RSS
Merry Christmas!
It's Christmas, there is snow on the ground, and there are gifts strewn about our family room. Even the dogs are playing with their new bones.
Merry Christmas to all!
Powered by Bleezer
Recent Posts
Archives
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
The things we take for granted.
Everyone wants money.
I started reading my morning paper today, only to find that everyone wants money. It started with the headline about Detroit auto companies demanding to be bailed out. Then the Grand Philharmonic Choir wanted more money because they were having problems. Then literacy groups wanted more funding. Then the Region of Waterloo Swim Club wanted the local council to save their pool.
We already live in a city that can't seem to manage its' finances, thinks it is perfectly fine to give out raises in a time of economic crisis, and just raise taxes as necessary to pay for it, without regard for the taxpayers.
I'd like more money too, but as a taxpayer, I guess all I get to do is give - more and more.Seriously, does this ever end?
Powered by Bleezer
Apparently size does matter.
A recent survey indicates that women may prefer the internet to sex:
An online survey commissioned by Intel has found, among other things, that 46% of women would rather go without sex for two weeks than give up the Internet for that long. The numbers get bigger for certain age groups; 49% of women aged 18-34 would make that choice, and 52% of women aged 35-44.
Since the vastness of the internet is preferred to their mates, I guess size really does matter.
Powered by Bleezer
Contract iphone development.
I'm currently finishing up development of a couple of iPhone applications on contract. I live in Waterloo, Canada, where companies seem to prefer not to hire contractors. So I find myself looking for contract opportunities for iPhone application development.
Complexity isn't a problem. I've just finished porting a large Symbian Java application to iPhone, as well as an open-source project.
So if you are looking for contract iPhone application development, you can reach me via email at larry@larryborsato,com, or by phone at 519-572-4435.
Powered by Bleezer
Apparently we need the government to take care of us.
A CBC article about the City of Toronto banning bottled water and forcing retailers to charge 5 cents per plastic bag attracted this comment:
Let's face it, taxes are how government prompts us to do things that are in our own best interests -- tax cigarettes to discourage smoking, and tax alcohol to encourage moderation, etc... 5 cents is pretty cheap, but if it encourages folks to bring a bag along, then that's great -- job done, and no one gets any tax money. If some idiots believe it's better to buy bags at the check-out rather than buy a box of biodegradable bags for a penny each, then let the morons pay their extra tax. We can use the funds to try remedial education about home economics, and then that same tax can given them a reason to prefer the choice that's better for them long-term.
Unfortunately this seems to be the prevalent view in Canada; that people won't do "the right thing" unless the government punishes us or forces us to.My doctor would tell you that a drink a day is good for you, but this person has decided that it must be taxed to force moderation. And if this person thinks that biodegradeable bags are available for a penny each then they haven't walked through a grocery store in a few decades. "Biodegradeable" is clearly code for "expensive".
Taxes were once created to fund common needs like wars or roads or other infrastructure - but they rarely seem to be used for that purpose today. Now they are apparently used to force people to change their social behaviour. For example, smokers and drinkers are punished heavily, though both are completely legal. And governments make arbitrary rules to limit comsumer choice. Bottled water is banned, though soda in plastic bottles is ok.
We've become the victims of some huge social experiment, where we are the ones who pay the price both financially, as well as with our freedoms. Of course the goals are always "right", so we must be wrong.
Last week I was in Manhattan, and when shopping I typically received a paper, not plastic, bag. The bags were sturdy and held up well as I walked home with my purchases. This is almost never the case in Canada, where I typically receive a shoddy plastic bag that rips before I leave the store. Perhaps the answer is not to punish me for using plastic bags, but to provide me a good paper bag.
Stop trying to punish my behaviour with taxes; use them instead for what they were intended to do. And then give me better choices.
Powered by Bleezer
Grace under pressure.
I was just leaving the FAO Schwarz store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Black Friday when I happened to bump into the CEO. He was standing outside the store introducing himself and thanking people for supporting his store.
I was impressed that a CEO would take the time - especially on such a busy day - to personally thank customers. But I was also impressed at how well the store seemed to be running that day, and how pleasant all of the staff seemed to be. And this was at noon or so, when the day had already been hours long for them.
You can tell a lot about the culture of the company by how they perform in a difficult situation. And I can't imagine a more difficult situation than the day after Thanksgiving. Yet these people were handling things as if they dealt with this kind of pressure every day - flawlessly demonstrating incredible grace under pressure.
Powered by Bleezer
I hate to say I told you so.
Six months ago I suggested that RIM would be giving up its competitive advantage over the iPhone if the eliminated they keyboard.
It seems that now that the BlackBerry Storm is out David Pogue agrees with me:
The first sign of trouble was the concept: a touch-screen BlackBerry. That’s right — in its zeal to cash in on some of that iPhone touch-screen mania, R.I.M. has created a BlackBerry without a physical keyboard.Hello? Isn’t the thumb keyboard the defining feature of a BlackBerry? A BlackBerry without a keyboard is like an iPod without a scroll wheel. A Prius with terrible mileage. Cracker Jack without a prize inside.
Powered by Bleezer
Mobile? Not so much.
I'm flying to New York on Air Canada tomorrow, and today I received an email telling me that I could check in and print my boarding pass, or I could use their paperless checkin on my mobile phone:
You can now use Web Check-in or Mobile Check-in up to 24 hours prior to departure every time you travel. Select your seat, print your boarding pass, and even stand-by for an earlier flight or upgrade if eligible.For Mobile Check-in, log on to mobile.aircanada.com and try out our new paperless boarding pass. Be sure to have your boarding reference number (XXXXXX) ready.
So I immediately went to use the mobile checkin on my iPhone, the pre-eminent mobile phone, only to see this message:
Only WML enabled devices are authorized to use this application.
Apparently the folks at Air Canada haven't yet considered the possibility that mobile users might have full featured browsers.
Powered by Bleezer
So desperate they're giving them away?
Best Buy Canada currently has a promotion on where purchasers of a 16GB Zune get a free 4Gb Zune:
Best Buy Canada is currently having an online promotion that gives buyers a free 4GB Microsoft Zune music player for every 16GB Zune purchased. The 16GB Zune is priced at $180 CAD (about $141), with the 4GB Zune thrown in for free is valued at nearly $100. Canadian and US 16GB Zunes have recently been reduced to $180, among price drops to other Zune models.
Is it possible that Microsoft is so desperate to increase market share that they are now just giving them away?Strangely the website currently says that they are out of stock, but also claims a quantity remaining of 57.
Powered by Bleezer
Taxing toilets? Wait, you're serious?
Yes, water experts in Australia want to tax toilets:
HOUSEHOLDERS would be charged for the amount of water they flushed down the drain under a radical new blueprint to cut consumption, the Sunday Mail reports.The scheme would replace the current regime which sees sewerage charges based solely on a home's value and not its waste water output.
In Canada sewage charges closely mirror the water input so it is pretty much the same thing. It just sounds worse when you call it a toilet tax, but that's pretty much what it is.
Powered by Bleezer
Rogers. Where the customer is always wrong.
I've been a customer of Rogers Cable since we moved to Canada from Boston. I've had a digital cable box for most of that time. The other day I received a letter saying that my digital box may be incorrectly connected. I use it every day so I'm not sure how that could be, but I do often have problems using their On Demand service, so I thought I'd take a look.
The website - rogershelp.com/boxfix - asks me to enter my account number from the upper right hand corner of my bill. My account number looks like this: 9-9999-9999. The application says this:
Your account number does not appear correct - it should follow the format 999-999999999 (3 digits, dash, 9 digits).
Now I'm willing to bet that this is happening because I receive a single bill for all of my Rogers services, but I'm sure that they should know that. So here's a note for the people at Rogers: Get your act together before you insist that I'm wrong when I do exactly what you tell me to do and it doesn't work.
But then again, Rogers service sets the bar pretty low so I've come to expect very little in the way of actual service. I signed my son up for a new mobile account recently and he got a new phone, which came via courier a few days after I ordered it. We didn't get around to trying it until almost a month had passed and it didn't work at all, and I called them about it pretty much on the 30th day after we got it,
Customer service insisted that I only had 30 days to call from the time the phone was purchased, regardless of when I received it, and I would have to send it in to be repaired. I asked them to pass me on to the Customer Relations group. Yes you need to know that it exists and ask for it specifically - they won't tell you about it. When I explained the problem to these folks they told me that they would send me a new phone and I could return the old one, which seemed to me like the obvious solution.
Honestly, how hard is this kind of thing? Doesn't it seem like common sense?
Powered by Bleezer
Southern California
I've been listening to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys since I was a little kid, and it never fails to brighten my no matter what else is happening. But by far the nicest song I've heard in a long time is Southern California from Brian's new album That Lucky Old Sun.
It's a sweet ballad about his life with the Beach Boys and how dreams do come true. It does seem to make me want to be in California more than usual.
And as always, it makes my day.
Powered by Bleezer
$337.5 million.
As Mark Evans notes, that's what you could buy Nortel for yesterday. The entire company.
When I worked for Nortel ten years ago that was what they would pay to acquire a small company. Now the company has essentially been mismanaged into the ground. Yet the executives have benefitted handsomely, often based on what appeared to be completely made up revenue numbers.
I was working for Bay Networks when Nortel bought them. Bay had about 8,000 employees to Cisco's roughly 18,000, and they were doing about three times our revenue. The merged Bay-Nortel had about 90,000 employees, and Cisco was still beating us every time. I wondered at the time what all of those people did; I can see now that it was mostly nothing since they are somewhere south of 30,000 and the situation is pretty much the same.
Perhaps they'll make a nice acquisition target for Cisco now, They they can keep the useful products and kill the rest. Then maybe my stock will be worth more than $10. And I don't mean per share. The current executive team has failed miserably and should just voluntarily resign.
Powered by Bleezer
Got election fever?
If you're trying to keep up on what's happening as the polls report, thanks to Google you can see it right here:
Powered by Bleezer
Shortage of truth?
When I moved to Canada from Boston I went to the state-run liquor store to buy some tequila only to find that a 26 oz bottle was around $45. When I asked why the price was so high, the store staff told me that it was because of a worldwide shortage of tequila. When I was in California a few weeks later, the local BevMo store didn't seem to be suffering from any shortage, with row upon row of 60 oz bottles for as low as $13.
Clearly there was no worldwide shortage of tequila; it is just an example of liquor price gouging. Even when the Canadian dollar was at par, a bottle of Patron that would be about $40 in the US was selling for $100 Canadian.
Today I saw this article about certain brands of scotch being pulled off the shelves in Canadian liquor stores:
NB Liquor's spirits sales grew by 3.5 per cent last year to roughly $90 million. So Clendenning said it isn't as if New Brunswickers aren't drinking enough scotch, but the supplier is just trying to capitalize on more lucrative countries."There are more profitable markets in the world," he said. "I'm told there is a worldwide shortage of scotch that may be driving up these prices."
A price of a bottle of some of the blended scotches starts at $23 and the single-malt scotches went up to $80.
Once again, the dreaded world shortage.You would think that this would be headline news. But lo and behold, a quick Google search shows that the only news about a shortage is the above article. It's a lot more likely that the more expensive scotches are being replace by those with a higher profit margin.
Powered by Bleezer
Depends what you mean by "buy".
If you buy something, but you aren't allowed to resell it to anyone else expect the manufacturer you bought it from, did you really "buy" it? Or are you just leasing it until you return it to the manufacturer?
Motorola seems set to do that with its new Aura mobile phone, contractually limiting you from reselling the phone, except to them, for some as yet unknown price.
With an unprofitable phone business and a just announced layoff of 3000, perhaps this is not the best time for Motorola to antagonize customers with these kinds of ridiculous tactics.
Powered by Bleezer
Common Sense Day.
My morning paper has an as for "Random Act Of Kindness Day" on Friday, November 14, 2008. I'm a big fan of random acts of kindness. But then again I'm also a fan of simple acts of courtesy like opening and holding doors for people, and saying please and thank you.
I've lately noticed a tendency though to create days to convince people to do on that day what they generally should be doing all of the time. We have "Remember the Blackout Day" to get people to save energy. We now have "Random Act Of Kindness Day" to get people to perform random acts of kindness.
Here's the thing. Creating a special days may make people act different on that day; it doesn't change their behaviour. Though it does seemingly turn some people into others' keepers. Witness those people who would chastise you for leaving a light on on Blackout Day.
Turning lights out when not needed is just common sense. And performing little random acts of kindness take almost no effort and make you feel so good. Again, simple common sense.
Perhaps we just need "Common Sense Day". And we should immediately follow that with "Personal Responsibility Day".
But in case you want to know more, here's the link.
Powered by Bleezer
No WiFi? Seriously?
Apparently thanks to Verizon, the BlackBerry Storm won't have WiFi:
You might have guessed it, but the reason is Verizon! We confirmed this a little while back with one of our really top-level sources (you know who you are!) and they did, in fact, confirm our suspicions — Verizon said hell to the no, we don’t play that up in here!
Okay, the truth is that I generally keep the WiFi turned off on my iPhone but I do turn it on when I download apps or other heavy data uses at home; it's just faster than 3G. The fact that the Storm doesn't just suggests a lack of concern for the user. I should at least have the choice on my own device.
Powered by Bleezer
Happy "Black and Orange Day"!
Courtesy of the Toronto District School Board:
A case in point: the Toronto District School Board has several “concerns” with respect to the imagery – and even the foodstuffs – associated with All Hallow’s Eve. In fact, some schools in Toronto and elsewhere now refer to Halloween as “Black and Orange Day,” fearing the H-word itself will be as potentially offensive to certain groups as Christmas may be for some non-Christians.
There's actually an entire policy to ensure that nobody is offended. Except for those with even the slightest bit of common sense.
I wonder how many meetings, attended by how many people, it took to think this one up. And was there even a single complaint to prompt it?
Powered by Bleezer
Vista. Your problem. Not ours.
After telling users how much Windows Vista would WOW! them, and then finding out that it didn't run properly on many computers and users preferred to stay with Windows XP, Microsoft has decided to fix the problem.
By pretending that Windows Vista never existed it seems.
Microsoft has introduced Windows 7, the successor to Windows XP. Oops, I mean Windows Vista.
Of course it doesn't really exist yet. And when it does, if you were dumb enough unlucky enough to purchase a computer with Vistathen you can just cough up more money to buy one of the many versions of Windows 7 so that your computer might finally work the way Microsoft promised it would. Maybe.
Powered by Bleezer
Nothing generous about Ontario insurance benefits.
I noticed a letter to the editor in the Peterborough Examiner from Don Forgeron, Ontario Vice President for the Insurance Bureau of Canada. He makes this comment:
Alan Shanoff's column on Ontario auto insurance does not tell the whole story. He wants accident victims to have unfettered access to the courts so they can sue at-fault drivers for pain and suffering.But this would create a highly litigious and expensive auto insurance system that would force claims costs even higher.
He ignores the fact that Ontario drivers have fast access to an extremely generous set of accident benefits, paid by their own insurer, to cover medical rehab, lost income and other benefits.
My wife was in a rollover accident last July 16, when she was hit by a driver who went through a red light while on his cell phone. He walked away while she was taken to the hospital. She has been in constant pain, and unable to work ever since.
Let's talk about Mr. Forgeron's "generous benefits". Before my wife got a dime she had to use up all of her sick days and all of her extended health benefits. After she used up all of her benefits, they would only pay up to a maximum of $1800. At $91 per physical therapy visit and $60 per therapeutic massage, you do the math. If she was still in pain after that, too bad.
Her income replacement was capped at $400 per week, regardless of her salary. Not enough? Too bad. And that was only until her long term disability kicked in. After that she would get nothing. And I'm not sure what "other benefits" he was referring to.
And the whole time, the insurance company just kept telling us that "we needed to understand how the insurance industry worked". There was barely a hint of concern for what my wife was going through.
Of course the constant comment that "this is all legislation; there's nothing we can do".And if my wife can never work again, not only will she have lost the only career she ever loved, but we won't have her salary and the insurance company won't care.
I'm not sure how Mr. Forgeron can possibly consider those benefits generous. Yes Ontarians pay some of the highest rates I've ever seen. And get virtually nothing in return.
Powered by Bleezer
Where is the local information?
You would think that local media companies would be striving to be the source of all local information.
I saw an accident yesterday. Lots of police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks. Today, a day later, I wanted to see what had happened. I went to the local television station - a CTV affiliate - only to find nothing about it. There wasn't even a search box on the main page. What web site doesn't have a search box today?
I then checked the local newspaper. Again nothing.
Those are the two biggest media companies in the area, but neither provided simple information about a local event. If these companies can't even handle the business they're supposed to be in, how can they ever expect to be local hubs?
Powered by Bleezer
Digital isn't always better.
When I was a kid we only had about 12 television channels - all analog via antenna. We lived outside of Niagara Falls so we mostly got Buffalo stations, along with a couple of Toronto stations.
When we wanted to see what was on we often just flicked from station to station as fast as we could. We often watched two or more shows at the same time by flicking between them; the channel change was immediate.
When I got married and bought a house we got cable. We had about 60 channels then. The channels still changed almost as fast.
Now we have digital cable. Almost 1000 channels. The picture quality is about the same as it was thirty or forty years ago with the antenna.But there is one really bothersome problem.
It takes up to 10 seconds to change the channel. It simply isn't possible to rapidly switch from channel to channel. It's more switch and wait. And unlike the old analog days, there are often times where the digital signal does not decode properly, making it unwatchable.
Digital signals take up a lot less frequency than analog, and that means that cable companies can squeeze a lot more into the same space. But that isn't always an improvement for the viewer.
And besides, the quality of television programming really hasn't improved in all these years.
Powered by Bleezer
Two minute warning.
I'm aghast - and yes that word is so appropriate at the front page article in the New York Times about cutting computer start time, especially this comment:
“It’s ridiculous to ask people to wait a couple of minutes,” said Sergei Krupenin, executive director of marketing of DeviceVM, a company that makes a quick-boot program for PC makers. “People want instant-on.”
Now I know that it can occasionally be a bother waiting when you need to get something done. But have we seriously gotten to the point where our lives are moving so fast that we can't wait two minutes - the time it takes to microwave a frozen burrito - to start working on our PCs?
Make a phone call. Grab a coffee. Or just sit back, take a deep breath, and enjoy life for a moment. Because twenty years can go by so quickly that when you look back you'll wish that you had all of those little two minute times back.
And it won't be so that you could have worked more.
Think of it as a two-minute warning.
Powered by Bleezer
Do you even know what honesty means?
Orson Scott Card has some thoughts on the state of journalism today:
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.
Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.
Read the whole thing.
Tip of the hat to small dead animals.
Powered by Bleezer
Acting small.
Wisdom from Seth Godin:
A small acting bank would never have invested in tens of thousands of loans that they hadn't looked at. And a small acting startup wouldn't hire dozens of people before they had a business model... and then have to lay off a third of them just because their VC firm showed them a scary PowerPoint.
This happened back in the dotcom crash of 2000 too.Companies that hired like crazy, or took huge risks, and then fell apart at the first sign of trouble.
If you are solving a problem for someone, you'll make sales. Even if you aren't solving a problem that they realize they have yet, you still have a chance if you pace yourself and don't do anything stupid.
People keep telling me how bad the economy is, and mention the wild swings of the stock market, but is the economy that much different than it was a few weeks ago? Other than the phenomenal greed of a few financial firms, with the expectation that the government will solve their problems for them?
The economy is only as bad as we make it out to be. As long as we behave normally, everything will probably continue to be normal. And taking a few extra minutes to act small - to do some due diligence, to apply a little common sense, or to think before we act - is always a good idea.
Or perhaps the real message in all this is that PowerPoint is evil. Just kidding. Maybe.
Powered by Bleezer
Advertising that feeds on itself.
First came the "Mac vs. PC" ads from Apple.
Then came the "I'm a PC" ads from Microsoft that tried to poke back at Apple.
And now we have Apple ads that poke fun at Microsoft's campaign that pokes at Apple.
I wonder if any of this actually helps to sell any more computers?
Powered by Bleezer
Macs have problems too.
Last week my Macbook failed to come out of sleep mode, and wouldn't boot. I dropped into single-user mode (Command-S + Power On in case you wanted to know) and found that I had a disk problem. I managed to start it from that point anyway, backed everything up, and by leaving it on all the time I got through the week.
On Saturday evening I reformatted the drive and reinstalled everything. A fairly simple process really - a fair bit easier than Windows if I recall correctly.
Yes Macs have problems too, but they never seem to be quite as painful.
Powered by Bleezer