I know there is a lot of talk about the financial crisis, and it is really bad. I know. It scares the poop out of me when I think about it too much. However, I still cannot wait until 2009!

My two favourite Sci-fi franchises will be taking my attention and money. Seriously, this is going to be the best year for entertainment in my world.

First Battlestar Galactica will be airing it's final installment, bring the series to a close. The best damn TV drama, I've seen since Hill Street Blues.

Next, Star Trek is going to be reborn, and if this trailer is even half of the movie, it could easily be the best Trek since Wrath of Khan. Only JJ Abrams could pull off a sci-fi trailer starting with a car chase!

I haven't made a post in months it seems, but when I saw this image, I had to post it for posterity and to remind myself why I chose NOT to live in Australia when given a chance.
Box Jellyfish can kill small children.
Great White Sharks make snacks of surfers.
Koala's are viscous.
Centipedes kill.
Hell Big Red Kangaroos are the animal equivalent to suicide bombers.

And....
they have spiders like this!

I'm am presently a member of the Conservative Party of Canada though my membership will soon expire and not be renewed. I've been a supporter of the Party since I voted for Brian Mulroney during the Free Trade election. I was a member of the Liberal Party when I voted for Brian Mulroney. However, I could not vote for the Liberal Party that year. They were against Free Trade and I was for Free Trade. Despite the scare tactics of the Liberal Party campaign, I had no fear that Canada was about to be absorbed by the US, either culturally or economically. I believed that Canadians knew who we were as a people, and that we could compete in the market place. I believed that competition spurs innovation. I believed Canadians should have access to the best products and services wether they are sourced in Canada or the US, or the World for that matter. The Liberal Party under John Turner did not believe Canadians were confident in their identity or that Canadian companies could adapt to market forces and compete. We needed to be protected from 'the world' out there.

Although there were other issues and policies offered by both parties, I felt each party's position on the Free Trade Agreement reflected their macro-view on how they would govern on other issues. Would they govern from a fearful and protectionist position, keeping Canadians from competition or would they govern with strength, confident in our ability to adapt, compete, and excel. I voted for Free Trade and let my Liberal Party membership expire and eventually became a member of the Conservative Party.

Now with the pending introduction of Bill C-61 (or Canada's Digital Millennium Copyright Act), I will be letting my membership to the Conservative Party of Canada expire. I'm not likely to re-join the Liberal Party (I'm more than a little fed up with both these parties), but I will do my part to help defeat any party that wants to introduce a bill like this to the Canadian people.

Like Free Trade, BC-61 is a Bellwether issue for me. The Conservative Party's support for this bill goes completely counter to why I supported them 20 years ago. The bill is supposed to protect copyright holders, but in reality its purpose is to protect the 20th Century business models of traditional media. They need to be protected from the "world out there". It's a fearful bill. It does not show confidence in Canadian companies to adapt to new realities of the digital world. It puts us at a long term competitive disadvantage vis a vis the rest of the world. Most importantly, it will make criminals out of regular Canadians who copy and reuse content ethically.

Sources:
Business faces challenges under copyright legislation
61 Reforms to C-61, Day 39: TPMs - No DRM Labelling Requirement
Legislation is severely flawed Bill C-61 has some unforeseen implications
61 Reforms to C-61, Day 40: TPMs - No Regular Review Process
Bill C-61 Flawed
Fair dealing missing under rules of new copyright law
Copyright shifts format
Copyright Lobbying Behind Closed Doors

Woke up at 4:30 this morning.

Son number 2, was crying.

Son number 1 had crawled into bed at some time around 3:30am and is giving me karate kicks to the ribcage.

By 5:30 decided to heat milk for bottle.

Fill glass with formula.

Put glass in microwave. That has idiotically designed "cooking rack" inside.

Watch glass tip on idiotically designed cooking rack and spill milk:
throughout microwave,
all over espresso machine,
over counter,
onto clean dishes,
into cupboards,
onto floor, and finally
soaked up by floor mat.

Swear!

Cause more crying.

Clean-up.

Take shower.

Make coffee.

Notice interesting smell of warm milk rising from espresso machine.

Wife wakes up (gets up - she HAD TO BE AWAKE already) and says "You are making too much noise stomping around the house."

grumble. grumble...

"I'm moving to Australia. It's been a terrible, horrible no good, very bad day." I say.

No one even answered.

Then...

"I love you, Daddy," says son number 1.

:)

Yeah. I suppose I will live.

Son #1:

Son #2:

I'm guilty.

If you look throughout this blog, you will find many images and quotes without proper attribution. I know I am not alone in my guilt.

Yeah we link to the original blog (most of the time), but the content that we quote/use is often not clearly associated with the attribution. It should to some extent be machine readable: THIS quote/image came from XYZ site. At our company we are building some web services that need to understand/read/display both license and attribution. So we looked at Microformats.org, for some guidance, but the attribution microformat is not complete, it is going to be part of the next version of Rel-License. However, considering most content being quoted in blogs is often being used within 'fair use' commentary regardless of license, a simple academic-like attribution would be very useful sooner rather than later.

So, if I wanted to comment on a picture from wife Mandy's blog post about the family playing Rock Band and my son's fascination with R.E.M.'s Orange Crush, I could post the image below and hyper link it to her blog post blog post where the image came from.


I could also put an anchor on the image to link back to her. However, it would be preferable for "machines" if the attribution maintained tighter context with the image as I have done below:



Using the mark-up:

<div class="hsnip">
  <h4 class="entry-title">Orange Crush</h4>
  <span class="entry-content">
     <img
src="http://bp3.blogger.com/
_dPEXnRmZGH0/SBVGeSCvf0I/AAAAAAAAA84/qUL_jTm5bQ4/s400/DSC_3076.jpg" />
   </span>
<br />
<br />
   <a rel="attribution" href="http://mandygratton.blogspot.com/2008/04/orange-crush.html"
title="http://mandygratton.blogspot.com/2008/04/orange
-crush.html"target="_blank">mandygratton.blogspot.com</a>
</div>

Now if we wanted to add an author, we could include hcard within the div.

What I like about this attribution solution is that it works nicely for text blockquotes. Where it can be argued that by embedding an image using the source URL gives the best attribution (bandwidth issues aside), this cannot be done for text quotes. So I can quote from Mandy's blog and include the attribution as part of the div.


The blockquote is an identifiable piece of content by both humans and machines and it is clearly attributed to the source blog post.