I’ve decided that my website will follow Wikipedia’s lead and so will shutdown on the 19th of January. Faintfuzzies.ca is just a small self hosted blog, but I feel that it is the principle here that counts. Though I’m not American nor is my site hosted in the USA I feel that the Internet must be protect from these sort of poor policy decisions. Though I do not condone piracy in anyway SOPA(Stop Online Piracy ACT)/PIPA(Protect Intellectual Property Act) or policies like it are not the answer. The Internet is more than just a means of moving files etc. Whole economies depend upon its free follow of information.

For oppressed peoples and nations the unfettered Internet is their voice. In a world that can be horribly unfair the Internet gives the voiceless a tool to fight back.

A US policy like this will have a knock on effect that impacts countries world wide and that is why I am taking this action. As the US’s closet neighbour the first effect outside of the USA may be felt here in Canada.

The freedoms of expression and speech in my opinion, supersede the right to income or profit. We all know we must find a balance, but it must always put the former before the later.

Tags: Blackout,Freedom,Internet,PIPA,SOPA,Wikipedia
Categories: Social Commentary
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Romeo, shown here in a computer-generated rendering, is a French humanoid robot designed to assist elderly and disabled people. Image: Aldebaran Robotics

I know from this are previous articles on this topic that the publicly stated goals for creating such a robot is providing assisted living help to seniors. Also, as stated in the article in regards to the choice for locomotion and bipedal movement, it was the challenge that drove the choice for a full human like robot. I think the challenge drives most of this research, it is not easy. It requires light weight motors, actuators, light weight materials, long life batteries, communications (voice recognition), and vision. All difficult hurdles to create a humanoid robot which can actually perform useful skills for the humans they will serve.

My question is, when can I get one.

Seriously, what geek would not want to have a fully functioning humanoid robot. If they don’t could they really be a true geek.

Tags: Future,Geek,IEEE,Magazine,Robot,Robotics
Categories: Computers, IEEE, Science, Social Commentary
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Tonight my wife and I watched as did most of the world as the USA elected there first black president.  Much will be said and written about this moment.  We will all remember this, probably for the rest of our lives.   For millions a light that can’t never be extinguished has been lite in the dark and possibilities have been made real.

In countries like Canada, Great Britian, France etc… the thought you a young black child might dream to be the leader of their country was just that a dream.  One probably discouraged by their parents.  Thankfully Baracks parents and grand mother didn’t believed in those negative thoughts.  Now young black childern can really dream that they can reach the highest office in their country.  This is a time for young people.  Yes we can!

Categories: Social Commentary
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We all know the web is mostly crap. Kinda like this website of mine. Useless drivel. That is until you stumble on to something you couldn’t possibly believed existed. Enter PHOTO OF THE DAY: 1979-1997, 6,697 Polaroids I discovered this while listen to one of my favourite podcasts Spark on the CBC. It is hard to imagine taking a picture a day for 18 years. It is very hard to imagine doing anything every day for 18 years. That is just what Jamie Livingston did, and his friends Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid put together the original show, and followed this up with a website.

It is not that this site is new. It has been around now for a while. But my finding it via Spark makes it now less important to me or have any less impact. One of the bloggers to first looked this was Chris Higgins of Mental Floss blog, he provide some of the first details of why this site existed.

“Every Day For 18 Years” looks like a normal life, full of friends and family and baseball. As did many I rushed to the end to see why he stopped. I was saddened to see that the taker of these pictures succumbed to cancer. But it was a life lived, a more or less normal life. Through these pictures you see as I and think many of us already know, but might to say. That even normal every day lives are beautiful, even special. This is demonstrated as truth by the constant circle of friends and family. Photographies of the various moments, birthdays, anniversaries, weddings… the milestones that mark and dot all our lives. There are some 6500 pictures more or less and you really get the impact of this mans life. I don’t know how many of the 6500+ photo’s got to me… it was enough that it’ll be a long time before I can forget.

I cheated after the 2 year I jumped to the end. Having seen the end I needed to see all the photos. There was something about seeing a mans death that made me need to see what his live was. It was like pay a debt for that cheating. This man died young, only by see how he lived could I justify looking in on his death.

Categories: Literary Stuff, Social Commentary, Web Stuff
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I was shocked that Bush and the White House came out today to fight against a congressional communitee looking at wether congress should pass a resolution calling the extermination of of some 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians as something other than genocide. All this just to protect US’s use of military bases in Turkey. I’m not all up on Armenian history, but if all accounts are more or less correction than this can not be called anything other than a genocide. Having said all that I’m not sure why governments feel the need to take the step of passing resolutions to this effect.

I look at the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand’s treatment of there Native populations. Did not these countries try to get ride of their Native populations and when that failed tried to assimilate them and when that failed as in the case of Canada leave the on reserves and forget them.

I thought I disliked Reagan as President, but George W. Bush has got to be one of the truly low points in American politics.

Categories: Social Commentary
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