Freyburg

One of Donald Rumsfeld’s big goals for the American military was “transformation,” a process by which the armed forces modernized and adopted a more “network-centric” approach to combat. It worked spectacularly during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, with Special Forces troops laser-targeting opposing forces and ground commanders getting a God’s-eye view of their operations theatre. But network-centric warfare has turned out to be a bust for winning the peace, as Wired Magazine details.

Check out my exciting, engaging and quite frankly awesome articles in today’s Metro.

With the recent decision by the federal government to earmark 40 MHz of spectrum to a fourth telco, Canada might finally see something approaching competition in the mobile space. It’s about time, as Canada has terrible wireless rates and is always behind the curve when it comes to new phone technology (cough*iPhone*cough). The Globe and Mail explains how the Big Three (Telus, Bell and Rogers) are smarting from this victory for the consumer. Oh, and check out the post at Techvibes, too.

My non-Canadian readers may not be aware of it, but Canada’s media industries have long worked under the yoke of CanCon, a government policy that states TV and radio stations must play “X” amount of Canadian content if they want to play other, predominantly American, shows and music that people actually want to watch and listen to. There are several flaws in the system, not the least of which is that is if a Canadian artist becomes a huge success, like Celine Dion or Bryan Adams, their work is no longer considered “Canadian.” Actually, given the suckitude of both those artists, maybe that isn’t such a bad policy.

At any rate, Cancon regulations created a myriad number of terrible bands who would have otherwise never been heard of, and recent successes like the Montreal indie music scene have more to do with file sharing and Myspace than they do with cultural policy.

So it’s amusing to me that a bunch of Canadian artists want to regulate the internet in order to make sure online content created by Canadians doesn’t get buried under a deluge of American content. It seems like they’re fighting the last war, when scarce space on the airwaves meant there was only so much room for content to be seen. With the internet, those conditions no longer apply. Speaking as a content creator myself, I know most of my (small) fan base isn’t even in Canada, but rather in the US, England, and Australia.

Amusing, but shocking. Try to keep up, whiny Canadian artists. While you were begging for grants and throwing derisive glares at those of us who don’t make experimental tone poems on Super8 film, the world passed you by.

Canada is well known as one of the most expensive places on the planet to use your cellphone, particularly if you want to get on the internet or perform other data-ntensive tasks. But there’s finally a hint of progress in the air, with Telus and Bell changing their data rate plans in anticipation of competition with the iPhone, which can only be carried on Rogers thanks to its use of the GSM band.

There’s also a low-priced iPhone competitor on the way in the form of the HTC Touch, which probably isn’t quite as good as Apple’s device, but at $99 is considerably cheaper.

The 44th anniversary of Doctor Who was marked by two sad occasions with the passing Peter Haining, the author of Doctor Who: A Celebration (the bible of the show in our formative years), and Verity Lambert, the co-creator of the program. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom, as we delved into how we celebrated the show’s birthday, the conclusion of the first season of the Sarah Jane Adventures, and other bits and pieces. Enjoy! (feed, web, direct download)

There’s a village in Morocco called Tetouan that’s the home town of a disproportionate number of young jihadis, including some of the men responsible for the Madrid train bombings in 2004. The New York Times Magazine investigates (at length) what turns normal young men from Tetouan into suicide bombers.

Lambert was the co-creator of Doctor Who, noted occasionally on this blog as the greatest television show ever made. In a bit of poetry, she passed away on the 44th anniversary of her most famous creation.

Amnesty International made a film featuring a performance artist going through six hours of the allegedly non-tortuous treatment that prisoners of American forces endure when being interrogated. The artist isn’t acting; every single whimper out of the guy is the real thing. Kind of puts the whole “war on terror” thing in perspective.

Turkey games are defined, at least by the fine folks at 1Up, as games that were massively hyped, and weren’t necessarily bad, but fell well short of expectations. That’s some good game bashin’!