Open your wallets

We just got these so-called Smart Meters installed in our Canadian province of British Columbia last year. The provincial power company BC Hydro put out some ridiculous publicity claiming that there would be no net cost in the long run because it would "help catch marijuana grow-ops" among other things (how? grow-ops bypass the meter). But subsequent investigations reveal that they hid costs of almost $1 billion, and now they want to raise our power rates by 50%! Somehow I fail to see the benefit to anyone except the company selling the meters and all the insiders they paid off.

Deja vu all over again

This is a perennial story which makes the rounds every time the U.S. government is trying to pressure the Canadian government to adopt the secret ACTA treaty provisions. But it goes all the way back to the late 1800s, when the story of the time was that Canadians were illegally copying U.S. sheet music. We've just had to learn to tune out our neighbours to the south when they show this particular blind spot, complaining about everyone else while being oblivious to their own transgressions.

Hang gliders are not subject to government regulation in Canada, so the operator was not required to meet any standards or conform to any regulations, and probably didn't have any insurance. While individuals who enjoy the sport are probably not keen to invite unwelcome government regulation, it would seem to be a serious oversight to allow the operation of a passenger-carrying business without some minimal regulation.

On the right track

I still browse in bookstores even though I read most books on my e-reader these days, so I think Barnes & Noble is on the right track with their efforts to integrate their bookstore chain with their e-readers. Yes, there are many practical difficulties as others pointed out in their comments, but at least B&N are trying. Unfortunately their real weakness is that they have no international presence or strategy outside the USA, unlike all of their competitors. They're a big fish in a medium-size pond.

More nimble?

Is that the new buzzword for slashing the team in half? Making them more "nimble"? I guess I'd get a little more nimble too if I were trying to avoid an axe that falls repeatedly, but I'm not sure it helps productivity. I have a fire-sale TouchPad. I like it and I've bought more apps for it than for my iPhone. I think HP didn't stick with it long enough, and they're compounding their mistakes.

GoDaddy has no business using my money to advocate a political agenda I don't agree with. I'm moving my 7 domains.

So how many seconds?

So exactly how many seconds of buffering constitutes and illegal copy? According to the court, 30 seconds is too much. Odd decision, almost as if the judge were unaware that most internet video transmission systems buffer 30-60 seconds - or as if his convoluted logic was intended to find any excuse to ban a service that the broadcast networks don't like. But let's take it to a logical conclusion. There are many buffers in a video transmission system from source to eyeballs. How many seconds of buffering is too much? Is it 10? 5? 1? 0.1? I guess the engineers will have to take this question to the courts over and over until they find the answer. Sounds like a lot of employment for lawyers!

Driverless trains can work

The trains in Vancouver (Canada) are all driverless, and they have a good safety record. The trains, tracks, and stations are monitored by CCTV from a central control room, and they have automated safety systems that monitor the tracks and stop the trains in the event of a problem. Plenty of uniformed staff and transit police circulate throughout the system, and there's a good chance of seeing them on any given train or at any given platform.

iPod Touch and bargain HP Touchpad here

and a Kobo Touch for reading. But when my mother wanted a tablet, we got her an iPad. It's all about the right tool for the job. It would be dumb to buy a $500 hammer/screwdriver/wrench/saw too and expect it to be the only tool you need to build a shed and maintain your car. Why do people think one tablet should be "the best" at everything?

Guess what tablet OS is #2?

Maybe the disgruntled Android gang should be paying more attention to the fact that WebOS is now the #2 operating system in tablets, ever since HP sold close to a million Touchpad tablets in their fire sale. And webOS is for sale - cheap!

The hidden financial reason

The loss of local number dialing has already happened in many other places, and an interesting reason turned out to be at the bottom of why the phone company couldn't make it optional to dial the full number with prefix within the same local. Of course modern phone computers could allow that. But as numbers run out, new customers are forced to take numbers in the new area code. Naturally they will perceive those numbers as having lesser value if people have to dial an extra prefix to reach them. In order to mollify them and keep all prices the same, the phone company forces everyone else to dial an unnecessary prefix too. Sort of like the theater making people who came early and got a seat close to the stage watch the play through the wrong end of binoculars so that they will be equal with latecomers sitting too far back

Maybe not Logitech's fault

I find it hard to fault Logitech for attempting to innovate. They have some fine products, and they do try to support them, unlike some other companies. The fault in this case is more Google's - they promised a lot and delivered little. It's the box plus the services that count for set-top boxes - why pay a premium price for a box with sub-par services? Especially when you can get competing boxes for as little as $50.

Meh

I have dual-boot Win7 and WinXP on my computers. I use WinXP almost exclusively, except when I really have to run something on Win7, because:

a) XP is faster

b) It's more familiar - I hate the arbitrary changes in Win7 just to be different

c) I have way more licensed software on WinXP that I would have to re-buy or replace for Win7

d) There's almost nothing I need or want in Win7

The fact is that everyone is forced to take Win7 with new computers, so eventually I'll have to reluctantly change over. But it's clear that Microsoft has switched from innovating to milking their user base for revenue. That's the beginning of the end.

Vast difference

It might be helpful to provide some information about how vast the energy difference is between a sub-orbital hop and achieving orbit, and therefore why these lower-cost spacecraft without huge rocket booster stacks are never going to be capable of reaching orbit.

Service already available for many years in Canada

Here in Canada it has always been possible to pay money directly to anyone else's credit card using online banking bill payment. Even here I think most people have never realized it, because the online bill-payment service is ostensibly for pay your own credit card bill. However there is no check on who owns the credit card account number you are paying, so it serves very well as a zero-cost way to transfer small amounts of money from one person to another.

Time to give up

I realized that the fight to keep private data out of the hands of U.S. security agencies was lost when I recently renewed by British passport from Canada. All British passport renewal forms from Canada now have to be sent to Washington DC. Yes, they are ostensibly sent to the British embassy in Washington, but do you really think that they are not all intercepted and copied?

Unix killed DEC

I spent a lot of time working on DEC PDP-11 and VAX, even a PDP-10 system at one location. I was an accomplished RSX system programmer at one time, and I still admire features of that operating system that Windows has never gotten right.

I still remember the day that the local DEC sales staff came to our shop (a major DEC account) to put on a seminar on how Unix was the future (DEC having seen the light), after bashing Unix and promoting the advantages VMS for years. They seemed lost and uncertain, and in retrospect that was the end of DEC. The failure to launch a successful microcomputer, and the subsequent purchase by upstart microcomputer maker Compaq were just the nails in the coffin.

It's the contract,

While the stats about smartphone OS are interesting, an important influence is the nature of the contracts offered in each country. For example in Canada the iPhone is offered only with an expensive multi-year contract including a high-use data plan. If you get an iPhone, you're certainly going to use it for browsing! Blackberry and Android phones are available cheap, without a contract, and can be used on low-limit data plans for the more cost-conscious.

SORBS only for the lazy and incompetent ISP

SORBS is a complete waste of everybody's time. Only lazy and incompetent ISPs use it. I've seen it blocking swaths of IP addresses belonging to the biggest ISP serving a whole region because someone somewhere reported a problem with one IP address in that range.

Wrong country, guys

AT&T is the official sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Team, but they have no wireless facilities in CANADA, where the Olympics are taking place. Video flooding there may well be, but if so it will be on the local networks of Telus, Rogers, or Bell Canada.

Azincourt

What a coincidence - I just read the historical novel Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell yesterday, and the author added an interesting appendix on his research. He cited various sources as estimating anything from 8000 to 50,000 French facing 5000 to 9000 English. Apparently exaggerated English estimates of French strength at the time were as high as 150,000, recalling some of the wild estimates of aircraft losses by both sides from the Battle of Britain. Estimating troop strength in a battle has always been difficult, particularly so from poor quality medieval sources. Many of those who started out with either side may have fallen sick (disease was rampant in the English force), fallen behind the troop movements, or returned home. Cornwell's take was that clearly contemporary sources agreed that there was a significant mismatch between the forces, and they were closest to the event.

It's not about predicting the future

It has been said that all of Science Fiction is based on imagining the answers to two questions "What if...?" and "If this goes on...?". It's not about predicting the actual future. We can leave that to futurologists. Science Fiction is about imagining what might be. It allows us to dream of goals that we can reach for, or avoid fates that we hope never to see.

Fingerprints not a good idea either

I have one of the Asus laptops with facial recognition logon. I gave it a quick try - it's amusing, but obviously easy to fool. My laptop also has a fingerprint reader which can be used to logon. Along with a shiny smooth plastic cover on the top side that always shows a crystal-clear copy of my fingerprints. :-)

Comments from an Asus notebook owner

The battery life on all the recent Asus notebook models stinks. Asus really needs to address this.

The Asus fingerprint reader is especially useless - not only can it not read fingerprints reliably, the owner's fingerprints are always clearly visible on the glossy black lid in any case. :-)

Take a close look at those hinge covers, which the same design as several recent Asus models - they are flimsy plastic covers that pop off or break easily with the slightest impact. Practically every Asus notebook using this design has missing hinge covers after a year of use.

Self damage

Lenovo still makes great computers for a small price premium, as I found when I recently compared them to other vendors on a laptop purchase. But they wanted 5+ weeks for delivery. Problems with the supply chain?