What I See

Hey Mr. Harper, cool your jets

2009-05-14T22:23:00.001-04:00

The PM says he is willing to go to the polls over the current EI stupidity being clamoured for by the socialist dingbats in the Liberal party.

The answer to the problem of politicians is a large number of sacks, cinder blocks, chains and large bodies of deep water.

Hater Post – Cineplex Newmarket

2009-05-14T22:20:00.001-04:00

Went out tonight to see Star Trek. Film was excellent but the theater experience sucks and blows at the same time. Concessions charge $4 for soda, $3.50 for a $1 bottle of water, staffed by the slowest movers ever. No wonder theaters are struggling (place was empty) when customers get ripped off like this. Wouldn’t want to take a family out. Reception hall, hallways, and theaters, dirty, water damage in the fixtures, and generally in disgusting shape. And they’ve applied for a liquor license, that should do wonders for the conditions. Someone needs a visit from someone who cares about customer experience, but past experience with the chain tells me that no one gives a crap.

And it shows. I miss independent theaters that were driven out of business by these cesspools.

Spectacle

2009-05-01T22:29:00.000-04:00

Watching Spectacle tonight on CTV. Elton John is interviewing Diana Krall. While I have not seen all the episodes of this show, and we see it long after it has aired in the States here in Canada, I must say how excellent the episodes I have seen are. The usual host is Elvis Costello but he decided not to interview his wife, resulting in a brilliant show.

Simpler Times

2008-10-16T21:54:00.001-04:00

As I prepare this I'm waiting to see Appaloosa, the movie adaptation of Parker's excellent western.

Great film. Not sure if the times were simpler in the old west but if the depiction is accurate they certainly were clearer. Shooting those who violate your code is illegal of course and most often wrong.

As we see the endless effluvium of political correctness a little simplicity might be helpful.

It's Over, for the moment anyway

2008-10-15T20:47:00.001-04:00

I have to say I am pleased with the outcome of the federal election. I would have preferred a majority to avoid what I fear will be a house filled with whinging, crying, stamping of feet and other behaviour that would embarrass a four year old.

One thing I expect for certain, the night of the long knives has already started for Mr. Dion. Which is bad for the Conservatives because without his ineptitude, their bumbling in Quebec and lack of conversions in the people's republic of Toronto could have resulted in a much smaller minority if a win at all.

Mr. Harper's announcement today that he acknowledges that Canadians are concerned about their finances comes late for many.

The Conservatives have a bigger minority, but left a majority at the side of the road. They need to learn from this. And thank their stars every day that Mr. Duceppe doesn't feel for Canada the way he feels for Quebec.

For the rest of us, was it worth $300M of our money? No chance.

Media Missiles

2008-10-08T19:59:00.001-04:00

The dissolution of the US economy is truly unfortunate, but what I see on both sides of the border is disgusting. What I mean are the ongoing actions of the media turning a bad thing into a complete nightmare. I swear that these "experts" are more concerned with selling advertising for crap none of us need than with accurate reporting.

Things are bad enough without media morons causing panic amongst readers and viewers because those people are operating under the delusion that all reporters have integrity. Certainly a percentage of reporters are fine people with good values, but there exist many, including the "citizen journalists" used by many of the news gathering organizations for whom facts need not apply.

The real problem, is that the Chicken Little rhetoric can be made to come through if enough viewers and readers believe the crap that's published. The only person who can activate your own BS detector is you. In these times, you might want to turn it on and crank up the sensitivity.

Debate? More Like Food Fight

2008-10-06T18:03:00.001-04:00

How disappointing that both of last week's Canadian Leadership debates weren't debates at all and more closely resembled a series of pie strikes at a single individual.

The media suggests that this should have been expected (true) and is fair (not true). If a candidate was a real leader, he or she would seek to create differentiation and a value proposition for his or her potential supporters in a positive manner and not focus on slagging whomever happens to be leading in the polls.

While I think that Mr. Harper was the most professional of presenters, his party has spent a lot of time working on creating FUD and a lot less time has been spent on delivering actual content. Good fellow, surrounded by some high volume of idiots. As for the rest of them, oh please. Clearly basic math and even a tenuous grip on reality are missing in every other case. Mr. Dion is out of his league. Perhaps he is a good professor, he's a poor candidate. Mr. Layton is blinded by the size of his enormous personal ego. Mr. Duceppe is an articulate speaker, unfortunately his platform is focused on secession, what I have always seen as traitorous action. Ms. May is probably a nice person but her cross country train trip has failed to deliver her to the real world.

The election is in a week. Cannot be over too soon, I'm tired of all of them already.

And Your Initiatives Are?

2008-09-28T18:59:00.001-04:00

In the Toronto Sun today, there was a profile of the candidates running in our EDA. The majority of the coverage was provided to Tim Jones, the Liberal and to Lois Brown, the Conservative. Both used their interview time to talk about themselves, Jones about his years in politics, neglecting to mention having his ass handed to him in the last Aurora mayoral election and Brown talking about her family having lived in the region for well over a century. No mention whatsoever of the needs of the community, industry or any of the issues supposedly being addressed in this election. I'd say I was surprised by the coverage but I'm not. Too bad that the principle candidates are so focused on themselves and not on the people who might elect them.

Ontario Linux Fest

2008-09-22T16:38:00.003-04:00

My friend John Van Ostrand is the driver behind a fabulous event called the Ontario Linux Fest. It's a great place to learn about open source software to meet cool people and hear from industry visionaries. This year the major speakers will be John Maddog Hall and Jeremy Allison. I presented on Virtualization there last year and thought it was a marvelous event with attendees who were really interested in the community.

If you aren't completely brainwashed by proprietary software, you should go. Get all the info and register online at http://www.onlinux.ca/register

Netbooks

2008-09-21T13:12:00.001-04:00

I had a wonderful conversation this week with the head of Intel in Canada. We talked at length about the idea of Netbooks, these small, potentially omnipresent not laptops that are appearing in the marketplace. In the past these things were underpowered and undercapable, and didn't serve the needs of the next generation, or at least for me, members of my generation who are really technology enthusiasts.

Why is the iPhone so popular? Simple. You are always connected to the things you want to do and the people you want to do them with. Younger people text and chat far more than they email. They live the web life and demand to be always-on. The Netbook does this but provides the potential for more power than an iPhone, on a nominally larger screen and with a more usable keyboard. Having looked around, I presently like the HP Mininote, my only frustration being that the high powered model comes with a very large OS. Asus has proved beyond question that in this type of device lightweight Linux works extraordinarily well with minimal overhead. Were I to buy the HP (because it has the memory and storage I want) I'd wipe it and install openSUSE as a first step.

Intel is really working hard at this. First they built the amazing processor model for the MacBook Air (a brilliant machine) and are making real inroads with their Atom processor line, (smaller, faster, cooler, more green).

My ideal world would be a device envisaged by writer Andy Ihnatko. About twice the size of the iPhone, touch screen enabled with removable storage. I'd add USB and Firewire support, plus connectivity to Bluetooth keyboards, mice and displays. Ideally sized for travel, but capable of being used as a real laptop via device extension. I think Intel gets the mobile, always connected challenge, now we just need the ideal piece of gear.

So Freaking Cool

2008-09-14T20:46:00.004-04:00

About two weeks ago, I ran an experiment with my wireless network. I changed the Airport Extreme N to be an N only wireless repeater in the 5 GHz band. I believed that by limiting the network to N only, that my N devices would run faster. Rumour has it that a repeater that offers b/g/n will run at the speed of the slowest connection. So I experimented. I found that my N devices moved content much faster in a pure N environment. But the PS3, the iPhones, the Touch, and the older computers only run at G speeds. So I connected my older Airport Extreme Flying Saucer to the ISP connection ( i have two addresses) and created a separate network. Everything worked great.

Then I decided to try the iPhone app called Remote. I couldn't connect to anything. Aha, the iPhone is G, and the AppleTV is N. So I reconfigured the saucer Airport to be a bridge and connected it to the switch that connects to the Extreme N. Surprise, even though they offer distinct wireless networks, the devices can freely intermingle. So I can use the Remote app and the very cool AirShare app that runs a micro http server on the iPhone so you can put files on it.

After quickly pairing the iPhone and the Touch to the Mac Pro, I was easily able to use either device as a remote for my iTunes library. I then paired them both with the AppleTV. Freaking brilliant. What an amazing bit of functionality. Remote connects to the library on the Mac and on the AppleTV and basically gives you complete control of whatever media is on the device. If it sounds overly simplistic, this is what makes the darn thing so brilliant. I can do all the things I want to do on the AppleTV or on iTunes using my iPhone or Touch. The Remote app is free on the AppStore. So for that matter is is AirShare.

If you have an iPhone or Touch, you have to try Remote.

Prosoft and Apple - ANyone paying attention

2008-09-14T13:12:00.002-04:00

Prosoft Engineering makes a really superb product for the Mac called Drive Genius. Its logo is the atomic model. This week Apple added the Genius service to iTunes 8. The logo for the Genius service is the atomic model. Drive Genius - Atomic, iTunes Genius - Atomic.

Anyone got any innovative ideas on images?

Sheesh

Political Professionalism - HA

2008-09-10T21:05:00.003-04:00

If backstabbing and slurs were degree programs the leadership candidates would all be PhDs.

It would be more embarrassing but at least we in Canada are not faced with the same level of wads that are running in the US. I swear that Heinlein's predictions that America would become a religious fascist state is well on it's way.

At least we don't have that in Canada, or at least not yet. Instead we have the ecoterrorists represented by Dion and his alter ego May.

The commercials from all of the parties are insulting. They assume Canadians all just fell off the turnip truck and banged their heads on the way down. Sweaters don't make Steve soft and cuddly and walking in the woods doesn't make Dion competent.

Now we see that the leadership debates will have 5 speakers. Oh good. The Conservatives, The Liberals, The NDP, The Bloc and The Other Liberals.

We're screwed.

Prediction Assessment

2008-09-09T20:42:00.002-04:00

So how did I do?

New Nano ? yes
New iTunes ? yes
New iPhone software ? yup, this Friday

Maybes?

None

Unlikelys?

None

So for all intents I was right. Hoorah for me.

Apple Announcement Eve

2008-09-08T16:10:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow Sept 9th, Apple will have an event. An announcement event.

Speculation is rampant, so here are my predictions. We'll check back tomorrow night to rate my success.

Pretty Sure

New iPod NANO
New release of iTunes
iPhone 2.1 software

Makes Sense But Only Maybe

AppleTV update - boy I hope that the current ones are upgradeable
Change of name of the iTunes Store

I Wish But Highly Unlikely

MacTablet

It's the Steve and Stephane Show

2008-09-08T15:48:00.003-04:00

I believe that Canada needs a Federal election like a fish needs a new bicycle. Somehow I think that spending over $300M to achieve a Conservative Minority (the expectation of the Prime Minister) is idiotic.

That said, Mr. Harper doesn't give a rat's what I think and we are in election mode. The spin has already started, and it's already nauseating.

And that said, I'm going to support the Conservative Party again. There is no viable Libertarian party or local candidate so I have to balance on the basis of least threat. The Conservatives are the least threatening to me. I don't believe in bigger government, and higher taxes so that releases the Liberals and the NDP. I think the Bloc are secessionists and should be hung. I think the Greens have a pretty vision that is absolutely a death knell for Canada's economy. I believe in the personal ownership of firearms. I believe that my money is my money. I believe that less government is better government. I believe that reduced tax puts money back into the economy. I believe that small business needs to be left alone by useless government parasites at all levels.

So my position falls to voting for the Conservatives. I even hope that the local candidate in my EDA wins, even though I don't care for some members of her campaign team or even the candidate's positions on some topics. This time around, I won't be making donations or allowing lawn signs.

If re-elected, the Conservatives have a lot of work to do. They've delivered on many of their commitments but still have many left to do. Still, I'd rather them than getting the Green Shaft from Celine, I mean Stephane, Dion and his collection of wingnuts who think you improve the state of the environment by taxing your own citizens while doing nothing to address the giant global polluters like China. The man may have lots of degrees, but they are not a substitute for brains.

Conservative.ca gets all youthful

2008-09-04T09:16:00.002-04:00

Some credit to the Conservative Party of Canada. In an email advisory yesterday, they introduced a new web site that is much lighter and usable than the monster it replaces. Also interesting to see much greater awareness of newmedia approaches to voters including the use of Facebook and Twitter. You can be a supporter of the party and its leader on Facebook but not friend them. On Twitter you can follow the leader and automagically they follow you in return. Or the whole Twitter thing is a hoax and we'll find that out soon enough. Will these steps help the party win an election? No idea. The party's leader is polling out to be the best person for the job of leader but there is a lot of resistance to an election call amongst the people who get to pay for it.

rechromed

2008-09-02T20:55:00.000-04:00

Well at first glance, I can say, well, it looks lightweight. Built on Apple's webkit it's quick enough and each tab is supposedly a separate process for a more reliable browsing experience, whatever that means when translated from mcmarketing spin.

Um it's a browser. And we surely do need another browser. Not.

Mark me as underwhelmed. Heard on a podcast that Chrome could be Google's ZUNE. Funniest thing I heard all day.

Google Chrome

2008-09-01T21:33:00.002-04:00

On September 2nd, 2008 Google is supposed to release the Windows edition of Google Chrome for Windows, a browser delivered to compete with Microsoft Internet Explorer 8. Initially Chrome will only be available for Windows but a Mac and a Linux version are in the works. So immediately Chrome will do two things that IE won't do, that is run on platforms other than Windows.

I have to ask myself why the world needs another browser. While I haven't yet seen Chrome, I have to expect that it will follow the Google model of being ad-driven. So why would I need another browser that is filled with ads.

I'll download the Mac version when it becomes available, because I think that there are really smart people at Google and I'm curious to see what they'll deliver. If it's ad driven, I won't keep it though.

Please don't move out of Toronto

2008-08-28T09:42:00.002-04:00

I read every day about the lunacy propagated on the citizens of Toronto by Comrade Chairman Miller and the rest of his team of wingnuts. I have only one request. Don't move north into York Region. We have more than enough dingbat politicians already and don't need more votes for the criminally stupid.

Toronto residents elected this mayor and this council. Now you get to experience what you chose.

er - What the Heck Is This Supposed to Mean

2008-08-28T09:37:00.002-04:00

Congratulations to Bell Canada for dropping their amusing if tired talking beavers for a new campaign where er is always in bold. Frank and Gordon may have taken some liberties with dexterity and the lack of opposable thumbs but the message was always clear. The new ads are bland and flat and always tagged with er It has no customer resonance at all. I've asked over 20 people to explain this to me, including the staff in the local Bell store. No one knows what it's supposed to mean.

If Bell has so much money to burn on crap advertising, call me. We'll negotiate a new program that I promise will make a whole lot more sense than er. Someone needs a smack.

Another Customer Service Story

2008-08-26T20:40:00.003-04:00

A year and a half ago I bought an Aliph Jawbone headset in the US because typically they weren't available in Canada for some moronic reason. The Jawbone is really good, but the charging cable design is defective in design, concept and execution. There are tons of complaints about the charging connection being defective.

I posted a complaint to the website, knowing I am out of warranty and got a really polite response from someone at Aliph. He gave prescriptive advice and concluded my charging cable needed replacing. He asked for the manufacture date stamp info. My headset is an early one so has no stamp, and so he asked for proof of purchase. I don't have the bill any more, so I am out of luck. The service was timely and polite, and I'm not surprised that they won't do anything but if I had a unit with the date stamped on it, they would have sent me a charging cable at no charge. So it's a bit disappointing that early adopters don't get the same latitude as those who came later.

Guess I'll have to buy a Motorola unit. Their service isn't as direct, but the design is robust

Government Idiots

2008-08-26T20:34:00.002-04:00

What is it about being elected that makes people stupid?

Mr. Dion, leader of the federal liberals is not "available" to meet with Prime Minister Harper for a "conversation" I guess he doesn't want to hear about the coming election call and prefers to keep his empty head buried in the sand. Harper is a similar idiot, believing his own press office that if an election was held, the Conservatives would win a majority.

So we'll end up burning +$300M of taxpayers dollars to run an election that will at best return a Conservative minority. EXACTLY what we have now. Wastes of space.

And in my riding we'll end up with another Liberal MP, mostly because the nice person running for the Conservative Party is not electable, not because she is a bad person but because she doesn't listen to constituents enough and listens to her campaign team too much.

What a complete and utter waste of time and money. Damn I'm tired of these nodules.

Fall Election Possibility

2008-08-22T19:06:00.004-04:00

Let me try to be succinct here. Hey idiots! No one in Canada who has a brain wants anyone spending $300M on a Federal election that won't actually change anything.

Definition: A politician is a person with limited skills other than spending your money to make him or herself feel better. Oh and an ego that requires the industrial sized can of Crisco to get the their head through a doorway.

How about a lot less government and a lot more useful work.

.ME

2008-08-22T18:49:00.003-04:00

In case you haven't heard there is a whole new bunch of ego domains available. They are the .ME collection. Yup if you couldn't get your name with any of the other dot whatevers, you can now get yourname.me The price of the domain registration clearly shows this to be a cash grab.

BUT. If you do want something like yourlastname.me go get it NOW!!!! Before someone else does and then you'll never be able to get it. BWAA HAAA HAAA

iPhone 3G Update

2008-08-22T18:45:00.003-04:00

Well I've applied the 2.02 update and it made changes. Battery life is down 25%. The GPS location issues that was sort of fixed is back and if 3G is on, it finds my driveway in downtown Kuala Lumpur. I did learn that I could call Apple for support on this today and will be doing so. Otherwise I don't notice any more 3G connectivity than before which is supposedly what the update addressed although you wouldn't know that from the information supplied by Apple that says the update fixes some problems. Problems? Please don't hurt your fingers typing a USEFUL explanation.

A Tale of Two Support Incidents

2008-08-22T18:33:00.003-04:00

I've been struggling with a couple of issues with my Mac and with MobileMe. On July 27th, my Mac Pro stopped working with Time Machine and I'd get a completely useless dialog saying Time Machine didn't back up properly. I called AppleCare and got bumped up to second line support where the engineer promptly forgot about me. Two weeks later I called in angry and Bonny started looking at the case. He made some good suggestions and we went through a prescriptive course of action including capturing the actions while Time Machine ran. The output was huge (1.3GB) so I put it at Bonny's suggestion into the public folder on my iDisk so he could get it. Today Peter called indicating Bonny was off but he wanted to try some things. In the interim, I discovered many people complaining about the same problem and fixing it by excluding their iTunes library from backup. I tried that and everything worked. I shared this with Peter and by doing a manual copy discovered one corrupt podcast. Deleting the podcast has resolved the whole Time Machine problem. Peter was excellent, but darn it, TM should provide a reason for failing. One bad file stopped Time Machine for nearly a month. Good customer service, annoying usability.

The second support incident revolves around MobileMe reporting -20kb of my 200GB per month of available bandwidth. The only thing posted to the idisk in the last 60 days is the capture file (1.3GB) So I chatted with MM support because you cannot call them. The person I was chatting with was clearly working with a number of other customers, and although I explained the problem exactly, on four occasions, she wanted to sell me more idisk space as the solution. MobileMe is not Apple's finest hour by their own admission. Ok, any software can have bugs, but when you pay for a service like MobileMe, support should be real not this chat crap and the support person should have a clue, and also LISTEN to the customer.

Apple gets 90% for incident one, even though I did a lot of the work myself and a -100,000,000 for MobileMe support.

iPhone 1 vs iPhone 3G

2008-08-13T09:49:00.003-04:00

There are probably a gazillion posts on this subject already, but I am compelled to do my own. I am comparing a first generation iPhone running the 2.0 software with an iPhone 3G running the 2.01 software. In the spirit of openness, the first gen iPhone was configured to run on the Rogers network in Canada, while the iPhone 3G is running on the FIDO network in Canada, which as readers may know, is operated by Rogers.

Looks
From the front there are very tiny differences. From the sides, the beveled case of the 3G makes it look much slimmer than it actually is. I think that the metal back of the first gen is more elegant and prefer it to the plastic back of the 3G but understand that the plastic back may improve reception although I have no data supporting that.

Feel
Both are comfortable in the hand, although the 3G feels more slippery and I am more concerned about dropping it. I had applied the ZAGG Invisible Shield to the first gen phone and that made it easier to hang on to. I will likely do the same thing to the 3G as the ZAGG product has proven its worth across many items. I find the buttons on the first gen more tactile and easier to use. The new buttons are more flush and take more focus to activate.

Connections
I am very disappointed that although the 3G has a "dock" connector, the unit is unfriendly towards the majority of existing iPhone accessories. It plays in the BOSE Sounddock but will not charge. It plays in the Apple HiFi but does not charge. It won't charge with the majority of pre-existing iPod and iPhone chargers I already own. The 3G also does not work with my in car FM transmitter. I have also noted that the Apple iPod cables won't charge the device either, you must use the iPhone cable that is supplied or an alternate that has the smaller dock connector. This is incredibly annoying and Apple needs a smack to the head for making so many functional accessories useless. I know that they don't care, but it's stupid regardless. The 3G does not have the incredibly goofy headphone jack of the first gen model and both the Apple and V-Moda iPhone headphone/mic combinations work very well with the 3G, just as they did with the first gen unit.

Applications
With the same software being available on both physical platforms there is little difference between the two, excepting 3G and GPS noted further on. Many people have said that updating or loading apps from the App Store to the 3G instead of through iTunes causes issues up to and including bricking. Fortunately I have not yet seen these reported problems and all the apps work ok. When I was setting up the 3G in iTunes many apps gave exception faults during installation and it took multiple attempts to get the apps installed. Once done, they are working effectively.

3G and GPS
3G is faster to be sure, but not as much faster as I would have hoped. It's also problematic in conjunction with the GPS. I turned 3G on right away and then went to the Maps application to find myself as it were. To my astonishment the GPS system determined I was in Kuala Lumpur. I was in Newmarket Ontario Canada, about as far from KL as I could be. I turned the 3G service off and did a find again. This time I was found correctly in Newmarket. I've since turned 3G back on since the 3G data is more important to me than the maps function but this is clearly a real bug that Apple is ignoring. As Apple grows, the quality of released products is slipping. A VERY BAD SIGN.

Mobile Me
To say that Mobile Me has been a complete disaster for Apple is an understatement. While I had significant issues on the Macs getting it lit up, specifically getting the MM software update to be downloaded, the first gen iPhone worked fine once the Mac was up to date. Similarly the 3G works great with Mobile Me at time of this writing.

Battery Life
I have not yet configured Bluetooth (warnings about battery consumption abound), but I do find that with 3G, Mobile Me (1 push account) plus two fetch email accounts and limited phone use, I can go a day and a half. Add in normal phone use and it's a day. My company issued RIM 8800 goes for three days on a charge. I don't find it much worse than the first gen or even the Touch with the 2.01 software. Turning off wireless in every case will save battery life but what's the point of that if you have wireless available?

Range of Wireless
In my highly scientific dog walking experiments I can stay connected to my home wireless at least 200m farther with the 3G than with the first gen while my dog takes me for a drag. I think the 3G does a better job of collecting 802.11x signals as I am prompted to connect to wireless more frequently. I have used it connected to home wireless, at the mall where I bought the phone and at the local Starbucks with good success.

Carrier Choice
Most people believe that there is only one carrier choice in Canada. There are in fact two. Although it is one network (Rogers) the plans are different from Rogers to FIDO. First to upgrade my account to the iPhone on Rogers would have incurred a $50 surcharge. Not so with FIDO. Second, Rogers plans bill in one minute increments. FIDO plans bill in 1 second increments. The plan with all the other features including Visual Voicemail was cheaper by a couple of bucks on FIDO than on Rogers, although FIDO had no My5 type plan as Rogers did. Given the amount of use for me it was not a loss. Rogers' unlimited nights and weekends start at 9pm. FIDO's start at 7pm. Since this is my personal phone, I'm already saving money with FIDO. The best news is that I was able to do the purchase and the transition of my existing number from Rogers to FIDO at an independent store, in this case Wireless Wave, without ever having to go into a Rogers store. Not having to speak to the practitioners of rudeness I have discovered in Rogers' stores is worth something to me as well.

Conclusions
There are bugs in the software. The unit freezes from time to time without apparent cause with no apps running. The GPS/3G issue is a REAL PROBLEM that Apple needs to address. Other than that, the 3G is a solid device and is recommended. If you have a first gen iPhone and want the 2.0 software but are not on AT&T, the iPhone Dev Team has a solution that might work for you. Search ipwnage on the web for more information.

Bad Week for Entertainment Industry

2008-08-10T18:43:00.003-04:00

Two passings this week impacting the entertainment industry. Yesterday it was comedian / actor Bernie Mac, and then announced today, the passing of brilliant musician Isaac Hayes. While I don't know Mac's work very well, he was good in the Ocean's movies. Hayes came to recognition with his score for the seminal 70's movie Shaft. When I was a young teen, the novel by Ernest Tidyman and then the movie were de rigeur among the English teachers in my school. Since then Hayes has made numerous contributions to the music scene and has been widely respected. He'll be missed.

Tragic

2008-08-07T21:08:00.003-04:00

I returned from a business trip to read of the murder on a bus to Winnipeg of an innocent young man by some whackjob. The young man is gone forever and soon enough will be forgotten. Unfortunately the killer, who stabbed, then decapitated the victim and is also rumoured to have been cannibalistic will continue to get lots of media attention. Yesterday he was photographed and begged to be killed. Surely a start for his insanity defense. So he'll be around for a while at the expense of the Canadian taxpayer.

In the National Post, reader Robert Sciuk wrote to ask whether the young man would have died at all had qualified Canadian citizens the right to carry a concealed firearm. Perhaps the victim would still be alive. And perhaps yet another criminal would not continue to prosper at the expense of an innocent life.

A Great Notebook

2008-06-06T18:24:00.002-04:00

No, not paper or some laptop, an awesome software product called Notebook from the nice folks at Circus Ponies.

Notebook is what it says it is. A digital notebook for your digital life. There are multitudinous digital note takers out there but Notebook just makes it simple. Any object type can be part of a note. When you type in notes, indexing of the words, search setup, and layout is automatic. You can capture images directly to Notebook and create links for stuff you use online.

I use it for blog content creation, taking notes on my laptop in meetings and for brainstorming. Very useful and usable. Give it a look.

Awesome Mac App

2008-06-05T21:07:00.003-04:00

I have had need recently to be able to simply capture actions on my Mac to create in a replayable format that I can ship to others via email. There are multiple products to do this on Windows, one of the good ones being Camtasia Studio.

I learned about an amazing product set for the Mac called iShowU and Stomp from one of the Mac podcasts I listen to. I have tried and purchased the software. Both products cost less than $50 in total. iShowU lets you select what region of your screen you want to control and what size or format you want your movie to be. It really couldn't be simpler. Easy to watch clips are a snap now. I have used other excellent products like Skitch and SnapzPro, but I have to give the power award for "filming" actions to iShowU. The other product is called Stomp and it provides conversion and compression services for MOV files. On my desktop I have Elgato's awesome H.264 USB encoder, but on a my portable it wasn't handy. Stomp compressed a very high res MOV to 800x600 in minutes so I could share it with the engineering team working on the project I've been testing in the Ukraine. A much smaller file moves more quickly as an attachment. Quality was great. Highly recommended.

Available from http://www.shinywhitebox.com

More ACTA Follies

2008-06-05T20:59:00.003-04:00

The folks at Google have received more information on the secret ACTA treaty being negotiated between the US, Canada and other countries. The first reports proposed that Canada was the primary architect. Not so. Canada's government has a serious case of cranio-rectal inversion when it comes to our southern neighbor such that they'd do pretty much anything they were asked. Yesterday Google shared details of more ACTA foolishness, this being that ISPs should use packet shaping or filtering as a means to counter piracy. That this further encourages a Big Brother mentality is not lost on Google who to their credit have been champions of Net Neutrality. Many are disgusted that these negotiations go on in secret, without public discussion or visibility.

They should also be furious because the negotiators don't have clue one on the subject and certainly look like moronic pawns of the RIAA and the MPAA, two organizations well known for their complete lack of respect for their customers.

Why Business Needs to Support Net Neutrality

2008-06-04T19:09:00.003-04:00

There has been a great deal of discourse on the subject of Net Neutrality. Google has been highly supportive of this issue, including a letter to the US House of Representatives from Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Last week, NDP MP Charles Angus introduced a private member's bill, Bill C-552 to protect net neutrality to prohibit telecom providers from interfering with traffic that flows over their networks, other than in specific instances. This issue has been covered well by the wonderful folks at the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (www.cippic.ca)

It's my position that all businesses need to care about net neutrality because such filtering could impact any business' ability to transact or create opportunity using the internet. If packet shaping is used by Internet Service Providers today to control use of P2P style applications, what guarantee exists to prevent such packet-shaping being used to provide preferential treatment to some web sites at the expense of others. What assurance exists that some content or entire site will not be filtered and blocked by arbitrary ISP action?

Certainly we must have initiatives to stop the spread of child pornography or the advocation of terrorist action, but I'm not convinced that placing such controls in the hands of ISPs is the complete answer.

There has also been talk of a tiered internet where depending on what you pay controls what you can post and what you can receive. That goes against the premise of the web as a whole and also has the potential to negatively impact our ability as a country to create and grow new businesses, since new businesses won't have the funding to pay for preferential access.

Net neutrality in the end benefits commerce and I encourage you to support these initiatives.

Until next time, peace

(This was first posted to my blog at itworldcanada.com)

Everyone needs a BAT

2008-06-04T18:27:00.003-04:00

Check out this video about Microsoft Surface. It’s not exactly pure MS but it made me laugh and you will learn a new acronym in an industry stuffed to the gunnels with them.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/05/microsoft_surfa.php

Peace

Ban guns, help criminals

2008-06-03T21:42:00.003-04:00

Mayor David Miller of Toronto continues down the path to enable legislation that would ban the private ownership of handguns in the City of Toronto. He asserts, although the supporting data is unsurprisingly absent, that guns used in crimes are stolen from registered owners. Yes, you see handguns have been registered since the early part of the last century. In fact, the background check completed before issuance of a Firearms license is as rich as the security check for trusted status.

The Mayor is one of those who whines that he cannot get things done because he needs more powers. How very Chairman Mao of him. The reality that handgun bans in the United Kingdom and Australia resulted in an increase in gun crime goes completely ignored.

Criminals don't register guns. Criminals like to be assured that citizens don't have firearms. Even when those firearms have trigger locks, are kept in locked enclosures and where the ammunition is also locked up in a different storage location.

The Mayor is much more dangerous than the criminals he talks about. Instead of supporting the police force, who agree a handgun ban will do no good, he seeks to steal freedoms from law abiding citizens.

What other leaders have banned handgun ownership by law-abiding citizens? Mao Zedong. Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin. Nice company.

Finally after years of taking the high road, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association is communicating to shooting enthusiasts in Canada and abroad to not travel to Toronto, not to spend their tourist dollars in the Comrade Leader's city and to tell other folks about these draconian measures foisted upon the citizens by the Mayor. This is the only thing the Mayor understands since it impacts the dollars, and he certainly whines about not enough money. Nearly as much as he whines about not having enough power.

A negative and then positive photo printer experience

2008-06-02T14:52:00.002-04:00

So yesterday I wanted to print some photos of my daughter in her prom dress. My Epson R1800 was powered up and had reasonable ink levels. So I fired off a print from Aperture. It came out looking like something the cat yacked up. Now I admit I don't print photos every day so I went through the nozzle cleaning ritual and after about 10 passes had proper (I thought) test pages. So I printed again. More junk.

I checked the ink tanks again and surprise they were now nearly empty, so I headed out to my local photo shop that actually stocks ink tanks. I explained the scenario and several folks said "oh yeah, that's a problem with Epsons, the printheads get plugged up. Send it in for service under warranty." Well, that inhales rapidly because it's out of warranty. So they tell me that it will cost at minimum $250 and weeks to service. I am now annoyed.

They then suggest that it might be cheaper to buy a new printer in the long run since I need all the ink tanks, plus the services plus the printing of the photos etc. I agree and buy a Canon Pro 9000.

Understand the R1800 did a beautiful job but I have no interest in future printhead issues and the shop tells me that Canons don't have this issue although their B&W prints may not be as nice as the Epson. Don't do B&W so not a big concern.

Brought it home, followed the setup graphic, plugged it in to the Mac and in less than 15 minutes had some beautiful prints in hand.

Too bad about the Epson, quality of prints was great, product life was poor due to the printhead issue, but the Canon experience has been awesome so far and if their utilities are accurate, the ink consumption is less than on the Epson.

How to Crush Your Own Industry

2008-06-02T11:43:00.002-04:00

Simple procedure really, turned into a practice by the MPAA and the RIAA

1. Focus your efforts on a business model created before the advent of global economies and the Internet. Better if the model didn't work all that well in the past and is completely in opposition to reality today.

2. Treat all your paying customers like they are thieves. That usually goes over well and promotes a sense of well being.

3. Lobby government technology "experts" whose expertise is limited to having assistants book taxpayer funded lunches to stop all the "piracy" and enact legislation to have untrained law enforcement professionals seize suspected offender's personal technology.

4. Assume customers will enjoy the reaming and raise retail prices.

That's about it

Police State Action

2008-06-02T08:25:00.002-04:00

It was recently discovered that Canada's Conservative government, who spout a culture of openness, has been in secret negotiations with the US government to permit Canadian border services agents to inspect personal media players, laptop computers and mobile phones for suspected pirated materials and to seize and destroy any such equipment if the agent believes an infraction has occurred. No court, no freedom of speech just seizure.

In Canada, citizens already pay a premium to purchase blank media to stuff the coffers of the MPAA and RIAA who see all of their customers as thieves. Where the hell the government thinks that building Stalinist practices behind closed doors of an ostensibly free country is completely beyond me.

Despite their assertions to the contrary, the Conservatives are proving themselves to be as trustworthy as their peer parliamentarians. Not at all.

MarsEdit

2008-02-04T17:57:00.001-05:00

So here I am trying to get a handle on multiple blog sites. I'm listening to a podcast and coincidentally the speaker talks about this very problem. How very Jung. It's suggested to use this tool from Red Sweater Software called Mars Edit. Download the trial, looks simple enough. Wow it really is that simple.

Tres cool

Dr. Phil will save Britney

2008-01-07T18:10:00.000-05:00

Noted bottom feeder Dr. Phil has said he will step up and help woohoo flasher Britney Spears. He's doing this with all best intent of course. To get his mug plastered on more TV and magazines in order to sell more of his pap self delusion books. If anyone actually thinks he's serious, please check yourself into a clinic. You probably think reality TV is real too.

Chuck Norris supports Mike Huckabee

2008-01-07T17:50:00.000-05:00

This is funny and terrifying in so many ways. Huckabee won the Iowa caucus so clearly he is interesting to the voters in that area. Norris is a multi-year winner of medals in Karate and Tae Kwon Do, made more recently famous by the "Chuck Norris Facts" that appear on the web.

It's funny because Norris is reputed to have a marginal sense of humour and because Huckabee's geopolitical knowledge is similarly small. Huckabee was seen on TV congratulating Canadians on our national igloo. Hopefully his media management team has changed.

Maybe Hilary Clinton should seek support from Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. At least it would make Bill happy.

Back to it

2008-01-04T11:00:00.001-05:00

After too much time away, I am going to try to be more regular in my postings.

Two things come to mind following the holidays.

First, Ontario Judges continue to demonstrate too much leniency in sentencing. A man, found guilty of abusing his infant daughter and broadcasting this on the Internet, was sentenced to four years in prison. Should be forty. Or death. Conrad Black will go to jail longer for a much less damaging crime.

Second, I am officially old since I am stunned that a 15 year old Toronto girl could get a 17 year old Toronto boy to murder a 14 year old girl by multiple stab wounds because she was "jealous" Looks like another Homolka in making. We should try this murderess as an adult and put her away. Or have her put down.

Lastly, word has come out that serial killer Karla Homolka, who dodged a life sentence by testifying against Paul Bernardo before all the evidence against her was tabled, has left Canada to live in a Caribbean country. I feel badly for whichever country this is as they now have a known serial killer in their midst and I'm glad she is gone from Canada. Perhaps Canadian Border Security could ensure she never gets in again.

Liberal Delusions

2007-09-10T08:07:00.000-04:00

The Ontario Liberal Party, led by proven liar Dalton McGuinty is advocating the banning of private ownership of handguns by recreational shooters as if seizing the property of licensed private citizens will stop criminals from using guns in the commission of crimes. This is akin to blaming denture owners for shark attacks. Instead of focusing efforts against lawful and trusted citizens, the government should stop castrating the police, remove judges who don't care about victims and aggressively prosecute and jail those who use firearms in the commission of an offence.

Unfortunately there are lots of stupid people who couldn't construct a logical statement let alone follow one. All Ontarians who believe in the rights of the individual and personal freedom must vote out McGuinty and his trained seal Michael Bryant.

Known pedophile charged with repeat offence

2007-09-08T17:45:00.000-04:00

A twice convicted sex offender named Randolph Bartley was charged again this week with assault on a nine year old girl. Explain how this dirtbag is on the street after already proving TWICE that he will attack children. Then explain to me why Canadian troops are dying by IED over in Afghanistan.

Here's my solution to both problems. Child molesters automatically get shipped to Afghanistan and pay their debt to society as landmine and IED detectors. Simple, efficient and better for all concerned.

Is there an IQ test for judges? Apparently not

2007-09-08T17:24:00.000-04:00

A judge recently released on bail a man accused of beating on his former landlords with a roofing hammer. The accused was seen by witnesses leaving the home he invaded after beating a couple up. The man is blind and now cannot walk. The woman was severely beaten about the head and body.

This moron of a judge decided that the accused should be released on $50K bail and be forced to live with his parents until his trial. The Ontario Attorney General's office is "evaluating" whether they will protest. The Ontario Attorney General by the way is a complete buffoon, more concerned with appearing in the media lobbying for his cause of the day instead of dealing with real criminals.

Our province and country are being destroyed by this kind of brute incompetence where the accused gets all the rights and the victim has none.

Religion has no place in schools

2007-09-08T17:17:00.000-04:00

As the Ontario provincial election approaches, Conservative leader John Tory has promised public funding for religious schools. In an interview with local radio personality John Derringer, he was able to expand on his premise. His idea is that by offering funding, he can pull faith based schools onto the standard curriculum offered by the existing public school system.

Wouldn't that be pretty. I have a different idea. Don't publicly fund any religious schools and yes that means stopping the public funding of catholic schools. If parents wish to send their children to faith based schools they can do so on their own dime. Alternatively they could send their children to public schools and also leverage their church, synagogue, mosque, temple or whatever for faith related subjects.

Tory's plan will only exacerbate cultural separation. Multiculturalism is a failed experiment, how about focusing on education, and get God, Yahweh, Allah, Budda and whatever other big hand in the sky people want to follow out of taxpayer funded schools.

And no this doesn't mean I'm supporting the Liberals. They have their own very serious issues, starting with the endless collection of broken promises and their socialist agenda.

Cool Mac Stuff

2007-07-18T20:18:00.000-04:00

Hey so it looks like I've been off planet for a while. Reality is, challenges in the workday have kept me occupied with other things.

We use Linux at work and of all the distributions, I like SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. It's got great apps, is super reliable and never lets me down for business.

For home and my personal stuff, including foundation work, I still use Macs. Why not Linux? Well I could, but for my needs the Mac is perfect, plus there are still some richer apps in the graphics space and web dev space on the Mac.

I recently broke down and bought a new personal laptop. I bought the new Macbook Pro 17" with the hi res display and the fast 160gb hard drive. I like it very much, it's much faster than my old Powerbook G4. It's nearly as fast as my Dual G5 PowerMac. It's my first Intel mac and it's excellent although there are some annoying bugs, like random freezeups when using the browser or auto-launching an app. My first one did the same thing but Apple switched it at the store when they ran diags. This one passed the diagnostic, but like the new 15" machines I expect updates soon enough. Then I'll be really pleased.

There are some awesome apps that I have discovered that I wanted to plug as well.

I recently found myself needing a web site builder richer than iWeb but not as complex or having as steep a learning curve as Dreamweaver or InDesign. I bought RapidWeaver and it has great features but to do some of the things I wanted, I couldn't figure it out, or I had to buy a third party add-on. I then discovered Sandvoz. It misses some of the features in RapidWeaver but site building was incredibly fast and it's super easy to use. Highly recommended.

I've also struggled to find a note taking application that supported rich items, calendar and web linking and other powerful functions. I tried Circus Ponies Notebook and I really like it and was very close to buying the license even though I think the price is high, and then I found Journier. it's amazing and I'm sure I haven't even started to tap the capabilities of this tool. Free at journier.com

I also like the speedy search of Google Desktop but it blows up the Intel Mac so I don't use it on the MacBook Pro. Spotlight is too lame for me and too slow. Of course it doesn't send all my data to the Borg either so that's positive for Spotlight over Google Desktop. I really love Quicksilver. It's the most flexible find/launch/code tool around. Mac Format is running a series of tutorials on Quicksilver and it's very impressive as I learn more and more about it. Again, it's free from blacktree.com

If you are a Mac person and haven't tried these tools give them a shot, they're superb and a great value.

The Scourge

2007-05-18T08:52:00.000-04:00

Too often lately I've seen a disturbing trend in business called the Stack Rank. Ostensibly a good idea, it allows a manager to rank his or her team against a set of criteria. If this were the only performance measurement ranking, it might be useful, but what happens if the manager has been doing his or her job, helping the team achieve goals and helping those who cannot achieve find alternatives? Then the stack rank contains only good people. Again, a reasonable tool for personal development initiatives.

But there's a new scourge. The train of thought that says what if I had more of numbers one to three and replaced numbers eight to ten, even if they are doing a good job. It's a thought, but when you look at the challenge in hiring good people who can adapt to a new role, a new culture and the new company in a time that doesn't turn into a liability caused by ineffectiveness this becomes a deadly mistake. The company releases performing people in the hope that they can be replaced by a better yet unknown quantity.

Hope is not a strategy. Pop culture business books aren't a panacea for poor senior leadership either.

Lorne Gunter and the BS of Human Driven Global Warming

2007-04-10T18:33:00.000-04:00

In the National Post of Monday April 9, was a lucid, intelligent and mathematically responsible column by a writer called Lorne Gunter. I don't have the right to replicate it here, but if you are interested in some math that challenges the precept of human / CO2 driven global warming then his column is a must read.

Not sure how long this link will live but here it is:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/columnists/story.html?id=034028d4-8a4a-4103-8012-6445ac5ba715

Oh man is this so true

2007-04-10T18:29:00.000-04:00

Years ago I fell in love with a book by Guy Kawasaki back when he was the world's preeminent Macintosh evangelist. Basically I liked his style. Now I admit I don't spend a lot of time looking for blogs by famous people, but somehow today I received this link to his bloog called How to Change the World.

This particular link takes you to his writings on the power of LinkedIn and The Art of Avoiding an Asshole Boss.

It's absolutely brilliant

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/04/linkedin_and_th.html

New phraseology you'll love... maybe

2007-03-26T14:26:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Rachel Marsden who is syndicated to the Toronto Sun for coming up with the phrase Gorebull Warming. Horrors ! Is she implying that Al Gore is full of it ?

I sure do hope so. He's such a complete manure dealer.

Gorebull warming made up data from the Goracle.

Brilliant!

Go away for a while and what do you get?

2007-03-26T13:39:00.000-04:00

I've been on the road a fair bit and the thoughts have been piling up. Funny how sometimes you get so inundated with things you want to do or say and the volume convinces you to actually do nothing.

I've recently had the experience where I've had to handle people talking about me behind my back. I got really upset by it since much of what they said was untrue from my my perspective. I tried to be adult and accept it's what they see. Then I spent a week at a conference and filled my personal time listening to the audiobook of Atlas Shrugged. Still many hours to go but I am reminded of many things that have helped me in the past. I'll focus on doing my best, being myself, and the people who still choose to backstab would probably do it anyway so it's important to be sure to pay back such individuals in the most appropriate manner and help them reap their karma. Or whatever.

R.I.P. Cap

2007-03-08T20:48:00.000-05:00

The weasels at Marvel Comics have killed an icon. Captain America is dead. Cap was created in 1941 as an outlet for American frustration and fear around World War II. Thousands of boys and girls would end up dying and while the majority chose to fight, the death of a son, a daughter, brother, a sister, a husband, or a wife never goes down easy. In Canada we had Johnny Canuck, in Great Britain, they had Union Jack, all semi-super heroes who fought side by side with our armed forces against the Nazis and Imperial Japan. Politically incorrect? By today's rules maybe, but not for the time. But Captain America is no longer relevant. He's an example of right wing America. He's narrow minded and not multi-cultural.

BS.

The power of a comic book hero is that he or she is every man or woman at our best and our worst, taken to a different and unreal level, a morality play for us to view and ponder. A fantasy existence that provides us a non-threatening opportunity to question our thoughts and values.

Captain America had no superpowers. He was enhanced by the super-soldier serum, but he was all too human and all too fallible. He fell into suspended animation after WWII returning in the sixties to fight again for the America of the day. He's been irrelevant before.

Comic heroes die. The JSA of the forties is long gone. Superman "died" in the early nineties and has never been the same. Green Lanterns have come and gone. The original Batman carried a .45 and killed criminals because the justice system in his world put more value on the life of the offender than the victim. Today's comic heroes are mere shadows of the ones that we grew up with, despite their increased dimensionality. They are manifestations of what the writers see and feel, and it isn't always "welcome to pleasantville", but they lack the simple messages and basic strength of the old heroes.

I'm saddened by the loss of Captain America, not because of how he was killed but because he is viewed as irrelevant today. It's about sales of course, but it's also about society.

Let's see; honesty, integrity and being honourable. Yup those are certainly worthless qualities in today's climate and no one would want their children wanting to develop those attributes.

R.I.P. Cap, you no longer fit in today's world and we are far worse off for that.

Whatever happened to freedom of speech?

2007-03-02T18:05:00.000-05:00

I hate politics. I freely admit that. But I support the Conservative parties both provincially and federally because their platforms are closest to what I want.

Yes, what I want. I don't particularly care what someone else wants. That's called intellectual honesty. I'm not an altruist.

I was recently told by a friend who also volunteers that he was offered the choice to continue to be on the volunteer board of a riding association or to continue to write his blog. He made his choice, as he should and it's his choice, no one else's.

What is more troubling is that he faced this ultimatum at all. What right does the executive of any board, association, team, group or collection of marbles have to censor freedom of speech? Benjamin Franklin once said that "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

By the way if you think this position is in contradiction with some of my other posts, check your premises. I fully advocate freedom of speech. I also advocate that you don't have to agree with something just because some other person said so.

It's interesting that both examples of governmental structures that have resulted in the greatest mass murders of their own citizens, being fascism and communism, both hold censorship in high regard.

Oh yeah, they are both against citizen ownership of firearms, but that's an argument for a different day.

The Goracle wins an Oscar

2007-03-02T18:00:00.000-05:00

This in and of itself should communicate the reality of the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

1. CNN was right after all. Facts are irrelevant in the production of a nice story.

2. There are many drugs in Hollyweird. Apparently many of the voters for the Oscars dragged themselves away from their cocaine mirrors, heroin syringes, tequila shooters and buckets of methaphetamine sulphate to vote for old Al. Unfortunately they confused Gore with More

As in More Dope for Dopeheads.

Our planet is truly screwed. And not by global warming either.

What really creeps me out is how technology visionaries such as Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt can listen to this buffoon.

Denis Corderre is a scum-sucking mud pig

2007-03-02T17:40:00.000-05:00

Anyone who is a moron at this level must be a scum-sucking mud pig. To make a personal attack on a man like General Hillier who has served his country for crap pay and put himself in the line of fire for his entire adult life is beyond the pale.

General Hillier is trained to defend himself against all manner of attacks save the kind of slur made by the dishonourable minister. It's most regrettable that the General cannot respond in a manner appropriate to putting minister shitbird in his proper place.

I'm in denial. Apparently

2007-02-23T14:05:00.000-05:00

I had lunch with my good friend Chris yesterday and we were lamenting the politics of fear and bafflegab that has become of reasonable concerns about global warming. Chris pointed out that he had been attacked for asking where the data was on this subject. He was said to be denying the fact of global warming and that doing so was akin to denying the holocaust. Obviously I was shocked and dismayed.

I admit that I'm tired of the hyperbole laden rants of the Goracle (thanks to the National Post for that one) and Saint David of Suzuki.

Now let's be clear on this. I'm green. I bought fluorescent bulbs to replace incandescents when they were $16 each. I have six blue boxes in my yard. I'm very environmentally conscious and fully subscribe to the reality of climate change. That I am not yet convinced by my own investigations that global warming is real is also true since much of the "data" is highly filtered and by the Goracle's own admission, extemporated to make a point.

Here's the catchphrase for tomorrow. Environmental Fundamentalism. Nearly as much fun as religious fundamentalism but with trees!

Justin Trudeau

2007-02-23T13:26:00.000-05:00

Young Mr. Trudeau has announced he will be a candidate for nomination to run for the Liberals in Quebec. How nice for him. Perhaps if elected he will not be the psychotic and delusional cretin pre-loaded in his genetic makeup. What's fascinating is the public obsession with "stars". Justin Trudeau is really no different than any other young person who believes that he or she would make a good candidate for the party of his or her choice, but he gets national coverage like he's a prince of the realm. Mind you, photographers crawl out of the trees when Belinda Stronach carries a box from the curb to the door, so we already know that relevancy is determined by photogenic quality instead of capability.

Since when did Wikipedia become an authoritative source?

2007-02-23T13:19:00.000-05:00

In a series of conversations, I've discovered something terrifying. There's a large portion of the populace who think that what they read on Wikipedia is actually verified fact. Wikis by their nature are collaborative, but there is NO fact checking. I recently had to review some essays as part of a conference and all of them cited Wikipedia in the bibliography.

Let's be clear, last person in to the Wiki wins. Personally, I'm posting regularly that the generic Canadian pig is capable of flight. If I post often enough, it will be "true".

Liberal leadership slips in polls

2007-02-21T13:54:00.000-05:00

So the data from a recent poll indicates that the honeymoon is over for Stephane Dion. His much vaunted environmental stance has ranked him equal to PM Stephen Harper, the man Dion assures us doesn't care about the environment. Who cares most according to the poll? NDP leader Jack Layton. It might even be true since the NDP don't actually care about jobs, economics or other elements of fiscal reality. More to the point is that the pollsters actually found some reasonable people to poll. That said, I'd be curious to discover the demographics of the poll respondents. Want to bet that there were enough polled from the People's Republic of Toronto to sway the vote in favour of Layton?

You could kill someone with that PC

2007-02-19T10:39:00.000-05:00

While I know many fine people who work at Microsoft and believe that they show up for work every day trying to make a difference, I had to laugh at this piece of news from Ulan Bator. A young man had received a used Dell PC for the holidays instead of the Macintosh he wanted. He attempted to make due, but when the machine crashed again while he was downloading some videos from the net, (all legal I'm sure), the fellow decided to test gravity's effects on the PC and heaved it out the window. No one was hurt. Thanks to MacDailyNews for the story and the priceless little graphic.

Does the truth have a best before date?

2007-02-19T10:25:00.000-05:00

In Parliament, the Federal Liberals have charged the conservative party with stacking the judiciary. This is patently untrue, nor specifically surprising since the Liberals have proven to continually make up stories. The Conservatives have made appointments to the Judiciary ADvisory Councils as required of the party in power. Unlike what the Liberals did in their thirteen years of lying and cheating, the Conservatives have not appointed party loyal apparatchiks to Judge positions. When the Liberals were challenged in the media, they back pedaled to claim that the Conservatives were not exercising partisan politics (16 of 84 appointees with Conservative loyalties is hardly partisan) but were picking the "wrong kind" of people. What incredible arrogance and defiance of reality. How Canadians can support these leeches is completely beyond me.

Global Warming vs Earth Destruction

2007-02-18T10:15:00.000-05:00

In my last post I took to task the preachers of global calamity around global warming.

Since climate change has happened and is highly probable to keep happening without human intervention or interference, how about focusing on the real problems.

China has an exploding economy. How nice for them. Too bad the average Chinese citizen still suffers under the totalitarian fist of the People's Republic. But China is the UN's golden child so everything is A-OK over there.

No it isn't.

China will bring on line over 500 coal fired power generating plants in the next five years. Burning coal is neither clean nor effiicent. If you don't agree, look to the former Soviet Union's water and arable land table where years of coal burning runoff and particulate fallout have created a highly toxic environment. Coal particulate is lightweight, floats easily and can span the globe in a short period of time and when it falls to earth, has a reasonable probability of darkening the planet. So what?

In the heat of summer, why do people turn to light coloured or white clothing? Because it reflects more light, reducing heat absorption. Hence the wearer stays cooler.

How about instead of allowing "emerging economies" to build coal plants and buying their "carbon credits" get in there and build cleaner power generation plants. China already has nuclear weapons so why not use the nuclear capability for something useful, like power.

I'm not picking on China, they just happen to be the poster child for pollution.

Want to make a real difference? Stop listening to babbling idiots and use your voice to argue against coal burning fuel plants, support the development of alternate energy collection systems, stop the deforestation of the rain forests and North America's western coast and tell your kids to quit throwing their damn McDonald's bags out of the windows of their cars.

Get a grip people.

Global Warming as the new Religion

2007-02-18T09:57:00.000-05:00

Canada's National Post recently postulated that Global Warming is the new religion. A reasonable idea. Both are upheld by millions of people with no dependency or desire for factual evidence, both are supported by "learned writings" that are heavily filtered and both have advocacy camps that hate each other.

Whatever you do believe about the concept of global warming or cooling for that matter, is that by best evidence humans have populated the planet in some iteration for a very small proportion of planetary existence, a timespan earth scientists place at around 4.5 billion years. In that time, documented evidence shows that the planet has been both much warmer and much colder than it is today. These changes occured without coal fired energy plants, five billion people or the rising of the lost continent of Atlantis. It is highly probably that the earth's climate would vary regardless of humanity's presence or not.

Moreover the Kyoto accord, contrary to major media and the proselytizers in government has much less to do with controlling global warming than taking hard earned money from countries who are producers and putting it in the hands of non-producers or countries that are economically "disadvantaged", a euphemism for being so poorly managed that they dug a hole, jumped in and pulled the earth in over top of themselves. You want to help a country that's in economic trouble, knock yourself out, but stop lying that it's about the environment. Like most initiatives sanctioned by the United Nations, a clear cause of global warming for the amount of hot air it generates, Kyoto is a lie and anyone who tells you different is either a) a liar or b) too lazy to do his or her own research or c) both.

About the only thing going for those wanting to see some unfiltered science work is the presence of Al Gore as the pope of global calamity. Gore admitted to taking to hyperbole in his little film because its "ok to do that to get the message across". Al Gore is a big fat liar. Remember when he invented the internet?

If you are genuinely interested in the study of planetary climate change then go for it, do your own research. Trusting the media or politicians is akin to trusting your children with pedophiles. You can do it, but it clearly indicates that you need more chlorine in your gene pool. One source of contrarian information is the book State of Fear by Michael Crichton. It's certainly not his best story but is valuable for the citations listed on planetary climatology. Crichton vacillates wildly in the quality of his fiction writing, but he is nothing if not a scrupulous researcher and to his credit doesn't take a personal position when it comes to research. That said, don't believe him either, but do your research.

If you don't think for yourself you deserve what you get, and that often means becoming Sunday night's mutton.

Daylight Savings Time Gotcha

2007-02-17T09:22:00.000-05:00

In case you haven't been paying attention or caring for that matter, governments in Canada, the USA and Australia have pushed around the dates for the start and end of Daylight Savings Time. Most every OS on the planet is NOT ready for this change, and neither are most devices that autoswitch.

Unless you want time dependent events screwed into a ball, get out to the OS manufacturers and yell about DST fixes. In fairness, many have them in place already and some, like Apple, push the fix out automatically. If you use a Blackberry you need the 2007DST fix. You can get it from them or if your Blackberry is on an Enterprise Server your admin should have pushed the fix out to you.

Make sure you apply your fixes before March 12.

Bug Hunt

2007-02-17T09:20:00.000-05:00

No OS is perfect, all have security fixes to be applied. Shame though to see a major fix this week for Windows Defender, part of the built in "improved" security in Windows Vista. Didn't this product release two weeks ago? Yikes!

The Vista is bland

2007-02-17T09:09:00.000-05:00

After Vista's recent announcment and including the release of Office 2007 you would have thought that someone stole the media's lunch money. Vista isn't exploding out of the gates as it were. In fact Steve Ballmer told Wall Street that their revenue expectations might be overly optimistic. I admit to feeling a bit bad for all the developers who worked hard over the last six years to build Vista and the new office suite but timing is everything. People's computers do everything that they need, so there isn't the same rush for new hardware. The average user cannot fill 250gb let alone the terabytes being offered.

Let's face facts here. Vista offers very little net new value to XP users but adds a ton of complexity and "hard to use" The new architecture in Office 2007 however innovative is making existing Office users blanch because of massive relearning. At MacWorld Expo a PM for the Microsoft Mac BU indicated that the vaunted "ribbon" from Office 2007 wouldn't be included in Office for Macintosh 2008 for usability reasons. Microsoft has spent a ton of money on development and on advertising and the net net is that very few people care.

People looking at operating systems and PCs have real alternatives today. When people come to me and ask "after 25 years in IT what would you do, I ask some basic questions about needs, existing data and app dependencies and 9 times out of 10 I suggest that they look at either a Macintosh and OS X or a traditional PC running SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. Yes I think Linux is ready for the general user and I also think that SLED is the best general purpose and business desktop of all the Linux distributions. For roughly $60 Canadian per year, I get a stable, secure and reliable OS, hundreds of applications to do the things I want to do, file level transparency with Office 2003, but no viruses, no blue screens, and no need to go buy really expensive hardware that doesn't even have good Windows drivers.

Some analysts have said that we've reached the end of the giant monolithic OS. Maybe. We've definitely reached the end of giant monolithic OSes that don't really offer much to the user who is asked to pay exhorbitant fees for very darn little.

Federal liberals - Oxygen Thieves

2007-02-16T08:40:00.000-05:00

Two feats of momentous idiocy from the Federal Liberals this week;

First they backed off extending the anti-terror initiatives that they started when in power, for fear of government "abuse". The initiatives have never been used. And now Canada's oil sands projects have been explicitly threatened by Islamic extremists. What a great time to take the eye off the ball.

Secondly they voted not to support a plan to have minimum sentences for the use of a firearm in a criminal act. They did over thirteen years enact a Firearm Registry that has cost Canadians billions of dollars without stopping a single crime. Criminals it seems, have no fear of using a gun in the commission of a crime, and also don't feel the need to register their firearms with the government.