Rogers, a Canadian wireless provider, announced today that the iPhone is coming to Canada. To that, I say Duh! Rogers is the only Canadian provider with a GSM/EDGE network that could even support the iPhone. Rogers was going to be the only provider all along, which is why I think that today’s news doesn’t matter that much. It only means that Rogers and Apple have come to an official deal. Ted Rogers issued the following statement in a press releases: “We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year. We can’t tell you any more about it now, but stay tuned.” A release date is still not set, which leaves Canada pretty much at the status quo.
Well, that was a long introduction to what I really wanted to talk about. Why is Canada still in the technological dark ages? The iPhone has been out in the states for almost a year and a second generation iPhone is being readied while Canada still hasn’t got the first one yet. I am not just referring to the cell phones. Canada often gets new technology months or years after it is released. Canada still doesn’t have Amazon’s Kindle, Netflix (although we do have alternatives), and videos in the iTunes store. Another example is the recently released Livescribe smartpen. It is only available to people with a US address.
I am writing this post not to answer the above question, but to explore it because I don’t know the answer.
There are a few possible reasons. Firstly, Canada is a small market and it is not worth it for companies to market new products immediately. Also, with regards to movies and TV shows on iTunes, I am pretty sure that there are legal issues. For example, Apple doesn’t have the rights to broadcast certain shows in Canada. The third and most probable reason is that there are only a few wireless providers and they have a huge monopoly. Most of the products that Canada is lacking use cell networks and it is ultimately the Canadian telcos that prevent the release of new products in Canada.
Here are a bunch of pictures that have just been collecting dust in a “to be sorted” folder deep in my hard drive. Most of these are self explanatory. The animated beans are not actually animated, it is an optical illusion. Stare at one to prove this to yourself. The last picture is there just because Montreal is in the middle of a playoff run….Go Habs!!
My presence here has been lacking in the last week due to exams. They are done now and I am back online.
Here is a TED talk by Daniel Dennett. If you have 20 minutes, I highly recommend watching it. Although he is a regular atheist athour, his main field is consciousness. The talk is titled: “Can we know our own minds?”
I am in the middle of exams right now, currently burning the midnight oil. I don’t have time to do a proper post right now, but I will share a REALLY good article that I ran into last night.
CodeClimber’s article Burning the midnight oil outlines why working late at night/early in the morning works for him and the challenges that it poses.
Go check it out!
On yesterday’s Real Time, Bill Maher got the chance to interview Richard Dawkins via satellite. Maher does a good job interviewing Dawkins, who normally gets little respect from his interviewers in the states.
Most interviews of Dawkins on American tv are horrible; the worst one was on The O’Reilly Factor. It is like Dawkins is trying to argue with a 2 year old.
Anyways, check out the interview below. For those of you that have read the God Delusion, Dawkins doesn’t bring up any new big ideas, but the combo of Maher and Dawkins is funny. Dawkins does bring up a few neat tidbits. He upgrades his level of atheism from a 6/7 to a 6.9/7, and he goes on to call Francis Collins unintelligent. He admits that he plans to have a tape recorder by his side on his deathbed to debunk anyone that might claim he becomes religious there.
Here is my latest experiment. I have exams coming up, my first being on Friday (uh oh that’s today), and I am recruiting my readers to help me stay at my desk. I had a few people stop by yesterday. It was only my sister, mom and a few twitter followers. I am now announcing this for the big time.
I have started a live webcam feed of me at my desk. All I ask of you guys is pretty simple: If you don’t see me studying, feel free to verbally abuse me to make me study.
Hopefully, this will be up until my last exam on the 21st. I hope it doesn’t creep me out too much. In that case, I might take it down
Copyright 2011. Waves was created in WordPress by Obox Themes.
