[Annual meeting] Imperial Oil – 1035

Blogging from the floor right now at the annual shareholders meeting of Imperial Oil Inc. held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto. Some Greenpeace protesters are outside the building handing out some material. I came in through a parking garage interest and missed them.
Inside the meeting, security is tight. There are uniformed armed police officers at the entrance to the meeting and the meeting floor itself is thick with plainclothes security guards.
To open the meeting, Imperial Oil CEO Tim Hearn called on the company's legal counsel to outline the evacuation procedures for the meeting. Never been to an annual meeting where the company was so concerned about security and evacuation.
Started blogging away when my Airport Extreme Card found the MTCC wireless network. Thought I had access. Turns out I don't have access. So these will be posted up when I get back to the network.

First it was music, now its downloading movies

Pollster Ipsos-Reid says today that one-fifth of American who have
downloaded a digital music file have also downloaded a full-length movie.
Of course, this was only a matter of time and a matter of consumer
bandwidth.
BitTorrent users are already using that particular
application to move television shows and DVD-quality movies, in addition to
album-length music collections.
“These data are evidence that American downloading behaviors are expanding
beyond music and moving towards broader digital entertainment acquisition
and consumption behaviors,” Matt Kleinschmit, a senior analyst with
Ipsos-Insight's technology and communications practice, says in a press release
from Ipsos. “While the music industry continues to define and integrate
the role of digital music in the existing music marketplace, the motion
picture industry is presented with a unique foresight into next-generation
consumer entertainment. Multimedia-enabled portable devices, digitally
formatted television content, and downloadable back catalogue videos are
just a few of the categories that may be mined in anticipation of
near-future consumer demand.”

Record Industry appeals download ruling

Earlier this month, Canada's biggest record companies, acting through the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), lost a key court ruling.
The Federal Court of Canada ruled that CRIA was not entitled to force some of Canada's largest ISPs to turn over private customer data that the record companies say they needed to commence with lawsuits against 29 Canadians for illegally downloading music.
In his ruling, Judge Konrad von Finckenstein said that the CRIA had failed to make a case that copyright infringement was actually happening — essentially saying a P2P file-sharing system was not illegal under Canadian law — and that the record companies had not presented any evidence that forcing ISPs to turn over customer records was the only way CRIA could proceed.
CRIA filed an appeal of that ruling late last week. In that appeal, CRIA claims von Finckenstein made several errors.
Of some note, given the fact that the Judge essentially said in his ruling that CRIA's lawyers did a lousy job of presenting any evidence, CRIA appears to be keeping the same law firm to handle the appeal.

Clematis is planted

Several weeks ago, I ordered some Clematis and Hostas from Veseys. I got the roots for both in the mail last Wednesday. They arrived in a cardboard box. The 10 hostas — they're an assortment of cultivars — were packed in dirt in a big plastic bag. The four clematis were each packed in their own baggie.
Today I potted the clematis. Tomorrow I plan to put the hostas into the ground.
To pot the clematis, I followed the directions that came with the plants. First, I soaked the roots in water for an hour. I then took an 8″ pot, filled it up about 1/3 with a potting and seeding mix and put the root on top. I then put in more mix, to just past the crown of the plant. I watered with a root-starter solution.
The temperature was about 19 C today so i put the plants out the back for some afternoon sun but brought them back indoors tonight.
As for the rest of the garden, it's slowly but surely coming to life. I'm going to take some pics tomorrow.
But back to the clematis.
Here's the varieties going in this year. The plan is to put them on the back fence.

  • Hyde Hall
  • Harlow Carr
  • Wisley
  • Rosemoor

"Eleven guys. Eleven versions out of focus"

Thanks to Tim Bray for pointing to this fascinating look behind-the-scenes at how photos end up in Sports Illustrated. Sports Illustrated's photographers shot more than 16,000 photos during the most recent Super Bowl. That's right: 16,000 photos. Editors have to go through each one to find the best one for the cover. The article talks about how they do it and gives lots of pointers to the technology and software they use for this job. Very cool.
Here's the clip from Bray's blog:

There’s a fantastic article by Rob Galbraith on how Sports Illustrated moves pictures from the corners of the field to the cover of the magazine. For any digiphoto hobbyist, it’s a must-read. [Tim Bray ongoing]

The Apple of the market's eye

Earlier this week, Apple Computer Inc. released financial results for its fiscal second quarter and they were terrific, although there were some shadows in the details. Sales of Apple's iPod were through the roof but sales of the G5 desktop were disappointing.
Investors, though, took one look at the big picture — profit tripling, $4-billion plus cash in the bank, no debt, a white-hot product – and started buying shares. Apple's shares hit a new 52-week high yesterday of more than $29 (U.S.). I've got a write-up on the market reaction to Apple's numbers in today's Globe:

“Despite cautionary notes from several Wall Street analysts that shares of Apple Computer Inc. were fully valued, investors piled into the stock of the Cupertino, Calif.-based company, driving its shares up by more than 10 per cent at one point yesterday, to a new 52-week intraday high.
The day after reporting financial results for what one analyst called “a monster quarter,” Apple's shares finished at $29.30 (U.S.) on the Nasdaq Stock Market, up $2.66 or 10 per cent from the previous day's close. Apple touched its 52-week high of $29.58 early in the session.
“We think Apple's newfound momentum is likely to snowball and continue to surprise investors on the upside,” said Steven Milunovich, technology analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. of New York. Mr. Milunovich reiterated his “buy” rating yesterday. He has a 12-month price target of $32 . ..” [Read the full story]

I found some old Apple photos on my hard drive recently. They are pics of Apple's HQ in Cupertino taken during a 1998 trip to Macworld San Francisco. The pic here is the front door at that time to Apple's head office. A bigger version and another pic is in B-Roll.

Canada's record industry appeals download ruling

The Canadian Recording Industry Association says it will appeal a controversial court ruling earlier this month that seemed to suggest that, in Canada anyhow, sharing music on the Internet is not illegal. The record industry will argue that Federal Court of Canada Judge Konrad von Finckenstein made several legal errors in his precedent-setting judgement. Canada's record industry is attempting to sue 29 Canadians for illegally uploading music files to the Internet.

“In our view, Canadian copyright law does not allow people to make copies of hundreds or thousands of musical recordings for global copying, transmission and distribution to millions of strangers on the Internet,” said CRIA's lawyer Richard Pfohl (pictured)

“This appeal is important for virtually all Canadian intellectual property owners,” said CRIA President, Brian Robertson. “Any owner of intellectual property that can be digitally transmitted has a stake in this appeal process.”

CRIA claims that retail sales of recorded music in Canada have decreased by $425-million since 1999 and that, in the last 12 months, record companies operating in Canada have laid off 20 per cent or more of their staff.

I was not filing on this story but my Globe colleague Jack Kapica has this report.