Elliott C. Back: Technology FTW!

Reading Spat with Rogers leaves Canadian Apple stores without iPhones on Apple Insider leaves me with a sense of unease. It’s certainly Apple’s right to send shipments of the highly desired iPhone 3G where it wants, but to screw an entire country because it doesn’t like the action of one carrier won’t help it’s reputation with Canadians, who now suffer arbitrarily:

Apple, disgusted with Rogers Wireless for dumping egregious service plans on would-be iPhone 3G buyers, has decided that its Canadian retail stores will have no part in helping the carrier market the new handset to customers, AppleInsider has learned.

As a result, Canadian Apple Retail stores won’t be selling the new 3G touchscreen phones come Friday, representatives for the Cupertino-based company said during a private conference call on Monday evening. Instead, it will be up to Rogers and its partner Fido to lock subscribers into steep 3-year contracts that require a minimum monthly payment of $60 for just 150 minutes, 75 text messages, and 400MB of data.

So because Apple doesn’t like Rogers’ unfair pricing, they’re not going to sell their phones in Canada, with this snarky quote “We have nothing to do with the service plans. Those are Rogers’ plans.” On the other hand, iPhone Atlas suggests that Apple never intended to sell the iPhone 3G at any retail location, which would make this fight nothing but FUD.

I went with my girlfriend to Mont Tremblant for skiing this week, since we were both on spring break:

Mont Tremblant is in Quebec, Canada. On the way, amusingly, in terrible weather, we passed Mexico:

It was an awesome Spring Break–we stayed at a 5 star hotel, ate good food, and enjoyed driving. I got a speeding ticket–my first. Although the weather for the last couple hours coming back was terrible, I think my driving improved because of it.

If you’ve ever tried to get your Canadian passport, you know the photos are the hardest part. They must be taken at a professional photo studio, stamped and dated, and signed by your guaranteer. They must be shadow-free. Mine weren’t, apparently:

Question: I recently applied for a Canadian passport while I was at home over winter break in Phoenix, AZ. My case number is USXXXXX. However, it was denied due to shadows on the photograph. However, I am a senior at Cornell University and cannot have the photos retaken and re-signed by the guaranteer who is my family Dr. in Phoenix because I am in Ithaca, NY right now. How should I proceed?

The Passport Office of Canada kindly replied:

Thank you for your message of March 7, 2006. You may submit new photos without the guarantors signature. Please include your file number on the outside of the envelope. We trust this information is of assistance to you.

How awesome! I will have the photos redone this Friday.

One of the more interesting things I saw was a guy wearing the following sandwich board downtown in Victoria, BC:

Caption: “Awake. Islam’s a religion of war.”

Caption: Crusader cross.

It seems this guy is downright sick of Muslim fundamentalists blowing stuff up, and offers another crusade as a viable solution. Hold you comments for just one second–there are excellent results from a successful crusade or genocide. You meet your objective of eliminating the thread at hand. However, the collateral damage is usually considered (i.e., should be) to be too significant a cost to pay in exchange for your goals. In this way, most civilized nations prefer to try and isolate and punish criminals as entities-of-themselves and not entities-in-a-state.

You can imagine why I thought this was weird, then. In the US, this kind of reaction is expected. In my peace-loving Canada? No way!

I took a really pretty picture of beach waves and spray at Victoria, but I decided it was too mundane, and spiced it up:

We also walked down this stone pierway made from big steps, which was really fun:

There were always boats … boating … by while we walked:

And, except for a few dead jellyfish:

The water was quite pretty!