Category Archives: General

General items that fit either no category or more than one category.

Threat of Recession Looms in Canada

The Canadian economy has been the talk of the town recently with the dollar reaching parity with the American dollar for the first time since 1976 and the housing market really heating up.  These things are both offsetting the effects of inflation and helping to keep the economy running along smoothly.  Luckily our economy right now is really based on trading natural resources and with our agriculture.  Grain prices are reaching their highest levels in a long time and thats helping farmers make money.  Oil is always at or near the highest level it has ever been so thats helping out the Oil companies.  The problem with such a hot economy is that it is bound to cool off eventually its just a matter of when.  The USA is having a lot of problems recently with its crisis on sub prime lending, a cooling housing market and the poor state of their economy.  A lot of that will have trickle down effects into Canada.  Today, to add to the whole mess, is a strike by GM workers  at their Saginaw plant.  This is going to cause over 80,000 workers in Canada to be layed off as a result of the disruption in the automobile creation chain.  With such a large lay off this will be a devastating blow to our economy.  Unemployment numbers are going to rise big time and the longer the strike lasts the more harm that will be caused to the economy.

So with the high Canadian dollar hurting exports and then the GM layoffs raising unemployment, the economy is going to be in for a great shock.  It is hard to believe that this will all just pass by and we will be unaffected.  My prediction is for a recession in the USA followed by a recession in Canada.  The USA will be harder hit but Canada will be going along for the ride with this one.

The Canadian Dollar is Officially Worth More than the American Dollar

Not since 1976 has the Canadian dollar been worth more than the American Dollar. It has been a long road with times where the currency was worth almost half as much as the US Dollar. Times have changed and the USA currency isn’t the machine that it once was. The rising dollar has less to due with the super strong Canadian Economy and more to do with the very weak and troubled US economy. When you compare the Canadian Dollar to the Euro, it has been rising slightly but it is basically the same level it was a year ago. 1 Euro is 71 cents Canadian. One thing for certain with the new found parity with the US dollar is that some prices are going to have to change soon. Most prices have been set at an exchange rate of 1 CDN = .80 USD and that is no longer the case. It would be nice if all the prices of goods fell in Canada but I expect that the United States will have to raise their prices more to keep up with the rest of the world. This dramatic rise in the Canadian dollar has sure helped to keep inflation very low. Hopefully our exporters won’t be affected too badly by the change and the economy can keep on chugging along.

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Original Command and Conquer released as freeware.

Command and Conquer just had their 12th anniversary of its landmark RTS franchise. To kick the celebration off, they have a special surprise which new and old Command & Conquer fans will enjoy. EA is providing the original Command & Conquer Gold as a free download, compatible for Windows XP! The game itself is a classic and very much playable today. I love when developers release their games as freeware long after the game itself has fallen away from public sale. Thanks EA for giving this classic back to the gamers.

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Sask Wheat Pool … Viterra

The Sask Wheat Pool (TSX: SWP) officially announced their new name for their company today in Balgonie.  A new name was needed for the company as a way to show the recent merger of the Sask Wheat Pool and Agricore United.  The new name is Viterra which isn’t a word you can find in the dictionary.  The word itself seems to contain the word terra which is latin for earth or land.  With a made up word like Viterra it will take some getting used to for farmers who have been using the Wheat Pool name since 1924.  With the amount of influence the company has on the Canadian prairies we will be seeing a lot of the new name.  To me, it sounds a little like Viagra, so maybe its just what this old company needs.

Troubled Times Ahead For Sony

It has been rumoured that Sony is going to drop the price on the newest model of their Playstation 3 once the existing supplies of the 60gb model have been sold through.  They are expecting the old models will be sold out by October which just so happens to be the time that Microsoft AAA titles will be releasing for the Xbox 360.  The 80gb PS3 is currently retailing for $599 and the 60gb is selling for $499.  With news of future price drops it only leads to speculation that Sony fears they are losing the console war.  Sony has a lot riding on their console as it is also pushing their Blu Ray movie format.  Consumers will ultimately decide whether this price drop will be enough to keep the PS3 alive and the Blu Ray format for that matter.

Bloomberg

CPU Desk – Made From Several Hundred Old CPUs [ Pics ]

Matt Tovey collected several hundred old CPUs during a company upgrade and made this awesome desktop! Then he posted the process with pictures. This is a very clever idea that is a way to reuse all those old CPUs that are no longer useful. I would have a hard time doing this with just my old processors. Either I would have a really small table or it would be a table with a very small amount of CPUs. Lets see… a 486, a pentium, a 386… Yep a very small table indeed. Someone should make these things and start selling them. It would have to be a bit pricey since it would take a while to make but the old CPUs can be found for very cheap. This isn’t something that everyone is going to have and good luck seeing it in an Ikea catalogue.

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Paramount and Dreamworks drop BLURAY – go HD DVD.

This is wonderful news for the HD DVD camp. Just when people were talking about the end of the format wars approaching this can of worms got opened up. Now I know they probably just didn’t choose to make more money on sales, but I believe this will force a lot of consumers to take a better look at the formats and decide what is right for them. I know I am a fan of HD DVD as I own an Xbox 360. I don’t like the shenanigans that Sony constantly pulls when they talk about their formats. They really like to create the most proprietary formats and throw it down the throats of their consumers. With Paramount and Dreamworks HD DVD will be able to enjoy the Shrek series, Star Trek movies, Transformers, as well as a large number in their collections. The format war is back on!

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Mario Kart Wii

I have been a huge fan of Mario Kart ever since the SNES original. I played Mario Kart 64 for months straight. I remember playing Mario Kart Advance in computer science class in high school and having a great time. Finally, Nintendo is going to release the newest incarnation of the series, Mario Kart Wii. It will feature classic tracks, the return of hopping, and online racing. The link below has a number of screenshots, but I think these are too low of quality to really judge the new game. I don’t have many Wii games but this is one I will be picking up for sure. Racing online with friends should be a lot of fun, as well as the old favorite of split screen multi-player :)

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Google Code for Educators

Google is a company that seems to care about the future. They have many programs in place to train the future computer scientists and to assist them as they develop their skills.  In the past I have attempted to try to bring their Google ambassador pizza program to the university but failed at that.  I guess the University of Regina isn’t on their list of schools that they want to be supporting.  Maybe someday I suppose.  Now, they have a new program called Google Code for Educators.  It has a number of items targetted at profs to use in their classes.  There are video lectures, sample course content, and tutorials on new technologies.  All of this is available for free and is given away with the creative commons license.  It is my hope that more profs will use resources like this as the material is very well written and a lot clearer than many of the profs.  The program itself was actually announced July 26 but old news can still be new news to me.

China says it can crash US Dollar

“The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US Treasury bonds if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.”

This could be bigger than nuclear war. It would bring about the destruction of the United States as we now know it. China now has the US by its throat and is willing to pull its grip tighter to get what it wants. I’m just glad my money is all in Canadian, I will feel the wrath but I will at least be slightly sheltered.

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