Thursday, April 10, 2008

What good did it all do?


Instead of talking about all the problems his (Prince Harry's) deployment did in Afghanistan, I'll start with what good it did.

None.

Royalty doesn't belong in the army.
they're supposed to be behind the front lines, doing what the crown does best. Diplomacy.

Now to start with all that went wrong. Sending the, third in line to the crown was the biggest failures of royal guard as it attracted unwanted attention in a section of the world, where that attention can get men killed.

The Globe talks about how Prince Harry was nicknamed a bullet-magnet by the other soldiers and well that's true. Having a high profile figure in Afghanistan amidst all the fighting and death is like asking the enemy to take out more of your soldiers and well that in itself further downs the morale of the already tired and depleted forces. Plus the military allocations have to be increased in his area for his safety, cause he is after all royalty.

Also the interviews and constant media coverage surrounding the good Prince, takes away the seriousness of the situation and makes the soldiers feel like their all in a show.
If Harry wants to show patriotism, well there are other ways a 'Prince' can, by trying to help smaller NGO's or doing his part to solve smaller problems in the economy.

The Bottom line here is that deploying a Prince or any member of any royal family to war torn country causes more problems than it solves.

Well at least he's ok...

Like a pie on a window sil



Wifi internet is everywhere, in your homes, in your schools, in the coffee shop across the corner and well now even city-wide. most times its free and well sometimes you need a subscription but the fact of the matter is, that you know its there.
Just like any other service, there are people that will abuse and take advantage of the paid subscriptions and well that's what Bruce Schneier talks about in his article Steal This Wi-Fi
yet he's on the side of criminals.

it is Crime, and i'm going to call them criminals.

you cant justify providing "free" wifi to the neighbourhood, because you're inevitably paying for it and nothing is secure on your network.
Bruce is just trying to show that people arn't all that bad and that the chances of someone stealing his information and performing all kinds of illegal activities on his network are slim
but the truth is he can't be sure.

well sure some people might just use it for browsing and checking their emails, but how can he ever be safe with using his credit card or putting in any personal information online with a open and un passworded wifi stream.

The only way he can win this argument is if he's selfless and well gets another wired internet connection for himself and then keeps the current wifi internet connection for everyone else.
Now thats a intelligent public service.

heres for all you people that are now paranoid and need to secure your wifi!

Friday, February 15, 2008

Anglo to Franco and back


Language.

Where would we be without it. Something so important is usually taken as insignificant, without it we're just not human anymore. It reflects attitude, be it power, affiliation etc.

It was nice that someone else also shared my interest in language and decided to do an experiment. Andy Riga of the gazette was in Quebec and decided to see how to see how English is now becoming a more popular language among the French Canadians.

The rules were simple, she was to speak only French to store workers for seven days and see if any of them would reply back in French or switch to English, and boy was she surprised. Most of the store workers would only converse in English even though it was evident by their accents that they were primarily French speaking.

Now that wouldn't make any sense in the old days, why adopt a language your not accustomed to even when spoken to in your primary language?

Has communication become irrelevant?

No, its just the fact that most tourits will come over and will speak english and since the Ms. Rita herself says she has a bit of an anglo* accent the francophones** try to make it easier by reducing the language barrier and therfore increase sales. Its all about the business.

here's a little something to think about haha.




*anglo - person who is natively from an english speaking background.
**francophone - term used for primarily french speaking people.

Last Resort?


"...Quebec solidaire, the left-wing party whose four-per-cent showing in the polls just barely beats the three-per-cent margin of error, thinks it can put one in the net by aligning its fortunes with the NHL."

said an article on another webpage, and that is exactly what I thought when I read over the article on The Gazzette, and you know what, for a party that hasn't gotten more than 5% votes over the years, its almost like a last ditch effort.

Its all about the way you relate to your audience and here the audience is about 7 million people and most of them die hard hockey fans. so you have to ask yourself, will this even work? and the answer to that is, it probably wont. Surprisingly it has nothing to do with this strategy of gaining the interest of the masses but more likely to their stance on everything other than hockey.

Mr. Khadhir, the spokesperson for Quebec Solidaire, and a lot of politicians before him have come to use tv and electronic media as their main tools for propaganda and it most defenitely works.

All credit here is due to Mcluhan, and his Medium is the Message theory. Hot and Cold media at the same time, appealing sets of different audiences.

People will be drawn into supporting this party, just because it relates to them in some way and they've seen and heard this news on everything, from the tv to the radio to the internet.
within minutes, most of Canada and parts of the world, will know that the Quebec Solidaire support the airing of NFL in Quebec's for free.

What they don't know is that, the hockey issue is just to draw innocent undecided voters into the trap and then feed them information before after and during these 'free' telecasted hockey games.

In the end its just another political party, with just another scheme.


for more information visit

Quebec Solidaire
The Gazzette

Tuesday, February 12, 2008