Canadian Musings

Time to start writing a new number on those cheques! (2006, in case you've forgotten already ...)

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have apparently announced that they are likely to reject the patents currently held by a company called NTP, Inc.

If this happens, it would likely destroy the patent infringement case which NTP is pursuing against RIM (Research In Motion, makers of the popular Blackberry wireless email device). After all, how can you infringe a patent that has been "unissued"?

Too bad the USPTO have been so lax in granting patents over the past few years, with some people trying to patent ideas instead of inventions, and other patents being issued for trivialities. Expect more problems in the future, as more patents are challenged and rejected.

Apparently, if I were a Horrible Affliction, I would be Bubonic Plague.


Which Horrible Affliction are you?
A Rum and Monkey disease.

If you're really stuck for Christmas Gift Ideas, stay away from this list of the movies voted as among the worst of all time, according to the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com).

Oddly, I don't see "The Postman" or "Ishtar" on the list, though they are widely considered as worst-ever contenders. Big-budget bombs, too.

The Canadian Federal Liberal Government has complained publicly that the U.S. hasn't been active enough in patrolling the Canadian border.

This week, the U.S. House of Representatives have suggested a study considering a fence along that border. Surely this would be welcomed by those who want tighter border security, who want to stem the flow of illegal guns across that border.

But, as it turns out, the Liberal Government isn't interested. I guess they really aren't concerned with security, just with bashing those who actually are doing something about it. Go figure.

Canada, according to reports, has allowed Greenhouse Gas emissions to rise more then 30 percent above the levels required by the Kyoto accord in just a few years' time.

And much of what we consume has been imported from abroad. While some of what we manufacture is exported, we need to do some more smog accounting.

We need to understand how much Greenhouse Gasses are emitted by the manufacture of all the goods we consume in order to properly determine just how much Canadians are contributing to the Global Warming effects, or at least to global pollution levels.

Let's see what the levels are for (1) the goods produced locally for local consumption; (2) the goods produced locally for export; (3) the goods produced elsewhere and imported for local consumption.

If (3) represents more pollution than does (2), then Canada is a worse contributor to global pollution than even our current terrible record suggests. It may be that (2) is greater than (3), although that, too, is bad.