More HBC job cuts likely

Hudson's Bay Co. will likely make future job cuts in its merchandising group, industry watchers speculated Friday, a day after the retailer announced it was eliminating 825 management positions.

Could this mean the end of a Canadian staple? Is The Bay going the way of the dinosaur and Eatons? Could be.

Does this exemplify the current state of the Canadian economy? It might and it might not. Drastic measures as this show that we are not investing in the big box companies as much as we used to (or we've given all our money to Walmart and no other). It might also signify a move on our part to support the smaller Mom and Pop stores. If the latter is the case, watch out Walmart!

I don't think so though. I think stores like Sears and The Bay can't compete in a market where Walmart and other stores like it can offer goods at half the price. It's great that The Bay has a better reputation than Walmart. Their clothes are more fashionable, their TV's are Sony and Toshiba instead of NeXXtech (whatever that is), and their furniture might just last you a couple of years instead of a couple of months. It doesn't mean shit when it comes down to it though.

The majority of us are just scraping by as it is. We need to save that 50% in a pretty bad way. We're cows who are being led along and we just don't care. Not many of us think, "Oh, this might only last a year. I better not get it."

No, we're all thinking, "Wow! $29.99 for a whole home entertainment system!" Never mind it was made in a sweatshop somewhere.

There are also some of us who think, "Wow! $29.99 for a whole home entertainment system! Wait, that's not cool. Something's going to break on it before the 15 day warranty is up. But wait, what was that? $29.99? Ah, what the hell." And they buy it anyway because it's cheap.

Good luck to The Bay, Sears, and all the rest.

Moving

I'm moving my personal interests to http://jstpierre.blogspot.com After lengthy consideration I've decided that it would be better to have a blog for personal ideas and posts and another for things that interest and intrigue me; like some of the things I've posted through the past week. I don't think Blogger.com will let me move the old posts over, which is a shame, but I'll figure something out, maybe manually move them by cutting and pasting and making new posts. I'll figure it out, either way --- onward we go.

Microsoft's Singularity Operating System

"Microsoft Research has published the first details of a wholly new operating system under development called Singularity, designed new from the ground up, built on a new language and designed with emphasis on dependability instead of performance."

Dependability. Yeah right. "Windows XP, the most reliable OS to date." Yeah right. That actually might be true, I suppose. On a scale of 1 - 100, XP is the most reliable at 0.00001. Singularity will outrank it by leaps and bounds at 0.0001/100. Thanks MS, yer the bestest.

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Maxtor's External Drives Hit 1 Terabyte

The company said Wednesday that the new Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition will ship in either a 600-GB or 1-TB capacity point, at $549.95 and $899.95, respectively, beginning in December.

Sorry Nick.

I know most people will think this is just stupid crazy, but I'm glad. I currently only have 400GB going, and have had as much as 520GB in two computers on a network, and still run out of room on occasion. How can you fill 500GB you might ask? Most people think the 80GB that came with their computer is tons... Well, I can, and quite easily too. I definitely would like to see 1TB drives come down to around $300CDN. I'd pick one up in an instant.

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MySpace Creates Own Record Label

Okay, someone has to explain this to me. I've been to a few "MySpaces" and I have NO idea what it's about. Is there a point to MySpace? What can you do with MySpace? How is MySpace their own record label now? I think they lost me at hello.

News Corp has decided that MySpace's popularity among musicians warrants giving the site its own imprint. The evil is growing.

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Pearl Jam

Can you believe their still going after the last few albums? I know, who am I to say they've sucked in the last few years? Well, someone who was a hardcore fan from the beginning. I don't remember exactly, but I'm sure I bought Ten the week it came out. One thing about their latest ventures I really don't understand is releasing each concert they do as an album. What's with that? Even the most dedicated fan won't buy 100 of their albums every year. It's ridiculous. And then I noticed this article this morning. Why would a band that large fight to play a show in a town they really care nothing about? It's beyond me. Anyway, at the bottom is this quote:

Pearl Jam is presently finishing up work on its eighth studio album, which is expected early next year via J Records.

What can we expect from one of the original grunge bands? Some classic 'Jam? Some crap like Binaural, Yield, or No Code? Or could it possibly be some new sound they've come up with;something even slower to put you to sleep; something even worse than the last album. I'm hoping for what's behind door number one. It's a shame that they lost me at No Code. Vitalogy took me a while to get into, but eventually I did. And, of course, VS was revolutionary. The good ol' days, huh?

Natalie Cole covers The Great Canadian

Can you imagine? Natalie Cole covering a Neil Young song? I scanned through this, but couldn't find what song she'll sing. It just sounds like a bad idea all around.

Flickr + Google Maps = Geobloggers

This is a really cool idea if you happen to travel a lot. It'd be a little useless for someone like me who doesn't really go anywhere, though.

Another neat use for Google Maps and Yahoo's Flikr. You get the idea already. Although, I couldnt figure out how to add my pics, haa, kept saying : No User Data, even tho I was logged in. I'm going to add the Greaseman script next and give it a shot.

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internet explorer tab within firefox

I don't know if anyone else has run into any firefox problems, but this'll fix them if you have. Every once in a while I'll run into a webpage that just won't load in firefox. Well, this handy little tool will let you open that page in another tab (just right click and select open in new IE tab). This is extremely handy because you don't have to open IE, copy and paste the URL into it, and then close it down when you're done.

this is a new firefox extension.

to use it, just right click a link and choose "open this link in ie tab" you've now opened internet explorer in a tab of firefox!

this is great for the occasional times when a page doesn't work correctly in firefox, downloading windows updates, or designing a web page- since you can easily see how your webpage displays in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.

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Putting Porn on Your IPod

This is NOT why I want a video iPod, but I found it interesting nonetheless.

It may not be quite what Steve Jobs had in mind, but a search engine called Guba is set to offer vast amounts of pornography and other video files, specifically tailored for Apple's new iPods.

And here's a deep look into the human psyche.

Although Guba offers up a wide variety of video, from the satirical news program The Daily Show to Japanese animation, its "erotica" section is likely to be the biggest draw.
"We can kid ourselves, but in the end it's probably porn that people want," said Guba chief executive Thomas McInerney.

Really, what are you going to do? Load up some porn on your iPod and watch it on the way to work in the morning on the bus? Freaks.

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Grandpa Is Sued Over Grandsons Downloads

Sometimes I think the MPAA has their heads up their asses.

I think Grandpa is gonna be talking to "little Johnny". Nothing like making honest citizens into criminals. The people who are distributing the movies are the ones they should be prosecuting not Grandpa.

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Man writes ASCAP a letter seeking permission to sing Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday is copyrighted - by Time Warner. If you sing it in a public place, they consider it infringement. "Dear ASCAP, The copyright of "Happy Birthday" has been brought to my attention. I would like to request permission in advance to sing "Happy Birthday" to my father at Frenchy's Original Cafe in Clearwater, Florida, on October 8.

To go along with the idiocy of the last post, here's another.

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Musicians Tell How to 'Beat the System'

Web sites instruct fans on how to beat copy-protected CDs.

This is just an awesome article. The best part of it is this quote.

Sony BMG says it is not trying to prevent consumers from getting music onto iPods. Fans who complain to Sony BMG about iPod incompatibility are directed to a Web site (http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp) that provides information on how to work around the technology.

So, essentially, if you're not happy about the protection they put on the CD, they'll tell you how to get around it. That's just a great business model. How many millions did they spend on the technology? And then to turn around and tell people how to beat it? Wicked stuff.

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First Ever USB Guitar Ships

Brian Moore has taken their excellent iGuitar line of digitally-equipped guitars, and added class-compliant USB, via the new iGuitar.USB model. Plug it into a USB jack, and you have instant access to your sound in recording and effects software, no drivers required.

Man, I want one of these too! Isn't that a superb idea? Anyone with one of these and a computer can make complete crap music and upload it to mp3.com or winamp.com! Brilliant!

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First BitTorrent conviction

The first BitTorrent conviction has been given out in Hong Kong. Watch out!

This is exactly the reason I stopped using bittorrent for anything. I had 2 letters from the MPAA and one from the RIAA. It's just not worth it. LimeWire, Bittorrent, any P2P application, you're not anonymous even if you think you are. They have your IP address and all it takes is a call to your ISP and they have you. Stay away!

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Doomed

Doom: An epic game turned abysmal, steaming pile of celluloid? You tell me. On one hand, Karl Urban did a wonderful job... Well, as good as one could in a movie like this. On the other, Dwayne Johnson did not give his best performance to date.

Doom was probably one of the first games I ever played on a PC. Well, the first FPS game, that's for sure. I played the sequels and they were also good. This movie, though, maybe wasn't. Just before it started I told myself not to expect much. And I didn't. But from the beginning it seemed as though I had seen the show before. It took about 10 or so minutes to figure out that this is the exact same movie as Resident Evil. Now, it's not identical, and if I point out how similar it is it would ruin it for anyone actually wanting to watch it, but it's pretty close. I, of course, played Resident Evil also, and don't remember it being the same story as Doom. I guess that REvil copied Doom since Doom came out first, which is a shame, since REvil the movie was so much better than this.

It might be that watching Milla Jovovich run around killing zombies is better than watching Dwayne Johnson run around killing chromosomally challenged humans. Of course, everyone lives happily ever after in the story which annoyed the hell out of me. Why can't someone make a movie where everyone dies? Or the exact opposite happens to what you expect. The bad guy wins. The alien take-over succeed and the pitiful Tom Cruise character you've been rooting for actually dies, and the aliens, after eating all the dead humans and terra-forming our planet, live happily ever after :) That would make me happy. I'm sure Tom Cruise wouldn't take a roll like that, but I sure wish he would. I know there are probably a few movies like this out there that I can't think of at the moment, and I'm sure they didn't make one cent in the theatres because the viewing public needs the hero to save the day, but just once, just once, please? --4.5/10

EDIT: I was browsing and found this link. It appears that my views on REvil are shared by at least a few others.

Apple: ITunes Video Sales Top 1 Million in the first 20 days!!

"Selling 1 million videos in less than 20 days strongly suggests there is a market for legal video downloads," Steve Jobs, chief executive officer, said in a statement. "Our next challenge is to broaden our content offerings, so that customers can enjoy watching more videos on their computers and new iPods."

So, I'm seriously thinking I need a video iPod. I know, that's the most pathetic thing you've ever heard, but hear me out. I download all of the shows I watch. That's about a total of ... I don't know at least a dozen shows a week. At the moment, the method I use to get these shows is considered illegal (because the commercials have been edited out), so, to counteract that, I'd be willing to pay iTunes money every month to be able to download these shows. I like that I get to watch programs how I want, when I want. I can put them on my XBOX and watch them in my bedroom, or I can burn them all to DVD and watch them on my TV in the living room.

So the problem with the shows is the commercials. For every 30 minutes of programming there is 8 minutes of commercials. Why not, for 8 minutes, intermittently stick commercials on 1/4 of the screen, or 1/2, or whatever. I'd be willing to watch the commercials during the show, although it would be distracting, it would be better than being considered a theif, just because I like On-Demand TV. I can't really think of any other way to forcibly keep commercials in the shows. If they are just there, every 10 minutes or so, it's just too easy to fast-forward through them, which means the TV networks would never agree.

Another problem with iTunes offering shows through their site is the resolution. If I own an iPod, it's great that I can watch these shows on it, but with such a low resolution (I think it's something like 320 x 240) there's no way you can watch it on a TV without it looking like complete shit. It may look okay on the 20" TV in the kid's room, but on the 27" in our room it'd look really bad; you can totally forget about the 51" in the living room. Also, I think the M4V (MPEG 4) files it uses are not compatible with any of the XviD players that I use. So does that mean that you can hook up an output to your TV through the iPod? I don't know, but I'd guess that it'd be a fairly expensive cable. I know enough about video compression and conversion to convert the files to something useful like VCD or SVCD or XviD or even DVD, but like I said, the picture would look like crap.

IPTV, I think, will solve all of these problems even though it's a ways away yet. NBC, CBC, CBS, etc, need to realize that their method of delivery, founded early in the last century, just isn't good enough for the new millenium. It would be nice to get rid of Shaw altogether as their content and costs are absurd, but that's another rant for another day.

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Next iTunes Phone Revealed

Engadget has a hands-on with the Moto SLVR L7. Looks like there'll finally be a decent-looking iTunes phone.

If you take a look at the link below, there is nothing spectacular about this gadget. The thing that piques my interest, though, is the all-in-one gadget idea, in general. I've read a lot of reports on this idea and people seem to have come to the concensus that it's just a bad idea overall. I, personally, would love to have a piece of hardware that would do everything I need. Phone, iPod, camera, PDA, auto-starter for car, keyless entry for house - all of that. The only thing about it is the need for upgrades when something bigger and better comes out. If the parts were somehow interchangable, it might be a useful device. The other issue, of course, is security (for things like keyless entry, etc). There are plenty of encryption algorithms out there that take years and years to crack and would make something like this safe to use.

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Ford shows off Tablet PC-equipped F-150

Ford released pics of its F-150 "mobile office" concept that will debut at this week's SEMA show in Vegas. It shows some kind of mount emanating from the center armrest that holds a ruggedized tablet PC capable of on-th-go communication and even purchases via a credit-card swiper.

Shouldn't you be thinking about driving while driving? How many people are going to use a device like this while they should be driving? Lots. And how many accidents are going to happen because of this? Lots. It would be excellent to have in our work vans, but I know I would be playing around on it while I was supposed to be driving.

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The worlds fastest super computer

Scientists last week unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer, designed to help ensure the safety and reliability of the country's aging nuclear weapons. It is so fast, its speed is equal to every man, woman and child in the world doing 60,000 calculations per second.

How much would it cost to have one of these in my house? I think I want one.

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