We had an odd meeting, one might even say eclectic tonight. There was no formal agenda, other than a request to chat about the Canadian copyright Bill that has been tabled. More on that later.
There was a short discussion on ISPs and the methods they appear to use to encourage legacy clients from acquisitions to find greener pastures. There is a consensus that the NCF as an ISP is the right way to go. For people looking for an alternative, techsavvy is also available. These are useful to the more technically inclined. for those who don’t care or don’t want to know the difference, rogers or sympatico will probably suit you just fine. For those who want to know, I have located a Canadian hosting provider, Canadian Webhosting Canada who’s data center is located in Vancouver. The prices are reasonable, slightly higher than the American ones. There is also Blacksun out of Saskatoon.
We had a segue to the Wii and a new game for it. Think geek has an add for the Wii Brothers Pii Pii game. For more info, visit the following URL: http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/superpiipii.html (for the offended, this is one of their April Fool items)
We had a rather strange discussion of the modified Canadian Copyright bill which has been updated to include DMCA style provisions. In a nutshell, some of the protections we had before still exist in that we are allowed circumvention technologies in order to make a device usable or to make the “licensed material” usable in devices that do not have the ability to use it. This is a very interesting provision, as it permits exclusions for specific cases. I read the list of changes and the addendum. It’s a little brutal to go through, but pays off in a collection of these exemptions near the end. It seems reasonable at first glance, until you reach the point where it gets confusing as to which exclusion is trumped by which provision. For more info:
There is a lot more, but I mistakenly cleared my browser history and it would take quite a while to rediscover it all. Start with the above links, that will be sufficient.
We also had a brief comment about Paul Otlet, who in 1934 predicted the internet and world wide web as we know it today. The following is a link to an article on The Inquirer about Paul. The actual book about his life is referenced at this site, and the book itself is a downloadable pdf from here.
There was also a short mention of the BSDA certification. There are two levels of certification, BSDA and BSDP, the first being the BSD Associate, described with the following excerpt from the website:
The BSDA certification is designed to be an entry-level certification on BSD Unix systems administration. Testing candidates with a general Unix background, but less than six months of work experience as a BSD systems administrator (or who wish to obtain employment as a BSD systems administrator) will benefit most from this certification. Human resource departments should consider the successful BSDA certified applicant to be knowledgeable in the daily maintenance of existing BSD systems under the direction and supervision of a more senior administrator.
The BSDP exam is not yet available, but is targeted for late 2008. The description is also still to be defined. For more info, visit the site.
I’m sure I forgot something, so anyone who was there is welcome to comment :)
I also had a comment on the “stealth” nature of the mailinglist. I apologize, no link to the mailman page. I’ll add one after I post this item. We have mailinglist archives too (mostly meeting announcements)