From OSDir.com: open source FAQ generation and management tools that make maintaining and deploying useful FAQs al little bit easier.
Although at the end of the day, there is no substitute for listening to your users and tracking common issues and questions.
The Globe and Mail has a few inches devoted it the Sushi Ban in it's "Intelligence" column (registration required (try www.bugmenot.com) )which mentions Malcolm Jolley's http://www.gremolata.com were he is gathering a names and massges for a "massive electronic petition to be submitted to the provincial government."
"I love all good food and what really insults me is that we're being denied access to the very best for silly reasons," he says. "At the end of the day we'll all be eating at McDonald's and having Kraft Dinner because it's safe. How far do we want to take this?"see more at "The Battle for Toro" One and Two; and The End of Sushi or Sayonara Sashimi
In just a few days, his site has been flooded with dozens of posts by Ontarians outraged that the government is sticking its dirty hands into their sushi platters. The petition now has more than 200 signatures, and Mr. Jolley says he hopes to reach thousands before sending it next weekend to Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman, an admitted sushi fan himself who nonetheless has defended the deep freeze.
Toronto has some of the finest restaurants in the world, Mr. Jolley says, and the fresh-fish ban is embarrassing for the city.
Following up on The Battle for Toro, Part 1 and the original The End of Sushi or Sayonara Sashimi, and Via Blue Frog's Blog, I've sent a Petition to the Hon George Smitherman (" sushi aficionado as well as Ontario's Health Minister") from the fine folk at Toronto Area Sushi Society, and you can to.
Update Sushi Wars
Via Slashdot and from the Red vs Blue guys (season 3 starting soon) we have The Strangerhood (with a little help from Sims 2).
for more see: Art of Machinima and Machinima : Spielbergs with Joystick or this Machinima: Games Act Like Films
Via vowe dot net:Pepsi.ca and Apple Canada are going to give away one 20GB iPod every hour starting October 3rd for 84 days straight. Only Canadian residents can enter, and all the regular conditions apply. One interesting twist is that all entries are thrown out after each hourly draw. So if your up at 3am on the 26th day, it might be a good time to enter.
There is a "no purchase required" way to get your hourly pin's. no robots need apply.
Only in Canada, you say? Pity...
Following up on my orginal The End of Sushi or Sayonara Sashimi, there is a flurry of press reports on the threat to Ontario sushi in the CBC, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and CTV .
Most of this is CYA: "prevent future illness and bring the province up to national standards."; "most people won't be able to taste the difference between fish that's previously been frozen." In other words : we are doing this for your own good; you don't know any better; now go away or I shall call you names.
The Star article claims, " the provincial government is backing away from a strict new ban on the use of fresh raw fish in sushi."
It's early days yet, and pressure needs to be continuously applied if anything is going to get done. Again here's the contact info for your MPP
Update : from my Referral logs I see Sloot aka The Original Goldfish has picked (and copied) up my orginal post " The End of Sushi or Sayonara Sashimi" and Technorati tells me: 3 things daily (alice in wonderland reference?) picked up the same glob amd mail story; Max's Mewsings points out the CYA; and Small Dead Animals is rather cranky considering she claims not to like Sushi.
Update 2:There is Now to the Petition to the Hon George Smitherman (" sushi aficionado as well as Ontario's Health Minister").
Update 3 amd more Sushi Wars
Via The New York Times "Is Voting Worth the Trouble?" (September 26, 2004):
The ancient Greeks had a word for a person who is indifferent to public affairs in this way: idiotes, or idiot.
Via ST(O). I'm not should if the intention is to mock the sci fi story, or to highlight the difficulty of writing (and reading) when you cannot assume the reader is familiar with the subject, word, concept, history, etc. Contemporary fiction authors have it so easy.
This quote from a Charles Stross interview is a classic example:
CS: I wrote "Lobsters" and showed it to a friend. He said "that's really cool, but you'll never sell it--the audience would have to overdose on Slashdot for six months before they got it." He was completely right--he just underestimated the number of people out there who overdose on Slashdot!
Via Boing Boing we have The Worst jobs in history, via Baldric. So, yes your job cold be worse:
Fuller, Groom Of The Stool, Guillemot Egg Collector, Barber Surgeon, Bath Attendant, Coin Producer, Tanning (basically most of these involve "Pee")
Of course none of this compares to the hell on earth that is back office bank securities operations.
I've added review links and comments to my previous Saturday Night Hong Kong Films in Toronto (Omini TV ) listings
From Association for Computing Machinery comes Integrating VoIP into the enterprise could mean the end of telecom business as usual. from their VoIP issue.
(what's a PBX? Private Branch Exchange. A telephone exchange used within an organization and located on the premises; an example would be the main switchboard in a hospital. see here for more)
Use the Search bar (right) for more on PBX, Asterisk, or VoIP
as well as
Opening on Sept 28th (that's Tuesday) across Asia, 2046 is Wing Kar Wai 4 year cinematic journey, starting Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, and Zhang Ziyi.
.
The New York Times magazine tells the story (The Director's Director (Registration required) behind the making of this film which will likey be a huge success (or an absolute disaster). A (indirect) sequel for his 2000 "In the Mood for Love" (Fa yeung nin wa), in certainly appears to be a lush and colorful.
(The Globe and Mail had a good and very different article, but I can't find a link to it; they don't want to share?)
I haven't found a trailer (yet) but here is a short teaser, no sound; also a Link to ziped hi-res images from the film; and this is the 2046 official site(Flash), in english/chinese/japanese.
No word on when us Northern Americans can view the beauty
Andrew Orlowski (San Francisco bureau chief of The Register) spoke to the cream of the music industry, telling them to embrace the Future, Technology,Freedom and Growth, and dump DRM, and old business Models.
He also suggested why and how. He does a good job of suggesting where things are headed, and how not to resist, oppurtunities, possible objections - and anwsers to them.
To sum up, then: because of digital technology, you think your rights are worthless. They aren't. You need to monetize them in two ways: by ensuring that there's a revenue stream for things you can't count, and finding new bottles that you can count.
Via Jon Udell comes Nic Wolff's single-signon bookmarklet. From one key phrase come many
Good advice Via Scribbling.net
1.Conceive your site as a web site.
2.Validate your markup.
3.Avoid frames and splash pages.
4.Optimize for download.
5.Make your site URLs as short and static.
6.Textual, and non-Javascript dependent.
7.Search engine spider friendly.
8. Error messages your mother could understand.
9. Don't "Click here".
Via Anti Pixel we have MoCo Tokyo - Modern contemporary design & architecture
remember "The future is here, just unevenly distributed" (WG)
Via Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends comes word of Azul Systems and it's 384 core chips and boxes designed to only run 'virtual-machine' codes, such as those written in Java or .net.
BusinessWeek Online writes about Azul: A Server Startup with a Plan.
CEO Stephen DeWitt sold Cobalt Networks to Sun Microsystems for ~USD $2 billion, so it can all be smoke and mirror's.
More on Multi core here
Update: retro noticed that Wes Felter links to EE Times : Azul leads wave of proprietary server startups, a more sceptical piece.
And Mercry News / SiliconValley.com (Azul method squeezes chips) has noticed too.
