The Unreasonable Man

As some readers may know, I spend my days working on “Digital Signage“. A field that did not exist just a few years ago; now, it is turning into a real and growing market. The following enabling trends are helping this market:

• Ubiquitous TCP/IP. This is leading to a decrease in the major cost of sending content to multiple players.
• Cheaper and smaller media-playing hardware: a small PC that can play video (even high-def) is no longer cutting-edge.
• Better codecs, meaning smaller media content (DivX, AVC).
• Better software, with good network/player management, aimed at scalable deployments.
• Managed services; the growth of “SAAS” (Software As A Service, which for this endeavour makes a lot of sense).
• More interfaces with the outside world (APIs, database links with back-end and POS systems and with input devices such as telephones).
• The maturing of other ways of getting signals to a screen, such as Satellite and IPTV (the latter is of course promoted by Cisco and carriers such as Bell, but is not ready for the big time).
• AJAX, meaning a browser-based app can give a rich customer experience.
• The entry into the market of companies like Cisco and IBM.
• New technology and expertise for measurements (play affidavits) allows combining play data with sales data.

Trends like these above make the technology practical, and marketers and real-estate owners have noticed this. Which is keeping companies in this field busy. Expect to see lots of media content around you everywhere.

Damn those Yankee cultural imperialists! Now Ralph Nader is in a movie whose name and theme are very much like this blog’s. How dare he take George Bernard Shaw’s words after I did.

My image of the day was taken yesterday morning at DFW, and shows the VOR. A giant antenna array - larger than any I have seen.

And look now, because these will all be replaced soon enough by GPS-based equipment. General Aviation may delay it , but GPS rather than radio beacons will be the way of the future.

Until China blasts the GPS satellites out of the sky, of course. Then we go back to living in caves.

CNN reports tonight that that one in three (nope - not one in three hundred: that is one in three) Americans believe that 9-11 was the result of a conspiracy by non- Arabs, in particular Zionists.

Another bunch of wackos are the US States that have enacted BMI legislation. BMI = Body Mass Index. Kids in those states now get weighed at school, and take home report cards on their Body Mass Index. High BMI = Bad. Fail the report and G-d knows what could happen to you or your kids.

Jesus Christ! You have to despair…. Windows Vista; Jews causing 9-11; and kids getting “fatness report cards”. I used to think the world was getting more rational. Chairman Mao, please come back, all is forgiven. At least you were rationally evil.

Just picture waking up in Fort Worth, online-updating a Linksys wireless router that kept locking up (what’s new), then driving to Dallas, flying to Toronto, and finally driving the four-wheel drive in low range to snowy Mono. Different worlds.

Today’s plane was an Embraer: nice plane, made by Brazilians. And equipped with video system that bleep out the word G-d.

Meanwhile, back to work tomorrow, and back to the reality of the just-released Windows Vista. the Toronto Star knows that Vista represents, in their words, “an unprecedented loss of consumer control over their own personal computers”. See the article here.

My summary: Windows Vista:

• is not innovative
• looks cute
• is evil
• will be very expensive (the non-handicapped versions will cost $600)
• takes away control from consumers and hands it to Hollywood and Redmond, WA

…and yet we will all be using it. Linux is handicapped, Mac is handicapped and differently evil, and yet, out of pure ignorance (people actually believe in this nonsense - after all, how can Michael Willems or The Star know better than Bill Gates!) we will all be using the OS that ranks right up there with Chairman Mao and Saddam Hussein. Some things in life get better; some do not. MS and Windows are in the latter category. Prepare to open your wallets.

I was on an Air Canada plane yesterday, as I will be on another one tomorrow travelling back into the snow and ice.

I watched a movie, “The Queen”. It was “edited for content”, i.e. censored. This was the strangest censorship: all mentions of the word “God” were bleeped out. Political correctness gone totally wacko bonkers. I must write to Air Canada about this.

In Ft.Worth!

(Manual, ambient -2 stops, flag lit with two flashes in E-TTL II, one off camera)

Last day at Terminal 2. My car is there and when I return to Canada, it will be at an abandoned terminal.

Jason drove the Land Rover to (his) work this morning:

For those of you who are photographically interested: Picture was taken with the 5D, using the 17-40 4L lens. I lit Jason with a 580EX speedlite with Sto-Fen diffuser. First, I set the camera set to manual; I set it to underexpose the ambient/background by two stops. Then I set the flash FEC to -1EV. That is why the background looks dark - it was not in fact that dark.

And here is an image of my other son, taken during lunch (5D in manual 2 stops below ambient; flashed with 580EX with Sto-Fen using -1 FEC):

In other news, I am flying to Dallas tomorrow, in my continuing quest to use as many free Air Canada flights as I can before the unlimited pass runs out at the end of February.

The Prime Minister will make a statement: Maher Arar, who was incorrectly identified by Canadian security services as a terrorist and who was then “extraordinarily rendered” to Syria by the USA to be tortured there, is reportedly to receive a settlement including an apology, $10m, plus $12m in legal costs from the Canadian government. He has already been totally cleared by a government enquiry. The head of the RCMP has resigned. In other words, the government has admitted doing wrong and has tried to make it right.

At the same time, the EU is reportedly considering an apology to Mr Arar as well.

This in stark contrast to the US, which in spite of every thing is keeping Mr Arar on the terrorist no-fly list - apparently for no other reason that to save face and to avoid admitting a wrong. And America’s ambassador to Canada has warned Canada to back off.

I could not show the difference between the USA and Canada better if I tried. And that is regrettable, since America is - or at least, ought to be - what the world looks at as the example of freedom and democracy.

Love the warning.. what else does snow do?