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Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously said the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.

We should add religion has no place in our classrooms.

Conservative John Tory is stubbornly holding on to his platform of funding faith schools in Ontario as the election date looms closer and history will record he lost because of this single issue.

What a waste. John Tory is a good man riding the wrong horse and it has overcast everthing about him.

Putting $500 million of money we don’t have into a hole will not only divide the province but weaken our public school system.

The facts:

We can’t afford the dual system we have now. Catholic schools should never have been funded by then Premier Bill Davis whose actions cost the Tories their dynasty at Queen’s Park.

John Tory will repeat that rejection by the electorate with his lame scheme for faith funding.

We have no idea how much this will really cost.

We have no idea what constitutes a religion. Do the Moonies have a shot at publicly funded education? The Scientologists? The Universal Church where smoke pot is a religious rite (as opposed to right?)

We have no idea how many kids in the public system will migrate to faith schools if this comes about, weakening the system.

WE have no idea how many kids now in faith schools will come in?

Tory says his plan will not see new faith school built with public funds. What we’re doing is opening the door for a Supreme Court challenge. In other words, they’re to be equally funded but not equal? Doesn’t fly. It’s like being a little bit pregnant.

Faith and religion are best taught at home, by parent and in churches, mosques or synagogues. Not in schools.

One system. One standard. One wallet.

Sorry John. You had a shot and you used it to blow your own legs off.

Hmm. There’s a buzz around town.

Could it be Rogers is announcing a consumer friendly data plan next week? One which will allow everyday people who don’t have a corporate account to access data - e-mail and web sites - from their mobile smart phones.

Could it coincide with the roll out of a Blackberryesque device aimed at consumers.

Or will it be more of the gouge and burn?

Sometime it’s good to have connections.

When my laptop froze and turned turtle while trying to roll back from Vista to XP I was furious as the previous posting attests.

Luckily because of what I do for a living I know a few people who can help. A quick email to HP’s media folks and the problem was fixed though it took a high level intervention and some serious wrestling with software.

I’m sure HP would have fixed it up anyway eventually. I just used a backdoor to get it done.

However, It makes you appreciate how frustrated the average consumer must get with all this. 

Well, what a difference a day makes.

Yesterday I started installing XP to roll back from Vista.

Today I don’t have a laptop. Apparently, you can’t get there from here.

That’s not what the lady at HP support told me when she gave me the number to call. Not what the lady at the end of the sales desk told me when I told her what I wanted to do.

And not what another guy at HP support told me when I said I couldn’t get XP set up to start as I tried to roll back from Vista.

Vista, I said clearly, is preventing me from starting XP.

Turn the machine off  and boot from disk he said. Problem solved - until half way through when Vista does indeed refuse access to install the rest of the files. So now I have a hung XP install  and a blue screen of death.

Frustrated? You don;t know the half of it.

Next stop the local computer guy to reformat the hard drive - assuming the disks I was actually sent are full XP SP2 versions. I’m checking on that today.

Nothing, it seems is simple.

Okay, I’ve thrown in the towel with Microsoft’s Vista.

It was preinstalled on an HP laptop I got last May and I’ve struggled with it since then. It is extremely annoying, obstinate, controlling and obtuse. Come to think of it a lot like some people I know.

During a marathon call to HP support a few days ago after I suddenly lost both wireless and wired access tothe Internet - I could get local access to my network but no Web access - the HP person let it slip there was a number I could call to get XP disks sent to me.

Wow. So I called. It cost me $7 plus $11 shipping but the next day a package with XP arrived. Woooo hooo.

So, now I just have to find some time to burn all my files to CD and then wipe the drive and install XP. I think I will be a happy camper again. 

A fellow freelancer sent out this link to a fascinating review of how media companies can grab a toe hold in a fast changing environment which threatens to render them obsolete.

In essence it addresses how Traditional Old Media (TOM) can coexist and profit in  world dominated by New Media.

Now this is a subject near and dear to me since my clients are TOM and yet 80% of what I write about it technology related.

You can read the entire report here  and if you’re at all interested in journalism and the future of media I urge you to take the time.

 It’s some 50 pages long but what struck me were some of the concepts such as “everything is iterative.” In otherword, everything is beta. In new media you don;t have to have a finished product, you have an idea which has been fleshed out and you throw it out there to see what works and doesn’t, making improvements on the fly. This is alien to newspapers and magazines since the current thinking is that people like a comfort zone where things don’t change much.

 The report also promotes, among other things, the creation of an “innovations team” to constantly develop new products,partnership and applications withing a media organizations and says empowering middle management  is the key to unlocking the future.

Interesting stuff but in the top down driven world of Quebecor Media and others like them, it’s hard to see that kind of wholesale change coming anytime soon.

Still, as someonelse noted in another study this week, blogging hasn’t replaced journalism, it’s mostly become a second wave of discussion around what’s being reported by mainstream media. And that means there’s still an important role for journalists.

I just wish some of those media conglomerates realized the value their staff and freelancers bring to their business in that way. 

Wow. It’s Friday Sept. 8. I haven’t posted in two weeks. The howls are deafening.

 Okay, maybe not.

Still, if you’re gonna blog, ya gotta be consistent, so apologies all around.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Megs is in Italy for the next four months and the party was pretty wild. Then it was the long weekend and I hit the road for New York City for a couple of days to listen and see what Hewlett-Packard has in store with some new products.

First off, I really like the long awaited Home Server. They rolled this out at the Consumer Electronics Show and I was intrigued then as much as I am now.

The idea is that this littl ebox sits on your network like a server and acts as a storage facility and as an intelliengent source to back up your folders and run programs for the benefit of the house. This box opens up things like central storage, security camera recording, a way to control HVAC and other house function in an always-on, always accessible way.

The idea is you can access your files anywhere inthe world you have Internet access….something I like because I’m often on the road and need to reference a file from my hard drive.  I can do this now with Net Magic, which cost me all of $20 but Home Server takes it to the next level.

 For $599 with about 500 Gb of storage I think it’s the hottest thing yet but then I’m a geek.

Also launching was Blackbird 002, HP’s take on Calgary’s  gamer machine builder Voodoo - a company they acquired this time last year.

My take? Very cool but at $7,000 out of my price range. However, from a design POV I hope to see some of the features it incorporates in the other machines HP makes - liquid cooled CPU and Video Card, easyin and out card access, LED for ports at the back so you can SEE what you’re unplugging and plugging in as you crawl under the desk and twin cooling fans with F1 like air paths through the chassis for maximum effect.

And finally, the big news at the event was the launch of a group of handhelds, the most interesting of which squarely take on the Blackberry which so far has been a category killer. Coupled with HP’s software offerings, these are pretty cool devices and I’m going to be really interested to see Motorola and Palm’s reaction.

On a downer note however, most of us will never see the coolest handhelds because everyone in Canada is being held hostage by the big guns, Rogers, Telus and Bell, who don;t have consumer friendly pricing for their data plans.