll ever do in your lifetime.

You may be wondering why I'm mentioning this.  it's because this is possibly the most severe form of murder that could ever be committed against anyone, especially in a country where the law enforcement agency is generally considered as fully functional and on the whole reasonably clean.  When you kill a law enforcement officer, you're saying to the world that you'll kill anyone.  That makes it all the more important that such a criminal be brought to justice as soon as possible.  So if you have any information about this case, don't hesitate to call!

I offer my sincerest condolences to the family and friends of officer Benoit L'Écuyer, and hope that cop killer Boucher is brought to justice.