Canada’s Most Respected Cheaters

September 17, 2004PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Earlier this year, KPMG released its annual ranking of Canada’s most respected corporations, the silver medal awarded to WestJet, Canada’s western-based, national, privately owned airline. “Today, corporate reputation matters more than ever,” said KPMG partner Bill Dillabough in announcing the results. “We at KPMG are proud to draw attention to the importance of respect and integrity in the business world.”
Canadian Auto Workers’ Jim Stanford wonders how it is that a company …

with revelations (not yet proven in court) that it snooped confidential information on Jetsgo (its low-cost competitor), in addition to hacking similar data from Air Canada … with first-half profits down by half, and the profit margin (as a share of revenue) at its lowest ever … paying its workers sub-average wages and offering no pension plan …

could possibly have been provided with a much sought after designation by one of the world’s most prestigious corporate advisers? We wonder, too.

VanRamblings’ Favourite Hollywood Movie of 2004 Now On DVD
A Great Week For New DVD Releases — Lots of Rental Choices

September 16, 2004Video & DVDRaymond Tomlin

Although Man on Fire is ostensibly a good-vs.-evil thriller about an ex-CIA agent bent on eliminating a ruthless Mexican gang of kidnappers and dirty cops, in reality director Tony Scott’s highly stylized, nearly 2-hour bloodlust epic is instead the most emotionally resonant piece of Hollywood cinema to have hit the big screen thus far in 2004. And now it’s out on DVD. Rush, we mean run right down to your favourite video store and rent Man on Fire — sure to be discovered on home video and ready to become the top DVD rental of the year. The story’s narrative involves Denzel Washington’s John Creasy, a burnt-out, alcoholic former military operative who takes a bodyguard job for a wealthy family in Mexico City on the suggestion of his friend (Christopher Walken). Creasy has retreated from life and exists inside a gruff, hardened exterior but, as the movie unfolds, he softens in the presence of his employer’s young daughter, Pita (Dakota Fanning). Following Pita’s ambush kidnapping Creasy sets out to find the kidnappers and make them pay — big time. Scott takes great care to establish the relationship between the bodyguard and the child. This makes Pita’s kidnapping feel less like a plot machination and more like an act of terror. The chemistry between Washington and an immensely charming 9-year-old Fanning is surprisingly rich, touching and emotionally resonant. Gritty, incendiary and viscerally engaging from beginning to end, Man on Fire emerges as the most percussively watchable action film of the year, with a great script and charismatic, engaging performances throughout.

Mario Van Peebles sports an attitude of electric, hungry-eyed defiance to play his father, Melvin Van Peebles — one of the first black directors to be ushered through the gates of Hollywood — during the making of Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song (1971), recapturing the feel of an era filled with social history and personal turmoil. Built around Mario’s performance, which is built on Melvin’s macho swagger and bull-headedness, Baadasssss! radiates with a jolting, lively energy, raw and full of the kind of life we don’t see often enough on screen. A must-rental for cinéastes.

Débuting at Cannes and subsequently nominated for seven London Film Critics awards, Young Adam is an adaptation of the Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi’s 1957 novel. The story of Joe, an amoral wanderer played by Ewan McGregor, who discovers the body of a girl while working on a barge, upon its release the film raised eyebrows with its graphic sex scenes between McGregor and co-star Emily Mortimer (thus its NC-17 rating). With cinematography that transforms the bleak backdrop of 1950s Scotland into explosive beauty, and charged with tension throughout, this pungent story of guilt and lost innocence gradually becomes a compelling, if unresolved, study of conscience. Art cinema at its best, Young Adam should be seen.

Happy Days Are Here Again

September 15, 2004TelevisionRaymond Tomlin

It’s ‘Happy Days’ again on ABC

To mark the 30th anniversary of one of its most-loved sitcoms, ABC is holding a reunion for the Happy Days cast — even Chuck will be returning.
The reunion show, set for later this season, will bring together nearly all of the core cast from the long-running show, including Ron Howard, Henry Winkler, Tom Bosley, Marion Ross, Anson Williams, Don Most, and Erin Moran. Gavin O’Herlihy and Randolph Roberts, who played Richie’s older brother Chuck during the show’s first two seasons, will be on hand, as will series creator Garry Marshall.
Whether Marshall will explain what happened to Chuck — who was never heard from, seen, nor even mentioned after the show’s second season — remains to be seen. In addition to the original cast, Scott ‘Chachi’ Baio, Ted ‘Roger Phillips’ McGinley, Penny ‘Laverne’ Marshall, Cindy ‘Shirley’ Williams, Pat ‘Arnold’ Morita, and others who played recurring or regular roles during the 11-year run of Happy Days will also appear on the special.
Final ‘Jeopardy’ for all-time champ

Want to know the fate of all-time Jeopardy! champ Ken Jennings? If not, look away now. For those still reading, several sources are reporting Jennings has finally lost, following a record-breaking run that stretched over parts of two seasons and saw the Utah software engineer rack up seven-figure winnings. Jeopardy! tapes its shows weeks in advance, so Jennings’ final episode will likely air in October.
News of the Jennings loss, in his 75th game, was first reported on a blog called Kottke.org (highlight the blacked-out portion to read the contents), the tip coming from someone in the Jeopardy! audience last Tuesday. The trade magazine TV Week confirmed with sources close to the show that Jennings was indeed done. A spokesperson for Sony Pictures TV, which produces the long-running game show, said show officials “have never disclosed whether a contestant has won or lost before a show has aired.”
Jennings’ total prize money to date exceeds $1.7 million. He reportedly leaves the show with more than $2.5 million in total winnings.

Windows XP Service Pack 2: The Ongoing Saga

September 14, 2004Web & TechRaymond Tomlin

Problems mount with Windows XP Service Pack 2

Since first alerting you to the release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 in the August 17 edition of Tech Tuesday, a number of glitches with the upgrade have surfaced. This isn’t surprising. As VanRamblings has noted previously, people are going to have some problems with SP2, one of Microsoft’s most intrusive and potentially disruptive updates ever.
In today’s Tech Tuesday, we’ll examine some of these concerns.
An Information Week story written by Techweb’s Gregg Keizer, quotes an interesting statistic: According to asset-monitoring firm AssetMetrix, about 10 percent of the PCs upgraded from Windows XP to SP2 in their test universe experienced some problems. That figure comes from a study of over 44,000 upgrades at over 340 companies.
Statistically, 10% might not sound like a particularly high number. But that will be of little comfort if you’re among those who will experience these difficulties. For complete details, read this press release about its test.
Microsoft acknowledged on August 31 that the browser’s pop-up blocker in SP2 can cause the Windows Update site to halt with an HTTP error 500. (Other pop-up blockers can cause this, too.) The solution is to add the Windows Update site to the browser’s list of sites that are allowed to use pop-up windows, explained in Knowledge Base article 883820.
Last week, Microsoft revealed that between 15 and 17 million people have updated to SP2. This is far short of the more than 300 million Windows XP users in the world and the 100 million people Microsoft hopes will upgrade by the end of October. eWeek reports that many IT managers are delaying the installation of SP2 for months because it may break applications.
Meanwhile, a survey of 32 IT managers published in Computerworld reveals that none have installed SP2, except for two who were part of Microsoft’s early-adopter programme. The reason for the delay is the requirement for application-compatibility testing. If you’re interested in testing your own applications against SP2 you should check out the Application Compatibility Testing and Mitigation Guide for Windows XP Service Pack 2.
As of this writing, there are still dozens of common software programmes which are incompatible with Windows XP SP2, from Norton AntiVirus 2003 to WordPerfect Office 11 and ZoneAlarm 5.0.590
If you haven’t installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 yet, you may want to delay installation until the vast majority of compatibility problems have been ironed out. As VanRamblings has written previously, Microsoft has made available a downloadable tool that will temporarily block delivery of Windows XP SP2 to a PC through its automatic Windows Update feature. Simply download the SP2 blocker, extract the file to a temporary folder, and click on the supplied XPSP2Blocker.exe file. Good luck, and safe computing.