August 15, 2003

This site is "fair and balanced". For today at least. 7:31:59 AM

Blackout 2003 - Ontario reboots The Globe and Mail reports that power in Ontario will be problematic with the chance of rolling blackouts for several days, in particular because it will take days for Ontario’s nuclear power plants to come back online. Slashdot has a good discussion of restarting nuclear power plants. 7:20:17 AM

News.com states that a patent-infringement judgment against Microsoft and its Internet Explorer browser could lead to other companies having to pay tiny, one man Eolas Technologies for the rights to use applets and plug-ins. The article notices that Opera Software’s Opera browser and Apple’s Safari browser use applets, as do all versions of Mozilla. Eolas’ lawyer seems to confirm this view. The article states: "Anybody who's making a product that infringes a valid U.S. patent needs to conduct themselves in accordance with the patent laws," Eolas' lead trial attorney, Martin Lueck of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, said in an interview. "It doesn't matter whether they're making, using, selling or offering to sell the product--they have to come to grips with the reality of the patent...I think anybody who's in the browser business should be taking a look at this verdict, and obviously, if they need a license, they should get one," Lueck said. One possible defence that they will raise, and no doubt be raised by Microsoft as it tries to overturn the judgement is that publisher O'Reilly & Associates claims it Global Network Navigator, released in 1993, included instances of "prior art," to the Eolas patent which would invalidate the patent. Hopefully this judgement will be overturned; nobody should be able to control such a standard part of the computer browsing experience. 6:50:08 AM

Blackout 2003 – Comment of the Day From the Comments Section on CalPundit From a Californian, [Nelson Muntz]Ha ha![/Nelson Muntz] Posted by Adam at August 14, 2003 02:31 PM 6:20:55 AM

Blackout 2003 - My story This afternoon, a day after a long trip to the East Coast I went downtown to the Eaton’s Centre, seconds after leaving the subway the lights in the Eaton’s Centre went out. Since I noticed that the area I was in had numerous under renovation signs I thought it might be a local issue. Once on the street I saw people streaming out of all the buildings on Yonge and Dundas streets. At this time I thought the feared rolling blackouts had hit Toronto. After an hour and a half of reading the free weekly papers at a local park I decided to walk to my apartment 4 miles away up Yonge Street. The walk went fast, the might problem being crowded sidewalks along the way. At major street intersections police and sometimes volunteers directed traffic, luckily enough I saw no accidents. Staff at a few stores along the way gave out water and the Canadian Red Cross office near Summerhill Station had an opportunity to give out bottles of water without going to far. Once at my apartment building, I faced a different challenge, to get to my 17th floor apartment via a sometimes completely dark stairwell that had only intermittent emergency lights. It was an interesting experience climbing in the dark. Once in my apartment I collected batteries, candles and filled up containers of water. Then for a while I read a book while sitting under a hall light still running on emergency power. Finally I went to sleep. I awoke at 5:30 and saw that my alarm clock was on. I had power! 6:13:06 AM

The Iraqi Information Minister states that Mark Fox did not turn 30 today! 6:09:57 AM

Should we blame Canada or the US for this power outage? 6:09:24 AM

Blackout 2003 Power in Toronto is back on! 5:46:37 AM