Sunday, June 22, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Canadian copyright laws bringing change
There is currently big change going on with Canadian copyright laws that the conservative government is trying to push through. This will change the legality of many normal things people do (and its not just about file downloading). Michael Geist has written a series of articles about how it will impact everyone in day to day life.
My view of this is how big music and movies make their money. Right now if you buy a CD you can rip the CD to play on an iPod. You cannot easily do that with a movie because movie's are encrypted. The content industries want you to buy one form of a song to play on the computer, one for the iPod, one for your CD player. You will put in your music and the device will 'phone home' to make sure you have permission to play this song on a Tuesday afternoon (maybe your song license only lets you play it once a week). A bigger problem with this is when they disconnect the server that the music phones home too because the format is old (this happened with Microsoft). The songs you bought try to call home, no longer can and so now refuse to play. Too bad, buy them again in the newer format. You can't hack them either, they're encrypted and to break the encryption by this law is illegal.
The other thing is tv broadcast flags. When VHS came out there was a big lawsuit because you were able to record a movie on TV. Big media lost, you are allowed to record and save the shows. The new copyright law will now change it. With digital tv (US has now shut down all analog tv and it's coming here) it's encrypted. There is a little content flag in the signal which says if you are allowed to record or not, how many times you could watch the recording, what equipment you are allowed to use and if the recording will delete itself after a month. These are all against your current protected fair use but now the new copyright will make it illegal to break the encryption. The content industry will hide your fair use behind encryption.
The music industry will claim to maintain fair use but it will be entirely at their discretion.
Michael Geist has a page about what you can do.
My view of this is how big music and movies make their money. Right now if you buy a CD you can rip the CD to play on an iPod. You cannot easily do that with a movie because movie's are encrypted. The content industries want you to buy one form of a song to play on the computer, one for the iPod, one for your CD player. You will put in your music and the device will 'phone home' to make sure you have permission to play this song on a Tuesday afternoon (maybe your song license only lets you play it once a week). A bigger problem with this is when they disconnect the server that the music phones home too because the format is old (this happened with Microsoft). The songs you bought try to call home, no longer can and so now refuse to play. Too bad, buy them again in the newer format. You can't hack them either, they're encrypted and to break the encryption by this law is illegal.
The other thing is tv broadcast flags. When VHS came out there was a big lawsuit because you were able to record a movie on TV. Big media lost, you are allowed to record and save the shows. The new copyright law will now change it. With digital tv (US has now shut down all analog tv and it's coming here) it's encrypted. There is a little content flag in the signal which says if you are allowed to record or not, how many times you could watch the recording, what equipment you are allowed to use and if the recording will delete itself after a month. These are all against your current protected fair use but now the new copyright will make it illegal to break the encryption. The content industry will hide your fair use behind encryption.
The music industry will claim to maintain fair use but it will be entirely at their discretion.
Michael Geist has a page about what you can do.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Jenna Rose
Hello, my name is Jenna Rose Huitema. You can see me with my very proud parents Jamie-Lynn, and Rick. I was born on June 11, 2008 at 10:08am. I weighed in at 7lbs, 5oz...and everyone says i'm a healthy happy baby. Can't wait to see all you real soon.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
Catching a Swarm
Here is the swarm in the branches of the tree above the hive. There must be hundreds of bees here who have made a new queen and subsequently left the hive with the old queen to start a new one. We hope to capture this swarm and put it into a new hive box to start a new hive. Swarming is a common occurrence but this is the first time we have experienced this.
Mike and Age watch us walk towards the tree where the swarming bees are located. Marie and Aukje were also there to watch and take pictures.
Johnny lifted Bert and I up in the tractor loader to reach the swarm of bees.
Shaking the swarm into the beehive and hope that we have the queen.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Johnny, Jack and Isabel's birthday party
Sunday, May 11, 2008
May flowers
I'm sure most of you have seen these flowers, but they (our wedding tulips) have finally achieved full bloom! It's just too bad the squirells at 90% of our plantings...
Monday, May 05, 2008
Shawn's birthday party
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Flooding

When the creek level went down we were able to go and have a look at the damage. Surprisingly there were still bees in all three hives although the hive that was tipped over didn't have many bees that survived and it will be surprising if any of the hives survive. Luckily we still have three other hives at our farm that weren't affected by the flooding.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Easter Sunday
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Trip to Jamaica
Dave & Linda all dressed up by the beach.

Sampling coconut milk - ewwwww!

The main lobby at the resort - RIU Tropical Bay.
Locals wandering about on the Black River.
Tips for posting on the blog
When you login you start at a place called Dashboard. Then you click on new post for the Huitema blog. You can also edit previously created posts, or delete any doubles that you make (hummingbird, I deleted your double post). If you save your post without publishing it is saved as a draft. You can then go back and edit it and then post it. You can also clean things up by deleting drafts you have no intention of posting. Finally, Carly and Marianne have admin privileges and go fiddle with anyone's post.
So you are at the page for adding a new post. Write a title. To add pictures there should be a picture icon (mouse over the icons, hold it still for a few seconds and words describing what the button does should pop up). Then you upload your photos.
You can see a tab - one labeled Edit HTML which is where you can directly edit the HTML of the page. The other tab is Compose, this one shows the picture instead of the code for the picture and may be easier to work with. Fianlly, Preview lets you see what the blog would look like, you can't edit this preview, be sure to click Hide Preview so you can save your post and publish it.
Finally, "Labels for this post" are where you can give your posts generally subject information like: humour, trip, Australia, summer, dog etc. If things are tagged consistently (with good general tags) it means you could go and pull out all the posts tagged trip.
Finally, if there are other Huitema's that want in on this blog thing, send me an e-mail (or Marianne) so we can send you an invite. Then you automatically get added to the blog.
So you are at the page for adding a new post. Write a title. To add pictures there should be a picture icon (mouse over the icons, hold it still for a few seconds and words describing what the button does should pop up). Then you upload your photos.
You can see a tab - one labeled Edit HTML which is where you can directly edit the HTML of the page. The other tab is Compose, this one shows the picture instead of the code for the picture and may be easier to work with. Fianlly, Preview lets you see what the blog would look like, you can't edit this preview, be sure to click Hide Preview so you can save your post and publish it.
Finally, "Labels for this post" are where you can give your posts generally subject information like: humour, trip, Australia, summer, dog etc. If things are tagged consistently (with good general tags) it means you could go and pull out all the posts tagged trip.
Finally, if there are other Huitema's that want in on this blog thing, send me an e-mail (or Marianne) so we can send you an invite. Then you automatically get added to the blog.
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