CANADA: P2P DOWNLOADING OK, BUT UPLOADING NO-NO

MSNBC.com reported yesterday that Canadian copyright regulators said downloading copyrighted music from P2P networks (such as Kazaa) appeared to be legal under that country’s law, but they said uploading was still prohibited. Also, a government levy of as much as US$25 has been imposed on iPod-like MP3 players, putting the devices in the same category as audio tapes and blank CDs. This is to pay musicians and songwriters for revenues lost from all the downloading, as manufacturers, in making these devices, are responsible for paying the fees. Also, producers of media such as CDs and DVDs will now have to pay a per-unit fee into a pool designed to compensate musicians and songwriters.

No prizes guessing who's NOT going to like this.

Read more here.

I STUMPED GOOGLE!

In my attempt to find an address in my hometown Batu Gajah, I decided to turn to the one thing that had always delivered the goods - Google.

Apparently not many people, excepting probably my dad, from Batu Gajah announce their addresses on the Net.

Quote Lokes: "That must be the world's worst search ever."

I think he's right.

HELLO NAMESAKES!

Can I just say again how HAPPENING (and I don't care how 90s the word is) Google is? Not like I just discovered it, but due to a narcissistic whim, I googled my nameS and came up with some surprises (and the odd shock - well, I shouldn't be shocked at all, that I have enemies :o().

There were not many returns for "Jennifer Tai". In fact, I can list down here - my namesakes from the world over!:

1. A girl in Takoma Park Middle School who won 2nd place in Microbiology in her Country Science Fair Awards;
2. A woman who's an officer in the Dept of Microbiology and Immunology (what are the odds that TWO Jennifer Tais have an interest in microbiology - from two different generations!). I think this same woman also was chosen as a 'mutator' and was named in the Journal of Bacteriology in 1999;
3. A US immigrant in need of living space in NYC (what else is new?) mentioned in the June 1995 of "Unification News";
4. An American committee coordinator for Preventable Diseases: HIV/AIDS education in Africa from the Int'l School of Beijing;
5. A young achiever at the Camberwell Malvern Little Athletics Centre;
An EAP participant of 1999 at UC Davis;
6. A first-time tandem skydiver @ skydivecaliforniacity.com;
7. A woman in the home buying business in California;
8. An administrative officer at the Hong Kong Packaging Institute (HKPI);
9. A GORGEOUS employee of a music agency called Aggravated Music;
10. A sorority member of Alpha Kappa Psi, also gorgeous;
11. A member of the Young Scholars programme in 1993;
12. A writer for MacWeek.com (namesake AND jobsake);
13. A grade-school student in an choir;
14. Head of Taiwanese institutional sales at HSBC, who was on maternity leave March 2000;
15. An MD doing analysis for the Medical Surveillance Report Monthly;
16. A cute looking NYC girl with the nick "nYcaZnpRinCess"

So have YOU googled your name and found your namesakes yet? :)

In other news, Lokes and I am going to spend a whole bunch of money on a new digital camera, the Canon Digital Rebel, aka the EOS 300D. We went all around SS2 and Sungai Wang, and believe it or not, better deals can be found closer to home - my home, that is. The std kits offered (no memory card, nada) ranged from RM3,700 to RM3,999, whereas one shop in DU offered a 128MB card (which is like 32MB RAM to a PC) for RM3,999. I guess it's because it's so popular. And oh, did I mention that 95 per cent of the shops we went to had run out of stock for the model? And that was just last week.

In MORE other news, I bit off a LOT more than I cld chew and am playing four games at once for various publications: Titans, XIII, DX2 and KOTOR.

See you guys in five years.