Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

I spent some time in the healthcare informatics business, the people responsible for data and content in the medical world. I've seen a few articles recently about health care information; particularly regarding privacy and sharing. David Weinberger's post on the National Health Information Infrastructure (NHII) got me thinking.

Net users think in terms of internet protocols - simple connectivity and ease of information flow. Medical information isn't like that. It uses archaic, essentially proprietary protocols like DICOM and HL7, with nary a bit of XML in sight. Different specialties like Radiology and Cardiology don't always agree on protocols, or even terminology. A great deal of information is analog rather than digital, and plenty is still captured on paper. Security of the information is a concern as well.

The NHII aims to improve the secure movement and usage of patient health care information. David suggests that if patients don't trust the system, they won't provide information. That isn't really accurate though; information is created (and provided) everytime we visit our primary care physician, a clinic, a hospital, or any other healthcare provider. The data exists, so we need to ensure that it is secure, yet can be used by those providers who need it. The holy grail of healthcare informatics is the Electronic Patient Record, a patient's lifetime record of their health history, care, and treatment. That is what the NHII can help achieve, allowing providers to have a clearer picture of a patient's case history.

Doing away with some of the arcane protocols and adopting more flexible web standards would be a start.

Imagine if you threw a protest and nobody came.

President Bush visited Canada today and met with primarily muted protests. A large anti-Bush crowd was expected, but according to The Globe and Mail there was "a crowd of several hundred protesters". The CBC reported that "as many as 5,000 protesters thronged the streets around Parliament Hill." This CBC blog indicates that crowd estimates by police ran from 2500-4000, though the protesters stated that there were 15,000 people there.

Most of the coverage was quite relaxed, except for this Toronto Star article (registration may be required), which referred to the president as "defiant."

Apple now has its own corporate blog. And so far it sounds very corporate too.

(Link from Om Malik)

Today's edition of CBC Radio's The Current had a segment on blogging with respect to ongoing concerns about potential fraud in the 2004 US election.

Update: Oops. I assumed that my dad had sent me something from an old copy of the magazine; he does save such things. Unfortunately this is a hoax. The picture is a heavily modified version of an submarine control panel exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution, pictured here. You can read more at Snopes.com.

My first clue should have been when both my sons, obviously much smarter than me, asked what the steering wheel was for. I just assumed it was an early pointing device.

As I was doing the last post I noticed a comment at the bottom of the UPI story:

Want to use this article? Click here for options!
Copyright 2004 United Press International

Personal Use

Anyone is free to make one copy for personal use. This can include one photocopy, one printed copy, one email copy, or posting an HTML link (without text or photos). This includes use by a student for an academic purpose. Click on the article title above to go back to the article. From there, you can print (or use) the content as described here.

The content will be used by one person, for personal reference, and will not be copied or redistributed to any other person in any form.

AlwaysOn mentioned this on November 21st, and United Press International has a story today about a woman who posted an ad on craigslist for a kidney donor for her brother who needs a transplant because of a rare blood cancer. Five people responded, one of whom is still in the running as a potential kidney donor.

Jeremy Zawodny wonders if bloggers are so dumb that they take the appearance of marijuana on Target's site to be a national crisis. Steve Rubel did go a bit far by calling it a PR crisis.

I just thought it was funny and had a good laugh. A search for marijuana on Target's site turns up several books and DVDs about marijuana, so it was no big deal.

Not everything has to be serious all of the time. And look at the conversation value Target has generated this weekend alone.

Not really, but I've seen a few blogs refer to the story of the Alaskan girl who killed mer mom. The original news stories, around November 21, fail to identify her as a blogger, but I notice that Boing Boing refers to an Associated Press story dated November 23 that refers to her online journal.

I hope that this isn't going to lead to criminal defenses like "the blogosphere made me do it", similar to when we used to hear that rock music, or more recently the internet made me commit that crime.

Microsoft is seeking an education-related patent for a "System and method for providing instructional feedback to a user", something for which there ought to be plenty of prior art - perhaps like every electronic educational toy ever made.

A closer look reveals that the patent suggests that a multimedia tablet PC can be used to instruct, or correct, a student as they go through the process of learning to print, or perhaps do long division. By seeing the work as the student does it, the computer can correct it and suggest hints through the various stages. To quote the patent:

Additionally, unlike traditional teaching environments, the user may be provided with immediate instructional feedback, rather than competing for the limited time of a teacher.

(Link via Techdirt)

We were having dinner with a couple who are friends of ours last night at a fairly upscale restaurant in town. The husband is allergic to alcohol, and we were also talking about how so many kids these days are allergic to things like nuts. We then realized that a large number of items on the menu contained nuts of various kinds, so the place wasn't exactly allergy friendly. And when we considered ordering a specialty coffee I realized that my friend couldn't join me.

It occurred to me that it might not be that difficult to create specialty coffees that were alcohol free, not only for those with allergies, but also those who prefer not to drink for whatever reason. Does this sort of thing exist already, or is there even a market for it?

Allergies seem to have increased substantially from one generation to the next. In about 10-20 years it might be mandatory for all restaurants to be nut-free, just as so many schools are today. But for now, wouldn't this be a great marketing benefit for a restaurant? After all, while it used to be acceptable to smoke in restaurants, nobody does now. This could be a new trend.

Russell Beattie makes a pretty convincing argument that Apple will launch a mobile phone. Ross Mayfield thinks that they will WiFi-enable the iPod first, something I've asked about too, and for which a patent exists.

If they're going to all that trouble, why not combine some things. People are already comfortable with form factors like the iPod, the Treo, and the Blackberry. So why not combine the iPod Mini with smart phone technology, a mini-keyboard and a camera? Currently cost would be a factor, as well as space constraints. Motorola is already claiming they have a "mini iPod that makes phone calls" though that might be a bit of a stretch.

InsideGoogle informs us that we can now buy marijuana at Target for a very reasonable price, with free delivery for a minimum purchase. Wow, you really can get more than ever at Target.

Perhaps Firefox has proven that of you build a better mousetrap (or browser) the work will beat a path to your door.

Of course it probably helps a lot if people really dislike the company that makes the other mousetrap. Or, in a more appropriate analogy, if the other mousetrap tends to attract far worse pests than just mice.

I spent the morning with my oldest son, now a college freshman, looking for a backpack that provided room for all of the stuff he carries. This isn't particularly an issue of size or volume, but of accommodation for various things like laptop, PDA, cell phone, iPod, etcetera. We tried office supply, electronics, snowboard, and outdoor stores, but just couldn't find anything that fulfilled all of his requirements. As we trudged from store to store, I wondered if he was that different from the average teen, many of who carry plenty of electronics.

We even tried the on-campus store, where there was not a single backpack with a laptop compartment, though given that his school is known form engineering and computer science I expect that some students do have laptops. Is my son that different, or are manufacturers that far behind the curve?

Television executives are concerned about rampant file sharing of television programs like Desperate Housewives and West Wing. But these shows are freely available on broadcast television, commercials included. For years people have recorded them. Now PVRs and TiVo allow customers to record and timeshift them, deciding when they want to watch a show, rather than allowing the networks to control their time. "Must see tv" is now "When I feel like it tv". What concerns the executives now is the sharing of these programs through the internet.

If something is free though, then how can I be "stealing" it? And since it is freely broadcast to everyone, the how is sharing really a problem. It does of course decrease the value of the rerun of a show. It also seemingly affects the resale of program seasons on DVD. Yet even with file sharing freely available, DVD sales of television programs are rocketing skyward. And I expect that most people still find it more convenient to have the commercial DVD of the shows with all the bonus stuff, rather than the downloaded copy.

It is more likely that if this trend continues, the networks cannot guarantee their advertisers a particular number of viewers in a particular time slot, so the value of a commercial slot drops in price. After all, it is all about the money, not the viewer or the show.

A couple of days ago I mentioned the 25 year old Romanian stripper who was given permission to stay in Canada. According to today's Globe and Mail newspaper, Canada's "stripper visa program" was introduced to rectify a shortage of exotic dancers, granting more than 550 temporary visas to Romanians last year.

A spokesman for Human Resources Minister Joe Volpe indicated the program would be scaled back, stating "I can guarantee you it will change this time."

This kind of thing probably wouldn't have happened if the NHL wasn't on strike.

Along the lines of Seth Godin's IdeaVirus, things seem to propagate around the blogosphere. It would be interesting to be able to graphically picture how an idea spreads, and who infects whom. BlogPulse attempts to do this, but requires me to find the initial link in the chain, or the carrier so to speak.

Why can't I just type in my concept or idea, and have an engine of some sort (Google?) find the first occurrence, follow the path of infection, and then map it for me graphically?

Is it possible that the nature of the internet would make it ideal for modeling actual viruses? This might actually aid in the prevention of both computer and human viruses.

The variegated interests combined with the self-referential nature of the blogosphere means that lots of cool new ideas get propagated quickly, then longer. The "long tail" is a spectacular example of this. Taken from an article appearing in the October issue of Wired, the long tail is in essence the ignored end of what we used to think of as Pareto's 80/20 rule. The thinking was that we could get 80% of the revenue from 20% of the customers, so we could ignore the other 80%. The other 80% are the long tail.

The long tail is of course the talk of all bloggers today, as they give their views of the value of the long tail. It isn't new though; it has always existed just by different names. Think hippies, or lunatic fringe. Think early adopters. Ross Mayfield took Robert Scoble to task today for confusing the long tail with the technology adoption curve, but that isn't hard to do because early adopters are part of the long tail - they're just a part that we now address thanks to Geoff Moore.

Fifty years ago Frederick's of Hollywood made a pretty good living out of addressing a need for mail-order trashy lingerie, certainly not something any proper woman would want to be seen buying. More recently Victoria's Secret addressed a need for more upscale lingerie and as a result became a cultural icon.

While the internet has certainly provided an incredible solution to the problem of economies of scale by allowing customers and sellers to have a very effective conversation, and eliminating the need for bricks and mortar stores, it is in no way new. Mail order houses of all kinds have made a pretty good living doing exactly this for years.

The long tail has existed since kids were buying x-ray specs from comic books. Many successful businesses have sprung up to serve parts of the long tail, like specialty bookstores. In the seventies, Saturday Night Live had a running sketch about a scotch tape store. Starbucks has made a fortune addressing the needs of upscale coffee drinkers who don't mind spending $4 for a coffee - certainly not representative of the average 80% of Americans. eBay is the epitome of addressing the long tail.

The difference now is that it is possible for one company, like eBay or Amazon, to address and have visibility and measurement of the long tail. This is unlike what we saw as niche segments before - like La Perla, Victoria's Secret, Frederick's, or Sears lingerie - all addressing different needs for the same product. But Robert Scoble is right in saying that the next big companies will come from the long tail. Only they'll come faster, like Google did, because they can see the whole tail and address it by moving and learning quickly. And smaller departments at Microsoft could too.

I started to write this because I was tired of hearing about the long tail. But look, I've gone and propagated it again.

Everybody wants to control the rights to their intellectual property, and ensure that I don't copy it illegally. It seems that some people would even like to eliminate fair use, which I personally believe will limit our ability to innovate based on existing intellectual property. However, I feel that the desires if copyright owners, and especially groups like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) might be more palatable if they considered my rights as well.

For example, I believe that when I buy a movie or a song, I should have the perpetual right to use the copy of the song that I have purchased in any format or any medium I desire. This means that I can listen to that song at home, in my car, on my iPod, and on my computer, wherever and whenever I wish. I will not be forced to purchase multiple copies for different media. Furthermore I am not limited to 30 days of use or 5 subsequent copies; in fact I have no limitations on making copies for my own use whatsoever. In exchange I agree to not copy the song for anyone else, keeping it only for my personal use.

In the case of a book I should have the right to both the physical and digital copies so I can read it wherever I want.

I can't see the record companies agreeing to this because it means that since I bought the record once they couldn't sell me the CD, and then the song over iTunes again. They probably wouldn't willing to look past the immediate lost revenue to the increase over the long haul as everyone buys the perpetual rights to only the songs they want. And

In fact this mass customization of music to personal tastes probably would not have been possible in the past, but it certainly is possible over the internet. And I should not have to pay more than once for the right to listen/read/use something.

A few of Canada's top musicians are asking the federal government to update copyright law, claiming that the current situation has caused music sales to drop by a third - almost $500 million - in just a few years, as well as costing thousands of jobs and countless lost career opportunities. According to a Macleans article:

The industry tracked illegal downloads of Tragically Hip music for a month this year. Henderson said there were 2.8 million attempts to download Tragically Hip music, compared with 1,000 legal purchases through the on-line music store Puretracks.

"That translates to about a quarter-million records in a month," said Henderson.

The musicians also noted that the three-year, $95-million Canada Music Fund expires this year. They asked the government to provide long-term sustainable funding to the music industry. So they want to limit Canadian rights, take away the ability to copy music, keep taxing citizens as if they are copying music, and also take a few million more tax dollars.

Dana Blankenhorn says that of all the examples of Moore's Law that he has encountered, he has never found one for training. Is that because training has never really improved? Or because humans aren't improving?

Carl Zimmer, the author of Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, suggests that humans are evolving at a very slow pace. Unfortunately we are speeding up the pace of evolution in the rest of the natural world.

The City or Toronto, Canada has a program that allows poor children to get a computer and an internet connection, so they can continue to keep their grades up. The implication here is that only computers can help students do well in school.

I use the internet extensively, as does my entire family, and it is an extremely useful tool. But when did the internet become the only way way to learn? What about teachers, textbooks, and libraries?

According to MobileTracker today is the first anniversary of local number portability in the United States. According to the FCC, over 8 million people have changed carriers but kept their numbers in that time, and about 750,000 people have changed a landline number to a mobile phone.

USA Today has a wickedly funny piece about patent lawyers coming to the rescue of inventors like Allen Kaplan.

Kaplan is trying to protect his four patents that describe how a router would use computer chips to determine the best way to route information. Oddly he created these ideas in 1996, about 12 years after Cisco was founded to build routers, and about 23 years after Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet networking.

It costs ten times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing customer. So why do so many companies insist on going after the new customer at the expense of the existing customer?

My wireless provider, Rogers, is also my cable tv and high speed internet provider. I've been a customer since I moved to Canada 2 years ago. We have 4 mobile phones. Last year I spend over $4,000, and this year a little over $3,000 with the company. I wasn't overly happy with their treatment of me as a customer, so I now carry 2 phones, one for business and one for personal. So Rogers has lost about $1,000 in revenue from me, but they're still getting a pretty good chunk of change.

My wife's phone was getting on in years and needed replacing, so I called Rogers regarding a hardware upgrade. The operator told me that I don't spend enough on her phone - she is on a Family Plan and apparently they require me to spend over $200 per month in order to qualify, even though I am certainly willing to sign up for another 2 year term.

They will give a new customer a discount on a new phone, but the customer who spends over $3,000 per year isn't worth their time. So the upshot is that they saved the $100-$200 discount, and they lost $1,000 in revenue in one year from a long term customer. This same long term customer also realizes that for $200 he can buy his way out of his contract, and even more of their lost revenue will go to a competing wireless provider.

I'm sure that this scenario is repeated daily at every carrier, but what part of this basic math isn't clear? Banks are brilliant when it comes to treating their frequent (and profitable) customers well. Why don't wireless companies get it?

According to Reuters American Democrats considering immigrating to Canada to escape four more years of Republican rule would have to stand in line like any other would-be immigrants -- a wait that can take up to a year.

The wait is apparently much shorter for 25 year old Romanian strippers who work on the Immigration Minister's re-election campaign. Alina Balaican was granted a ministerial permit to stay in Canada and apply for landed immigrant status, ahead of tens of thousands of applicants trying to come to Canada legitimately.

I was reading an article by Tom Atlee on Citizen Deliberative Councils, and thinking that some organizations get it, while others don't. Clearly CDCs can be an excellent way for people to exercise their democratic power, and for governments to get a cross-sectional view of the public's thinking. Information sharing, as much as possible, should be a key to this process. After that they should disband, as Atlee says "having no permanent or official power except the power of legitimacy and widely-publicized common sense solutions to compelling public problems."

In my town we have a similar entity known as Advisory Councils. As a taxpayer I have no obvious way to determine who the people on the council are or how they were selected. Their work is not open for public consumption. In the case of one group, the RIM Park Advisory Council, they presented their report to city council, but the report regarding marketing of a sports facility is not available online to read. The city website does not provide either the composition of the council or the report, or if they do, the extremely poor excuse for site search is unable to find it.

Furthermore, the Advisory Council, including two city councilors, would like city council to convert it to be the oversight group of the facility, with carte blanche control over budgets, staffing, and marketing. They have stated that they expect no less and are unwilling to take no for an answer, because they have good ideas, but have not justified their experience running a similar facility. To its credit, the city council has said that without further study the answer is no.

Governments at all levels need to learn that the continued culture of secrecy is a recipe for failure. Oddly enough, the reason the facility needs to improve its marketing is a result of secrecy over the original deal to build it, and the attendant $33 million over the original price tag for the facility. One hopes that eventually they will learn their lesson.

(Link from David Weinberger)

Mark Evans suggests that expectations of VoIP penetration in Canada may be overstated "mostly because local phone service in Canada is so inexpensive it leaves little room for VOIP players to come in under the competition on price." Looking at my residential telephone bill I'm not sure I agree. My basic residence line consists of the following charges:

Line	19.13
Call Answer	7.00
Call Display with Name	8.00
911	0.21
Net Charge	2.95
Touch Tone	2.80
First Rate Overseas	2.80
------------------------------	-------
Total	45.04

For some reason I have the pleasure of paying a $2.80 Touch Tone fee. When was the last time you saw a non-touch-tone phone? Okay, my father does have one rotary phone. But why am I paying extra for a service that the telecom switch provides for free? It probably costs extra to provide rotary dial.

The First Rate Overseas charge gets me a 10 cent per minute rate for US and Canada long distance, and a discounted rate for Europe. Local calls within my area code are free. But I used about 670 minutes of long distance, so my bill was about $130.

The Vonage Premium Unlimited plan is $45.99, and includes Voice Mail and Caller ID with Name, plus unlimited US and Canada long distance. I currently pay $19.95 plus long distance charges (over $67 this month) for a total of about $87, meaning that Vonage would save me about $40 per month. While this isn't true for every Canadian, it certainly works out well for me, so I'm switching. I will keep a single generic phone line just in case, and I do like my phone number, so I'll forward it to my Vonage phone.

(Link courtesy of Om Malik)

According to worldchanging, if you make at least $47,500 a year, you're in the global top 1% of earners. You can go GlobalRichList, enter your income and currency, and see where you sit in the global scheme of things.

It also puts the situation of the world's population into somewhat stark relief.

I'm doing some work currently with a software company that thinks ahead. Every employee is issued a fairly powerful laptop and a mobile phone. Rather than office voice mail the call transfers to your mobile phone after four rings. They've been sharing information and collaborating with a wiki for three years. And for a $20 one-time fee you get a gym membership.

Tom Pearson, an an engineer with the US Agricultural Research Service in Kansas, has found a way to tell a ripe pistachio from an unripe one by the ping they make when the hit a hard surface. His device is 97% effective compared to 90% for the current needle sorters, much easier to maintain, and is expected to save one company over a half million dollars this year.

Email has certainly been the undoing of many people since it became popular, often providing evidence for trials and other legal situations. One such lawsuit against Microsoft by Burst.com has brought to light Microsoft's corporate policy of destroying all email after 30 days. According to Burst.com's filing, Jim Allchin, Microsoft Windows chief, told employees needed to purge their e-mail every 30 days.

"This is not something you get to decide," the filing quotes Allchin's e-mail as saying. "This is company policy. Do not think this is something that only applies to a few people. Do not think it will be OK if I do this; it hasn't caused any problems so far. Do not archive your mail. Do not be foolish. 30 days."

"To the best of your ability, I would like us to follow the general rule of around 30 days for e-mail. Some of you may be in unique circumstances that require particular information be kept for longer than 30 days to do your job effectively. My direction to you is that I want you to think about this issue at least once a month and delete items that are no longer needed, including all of your general e-mail. Don't just blindly archive e-mail."

My local Starbucks in Waterloo, Canada just got WiFi. It is provided by a local company, actually a joint venture between the local electricity companies, that provides both fiber and wireless connectivity in the local. I can sign up for a subscription to the service. Unfortunately, the subscription won't do me any good once I leave the area. Nobody with cross-country availability seems willing to step up to the plate to provide service that I can use in more than one town. This really limits the usefulness of WiFi. Say what you will about T-Mobile, but at least you can get service coast to coast.

When Walmart talks about cutting prices it is pretty clear that they are lowering the prices. They can use their massive purchasing power to bargain lower prices out of their suppliers. So I thought the concept of "price cut" was pretty clear.

Reading a department store flyer today I noticed that they advertised a "price cut" or $5, from $29.99 to $24.99, for a wine opener gift set. In fine print under the item was the following explanation:

When we say "Price Cut", we mean the existing everyday price is being lowered temporarily.

In discussing Steve Ballmer's claims about Linux patent violations, and the inaccuracies therein, Mike at Techdirt comments:

Either way, all this is showing is that these battles about software patents are focusing the competitive battle in exactly the wrong place. No one should be battling over who patented what part of which operating system, but on who has the better offering for the market.

Discussing the Intellectual Property Protection Act last month Senator John McCain stated his opposition to the bill, especially the anti-commercial skipping feature. He commented:

“Americans have been recording TV shows and fast-forwarding through commercials for 30 years. Do we really expect to throw people in jail in 2004 for behavior they’ve been engaged in for more than a quarter century?”

While Congress is busy trying to make it illegal for you to hit the fast forward button on commercials, CBS is about to release a study that finds that fast forwarding though commercials actually increases recall. Viewers were able to recall 23 percent of the commercials they fast-forwarded through. In presenting the report, Dave Poltrack, executive vice president-research and planning at CBS said "You wouldn't get that kind of recall if you asked people to watch a regular TV commercial."

Apparently Bill Gates gets four millions spams every day. And I thought I had it bad.

My current commute is about 45 minutes from Toronto to Waterloo in Canada. A few minutes from the office in Toronto the gas price was 70.5 cents per liter. Forty minutes away in Waterloo the price was 78.9 cents per liter. I've yet to hear a plausible explanation for this difference.

Lexmark and HP have admitted that they install spyware on printer users' computers.

The companies claim they use the software to understand customer behavior. Lexmark collects very specific data, such as the installation of the Lexmark product, the number of printed pages, the quantity of ink use, the type of printer and software used and the use of button commands, as well as the type of processor, the amount of memory, the capacity of the hard drive, and the name, version and linguistic parameters of the operating system. HP collects similar data, but asks the users to opt-in.

If only Congress was as concerned with protecting me from spyware as it is protecting record company profits.

According to The Globe and Mail, the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) has decided to allow Canadians to watch Fox News despite complaints about the station's "alleged ... ideological slant".

This is a big deal, because in Canada it is illegal to subscribe to any non-CRTC-approved television service. Now if only they would allow HBO.

I've got the perfect solution to the Digital Rights Management problem.

Let's stop sharing anything at all. We can stop using technology completely. We can stop innovating. We can stop collaborating completely.

Problem solved.

I had an interesting conversation with an artist who worked in stained glass and oils last night. When I mentioned I worked in marketing she asked me what I would suggest to create a buzz about art. She had heard the comment that "art is marketing" and was wondering how to connect the two. The community we live in is quite prosperous, but more known for its technology than its art. It got me thinking about how you define a value proposition for art.

My wife and I have decorated our home in country crafts and Americana; my office is an ode to Warren Kimble. For us it makes our home warm and cosy in a family kind of way. The art we have consists primarily of Tricia Romance reprints for her and Warren Kimble reprints for me. We don't have original art really, and we are definitely light on the framed stuff. We make (I cut the wood, she paints and makes it pretty) a lot of the things on our walls. So the value proposition for us is to make our house into the traditional "Home Sweet Home".

On the other hand, if you are willing to dish out serious coin for original art of some kind, what motivates you? Does it make you feel warm inside? Do you feel superior to others? Is it an investment? Does the reason depend on the type of art?

Is is possible to improve sales for artists by defining a clear value proposition for potential customers?

I always try to say "thank you" to people who work with me who have done exceptional work. It's easy, inexpensive, and it makes them feel proud of their accomplishment.

Some time ago I was managing a team on a large project. They pulled out all the stops to deliver a great product on time, a feat that was quite rare at this company. I asked the CEO to thank them in a simple email. His response? "We don't do that here."

There ought to be a class in "Thank You" in school. Along with common sense.

An unmanned NASA jet powered by a supersonic combustion ramjet, or "scramjet", was able to fly at almost Mach 10 (about 11,263km/h) for about 10 seconds. At approximately 3.2km a second, the aircraft could fly from Sydney to Los Angeles in just over one hour.

For a minimum bid of $1 million you can acquire 39 internet commerce patents from bankrupt software company Commerce One at auction in San Francisco. You too can threaten companies like Microsoft and IBM with patent infringement.

One lawyer suggests that this is essentially "patent terrorism", but it sounds like good old extortion to me.

Frank Barnako (at CBS MarketWatch) mentions a comment by Microsoft that Firefox is getting a free ride. From the column:

It may be good to be the king, but for Microsoft the crown rests heavy in the Web browser marketplace. The release of Mozilla.org's Firefox 1.0 browser may give the Redmond, Wash.-based company some respite from criticism, says Gary Schare, director of Windows product management at Microsoft. Responding to why Internet Explorer does not have the tabbed browsing Firefox does, Schare pointed out IE has hundreds of millions of users, and bolting on something like tabbing isn't easily done. "We have to strike a balance of what's okay to break and what shouldn't we break," he said in an interview with BetaNews.com. "The Mozilla guys have had a bit of a free ride," he continued. "Every time they ship a new version, they break a bunch of things," and risk creating problems for people using previous versions of their browser. "Now they've got a product out there that's a 1.0, and people are going to count on it and expect some backwards compatibility for some time forward."

With any luck, this newfound competition will result in renewed innovation.

A couple of days ago engadget answered my request for a wireless iPod.

Yesterday I suggested that the broadcast flag was the FCC's roundabout way of protecting commercials. Today Broadband Reports mentions a new bill that would ban users from skipping commercials on their TiVo. They reference a Wired article regarding HR2391, the Intellectual Property Protection Act.

Oddly, the bill would allow people to skip objectionable content -- like a gory or sexually explicit scene -- but not commercials or promotional announcements. Who exactly gets to define "objectionable content"?

Will Congress be legislating the removal of my Fast Forward button next?

It looks like the Government of Canada is going to push through changes to copyright legislation asked for by the record companies. These changes will also likely include the provision for "notice and takedown" of copyrighted material without any form of due process. There was no comment on the removal of the levy Canadians currently pay on all blank recording media which is paid to the recording industry.

At a recent recording industry awards event, Prime Minister Paul Martin said the government would step in to protect the music business because "We are not going to let an industry that is so important to this country, so important to our ability to tell our stories and sing our songs to the rest of the world, be jeopardized."

Yes every time Shania Twain sings "Man, I feel like a woman" she is singing my song and telling my story. Avril Lavigne was right - it's so complicated.

Today's Boston Globe has an Op-Ed piece by Pet