All the fish gone by 2048?

Post ImageIn the last week we’ve heard a lot about recent research that suggests fish stocks will completely collapse by 2048. The research, led by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, found essentially that marine biodiversity matters. An article at The Economist explains:

The findings suggest that governments should rethink the way they try to manage fisheries. Marine reserves are common in the tropics, but policymakers in temperate countries tend to focus on one species at a time to control numbers of that species caught. They might do better to spend more time thinking about ecosystems and less haggling over quotas.

I guess I’m what economists would call a “frontier” thinker. Now that we know about the issue, I think we’ll be able to apply our science and technology to solve any potential problems. I am pretty confident that by 2048, we won’t have to worry about disappearing fish stocks.

Read: The Economist

The NHL needs to fire McGeough

Post ImageWhenever Michael McGeough is assigned to officiate an Oiler game, I cringe. Tonight he proved exactly why. The Oilers just lost to the Dallas Stars by a final score of 3-2, but the Stars were helped immensely by the officials in this one.

The first Stars goal should not have been allowed. Roloson was in his crease and was interfered with, which according to NHL rule #78 should have been immediately disallowed. Neither official on the ice made a peep, and the goal was allowed to stand.

Late in the third period, with the score 3-1 for the Stars, the Oilers pulled Roloson and managed to get to within one. Then, with less than half a minute to go, Hemsky scored. This time though, McGeough immediately waved it off, very emphatically I might add. He claimed that Horcoff made a glove pass off the draw. First of all, it’s really not hard to distinguish between a glove and a stick, and Horcoff clearly used his stick. The play was entirely legal. Secondly, McGeough was horribly out of position and could not possibly have had a good look at the draw. Which leads to the question – why did he wave it off?

Because he’s a fucking idiot, that’s why. The play could not be reviewed apparently, and the Oilers were robbed of one, possibly two points by the sheer stupidity of McGeough. I don’t blame the fans for throwing anything and everything on the ice.

Seriously, the NHL needs to review this game and make sure McGeough never officiates again in the league. This kind of atrocious stupidity cannot be tolerated.

Maclean's sucks up to the U of A

Post ImageI don’t know about you, but today I lost all remaining respect that I had for Maclean’s magazine. The annual ranking of Canadian universities came out, and the University of Alberta placed first in the reputational ranking. Kind of suspect, don’t you think, considering the U of A led the charge to boycott the rankings due to suspect methodologies. If there was any doubt about why the U of A and 26 other universities chose to boycott the ranking, I think it’s gone now. Nothing says guilty like sucking up.

If you’d like to see past results, the University of Waterloo has a handy page with all the data – not surprising considering they have ranked first in 13 out of 16 years the rankings have been produced.

For its part, the University of Alberta stands by the earlier decision, though Provost and Vice President (Academic) Carl Amrhein said placing first “certainly feels good.” I guess that’s a fairly diplomatic answer.

Read: Maclean’s

Zune doesn't hate podcasting after all?

Post ImageIt may be true that Microsoft’s upcoming Zune device doesn’t explicitly support podcasting, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t copy a podcast episode to it yourself. In that sense, it’s a lot like any of the other Windows Media based devices out there.

Until today, I was more worried that Microsoft and the Zune would snub podcasting altogether. No mention of podcasting in any literature, marketing, or other materials. No hope for future updates to the Zune to support podcasting. That sort of thing. Today however, Microsoft launched Zune.net and put my fears to rest:

Zap! You’re connected to your best friend and send the new song your band recorded in the garage last weekend. Another friend gets the hilarious podcast your kid brother made at school…

Emphasis is mine. See! They don’t hate podcasting!

Maybe there’s hope for V2 after all.

Read: Zune.net

Minnesota to launch solar wifi network

Post ImageYay for wireless everywhere! Let us all follow the fine example about to be set by Minnesota. According to Web Worker Daily, the state is getting ready to take a major step into the wireless world (via Tris Hussey):

From a state better known for wind chill and the latest in fur-trimmed parka fashion, a plan to create a wireless mesh network with nodes powered by batteries refreshed via solar panels is gathering steam.

The solar panels being used are apparently the same type already being used for highway signs across the country. The battery system is theoretically capable of lasting nearly seven years between replacement. And all the hardware is promised to work even during the dead of winter, through snow and sub-freezing temps.

Canadians take note! This sounds like the kind of technology we need to deploy here in our own cities. Apparently 300 residents are already testing the network (not currently solar powered) and a final decision on the project should be made on Monday.

Wireless Internet access provided by an all-weather, solar-powered mesh network. Awesome.

Read: Web Worker Daily

Dynamic multi-dimensional scrolling in Vista

Post ImageThe launch of Windows Vista is drawing near, so you might be wondering if it is worthy of your hard earned dollars. Ask someone to tell you about Vista, and they’ll likely tell you that it is more secure than XP and has much nicer eye candy. That’s all well and good, but what you really want to hear is that Vista has dynamic multi-dimensional scrolling. No really, that’s what you want to hear. Long Zheng has an awesome animation that compares the scrolling experience in XP with the new experience in Vista (if you’re too lazy to look, essentially Vista does horizontal scrolling for you automagically).

I can’t say it better than Long:

Is it a feature? No. Is it worth mentioning? No. Is it a selling point? No.

Does it deliver a great experience? Yes.

Assuming Vista contains many more of these little gems, you’ll want to spend your money on the new operating system.

Read: Long Zheng

Canada to tax Income Trusts

Post ImageBy now you’ve probably heard that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced today a new tax on income trusts. The decision has drawn lots of criticism, especially since it comes just three weeks after BCE proposed the biggest trust conversion in our nation’s history. Telus was another major corporation looking to transform itself to an income trust.

So what the heck is an income trust? That’s been my question throughout all of this. According to Wikipedia:

An income trust is an investment trust that holds income-producing assets. The term also designates a legal entity, capital structure and ownership vehicle for certain assets or businesses. Its shares or “trust units” are traded on securities exchanges just like stocks. The income is passed on to the investors, called “unitholders”, through monthly or quarterly distributions.

Interestingly, the article also points out that they are most common here in Canada.

Anyway, that definition helps a little, but not a lot. When I heard that “BCE wants to turn itself into an income trust”, I thought, “but they are a company?” So if I understand things correctly, they just wanted to save some money on taxes, and becoming an income trust would allow them to do so. And indeed, as the CBC article points out, BCE would have saved itself $800 million in taxes by 2008. That’s some serious dough.

Actually, it turns out the CBC article is more helpful in understanding things:

Trust conversions are increasing in popularity because trusts do not pay corporate tax. Instead, they pay out most of their income in distributions to unitholders, who then pay tax on those distributions at a preferential rate.

Clearly, the government was not happy that it would be losing so much tax money. Existing trusts have a four year grace period until the new tax takes effect, while new trusts face the new rules immediately.

I don’t know if this is a good thing or not. I simply don’t understand things enough to say one way or the other. Certainly the markets don’t like the new rules. My feeling is that companies like BCE and Telus simply discovered a weakness in the laws and sought to exploit it. The government realized it had a problem, and took immediate action. Which one of them is correct? I don’t know. Tax avoidance probably isn’t a good thing for the country, but on the other hand, the companies were not breaking any rules. I can only hope that Mr. Flaherty’s rhetoric about income trusts hurting the economy is true, and not just a statement made up for his own purposes.

Read: CBC News

Windows Media Player 11: Not Impressive

Post ImageOn Monday, Microsoft released the latest update to Windows Media Player, affectionately known as version 11. Apparently the release was supposed to happen a week earlier, but was delayed due to concerns about the quality.

They should have delayed the release even longer.

I wrote about Beta 1 and Beta 2, and in general, the final release hasn’t changed my opinion about the software. Here’s what I like about it:

  • The interface is clean and looks modern and attractive.
  • Searching is excellent, and really becomes the main way you interact with your media library.
  • Synchronization with portable devices is superb.

And pretty much everything else falls into the “indifferent” or “don’t like it at all” categories. They have tried to make the app easier to use, but as a result, they have taken out some of the functionality that advanced users such as myself want. The best example here is adding media to the library. I want to have explicit, tight control over what goes into my library and what stays out, so forcing me to monitor folders or play a file completely sucks. Give me multiple different ways to manage this kind of thing!

What else: lots of visualizations are missing, there aren’t any Canadian stores supported, sometimes it appears to freeze, and a bunch of other minor things.

The biggest problem of all? Windows Media Player 11 is not an “oh my god you must get the latest version” kind of update to previous versions. As far as I am concerned, WMP11 is the first such release of Windows Media Player. I think WMP9 was an excellent improvement, and WMP10 was better still. It sucks that I can’t say the same about WMP11. I was really hoping for something better.

I guess I’ll have to wait for version 12.

Read: WMP11

GameDaily is drunk on PS3 kool-aid

Post ImageTomorrow is November, and you know what that means – game console launches! Both Nintendo and Sony will be releasing their latest offerings this month, so don’t be surprised if you hear a lot about it over the next few weeks. Hopefully though, the coverage is more accurate and credible than GameDaily’s latest. Author James Brightman outlines five reasons that Sony will win the “Next Gen Console War”. Here are his reasons, with my comments underneath each one:

1. The Brand
Brightman is right, a “strong brand should not be underestimated.” However, the problem with this argument (that Sony will win because it has a strong brand) is that nothing lasts forever! Indeed, Brightman states, “in the late ’80s and early ’90s Nintendo was king, but on today’s market there is no brand more synonymous with the world of video games than PlayStation.” Too bad he couldn’t read his own sentence and realize that what happened to Nintendo could happen to Sony too.

2. Microsoft (somewhat) Squandered its Lead
Nice to the see conviction in his argument – “somewhat” hey? Microsoft’s goal is to sell 10 million consoles by the end of 2006. They are definitely behind at the moment. But let’s see how the holiday season shakes out, shall we?

3. Japan is Ripe for the Taking
Japan has never been a strong market for Microsoft. The first Xbox did horribly there, and I don’t think MS execs were expecting to do that much better with the Xbox 360. Not that it matters – Sony cannot “win” by simply selling more in Japan. Once again, Brightman neglects to read his own writing: “let’s not forget that this is a global market.”

4. Blu-ray Will Matter
If there’s one good thing about Brightman and his article, it’s that he makes tearing it apart really easy. He writes, “sure some of this is hype, and maybe we’re falling for it…” You better believe it is hype. Anything related to Blu-ray or HD-DVD at this point is hype.

“In one to two years, we think the combination of the Blu-ray medium and the Cell processor will lead to a noticeable difference between the visuals of the PS3 and the Xbox 360, as developers begin to really harness the technology in the PS3.”

Seems to me that Brightman isn’t a very technical person. Developing for the Xbox 360 in such a way that you can extract every ounce of performance is hard. It requires a shift in the way developers think and work (because of multiple cores, etc). There aren’t any 360 games that really do this yet. So, to say that in a one or two years the Cell processor and Blu-ray will lead to a noticeable difference is ridiculous. First of all, 360 games are going to get better. More importantly though, developing for the PS3 is even more complex than for the Xbox 360, so I would expect it to take much more time before we see the best possible visuals.

5. Free Online
This is the one argument I somewhat agree with. Completely free, full online access for PS3 gamers is a big deal. We all know Microsoft has deep pockets however, so if they wanted to make Xbox Live Gold free, they certainly could. I think they’ll wait though, to see what the PS3 online service is like. People will pay for quality.

A few more things
There’s a ton of other problems with this article. For one, what about Nintendo? Brightman compares Sony almost exclusively to Microsoft. The Wii might not have fancy graphics, but I’d argue it belongs in the “next gen” classification. The PS3 is going to have to beat the Wii too. For another thing, there’s no mention of the cost. The PS3 is really expensive, both in comparison to previous consoles, and to its competitors. Brand allegiance is important, but it often falls apart in the case of extremely high prices. Another thing – the Playstation doesn’t have the huge list of exclusive titles that previous versions did. Lots of games are now available for multiple consoles. I could go on.

It’s really easy to make predictions about how the consoles will fare against one another. It is much harder to make accurate predictions. That said, its pretty simple to come up with something better than this GameDaily article.

Read: GameDaily

Comedy Central smarter than the average bear!

Post ImageOver the last few days word has spread that Comedy Central asked YouTube to remove clips of the Colbert Report and the Daily Show, under terms of the DMCA. When I first heard about it, I was really disappointed in Comedy Central. It seems they only decided to make a fuss now that Google owns YouTube. I thought they were really shortsighted, and indeed stupid, for ignoring the fact that YouTube is a huge buzz machine for its shows.

Today however, Jeff Jarvis is reporting that they didn’t ask YouTube to remove all clips, just some of them. Further investigation shows that only clips longer than 5 minutes have been removed.

I think it is really in Comedy Central’s best interests to allow clips to appear on YouTube. Not entire episodes certainly, but short clips. Even if they don’t make any money from the clips immediately, it would be a good experiment. You’ll never understand how to take advantage of the fast changing media distribution landscape until you try something new.

Read: BuzzMachine