There are many, many reasons.
One has been increasingly irksome.
Email addresses that have long been directed correctly, even email addresses that are in my own personal address book, are being flagged as SPAM. See example screenshot below …
Microsoft is simply useless at anything to do with the internet.
A friend of mine just emailed. Her facebook account was hacked this morning and the hacker has been asking all of her friends for money to get home from London.
She is not in london and does not need money.
The hacker is trying to convince “Facebook friends” to send cash.
The economic news couldn’t be worse for the book industry. Now insiders are asking how literature will survive.
The end of days is here for the publishing industry — or it sure seems like it. On Dec. 3, now known as “Black Wednesday,” several major American publishers were dramatically downsized, leaving many celebrated editors and their colleagues jobless. …
Salon – Read it and weep
It’s bad.
But I’m not all that sympathetic.
Traditional book publishers are as almost as bad as music publishers, relying on a “star” system rather than allowing fair access for new talent.
If Houghton Mifflin, Simon & Schuster, Random House and Macmillan all go bankrupt, something different — and better — will rise from the ashes. They’ve been terribly slow to innovate.
Where are the audio books? Ebooks? New technologies to encourage younguns to read?
Onion – larger version
A stinging Arctic storm that swept into southern Alberta on Friday will only worsen through the weekend, with plummeting temperatures, slick roads and bone-chilling winds leading emergency officials to issue a series of warnings about the risks of venturing outside. …
Calgary in grip of deep freeze
That Canada.com newspaper online page format is still crappy.
Pop-up windows?
Yuck.
When are they going to improve it to something more like the NY Times?
The only good thing I can see happening with Canada.com is their AJAX RSS page. (Beta)
The best article I’ve seen on the Auto bailout was published in the NY Times:
Big Three workers aren’t making anything close to $73 an hour (which would translate to about $150,000 a year).
But the defenders are not right to suggest, as many have, that Detroit has solved its wage problem. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler workers make significantly more than their counterparts at Toyota, Honda and Nissan plants in this country. Last year’s concessions by the United Automobile Workers, which mostly apply to new workers, will not change that anytime soon.
Wages, overtime and vacation pay comes to about $40 an hour, still more than they deserve, I feel.
If you add the excellent fringe benefits you could call it $55 an hour, about double the average of the American worker.
Too much.
The real problem is that many people don’t want to buy the cars that Detroit makes. Fixing this problem won’t be nearly so easy.
I highly doubt the Big 3 can turn that around.
NYT – $73 an Hour: Adding It Up
Personally, I would not bail out the auto industry. Best case scenario would be for one of the 3 to go out-of-business, the two remaining surviving and thriving.
That won’t happen. The U.S. government will hand these bad companies tax dollars, borrowed from China.
Starting now the Big 3 business model will be to position themselves for future bailouts.
Sad.
By extension, I should hate their spin-off discount company Koodo.
The immediate reaction of technology bloggers and industry observers when the brand launched was a shrug.
Telecommunications blog Wireless North ran the news with the headline “Telus launches Koodo [but why?]” and suggested the brand be called “Metoo” because it was following in the footsteps of Rogers and Bell, which have their own discount phone brands, Fido and Solo, respectively.
“Don’t let the fresh coat of paint fool you. Koodo’s mobile offerings are already offered through Telus and come with a minor changes in the price plan structure,” a Financial Post blog opined.
A funny thing has happened since then, however. Though no official numbers have been released, Telus’s recent earnings suggest Koodo has been a bona fide hit. …
I hate TELUS.
But they have excellent and memorable advertising. For both TELUS and Koodo.
And, the service is getting pretty good reviews.
The only cheaper phone plan is pay-as-you-go cards you can buy at 7-11.
How about this?
Mike Dixon from Google took the time to contact me about my “problem” with Google News.
I had accidentally “personalized” the site to show the American feed, rather than the Canadian one.
Here’s Mike’s advice:
… it looks like you’re actually seeing
the U.S. edition of google news (rather than the canadian edition),
with one canadian section added (the world section, which of course
isn’t going to have much canadian news either).my guess for how this happened: at some point you were viewing the
U.S. edition (either because you went to news.google.com or because
you were on news.google.ca and switched with the drop-down at the top
of the page). then you said “personalize this page” and made some
changes (judging from the section list on the left, you moved U.S.
national news to the bottom and added a world section from the
canadian edition). now that you’ve created a personalized edition
(based on the U.S. edition), that will get shown to you whenever you
return.here’s how to fix it: on the front page, you should see an “edit this
personalized page” link. click it, and then the “reset page to
default” link. this will delete your personalization, and should
return you to the default canadian edition (if you’re on
news.google.ca; if you’re on .com, you’ll get the U.S. edition but can
switch with the drop down). confirm that the “google news” logo
includes the word “canada”, that there’s a canada section on the front
page, and the sports section includes an appropriate quantity of
hockey…now you can redo any personalization you’d like.
THAT WORKED PERFECTLY.
Thanks Google.
=== my original post:
I logged into Google News Canada to check who won the Grey Cup, one of the biggest sports stories of the year.
Yet I did not find out who won the big football game — (it wasn’t Edmonton) — because the story was not linked on the home page. Nor even on the Sports page.
It’s still not improving as fast as I would like.
Shiromi Arserio used 2 of my photos in an article called the 10 Most Influential Spiritual Books Of The Past 50 Years.
10 Most Influential Spiritual Books Of The Past 50 Years – Brave New Traveler
For the record, I feel the Celestine Prophesy and The Secret (#2 and #1) are over-rated drivel.
Microsoft rolled out an improvement to their popular web email service today. At least it got to me today.
It looks much nicer. And has separate mail and web search bars.
Still, SPAMERS love Hotmail because the free service only allows you to put 250 friends on your safe list. And their SPAM protection is the worst of the major players. By far.
The new look site does not work on Opera for Mac.
AND, of course, they still won’t let me flee to a better service like Gmail or Yahoo. Because your old mail cannot be forwarded in the free service to another.
I’m still in Hotmail prison.
My preferred contact is RickMcCharles AT Gmail.com.
I check that address first each day.
Rick McCharles 
