Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

Here's a handy all-purpose press release template, courtesy of The Social Customer Manifesto:

[Company name], a [noted | leading | large] provider of [insert industry name here] solutions is [happy | pleased | thrilled] to announce [a new customer | a new product].

[Paragraph with lame details here]

[Paragraph with glowing quote from executive here, that was written by someone else]

[Paragraph with contrived quote from a customer here, that was written by someone else]

[Paragraph from a "Noted Industry Analyst" here, that took three weeks to get approved through the analyst's business prevention department]

[Pollyanna penultimate paragraph painting priceless predictions for the future of the industry]

[About Company X, a rehash of the lame stuff in the first sentence of the first paragraph]

From the Western Standard:

Shannon comments on something I've noticed as well - that Tom Peters rarely posts on the Tom Peters Blog. Unlike Shannon, I haven't unsubscribed, but only because I find the occasional post interesting, but I guess that I feel somewhat deceived because I initially went there expecting to hear Tom.

Tom is selling the Tom Peters! brand, but he isn't delivering.

Via Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine I found You're It, a blog on tagging. I'm still not sure what I think of tagging for text, but I can see how it could be valuable for other media.

So as I was catching up on back issues of The New York Times Magazine, I was interested to read the article Our Ratings, Ourselves about the Nielsen and Arbitron ratings systems. The article describes the new way these companies intend to track what people are watching:

In the course of brainstorming in the early 1990's, Kolessar and his colleagues came to the conclusion that the best way to capture and individual's media exposure was to bury a unique, repeating, inaudible digital code in the audio tracks of every radio or television channel in the country; the [portable people meter] would recognize that code.

[...]

"...Advertising is becoming incredibly ubiquitous, so you need measurement that is equally ubiquitous." Can everything with sound be coded, I asked? "Yes," Morris said. Will everything with sound be coded? "Yes," he said.

While the same currently repeats throughout the entire item, it isn't hard to foresee different tags at different times through the item.

Musing is urging you and I to do what we can to save the baby seals who are being killed by ice.

The Kyoto accord has the potential to kill those poor defenseless animals by keeping the ice from melting.

Every contribution you make to global warming brings us closer to saving those poor seals. Don't walk or bike if you can possibly drive. Every Hummer idling outside of a Starbucks brings us closer to that goal.

From the front page of today's Globe and Mail:

About 150 hospitals and clinics across Canada are operating breast-cancer screening machines that have failed a national quality test, have never been tested, or are no longer being tested, causing health-care experts to worry that cancers may be missed.

For thousands of Canadian women, that means they are being screened on equipment that is too old or of questionable quality. Or they are being sent to a facility that has let its accreditation with the Canadian Association of Radiologists lapse, or has never applied for it.

[...]

In stark contrast, no mammography machine can operate in the United States without a licence from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and an accreditation from the American College of Radiology.

In Ontario, about 82 per cent of clinics are accredited, just below the national average of 85 per cent. That leaves 51 machines that are not.

One of them is in Mississauga and another is in Etobicoke, says Dr. Murray Miller, a radiologist who works in those clinics and who is also on the association's accreditation committee. He refused to identify the two clinics that have unaccredited machines but said neither is accredited because both are brand new. He said he is pursuing accreditation for both.

"The bottom line is the quality is first rate," Dr. Miller said, adding that he believes the mammography quality at unaccredited Ontario centres to be very high.

Other clinics don't do it because they don't see the benefit:

Linwell X-Ray Centre-Midtown Plaza in St. Catharines allowed its accreditation to lapse because it didn't spell extra business.

I think that Ken Dyck disagrees with my comparison between the current situation of federal government spending and the philosophies of Ayn Rand. He uses research described in a New Scientist article, Charity begins at Homo sapiens, to suggest that "it would seem entirely possible that self-interest and altruism are not as incompatible as Rand made them out to be".

Actually, Ayn Rand would probably argue the true altruism wasn't really possible. Let's look at the definition of altruism:

Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.

Even if you aren't so sure about that, you must understand that the government cannot be altruistic because they are motivated by the desire to stay in power, thus the recent $4.6 billion agreement between the Liberals and the NDP. Besides, the government doesn't actually have anything to give - they generate no revenue.

Forcibly extracting money from those who have it (which is what taxes are) so that it can be given out to certain groups who need it, as defined by an unelected union leader who was giving orders to the Prime Minister - that is not altruism. There is no selflessness involved. Every party gets something out of the transaction, except of course for those who actually worked to earn the money that was paid in taxes. They were denied the ability to practice any form of charity with the money that was taken from them, ostensibly by people who claim to know better how to spend it, and benefit themselves in the process.

Much like communism, where some higher classes often became rich even while the workers barely eked out a living, all of these intermediaries benefit. While they may truly care about these people, they also act out of self-interest, so this is not altruism either.

The "rich" often choose to donate time and money to worthy causes, and in Rand's books the capitalists worked to improve society as a whole, which benefits everyone. Corporations generate the employement and the wealth that drive the Canadian economy, and any impact on those corporations will ripple through the economy. I'm having trouble remembering the last time a union created thousands of new jobs.

I could just equate the government to Robin Hood; stealing from the rich to give to the poor. I guess though that I should be happy that my selfless act of paying taxes was able to help so many downtrodden advertising agencies, as I sure that they were selflessly working to keep Canada together and the Liberals in power, with no thought of benefitting themselves.

I think that generally people are concerned about those who are less fortunate than themselves, and willing pay taxes that they know will benefit those people. However, everyone has their limits.

Rick Segal makes an interesting point about the "Us vs. Them" syndrome sometimes seen in companies.

I'd like to split the Us vs. Them into two categories. There's the version that happens between management and employees. I think that is what Rick is referring to and it can become poisonous quickly if management doesn't realize what is happening and deal with it.

The other version is between departments. In a growing company you typically start to hear R&D complaining about what Sales customers, Sales complaining about R&D's inability to deliver, and everyone complains about Product Management. And Technical Support are left to deal with the customer complaints.

Many times this version is just an occupational hazard of success, and the best way to clear it up is to put some process in place and make the departments more transparent. Once each department clearly understands how the other departments work, along with their responsibilities, usually the problems lessen.

Smart companies notice this, and they take steps to correct it.

If I read one more time that the best recruitment candidates are passive candidates I think I'll throw up.

Note this comment from Lou Adler:

You need to be super creative to reach out to the best candidates — who by and large all are passive.

• Candidates who are recent victims of restructuring
  Many companies downsize and it is not only poor employees that end up on the street. It may have been an issue of salary or management change. Are you going to tell me that you wouldn't be interested in Carly Fiorina because she is an active candidate?
• Candidates who are unhappy in their current positions and are looking
  These may be excellent staff who just aren't happy and are actively looking.

You can spend a lot of time and effort trying to attract a candidate who isn't motivated to move. You can assume that all active candidates are useless - after all, if their last company let them go they must be incompetent (I wonder what the commission on a Carly Fiorina might be). Or you can spend a little time to spot the active candidate who brings talent and drive, and might be an incredible hire for the company.

I've been a victim personally of restructuring where the company has killed off a product division, leaving several active candidates. Do you really think that we were all incompetent? Do you think that all Enron or Worldcom employees were incompetent?

I'm amazed that anyone could conceivably make such a rash judgement about entire classes of people based on an active or passive status. I sincerely hope that you never find yourself unemployed, though if you do it was obviously your own fault - if we are to believe Mr. Adler.

Firefox just hit 50,000,000 downloads.

I've seen two federal elections since moving to Canada from Boston a couple of years ago. Oh sure people claim that there isn't an election going on but it certainly seems like it is.

Elections start without any date having been announced, but it seems that you can tell because all governing Liberal MPs are flying around the country at taxpayer expense giving out money to anyone they can, without any kind of plan. After billions of dollars (yes billions of dollars) have been promised to everyone, then an election date is set and the parties campaign for about a month. For the Liiberals, it's really impossible to tell campaigning from "before campaigning".

Both elections were preceded closely by federal budgets, and in both cases promises and funding announcements made during the election campaign bore no relation to the previously announced budget. Amazingly this works because it seems that Canadians' votes are easily bought with government (read "their own") money. Though would forgiven if you believed that the money belonged to the Liberal party, given the ease with which they spend it.

For example, their recent four-day tally, from The Globe and Mail:

From Monday until 3 p.m. yesterday, the federal government announced projects, grants and funding for various programs totalling $409,608,979.* Amounts by province or territory:

Quebec                        $48,970,018
Ontario                        $29,498,009
Manitoba                     $12,759,395
Nova Scotia                  $11,109.195
Prince Edward Island      $6,957,819
New Brunswick               $5,760,599
Saskatchewan               $4,663,513
Alberta                        $4,399,627
Yukon                           $1,400,000
British Columbia            $867,365
Newfoundland               $718,000
Northwest Territories      $305,439

-*Included in that total is $282,200,000 in national programs that are not broken down by region.

SOURCE: GOVERNMENT OF CANADA

Including their little $4.6 billion gift to the NDP, that brings their total new spending this week to about $5 billion. $5 billion that wasn't important enough to include in the federal budget a couple of months ago, but seems so important that they must fly across the country to announce it. If it was so important, then why not include it in the budget?

The other thing about these federal elections is the fact that the promises sometimes fail to materialize.

The one really strange thing about giving money to Ontario is that you aren't supposed to ask for it:

Ontario is playing a “dangerous” game and adding fuel to separatist fires by claiming it is treated unfairly by the minority federal government, National Revenue Minister John McCallum said Thursday.

This is hilarious!

Om Malik is talking about the rose-colored glasses that some folks seem to be wearing when the discuss VoIP. He points to Lance Ulanoff's five reasons why he doesn't have VoIP and the indirectly to Russell Shaw's rebuttal.

The really funny thing is that Russell responds to most of the concerns by saying that you can just keep your existing landline and use cell backup to avoid the VoIP problems. Wouldn't the point of switching to VoIP be to not depend on landline or cell backup?

As for the problems of blocking and security, they can certainly be overlooked, but that probably won't make Lance feel better.

The voip weblog is pretty condescending when it says this:

Now, its Lance Ulanoff of PC Magazine coming up with elaborate, yet mostly fictitious, assertions against broadband VoIP services. I would take the time to deftly counter Lances silly diatribe of half-truths, but it appears Russell Shaw has handily done so.

We would be better off enumerating the concerns, then prioritizing and resolving them.

Saying that you can use VoIP as long as you have a cell phone just sounds idiotic, especially if we ever hope to get beyond the early adopter stage.

Shelley at Burningbird noted Bill Gates' comments about hiring:

"Anybody whos got good computer science training, they are not out there unemployed," Gates said. "Were just not seeing an available labor pool."

I'm a degreed engineer who has been developing software (C, C++, Java) for over 20 years with experience in R&D, Marketing, and Field Sales. I have a track record of managing teams to ship products on time and within budget. And I have a history of driving substantial revenue increases in companies I've worked for. Yet Microsoft took over six months to get back to me to say they weren't interested.

Mr. Gates needs to check his facts.

When I was about 15 or 16 years old I started read the works of Ayn Rand, in which (drastically oversimplifying here) the capitalist heroes fought against the socialists who felt that the heroes only existed to provide for the less fortunate. The meaning of "less fortunate" was defined solely by the socialists.

This particular thinking is exempified by these quotes from Atlas Shrugged:

"A free economy cannot exist without competition. Therefore, men must be forced to compete. Therefore, we must control men in order to force them to be free."

"...we can't worry about businessmen at a time like this. What we've got to think about is jobs...issue a directive making it compulsory to add, say, one-third more men to every payroll in the country."

"You boys have no excuse for permitting all that need an misery to spread through the country - so long as there are people who aren't broke."

The CAW demands have almost crushed the big three North American automakers, especially as productivity has dropped and the Canadian dollar has risen, making it expensive and uncompetitive to do business in Canada.

The final straw for me came today when Andrew Coyne pointed out this article:

Tory Leader Stephen Harper's hand was forced yesterday by a tentative deal cooked up between Paul Martin and Jack Layton on Sunday night in a suite at the Royal York Hotel. The NDP Leader arrived on the subway; the Prime Minister came by limousine.

Organized labour pushed the deal aggressively, threatening to withdraw its support for the New Democrats if Mr. Layton favoured an early election.

Canadian Auto Workers leader Buzz Hargrove played a key role in the negotiations as a go-between and, in fact, delivered a forceful message at the 11th hour on Tuesday to Mr. Martin.

The economy is much like a train engine - the more weight you make it drag, the slower it gets.

The point of Atlas Shrugged is that the "rich", the engines of the economy, eventually grew tired of being drained and packed up and went away. And since the "needy" don't create jobs, the economy stopped.

I'm worried.

Imagine that it's the turn of the century. The automobile is brand new and horse buggy manufacturers are concerned so they convince the government to levy a tax of $100 per HP on the $700 vehicle.

Or perhaps the concerned candle manufacturers force the levying of a tax on the new electric light bulbs.

These ideas would have chilled the acceptance of innovation and halted the progress of the industrial revolution.

Unfortunately cooler heads are not prevailing these days as the recording industry convinces governments to tax any competing technology as in this case where the Netherlands is considering a tax of $4.30 per gigabyte on all MP3 players sold.

It is unfortunate that the Netherlands, with a great history of innovation including CDs and DVDs and much more, would want to punish users of that new technology in order to protect the status quo. Sad too that it assumes that all MP3 owners are guilty of infringement, in much the same way that Canada already does.

Paul Graham suggests that hiring is obsolete:

Most CS undergrads hope to get a good job when they graduate. But as the age of startup founders creeps downward, I foresee an alternative path for the most ambitious: instead of going to work for Microsoft, start a startup and make Microsoft buy it to get you.

This change will do more than make some young hackers richer. It will fuse recruitment with product development. Instead of applying for a job and then being told what to work on, you join the company as a complete development team, with a beta version. Results: (a) a shift in power from companies to hackers, and (b) an increase in the rate at which new technology gets developed.

Obviously this new model will be a better deal for the best hackers. But I think it will also be better for the Microsofts. The few tens of millions extra that they'll pay will be a bargain for what they'll get.

This would necessitate a change in the recruiting function though. Recruiters would have to become skilled in assessing the value of technology and products, as well as mergers and acquisitions. Hiring companies could even provide some seed funding for people they foresaw as valuable.

Smart companies would create communities of support for these type of people, and provide them highly discounted (or free) software environments, and access to APIs and key product information. These communities would provide the ability to collaborate with key software people on the hiring company's side, as well as best practices or the company.

This would help the hackers, as Paul calls them, to build products using architectures and tools that will easily integrate into the target hiring company's environment.

The only problem I can envision would be one of cultural fit, which is also something that the recruiters would need to work on.

(Link from Evhead)

A popular gay nightclub in San Francisco has been accused of discrimination - against blacks.

The largest passenger airliner ever built, the Airbus 380, took off on its maiden flight today.

The A380 is designed to carry 555 passengers in three classes, but it can be expanded to 800 seats.

Tony Goodson pointed this out, but Cameron Reilly must be kidding when he says this:

As Ive been saying to people for ten years, the Internet as we know it today wouldnt exist without the relentless efforts of Microsoft and their partners in the last 30 years to make computing accessible to the masses.

I even recall that in 1995 Bill Gates said that the internet had no business value at all.

Microsoft software is useful, but they don't deserve thanks for the internet.

Both Om Malik and Mark Evans are talking today about research done by Sandvine that suggests that as of April 5th more than 1,100 VoIP providers.

Sandvine asserts that Quality of Experience (QoE) is critical in the VoIP market:

The battle for market share amongst all these offerings will be fought on the field of quality of experience (QoE), a measure of end-to-end performance that combines reliability, standard quality of service metrics and subjective end-user experiences. The failure or success of VoIP offerings depends on the level of QoE that a service provider can achieve and sustain, so network managers must determine very quickly how QoE can best be quantified and ensured.

Sandvine obviously sells technology to improve QoE by providing tiered or priority services, but their customers are likely ISPs that don't want to improve the experience for an VoIP technology but their own. The end result is likey to be a poorer QoE for many of those 1,100 providers, in much the same way as some ISPs are blocking Vonage.

That doesn't really matter anyway because, as Om shrewdly points out, there will be some shrinkage:

Given that there are going to be about 3 million VoIP subscribers at the end of 2005, and if you take out nearly 2 million that will be shared by the cable companies and Vonage, well what you are left with is a million subscribers for about 1080 providers. Or about 925 or so per VoIP provider. That cant be a business you can build the next WorldCon on? Can it?

[...]

Aswath, keeps reminding us, isnt this all old wine in a new bottle. Its not different thinking. So prediction - and a full year before Sandvine - by end of this year most of these wannabes gone, VoIP market cleaning up, and handful surviving and thriving. Remember ISPs.

Apparently I'm rich... for Canadian tax purposes anyway.

I saw this the other day and forget to mention it, but Andrew Coyne reminded me by pointing to this article:

The top 5% of income earners pay almost 40% of the money Ottawa collects in personal income taxes, according to new information from Statistics Canada. The federal statistics agency recently released a study showing the upper 10% of income earners in 2002 -- those who were paid more $64,500 -- provided 52.6% of the federal government's revenue from personal incomes taxes, up from 46% in 1990.

Further data provided to the National Post shows the proportion of income tax paid is skewed even more for the top half of that 10%. People who earned more than $82,700 in 2002 -- the top 5% -- put 39.1% of the personal income-tax revenues in federal coffers. In 1990, that 5% paid 32.2% of total income taxes.

Mr. Alexander said it was "striking" that the study identifies the top 10% of earners as those who were paid more than $64,500 in 2002.

"That is an eye-opening observation," he said, noting it raises the question of "whether or not the tax system is sufficien

The Statistics Canada study noted people in the top 10% bracket saw the smallest drop in their effective tax rate between 1990 and 2002, while the share of federal taxes paid by people in the bottom 50% of income earners dropped substantially.

Joel Fleming heard the word "blog" in real life twice yesterday, and suggests that blogging has gone mainstream.

I live in the same town Joel does. I used to go to meetings of local high technology marketing folks. They don't use the word "blog", and look at me funny when I do. These are people who profess to market products to early adopters and mass markets, yet they don't see the value in being early adopters themselves.

At least there is some hope.

Microsoft wants what I have wanted for over ten years:

Microsoft's newest mission is pushing for a Mobile PC for every person. These are not run-of-the-mill laptops or desktop replacements. Microsoft is aiming for broad, general acceptance of a whole new category of carry-everywhere, always-connected computing devices with batteries that last all day long.

[...]

Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect, described one such ultra-portable device during his WinHEC keynote Monday. Dubbed the Ultra Mobile 2007, that device was about the size of a paperback book. Gates described it as costing less than $1,000, weighing less than 2 pounds, and having a camera, phone, music player, and video player.

Just a month ago Kofi Annan proclaimed that he had been cleared of any wrongdoing in the Iraq Oil-for-Food program:

Cotecna won a large UN contract to inspect the oil-for-food programme in January 1999, while Kojo Annan worked for the firm in Africa.

Kofi Annan has insisted he did not know about the firm's bid for the contract and today's report said there was no evidence the bid "was subject to any affirmative or improper influence of the secretary general in the bidding or selection process".

The investigators, identified as Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan, felt the Independent Inquiry Committee played down findings critical of Mr. Annan in an interim report in late March related to his son, Kojo Annan, according to Mark Pieth, one of three leaders of the committee.

The committee "told the story" that the investigators presented, "but we made different conclusions than they would have," Mr. Pieth said. "You follow a trail and you want to see people pick it up," he said of the investigators who left.

In an interview aired yesterday with Fox News, Mr. Volcker took direct issue with Mr. Annan's insistence that he had been exonerated by investigators probing both his role in overseeing the Iraq aid program and conflicts of interest involving a key contract awarded to a Swiss firm that employed Mr. Annan's son.

"I thought we criticized [Mr. Annan] rather severely," Mr. Volcker said of his panel's interim report, released March 29. "I would not call that an exoneration."

Asked point-blank whether Mr. Annan had been cleared of wrongdoing in the $10 billion scandal, Mr. Volcker replied, "No."

My local paper, The Record, wrote an expose about sex in high schools, including a re-telling of an incident when a "...Grade 9 girl was discovered giving oral sex to a Grade 12 boy in a washroom during a student dance" at a downtown school.

It turns out that the event never really happened, and the paper printed an apology.

Arianna Huffington is introducing a new celebrity blog site, The Huffington Post, scheduled to launch May 9:

"She has lined up more than 250 of what she calls 'the most creative minds' in the country to write a group blog that will range over topics from politics and entertainment to sports and religion," The New York Times reports. "It is essentially a nonstop virtual talk show that will be part of a Web site that will also serve up breaking news around the clock."

Contributors will include some big names: Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Maggie Gyllenhaal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer and Mortimer B. Zuckerman. Because there are so many lined up, even if most of them only post occassionally, the site will always have fresh content.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the venture is that Tribune Media Services will syndicate parts of the blog to newspapers and their Web sites -- which might be the first time a blog is being syndicated to newspapers.

(Link from CyberJournalist)

At least six months ago I had applied to a position at Microsoft Canada. Today I received this form email:

After careful consideration and assessment, your profile was not selected for participation in the interview process as we have identified other applicants whose skills and experience are more aligned to the specific requirements of this position. We will retain your Candidate Profile for future employment consideration with Microsoft Canada, unless you provide us with a written request to remove your candidate profile from our Recruitment Management System.

The only other time I have ever dealt with Microsoft was when they called me up for an interview, then cancelled on the day of the interview, saying the position had been put on hold.

Just like Jeremy Wright says, I too am ambivalent about Microsoft, mostly because they are ambivalent. Their products are ok and do their job, but I'm using fewer and fewer of them.

Now they seem to have become ambivalent themselves, if their hiring is an example. The person I spoke to at Microsoft wasn't even a Microsoft employee.

Frankly if it weren't for people like Robert Scoble bringing a personality to Microsoft, it would be like thinking about plumbing. My Moen taps work fine and do their job, but I really don't think about them at all. New plumbing inventions don't really catch my attention.

That's currently just about how I think of Microsoft. I'm just concerned that may be how Microsoft feels about its customers.

Almost 14 months ago Todd Bertuzzi viciously attacked Steve Moore during an NHL game:

The 6-foot-3, 235-pound Bertuzzi was suspended indefinitely for his sucker punch from behind on the 6-foot-2, 205-pound Moore in a game on March 8, 2004, between the Canucks and the Colorado Avalanche. Moore suffered a concussion, broken neck and facial injuries.

Some of the game's biggest stars and the Canadian hockey establishment have rallied around Bertuzzi. Markus Naslund, whose injury inflicted by Moore set the wave of retribution in motion, said Moore was a talent-challenged plumber looking for a fast buck. Martin Brodeur wanted Bertuzzi to be eligible for the worlds. Hockey Canada, undeterred by the mugging of Moore, a Canadian on Canadian soil, evidently agrees. Team Canada officials would welcome Bertuzzi. NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow blamed everything on officiating.

David Letterman executive producter Rob Burnett to Rosie O'Donnell:

"I don't know how to respond to something that never happened," Burnett said. "And the last thing I want to do is get into a fight with a powerful celebrity who has a blog read by tens of people."

The Globe and Mail has an article that asks that question "How much should newspapers give away?", comparing The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, the Winnipeg Free Press, and the Medicine Hat News.

At the Winnipeg Free Press, most on-line content is available only to subscribers to the printed version of the newspaper:

"It didn't make sense to just give away our content," Free Press publisher Murdoch Davis said. "There is lots of stuff for free on the Web, but that doesn't mean that an industry that has existed for well over 100 years on a paid model should simply abandon that model."

The Free Press wants to ensure subscriptions to the printed paper do not erode, Mr. Davis said. While there is little advertising revenue generated from the site, ancillary Internet operations generate considerable cash. These include an enhanced obituary site called "Passages," and a link for career advertisers to the Workopolis job site.

Mr. Davis is enthusiastic about a new move to sell a fully electronic version of the paper -- a PDF version of each full page, with pictures, captions and so forth, as they appear in the print edition.

The Medicine Hat News is a bit more intelligent:

Michael Hertz, publisher of the daily Medicine Hat News in southern Alberta, said his paper's Internet site gets about 100,000 visits a month.

It brings in about $250,000 a year in advertising, enough to generate profit after paying costs such as the salary of a "Web master." But the paper isn't going to start charging for access, Mr. Hertz said, because "it is a really good way for us to promote the newspaper and keep it in peoples' sight and presence."

The Globe and Mail seemed to have the best logic:

While The Globe offers far more free news content than the Journal does, readers must register and pay for premium material. That assures advertisers they are getting a "tight niche audience," said Sandra Mason, vice-president of The Globe's on-line businesses.

Like the Journal, The Globe can then charge higher rates for its on-line ads than other sites, she said.

Ms. Mason said one reason the paper has opted for a hybrid model with lots of free material is to ensure potential future Globe readers -- in a younger demographic than current readers -- are exposed to the paper's content. (emphasis added)

Pop quiz time. Where do you think this quote came from?

“Comparing average crime rates for 2003 in the three prairie provinces and in the four bordering states as presented in the report for those crimes that are similarly defined and measured in both countries, we found that, in total, both violent and property crime rates were two thirds higher in the Canadian prairie provinces than in the four border states. Average crime rates were higher in the Canadian Prairies for all crimes with comparable definitions and statistics in the U.S.A.: Homicide – 1.1x higher; Aggravated assault, assault with a weapon and attempted murder – 1.5 x higher; Robbery – 2.1x higher; Breaking and Entering – 2.3x higher; and Motor Vehicle Theft – 3.2x higher.”

Saskatchewan M.P., Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative Firearms Critic, issued a news release today with the information, with the heading:

CRIME RATE 66% HIGHER IN THE PRAIRIE PROVINCES
THAN IN THE FOUR STATES SOUTH OF THE BORDER
“These two reports expose two Liberal deceptions; one, that Canadian gun laws reduce crime; and two, that more legally-owned guns results in more crime.”

Patterns of homicide in the United States and Canada were examined with a view to finding out whether the availability of firearms affects the homicide rate independently of the other social, demographic and economic factors in play. If this is the case, then low-homicide areas, which generally have fewer social and economic problems but the same access to firearms, should have a higher proportion of their homicides by firearms. This is not the case for the four border states.

Finally, patterns of all violent and property crime rates, some of which involve guns and some of which do not, in the four border states and three Prairie provinces approximately match the pattern of homicides. This observation suggests that the same factors, such as social and economic conditions, largely explain both violent and property crime - a finding that lends some support to Morrisons hypothesis that gun availability does not increase crime. (emphasis added)

Gracious thanks to Musing for the link.

Apparently they roam in upscale neighborhoods in Pikesville, Maryland:

More than a dozen police cars and a police helicopter were used to herd the roughly 10 beasts, authorities said.

[...]

Officers eventually managed to maneuver the buffalo onto the tennis court about a mile from where they first were spotted.

Will it be Our Media or Open Media?

Wait a moment. Our Media is a community. Open Media looks like content delivery, "the future of public tv and radio" as they describe it. They don't want my content.

I was confused for a second there.

Over at From Tokyo, Lionel Dersot has pointed out this wickedly funny overview of A-list bloggers.

Accordion Guy notes that a Canadian candy called Smarties (similar to M&Ms with a less chocolatey flavor) are available in a limited edition package labelled "Smarties, Eh".

As far as I know, Smarties are only available in Canada anyway, so I'm not sure what the point is, other than a marketing gimmick. It might be an interesting was to differentiate themselves upon entering the Canadian market, if that is their plan.

In Boston, and New England, Smarties actually refers to a little disk-shaped candy with a sour-sweet taste that melts in your mouth. The Canadian equivalent is called "Rockets".

Frank Barnako references Simon Waldman's comments about Wikinews not being very good:

The real problem is that almost every story seems to have been ’summarized from elsewhere’ and there is very little stuff there from ‘direct experience’. The end result is - I’m afraid to say - that of a very patchy wire service. It feels like a version of world events from people who’ve only ever experienced them through a computer screen.

Frank says:

There IS a difference between amateurs and professionals. The former do it for love. The latter (hopefully) love what they're paid for doing.

Both will make mistakes. The pros can be expected to be reliable, punctual, and curious. If they're not, you can bitch at 'em. Try telling an amateur he didn't get it right. See if he cares.

Don't believe me? Try calling the Washington Post and telling them you don't like their reporting. See how far you get.

Don't like Wikinews? You can change it.

Jeff Jarvis highlights an excellent piece by Tim Porter - The Mood of the Newsroom. Then Jeff offers seven suggestions to turn things around.

I won't try to summarize them; you should read them yourself.

Tim writes:

Here is the litany of shame that echoes in newsroom after newsroom:
We don't have the money.
We don't have the time.
We don't have the people.
We have lousy editors.
We have lousy reporters.
We can't communicate.
We don't talk.
We don't listen.

Things were better when ...
We had more people.
We zoned.
We didn't zone.
We had more money.
So-and-so was editor.
We did more (name your beat) reporting.
We did less (ditto).

I also write a column for local newspaper. The person I normally interact with is ill. So there is absolutely no interaction with the paper. I send my columns and they appear in print, with no other acknowledgement.

The people who read the paper - your customers - notice these things.

Joseph Heath, who teaches philosophy at the University of Toronto and writes about rational choice theory, thinks that road tolls are a good idea (paid subscription required) because wealthy people who can afford to drive luxury cars would be able to buy their way out of a traffic jam. And he thinks this would be a popular idea.

He suggests that if you charge drivers for peak hour travel, they will choose to reschedule their trips, making rush hour more manageable. He neglects that basic fact that the reason there is a rush hour is that most people are trying to get to work, much of which operates on a fixed schedule. It isn't the commuters that want to be driving at rush hour, it is the fact that their employers define work hours that creates rush hour. Mr. Heath seems to assume that the only variable is driver choice.

While tolls might be fine for the wealthy, there would be an unreasonable tax on the average person. I'm not sure why he doesn't recommend that the wealthy just travel when the traffic is lighter.

It might be a much more intelligent solution to have employers stagger work hours to eliminate the two hour rush hour window. Many cities also encourage carpooling through the use of special driving lanes. Rewarding drivers for something good seems better than punishing them with road tolls.

An increase in public transportation might help too. Oddly, Mr. Heath suggests directing the tolls to more public transit, then contradicts himself by saying that won't help because drivers will notice less congestion as a result and just start driving again.

Newspapers are dying partly because of the ridiculous things they do to aggravate their customers.

I subscribe to the print edition of The Globe and Mail. I also read content on the web, but some of it is behind a firewall in what they call their INSIDER Edition. All the INSIDER Edition consists of is the electronic version of the printed articles.

I though I would quickly enable INSIDER Edition on my subscription, but I couldn't figure our how to do that. So I checked the website and found this:

I subscribe to the print (newspaper) edition of The Globe and Mail. Do I get a discount to INSIDER Edition?

Absolutely! If you have a five- or six-day subscription to the print version of The Globe and Mail, you may subscribe to INSIDER Edition for just $6.95 per month (plus applicable taxes) instead of our regular rate of $14.95 per month (plus applicable taxes).

Well the joke's on them, because after my current subscription period ends I will be cancelling my subscription. They need to realize that they have lots of competition when it comes to news delivery.