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This clearly belongs in the rumor column for now, but it seems that Apple is pretty upset about how Rogers is handling the iPhone 3G plan situation. Apple is so unhappy, they say, that it is actually going to reallocate some of the stock that was originally planned for the Canadian market.
More specifically, rumor has it that Apple is going to “divert” a “large percentage” of their iPhone stock away from the Canadian market and into the hands of European distributors. As a result of reallocation, many Rogers stores may only have 10-20 units ready to go on launch day later this week. mobile magazine
I want an iPhone but I will not die if I don’t get it until Christmas with a reasonable data plan.
I rather suspect that Apple was none too pleased to get a gazillion emails from people who a) would have bought the iPhone, b) would have started looking at Apple’s other products.
Nice work Ted!
Written by jay on July 6th, 2008 with 3 comments.
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Goodish news from the world of science:
Sirtris’ resveratrol formulation is now in Phase II clinical trials for diabetes. When it hits the market in four or five hears, David Sinclair [co-founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, discovered the molecule resveratrol. Sirtis Pharmaceuticals was bought by GlaxoSmithKline for $720 million] said, “It’ll be on the market as a diabetes drug. It’ll have to sell for $3 or $4 a pill, in order to stay competitive.” The company is also working with other molecules — potential drugs — that are unrelated to resveratrol but also stimulate the SIRT1 gene. Some of the molecules could be up to 1,000 times more potent than resveratrol, he added. next big future
4 bucks a day for 3-13 extra years of life…a Mountain can of Stella a day. I’m there.
Written by jay on June 3rd, 2008 with no comments.
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But, as we manage this transition to a low-carbon economy, we must also do more to help the oil market operate more efficiently. Globally, producers and consumers share common interests in market stability. So instead of Opec going its own way, there should be an enhanced dialogue between producers and consumers about the advance of nuclear, coal and renewables and about greater energy efficiency - as well as about future oil reserves. guardian
Fatuous twaddle and, if you follow the link, lots more where that comes from.
Brown is not an idiot; he must know that “enhanced dialogue” between producers and consumers will result in nothing.
The basis of dialogue is power and until the West weans itself from oil - which is going to take a while - the reality is that money talks and bullshit walks. Jumpers all round in the increasingly colder England.
Written by jay on May 28th, 2008 with 4 comments.
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I would be afraid, very afraid…
Described the project director, “My measure of success is that the International Olympic Committee bans everything we do. brookings institute
Well worth a Sunday morning read.
Written by jay on May 4th, 2008 with no comments.
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Cracker
And that is just your computer…the third parties are a whole other story.
Written by jay on April 30th, 2008 with 2 comments.
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The Lying Jackal reports that the Muslim-3 are planning on holding a news conference to make an offer to Macleans to settle the Human Rights complaint.
I suspect the prospect of another few months of public mockery followed by an unprecedented loss either before the Commissions or in the Courts was more than a little unappetizing. Plus, and I have no way of proving this, the steady erosion of support for the CHRC and the exposure of the CHRC’s wanton disregard for proper investigative methods and procedure, is taking its toll.
A couple of points - Toronto area bloggers, if possible - should try to cover the press conference. Macleans should be looking for an apology and costs from these sock puppets. Remember, the law students are not, in fact, the complainants here. The CIC is and it has the money to pay the significant expenses Macleans has incurred to date.
This is yet another piece of evidence we’re winning.
Update: Steyn “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You”
Update 2: Deborah Gyapong comes up with a reasonable negotiating position: Unconditional surrender with reparations and an apology.
Update 3: Over in “>Lying Jackal land commentors are handing Warren his head on a platter. He’s banned me from his comments - the truth hurts - but the unbanned are going to town. Now, remember, use that link. Page after page of “Lying Jackal” referrals. Has to leave a mark.
Written by jay on April 30th, 2008 with 29 comments.
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The Russian Soyuz landing capsule was facing the wrong direction when it entered the atmosphere, which made its heat-resistant shield redundant, the source said. cbc
Much, much too close. We are, no doubt, entering the era of a serious exploration and colonization of near Earth Space; but we would do well to remember that literally hundreds of ships were lost on the route to North America. It will take decades before space travel is actually safe in any sort of statistically meaningful sense.
But, still, we must go.
Written by jay on April 24th, 2008 with no comments.
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In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated at $20-$40 a barrel. next energy news
My very old pals in Shaunavon Sask are sitting pretty because the Bakken forgot to stop at the Canada US border.
Written by jay on March 29th, 2008 with 2 comments.
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“Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature…This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net” liveleak
It is much worse than a sad day for free speech on the net - it is proof that militant Islam can overpower our most basic rights. Fitna was political commentary. It had footage which was widely available. What made it unacceptable to the Islamofascists is that it made the direct link between the terror and atrocities committed by radical Islamists and the nature of Islam.
HotAir reassures:
Don’t worry, the film’s still around. Google Video has it for the moment and I hear that it’s up and down on YouTube too. When all else fails, just search for “fitna” and “torrent” and all should be well. They don’t call it “viral video” for nothing: Once it’s released into the population, you can never quite stamp it out. LiveLeak did its job for as long as it needed to. hotair
And HotAir points out that the threats which caused LiveLeak to pull the film has pretty much proven Wilders’ point.
I have downloaded a copy from http://www.sendspace.com/file/bodnck
h/t sda
Written by jay on March 29th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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Wired has a really interesting article on Ray Kurzweil the Singularity guy. In it they talk about his “exponential” thinking.
But Kurzweil had a special confidence that grew from a habit of mind he’d been cultivating for years: He thought exponentially. To illustrate what this means, consider the following quiz: 2, 4, ?, ?.
What are the missing numbers? Many people will say 6 and 8. This suggests a linear function. But some will say the missing numbers are 8 and 16. This suggests an exponential function. (Of course, both answers are correct. This is a test of thinking style, not math skills.) wired
Now I am not a math whiz but isn’t another possible sequence 2, 4, 16, 256…ie. 2×2=4, 4×4=16, 16×16=256.
Stuff can happen very, very fast.
Written by jay on March 28th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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At the end of the session Doug Christie revisits this questioning. He comes across as a bitter and angry blowhard, but they go a long way to establishing what appears to be a very ugly pattern. Someone (let’s call him Lucy for sake of argument), tries to get the police to proceed with hate crime charges. The police use their full powers to investigate, including issuing warrants and seizing evidence. They eventually decide that either no crime has been committed or the burden of proof is just too high, so drop the charges and pass the evidence on to the CHRC where regular rules of evidence and burden of proof don’t apply. Whether or not this is a conscious strategy on their part (and Steacy insisted it was not), it would certainly appear that that is indeed the end result, based on the examples provided today. Jaeger at sda
Relative to the police, CHRC investigators have pretty limited powers. They would, for example, have a hard time getting a warrant to seize and crack a hard drive. But why should that stop them?
The scenario Jaeger outlines above is entirely plausible. Proven? Not yet. But the groundwork has been laid.
It is well past time for a full scale judicial investigation into the methods and tactics of the CHRC. The evidence which came out today is not, in itself, the smoking gun. Rather it is the whiff of cordite which suggests guns are being fired close by.
Time for the spineless CPC to appoint a judge and get on with the task of cleaning up this mess.
And, while we are looking at this, it might be an idea to look a little more closely at the police forces which, apparently, handed over evidence obtained under warrant to “investigators” who a not likely to have been entitled to that evidence. Whether or not there was a Memorandum of Understanding as between a particular police force and the CHRC is irrelevant. If evidence obtained during the course of a criminal investigation is released to a third party a serious abuse of process has occurred.
Written by jay on March 26th, 2008 with 4 comments.
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jimbo.wales: and therefore not appropriate for me to directly edit the article with a conflict of interest
jimbo.wales: the truth is of course a much worse conflict of interest than that 
but that will do valleywag
Mr. Wales founded wikipedia…but what he did to deserve Canada’s own gift to female stalkers beats me.
Written by jay on March 3rd, 2008 with 5 comments.
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Amidst the piles of silliness coming from the Kinsellas of this world, a bit of perfectly geeky humour from our pals at Google:
Turns out that when they came up with the idea for Web Clips, they didn’t think it made sense to show these RSS feeds and ads in the spam folder. After all, these clips should be useful and fun, but spam (of the email variety) is neither of these things. Not knowing what to put here, Keith searched for “spam recipes” and decided to make a feed out of the results. gmail blog
Written by jay on February 22nd, 2008 with no comments.
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Most of us now understand, and appreciate, Moore’s Law, but in the semiconductor industry they live it every day. And T.J.(Rogers) is one of the best of them. And what he saw in SunPower was the impending arrival of Moore’s Law to the alternative power world … and more than anyone, he knew what that meant. abc news
Solar power technology is just getting rolling. There are bottlenecks, there are inefficiencies and all the other issues which surround a new technology. But, if Moore’s law really does apply, and people way smarter than me think it does, then there is every chance we will have reliable, inexpensive solar power to get us through the coming mini ice age.
The funny thing is that the warmists, denied the capacity to regulate us back to the Amish life style, will probably think this is a bad thing.
Written by jay on February 16th, 2008 with no comments.
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Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded. nyt
Gee, this is a surprise.
Written by jay on February 9th, 2008 with no comments.
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I understand that a number of haters - two in particular - have gleefully relied upon Messrs. Lemire and Klatt as sources to viciously defame a good man.
Would you regard two notorious supporters of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups as “experts” in anything? Of course not. Only a hateful fool would do such a thing. the liar warren kinsella *
Strangley, the liar Kinsella does not for an instant deny that Warman was sock puppeting bigotry. “Defame” is an interesting choice of words. I regularly call the liar Kinsella a liar because I have the evidence sitting on my well backed up harddrives that he lied. It is certainly defamatory. It is also true. When the liar Kinsella accuses people of defaming Richard Warman he implies that what they are saying is not true; but, in fact, it may both defame what little character this shrimp has and be completely true. Which Warren knows and which he is using to mount a defense of the little creep.
But the really fun part is that the liar Kinsella would not know a principled argument if it ran over him…twice. I don’t have to agree with, like or even know Lemire to be interested in the evidence he has found of Richard Warman spewing racist, sexist filth about a black, female Canadian Senator. This “good man” has, apparently, written material which would make even Robert McClelland blanch. Exposing this sock puppet bigot and the Human Rights Commission which enables him is vitally important to anyone who values free expression in Canada. Repellent as I find much of the material that Lemire has helped to put up on the net, the bigger picture is about stopping Warman’s vicious abuse of the CHRC system and investigating the extent to which the CHRC has enabled that abuse.
“Good men” don’t lie. Simple concept Warren. You should try it.
* Yes, I have violated my general policy of shunning the liar Kinsella. If he is willing to go to smear overdrive to defend a racist little man like Richard Warman he needs to be called on it and that means actually linking to the liar’s revolting site.
Written by jay on January 21st, 2008 with 12 comments.
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But my lawyer and I insisted that we be permitted to record the interrogation, for use when we appeal the commission’s decision to a real court. The officer allowed the video camera, but asked that we keep the recording confidential. But, over a year ago, our lawyer served notice on the commission that we reserved the right to publish any communications to or from the commission whatsoever, and that they should govern themselves accordingly. It’s not surprising that a censor like the commission would want to do its censorship in the dark. ezra levant
Ezra and his lawyer were wise and I trust Mark Steyn and Mcleans will go the same route.
In fact, as a matter of right, people should be allowed to video any “public” process. It creates a record but, more importantly, in this day of You-Tube, it serves notice on the bureaucrats and commissioners that they are going to be seen by thousands. Video technology is cheap and very easy. And, like sunlight, it disinfects.
Of course it would be nice if we had the name of Ezra’s inquisitor.
Update: From my lips to Mark Steyn’s ear…
Then come two sections - one in which “human rights agent” Shirlene McGovern quizzes him on his intent in publishing the cartoons, and another in which she raises the fear that his publishing them could lead to violence against Muslims “particularly in today’s world post-9/ 11 that has made a number of Muslims more vulnerable to hatred and contempt”.Ezra’s answer speaks for itself, but Ms McGovern’s question reminds me of a passage from Melanie Phillips’ book Londonistan:
Minority-rights doctrine has produced a moral inversion, in which those doing wrong are excused if they belong to a ‘victim’ group, while those at the receiving end of their behaviour are blamed simply because they belong to the ‘oppressive’ majority.
Ms McGovern, a blandly unexceptional bureaucrat, is a classic example of the syndrome. the corner
Interestingly, Ms. McGovern was on the side of the angels when she dismissed a complaint against noted homophobe Stephen Boissoin saying according to the Calgary Sun
She said if anyone was guilty of “publishing a discriminatory statement” it was the newspaper, not Boissoin.
She said people have a right to express their opinions to the editor.
Editors don’t have to publish them, and should know better than laypeople which ones are over the line. She didn’t say if Boissoin’s was or not. calgary sun
Needless to say she was later over-ruled by Charlach Mackintosh the chief Alberta Human Rights official and Boissoin goes on to be held what, responsible? guilty? naughty? mean? Well, whatever it is Human Rights tribunals find they found it and he was fined.
Written by jay on January 13th, 2008 with 2 comments.
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After the kids got their PLAYMOBIL® 
and Susan her boots I had just enough money left over to get a new computer…or “new to me”.
I managed to find a used “gaming rig” with one of those video cards which arrives with a fan bigger than your last video card for playing Counterstrike and a lovely, fast processor and matched, high-end memory. It is a couple of years behind the bleeding edge and a light year ahead of the machine I have been using. We’ve all upgraded so I won’t bore you with the details of file transfers and hard drive strangeness.
Two interesting things: the first is that the machine prompted me to obtain a really upper end version of Microsoft Windows Vista
. Which, I have to say, I rather like. Graphically it is modern, it seems stable and I had it installed by a pro so my few remaining hairs remain, more or less, attached to my skull.
The other thing it set me to looking for was a second SATA drive. Wow: Seagate Barracuda 1 TB SATA Hard Drive is $371.00 at Amazon. No doubt cheaper elsewhere.
On my old computer there was no SATA connection and it simply chugged along with a 300GB drive. Now the TB looks attractive. So, of course, does the the idea of the home server with a couple of these…and that way lies madness.
Written by jay on December 31st, 2007 with no comments.
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USA: Dr. David Wojick is a UN IPCC expert reviewer, who earned his PhD in Philosophy of Science and co-founded the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie-Mellon University: “In point of fact, the hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth’s surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The GHG (greenhouse gas) hypothesis does not do this.” Wojick added: “The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of false alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates.”
New Zealand: IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports going back to 1990 and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of “Climate Change 2001: “The [IPCC] ‘Summary for Policymakers’ might get a few readers, but the main purpose of the report is to provide a spurious scientific backup for the absurd claims of the worldwide environmentalist lobby that it has been established scientifically that increases in carbon dioxide are harmful to the climate. It just does not matter that this ain’t so.”
Germany: Paleoclimate expert Augusto Mangini of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, criticized the UN IPCC summary. “I consider the part of the IPCC report, which I can really judge as an expert, i.e. the reconstruction of the paleoclimate, wrong,” Mangini noted in an April 5, 2007 article. He added: “The earth will not die.”
US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works
There are lots more of these quotes in the Report.
I suspect that the IPCC Fourth Report and the Bali Conference will, in retrospect, be seen as the high water marks of global warming hysteria. On the one hand you have increasingly crazy warmists ranting about Ferrari drivers and the girls who love them and wacky Canadian Prime Ministerial hopefuls just making stuff up while, on the other, you have the steady erosion of the basics of the warmist’s claims in detail.
What is missing from all of this are politicians brave enough to stand up and say that the science is simply wrong, or, at best, too uncertain to lead to any policy in particular or justify any expenditure of public funds.
AGW fatigue has certainly begun to dull the religious fervor of the middle class which is to say I am still seeing lots of Christmas lights being strung, cars driven and new stuff being bought. However, that is not really going to stop the madness.
What might stop it would be coming up with ways of forcing the various governments to defend their actions in the Courts where, well, evidence is required. The problem there being to find a government action which is, in fact, subject to legal challenge. There is no right to be told the truth nor any requirement that government prove the scientific basis for its actions.
Living here in Victoria, a hotbed of fuzzy green AGW hysteria, about the only thing I can think of doing to counter AGM is to write for the local rags…not that I expect non-consensus articles have much chance of being printed; but that is another story.
Written by jay on December 21st, 2007 with 2 comments.
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It is a commonplace in the peak oil world that all the elephant sized pools have been found. For the Jim Kunstlers of the world the excitement of watching industrial civilization and, most importantly, suburbia, come to a grinding dystopic end overwhelms their humility in the face of nature.
News in from Brazil suggests there might just be a drop or two of oil left to be discovered:
Last week’s news centred on the Tupi field – at present, little more than a couple of exploratory wells 280km off Brazil’s coast in the Santos Basin. But those two wells have confirmed that the field holds between 5bn and 8bn barrels of oil, not far short of the entire reserves of Norway, which were 8.5bn last year, according to figures from BP. The field, potentially, would add more than 50 per cent to Brazil’s 14.4bn barrels of proven reserves of oil and natural gas equivalent.
Yet Tupi could be just the start. Its oil is trapped under a giant salt shelf, 800km long, 200km wide and up to 2,000 metres thick. Its average thickness is about 500 metres, according to Nilo Azambuja of HRT, a Rio de Janeiro company that provides geological services to Petrobras, Brazil’s publicly controlled oil company.
The Tupi field lies at a depth of 6,000 metres, beneath 2,000 metres of sea and 4,000 metres of rock and salt. financial times
This oil is very deep in conditions which are very nasty. However, at $100.00 a barrel this is a recoverable resource.
More to the point, what else is out there? Billion barrel fields are supposed to be as extinct as the dinosaurs. But here one shows up.
Written by jay on November 21st, 2007 with 10 comments.
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