Freyburg

So, just when you thought Bush couldn’t screw things up any further, the push for biofuels has pushed the world into a food crisis. That’s just great.

This one is about the Canadian reaction to the Rogers data rates for the iPhone. And next month, I’ll hopefully have an honest-to-goodness-in-the-paper-magazine article in Mac | Life.

“The Stolen Earth,” the penultimate episode of Series 4, was a barnburning spectacular of fanwankian proportions, and the RFS crew did their level best to keep their geeky selves in check before effusively praising (or in the case of Chris, begrudgingly praising) a jam-packed episode full of danger, Davros, Daleks, derring-do, and other things starting with the letter “D”. Delightful!

 

 Radio Free Skaro #89 - The Stolen Mirth: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (23)

Rogers has announced their data plans for the iPhone. It’s all there in their chart…no unlimited plan, 2 gigs of data for $115, and a lot of even worse plans with less data. I didn’t have time to write about this wrinkle when it came out, but others have covered it in my stead quite nicely. They’ve mounted a pretty weak defense for this push for the status quo, and given they announced the plans today it’s pretty sad that they’re already on the defensive. All I can say is there is NO way I’ll be getting a new iPhone with these rates in place. I’ll stick with my first gen iPhone, which has served me well using only wifi for my data.

The BBC, in their infinite wisdom, decided sometimes in the late Sixties or early Seventies that they needed space for new shows in their tape library, and destroyed many of the original tapes containing Hartnell, Troughton, and even a few Pertwee stories. Despite the odd find each decade of a lost story molding away in some backwater, many of these classic Who tales are lost in the mists of time…until now.

It turns out many a fan recorded the audio from the shows as they were broadcast, so almost all the soundtracks have been preserved. But a cadre of fans spread across the globe are taking things a step further and animating the classic lost Doctor Who adventures to recreate the Doctor’s first adventures. The BBC did this officially with “The Invasion,” but as stated in the Guardian story, animating is a tremendous amount of work. Fans don’t care, though, they want their Who and they’re willing to put noses to the grindstone to get it.

So one of the benefits of doing “The Lab with Leo” was getting in contact with lots of people who ship out gadgets for review. Now I’m doing the odd review for Freyburg, the first of which is the Linksys WRT600-N. First things first….I have NEVER, until now, installed a router where everything just worked. Every single router I’ve used, whether from Linksys, D-Link, or otherwise, has given me some form of incompatibility grief. Even my dad’s Airport wouldn’t talk to both his new iMac and his old iMac. The 600N, however, had no problem finding my Macbook Pro, my girlfriend’s Macbook Pro, our Xbox 360 (a sticking point with many other routers) and even my iPhone (though even though it connects, it goes by the old name and not the assigned name I gave the router).

It works as advertised…it’s considerably faster than my old wireless G router, with streaming and downloaded video starting almost immediately and a noticeably faster browsing experience. You can attach a hard drive to it for network enabled storage, though I haven’t bothered to do so yet. Given how easy the rest of the routers functions were to set up, I’m assuming it’ll be pretty painless as well. Linksys also announced new Mac setup wizards for their routers, which should make things easier for the install-challenged. I didn’t have any trouble installing it by hand, but some Mac users might, so the new installation software is probably a wise move. The original price of the router was $279, but that price seems to have gone down to $150 to $180, depending on where you go online to find a unit. Overall….a win!

Peter Bergen, who wrote the excellent Holy War, Inc., has penned a mammoth investigative report for the Independent that points to the possible decline of Al Queda as a force in the Middle East. Interestingly, it’s not American military pressure but Muslim religious leaders who are turning the tide away from extremism. Al Queda’s predilection for slaughtering plenty of innocent Muslims along with whoever else they have on their hit list isn’t going down too well, and opinion i turning against jihadism. It’s interesting that after pulling off the most spectacular terrorist attack in history and subsequently evading the American military for the better part of a decade, the one thing Bin Laden and Co. didn’t account for is human decency.

Chris absconded to Las Vegas  this week for liquor, gambling, and other licentious pursuits, so it was left to the other two pillars of RFS to hold the fort, which they barely managed. The subject at hand? “Turn Left,’ which served as not only this season’s “Doctor Lite” episode but also as a fantastic return to the series for Billie Piper, not to mention a sterling performance by Catherine Tate. The usual digressions and drivel-making were of course present, but without our tall co-host’s derisive sneers and seething hate, it wasn’t quite the same.

 

 Radio Free Skaro #88 - Third (Guy) Left: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (55)

involving the C-word, so cover the ears of the young ‘uns and laugh. (NSFW)

Here’s some video from the House of Parliament where Jim Prentice, the Minister of Industry and the main force behind the pending copyright atrocity known as Bill C61 gets smacked a good one.

And here’s a link to an interview from Search Engine, CBC’s internet culture show, where Prentice fails to defend C61 and hangs up on the host.

By the way, Search Engine will not be back in September. As usual, the CBC has produced something of value and decided not to do anything with it. Clap clap…clap. Here’s some reaction from blogs and the Globe and Mail.