October 29, 2003

A Trans-Israel Canal? IsraelNationalNews reports that the Israeli Transportation, Infrastructures and Interior Ministries have embarked on the initial stages of project to move the large Pi Gelilot fuel facility that is currently located in the heart of Tel Aviv to a not-yet-built offshore artificial island in the Mediterranean Sea. Interestingly the article suggests that the source of the landfill needed to construct such an island could be from the construction of a canal from the Mediterranean Sea, just south of Ashkelon, to the Red Sea port of Eilat. This 300 kilometre long canal would serve as an alternate to the Suez Canal for traffic between the Mediterranean and Red Seas and would also be wider than the Suez Canal, which cannot accept supertankers. Given that the Suez is much shorter and would be easier to expand than to build a new canal this project is unlikely to occur. However as an alternative, Israel has already reversed the flow of the Tipline oil pipeline from its original Eilat to Ashkelon course to carry oil from Ashkelon to Eilat where it can be put on tankers for transport to Asian markets. The main users of this short cut around Africa would be Russian oil companies. 8:52:53 PM

The W3C HTML Patent Advisory Group has presented the United States Patent and Trademark Office with prior art establishing that the US Patent No. 5,838,906 owned by Eolas Technologies is invalid. The patent covers the means by which a web browser uses external programs to display downloaded data it cannot itself display, a typical usage is with Flash animations or PDFs. The W3C notes that if the patent is not invalidated it would have a major impact on the web as an unknown number of web pages would have to be changed because Microsoft has stated it will modify Internet Explorer to avoid the patent. In addition to this prior art, the Internet of the Viola browser states his browser is also prior art as does the creator of Lotus Notes. 8:42:51 PM

The Canadian Department of Defence will spend more than $500 million on 66 Mobile Gun System combat vehicles known in the U.S. as Strykers. The eight-wheel armoured vehicles with a 105-mm main gun are already being built in London, Ontario for the US military. On their arrival starting in 2006, they will replace the aging Leopard I main battle tanks used by the Canadian military. There are critics that argue that the Stryker is too thinly armoured to be useful and that by using wheels instead of a tracked carriage the vehicle is not mobile enough. However in a sidebar the CBC notes that Strykers can be transported by the Canadian military’s C-130 Hercules aircraft while no Canadian planes can carry the heavier Leopard I main battle tanks. 8:28:59 PM