How do Mac OS X browsers handle three essential features (on top of the requisite standards compliance): Tabs, crash or quit protection, and print preview?

Evidently, then, no single browser gives me everything I want. If Opera fixes its keystroke and tab behaviour, among other defects, it may win out.

How nostalgic, though this manner of presentation, complete with flag, is really more American.

Today, I sat through a grueling and overly-warm but illuminating and enjoyable conference on copyright, specifically Canadian copyright issues as they pertain to music. The TIP Conference takes place each year; today it carried the title “Sound Bytes, Sound Rights: Canada at the Crossroads of Copyright Law.”

Whilst waiting in line, I saw the unmistakable visage of Michael Geist sweep into the room. As an acolyte of his Toronto Star columns, I later made sure to interrupt his setting up his PowerBook (reminding myself how much I hate it when people do that to me) to blurt “You’re Michael Geist! It’s like meeting the Beatles. I read your shit religiously!” He showed next to no reaction, and a couple of other attempts to chat during the rest of the day evinced palpable disinterest.

Sorry, Mike, but I’m a fan of yours even if the feeling ain’t mutual.

Later, to the audiencemembers seated around me, I proposed a (teetotaler) drinking game for utterances of “illegal downloading”: Raise one finger if you hear that by itself, two if it’s in the context of music. It only happened once!

En tout cas, my notes follow. Nothing is a direct quotation unless it’s surrounded by quotation marks or introduced as such; paraphrases that differ markedly from the speaker’s actual words are marked as such. I will expand these as other links become available. In theory, audio and video from the conference will be posted shortly. Not all questions and answers – not even all my questions and answers – are listed here. I will try to fix that in coming days. I’m just trying to get the basic notes up pronto.

[continue with: Notes from copyright conference →]

I took a trip down memory lane and reread my old posting on the Nigerian TTY scam. Then of course there was the news last year that you can use AIM to connect to relay services.

So, having read the horror stories on the relay-operator bulletin board, I decided to ask a few questions.

AIM IM with myiprelay

Welcome to IP Relay.
To place a relay call type CALL
To register your personal My IP Relay Number type VALIDATE
For customer service information please type HELP

Message from My IP-RELAY
Have a DLink Videophone? Make a VRS call to TV.IP-VRS.COM! For more information, visit http://www.IP-VRS.com.

help

Welcome to My IP Relay! Using this service you can place a relay call through an operator. For more information on this service contact customer service at ip-relay@mci.com, TTY 866-735-0193, Voice 866-735-0373 or visit our website at www.ip-relay.com. Please mention “Relay through AIM” when contacting customer service.

call

Welcome to My IP RELAY.. Please hold for the next available operator.

IP RELAY RO [redacted]F NBR CALLING PLS QQ GA

question about protocol first, please. ga

(opr here i can try to ans ur questions or would u like to be transferred to cust svc qq) ga

I’ll start with you. You may be unable to answer the following question, but here goes: Aren’t these AIM instant-message calls actually more likely to facilitate Nigerian and Ghanaian relay scams? GA

(opr here i will be transferring u to cust svc pls hd) Thank you for contacting MCI Relay customer service my name is my name is [redacted], how may i help u qq ga

OK, have I reached a supervisor? GA

this is the relay customer service dept i am not a supervisor but is f u wish I can connect u to a supervisor ga

No, not at the moment. The previous operator hurriedly transferred me to you. I have a question that you too may be unable to answer: Aren’t these AIM instant-message calls actually more likely to facilitate Nigerian and Ghanaian relay scams? GA

this relay service is provided for people who are deaf hard of hearing or speech disabled relay calls are regulated by the ffc and the operators have to honor the all the calls that come into the relay service we are aware that are our service is being abused by people who many not be deaf hard of hearing or speech disabled and the FCC has released a public notice regarding this issue and the FBI has an open investigation regarding this issue ga

I wonder if that was a macro on your keyboard or if you retyped your script from scratch. Either way, bravo. I do have another question regarding protocol. Does your system differentiate between “traditional” IP relay and the new instant-messaging calls? GA

i am not able to disclose that information it is confidential information can i please have ur first name and last name and phone number ga

For what purpose? GA

in office documentation ga

No, but if there were a customer-service telephone line I could call to specifically discuss the abuse of the relay service, I would consider calling it. GA

sure u can call me directly at the 800 number via voice i i would like to have ur name so that i can odcument document that u will be calling ga

What’s the number, please? GA

one moment i will be documenting that i spoke to u regarding this issue pls hold

OK. GA

ok thank you so much for holding the voice number for customer service is 1800 735 0373 and my name is [redacted] if u wish to ask for me u may also the conatct id number for this call is 29217997 so if u wish to call in just provide us with that contact id number and the file that i just created for u will be pulled up and all of ur concerns have been documented ga

All right. I appreciate the constraints you are working under and I wish you good luck with your next call. GA -SK

thank you so much and thank you for calling mci relay customer service have a wonderful day

SK

bye sk

Connection was lost or unable to get an operator at this time. Please try your call again.

Update

(2005.03.05)  I tried to line up a meeting with young Shane Luitjens when I was in Boston. He was legitimately busy trying to line up his own meetings in another city, but apart from that, his tone in instant messaging was consistently withering and blithe. Every third line aimed for something Wildean, but ended up being simply glib, a put-down.

Apparently, when one is red-haired and talented, one need not meet new friends, particularly fellow writers who know all the standards-compliant Web developers in various cities. Then again, standards compliance – a sure way to make more money as a Web designer – was one of the topics on which he was withering and blithe.

Nobody cares that you were a whore. What we care about is that you’re a snob and a jerk.

Well, God love ’em for trying and all, but what’s wrong with Opera for Macintosh 8.0 beta? Lots.

[continue with: Opera for Macintosh: Not exactly magnum →]

1. Special LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD for Bowman’s befuddled indirect compliments on my artistique ability. God knows I give him enough
2. Bowman in Hong Kong (deuxième)
3. Bowman typesnaps (deuxième; troisième; quatrième; cinquième) [continue with: B-links, January 30 →]

Katherine Barber, editrix of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, has a mediævalist air (she indeed sings in choirs and loves ballet) and an inexplicable mid-Atlantic accent. She gave a presentation last night on Canadian English.

To concentrate on uniquely-Canadian words is a sort of anecdotalism we wish to avoid (historians face the same problem – everybody’s got a story they like to tell), but here are the Canadianisms Barber introduced last night, some of them with enough citations to have been newly added to her dictionary. (I’ve daggered ones that aren’t in the dictionary.)

Auditor General

aunt

(Maritime pronunciation [a:])

babiche

(rawhide webbing)

bachelor, bach

(“large bachelor,” “bachelors available”)

bird flu

bismarck

baba

bomboniere

butter tart

(Bruce McCall pardoy of wartime illustration: HE’S FIGHTING FOR YOUR BUTTER TARTS)

Canadian Tire money

CanLit

cash

(register; also its location)

conditional sentence

course calendar

dangerous offender

drop the gloves

eh

(not distinctly Canadian when used in the Americans’ stereotyped sense of tag question, but as an interrogative like you know, right, you follow: “We were on the 401, eh, and this guy in a Benz cut us off”)

emerg

gotch(ies)

hang up the skates

Hatter

(person from Medicine Hat)

holopchi†

Iqalungmiut

(people from Iqaluit, singular and plural)

jambuster

LCBO

loonie

(headline: “Loonies to help crime victims”)

mangia-cake

(what Italian-Canadians call Canadian anglos; possibly the second-best Canadianism ever – see also gino/gina [vs. guido/guida], porkchop [the best!], FOB, CBC)

midget, atom, mosquito, bantam, peewee

(also major junior)

nicky nicky nine doors

(vs. drop down ginger)

Nunavummiut

(people from Nunavut, singular and plural)

Ontario scholar

(also grade 13)

panzerotto

perogy

rag the puck

riding

scotch and soda†

shovel, v.

Smithereen

(person from Smithers, B.C.)

Western vs. Denver sandwich

Superspecial addition to the corpus!

After picking away at it off and on for about 18 months, last year I called up the OED here and asked them if they wanted my large corpus of accessibility-related citations, painstakingly retyped from my three linear feet of sources. They took ’em, but that’s the last I heard of it.

Now you too can enjoy the pleasure of backdating closed captioning, Line 21, and the contentious audio description all the way to the go-go ’80s! (Tagged accessible PDF only, whether you like it or not.)