Category: Uncategorized

Here’s a column I posted at globeandmail.com about rumours of a deal between Google and Sun:

“In the late 1990s, senior executives at Microsoft — including then-CEO Bill Gates — were obsessed with what they saw as the biggest threat to the company’s domination of the software industry. That threat was the combination of a Web browser called Netscape with software called Java, developed by Sun Microsystems. Starting with the infamous “Internet tidal wave” memo in 1995, Microsoft spent a great deal of time and energy trying to combat this threat. Why? Because the software giant saw it as having the potential to dethrone its desktop hegemony, by moving what people did with their desktop PCs onto the Internet.

That threat was defused by a combination of market power and savvy marketing from Microsoft, and also — if the truth be told — by some fumbling on the part of Netscape and Sun. Microsoft started giving away its own browser, and began offering “Web-friendly” software. Netscape was acquired by America Online and gradually became irrelevant, and Sun failed to build on the potential of Java for a number of reasons. Among other things, the company was blindsided by competition from open-source server software and the popularity of the Linux operating system. Continue reading “Column: Google and Sun and the Web”

Here’s a column I posted at globeandmail.com about RIM’s stock falling on its latest results:

“Research in Motion co-chief executive officer Jim Balsillie often gives the impression he’s frustrated by the lack of respect the Waterloo-based company gets, and it’s easy to sympathize. After all, RIM just reported blockbuster sales growth, a huge number of new subscribers and new deals with tech industry leaders such as Intel and Nokia. And what did the stock do? It went south. Not only that, but all anyone can talk about is how Microsoft and Nokia and little upstarts like Good Technology and Seven are going to eat Jim’s lunch.

So what does a company like RIM have to do to get the kind of recognition it deserves as a technology leader?

RIM’s problems actually have very little to do with its technology. Almost everyone agrees the BlackBerry is a great device, and that the kind of end-to-end email solution it provides for companies is second to none. The company continues to sign up telecom partners around the world, and it has new devices either on the market or coming soon that will help bridge the gap between the type of handheld PDA that primarily does email, and newer “smart phones” that do voice, email and other things. Better still, the BlackBerry name has tremendous brand recognition in the marketplace, which is hard to duplicate. Continue reading “Column: RIM investors get nervous”

Here’s a column I posted at globeandmail.com about Palm’s deal with Microsoft:

“Chalk another one up for Microsoft. With Monday’s widely-expected announcement involving handheld-maker Palm Inc., the software colossus has added to the long list of victories it has won over lesser mortals — a list that includes Netscape Communications, which also pioneered a market only to see it eventually taken over by Microsoft. For Palm, agreeing to use Windows Pocket PC as the operating system on its devices is like Ford agreeing to put General Motors engines in its trucks, and many Palm devotees clearly see it as dancing with the devil. The company may have saved part of its business (although even that is open to debate) but it has likely lost its soul. The next target in Microsoft’s sights, of course, is Canada’s Research in Motion.

Rumours about a deal between Palm and Microsoft have been flying for the past few months, and according to several reports — including one from a programmer who works at the software giant — the two companies have been working on blending their products for 18 months. In other words, even as a survey last year was showing Palm as the leader in the handheld industry, with 33 per cent of all PDAs shipped in the second quarter of 2004, the company was already in discussions with Microsoft about using its software. Why? Because the PDA company had already seen the writing on the wall, and it spelled out three words: “shrinking market share.” By the second quarter of this year, Palm had just 18 per cent of the market for handhelds. Continue reading “Column: Palm sues for peace”

This is a story I posted on globetechnology.com about “Google-bombing” — in particular, the fact that typing “miserable failure” gets you a link to George Bush’s bio:

“It’s a tribute to the omnipresence of Google that the company’s name is used for a phenomenon that isn’t even specific to Google, but affects almost every search engine company, including Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. It’s called “google-bombing,” and you can get a glimpse of what it involves if you type the phrase “miserable failure” into Google’s search box, or even just the single word “failure.” The first result that comes up is a link to President George Bush’s biography at www.whitehouse.gov.

This is not a political comment by Google, but a result of the way the search engine operates, which involves ranking webpages based on how many other sites link to them using a specific term (a process Google calls PageRank). If a lot of websites use the word “failure” to link to George Bush’s biography, then Google’s automated engine concludes that his bio is the most relevant result for that term.

Continue reading “Google on “Google-bombing””

Here’s a column I posted at globeandmail.com about Google’s Web plans:

“First eBay, and now Google. The on-line auction network dropped a bomb on the tech sector last week by announcing its takeover of voice-over-Internet provider Skype for somewhere between $2.6-billion and $4.1-billion (U.S.), and now there are rumblings that Google is not only about to roll out a wireless service of some kind, but is also putting together its own optical fibre network — something Web commentators have dubbed GoogleNet.

Is Google planning to become a virtual phone company, combining all the “dark” or unused fibre it’s buying with its new Google Talk service? Does it want to roll out Wi-Fi access across the U.S. — or even around the world — to make it the de facto Internet provider for mobile surfers? Or does it just want to control as much of the Internet as it can, so it can monitor all your web traffic and serve up ads wherever you are? Perhaps all of the above.

One thing is certain: Google has big plans, and they don’t just involve search. And not only is its market value closing in on $90-billion — which puts it ahead of Hewlett-Packard and Nokia (not to mention SBC Communications, the largest telco in the U.S.) and just behind Time Warner and wireless telco Verizon — but it also has $4-billion in cash it just raised from a stock offering. That’s more than enough money to finance some interesting investments. Continue reading “Column: What is Google up to?”

Here’s a column I posted at globeandmail.com about number portability:

“It’s a simple enough request, at least from a consumer’s point of view. You’re planning to switch from using Rogers as a cellphone service provider to Bell, or from Bell to Telus, and naturally you would like to keep your phone number, so that all your friends and co-workers will know where to reach you. It would be easier if there was a national telephone directory for cellphone numbers, but there isn’t (that’s a story for another day). So you ask to keep your number. And what is the phone company’s reply? Oh, we can’t do that, sir. Why not, you ask? After all, they do it in lots of other countries, including the U.S. and Europe, don’t they? Maybe so — but we don’t.

After years of watching other jurisdictions get wireless number portability, the federal government stepped forward earlier this year and said that it wanted the broadcast regulator to “move expeditiously” to implement the feature. Last week, the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association released a position paper prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers, grandly titled Implementation of Wireless Number Portability: Setting a New World-Class Standard, in which the wireless companies said that they would be ready to start offering portability just as soon as they could. And when might that be? In 2007. Continue reading “Column: Telcos drag their heels”

Here’s a column I posted at globeandmail.com about the eBay takeover of Skype:

“There’s only one real question that springs to mind in the wake of eBay’s takeover bid for voice-over-Internet provider Skype — which could cost the on-line auction company up to $4-billion (U.S.) — and it is this: Is the dot-com bubble back, or has eBay chief executive officer Meg Whitman lost her mind?

As is typical with such deals, there was plenty of talk on Monday about the “synergies” between the auction provider and the VoIP company started by Swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennstrom — who also co-founded the notorious Kazaa file-sharing network. Ms. Whitman, for example, talked about “leveraging” Skype’s software and services along with eBay’s on-line payment service PayPal to create an “unparalleled e-commerce engine.”

Even if you agree that there are synergies between the two companies, however — and that takes a little thinking outside the box, not to mention a few leaps of faith — $4.1-billion is a lot of cash to pay for benefits that remain purely theoretical. Does eBay have so much money that it can afford to bet $4-billion on a company that has less than $100-million in revenue and no profits? Or is it so desperate for growth, and so afraid of losing ground to competitors such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, that it is willing to mortgage its future on such a deal? Continue reading “Column: eBay tries a Hail Mary”

Here’s a column I posted to globeandmail.com about the speculation that Skype will be bought:

“First it was Yahoo. Then it was Microsoft. Then it was Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate News Corp. Now eBay is supposedly in talks to take over Skype, the voice-over-Internet company started by Swedish entrpeneur Niklas Zennstrom. According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, the on-line auction site is considering paying between $2-billion (U.S.) and $3-billion for the VOIP provider, while a report in the New York Post says the deal is worth $5-billion. Oh yes, and Skype has also reportedly hired an investment bank to look into an initial public offering, which sources say could raise billions.

Is it a coincidence that the name of this voice-over-Internet company rhymes with “hype?” Perhaps. It’s certainly possible that eBay is having takeover talks with Skype, just as it’s possible that Yahoo, Microsoft and News Corp. had talks — or even Google, Amazon or Time Warner, for that matter. Talking doesn’t cost anything. But does it make any sense for eBay to pay $2-billion, $3-billion or $5-billion for the company at this point in its development? Not in any universe that obeys the laws of financial reality.

That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, of course. With eBay and other maturing tech companies looking for sources of growth wherever they can find them, almost any combination you can think of has probably been considered by someone, somewhere. But that doesn’t mean such a deal would make any sense. Continue reading “Column: Is it Skype or hype?”

Here’s a column I posted at globeandmail.com about the Kazaa lawsuit:

“What a hydra-headed monster Shawn Fanning gave birth to. The Napster founder’s company didn’t single-handedly create the digital music revolution — German researchers arguably did that when they came up with the MP3 standard — but the Napster network poured fuel on the flames, and helped to make the terms “peer-to-peer” and “file-swapping” part of the public consciousness.

By the time Napster was crushed by a U.S. court, of course, it had already been usurped by Kazaa and Morpheus, a new breed of file-sharing network. And as the record and movie industries have shifted their focus to those newer threats, those networks too have been overtaken, by BitTorrent and eDonkey and Limewire, and other P2P systems that are still in their infancy. Like nailing Jell-O to a wall or trying to push a string, getting a handle on digital file-sharing is something that’s easier said than done.
The recent ruling against Kazaa by an Australian court is the latest attempt to grapple with the P2P threat, and like a similar decision by a U.S. court earlier this year it tries to walk a fine line between dealing with illegal activity on one hand and criminalizing an entire technology. Continue reading “Column: Kazaa fight continues”

Here’s a column I posted at globeandmail.com about ATI:

“By now, anyone who follows the computer-graphics chip market — which is effectively a triumvirate made up of Toronto’s ATI Technologies, U.S-based Nvidia Corp. and computer-chip giant Intel — knows that it can be a roller-coaster of a business. Since both ATI and Nvidia are constantly coming out with newer leading-edge chips, who is on top can change rapidly. In one quarter, ATI will have the hottest chip (which in turn usually commands the highest profit margins) and Nvidia will be playing catch-up; a couple of quarters later, the positions will often be reversed.

Last year, for example, Nvidia was the one who was late to market with a competing chip, and ATI was getting all the glory. Now, ATI looks like it is behind the eight ball on the high end of the graphics market and its margins are suffering as a result, which led to the company’s latest sales and profit warning. Meanwhile, Intel is hammering away at the lower end of the market — “integratedâ€? chips used in laptops and desktops — which has been one of ATI’s core businesses. And since newer chips come out so frequently, older products have little longevity, which means they have to be discounted heavily just to get them out the door. Continue reading “Column: ATI and the big picture”

(Note: This was originally published on the Globe and Mail’s website)

The Canadarm ice scraper

It’s well known that the shuttle’s robotic arm is used to lift satellites out of the cargo bay, and that on the current mission a new version will be used to check the surface of the orbiter with a special camera. But the arm has also been used to “knock the ice off the shuttle’s crapper,” as one NASA scientist put it, and to smack the occasional balky communications satellite whose solar panels didn’t unfurl properly.

“I think the arm has been used more for things it wasn’t designed for than things it was designed for,” one senior engineer said.

The shuttle twang

At the point that NASA calls “T minus 6.6 seconds,” or launch time minus 6.6 seconds, the shuttle’s massive engines fire. But it only takes about three seconds for them to get to full throttle, so why do they start at 6.6 seconds?

This is because when the engines start up, the force of that thrust actually bends the upper part of the external fuel tank backward by up to one metre, and it takes several seconds for it to swing back to vertical – a process NASA engineers call “the twang.”

Once the twang is done, the shuttle is ready to go.

Bad jokes come in handy

Astronauts know a lot of bad jokes. During the launch countdown, they spend several hours lying flat on their backs, in full flight gear and space suit, unable to move. To pass the time, they often compete to come up with the dirtiest or stupidest joke — and there is plenty of competition, members of the space program say. Because the only people listening to the audio channel at that point are the other crew members and NASA physicians, they don’t have to worry about offending anyone. “You just have to make sure you don’t hit the wrong button and put it on the public channel by mistake,” one astronaut said.

Prone to pain

The amount of time astronauts spend on their backs in the orbiter before launch (up to six hours if there are problems or weather delays) can be hardest on the fighter pilots among the crew. This is because when pilots fly their high-speed manoeuvres, they are subject to severe gravitational forces that put a strain on their vertebrae. “We’ve had fighter pilots actually break their necks while they were flying” because of the gravitational pull, one astronaut who is also a pilot, said. This leads to back problems that are aggravated by lying motionless in a heavy flight suit for several hours.

The ice that wouldn’t melt

You might think nothing could survive on the surface of the shuttle after its re-entry into the atmosphere when it is subjected to temperatures of up to 1,650 degrees Centigrade, but you’d be wrong, a NASA insider said.

On one mission, the liquid waste expelled from the toilet while in orbit created a giant, horn-like icicle that stuck up from the top of the shuttle. As the orbiter cruised to a landing after re-entry, a large frozen chunk of the horn slid off and landed with a thunk on the runway. “I guess we don’t need any more insulation on that part of the shuttle,” one of the NASA engineers said with a laugh.

(Note: This was originally published on the Globe and Mail website)

Can an entire country heave a single, collective sigh of relief? If so, then that’s what the United States did yesterday morning when the space shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 10:39 a.m. and soared skyward, 2½ years after an explosion destroyed its sister ship Columbia as it was returning to Earth, killing its entire crew and bringing the U.S. shuttle program to a screeching halt.

As Discovery’s massive engines fired yesterday, the ground rumbled and shuddered as far as six kilometres from the launch pad, setting off car alarms throughout the space centre’s parking lot. Within seconds, the shuttle was just a glowing ember at the end of a giant column of smoke, and less than 10 minutes later it was coasting through space — at almost 30,000 kilometres an hour — on its way toward a hookup with the International Space Station.

Although it appeared to be a relatively flawless launch, there was some initial concern about a couple of small pieces of debris seen on videos of the liftoff, and NASA’s senior engineers admitted the agency won’t really have closed the door on the 2003 disaster until the Discovery crew lands safely on Aug. 7.

“I ask you all to take note of what you saw here today — the power and the majesty of launch, of course, but also . . . the pluckiness, the grittiness of this team, who pulled this program out of the depths of despair 2½ years ago and made it fly,” NASA administrator Michael Griffin told reporters after the launch. The mood in the launch control room “was giddy,” said NASA flight director Mike Leinbach. “People were slapping each other on the back.” The only thing better than a successful launch, he said, “will be landing in 12 days.” Only then, he said, can NASA “say that we’ve come full circle” from the Columbia disaster.

Canadian Space Agency director Marc Garneau, who has been in space three times, said he also wants to wait until the mission is over before describing it as a success. “I want to see how things go in the next few days,” he said in an interview. “They’ve got to inspect all those tiles, analyze all those camera videos that were used at liftoff to see that nothing damaged the tiles, and so I’ll reserve judgment on that.”

Mr. Garneau is also keen to see how the orbiter boom sensor system works, as well as the sensor or laser camera that scans the tiles. Both pieces were built by Canadian companies.

NASA has spent the past two years investigating the cause of the Columbia explosion — which turned out to be a piece of foam that came off the external fuel tank and damaged the shuttle’s wing — and then redesigning both the spacecraft itself and the culture at the space agency.

More than 100 still and video cameras were trained on the Discovery yesterday. Although two cameras showed two small pieces of debris — one that missed the shuttle, and another that appeared to be about 3.8 centimetres wide — NASA said it would need to study the footage before it could say whether they were important. “We’re seeing areas of the shuttle . . . that we’ve never seen before,” said NASA flight operations manager John Shannon.

“The launch was fantastic. We had perfect weather and a flawless launch,” said Canadian astronaut Dave Williams, who went into space in 1998 and is expected to fly again next year.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who has been in space twice, said that he felt “relieved and very happy and proud” after the launch. “It’s been a long time getting to this point. . . . We are back in the shuttle business.”

Mr. Hadfield also noted, however, that the mission “is by no means over.” Discovery was originally supposed to lift off in May, but problems with ice on a fuel line and a faulty sensor in the external tank caused NASA to reschedule the mission for July 13. That launch was scrubbed a little more than two hours before liftoff, after a prelaunch test revealed another faulty fuel sensor in the shuttle’s external tank.

Today, Discovery’s crew will use the Canadarm and the Canadian-made inspection boom with its 3D laser camera to examine the surface of the shuttle. Although cameras spotted the piece of foam that broke off the Columbia, NASA didn’t have a way to detect how much damage it had done.

“This is a big day for Canada, and a big day for NASA,” Mr. Williams said. “Getting back to space is tremendously important.” He and other Canadian astronauts say a return to space is also a way of paying tribute to the crew of the Columbia”They would want us to continue,” Mr. Williams said.

(Note: This was originally published at the Globe and Mail, where I worked)

Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to walk in space and now the director of NASA’s robotics program, is standing at a podium, ready to talk about the Canadian technology that will help ensure the safety of the next shuttle, Discovery, which is set to launch on Wednesday. But first there is something he wants to do. “These are the seven people we killed 2½ years ago,” he says, pointing at a picture of the crew killed when the Columbia shuttle exploded Feb. 1, 2003, scattering their remains and the pieces of NASA’s shattered reputation over much of Texas.

Is there a catch in Mr. Hadfield’s voice as he says this? Of course not. He is, after all, a former test pilot and Canadian Air Force colonel who has flown on two shuttle missions and worked as ground support for dozens of others, and so the words are spoken in a firm, fighter-pilot kind of voice. At the same time, it’s clear he wants to recognize those who lost their lives that day.

And so he says a few words about the men and women on STS-107: about Kalpana Chawla, who was born in a small town in rural India and was her country’s first astronaut; and about Ila Ramon of Israel, son of a Holocaust survivor and the first Israeli in space. And the rest of the crew: mission commander Rick Husband; flight surgeon Laurel Salton Clark; specialist David Brown, who put himself through college by working as a circus acrobat; Air Force Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Anderson, one of the first black Americans to join the space program; and shuttle pilot Willy McCool.

In an interview later, Mr. Hadfield said the coming flight isn’t meant as a tribute to the crew; it’s a resupply mission for the International Space Station, he said, and a chance to see if the upgrades and changes made to the shuttle since the Columbia explosion work. In other words, the “Return to Flight” mission is about doing just that: getting back to business. “The purpose of a spaceship is to fly in space,” he said. “We’re not in the business of just dreaming about space flight, we’re in the business of space flight.”

At the same time, it is clear that Mr. Hadfield feels a deep sense of responsibility toward the Columbia crew. “It’s true, we did kill them,” he said in his blunt, no-nonsense way. “And I’m just as responsible as anyone else here. It was not a random act of God, it was a sequence of incorrect decision-making. I made my own particular best judgment based on what I knew and I was wrong.” NASA, he said, “decided based on all our engineering judgment and knowledge that [the damage caused by a piece of foam]wouldn’t be a problem. And we were wrong.”

Former astronaut Marc Garneau, the first Canadian aboard a shuttle and now director of the Canadian Space Agency, said he believes some of those involved in the current mission will see a successful launch as a kind of tribute to the crew of the Columbia, a way of showing that NASA has learned from the accident that led to their deaths. “I think once the shuttle is proceeding with its mission, there will probably be some comments made in that regard, that this means they did not die in vain,” he said.

Like the Challenger explosion some 17 years earlier, the Columbia disaster transformed the shuttle program in an instant. Instead of a heartwarming story of man’s ability to rise above his earthbound existence, it became a story about how NASA had become complacent about the risks. The next two years were spent in a frenzy of self-examination, as the agency tried to determine how such an event could have taken so many experts by surprise.

During that time, NASA has struggled to do three things: first, find out why the Columbia exploded when it was assumed to be resistant to damage; second, change its design so that nothing similar can happen again; and third, launch another shuttle to prove that the program can still accomplish its fundamental task of getting astronauts to space and back safely.

“Everybody wants to just get past this and get back to doing what they do for a living, which is send people into space and bring them back,” said Iain Christie of Ottawa-based Neptec, whose company made the camera that will inspect the shuttle. Unlike its sister ship Challenger, which blew up shortly after launch in 1986, the Columbia was destroyed just a few minutes away from its scheduled landing at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

A suitcase-sized piece of foam came off the shuttle’s external fuel tank and hit the wing, leaving a hole — which NASA didn’t think was all that important at the time. But when the shuttle was re-entering the atmosphere, Mr. Hadfield said, “a blowtorch of superheated plasma came screaming in through that hole and melted the wing,” and the shuttle exploded. NASA says it is satisfied it understands how the incident occurred and can prevent it in the future.

However, the shuttle must be sent up again to prove conclusively that it is safe to fly. And even after all the modifications — including more than $1.4-billion (U.S.) spent to add heaters to the fuel tank to prevent a buildup of ice that could break off, and to change the way that the protecting foam is applied to the tank — something unexpected could still put the shuttle in harm’s way.

“There is no magic spaceship that is 100-per-cent safe,” Mr. Hadfield said. “We know this is not a perfect vehicle or a vehicle without risk — you can’t ever say something is without risk. But NASA has decided that we understand the risks and that we are prepared to fly again.” The seven astronauts, however, will strap themselves in knowing that a recent task force report found NASA had failed to fulfill three of the goals set out after the Columbia accident.

Those goals were to: ensure that no ice or foam would come loose from the fuel tank; make sure that if anything did hit the shuttle, it wouldn’t cause any serious damage; and if there were any damage, find a way for the astronauts to repair it before their return. According to Mr. Hadfield, those three goals were virtually impossible to meet completely. “We can’t take it to zero,” he said of the chances that something might damage the shuttle. “We can try to minimize it, but we can’t get rid of it completely. And if we do get some kind of damage, there are some holes that we simply can’t repair once we’re up there.”

If something knocks a hole the size of a stop sign in the shuttle’s wing, as the piece of foam did to the Columbia, “we can’t just get out there and throw a bunch of Bondo on it,” he said. Mr. Hadfield and others in the space program say so much study and analysis has been done over the past 2½ years that this shuttle launch could be one of the safest in the aircraft’s 25-year history. “I am confident that this is the safest launch ever attempted,” he said. “Far safer than a shuttle mission has ever been before.” In fact, he said, “I would be far more comfortable flying on this one than I should have been flying on the first two.”

Even the members of the Stafford-Covey task force (otherwise known as the Independent Return to Flight Task Group, set up by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and staffed by former astronauts) said that the shuttle was safe to launch, Mr. Hadfield said — “safer than the ones they flew on.”

Perhaps the biggest struggle for NASA since the Columbia explosion has been coming to grips with all the things that it suddenly realized it didn’t know. According to Mr. Hadfield, “there have been over 10,000 incidents of debris hitting the shuttle during launch” over the 112 flights leading up to the Columbia mission. Why did a piece of foam cause so much damage that one time?

Paul Cooper, a vice-president at MDA Ltd. of Brampton — which built the Canadarm — says the piece of foam would have had to be exactly the right size and come off at exactly the right time to hit the shuttle’s wing in such a way as to damage it so badly. The odds of that are almost impossible to calculate.

“I watched the footage of that foam over and over,” Mr. Hadfield said, “and I decided that we didn’t need to do anything.” So did most of the other NASA engineers who saw it. Now, NASA says it has come as close as it can get to ruling out a similar accident. NASA administrator Michael Griffin — a physicist and engineer — said the shuttle will still be at risk, but at least the risk is known. “Before, we were flying at risk of foam and ice,” he said, but “we really did not know how serious it was. Now we know, and we hope it will be much less because of the changes we have made. But the risk will not be zero.”

Hey, thanks for dropping by — whoever you are. And all the best of the season to you and yours, from us and ours. “Us” is Becky and Mathew and Caitlin and Meaghan and Zoe Ingram. No longer the Calgary-based Ingrams, we have made the big trek back to the centre of the known universe in Toronto, where we have a lovely little house near the Rouge River, down by the lake — with a lovely view of the nuclear generating station.So since we’re way too disorganized to get actual paper Christmas cards out in time, this is an electronic Season’s greeting from our family to yours.

As we write this, we’ve just had a little bit of wintery weather — a rare event in Toronto this season, which has seen more double digit days than any other December in recent memory. It just doesn’t seem right to be putting up Christmas lights in a T-shirt. But the snow is already going. Maybe Santa will have to bring the ATV instead of the sleigh.

In case you haven’t seen them for awhile, here’s a review of where the kids are — and no, this won’t be one of those letters that talks about how Caitlin just got accepted into Harvard at the age of 12, or how Meaghan won a Rhodes scholarship, or Zoe danced Swan Lake in her Christmas pageant… although I should mention that Zoe recently became a magician’s assistant for a day at a Christmas party, out in the country at a tree farm, where we also went out into the field and cut down our magnificent Christmas tree. Caitlin spends a little too much time on MSN Messenger with her friends for our liking, but other than that is turning into quite the young lady (except for sometimes that is).

Meaghan is also growing up fairly quickly, but while she likes to wear a dress now and then, she also loves to do 8-year-old things like play with snakes like the ones they had at our company Christmas party, where the girls got to ride on a toy train and meet Santa. Zoe, meanwhile, is a bossy 3.5-year-old (no surprise there), and manages to get everyone in the house to do what she wants, even if they would rather not. She has made lots of friends at play school, and even won the award for Most Improved Play-doh Animal, a coveted… oops. Sorry about that.

There’s a few more pictures here if you want to have a look at them (go on — you know you want to). Or you can send an e-mail to Mathew at [email protected] or one to Becky at [email protected] or to Caitlin at [email protected] — you get the picture. Meaghan and Zoe might take a little while to respond, but don’t let that stop you.

(Note: This was originally published at the Globe and Mail)

By now, everyone who has been following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has probably heard the name Osama bin Laden. President George W. Bush has said that he is a prime suspect in the terrorist attacks, just as he was a prime suspect in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and in dozens of other terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies, ships and other assets. Some viewers may even have seen Mr. bin Laden on television, a wiry man with a long beard, dressed in traditional Muslim robes, speaking into a microphone or walking out of a tent in the mountains surrounded by men carrying semi-automatic rifles. But just who is Osama bin Laden?

As far as anyone can tell, Osama (or Ussamah) bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia in 1957 to a prominent businessman from Yemen and his fourth wife. Mr. bin Laden has 22 half-brothers who control various branches of the family empire (the Syrian group, the Lebanese group, the Egyptian group, the Jordanian group, and so on) – a conglomerate that does business throughout the Middle East and is worth about $5-billion (U.S.). Mr. bin Laden’s father Mohammed was a close friend of Saudi King Abdul Aziz, and made his early fortune by being granted an exclusive contract to build all the religious structures in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and until 1967 in the city of Jerusalem as well. From this Mr. bin Laden expanded into road construction, farming, telecommunications, petrochemicals and a range of other businesses.

According to one account, the bin Laden sons went to the same schools as the various children of King Abdul Aziz – as well as other Middle Eastern luminaries such as King Hussein of Jordan, the Kashoggi brothers (whose father was one of the king’s doctors) and actor Omar Sharif. Like his half-brothers, Osama bin Laden worked for awhile for his father’s company, and reportedly had a reputation as a bit of a party boy who liked to stay out late and drink in Jeddah, the political hub of Saudi Arabia.

Those party days came to an end, however, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and a large number of Saudi men went to support their Muslim neighbours. Osama bin Laden used his family’s money and construction equipment to dig tunnels and trenches in the mountains and to create a network of training camps and rebel bases. Like most of the “mujahideen” rebel groups, he was financed and trained in part by the U.S. government, which spent $6-billion or so trying to defeat the Soviets.

After the Soviet troops finally pulled out of Afghanistan, Mr. bin Laden went back to Saudi Arabia and continued building roads and other projects – but he would say later that his commitment to a radical and violent interpretation of Islam, to the idea of a holy war, started in Afghanistan. Even though he and his mujahideen fighters were working with (or for) the U.S. to repel the Soviets, Mr. bin Laden and others saw the U.S. as equally oppressive to Muslim peoples in the Middle East, and as soon as the Russian threat was gone, Mr. bin Laden turned his attention to the U.S. “crusaders,” who he blamed for helping Israel oppress the Muslims in Palestine and for corrupting the royal government of his home country of Saudi Arabia.

Through the 1980s, Mr. bin Laden continued working in construction, on projects that included an 800 kilometre road from Port Sudan to Khartoum in Sudan – a war-torn country controlled by a radical Islamic military regime. The bin Laden group also reportedly built a number of oil pipelines, which are now being used to transport oil from a field in the southern region of the country, a project that is partially owned by Talisman Energy of Calgary. Mr. bin Laden later moved to Sudan, and continued building his business empire, moving into agriculture and even pharmaceutical production.

Sudanese leader Omar el-Bashir has maintained that Mr. bin Laden was an ordinary businessman while he was in Sudan, helping to build roads and schools, but U.S. and international authorities became convinced he was engaged in financing terrorism and training Muslim terrorists. In 1998, in retaliation for attacks on two U.S. embassies, the U.S. destroyed what it said was a chemical weapons factory controlled by Mr. bin Laden – a plant Mr. bin Laden said was a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility.

Although he was known to the U.S. government already, his first real appearance on the international scene was when he granted an interview to British journalist Robert Fisk of The Independent in 1993. At the time, he was building the Port Sudan road, using the same bulldozers he had used to build a network of guerrilla trails in Afghanistan – but already, some of his fellow mujahideen had gone to fight in Bosnia and Mr. bin Laden was suspected of helping to finance that battle between Christian Serbs and Muslim Croats. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed, and the world started to become familiar with the name Osama bin Laden.

The following year, the rest of Mr. bin Laden’s family distanced themselves from their half-brother: Bakr Mohammed bin Laden, the leader of the family group, expressed the family’s “regret, denunciation and condemnation of all acts that Osama bin Laden may have committed” (one of Mr. bin Laden’s uncles denounced him again this week in comments to Associated Press, and sent the family’s condolences to the victims in the U.S.). The U.S., meanwhile, was putting pressure on the Sudanese government to distance itself from Mr. bin Laden and his ilk, and finally the country pressured Mr. bin Laden to leave. He decided to return to Afghanistan, where he helped the radical Islamic group known as the Taliban to take control of the country, and in return was offered the protection of the government.

From most reports, Mr. bin Laden has helped to set up a network of training camps and supply depots in the hills of Afghanistan, and moves from camp to camp at random to avoid potential attacks. He has a heavily fortified family compound in Kandahar, but rarely spends much time there – preferring to stay in a network of caves and tents in the hills, guarded by a group of devoted followers including his 16-year-old son Mohammed. He reportedly has satellite phones in the caves, which he uses to keep in touch with various radical Muslim groups, as well as other electronic equipment including fax machines and computers that are powered by electric generators. Mr. bin Laden’s group is known in Arabic as al-Qaeda, or “the base.”

The United States has tried to pressure the Taliban to hand over Mr. bin Laden, but they have refused, denying that he is involved with any terrorism. Several sources have reported that two years ago, his daughter (he has 20 children from four marriages) married Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Taliban – and at the same time, Mr. bin Laden married the daughter of a highly-ranked leader in the Taliban government, the two marriages further cementing his ties with the ruling party in Afghanistan. Some foreign security experts believe that such ties make it unlikely that the Taliban will hand over Mr. bin Laden, no matter how much the U.S. threatens.

In a series of interviews he has given, including one with ABC News reporter John Miller in 1998, as well as in public statements – such as the death sentence or “fatwah” he issued in 1998 against the U.S. – Osama bin Laden has made it clear that he believes that virtually any action taken against any American, civilian or military, is justified by his holy war. He said “We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets, and this is what the fatwah says . . . . The fatwah is general (comprehensive) and it includes all those who participate in, or help the Jewish occupiers in killing Muslims.”

In the 1998 fatwah, Mr. bin Laden says that: “We – with God’s help – call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. We also call on Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan’s U.S. troops and the devil’s supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson. . . . The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.”

Asked by an interviewer if he is a terrorist, Mr. bin Laden says “Terrorism can be commendable and it can be reprehensible . . . terrorizing oppressors and criminals and thieves and robbers is necessary for the safety of people and for the protection of their property. There is no doubt in this. Every state and every civilization and culture has to resort to terrorism under certain circumstances for the purpose of abolishing tyranny and corruption.” The terrorism his group practices “is of the commendable kind for it is directed at the tyrants and the aggressors and the enemies of Allah . . . terrorizing those and punishing them are necessary measures.”