Denis Lemire's Site

A day after Boxing Day I failed to fight the temptation of a new TV to upgrade my circa 2008 52″ Sharp.

The prospect of a 70″ 4K TV, an LG 70UF7300 was too much to resist.

No early adoption of consumer electronics goes unpunished, however.

The industry’s insistence on incompetentently rolling out anti-consumer tech ends up ruining the pleasure of such frivolous spending. 

History repeats itself. Early adopters of HDTVs predating HDMI got screwed by the lack of HDCP in their DVI ports.

Likewise, this TV and countless others like it will likely be unable to interoperate with soon to exist UHD Bluray players.

I’m having difficulty confirming definitively, but it doesn’t appear this particular 4K TV has support for the latest HDCP (High Definition Customer Penalization) standard.

Using my 4K TV as a 4K TV will require thumbing my nose at the conservative’s misguided copyright reform (Canadian DMCA equivalent) and circumventing HDCP (the “Digital Lock”) altogether. Fortunately such devices, HDCP strippers, do exist. I’ve ordered an HDfury Integral either proactively or prematurely, depending on the eventual outcome, to do exactly that.

The situation is rediculous. No intent of copyright infringement has ever been thwarted by such poorly conceived garbage. Legitimately paying customers (suckers like myself) will continue to be harmed. Many otherwise capable displays will end up on the e-waste pile prematurely. Why is this tolerated? Isn’t this what class action lawsuits are for? Aren’t there any consumer protection laws that could be invoked against the intentional crippling of very expensive gear?

I’m not sure I would have found the same career I enjoy today had I not been accidentally bootstrapped by the Andromedans!

After 20 years, those crazy bastards are back!

They want to build a new game and inspire a whole new generation of would be technology and sci-fi geeks!

Their kickstarter project is well on its way, but they still need another $100,000 in the next three days to meet their funding goal!

Isn’t this worth the buckazoids?!

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As if their outrageous system access fees and astronomical $8 caller ID charges wasn’t enough. Rogers was clever enough to come up with yet another reason to hate them.

I originally bought an iPhone on July 12, 2008 with a three year term. At the time the plan was $60 (plus the multitude of miscellaneous rip-off charges) for a lousy 150 daytime (where daytime in Rogers’ world ends at 9 PM, not 6 PM) minutes and a humble 400 MB of data transfer. I accepted these lousy terms, cause well, I’m Canadian. Our cellphone industry is a joke and I wanted an iPhone. What else can I say?

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The first few times I saw it, I thought nothing of it. Nothing to worry about I thought. Someone at the assembly line for a few of these laptops must have been getting into the LSD or something. Much to my complete disgust, I discovered today that these keyboards are not few and far in between. They are becoming the norm.

Walking around Best Buy today, almost every single laptop computer on sale, if not all of them are using these so called ‘bi-lingual’ keyboards. Now I have nothing against an optional SKU for those that have a use for it, but you can have my US layout keyboard when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.

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There is no shortage of potential iPhone users infesting the Internet with their whining and moaning about the outrageous service plans Rogers is tossing towards Canada. Not wanting to feel left out, I’m compelled to contribute two cents of my own.

Every individual has a tipping point, once that point is reached said individual will flip their potential service provider the bird and tell them to keep their f*cking iPhone. With the announcement at WWDC 2008 that Canadians would no longer be shunned, I was excited. Extremely excited.

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