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I’d like to forget that the previous round happened, since I went 0-4 in my predictions. Where did I go wrong? Well, the media will probably blame 20 year-old phenom Carey Price, but the Habs‘ high-flying offence that scored with the greatest of ease during the regular season, began to falter in the Boston series and went completely M.I.A. in the Philly series. The Rangers, and especially Colorado became infirmaries. The Sharks failed to live up to expectations again; I doubt Ron Wilson will be there come the fall.

So now it’s down to four teams. It’s the playoffs and anything can (and will) happen, but I’ll go with the following predictions, in bold, as per my usual:

Eastern Conference Finals
Pittsburgh vs Philadelphia

Western Conference Finals
Detroit vs Dallas

Now is the time when I start to employ the “Captain Canuck” factor. Since 1893, all of the teams who have won the Stanley Cup had a Canadian team captain except for one team; the 1999 Stanley Cup Champion Dallas Stars’ captain, Derian Hatcher, was an American. Detroit is the only team remaining whose captain is not a Canadian. We’ll see if the “Captain Canuck” factor continues to hold up.

Although the NHL playoffs don’t start up again until this Thursday, there’s still plenty of other hockey to watch. The Kitchener Rangers are bound for the Memorial Cup which is being hosted here in Kitchener, ironically. And Team Canada looks strong in this year’s IIHF World Championship.

Dr. Stephen Hawking recently theorized about the possibility of life in places other than Earth. And while lately it seems like Dr. Hawking is in the news for pop-science opinions rather more often than for actual scientific research, he brings up a few good ideas. For fun, I’d like to add a couple more. Life, in places other than our lil’ blue planet, possibly…

• …is less intelligent/evolved than us and haven’t invented any modes of transportation, communication and other technology that we’re using in space exploration. Perhaps they’re still in a prehistoric or even single-celled stage.
• …has already nuked itself.
• …is vastly intelligent and want nothing to do with our meager selves and our ass-backwards planet.
• …have a dominant species (like Earth’s humans) that share a lot of traits with Dan O’Bannon’s Geiger-inspired aliens and we’re better off not discovering them…or being discovered by them.

The universe, and what lies beyond, might be infinite - there must be something somewhere.

Since I was a small boy, I’ve daydreamed. My parents/teachers/coaches constantly scold me for drifting off in thought, neglecting the task at hand, and I haven’t grown out of it.Daydream Revelation posts are my random thoughts about anything and everything that form without warning. Some of them are new. Some of them have existed since I was a child. Some have been refined over the years, while others have not. Either way, I’m documenting them on my blog. Enjoy, or don’t.

Now that the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs are in the books, let’s see how accurate my predictions were. I correctly chose Montreal, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Colorado, Detroit and San Jose to win their first round matchups. Dallas and the Rangers were surprises, resulting in me going 6-2. Allow me to present my predictions for the second round in bold.

East
Montreal vs Philadelphia
Pittsburgh vs New York Rangers

West
Detroit vs Colorado
San Jose vs Dallas

The first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs is almost complete, with only a handful of series lingering (go Flames!). At this point, the sports writers and commentators whip out what I call “the historical ass chomper” statistic - inevitably history should come back to bite a given team in the ass.

Take, for example, this article on TSN’s website and this one from the CBC which set the stage for Game 7 of the Habs-Bruins series.

The CBC article notes that:

In over 80 years of existence, the Bruins have never come back from 2-0 and 3-1 deficits, while Montreal as a franchise has never seen a 3-1 lead fall out of its grasp.

The Canadian Press on TSN.ca reports a plethora of those “historical ass chomper” stats such as:

• NHL teams have trailed 3-1 in a best-of-seven series 224 times and have come back to win the series 20 times, or nine per cent of the time.
• Since the NHL introduced the best-of-seven format in 1939, the home team has won 76 of the 120 playoff series that have gone to seven games, or 63%.
• Boston in 0-3 in Game 7s played away from home.
• Montreal is 10-8 all-time in Game 7s, while Boston is 9-7.

Mathemtically, Montreal should take the series tonight. My opinion is that this makes the setup of the game more exciting. If your team’s on the benficial side of the stat, you as a fan feel confident in your team’s ability to lock up the series. On the other hand, you appropriate some sort of feisty underdog mentality in the case where history’s teeth are mere seconds away from taking a chunk out of your team’s collective gluteus maximus. But like most thing’s in life, nothing is a sure bet. This stat may be a resonable predictor; stats are supposed to be because that’s the whole reason for statistical analysis - duh! But stats don’t govern willpower, team chemistry, morale, mitochondrial performance in athlete’s cells and the many other factors that influence the outcome of a game. However, stats are easier to digest in the pre-game show. Now excuse me while I seek cover from Montreal fans who’d prefer that I shut up at this point in time.

It seems like 10 “hot” startups hit the Web every week now. With so many, it’s hard to get excited about one (or more). Yet there is a new site about to launch, which I don’t know that it would classify as a startup per se, that I’m excited for. StackOverflow.com, a brainchild of Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky, is in the works. According to Joel, StackOverflow.com will be:

…a programming Q&A site that’s free. Free to ask questions, free to answer questions, free to read, free to index, built with plain old HTML, no fake rot13 text on the home page, no scammy google-cloaking tactics, no salespeople, no JavaScript windows dropping down in front of the answer asking for $12.95 to go away. You can register if you want to collect karma and win valuable flair that will appear next to your name, but otherwise, it’s just free.

I enjoy the written word of these two guys; I subscribe to their blogs’ feeds and I even purchased a copy of Joel on Software a couple of years ago. A developer community site like this could prove to be invaluable. Most developer-oriented sites are, for some lame reason, dreadful to read. Most of my information gathering consists of referencing MSDN and Google and Krugle code searches. I trust that Jeff and Joel will put together something, anything, that’s better than what’s available right now.

It all starts tonight. The first day of the NHL playoffs signals the beginning of one of my favourite times in any given year. Here’s the first round matchups and my predictions are in bold.

East
Montreal vs Boston
Washington vs Philadelphia
Pittsburgh vs Ottawa
New Jersey vs New York Rangers

West
Minnesota vs Colorado
Detroit vs Nashville
San Jose vs Calgary (still cheering for the Flames)
Anaheim vs Dallas

When it comes to pop culture, I’m admittedly not an avid follower. I could care less about the lives of Hollywood personalities or pop music divas and giants. However, when it comes to Web culture and Internet memes, I eat it up. Being April Fool’s Day, announcements of phony products and odd couple corporate mergers have become commonplace. I used to enjoy this day, but this year, I’m left feeling somewhat jaded. None of these jokes are all that entertaining, since it’s all been done before.

I think the failure of fake written announcements common today could be likened to the an old-time radio program trying to lure our attention away from our TVs, iPods and computers. While it involves a fair amount of creativity, the written word has a hard time “selling” the hoax. For example, on this blog o’ mine, I could’ve easily posted something touting that I’m giving up the software game, throwing my Computer Science degree away (or at the very least, putting it into storage) to go back to university to finish off my Pharmacy degree like my parents wanted me to. I would cite the fact that none of my family members understand what I do for a living, but everybody has some inkling as to what the people in white lab coats behind the counter at pharmacies do, as my primary reason for doing so. And if you believe that, I’ve got a copy of Duke Nukem Forever to sell you.

Here are a few examples of this year’s hoaxes that bored me:

• Sun, after open-sourcing Java and Solaris, want the code back.
• Chris Pirillo plans dumps Mac OS X in favour of Windows XP
• Consumerist becomes the Conglomerist and posts a lot of things that are the antithesis of what the site stands for
• More of Google’s usual April Fool’s fake products and product features
• xkcd turns from a smart Web comic about stick figures pondering programming, sex, physics and the human condition into a dumbed-down fully illustrated Web comic about…something or other

----------- sarcasm snip -----------

Hardy-har-har.

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Truth be told, there were a couple that I did like:

• Clicking on any of the featured videos YouTube’s homepage gets you the video for Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” instead of the purported video. Bonus points for exploiting the Rickrolling meme.
• ThinkGeek has posted fake products on past April Fool’s days, but this years’ Super Pii Pii Brothers for the Nintendo Wii is pretty frickin’ funny.

Were there any other good finds today?

As an update to my last rant about software patents sucking and how it related to my former employer, Desire2Learn, it looks like idio-cracy might finally be waning a tad. In a total 180-degree turn the U.S. Patent Office has determined that Blackboard never should’ve received patents for (in my opinion) basic Website functionality common to many a site. I’m curious to know how this will end and remain hopeful that common sense will previal.

The CBC will become first of the major North American television networks to release content sans DRM. Indeed, you read that correctly.

The CBC will kick things off by releasing episodes of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister the day after they air on TV. What I really admire about this plan is that the content will contain no DRM whatsoever (a la iTunes Music Store), so people are free to watch on whatever computer or device they wish. The icing on the cake is the fact that shows will be distributed via BitTorrent, which gives distribution power to the people. I would love it if they followed suit with some of their other shows like Air Farce, The Hour, The Mercer Report, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Little Mosque on the Prairie or even jPod.

Actually, if we examine the CBC’s BitTorrent distrubution idea a little bit further, this is highlighting all of the right reasons for net neutrality. Putting this under a microscope yields:

• BitTorrent is a highly efficient means to distribute digital data like software, music, video, photos, documents, etc.
• BitTorrent, much to the chagrin of (mainly) the RIAA and MPAA, is a way to distribute copyrighted material.
• It should be noted that BitTorrent is also used to distribute a lot of un-copyrighted material in an efficient and legal manner.
• Due to the popularity of BitTorrent, pressure from copyright holders, and the bandwidth it consumes, major ISPs (in Canada’s case, that includes Rogers and Bell) shape network traffic such that BitTorrent traffic comes in like a trickle while other traffic (Web, email, instant messaging, etc) is unhindered.
• The CBC is funded by Canadian tax payers.

Would the Canadian ISPs dare to continue to cripple BitTorrent traffic, even if the packets of said traffic belong to a video made available by a publicly funded television network? Michael Geist points out that the CBC’s Mandate clearly states that their programming:

…be made available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose…

In terms of the distribution of “large” digital content like high-quality video on the Internet, nothing currently comes close the appropriateness and efficiency of BitTorrent. Hopefully this experiement is successful and ISPs have no choice but to respond by providing equal accessibility to all information available on the Internet.

Even though earlier this year I complained about the CBC showing too many Leafs games, they’re still not off the hook. Although I am viewing them in a much more favourable light.

Geek Aside:
To get around some of the traffic shaping, I suggest using non-standard ports with your chosen BitTorrent client (I use µTorrent for Windows and Deluge for Linux) and changing the associated port forwarding on your NAT router, if you have one (and you should). For fun, I often change which port I use on a weekly basis. Also, some clients are better at obscuring BitTorrent packets from traffic-shaping hardware/software than others - Deluge’s default settings rule for this.

Popular music annoys me. It all sounds so very drab and uninteresting, and bores the hell out of me. I’ve repeated this ad nauseum to poor Dena. Pop rock. Pop rap. Pop country. Pop pop. It’s all poop to me.

I never understood why the music that the majority of people like bothers me like it does, until I came across this video from comedian Rob Paravonian.

Almost everything in the grand ol’ banks of human knowledge was based on previous ideas, and music is no exception. However, sometimes inspiration results in duplication. On the Dean Blundell Show severals months ago, they frequently poked fun at Sum 41’s “Pieces” sounding eerily similar to Coldplay’s “The Scientist”, often playing the two songs simultaneously to illustrate the point. They then moved onto that crappy “Girlfriend” song courtesy of Avril Lavine sounding an awful lot like “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” by the Rubinoos. Recently, while listening to the Dean Blundell Show, I heard the latest single from Linkin Park called “Shadow of the Day”. I’m not sure if anybody else has noticed this, but it totally reminds me of a slightly sped-up rendition of U2’s “With or Without You”. With the exception of U2, I normally wouldn’t listen to any of these bands if they weren’t played during the Dean Blundell Show. I like to prepare for work every day listening to their jokes about vaginas, farts and the combination thereof, so I’m willing to suffer through horribly boring music.

Paravonian is definitely on to something. I think the reason why I find most popular music so boring is because I’ve heard the same song too many times, regardless of whether it apes Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major” or not. While I’m a fan of many bands who play the verse-chorus-verse variety of music that undoubtedly owes something to “Canon in D Major”, I now realise why bands like Sonic Youth, Boards of Canada, Butthole Surfers, Mogwai, Holy Fuck, Do Make Say Think and My Bloody Valentine are often part of my daily playlist.

My former employer, Desire2Learn, has lost the patent suit that Blackboard filed against them. Here’s a little bit of background on the patent suit, and this is the latest development in the case.

While the suit was ongoing, D2L employees (myself included) were forbidden to discuss the suit with anybody outside of the company. Even talking about it in the office was discouraged, and we were told to carry on with “business as usual”. Now that I no longer work there, I can give my opinion.

Said opinion is this: software patents suck. Badly. And very much so.

A hundred years ago, patents made some sense. The goal of patents was to rouse the inventive spirit so that inventers could have exclusive rights to their newly realized concoctions and contraptions like Velcro, quartz clocks or incandescent light bulbs. The thing about inventions such as the ones I just mentioned is that they are very specific and concrete. For example, Velcro consists of a series of plastic hooks and small fuzzy plastic loops and when applied to each other, adheres. Its form defines itself.

Software is drastically different, so let’s first establish what it actually is. By definition, software is a collection of instructions that computers will execute to perform a given task or action. This software can be anything from a web browser and spreadsheet application, to a video game or your car’s diagnostic utilities. Yet if we take a step back for a moment, it’s safe to say that process of developing software truly involves translating human ideas and concepts into a manner that a computer will understand with the intention of being used, in turn, by humans. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - programming is hard The point I’m trying to make, though, is that primary “inventions” in software are not anything concrete. Instead, software contraptions and concoctions are actually ideas and concepts. Can you patent a thought or concept? According to software patents, sadly, it is.

The suit against Desire2Learn basically came down to that sort of battle over concepts and ideas, and so Blackboard paraded their crazy patents that they miraculously invented in a court down in Lufkin, Texas that is known for processing patent suits quickly and favouring plaintiffs. Would you like to know a sample of Blackboard’s life-altering inventions? Please have a seat because you will surely be blown away by this, and I don’t wish to be held responsible for any bruises or concussions sustained as a result of learning this astounding information. Blackboard allegedly invented the super fantastic amazing concept of…a single person having multiple roles in a Learning Environment System, such that a person could have privileges of a Teacher’s Assistant in one course and those of a student in another course. Wow! A user having multiple roles - what a concept!

[—- sarcasm snip —-]
I don’t think anybody has ever come up with an idea such as that, except for maybe early multiuser operating systems like UNIX, Microsoft’s Active Directory, Web-based forum software, majority of Web-based Content Management Systems, Software Configuration Management systems, IT Software Management systems, Customer Relationship Management applications, Facebook groups, Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing games and thousands of other software applications. Blackboard truly are blazing trails by using a well-entrenched concept and extending it to the context of an LMS. Bravo!
[—- sarcasm snip —-]

Much of the technology industry, and I do mean that in the broadest sense (computer/networking hardware and software, the Internet, gaming consoles, embedded systems in cars/medical equipment/microwave ovens/etc), would not be where it is today without the ability to build and improve upon existing ideas in quick and efficient ways. Software patents stifle innovation, requiring developers and architects to constantly to engineer solutions that don’t step on the toes of lame patents, which are of course, just concepts and ideas. Something to keep in mind is that Blackboard is the market leader in the field of Learning Management System and Desire2Learn is their primary (and much smaller) competitor. Blackboard spent the last couple of years purchasing competitors and filing patents, while Desire2Learn chipped away at their market share. Software patents introduce a poisonous mentality into our profession; don’t innovate, litigate.

Barry alerted me to this blog post, in which the author pines for RIM to purchase LinkedIn.

Social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace have grown in popularity over the past couple of years. They provide a means for people to maintain contact and interact with those that they chose to as well as meet new people with common interests.

It’s fair to say that most of RIM’s Blackberry users are in the business sector, so LinkedIn makes more sense than Facebook or MySpace. Probably the best application of using LinkedIn would be as an external contact manager. Being able to call or email from a centrally managed contact list, like LinkedIn, could prove to be handy. Plaxo would be a candidate to partner with in these regards, too.

The real gotcha would likely come from IT departments who have implemented the Blackberry Enterprise Server to centrally manage and support their Blackberry users via integration with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino or Novell GroupWise. External contacts coming in from LinkedIn could possibly give CIOs and CTOs many a sleepless night.

A deal with a social networking site like LinkedIn might make sense for RIM’s much smaller consumer market to up the “cool” factor of the Blackberry service with devices like the Curve and Pearl.