David Akin’s On The Hill

A few years ago, a Nanaimo, B.C. man decided to masturbate in his living room with the curtains open. Some neighbours observed his act and called police. He was arrested and charged with performing an indecent act in public. He was convicted and spent four months in jail. But while all that was going on, his lawyers successfully got the case in front of the Supreme Court of Canada and yesterday, the Court overturned his conviction. In Canada, your living room is not a public place — even if you're doing something rude to yourself….
The Globe and Mail's Kirk Makin has more in today's paper:

The accused, Daryl Milland Clark, was reported to police after a neighbouring couple furtively observed him through binoculars for 10 to 15 minutes, then called police.
“This is an important case from the perspective of defining a public place,” Mr. Clark's lawyer, Gil McKinnon, said in an interview.
“People can be comforted to know that a law-abiding citizen who does some kind of act in privacy — without knowledge he is being observed by someone outside — is not at risk of being prosecuted,” Mr. McKinnon said. . . . [Read the rest of the story]

This post has two purposes. First, it’s a test to see how posts with BlogJet get rendered once BlogWare publishes them. (If you’re confused at this point, move right along. You’re not missing much by skipping the rest.)

Second, it’s a request for advice. My mobile computing machine for the last little while has been a Mac. Now, my main mobile computing machine is a PC, running Windows 2000. I’m using BlogJet to post this. On the Mac I was using Ecto (Ecto for Windows is out but just doesn’t seem to work at all with my Blogware blog.).  I loved Ecto on the Mac (and still use it to post from my Mac desktop machines) but would love to find something with similar functionality on the PC.

So far, BlogJet seems close.

Anyone have any suggestions about similar tools that work with Blogware and Win2000? Love to hear your thoughts.

 

Manulife CEO Dominic D'Alessandro (left) is the most respected chief executive officer by his peers, says a new poll by Ipsos-Reid, and that's probably about right. D'Alessandro engineered the takeover of John Hancock Financial Services and has steadily and without much flash and dash made his business into a monster. The Manulife takeover of the Massachusetts-based John Hancock (which also had a CEO named D'Alessandro, oddly enough) was the largest cross-border business combination in Canadian history.
And, for what it's worth, the few times I've met him he's seemed to me to be about the most polite, respectful and, almost shy, CEO you could imagine.
But the most interesting tid-bit about the Ipsos-Reid poll was the fact that Paul Tellier tied for second, as the most respected CEO. Tellier, of course, was fired/quit/retired/resigned from Bombardier and replaced by the family that controls the firm.
Laurent Beaudoin, who married the daughter of Bombardier founder Joseph-Armand Bombardier, and who had been CEO prior to Tellier, took over the top job again in the wake of Tellier's departure.
It's not clear what Beaudoin's peers think of his capabilities, compared to Tellier's, as a CEO but shareholders sure passed their judgement. When Tellier got ousted, Bomber stock to an all-time intra-day low of $1.87.
Here's the quote from the Ipsos-Reid release:

Dominic D’Alessandro’s successful merger of Manulife Financial and John Hancock Insurance this past year has swelled the ranks of Canada’s business leaders who most admire and respect the CEO. He emerges this year with 10% of CEOs personally writing his name in the slot for the CEO they most admire and respect.
Following behind Mr. D’Alessandro are:
• Paul Tellier former CEO of Bombardier (4%),
• Clive Beddoe CEO of WestJet Airlines Ltd. (4%),
• Remi Marcoux CEO of Transcontinental Inc. (3%), and
• Ed Clark CEO of TD Bank Financial Group (3%).
All other CEOs mentioned received 2% of the vote or less.

I have a new job, which I'll be starting in a week. An edited version of a note I circulated to some sources earlier this week announcing this change is copied below. The new job likely means some changes here at the blog, too. It will take a few days to re-tool before those changes show up and, as always, I'm keen to get your feedback about this blog ought to contain. Here's that note:

Hello —
Effective MONDAY JANUARY 31, I will join CTV's Ottawa bureau as a Parliamentary Reporter.
I will be ending, after a long run, my coverage of technology and business issues.
Because my new job will require all of my time, I will have to close my assignment as a Contributing Writer to the Globe and Mail's Report on Business.
Effective MON JAN 31, I encourage you to visit http://www.davidakin.com where my new cell phone number and other contact information posted.
As always, love to hear what you're up to and I hope to touch base with you soon.

[From today's Globe and Mail] Mosaid Technologies Inc., fresh from a patent fight victory with one of the titans in its industry, is taking on another giant, and investors must decide again whether to wager their money on a potentially lucrative — but always uncertain — legal settlement.
For many current and potential Mosaid shareholders, it is not so much a question of market share, rising sales or new technology in the pipeline, but rather how successful Mosaid's lawyers are in capturing a royalty stream from the world's largest makers of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM . . . [Read the full story]

The Internet Advertising Bureau of Canada announced the adoption today of new standards for online ads. Taking its cue from the American industry's move to standardize ad sizes, the IAB put out what it calls the Canadian Universal Ad Package or CUAP.
The push to standardize on some ad sizes for online media will reduce costs for advertisers and eliminate inefficiencies associated with buying and creating online media, the IAB seays.
Online ads still make up an awfully tiny percentage of overall media advertising. The IAB said that in 2004, the Canadian online publishing industry posted revenue of $295-million. To put that in perspective, Bell Globemedia, which owns CTV and The Globe and Mail,put up $302-million in revenue (most of which was derived from the sale of advertising) in just the fiscal third quarter, which ended Sept. 30.
Future phases of the CUAP package (due later in 2005) will include rich media and video-streaming standards as well as online ad measurement guidelines.

Just a tiny chunk of the show floor at the Detroit Auto Show. This photo is taken at the Honda stand looking out over the Ford display. Photo: David Akin

I was one of the cheerleaders, to use the parlance of The New Republic's Gregg Easterbrook, at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Easterbrook doesn't exactly sound like he's the kind of guy you want to hang out with at a show like this:

The cheerleaders, I mean automotive press, have departed, and over the weekend the annual North American International Automotive Show was opened to the public. You can gawk here at the flashy cars on display; detailed reporting on the event can be found here at The Detroit News auto show site. The theme of this year's cars was more: more power, more gizmos, more weight, more cost, even more safety features. But at this point what we need from cars is less.

If you're at all interested, one of my stories was about the struggle the Big Three (a misnomer now since Toyota is now number two in the world to General Motors) are having in the North American car market. (Click on the video links on the right-hand side.)

[From today's Globe and Mail] It was no less an expert than Michael Dell who forecast the demise of Apple Computer Inc. In 2001, the chairman and founder of the computer company that bears his name said Apple had sealed its fate by failing to build computers that used Intel Corp. microprocessors and software from Microsoft Corp. In sticking with its own proprietary technologies, Apple could not survive. “We know how the movie ends,” Mr. Dell, now 39, said. “It's just a question of what happens in the middle.”
But three years later, it is Apple — not Dell Inc. — that some say is now the best bet for investors interested in backing a computer maker.
Long an ugly duckling for investors, the Cupertino, Calif., company has been the soaring swan of the market for the past year. Its stock is up 176 per cent in the past 12 months (it closed yesterday at $70.10 U.S.), compared with 13 per cent for Dell. Apple already rivals Round Rock, Tex.-based Dell in manufacturing efficiency, and is poised to beat it on profit margins, earnings and revenue growth. On new product innovation, analysts say, Apple is unrivalled . . . [Read the full story ]

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Daily Kos and another blog received $3,000 (U.S.) a month for four months from the Howard Dean campaign.
The story reports that both bloggers disclosed at their blogs that they received funds from the Dean campaign.
The Journal's story began with a post by Zephyr Teachout, who worked on the Dean campaign.
Neither The Daily Kos nor MyDD, though, contains disclosures now about how they pay their bills, something I think is important if you want your views on whatever issue to be taken seriously.
The guy behind the Daily Kos, it should be noted, received hard-to-get press credentials for the Democratic National Convention, the same kind of credentials normally reserved for those who are not being paid by the politicians they are ostensibly reporting on. The guy behind MyDD quit his blogging while he worked for the Dean campaign.
Now, it's one thing for bloggers like Kos to provide a forum for political discussion but it's quite another to be given press credentials when the group accrediting you is the group paying you. Dozens, if not hundreds, of other independent journalists and bloggers had their applications for credentials to this event refused. I wonder what those who couldn't get credentials think of the Democrats for credentialling someone who was on Dean's payroll.
Some Kos fans are, erm, a little hot under the collar about this whole issue. Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, has some good discussion, as well, around this issue.
But whether you agree with Kos politics or not, what did he and his supporters think would happen? Bill O'Reilly, Bob Novak and other political opponents of Kos' worldview were bound to impugn his ethics and accuse him of being on the take.
Here's a response, from Teachout's blog:

How about a dislaimer or graphic that says I can be bought and have been. Then folks would know what they are dealing with. For a graphic I might suggest a hand out, palm up. Or a makeup laden lady of the night, her lips puckered and a eyebrow raised. We would then know the blogger is interested not in just donations, but bribes as well. It could become the latest thing in copy cat blogging protocol.

Daily Kos has lots to say on his site about this as do his readers/contributors.
Jerome Armstrong, who is behind MyDD, also has an explanation/thread on this.
This, incidentally, is not an issue about politics. This is an issue of vital importance to the craft of journalism and the challenge to that craft from bloggers. Readers need to know who pays the bills or how the bills the get paid.

[From today's Globe and Mail] As soon as The Mac Station opened for business yesterday, the phones at the Vancouver computer store lit up with requests for information about the new Mac Mini (pictured left), a tiny but full-powered desktop computer that Apple Computer Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. had unveiled hours earlier at an annual trade show in San Francisco.
Like its popular iMac consumer desktop computer, the Mini turns the world of computer design on its head. Just five centimetres tall and about three times that wide, it weighs a little over a kilogram. It is also the most competitively priced Apple computer ever, with a base model starting at about $630.
That is still more expensive by as much as two or three hundred dollars than the base models from other computer makers such as Dell Inc. of Round Rock, Tex. and Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, Calif.
And so, the first question about the Mini was the same one asked of Apple when it introduced the iMac in 1998: Will it sell? … [Read the full story]