Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

The Canadian government is preparing legislation to keep all of the companies created by Air Canada's restructuring bilingual and their head offices in Montreal.

Air Canada emerged from bankruptcy protection last September after most of its debt was erased and shareholders lost all their investment. As part of its restructuring, Air Canada created Air Canada Technical Services, Air Canada Cargo and Air Canada Groundhandling as separate entities, in addition to Air Canada Jazz and Aeroplan.

Legislating services and service locations may not be the most effective way to run an airline - a profitable one anyway. Of course, that doesn't really seem to be a consideration.

The other day Glenn Fleishman suggested what would have happened if the creation of public electrical utilities had been attacked in the same way that municipal broadband solutions are these days. His imaginary Previous Millennium Research Council (PMRC) uses similar arguments:

The PMRC also takes the stand that installing electricity in every home would drain tax coffers, and expects that once projects are begun, the revenue from them might never cover the immense cost of such service. “One might imagine a city building an electrical network that could provide any amount of service at any time of day or not, rather than at particular times that are most advantageous for power generation,” the report states.

Businesses are also not interested in electricity, the PMRC states, noting that horses, railroads, coal, and the Irish are the driving forces of the economy. “Providing universal access to electrical power is not a leading consideration in business development,” the report says. While certain businesses require electricity, such as theaters or carnivals, business conditions are best improved by well-honed service provided by a single company in each field which reduces the chances of disruption.

The providers argue that municipalities are ill-equipped to offer broadband services, ignoring the fact that many municipalities already provide a host of sophisticated services such as electricity, education, public transportation, libraries, and waste disposal.

Many of these services are viewed as public goods that are best provided to the community by the community. In an age where Internet connectivity is increasingly a prerequisite for banking, health care information, government services, and personal communications, ensuring that an entire community enjoys affordable access is a necessity, not a luxury.

For example, I currently live in Waterloo, Canada. Fibretech, the local utility provider, offers WiFi locally for $4.95 per hour. Rogers Communications, one of the two largest telecom companies in Canada, just announced their WiFi service for $9 per hour - almost twice the price.

Either we define the internet as a public good and build local utilities to provide it at breakeven cost, or we allow real competition. Either way, the choice should not be dictated by a single telecom company. Residents of a city are more than capable of making decisions regarding how their city provide such a service.

Michael Getler, ombudsman for the Washington Post, reflects on the struggle of the printed newspaper to stay relevant in today's world (free subscription required). He is very even-handed in his treatment of bloggers as well:

The blogosphere is a wonderful thing, also in keeping with who we are. But it doesn't seem so new to me because it does what readers have always done: read, write, analyze, complain, correct. It has always been true that if you make a mistake on even the most arcane matter in a newspaper, someone out there will catch it and let you know. The Web and the explosion of personal blogs, or Web logs and journals, have tapped into and greatly expanded that public reservoir of knowledge and understanding in important ways by challenging the accuracy of reporting and adding analysis.

Bloggers were the first to uncover some things recently, but that doesn't mean that traditional news organizations would not have come to those facts as well. The difference between newspapers and some of today's instant-delivery alternatives is that newspapers make use of time -- time for trained and experienced journalists to report, time for editors to get between reporters and the public, time to think a little longer about things.

(Link courtesy of The Editor's Log, Greensboro News-Record)

Join in the attempt to drive planet Earth into a new orbit.

According to the website:

Scientific research has proven that this change of planetary positioning would very likely stop global warming, extend daytime hours and create a more homogeneous climate.

Here's two American views on the Canadian decision not to participate in the U.S. ballistic missile defence program.

From the New York Times (International Section):

"If a missile is going over Canadian airspace, I want to know, I want to be at the table," Paul Martin said while still running for the leadership of the Liberal Party in April 2003.

His support for a missile defense system was consistent with more than a half century of Canadian national security policy of sharing responsibility for continental defense with the United States, even in times when the two countries sharply disagreed on Cuba, Vietnam and most recently Iraq.

But on Thursday, Mr. Martin, now prime minister, reversed course and said that Canada would not take part with Washington in the development of a missile defense shield, essentially because he faced a rebellion on the issue at a Liberal Party conference next month.

Mr. Martin tried to frame the decision as a matter of priorities, preferring to emphasize increased cooperation with the United States on securing the borders against terrorists and building up the armed forces, even though the Bush administration had asked for little more than moral support for the new system.

Many national security experts, however, consider his announcement to be a fundamental shift in relations, more abrupt even than the decision by Mr. Martin's predecessor, Jean Chrétien, not to take part in the invasion of Iraq.

"It's a big departure," said David J. Bercuson, director of the Center for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. "Anytime we have had a major evolution in North American defense policy since 1940 the two countries have been together."

Canada announced Thursday that it has decided not to participate in a U.S. missile defense system, dealing a symbolic setback to the experimental project and a blunt rebuff to President Bush, who had personally lobbied Canada to join.

The decision by Prime Minister Paul Martin, who had earlier signaled he favored signing on to the system, was an acknowledgment of the deep dislike Canadians feel both for President Bush and his administration's project to shoot down missiles headed toward the United States.

"We will continue to work in partnership with our southern neighbors on the common defense of North America," Martin said. "However, ballistic missile defense is not where we will concentrate our efforts."

His decision has more political than practical impact, since Canada agreed last August to allow its operators at the North American Aerospace Command center in Colorado to share information on incoming missiles, a key concession that had been sought by the United States.

According to Michael Kergin, outgoing Canadian ambassador to the United States, Canada is important but not prominent in the United States, so attracting national public attention south of the border has been nearly impossible. Mr. Kergin says:

“I could be down here on the corner of Constitution and Pennsylvania and yell the worst implications against the White House and I don't know that people would care very much or notice. It would have to be pretty awful to get a footnote in the Washington Times (newspaper).”

“I guess the expectation I had was that he'd let his heavy-duty cabinet players do the talking,” said Mr. Kergin, who started in Washington in October 2000 when Bill Clinton was president.

“But these very powerful personalities around the table spoke only when spoken to. That surprised me a little bit. He was very much in charge. He carried the conversation. He was very well briefed on the issues.”

“I don't think he's going to hold it against us, he just doesn't understand why.

“He may not understand, he may be puzzled by it, he may not agree with it, but he accepts it and respects it,” said Mr. Kergin.

“He certainly wasn't trying to bully us, but at the same time he made it pretty obvious publicly that this is a program he really personally believes in, which he thinks is right for the United States ... and is right for North America.”

It is best to remember that Canada has a smaller population and a smaller economy that the state of California. And California has Arnold Schwarzenegger.

According to the Washington Post (free subscription required), Sony BMG Music Entertainment expects that by year's end a substantial number of its U.S. releases will employ content protection technology to address piracy concerns:

"What matters the most to us is the consumer experience," Sony BMG Sales Enterprise co-president Jordan Katz says. "Both technologies offer playability across all standard players, including CD players, boomboxes, DVD players, PCs, Macs, car stereos, video games and clock radios."

The albums coming out now and in the immediate future will allow for three copies to be made. "We haven't set on what the number of copies should be, other than there should be a limited number; it shouldn't be infinite," Katz says. "Our research shows that the consumer thinks that's fair. So you are seeing Sony BMG taking a leadership role in this area, with increasing traction throughout the year in terms of a number of (our) releases."

By the way, how useful is research in this area? What customer is going to admit to the record company that they intend to make 50 copies of their CD?

Companies create these arbitrary limits in the name of preventing privacy, when in fact real pirates won't be stopped by some silly content protection technology. They are more likely to be working from master copies of the CD anyway.

(Link from Furdlog)

The Toronto Star has a faceoff today about Canada's decision to reject the U.S. ballistic missile defence program.

Linda McQuaig says "standing up to the U.S. will gain us respect abroad":

Canadian advocates of missile defence have long argued that joining the scheme is the best way to protect our sovereignty — the logic apparently being that Washington is going to intrude into our airspace anyway, so it's better if we look like that's what we wanted all along. It's only rape if you resist.

Fortunately the Martin government, under enormous pressure from the public, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, ignored this convoluted logic. After months of dithering on the issue, Ottawa showed surprising spunk last week in standing up to the American empire — a spunkiness that will only improve our standing in a world increasingly alarmed by U.S. unilateralism.

Japan, Australia, South Korea and Israel, none as powerful as the U.S., but grown-ups all, are currently working with America toward a successful missile defence operation. They are willing to acknowledge the frightening truths of our world, the dangers that face democracies. By contrast, our grudging, reactionary stance on the matter puts us in a league with certain European leaders, concerned more with American power than with threats from foes.

In short, our rejection of missile defence will increase our standing in the dream world the majority of Canadians appear to live in, the one where the enemies of the U.S. are not our enemies. It will increase our standing in our own minds, and our popularity with enemies of the free world — inasmuch as any of those people think about Canada, except in terms of how easy we'd be to dominate without the U.S. on our side.

Jon Udell has created a screencast of a five minute walking tour of Keene, NH.

When I moved to Boston a few years ago, a wrong turn took me to Keene. It was late at night and I found myself waiting at perhaps the longest level train crossing I had ever endured. I still had to get to Boston that night and, as a result, I was never able to enjoy the town. I now feel that I can.

Oddly enough, a few years ago I hit upon the idea of building self-running Powerpoint presentations consisting of screen shots, to be used as demoware for the company I was working with. It never occurred to me at the time to make a Flash movie out of them. This is definitely a very interesting enhancement of that idea.

(Link from ongoing)

Shannonsays.com quotes John at Business Evolutionist:

"People don't buy 3/4 inch drill bits. They don't buy 3/4 inch holes. They buy the respect and admiration of people commenting on the picture they've hung on the wall using the hole provided by the drill bit.

The drill bit is a tool put to use in service of some goal of the individual. Almost no one cares how the drill bit is made. The hole will be covered up by a picture or covered with paint."

It's not about the hole; it's about the "feelings" that the hole will bring.... the drill bit and the hole are secondary to the WIIFM factor.

A husband buying a drill bit to hang a picture for his wife doesn't have the same feeling when the picture hangs, and the manufacturer might not want to use his feelings as part of a branding effort. Then again, maybe they would.

Somebody buying a Cisco router might be buying a product because it makes them feel secure, or maybe because it routes network traffic. On the other hand, I don't think people buy an inexpensive car for how it makes them feel, rather they are purchasing an economical mode of transport. You could make the argument that they feel like they saved money, but I wouldn't base a branding exercise on that alone - it's too easy to compete against.

I think that the higher the price (or the more the perceived value), the more feelings enter into the picture. And the more they can be part of effective branding.

The purchase of an Apple iPod is obviously motivated in large part by hows it makes us feel. Otherwise Creative, selling an identical piece of technology, would have a much larger share. Is a bigger high definition television about feelings, or a better view of the game?

Selling luxury is more about feelings than product. Sometimes selling cheap is what it's all about. And sometimes, it is just about selling a solution to a problem.

I've been doing some research for a seminar on collaboration using blogs and wikis, as an alternative to more complex content management systems like Sharepoint or Documentum. It seemed like this might be an ideal place to capture some of the information.

Products such as Sharepoint and Documentum are both content and document management systems. They store unstructured content, links, and documents such as Word files or Excel spreadsheets. They allow documents to be checked in, checked out, and otherwise controlled. Different user privileges may be assigned to different content areas.

Blogs and wikis are adhoc repositories of unstructured content. They do not typically store documents, though some products allow documents to be stored as attachments, but the documents are not controlled. User privileges are typically reduced to either having access to the entire system or to none of it.

About Collaboration:

Why Can't We All Just Collaborate?

Definition: A blog is essentially a series of informational items displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogging 101 - BloggerCon Beginners Sessions
How To Blog For Fun & Profit

Movable Type
Wordpress
Blogger - A free blogging service
Typepad - A low-priced blogging service
Livejournal - A blogging community

Definition: A Wiki is a collaboratively-edited website which many people also view as an anarchistic publishing tool. The distinguishing feature of wikis is that they typically allow all users to edit any page, with full freedom to edit, change and delete the work of previous authors.

Wiki 101
What Is A Wiki

TWiki
Wiki Wiki Web
Confluence

Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia
Wikinews - A Free News Source

Definition:RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) and Atom are formats for syndicating news, or the entries in blogs and wikis. The syndicated information is typically read in news readers.

What Is RSS?
What Is Atom?

Definition: A application or website which allows a user to read syndicated information. Rather than read entire websites, users can opt to read only the new entries. This allows users to read many more sites efficiently. I read over 450 sites per day in this fashion.

NewsGator - Read feeds in Outlook or online
Bloglines - Read feeds online
NewzCrawler - A Windows client for reading feeds

Technorati
PubSub

Definition: Subscribers receive regular audio programs delivered via the internet, and she or he can listen to them at her or his leisure.

What is podcasting?

Update: I added Confluence wiki software at the suggestion of Bound By Gravity.

Paul Martin said no, Canada does not want to be part of the U.S. ballistic missile defence program. But what exactly does "no" mean here?

Canada has already agreed that NORAD will now watch for incoming ballistic missiles. There were no other demands made by the U.S. So what isn't Canada going to do as a result?

According to the Toronto Star, Mr. Martin insisted that Ottawa "would expect to be consulted" before the U.S. tried to shoot down an incoming missile over Canada, saying:

"We're a sovereign nation and you don't intrude on a sovereign nation's airspace without seeking permission."

U.S. officials at the Missile Defence Agency said that under ballistic missile defence, interceptors from launch silos in Alaska and California are aimed out across the Pacific and that their trajectory would take them nowhere near Canada.

Even if it did, the officials said, the interceptors would be out of the atmosphere and, therefore, outside of sovereign airspace within a minute or two of being launched. The actual intercept — a collision in space — is designed to occur between 160 and 300 kilometres above the Earth, beyond the atmosphere.

"There's no flying over Canada .....," the intercept is to happen way out over the Pacific as far from North America as possible," Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the agency, said.

A U.S. official said that Mr. Martin is hiding behind a smokescreen and that missile defence has nothing to do with Canadian airspace.

"Martin knows that ..... he was just saying it for the political theatre," the U.S. official said.

The Canadian government never seeks outside approval to fly its surveillance satellites over other countries.

"We don't have to ask permission and we don't ask permission," said Mike Taylor, director of government relations at the Canadian Space Agency.

"Its not sovereignty issue," he said.

It surprises me that some Canadians seem to support this flip-flop. The Liberals were voted in with Paul Martin suggesting that he supported missile defence. Now he changes his mind, and that's ok.

I have no doubt that relations with the U.S. would be much improved if decisions were merely communicated honestly, by a leader whose word means something, as opposed to someone like Mr. Martin, whose decisions are based solely on what will get the Liberals re-elected..

We do stuff_TM

(Link from The Doc Searls Weblog)

Jaqueline Passey, a real Libertarian girl, has finally switched to Firefox. Her post about it has attracted a stream of comments around one person who seems to be violently pro-Internet Explorer and Microsoft. In the words of this person:

Firefox is complete and total crap. I used it for a day and switched back because it was so not-ready-for-primetime.

I know there's a lot of Firefox fans here, and I would just like to qualify my statements by saying: you're all retarded.

Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada, and the man who made improving Canadian-American relations a plank in the Liberal election platform last June, and who supported Canadian participation in missile defence, has now flip-flopped and said that Canada will not participate in the missile defence program.

Picture this. A ballistic missile is flying over Canadian airspace on its way to New York or Washington.

Before the U.S. considers launching a missile to defend themselves, Paul Martin expects to be consulted.

Given that a missile would likely take minutes to pass over Canada, what does Mr. Martin actually expect to happen?

Reading Canadian newspapers would give one the idea that Canadians expect the government to be responsible for everything. I've certainly seen the phrases "the government spends their money on", or "the government should pay for". I've also often seen the comment that "the government has a surplus".

I have an aunt who always used to tell me, when you see the word "government", substitute the word "taxpayer". The government isn't spending their money - they don't have any. They are spending yours.

Also, for those who don't see to understand, the government gets all of its income from taxpayers. It does not generate any revenue (nor does it ever seem to save any money). If the government has a surplus, it means simply that they overtaxed citizens. Whether you disagree with how little tax the rich pay, or how much the poor pay, we paid too much.

I'm of the opinion that I know better how to spend my money that the government does.

Mathew Ingram, a columnist for The Globe and Mail, apparently has a blog. Well it does resemble a blog in the sense that there are some text items posted in reverse chronological order, but there is no RSS feed and no way to search, and I can only go back in the list of items by going to the previous page. The items are also chopped in half by the page limit, much as a printed page would be.

The "blog" describes itself this way:

Mathew Ingram's "blog" is a collection of brief items - from the interesting to the unusual, and occasionally the outright laughable. Feel free to e-mail your suggestions and/or comments.

Just for fun, I searched the paper for the work "sex". Lo and behold, Mr. Ingram's "blog" is the fourth entry. When I click on it go to the blog and search for "sex" the word is not found.

This is certainly not earth-shaking, but it is curious. Is The Globe and Mail manipulating search results to highlight particular parts of the paper?

This is how democracy works in the provincial legislature in Ontario, Canada:

In a voice vote, the Speaker of the legislature would determine the outcome based on the volume of the ‘Yeas' and ‘Nays' yelled by the members.

Yes we are used to seeing spyware hijack the Internet Explorer browser. Those of you that still use IE anyway.

But if you install a Microsoft released a patch for a "critical" vulnerability in MSN Messenger, Microsoft will hijack your browser, ignoring your home page selection and setting the home page to MSN. The patch is mandatory for users of MSN Messenger so you won't have a choice.

Apparently Microsoft Anti-Spyware takes a similar action.

Ping Identity Corporation has a new marketing campaign:

Download our FREE Federation Server or we'll shoot this dog.

Not exactly a new idea though. For those who can't recall, the picture is from the cover of National Lampoon magazine, circa late 70s if I recall correctly. The heading was "Buy this magazine, or we'll shoot this dog."

Seth has a thought on beer with caffeine in it:

It's entirely possible that adding caffeine to beer will be remembered as a great idea.
Possible, but unlikely.

An annual survey by Jupiter Research showed that last year American adults spent as many hours a week in front of a computer as they did in front of a television:

The survey of 2,231 people found that consumers spent an average of 10 hours a week on the Internet in 2004, the same amount as the year before. TV watching declined to 10 hours a week, however, from 11 in 2003.

Based on this, the New York Times suggests that the internet is the new TV. They are however two very different things.

Television is entertainment or educational programming created by someone else, pushed to me the passive viewer, based upon a schedule imposed by someone else. I the viewer have minimal input, other than through ratings, as to what the programming may consist of, and my selections are limited by the available channels, which are further driven by market forces. There are basically only a few publishers, and a few stars, and many viewers.

The internet on the other hand may consist of content created by someone else, but the schedule at which I view it is defined by me. It is an interactive medium where I select the programming. In fact, I may even create the programming (i.e. blogs). The selection is essentially infinite, and market forces have a lesser effect overall. There is an increasing number of publishers, anybody can become a star, and the line between publishers and viewers is indistinguishable.

The internet is NOT the new TV. Not by a long shot.

The survey does not seem to account for those who are online while watching TV, which is a frequent occurrence in my house.

(Link from Furdlog)

The province of Ontario, Canada, is proposing legislation to legalize same sex marriage, as is the Canadian federal government.

While many provincial politicians have had the courage to declare whether they support the legislation or not, it seems that the Liberal government has struck a deal with the opposition parties to avoid a recorded vote. This ensures that citizens will have no idea how their representatives voted, freeing the politicians from any accountability to the people who elected them.

Interestingly enough, only CanWest Global Communications-owned newspapers felt this was important enough to mention. The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail seem to have no mention of it.

John Dvorak thinks that marketing at Microsoft is a myth. He says:

I argue that Microsoft is a technology-centric company with incredibly poor marketing. So poor that it cannot even convince the pundits that it is anything but a me-too developer.

So, the trick is to build better products and services. In my view. Now, where John is right is where we ARE building better mousetraps.

.....and i disagree - its NOT simply about building better products and services. Marketing at its best is about having conversations with customers and potential customers. Its about building relationships. "market development" is a term for "pre-sales." That's what marketing does -- it talks to and with the market to find out:
A) what the market wants
B) how the market will purchase things
C) what the market finds funny, sexy, useful, awful, etc.

It's about a good product, that solves your problem, not the company's, and is easy to integrate into your business or your life.

I would argue that Microsoft doesn't build better mousetraps; in fact their mousetraps don't always work. They are a me-too company in some situations - like word processing, spreadsheets, browsers, anti-spyware - lots of stuff. Most of the time they understand the customer problem, though sometimes they are a little slow to get there.

What Microsoft does really well is integrate. When they release something they've go a bunch of stuff built around it so that you can be productive right away. It's never perfect, or everything you need, but it's all you need to get your job done.

Sharepoint is a good example. Nothing fancy, but it makes you more productive right out of the box.

When you can do that, you don't have to market. You make the market. In Microsoft's case, you are the market.

The lack of leadership in Canadian politics is apparently a common thread today, the day the federal budget is being released.

Andrew at Bound By Gravity builds upon a post by Bob at Let It Bleed about the lack of leadership in Canada. As Andrew says:

Canadians aren't hungry for a change of government. It's not that they're particularly electrified by what the Liberals are serving up - rather that they have not been given a coherent, intelligent, exciting alternative.

Louis (Michael J.Fox): "People are so thirsty for leadership they'll crawl through the desert and when they find it's only a mirage, they'll drink the sand."

President Shepherd (Michael Douglas): "People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference."

It seems rare that politicians these days actually have a plan. Instead they seem to be driven by polls, with their only concern being getting re-elected and maintaining power. They don't really seem to care about citizens. They practice "gesture politics".

As the New York Times said in The Triumph of Gesture Politics:

"The essence of leadership has changed into something that is less and less about significant undertakings and more and more about dramatic stunts."

According to the Washington Post, a Georgia woman is suing Hewlett-Packard, claiming their printer cartridges are designed to expire on a certain date, regardless of whether they have been installed in a printer or not. According to the suit:

"The smart chip is dually engineered to prematurely register ink depletion and to render a cartridge unusable through the use of a built-in expiration date that is not revealed to the consumer."

(Link from Furdlog)

Digital Domain is being swamped by traffic from a Netherland website. The same thing was happening to me a couple of weeks ago, only it was an Israeli site.

I don't understand why these companies do this, but I have better things to do with my money than pay for them to use my bandwidth.

So I looked them up at www.whois.sc, and banned their IP address. Problem solved - until the next time.

Kate at small dead animals laments the fact that the Canadian identity may be reduced to a demonstration of what not to do, and in her words "simply to serve as a warning to the United States".

I could try to summarize her comments, but she already says it so well.

Jeremy doesn't use Firefox, and he gives these reasons:

I dont use tabs. I dont use gestures. I do so little web development, I dont need the toolkit. The download managers nice, but I dont miss it. The standards support doesnt matter either, as the number of sites which show up wrong in IE is minuscule compared to FireFox. And security doesnt matter, because I have 10 years experience locking down IE.

I don't use Firefox for the features - they really don't matter much to me, but they are handy.

I've been using browsers since they first existed, and I use Firefox because I don't ever want to make the statement that "security doesn't matter because I have 10 years experience locking down" anything. That statement alone defines all that is wrong with Internet Explorer.

I use Firefox because my time is too valuable to me to spend it making sure my browser is working, and fixing it if it isn't.

Many mornings I take the freeway into Toronto, Canada in the morning. The on-ramp to the freeway from my town is a two lane ramp, merging onto a three lane freeway. The freeway speed averages well over 60 miles per hour.

Yet every morning the traffic on the on-ramp comes to a complete standstill as people slow down, then stop, while they wait to merge onto the freeway.

I was still cursing these people when I noticed Chris Pirillo pointing to the 10 commandments of driving in Seattle. It brought back my sense of humor.

When I was in Grade 6 I learned and important lesson: Don't think, just memorize.

I was learning about a historic figure, though I can't recall who it was. My history textbook gave his birthplace, but numerous other books I read in the library gave a different birthplace. Later we had a test. When asked for the birthplace, I gave the far more common answer, assuming it to be correct. I got the question wrong.

My lesson was that the teacher didn't care what I though; she just expected me to repeat what my textbook, a single source, said.

I was reminded of that incident when reading Why Johnny Can't Think at Authentic Voice. I can only recall a couple of teachers who pushed me to learn and understand, as opposed to just regurgitating what I'd been taught. I attended Catholic schools as a kid, so it is only in hindsight that I realize how limited my education was in other ways, bounded by the mores of religion. We didn't learn about other cultures or religions then, because Catholicism was the only "real" religion.

I was fortunate to have parents who told me: Learn. Don't memorize.

I was never really good with rules, and always wanted to know more about everything, rarely taking any answer as a final one. An attempt to artificially limit what sources of information kids use or have access to is not acceptable, and it won't stop them from learning. It didn't stop me.

We owe it to our children to expose them to as many sources of information as possible, and arm them with the tools and the understanding to know how to discern what is useful and what isn't.

The Business 2.0 blog quotes the Wall Street Journal on "Global 15", Toyota's plan to become the largest automobile manufacturer:

For Toyota to accomplish what it calls the "Global 15" plan, a code-word for the auto maker's goal to displace GM as the world's biggest auto maker, "you have to have growth in the U.S.," Mr. Cuneo said. "No matter how much growth you may have in emerging markets, you have to grow in North America. It's a profitable market so it makes a lot of sense."

I suffered through VX2, a nasty piece of malware, last night. VX2 hooked itself right into the Windows Login Service, creating a new randomly-named DLL each time the system started. The file was the started using RUNDLL32.EXE, and showed up in the task list. When I tried to kill it, it just restarted. The DLL files were locked, so they couldn't be manually deleted. VX2 also disabled my Recycle Bin.

Once I installed Prevx I was able to see what was happening. Ad-Aware could find the DLLs, but couldn't stop or remove them. Instead it asked if I wanted to remove them after rebooting. When you select "yes" an entry for Ad-Aware is put into the \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce key. As soon as that happened, VX2 removed the key.

This is ruthless malware, designed to prevent you from having any control of your own machine, and preventing you from removing it at all. And while it is running, it does whatever it pleases.

This is why anti-spyware laws with real penalties are required. Some have even suggested capital punishment. Last night it didn't sound like such a bad idea.

Two of the three judges on the District of Columbia Circuit panel said the FCC never received permission from Congress to introduce and mandate the broadcast flag. The CNet article includes telling comments:

"You're out there in the whole world, regulating. Are washing machines next?" asked Judge Harry Edwards. Quipped Judge David Sentelle: "You can't regulate washing machines. You can't rule the world."

Judge Sentelle was concerned that the groups may not suffer the particular harm that would give the standing required to sue.

Your adware-ridden PC is worth about $3 per year to the slime that create the stuff. Could I just send them the $3 and save the trouble?

I just spent two hours ridding one of our PCs of ruthless adware and malware, including this particularly repugnant piece of work called VX2 from Direct Revenue. Capital punishment for these people would be letting them off lightly. Their website says this:

DirectRevenue’s technology solutions enable millions of consumers to enjoy some of the Internet’s best software, services and content – all for free!

If you happen to be hit with this little bit of nastiness, you can fix it really quickly using these tips from Lavasoft, the makers of Ad-Aware, though Ad-Aware itself can't remove it.

The smartest thing I've done lately was to install Prevx, a tool that monitors my system to watch for attacks. It works - really well.

Bound By Gravity has a great post about how some people (discussing same-sex marriage in this case) are tolerant of the beliefs of others, until you disagree with them. Then you must be a prejudiced bigot.

I've also seen the argument that we don't make laws only for the majority; we must also protect the minority. This argument is certainly useful when proponents of same-sex marriage are the minority. If the opponents were the minority, I expect the argument that we need to protect the rights of the minority would vanish.

I actually don't have a position either way on the issue, but I never cease to be amazed by the leaps of logic, and the intolerance so evident especially on the part of those who claim to be protecting the rights of others.

Ian has noticed that the HP laptop BIOS only allows certain Mini-PCI cards to be used. Yes, HP controls what you can do with your laptop. For your own protection of course.

(Link from Boing Boing)

According to the Washington post, newspapers are in trouble (free subscription required).

They even have a new metric called "readership". From the article:

They even are trying to change the very language of the industry, asking advertisers and investors to dwell less on "circulation" -- how many papers are sold -- and more on "readership," or the number of people exposed to a paper's journalism wherever it appears, in print, on the Web or over the air.

In the first 10 months after the site was firewalled, visits to The Record's Web site had fallen by 40%, something Mr. Kuntz says isn't necessarily a bad thing because high traffic translates to big costs for larger servers and increased bandwidth.

Losing 40% of readers doesn't seem like a desirable result, unless the print subscriptions increased by a corresponding amount, but that does not seem to have happened. They're still getting the news, just not from The Record.

The San Francisco Chronicle shows that the web can increase viewership. Though its daily sales have dropped in recent years, its Web site boasts more than 5 million unique visitors a month. How effectively they've been able to monetize that viewership is unclear.

(Link from BuzzMachine)

Scientists need to recalibrate the kilogram, which is the only metric measure to be based on a physical item, a cylinder of platinum-iridium alloy metal sealed inside three locked safes at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) near Paris.

The mass of the present kilogram artefact has fluctuated by as much as 23 millionths of a gram, as a result of contamination and cleaning.

I wonder if shipments of cocaine are sitting somewhere, awaiting the outcome of the recalibration? Just kidding.

There was an interesting article in the Toronto Star today about networks starting their prime time programs a minute or two before of after the hour in order to frustrate digital video recorder (DVR) users, or to capture viewers who now feel that they've already missed the beginning of another show, so why bother switching.

The article is in the print edition, but apparently not available online. Here is a link to an online forum discussing the same thing.

The idea of using odd start times to either keep or frustrate viewers assumes a pretty low level of either intelligence or motivation on the part of said viewers. It's telling that the methods the networks are willing to use to keep viewers don't include the concept of better quality programming.

Yet clearly people are clearly willing to pay handsomely for better quality television. Just ask HBO.

(Note: HBO is not available in Canada.)

Kathy Sierra, over at Creating Passionate Users, goes off on a tear about the disparity between companies' public statements about wanting to hire the brave, the bold, and the innovative, versus the reality of the "team players" they actually hire.

As somebody always willing to push boundaries to create a better experience for customers, I can say from experience that most companies really aren't interested in that except perhaps at the CEO-level - they can push whatever boundaries they want to. It's rare to find a company that is willing or able to make use of my considerable energy.

The reason is probably because people like that are so difficult to manage. I know - I manage several people like that right now. Yes it is difficult and it takes time, but I find that by talking with them I can find what interests them, and then give them some goals to drive toward. Sure everyone has to deal with boring day-to-day stuff, but I do my best to minimize that, so that I can get the most productivity from them. Sometimes that means breaking rules.

Kathy refers to Tom Peters from Re-Imagine!:

"We will win this battle... and the larger war... only when our talent pool is both deep and broad. Only when our organizations are chock-a-block with obstreperous people who are determined to bend the rules at every turn..."

Tom, when was the last time you worked as an employee for one of the companies you speak of so often? As opposed to speaking with the C-level folks? It's probably blasphemous to even ask that question, but I like to break rules.

It's great to see people like Robert Scoble making a difference, and I'm very impressed with the fact that Microsoft is letting it happen. They are breaking the rule that people can only say good things about our company. Robert is the exception rather than the rule though, and it seems that the majority of A-list bloggers aren't the average wage slaves, beholden to their employers.

Yes we all have to work with the team, but I'm always looking for those smart companies that will challenge me. I won't surrender my passion either.

Dave points to Robert Scoble's comments on Autolinks. The post is about "Scoble weighs in on