On to the 2nd Round poker tournament for a trip to Las Vegas
Poker Pro and fellow Canadian Daniel Negreanu is offering a Weekend With Daniel competition in Las Vegas:
The weekend includes a trip to Las Vegas, where you’ll get to stay at the Venetian Hotel and party with the man himself in true VIP style. Daniel will also invite you to his Vegas home, to teach you the skills you need to make it as a poker champion. The prize package is worth $17,000 in total!
Basically you have to first qualify in a daily WWD Round 1 freeroll. Players that finish in the top 1,000 will go through to our WWD Round 2 tournament.
I just played the WWD Round 1 this evening with a total of 1458 players in the poker tournament. I literally played 2 hands and folded everything else. Believe it or not, I qualified by doing nothing. I don’t know what the 458 idiots were doing but somehow they busted out. How hard can it be to make the top 1000??
So it’s on to Round 2 and I’ll let you know how that goes. I imagine that I may actually have to play poker to get to the final round.
Rogers iPhone Plan = Customer Dissatisfaction
There is no doubt that the iPhone being released in Canada on July 11th will be huge. Regardless of price or plan, lots of fanboys, tech nerds and kids with rich (or dumb?) parents will get there hands on it.
The highly anticipated price plans have been released on the Rogers website. Notice that there is no unlimited data transfer like our friends in the US get as well as the basic extras cost extra. (call display, evenings at 6pm rather than 9pm, etc). It looks like for a decent plan, you are looking at paying at least $100 a month, probably more. Don’t forget the extra charges as you are watching Youtube videos that push you past your cap!
Check out the tons of comments which are even more entertaining and basically comes down to everyone saying “F YOU Rogers”.
http://www.blogto.com/tech/2008/06/rogers_iphone_plans_revealed/
http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/27/rogers-announces-iphone-3g-plans-unlimited-data-isnt-one-of-th/
In fact, it has even spawned a brand new site http://www.fuckyourogers.com/
It would be interesting to see how the iPhone does in Canada. Unfortunately, it seems the Canada is far behind that of the United States in this regard as there is very little competition here.
Beware MSN Messenger SPAM
I have been on MSN Messenger for a long time. Admittedly, it’s not the best IM client out there but the simple fact is that most of my friends use it. Apparently it’s the #1 of IM client in Canada while AIM is #1 in the United States (go figure?).
A potential problem that I have started to see is the IM Spam that I have been receiving. I would estimate, at least a few times a week I would suddenly receive an unsolicated IM message:
(9:39:03 PM) curtissmalzahnzmbx667@live.com: 2252128559Hey check out hxxp://cobatra.com/gdr43
It’s fairly obvious that this is some kind of malware website. I can only imagine how many people fall for it and click on the link mostly likely with the famously insecure browser, Internet Explorer 6.
As always, keep your system up to date with virus and firewall protection and of course, use the just released, Firefox 3 web browser.
**EDIT**
Just got this one:
(10:33:46 PM) vitiwovazig84@hotmail.com: heyy. how are you? I’m doing OK. lonely though
… can you come watch me strip on my webcam??? pleaasee. i’ll love you forever.. go here http://2iN3ZBpcygOP6.blogspot.com see ya there! =) i am waiting!!
Yahoo is falling apart
It’s kind of sad seeing what has become of Yahoo as of late. It has been in the news for some time as it negotiates on and off again with Microsoft that eventually led to nothing. This did not make too many shareholders happy as they saw perhaps billions (yes billions) of dollars fly away. This created more drama with major shareholders such as Carl Icahn’s attempt to dissolve the board of directors and the head of Yahoo Chief Executive and co-founder Jerry Yan on a stick.
Eventually Yahoo turned to Google as their white knight but that deal (partnership?) turned out to a be a lame ad sense deal . Yahoo might as well have just created a publisher account. Shareholders see this as a ~ $800 Million deal, which pales in comparison to the ~ $12 Billion. Maybe Yang uses a different algorithm?
What is perhaps most interesting is mass exodus of Yahoo execs. What will become of Yahoo?
Proposed Canadian Copyright Law presented today
Possibly some scary news for Canadians who may soon face stiff copyright law where some critics are going so far saying that Copyright law could result in police state:
The federal government has introduced a controversial bill it says balances the rights of copyright holders and consumers — but it opens millions of Canadians to huge lawsuits, prompting critics to warn it will create a “police state.”
People caught downloading music or video files illegally could also be sued for a maximum of $500, but uploading a file to a peer-to-peer network or YouTube could result in lawsuits of $20,000 per file.
The Hype Machine is on
Most people in the tech industry are keeping an eye on Apple WWDC Event today and the rumoured release of the iPhone 2.0. Let fanboys rejoice, the Apple Hype Machine is in full force.
Most, if not all the big bloggers are doing live, play by play of the event including what Steve Jobs is wearing, here’s a few to keep an eye on:
Will this be the iPhone that Rogers wireless is planning on releasing at most likely some exorbitant pricing plans?
I am actually more curious how twitter will be able to hold up to the onslaught of tweets for this event, which I can only imagine will be massive. They are supposedly prepared for it based on their blog post.
We’ve moved much of the load off our database by utilizing more memcache, employing more read-slave servers, and by fixing some bugs for improved efficiency.
In the event that our estimates and preparations fail, we have designed a way to keep Twitter updates moving quickly through the system to their respective recipients. We have isolated and created on/off switches for many Twitter features. Should it become necessary to shed incoming load quickly, we can turn off features such as stats, pagination, and several others to preserve the reliability and timeliness of your Twitter timeline.
The TTC’s beta site is now live
Check it out the beta here: http://www.beta.ttc.ca. Supposedly it costs about $400k for the revamp, and will be fully functional by mid July. The RSS feed for service alerts is a great idea and looks fairly clean and simple. A definite improvement from their current site which looks like web 1.0 at it’s best or something that was done by some TTC employee who just learned how to use Dreamweaver.
Canadians - beware what you download
Looks like Canada is catching up to the US in regards to copyright infringement. There was a time where we were in sort of a legal limbo outside the reach of groups such as the RIAA and MPAA from legal actions . Guess things are changing….
From the article:
Link: URGENT MESSAGE TO CANADIANS
My fellow Canadians, a matter of the greatest importance has come to our attention. TOMORROW new laws will be passed by the Canadian government which will effectively OUTLAW the use of modchips and flash carts, among other things.
And more: Report Says Canadian DMCA To Include $500 Fine Per Download:
The National Post reports that the Canadian DMCA, which may be introduced tomorrow, will include a “personal use download” fine of $500. The front page story indicates that the fine (presumably a new form of statutory damage award) could be awarded on a per infringement basis, leading the possibility of hundreds of thousands of dollars in liability for file sharing. This provision has been rumoured for some time and may be designed to reduce the maximum possible awards, since the current statutory damages provision provides for damage awards of up to $20,000 per infringement.
This could become quite interesting and I wonder if we’ll start to see similar crackdowns and wild RIAA suits against us Canadians for wild amounts of money.
Canadian Border Checking Ipods Too?
Interesting and kind of scary article from Canada.com: “Copyright deal could toughen rules governing info on iPods, computers”
The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices.
The deal could also impose strict regulations on Internet service providers, forcing those companies to hand over customer information without a court order.
Considering the US Border can search laptops without cause, it seems it’s not safe to travel anymore with these seemingly harmless devices. What you have on your computer or iPod could land you a serious fine or worse yet, jail time.
Crossing the border and delays between Canada and the US is already slowed by things such as terrorist alerts, currency exchange rates and high gas prices - this could just add another reason why not to bother crossing the border. Maybe their intent is to discourage travel and tourism. Thoughts?
Bell offering movie downloads
Looks like Bell is jumping on the movie download bandwagon, ala Apple iTunes, Microsoft xbox 360 , Netflix, etc. Interesting arguments from the article in regards to this announcement and in the CRTC investigation on their own peer-to-peer throttling practices. Now I wonder when Rogers will follow suit with their own movie download offering.
Rogers has recently instituted a policy of enforcing download caps for customers. If Rogers were to offer movie downloads, it makes you wonder how they enforce internet usage, yet promote extensive movie downloading which would no doubt take a huge chunk of bandwidth. Then again, Rogers seems to have the reputation for not caring for customers as they continue to grow and expand into new media businesses. I’ve had a few run ins with Rogers myself that has recently led me open up their “iron grip” as much as possible by canceling my cable service and look at other alternatives.
It is nice to see that Canada is slowly catching up to the online media that our US neighbours enjoy so much. We can probably blame a lot on the CRTC’s restrictions. Let’s just hope that there’s some additional competition to keep Bell and Rogers on their toes.
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Unscientific and unsupported theories on life, sports, tech and all things important to me.
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