Actually Sasktel would have privatized (and then been able to have been bought out) if it wasn't for the Saskatchewanian attitude towards retaining crown control of companies. I hear from people daily who bitch and moan about monopolies, and crown controlled, and how since I work for a crown company I must have a hand in making everything in the government as bad as it is.
And on the same breath they will tell you how it's a bad idea to privatize the remaining Saskatchewan Crown's.
That being said - you're wrong about the only thing preventing Rogers from buying out Sasktel being the BWA (Bell Wireless Alliance). It's Saskatchewan politics and only Saskatchewan politcs preventing it (and I'm on the fence here, I have arguements both for and against privatization).
Plus Roger's existing infrastructure is different enough that if the privitization were to happen, AND if a company were to consider a hostile buyout of the now privatized Sasktel - it'd be much more likely to be Bell - not Rogers. You buy what works with what you have, so CDMA for their existing GSM network is a square plug for a round hole.
I work for Sasktel (incumbent Telco in Saskatchewan - smack dab in the middle of canada for the geographically challenged) and we've had wireless internet services going for the better part of a year now.
We're part of the 'Bell Wireless Alliance' which is a resource/competition sharing agreement between Bell, Sasktel, Aliant, MTS and most of the other CDMA cellular carriers (excluding Telus) - and yet Bell always seems to trump Sasktel where new technology is concerned.
First company to roll out DSL in Canada - Sasktel. Who got credit? Bell.
First company to have broadband/dsl television services in Canada - Sasktel. Who gets credit, Bell and a handful of US carriers who are still working on it.
First company to have MTC wiress broadband in Canada - you guessed it, Sasktel. Who gets credit - Bell and Rogers.
I've been with dreamhost about 18 months now and have had great luck. I started out with an early promo that got me the better part of a years hosting for VERY cheap - but continued on because they've been so easy to deal with and reliable.
There's also a coupon floating around that'll get you $50 off any signups - just enter "PBP" when signing up.
Also - bear in mind that although dreamhost does NOT have telephone tech support, they really don't need it. They've been doing fine by me with just email support - very quick, thorough, and detailed.
Their newsletters are also a riot to read monthly:)
Mod parent up as they were nice enough to not try to milk referral bonuses for Dreamhost out of it, and they're referring to a truly oustanding hosting service. I've been with Dreamhsot now for about a year and am loving every minute of it. One of the best hosting providers I've seen to date.
Sasktel's actually pushing over 35,000 subscribers on the service now and it's been available little over a year and a half. For a province of UNDER a million people the adoption rate for the service has been incredible. It's a crown controlled corporation, and the only other competition is Shaw cable services - so there's not a lot of alternate choice - but all things considered Sasktel is doing amazingly well.
If you couldn't tell, I work for the company - not in the same department (Mobility not landline/internet/"Max" (TV)) but the company has bragging rights for sure.
The one big drawback is the way the service allocates and uses bandwidth. Currently each set-top box requires roughly 3mbit of dedicated stream to be able to deliver uninterrupted. With a DSL infrastructure that can barely support 8mbit total (and has just been confirmed for new 7mbit subscriptions - replacing the old 1.5 and 3.0) it means that consumers have a limit of two set-top's per household.
Second drawback is the subscription service which is well - data passing over the wild interweb. Have the boxes behind a router/nat in order to make things more convenient, and you miss your subscription update (blocked) and lose service until you put it outside of the firewall.
And last but not least the biggest downfall in my opinion - especially considered the new technology trends. High Defenition quality content is currently IMPOSSIBLE. There is just not enough bandwidth nor a compression scheme powerful enough to merge the 3mbit per box limit with the sheer amounts of data that a HD stream carries.
I know that the other carriers just starting this service (MTS/Alliant/Bell/Telus) are having quality issues - but I believe that's because they're trying a "bandwidth on demand" schema instead of allocating 3mbit to each box. If it works (and the aformentioned by previous posters - quality issues dissapear) then it may actually open the line for possible HD streams - but for the time being it looks like Sasktel has rolled out the only 100% working implementation. Mind you they've also had a year and a half to fine-tune it.
I keep telling people that this would have made one hell of a movie!!! If they had this on the big screen before it happened in real life, I for one would have enjoyed watching it unfold.
We will soon discover that it was truly Microsoft funding Novell in a behind-closed-doors manner to create the deal with Canopy in order to hype up the media attention around unix/linux/bsd all in order to drive SCO/Canopy/Caldera into the ground. Novell's merger with Suse then becomes an easy way for Microsoft and Novell to take a larger chunk of the open source OS market away from the big players (read: Novell then scrapping Suse or giving it away to MS to play with in their sandbox) and become their own litle megalopoly.
Just spewing out semi-humorous consipracy theories, as all the twists and turns in these shenanigans are quite amusing.
The XBOX as far as games and titles has left me feeling a little... lacking. But as far as it's multimedia capabilities (with some creative adaptation to the hardware of course) has impressed me. Mind you that's not the obvious use for the XBOX, and thusly posed against the question, would leave a resounding "No, has not lived up..." but all in all I'm happy with my purchase.
They only censored the more common mirrors for it. With all the k-lite.tx.cx.xp.co.uk mirrors available, all redirecting back home anyways, it's nigh impossible to nail them all down tight.
This follows very closely to the article yesterday regarding TiVo Fanatiscism. From there, I was delving for software solutions to a TiVo / PVR situation, and mythTV and Freevo were both offered up.
My only question here is, and I know I'm risking a horrible wrath of flamage from this;
Is there a software solution that offers Canadian and USA TV-Guide listings, functions as a PVR fully with MPEG1/2 encoding, and allows queing recording. For me digital/satellite support aren't a must, but surely will help down the road when I get digital/sat.
And here's the kicker... Anything that has Windows ports as well as a Linux source? This is where the flamage will probably ensue, judging from the general/. crowd, but you've got to admit that the general populace does not use linux/unix/bsd. Therefor for a software solution that would cater and be enjoyable by all, I'd honestly think a Windows option is a must. I'd use it on both platforms from two different machines, but I'd like the option of both.
This may sound horribly blaspemous, and risking flaming out the wazoo, but has there yet been any software similar to MythTV, FreeVo, etc... That is Linux & Windows (and perhaps Mac?) ported?
I made a tough decision a while back, to put my only tv-tuner into a windows box that sits in the living room. Reasoning is that most guests don't know Linux, and I don't have the time or patience to even teach them the basics of KDE or the like. You all know it's true...
So the ability to use PVR software (*NOTE* Must Have Canadian Content Listings... in all my searching I've yet to find any open or commercial source that does) on that machine would be fantastic.
Heck... I'd very gladly into the fanatiscism if only they'd offer Canadian guide content on most of the common (but few and far between) PVR's out there. Can't even be done with most software, darnit!:)
Well give them the benefit of the doubt on the soundtrack (I do agree and have my doubts!).... The first movie had an incredible and perfectly orchestrated soundtrack . I'm sure it could have been done better, but as it was done just like it was, that's good by me... and I am not afraid or ashamed to admit that I actually own the soundtrack CD, and listen to it once in a while.
*crossing-fingers* here's hoping that the song and music choice fits as well with the theme of the latest movie, as the first one did for the first movie.
I disagree with the last part of your statement, but I must say that a book would be just what the doctor ordered. No better way to get the point across than in text.......:)
It's actually on my "to-do list" believe it or not. When I have the time, the drive, and the confidence that I can stick to it once started, I fully expect and intend to do some heavy reading of Plato, and particularly Descartes (Nietzsche is new to me, but I'll add it to the list). And ironically enough, the mention of Descartes was a heavy influence on the "Philosophy" of the matrix portion of the website.
By no means do I intend to give the impression that The Matrix, the website for such, and all the information contained within is the be-all and end-all of Philosohpy. Quite the opposite, as you mentioned, as it's sort of a "starter kit" for those who notice it as another facet of the movies, and piques there interest to delve into the topic more thoroughly.
Thanks for the Nietzsche mention though, I will follow through on that one. (And no, that's not sarcasm... I'm being totally honest!)
Or perhaps YOU need to get off your high horse, realize that things mean different things to different people. You find it offensive, others find it the most entertaining and engrossing movie they've ever watched. No need to cut people down for enjoying something just because you make a hobby of being condescending and rude.
And your telling me that you've never had an urge to do the same for anything in your life? Not necessarily a movie, or even a book or other form of entertainment, education etc.... But everyone feels the need to "fill in the gaps" as you put it sometimes. If only to make themselves feel smarter, or share their view of something with others.
It's entertaining, it's enlightening, it's a good read. No need to look down your nose at someone for giving it a shot.
But how many of todays popular culture addicts would sit down with a copy of Plato's works and read through it? Yes, it may very well enlighten them, and yes they'd learn a lot from it... But hell, these are the same people that watch WWE wrestling religously.:P
How better to bring the basics of philosophy to some of a cultural crowd that normally wouldn't even pay the slightest attention to it. If your going to feed someone medicine that tastes bad but is really good for them, it always helps to honey coat it. Same goes for philosophy covered in the candy-coated shell that is the Matrix movies/idea.
It very well could be personal preference on my part, but the theory had stood up against comparisons with friends/family/colleauges time and time again.
The yardstick I'm using to measure the validity of my statement is the fact that for myself and many others I know, it -does- infact stand the test of being dragged out once a year (or heck, once a quarter in my case) and watched time and time again... And each time I get chills.
And it's not the special effects that do it for me, not all of it anyways. And for surely not the acting ("woah!")... it's just the story, the idea, the philosophy.
It's one of those situations that you can't really point a finger at, it's just a gut feeling in the pit of your stomache as to "yay" or "nay". Not for everone, but it's everything for some (if that makes any sense).
The biggest thing that I've noticed is that it's UNIQUE (at least to modern popular TV-centric culture). I know it's been done in anime, in books, and in a variety of other entertainment forms, but for most of the North American/Europian world, it's unique and thusly stands out. Just like Starwars did in the 70's.
I won't say that LOTR isn't in the same category, but for me, who read the books as a young child in junior high, and who wasn't terribly impressed with them (Actually forced myself to read them all, found them fairly sluggish and grueling to read) it just doesn't press my "Best Thing Ever" buttons.
Anything matrix related is good by me. I've been reading a lot more of the philosophy section of the website lately, and I've also been reading any posts like the one above regarding the theory and science behind the movies/plot/story.
To be honest, I had no idea "how deep the rabbit hole" really went. The Wachowski brothers are brilliant IMHO, and have one of the most immersive universes I've ever seen. The movies aside, and franchisements out the window, this stands to be one of the most engrossing and amazing "thresholds" of our timeframe.
And although the naysayers might argue, the Matrix is to me, and many of my friends/family/colleauges, as Star Wars was to the generation two decades ago.
Funny thing is, I -DO- have Nethack on my "Tools" disk which is kept in a cd wallet in my car, with duplicates at home and at work.
Helps in many situations. Those boring trips to the inlaws where you having nothing better to do while they rehash old stories than to throw in on their old 486...
And what better to do that play Nethack when your logging a few extra minutes of "repair time" for those friends who promise a beer for every 10 minutes of work done to "fix" their computer(s).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually Sasktel would have privatized (and then been able to have been bought out) if it wasn't for the Saskatchewanian attitude towards retaining crown control of companies. I hear from people daily who bitch and moan about monopolies, and crown controlled, and how since I work for a crown company I must have a hand in making everything in the government as bad as it is.
And on the same breath they will tell you how it's a bad idea to privatize the remaining Saskatchewan Crown's.
That being said - you're wrong about the only thing preventing Rogers from buying out Sasktel being the BWA (Bell Wireless Alliance). It's Saskatchewan politics and only Saskatchewan politcs preventing it (and I'm on the fence here, I have arguements both for and against privatization).
Plus Roger's existing infrastructure is different enough that if the privitization were to happen, AND if a company were to consider a hostile buyout of the now privatized Sasktel - it'd be much more likely to be Bell - not Rogers. You buy what works with what you have, so CDMA for their existing GSM network is a square plug for a round hole.
I work for Sasktel (incumbent Telco in Saskatchewan - smack dab in the middle of canada for the geographically challenged) and we've had wireless internet services going for the better part of a year now.
R owId=1-4NP&SWEField=s_2_2_24_1&SWERowIds=SWERowId0 %3D1-4NP&SWETVI=&SWEApplet=Product+Catalog+List+Ap plet+(eSales)&SWEView=Product+Catalog+View+(eSales )&SWEDIC=false&SWETargetView=&SWEVI=&SWENeedContex t=true&SWETA=&SWETS=&SWEContainer=&SWECmd=InvokeMe thod&SWEReqRowId=1&SWESP=false&SWESPa=&SWEPOC=&SWE BID=-1&SWEC=5&SWEM=&SWEMethod=Drilldown&SWETS=1092 677920239&SMIDENTITY=NO/ . It's basically the final step to getting broadband internet services to every single populated square inch of the province (Sitting at 70-80% currently with just regular copper and fibre - the wireless is to bridge the final remote areas).
We're part of the 'Bell Wireless Alliance' which is a resource/competition sharing agreement between Bell, Sasktel, Aliant, MTS and most of the other CDMA cellular carriers (excluding Telus) - and yet Bell always seems to trump Sasktel where new technology is concerned.
First company to roll out DSL in Canada - Sasktel. Who got credit? Bell.
First company to have broadband/dsl television services in Canada - Sasktel. Who gets credit, Bell and a handful of US carriers who are still working on it.
First company to have MTC wiress broadband in Canada - you guessed it, Sasktel. Who gets credit - Bell and Rogers.
An example of this service can be found here https://commerce.sasktel.com/esales/start.swe?SWE
[/rant]
I've been with dreamhost about 18 months now and have had great luck. I started out with an early promo that got me the better part of a years hosting for VERY cheap - but continued on because they've been so easy to deal with and reliable.
:)
There's also a coupon floating around that'll get you $50 off any signups - just enter "PBP" when signing up.
Also - bear in mind that although dreamhost does NOT have telephone tech support, they really don't need it. They've been doing fine by me with just email support - very quick, thorough, and detailed.
Their newsletters are also a riot to read monthly
You don't say?!
Mod parent up as they were nice enough to not try to milk referral bonuses for Dreamhost out of it, and they're referring to a truly oustanding hosting service. I've been with Dreamhsot now for about a year and am loving every minute of it. One of the best hosting providers I've seen to date.
http://www.exlite.net for the "lite" spyware/adware free version (I had sumbitted this story too with this included - but no, it got rejected *sigh*).
It's the 0.18 beta which asks for a key, but until a lite of 0.20 is released, if you close the window asking for a beta key, the program will work.
The official 0.20 client is confirmed to include Cydoor and SearchSquire right out of the box.
Sasktel's actually pushing over 35,000 subscribers on the service now and it's been available little over a year and a half. For a province of UNDER a million people the adoption rate for the service has been incredible. It's a crown controlled corporation, and the only other competition is Shaw cable services - so there's not a lot of alternate choice - but all things considered Sasktel is doing amazingly well.
If you couldn't tell, I work for the company - not in the same department (Mobility not landline/internet/"Max" (TV)) but the company has bragging rights for sure.
The one big drawback is the way the service allocates and uses bandwidth. Currently each set-top box requires roughly 3mbit of dedicated stream to be able to deliver uninterrupted. With a DSL infrastructure that can barely support 8mbit total (and has just been confirmed for new 7mbit subscriptions - replacing the old 1.5 and 3.0) it means that consumers have a limit of two set-top's per household.
Second drawback is the subscription service which is well - data passing over the wild interweb. Have the boxes behind a router/nat in order to make things more convenient, and you miss your subscription update (blocked) and lose service until you put it outside of the firewall.
And last but not least the biggest downfall in my opinion - especially considered the new technology trends. High Defenition quality content is currently IMPOSSIBLE. There is just not enough bandwidth nor a compression scheme powerful enough to merge the 3mbit per box limit with the sheer amounts of data that a HD stream carries.
I know that the other carriers just starting this service (MTS/Alliant/Bell/Telus) are having quality issues - but I believe that's because they're trying a "bandwidth on demand" schema instead of allocating 3mbit to each box. If it works (and the aformentioned by previous posters - quality issues dissapear) then it may actually open the line for possible HD streams - but for the time being it looks like Sasktel has rolled out the only 100% working implementation. Mind you they've also had a year and a half to fine-tune it.
I keep telling people that this would have made one hell of a movie!!! If they had this on the big screen before it happened in real life, I for one would have enjoyed watching it unfold.
:)
Oh wai... I am!
We will soon discover that it was truly Microsoft funding Novell in a behind-closed-doors manner to create the deal with Canopy in order to hype up the media attention around unix/linux/bsd all in order to drive SCO/Canopy/Caldera into the ground. Novell's merger with Suse then becomes an easy way for Microsoft and Novell to take a larger chunk of the open source OS market away from the big players (read: Novell then scrapping Suse or giving it away to MS to play with in their sandbox) and become their own litle megalopoly.
Just spewing out semi-humorous consipracy theories, as all the twists and turns in these shenanigans are quite amusing.
The XBOX as far as games and titles has left me feeling a little ... lacking. But as far as it's multimedia capabilities (with some creative adaptation to the hardware of course) has impressed me. Mind you that's not the obvious use for the XBOX, and thusly posed against the question, would leave a resounding "No, has not lived up..." but all in all I'm happy with my purchase.
They only censored the more common mirrors for it. With all the k-lite.tx.cx.xp.co.uk mirrors available, all redirecting back home anyways, it's nigh impossible to nail them all down tight.
This follows very closely to the article yesterday regarding TiVo Fanatiscism. From there, I was delving for software solutions to a TiVo / PVR situation, and mythTV and Freevo were both offered up.
/. crowd, but you've got to admit that the general populace does not use linux/unix/bsd. Therefor for a software solution that would cater and be enjoyable by all, I'd honestly think a Windows option is a must. I'd use it on both platforms from two different machines, but I'd like the option of both.
My only question here is, and I know I'm risking a horrible wrath of flamage from this;
Is there a software solution that offers Canadian and USA TV-Guide listings, functions as a PVR fully with MPEG1/2 encoding, and allows queing recording. For me digital/satellite support aren't a must, but surely will help down the road when I get digital/sat.
And here's the kicker... Anything that has Windows ports as well as a Linux source? This is where the flamage will probably ensue, judging from the general
This may sound horribly blaspemous, and risking flaming out the wazoo, but has there yet been any software similar to MythTV, FreeVo, etc... That is Linux & Windows (and perhaps Mac?) ported?
I made a tough decision a while back, to put my only tv-tuner into a windows box that sits in the living room. Reasoning is that most guests don't know Linux, and I don't have the time or patience to even teach them the basics of KDE or the like. You all know it's true...
So the ability to use PVR software (*NOTE* Must Have Canadian Content Listings... in all my searching I've yet to find any open or commercial source that does) on that machine would be fantastic.
Anybody know?
Heck... I'd very gladly into the fanatiscism if only they'd offer Canadian guide content on most of the common (but few and far between) PVR's out there. Can't even be done with most software, darnit! :)
Well give them the benefit of the doubt on the soundtrack (I do agree and have my doubts!).... The first movie had an incredible and perfectly orchestrated soundtrack . I'm sure it could have been done better, but as it was done just like it was, that's good by me... and I am not afraid or ashamed to admit that I actually own the soundtrack CD, and listen to it once in a while.
*crossing-fingers* here's hoping that the song and music choice fits as well with the theme of the latest movie, as the first one did for the first movie.
I disagree with the last part of your statement, but I must say that a book would be just what the doctor ordered. No better way to get the point across than in text ....... :)
It's actually on my "to-do list" believe it or not. When I have the time, the drive, and the confidence that I can stick to it once started, I fully expect and intend to do some heavy reading of Plato, and particularly Descartes (Nietzsche is new to me, but I'll add it to the list). And ironically enough, the mention of Descartes was a heavy influence on the "Philosophy" of the matrix portion of the website.
By no means do I intend to give the impression that The Matrix, the website for such, and all the information contained within is the be-all and end-all of Philosohpy. Quite the opposite, as you mentioned, as it's sort of a "starter kit" for those who notice it as another facet of the movies, and piques there interest to delve into the topic more thoroughly.
Thanks for the Nietzsche mention though, I will follow through on that one. (And no, that's not sarcasm... I'm being totally honest!)
Or perhaps YOU need to get off your high horse, realize that things mean different things to different people. You find it offensive, others find it the most entertaining and engrossing movie they've ever watched. No need to cut people down for enjoying something just because you make a hobby of being condescending and rude.
And your telling me that you've never had an urge to do the same for anything in your life? Not necessarily a movie, or even a book or other form of entertainment, education etc.... But everyone feels the need to "fill in the gaps" as you put it sometimes. If only to make themselves feel smarter, or share their view of something with others.
It's entertaining, it's enlightening, it's a good read. No need to look down your nose at someone for giving it a shot.
But how many of todays popular culture addicts would sit down with a copy of Plato's works and read through it? Yes, it may very well enlighten them, and yes they'd learn a lot from it... But hell, these are the same people that watch WWE wrestling religously. :P
How better to bring the basics of philosophy to some of a cultural crowd that normally wouldn't even pay the slightest attention to it. If your going to feed someone medicine that tastes bad but is really good for them, it always helps to honey coat it. Same goes for philosophy covered in the candy-coated shell that is the Matrix movies/idea.
It very well could be personal preference on my part, but the theory had stood up against comparisons with friends/family/colleauges time and time again.
The yardstick I'm using to measure the validity of my statement is the fact that for myself and many others I know, it -does- infact stand the test of being dragged out once a year (or heck, once a quarter in my case) and watched time and time again... And each time I get chills.
And it's not the special effects that do it for me, not all of it anyways. And for surely not the acting ("woah!")... it's just the story, the idea, the philosophy.
It's one of those situations that you can't really point a finger at, it's just a gut feeling in the pit of your stomache as to "yay" or "nay". Not for everone, but it's everything for some (if that makes any sense).
The biggest thing that I've noticed is that it's UNIQUE (at least to modern popular TV-centric culture). I know it's been done in anime, in books, and in a variety of other entertainment forms, but for most of the North American/Europian world, it's unique and thusly stands out. Just like Starwars did in the 70's.
I won't say that LOTR isn't in the same category, but for me, who read the books as a young child in junior high, and who wasn't terribly impressed with them (Actually forced myself to read them all, found them fairly sluggish and grueling to read) it just doesn't press my "Best Thing Ever" buttons.
Anything matrix related is good by me. I've been reading a lot more of the philosophy section of the website lately, and I've also been reading any posts like the one above regarding the theory and science behind the movies/plot/story.
To be honest, I had no idea "how deep the rabbit hole" really went. The Wachowski brothers are brilliant IMHO, and have one of the most immersive universes I've ever seen. The movies aside, and franchisements out the window, this stands to be one of the most engrossing and amazing "thresholds" of our timeframe.
And although the naysayers might argue, the Matrix is to me, and many of my friends/family/colleauges, as Star Wars was to the generation two decades ago.
Funny thing is, I -DO- have Nethack on my "Tools" disk which is kept in a cd wallet in my car, with duplicates at home and at work.
Helps in many situations. Those boring trips to the inlaws where you having nothing better to do while they rehash old stories than to throw in on their old 486...
And what better to do that play Nethack when your logging a few extra minutes of "repair time" for those friends who promise a beer for every 10 minutes of work done to "fix" their computer(s).
Correction, it had BETTER be a hoax, because I'll be mighty choked if this turns out to be true.
:P
And fuck you that the Matrix Reloaded is pushed back a year... it's ready to go already you fuktard.