October 15, 2002

The National Post has the first of two excerpts from The Bubble and the Bear: How Nortel Burst the Canadian Dream. This section describes how Nortel announced aggressive forecasts in Jan 2001 and was claiming that the situation was getting better. It didn’t. Indigo.ca carries the book. 11:33:31 PM

Great Canadian Digital Media Rip-off The National Post’s Financial Post Editorial section has a letter from Claudette Fortien, chair of the Canadian Private Copying Collective responding to the Oct 10th article by Howard Knopf who noted that the proposed levy on digital media would result in Canadians paying millions of dollars to buy digital media, money that could go to American musicians. Fortien disputed the amount of money involved and the recipients but stated that the levy on a MP3 player with a 20 GB hard disk would be $74 Canadian! Furthermore Fortien states that a levy on computer hard disks has not been considered but does outline how they would calculate it! This is a rip-off. Why should a person pay musicians for the right to buy CD-R so they can back up their data, or make a compilation disk from music CDs they already own? 11:27:44 PM

Vote Yes or Die What’s with all these news stories that treat the Iraqi "election" as anything other than a sick joke being perpetuated by Saddam Hussein. Do the reporters covering it, particularly the European ones actually think that a person would vote No when the ballots are marked and the voting is in the open? Why is this not a story about oppression in Iraq? What's wrong with The Scotsman, The Guardian and others? 11:16:12 PM

Hate Online Proving that the big lie never dies, Indymedia (Nazimedia to Damian Penny’s readers) has published pieces claiming that the Mossad was behind the Bali bombing and another behind the sniper attacks in the Washington DC area. 11:14:34 PM

Bad Movies 101 The LA Times has an article why Hollywood studios sometimes keep movies on the shelf for years and possibly indefinitely. Sometimes it is because the movies are so bad the costs of bringing them to the screen would only produce more loses, in other cases it is studio politics or accounting considerations. Eventually these movies go straight to video and DVD or television. Of course, not making terrible movies is the best way to keep them out of the theatres. 12:29:04 AM