Old Media, New Format

As I read various news articles online, I find myself turning further away from old media sources. I’m not talking about turning away from print, I did that a long time ago. I am talking about the old print and television media companies web sites.

There are two primary reasons for this. First, they don’t post easily available images from third parties. This probably has to do with copyright and I find it sad that traditional media would jealously guard their own copyright when it directly works against them. The second and biggest reason is that they never link to outside sources. I read an article on a Canadian newspapers website (I can’t remember which one) that talked about a video that is on YouTube and yet they neither imbedded the video or linked to it. In the past, a reporter never talked about the competition unless it was the news story. This antiquated approach must be driving more people than myself away. I actually heard this reference on the CBC show Search Engine. It didn’t really click when I heard the host, Jesse Brown, talk about this in comparison to blogging but now I suddenly get it. I wonder how long it will talk old media to?

The CRTC is a failure

I think it is time the government of Canada seriously considers dissolving the CRTC. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is supposed to be the holder of the public good in regulating those industries listed in the CRTC’s name. They have once again backed away from protecting the public good and are allowing telecom companies in Canada to do what they will with the traffic that is on their networks. Canadian telcos have been given the green light to censor anything they want if it travels on their network. We have already seen Telus do this in the past by blocking a labour groups web site.

What is the point of having a regulator that fails to regulate? It’s not like the situation is going to get any worse. I’m sure that frequency licensing could be handed to another bureaucratic arm of the government. The media likes to call the CRTC a “watchdog”. I think it has become a guard dog, watching out for the interests of the major telcos and media companies.

Normally I like blue

What ever happened to an unobtrusive light on a device that simply indicated the status. Unobtrusive is the key point here. We now have more lights on our various electronics to tell us more things than we really care about. This worst part is that the entire damn industry has decided that ultra bright blue LED’s are the way to go. I am getting ready to stick electrical tape over every damn one, on every device I own. My room looks like an arcade when I turn the lights out. Why does my home router need to have eight of these damn things? Why does my air filter need to have a huge one around the damn speed control knob? Why do I need a light to tell me that a device is turned off?

I can’t understand how any engineer that should be well versed in physics would not point out the inherent problem with a blue light. Blue photons scatter extremely well. That’s why the sky is blue folks. Pick a colour of light that doesn’t scatter so it doesn’t illuminate the entire room. Just so you know, violet isn’t it.

I have blue LED’s on:


  • wireless router (many of them)
  • monitor (and orange to tell me it’s off)
  • speakers (and red to tell me it’s off)
  • NAS
  • external hard drive x2
  • air filter
  • probably other things that I’m forgetting

I must find the tape this weekend, or buy some.