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musings of mark since 2001

Talk about missing the boat, in this case it’s not only left the harbour but is on another ocean by now. Cnet news, billing themselves as “News of Change” has another announcement from Microsoft about its new “Live” service.

“The Windows Live package aims to provide Internet-based personal tools such blogging and instant messaging software, as well as the e-mail service.”

Could someone down in Redmond tell them it’s almost the year 2006 please? A little late to get on the boat myself, but I started blogging in May of 2001 and hardly thought I was cutting edge at the time.

Trying to outdo Google’s big-brotherlinesses, the new Live will automatically calculate a safety level to keep you from your own stupidity, assuming you are too stupid in the first place. Also in the try-to-catch up department is the indexed search , it searches message bodies as well as subjects, nothing new there. For some reason they are making spell checking out as something new, anyone that’s used Mozilla mail with their web browser knows how that works.

With all that though, I’ll still be there to get the Windows Vista operating system even if it’s features are also a few years behind the times. Haven’t looked for anything on the new kernel, or if it’s an old NT kernel re-warmed, but it was nice avoiding the complete Windows XP - NT experience. Now there is software like Fireworks that I want to use, but it’s been borked so that you must use XP-NT dll’s to make it run and I’ve got an expensive box with a CD that’s just a coaster. If the ‘new’ OS doesn’t support the old XP-NT hooks, then for sure the Win98 machine is a Linux model then and there’s another non-microsoft machine in the house.

Turns out I’ve been nominated for one of the Bowen Island Chamber of Commerce Excellence Awards. Guessing it’s because it’s pretty darn easy to do business with me, and the web and mail servers I supply for them just plain run well. Doubt that I’ll actually get it though thank goodness, too many people know that I’m not an entrepreneur and could care less about better profits, the opposite of what a Chamber of Commerce is all about.

It shows in the bottom line too; thought I had the rent for December in the bank, but a person has to eat and scrambling to make ends meet at the end of the month. Spending a bit more time at home makes for a smaller paycheck from the other marina, makes me happier, but poorer all the while. Just as well off though in the long run probably; and it keeps me from temptation of all types, including accolades from the business community, (at a function that I can’t afford the admission price to attend anyways - lol!), what an irony it would be if the vote came my way.

It really is amazing how ridiculous patent applications have become. If this is for real and not some sort of farce to point out the ridiculousness of the current patent craze is, then witness:

“Breath Capture is a patent-pending method and apparatus for collecting human breath as a keepsake display.”

It’s a seal-able test tube that you blow into, and then cap. That’s it. For this you can get a patent? The ‘method’ is breathing out, and the ‘apparatus’ is existing technology - sheesh!

Might as well patent Panexa, after all it is a ‘method’ of delivering pill advertising and the technology is existing. You just need to come up with some back-end php code and call it unique and Bob’s Your Uncle.

One of the many incidents not reported on the Main Stream North American media is the talk of England’s AG invoking the Official Secrets Act, thank goodness for the internet as it allows us to read what others in the world think:

If someone passes me the document within the next few days I will be very happy to publish it in The Spectator, and risk a jail sentence. The public need to judge for themselves. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If we suppress the truth, we forget what we are fighting for, and in an important respect we become as sick and as bad as our enemies.

Boris Johnson is MP for Henley and editor of ‘The Spectator’

Thanksgiving Day holiday for my brothers that have emigrated to the USA today. It’s a typical holiday where everyone except those in the service industries get a day off from work, and the the celebration of the massacres taking place in the new colonies are forgotten for a warm fuzzy feeling of giving thanks for family, friends and life.

Canadian history is not much different, ranging from various thanks for defeating enemies to todays “blessings with which the people of Canada have been favoured”. Long before Europeans settled in North America, festivals of thanks and celebrations of harvest took place in Europe in the month of October. The very first Thanksgiving celebration in North America took place in Canada when Martin Frobisher, an explorer from England, arrived in Newfoundland in 1578. He wanted to give thanks for his safe arrival to the New World, 43 years before the pilgrims landed in Plymouth.