Will newspapers survive the recession / depression?

By Stephen Pate

Rob Patterson isn’t getting any sleep either. 20 blogs yesterday.

That’s not fair. He heard Derek say I was PEI’s most prolific blogger and he’s thrown down the gauntlet.

I think he just flushed his buffers, zzz’d his RSS, and freshened his air fresher.

I posted such a long comment – very unlike me- that it bears repeating.

The traditional media will not go away. Social media like Blogger is still on the edges of the scene. For example, Google News while popular is not profitable. The web sites for most major newspapers that deliver product are quite profitable.

Without profit no enterprise will survive. 

Facebook wins US$873-million judgment against Montreal-based spammer

Perhaps this explains why Facebook is calling people spammers after 200 or 300 emails to friends or a group. Spam is in the eye of the beholder.

The traditional media love these silly stories, anything to slam social media. Not much revenue for Facebook considering their burn rate.

The judgement was like shooting sitting ducks with no defendant and a Silicon Valley judge.

Facebook not in trouble

Facebook flies to Dubai for cash

Is Dell in trouble or Future Shop

Future Shop employees are telling customers that Dell Computers can not longer be ordered through Future Shop. With the bankruptcy filing of Circuit City computer manufacturers and distributors are nervous.

Wow is Dell in trouble? Rumours of bankruptcy surface 2005 to 2007 but I couldn’t anything more recent.

It could be that or they may just have an unannounced break-up, like with your girlfrend or boy friend but over money.

Could be Future Shoo didn’t pay its bills on time. Those are the usual explanations.

Anyone have answers?

I’m probably not making this better, am I?

Well my Jehovah’s Witness cousin from way down Yarmouth, NS sent me a mysterious email.

TO: STEPHEN PATE

I REPEAT EMPHATICALLY – PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE EMAILS OR VIDEOS OR LINKS TO BLOGS OF ANY KIND! PLEASE TAKE ME OFF YOUR LIST!!!

THANK YOU ROR REPECTING MY REPEATEDLY EXPRESSED WISHES.

name withheld ( I typed that over the real one)

(see note at the end)

Now I don’t know about you but I find those all caps emails sort of rude and confusing.

First it’s hard to know where the sentence begins. Then there is the confusion over whether the message is an acronym, anagram or just someone really mad.

Being a Jehovah’s Witness, my cousin Jim is a mild mannered man of the Lord, a paragon of self-control and closeted anger. He would never be angry with me but believe in the Lord that I might be saved and join him in paradise – no in the garden sharing my dinner with the lions and my breakfast with the lambs.

This Hour Has 5 & 1/2 Minutes for November 18, 2008

This weeks episode is hot on the trail of the Liberals.

Some of the stories

Dave Carver’s romance with Minister Docherty
Bruce Howatt PEI’s top poker ace
Secret $200 million slush fund,
PEI’s new Price is Right,
It ain’t heavy: it’s a government cheque

Have you seen it?

Stephen Harper is a control freak and nosey to boot

I wanted to get Diane Finlay’s email address so I googled her home page.

Except for Answers.com getting in my way, there she was.

Why doesn’t the Federal Government make it easy to find the web sites for departments. Guess they don’t want to hear from us.

Diane Finley, nosey parker Stephen Harper steams open her mail

Clicked on contacts, clicked on her email and there I was in Outlook sending an email.

Hey! What’s with that? Diane’s initials aren’t PM: they’re DF.

Why look at that: I got the PM’s email.

I back up look at Diane in sun glasses and try again. Same thing. Back up twice and I see other cabinet ministers who all have the PM’s email address.

What a control freak Stephen is. They’re not even allowed to get their own email without him reading it first.  Does he have nothing better to do.

And look at the dinky pictures he puts up, I can see him staring at the bathroom mirror: you are nothing. I am everything, The King of Canada. You are all little people with little pictures. And no email.

Diane Finley MP before she entered the dark world of Stephen Harper

I wonder if he steams open their mail envelopes.

You can’t find the minister’s emails on the department web sites. The only way you can find them is to search the House of Commons site for Members

And you will find a much nicer picture of the minister.

For the record Diane Finley’s email is Diane Finley

I better harvest all of them before the night of the long knives when Stephen-I-Want-Power takes over the REICHSTAG. Of course by then all we’ll be able to get on Google is Stephen Harper’s home page with adoring pictures of Prime Minister for Life Harper.

Stephen Harper, Prime Minister for Life

I want to assure Prime Minister Harper this is political satire. Please don’t have the Mounties arrest me for treason. Is satire still allowed in Canada or only when the Prime Minister hires Rick Mercer for some quasi-satirical fluff?

Would someone teach Tim Banks how blogging works

Would someone teach Tim Banks how to a) design his site for navigation and b) stop flushing all his posts through RSS again and again.

He must have had a clogged toilet today because there he goes again with 25 old posts RSS’ed all over again. Must be the 3rd or 4th time this year for that stunt. PEI Blogs

He’s such a self-important, pompous person he doesn’t understand RSS etiquette. Reading your stuff once is enough Timmie. Turn off the loud speaker. Get some help. Surely to God someone at your company knows how to do this properly. We are not impressed.

Still Water, Daniel Lanois Live

An hynoptic Still Water from the Marquis Club in Halifax

I cannot believe how dumb I am

A couple of weeks ago I downloaded the Internet Explorer Beta 8. My life on line has been a disaster until this very moment when I re-installed Firefox.

I know it’s 8 Beta, I just like the sound of Beta 8.

Beta 8 was really slow and buggy. Sometimes closing a window would start the sequentially opening of dozens of new tabs. Only re-booting fixed the problem.

So I uninstalled it and went back to IE 7. Not a chance. Two days of struggle got my computer back, except I could not change my IE Options. Try updating some plug-ins. It was hopeless and my computer started falling apart.

We did registry edits with all known patches. Nothing. Nada.

So I re-installed IE Beta 8 which is again slow and buggy. The coup de gras came this morning when WordPress wouldn’t let me post another story.

That was it. I have to blog 3 to 10 articles a day or I die! Enough.

Dun dee dee dun dee dee dun Bonaza….Firefox to the rescue.

Wow this is nice code. Will and James Pate have been bugging me for a decade to move to Firefox. Why did I resist?

Now I can get back to editing This Hour Has Five and a Half Minutes.