Uncut

This week's editorial in Eye Magazine raises the thorny issue about circumcision -- and asks, why is it still legal? A baby doesn't agree to have the procedure done. There are no health reasons to do it. There is only tradition and religion. So why is it still legal? Recently the British Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons said that it was "a non-therapeutic and medically unnecessary intervention" -- yet, seems to turn a blind eye at the practice with the statement: "If for religious or cultural reasons you decide to perform an infant male circumcision, ensure that your skills are current." It seems like a double standard. There are other practices that religions are OK with, yet are against the law, and aren't allowed -- why this one? The article is a convincing one for a change. For such a civilized society, we still don't have laws against such barbaric practices.

Nicieties

On my way home from work this afternoon, the little one was sitting beside me, smile on her face, lost in ABBA -- so she didn't see what happened at the Leslie station. A teen got on the bus, dressed in a tight tank top and track pants with crotch to spare. She strutted with attitude. Sat down, and dared anyone to give her an excuse. Then a small white butterfly flew in through the open bus door just before it closed. It went straight, and slammed right into the window. There was no way out. It struggled. Reversed. Went at the window again. Repeatedly. There was no opening. Minutes went by as the bus waited for the driver to return from the station. The teen got up, went to the window, caught the butterfly gently in her hand, strutted to the door, pushed it open, went outside and released the butterfly. She strutted back to her seat, sat, and dared anyone to give her an excuse. That was a spark of hope.

The Memory Hole

The Memory Hole and its sister blog site is maintained by Russ Kick -- a man on a mission to free information. Using the US freedom of information act, Kick obtains once secret documents and publishes them on his site. He obtained hundreds of images from the US government of Iraqi prisoners being tortured for example -- after he published them, the government scrambled to put a lid on it.

JibJab

This one is for our American friends who've had enough of politicians -- it's an extremely funny clip of Bush and Kerry. Warning however: you may not want to vote after seeing this! [Thanks, Debkanti, for the link.]

Tour de Force

Congratulations to Lance Armstrong. I know he won. Other than that, I could care less about watching cycling on TV. I'd rather cycle. If you haven't had enough of Lance and company during the Tour de France, check out this Baseline article -- it's about his bikes. It's actually a pretty good article. When the difference of 10 watts of energy or a few grams of extra mass could mean the difference between winning and losing a race, you've got to have serious engineering like what went into creating Armstrong's bikes.

Over Budget by $998M [PDF]

After Marc Lepine's 1989 shooting spree of women at the University of Montreal, law enforcement and the government realized that they didn't have a clue who owned guns out there, or what their criminal history was. From the outset, the gun lobby opposed any list of gun owners -- outright -- after all, they weren't criminals. Garry Breitkreuz, the Charlton Heston of the North, wants the whole scrapped. The passage of new firearms act in 1995 gave the government instructions to not only increase penalties for firearm offenses, but also to create a gun registry -- a huge database that could be accessed by law enforcement across the country. The problem however, was that law enforcement agencies around the country were not integrated, reported to different authorities, had conflicting interests -- and some provinces, just didn't want to have the registry period. You can guess who those cowboys are. The result: a $2M project is now estimated to have cost taxpayers $1B.

Dollar General Growing [PDF]

Dollar General plans to open two new stores everyday in the US. Their processes to get a new store up and running is a closely guarded competitive differentiator, as it can take them a mere 8-days to get a store ready for customers. Dollar General needs to move this fast, as the $6.9 billion company competes directly against Wal-Mart -- and they've been winning -- they take 4.3 cents of every dollar sold compared to Wal-Mart's 3.5 cents -- and each new store opening brings more cash to the bottom line. With 6,930 stores in the US, they're already the largest discounter -- and adding 700 more this year won't hurt a bit.

CIO's Waning Influence [PDF]

Baseline's third annual survey of the top US CIOs show dismal results for the IT cause in corporations. The survey checked to see if CIOs made it into the group of top five officers in companies. From 1,000 companies -- or 5,000 officers -- there were only 47 CIOs (or IT executives). Corporations continue to reward IT executives for, and equate IT's productivity with, keeping budgets down. IT executives just aren't seen as contributing to the strategic direction of the company or helping with the bottom-line.

RBC's Debacle

Remember the RBC debacle back in June? It affected about 10 million customers -- impacted payroll deposits -- and was all a result of programming errors introduced by a developer. The code just wasn't tested sufficiently, introduced during the week -- during the peak hours -- all things that shouldn't happen in the banking industry. Further, when criminal-types heard the news, they pounced immediately with phishing attacks, sending RBC customers to fake sites to collect their account information. RBC is considering dropping service fees for the month of June to compensate customers -- that would cost them $165 million in revenue. They haven't said what they're going to do with the employee yet, but I sense a flailing, with the right dose of tar-and-feathering, and maybe even stoning to happen.

RFID Woes

From Baseline Magazine -- read the latest on Wal-Mart's progress on their RFID efforts. Things don't look so good -- their read rates remain dismal, different products may require different technology, and there is no indication that there will be a payback on the horizon -- Wal-Mart, however, is keeping the noise down on their 'pilot learnings' and being very optimistic on achieving their targets.

EAI Patent

Teilhard Technologies has been granted patents in the US and Canada for their ETL method of EAI integration. Their method speaks to some of the basics of ETL that's current employed by many other EAI providers. Teilhard has already opened conversations with some EAI providers to ask for money via license fees for use of processes they have the patent rights to. This is going to be another case of bring out the lawyers.

Stratford Festival

My wife and I went to see this year's production of A Midsummer's Night Dream (MND) at the Stratford Festival. MND stands up to a lot of interpretation -- and it survived this one too, although for the life of me, I can't understand why Shakespeare gets reinterpreted. This time, it was reinterpreted and set somewhere in the Spain. The play has stood the test of time -- over 400 years -- really, it's OK folks -- no need to be artsy-fartsy and change the damn play. The Spanish interpretation just distracted from the play. Having said that, the faeries were really cool. They were done very well. I took some pictures while in Stratford -- check them out.

Places to Grow

I just read this scary story in this week's Now Magazine. For anyone who goes driving around outside of the GTA, you have surely noticed over the last number of years the epidemic of deforestation and consumption of arable land to construct obscenely large houses on sprawling properties. The economic weight of the practice is killing taxpayers, as we are the ones who foot the bill for the wealthy, tax-evading parasites' infrastructure -- you know -- when there was a forest or a farm, we didn't really need to pay for the water supply out there -- or the sewage or the hydro or the roads. The Ontario Government just released their Places to Grow infrastructure plan -- and they will no longer provide any money for infrastructure in areas set aside for greenbelt protection. Great! Smart! But there's one problem, that Wayne Roberts of Now points out -- the planners forgot about food. Food should be considered part of our infrastructure. Yet, the Government gives no protection and doesn't encourage the use of arable land for the production of food. It's a scary story, when you think that we're heavily dependent on imports for most of our food.

Japanese Style

From entertainment to gadgets, Japanese pop culture and consumer trends are becoming more influential in the world. Japanese schoolgirl-watch has now become past-time of marketers looking for the next trends -- no longer is it the inner city kids. Read the article in BusinessWeek.

A CEO's Last Stand

BusinessWeek's latest cover story heralds the end of Scott McNealy -- of course, we've heard this before, but is it true this time around? The article interviews many of Sun's former executives who candidly discuss the episodes of McNealy not listening to his lieutenants, ignoring market trends and trusting in the prowess of Sun. The market performance of Sun over the last few years however is anything to brag about. With the industry picking up, you'd think Sun would be gaining some ground, but they haven't.

Brimful Of Asha - Cornershop Boys [MP3]

This takes me back ... ;-)

[Intro]
There's dancin' behind movie scenes
behind those movie scenes -- saddi rani
She's the one that keeps the dream alive
from the morning, past the evening, to the end of the light
[chorus]
Brimful of asha on the 45 (x4)
I'm dancin' behind movie scenes
behind those movie screens -- Asha Bhonsle
She's the one that keeps the dream alive
from the morning past the evening to the end of the life
[chorus]
And singing illuminate the main streets
and the cinema aisles
We don't care about no government warning
About the promotion of the simple life and the dams they are building
[chorus]
[bridge]
Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow, everybody needs a bosom (x3)
mine's on the 45
Mohammed Rafi----------45!
Lata Mangeshkar---------45!
Solid state radio------45!
Ferguson Mono---------45!
Non public-------------45!
Jacques Dutronc and the Bolan Boogies ... and the Heavy Hitters and the chi-chi music
All Indian radio------45!
2 in 1s---------------45!
Ovvo records----------45!
Trojan records---------45!
[chorus]
[bridge]
7-7,000 piece orchestra set
everybody needs a bosom for a pillow mine's on the rpm.
[chorus]
[bridge]

P2P @ EarthStation 5

EarthStation 5 is a sticks it to the RIAA, the MPAA, and just about anyone who hates P2P. EarthStation 5 is a company based out of Palestine -- yes, the Palestine in the heart of much violence and chaos. You download their software and you have access to everything that's shared online. Everything. And the beauty of EarthStation 5 ... the welcome litigation, as posted on their site:

"Earthstationv Ltd., a Palestinian Corporation, does not accept any legal process via email, nor will we accept any attachments via email. For service of process, you must serve our legal department located at our offices in the Jenin refugee camp, Jenin, Palestine."

Death by Meeting

Read an executive summary of Death by Meeting by Patrick M. Lencioni. It's given me a few ideas, but I'm not sure I want to put any of it practice, as people my lynch me. The book is about meetings -- meetings that are so boring, people yawn and fall asleep -- sometimes falling asleep before they yawn -- I've been in a couple of those. Lencioni recommends four types of meetings:

The Daily Check-in -- lasting just a few minutes, the meeting is a stand-up; the purpose is avoid confusion amongst team members on what the daily priorities are.

The Weekly Tactical -- this could be weekly or bi-weekly and focus on tactical issues. This meeting needs everyone to attend and set priorities, report on statistics and metrics.

The Monthly Strategic -- this meeting is to focus on a couple of strategic issues and set direction.

The Quarterly Off-Site Review -- these meetings are for review of strategy, management issues and team building. These meetings are for discussion purposes, and shouldn't be structured.

[Order from: Amazon or ChaptersIndigo.]

Multimedia Scrapbooks

The New York Times reports of the use of Webjay -- an online tool to create and share playlists of audio files. More and more however, folks are realizing that they can use Webjay to also share their playlists of videos -- and even further, some more creative types are taking to making mashups -- remixing of videos, audio and photos to create new content. There's quite a few politically motivated mashups -- especially of George W. saying things that he just might say in public. hilarious! [This came to me from Slashdot.]

First In, Last Out

I just finished reading an executive summary of First In, Last Out, by John Salka with Barret Neville. It is a book on leadership as exemplified by the New York City firefighters. "First in, last out." That is the motto of the Fire Department of New York (FDNY). It applies to the officers of the FDNY -- they are the first ones in, and the last ones out -- it demonstrates the trust, integrity, focus, commitment and intensity of their leadership. The book gives three disciplines of leadership: 1) commitment to reality -- that is the truth; 2) commitment to treating your people as assets -- they're the engines of your organization; and, 3) commitment to developing leaders at all levels of your organization -- it will help spread your influence as a leader and direct everyone in a common direction. The book is appears to be an inspiring one. If I have the chance, I'll be picking it up. [Order from: Amazon or ChaptersIndigo.]

MSN Search Preview

Microsoft's going head-on with Google and Yahoo! Built completely from scratch (or so they say), Microsoft's new search engine should be in production by the end of the year -- in advance of Longhorn, which will most likely take the search engine to new heights by incorporating local searches with internet searches. The new filing system that comes with Longhorn is suppose to allow you to find what you're looking for easier on your computer. The search preview may be only a preview, but if it holds true to what Microsoft is showing now, it will look more like Google -- low on the ads.

Terry Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky

Terry Pratchett's third book geared towards children is a great novel for adults and his fans. The book is a follow up to the Wee Free Men -- it follows the adventures of Tiffany Aching, an eleven year old witch and excellent cheese maker. In the Wee Free Men, Tiffany saved her world from the Queen of the Fairies, with the help of the Nac Mac Feegle. This time around, she's out to learn witchcraft, and save herself -- along for the ride are the Nac Mac Feegle again, with Rob Anybody, Daft Wullie and Awfully Wee Billy Bigchin. Anyone who's familiar with the Discworld series will enjoy this book. You will also get to see Granny Weatherwax is a completely new light. Great novel! [Order from: Amazon or ChaptersIndigo.]

Robot@Home

More and more there's a reliance on robots in society. In the future, robots will play a bigger role in our lives. By some predictions, there will be 55.5 million robots in the world by 2010. What forms will they take? BusinessWeek magazine has grouped them into the following categories: Entertainment, Appliance, Immobots, Assistive Mobile Bots and Humanoids. Read what's in store for you.

Benefits Trap

From BusinessWeek magazine comes an extensive article about the predicament old-line companies have gotten themselves into, by pledging billions in retirement benefits that they can no longer sustain, and will most likely off load to the government and their former employees. It's a sad situation industry as a whole have gotten themselves into. During the boom days, they invested little in sustaining their benefit programs -- now they're crying as younger and sometimes foreign rivals, compete against them, but don't carry their 'legacy costs.' GM for example need at least $1,784 per vehicle to cover their retirement bills, where Toyota only needs $200 per vehicle. At the end of the day, the bailout for these companies will come on the backs of the taxpayers of today. Again -- how did we get into this predicament? Short term, profit motivated thinking, that's hardly strategic and long term. For industry that employs such brainpower, it's continually amazes me how festering greed can rot away at that intelligence.

The Corporation

The Corporation has finally hit the screens in the US, and BusinessWeek provides a review of the film. Ray C. Anderson of Interface Inc., is the star of the show. The film can be summed by in his words: "I realized the way of the CEO is the way of the plunderer. Someday people like me will go to jail." While Anderson isn't completely devoted to the film: "I think they had a thesis and used extreme examples to prove it" -- he does think that every CEO should see the film. I'm even thinking of getting the DVD and sending it to the boss at work. (Read my previous words on the movie when I first saw it.)

Plague of Orkut

This a great study in social networking and the conflicts that are resulting in the globalization of culture -- or just plain culture clash. Brazillians are avid users of social networking sites -- sites that cater to people who want to yap continuously online -- and for the life of me, I don't see the appeal -- but that's one man's opinion for you. The latest row is happening on Google's Orkut, where Brazilians dominate and are driving the English speakers (read: mostly Americans) nuts. The Brazillians speak Portuguese online -- and English speakers don't understand. The same thing is happening at other community-based websites like Friendster and Fotolog -- and what beautiful noise they all make.

Basel and BITS

Recently, businesses have started to organize a collective voice for the IT industry, in the wake of the many security violations and publicized vulnerabilities. The financial industry has been especially keen -- with the spate of financial vulnerabilities in businesses, they're taking a close look at all potential weaknesses. BITS, a financial industry organization, recently published a policy on their expectations of the technology industry. They're calling on IT vendors to:

Make security a fundamental part of software design,

Support older versions of products,

Make upgrades easier,

Improve the patch-management process,

And provide businesses advance warnings of new vulnerabilities.

Further, the Basel II accord, which applies to large international banks, expects that by 2007, they must be able to identify and measure their exposure to operational risks, including those from technology. For further information, see the following:

BITS Framework: A Tool for Managing Risk [PDF]

BITS Papers and Presentations

Basel Capital Framework (Basel II) [PDF]

Basel II Whitepapers

Mars Underground Mole

Roland Pipuepaille writes about the Mars Underground Mole (MUM) -- a device that NASA is building to send to Mars to look below the surface. MUM will be able to dig 5 metres below the Martian surface, and transmit data to a digital array scanning interferometer (DASI). The DASI will produce spectral images, allowing for the detection of the composition of the Martian underground soil. For more information, read the concept [PDF] as it was described at the Sixth International Conference on Mars (2003); and check out the NASA release.

Stargate Atlantis

Stargate SG-1 was never really a great series. The series could never measure up to the movie, and the whole premise of the US military doing good was just too unreal. Well, there's a new series -- Stargate Atlantis -- and I'm interested in seeing the effects. I expect the story to be total crap as usual. But hey -- look at the picture below -- there's a Canadian in the show? Heheh. Gotta find a scapegoat for all the things that will go wrong! (And I missed the first episode last night.)

OneWorld.ca

If the troubles of the world are getting to you, and you'd rather not hide under the bed, check out OneWorld, and join the ranks of people that have decided to do something. This site is the Canadian arm of the OneWorld network. It lists campaigns, with information on how you can participate, as well as material you can use. If you're a social activist, you already know this site.

Hitchhiker's Guide to Biomorphic Software

Kenneth N. Lodding, of NASA, writes a great essay about nature's inspiration for software. Biomorphic software coders uses nature as their muse. It is nature's distributed, decentralized, pattern formation, intelligent behaviour that makes it such a useful model. The essay provides an impetus, a historical context, then delves into the details of design and ends with the author's glimpse into the future.

US denies funds for UN Unit

The New York Times reports that for the 3rd year, the Bush administration has found a reason to deny funding of the United Nations Population Fund. The administration claims that the UN unit encourages abortion in China, contrary to the statistics the UN has provided of its operation, and contrary to US State Department finding. The Population Fund has been working on education and family planning, that encourages the use of contraceptives and educate on the facts of HIV transmission. Other countries have increased their share of funding to compensate for the US action. More evidence for George Bush not to be re-elected. (The Population Fund also has quite a few publications that would be of interest to those who find social science around the world interesting.)

Hawking Wrong About Black Holes

Stephen Hawking has always maintained that black holes are so powerful, that not even light -- that is, information -- can escape. Hawking apparently is doing an "oops." He's changed his mind, and in the process, causing him to lose a bet he made in 1997 with John Preskill. Hawking will present his new ideas of black home at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation.

Einstein@Home

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) will be looking for gravitational waves [PDF] from pulsars in the coming months. The vast amount of data needs analyzing, so researchers are developing a distributed project similar to SETI@Home to crunch the data using the spare cycles of volunteers computers. Sign up to catch a gravity wave today!

Shocking Encounter for Voyager 1

Voyager 1, which left Earth in the late 1970s, is currently about 14.5 billion kilometres from the Sun. The spacecraft is still functioning and reports back to the Earth once a day. The trip to the outer solar system has been quite uneventful, but things are soon to get a little interesting. In the fall of last year, the Sun ejected about a billion tons of gas during a solar storm in a coronal mass ejection (CME). That CME left the Sun traveling at around 2000 km/s, and will soon reach Voyager, having slowed down to about 600 km/s already. As well, Voyager 1 is getting close to the heliosphere, the perimeter of the Sun's magnetosphere -- when the CME hits the heliosphere, it will stretch it out distances as great as 600 million km and the impact will emit radio waves. The heliosphere will stretch and rebound -- for months it will oscillate back and forth, passing over Voyager 1. Suddenly, Voyager 1 is in the news again. The little spacecraft that could.

Economic Freedom of the World 2004 [PDF]

The Fraser Institute has released it's annual report titled the Economic Freedom of the World. The report was developed in conjunction with over 60 institutes around the world (all of whom will be releasing the report today), that saw the collaboration of over 100 scholars, including 4 Nobel laureates -- that's a lot of brain power. The report is an economic index of the world -- looking at what freedoms people enjoy due to their economic well being. I haven't read it yet, but I'm sure it will be a good read -- not to mention be packed with statistics.

Canadian Filmmakers' Festival

The Canadian Filmmakers Festival starts today and runs through to Sunday. This one surprised me. I wasn't expecting it. CanFilmFest is a division of the Toronto Film Festival Group -- and where the Toronto Film Fest showcases the world, CanFilmFest is limited to Canadian film production. The Festival includes commercial films, such as Luck and Ginger Snaps Back, as well as the usual art-house films that never garner much commercial success. The films are all being hosted at the Royal Cinema, at 608 College Street.

I Work With Fools

Do you sometimes have Dilbert experiences? Share them with the world at this site. Stupid boss? Stupid co-workers? Stupid you? Rant away! Or entertain yourself reading the woes of others.

LiquidGeneration

Here's a site that's a Flash orgy. Everything it seems was built using Macromedia's Flash. It also has a bit of humour as well. A great time waster. And don't play unless you have broadband access. [Thanks for the link Debkanti.]

Proud Pickers

This site has no redeeming qualities -- it proves however that you can always find some dumb-ass on the internet doing some dumb-ass thing. In case you haven't gotten it from the title, this site collects photos of people picking their noses. I didn't go any further than the main page.

Best and Worst

Most people won't vote, but they'll go to a site like this one and vote on some really silly topics to have their opinions counted. From a social science perspective however, the site is fairly interesting. It gives a forum for many share their opinions and gauge opinions -- not necessarily public opinion however, since this is the internet and there are still those out there that have never heard of it.

New Uses for DMCA

Only in America. LawGeek reports that a court in Boston has used the DMCA to grant preliminary injunction against a third party vendor who tried to fix a StorageTek tape library system -- even though the third party had permission from the purchasers of the system. StorageTek claims that the third party gain access to its maintenance code when they gained access to fix the system. This is just bizarre!

Global Compact, Little Impact

The UN created the Global Compact as a way of ensuring that companies activities around the world conform to human rights, labour, anti-corruption and environmental standards. Pete Engardio of BusinessWeek, reports however, that many now see the Global Compact as little more than a comfy club for big businesses to engage in a public relations exercise. The UN's focus has been to increase membership, rather than honour their commitments. For more on the Global Compact, check the following publications from the UN: The Global Compact Primer [PDF], A Comprehensive Guide to the Global Compact [PDF], and the Global Compact Performance Model [PDF].

The Future of Competition

The Future of Competition is by C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy, two professors at the University of Michigan Business School. The book raises an interesting notion that I haven't seen elsewhere before -- the notion that consumers today are dissatisfied with being just passive pockets of demand for an organization's goods and services. Technology and economics, not just in first world countries, but in third world countries as well, are tooling consumers to become active members in producing the goods and services they receive. This evolution is changing the balance of influence in the consumer-institution relationship in favour of the consumer. In their new roles, institutions must become 'experience environments' -- they must realize that quality will not longer be a measure of the goods or services received, but rather the co-creation experience received by each unique individual. For businesses that are successful in this transformation, the benefits are great. They gain access to consumer ideas for designing and manufacturing their products -- they can deeply understand their customers relationships with the firm. They gain customers that have an emotional bond and trust with their company and products. The book goes on to suggest a framework to achieving co-creation, and warns of potential pitfalls -- all a very interesting idea.

Corporate MVPs

Sports teams have them -- so why not businesses? Well, businesses have MVPs as well, so contends Margaret Butteriss and Bill Roiter, two individuals working in the leadership consulting business. In businesses, the authors say, MVPs are motivated by passion -- they espouse the values of the organization -- in its best dreams, they are what the organization stands for -- they are what organizations want all their employees to be. Like the 80/20 rule, MVPs represent a 95/5 rule -- they are the 5% of people that an organization's future depends on. Four key components of MVPs performance:

produce extraordinary results -- they're hyperproductive, knowing how to get things done

constantly strive for improvements -- they positively disrupt the status quo, pushing the organization forward

attract like talent -- they are well known, and are talent magnets

will succeed anywhere in the organization -- can read different cultures, build relationships, sell themselves and know how to gain acceptance

The book also goes into some length about managing your MVPs. Since they are different, they are special, and need to be managed differently. Some organizations will see such talent and prefer to leave them alone -- to manage themselves, and just stay out of the way. Wrong warns the authors. MVPs need to be managed, but differently from their peers.

Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition

I went to the Art Exhibition yesterday with my eldest. It has grown over the past few years. Just about every inch of Nathan Phillips Square was occupied. The artists also seem more temperamental as well. At least Sally Milne's husband seemed to have been pissed that I was taking a photo of her booth. I think some of the more pretentious few seemed to have forgotten that they were in a public space -- regardless, I still think Sally Milne's art is cool -- especially her rudely shaped lemons. (Yes, I'm bitter.) Other artists of note:

Shawn McPherson

Bonnie Brooks

Jan Peng Wang

Anita Niemeyer-Archibald

Paul Turner

Sandra Tarantino

Yana Movchan

Alejandro Rabazo

Thomas Hendry

Harbourfront Centre's Performing Arts

Harbourfront Centre has quite a lineup outside of the summer festivals. In the next couple of days for instance, Altamira is sponsoring the Toronto Symphony Orchestra at the CIBC Stage. There are other performances through the summer as well -- everything from the classics to Yiddish songs about women. None of this of cour