History of Nova Scotia, 2000 November 16-30

History of Nova Scotia
with special attention given to
Communications and Transportation

Chapter 50
2000 November 16-30

Go To: Index with links to the other chapters

2000 November 16

Salmon River Bridge Construction Underway
On Abutments Built in 1931, 69 Years Ago

Main Suspension Cables Completed

Members of the Guysborough Trails Association were estatic as the group's latest project reached an important milestone. The suspension bridge crossing over the Salmon River is nearly complete and one of the major components, the cables, was hooked up Thursday morning, November 16th.

Salmon River Bridge, Guysborough Railway

Salmon River Bridge, Guysborough Railway

(Bridge photo taken after completion.)
The project is being constructed by Galeb Construction and its sub-contractors. They started work on the bridge in October. Eldon Halloran, chairman of the association, says it was a later start than they originally planned. He explains there were a lot of technical pieces and specialized equipment which had to be manufactured and brought in.

"The weather hasn't been too helpful either," he admits. The project is worth approximately $150,000 and Halloran says it's enormous. "When people see it, it sinks in," he explains, adding this isn't a flimsy cable bridge with a few planks strung across the water. "It's an engineer-approved plan. Sable Offshore provided us with the plans through their sub-contractors. It's valued around $20,000. It gave us a real lever to seek funding."

Halloran says the bridge removes one of the main bottlenecks in the trail. "This will open it up for a lot of people to use," he says. "It's part of the whole package."

The bridge will be visable to people from the Giant's Lake Road. Work will continue on the project for the next several weeks. Halloran says the decking still has to be installed, as do the rails. He adds a final inspection will also be completed before the bridge is open to the public. "We hope to have it open to the public by mid-December,"he says. "We'll have an official opening in the spring with all of our funding partners."

One piece of unfinished business with the bridge is christening it with a name. Halloran says they may hold a contest for that job. The bridge also has some historical significance. It rises above the river using the abutments which were built to hold a railway bridge. The original stamp on the base reads 1931, but this is the first bridge to fill the gap. With it in place the trail is now completed from Forest Hill in Country Harbour to Guysborough, providing hikers, bikers and ATV and snowmobile users with approximetly 35 kilometres of completed trail. This winter will be the first time people will be able to cross that river.

[The Guysborough Journal, 22 November 2000]
Guysborough Trails Association website
http://www.trailtc.ns.ca/Guysborough.htm

Pedestrian Cable Suspension Bridge over Salmon River

Canada Gazette, 24 June 2000

Guysborough County Trails Association hereby gives notice that an application has been made to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans under the Navigable Waters Protection Act for approval of the plans and site of the work described herein. Under section 9 of the said Act, the Guysborough County Trails Association has deposited with the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and in the office of the District Registrar of the Land Registry District of Guysborough, at Guysborough, Nova Scotia, under deposit number 582 (Plan-file No. 227), a description of the site and plans of a pedestrian cable suspension bridge over Salmon River, at Ogden, Nova Scotia, on Crown land of the Province of Nova Scotia (Old Guysborough Railway) near McAllister farm on the Guysborough Nature Trail, which is part of the TransCanada Trail.

Written objections based on the effect of the work on marine navigation should be directed, not later than one month from the date of publication of this notice, to the Regional Director, Canadian Coast Guard, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Foot of Parker Street, P.O. Box 1000, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia B2Y 3Z8.

Source:
Canada Gazette, Part I, Volume 134, Number 26, 24 June 2000
http://canada.gc.ca/gazette/part1/ascII/g1-13426_e.txt
http://canada.gc.ca/gazette/part1/pdf/g1-13426.pdf

2000 November 17

Thanks to to Bill and Melinda Gates

MR. SPEAKER: The honourable Minister of Health.

Nova Scotia Legislature
RESOLUTION NO. 3356

HON. JAMES MUIR: Mr. Speaker, I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas computers are now as important to the function of public libraries as books; and

Whereas the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $855,000 worth of computer equipment to public libraries in Nova Scotia to provide low-income earners access to computer resources, as well as the Internet; and

Whereas this grant has allowed the provincial library to establish regional computer centres in Yarmouth, Halifax, Sydney and Truro;

Therefore be it resolved that all members of this House express their gratitude to Bill and Melinda Gates for their generosity, and wish them all the best in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I would ask for waiver of notice.

MR. SPEAKER: There has been a request for waiver.

Is it agreed?

It is agreed.

Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

Source:
Nova Scotia Hansard, page 8943, 17 November 2000
http://www.gov.ns.ca/legi/hansard/han58-1/h00nov17.htm#[Page 8943]

2000 November 17

Public Transit in Lunenburg County

A move is afoot in Lunenburg County to provide a public transportation system which, initially, will serve residents of the communities of Mahone Bay, Bridgewater, Lunenburg and Riverport. A steering committee is in place to promote the idea and a study undertaken by students from Saint Mary's University lends support to the need for transit service.
[The Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 17 November 2000]

2000 November 17

Canadian Internet Use Keeps Climbing

Nearly half of all Canadian homes are now hooked up to the Internet, more than in either the United States or leading European countries, according to a new study.

As children race home to answer their e-mail and adults check their stock portfolios or the latest news, more than 48 per cent of Canadian households now have Internet access, up from 43 per cent last year, according to a study by consulting and accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. This compares with 43 per cent of homes in the United States, 38 per cent in Australia, and 26 per cent of households in Britain, France and Germany combined.

Most of the growth in Canadian home Internet use this year has been due to a rapid expansion in Quebec. About 42 per cent of households in that province are now wired to the Web, up from only 29 per cent last year, as more and more French-language Web sites are created and Montreal continues its rise as a hotbed for high-tech indstry.

In addition to the increase in French-language sites, "there is more emphasis by the [Quebec] government in making its residents Internet-literate," said Peter Lyman, who heads PricewaterhouseCoopers' Information Communications and Entertainment/Media practice in Canada.

But for the rest of Canada, the rate at which Internet use has grown has slowed. Fifty per cent of Canadian homes outside of Quebec now have Internet access, up from 48 per cent last year.

Among Canadian users, high-speed Internet connections are also catching on, rising to 22 per cent of Internet-using households from 18 per cent last year. "Clearly, hish-speed connections are on the rise. However, today's high-speed market is still largely an early adopter market," Mr. Lyman noted.

The Internet is becoming more of a substitute for reading or watching television as a source of evening entertainment. Canadians are spending about five hours a week on-line, compared to slightly less than four hours last year. On the other hand, Americans are spending less time on-line, down to four hours a week from five hours last year. This decline in the United States "may be a sign of the medium's maturity and that people are becoming more economical and efficient in their use of the Internet," the study said.

In Canada, the prime reason for accessing the Internet is to send and receive e-mail messages, the survey found. Quebeckers indicated they were more sociable than most Canadians on-line, with 48 per cent citing e-mail as their main reason to log on as opposed to 37 per cent of users in the rest of Canada.

Otherwise, the Web appears to increasingly be used as a reference source, with 36 per cent of Canadians saying that obtaining information and reference material was their prime reason for accessing the Internet at home, the study said. Much of this research is devoted to obtaining government documents on-line. The survey also found that 44 per cent of home Internet users in Canada access government services, up from 32 per cent last year.

[The Globe and Mail, 17 November 2000]

Survey Shows Canada Leads the World
in Internet Use

PricewaterhouseCoopers study done
to further the understanding
of Internet applications on a household level
and to identify trends in take up rates

Canada has become a world leader in Internet use, the second annual survey by management consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests. The survey found that almost half of Canadian households surveyed were online — 48.2 per cent — compared with 43 per cent in the United States, 38 per cent in Australia, and 26 per cent in "Europe" — that is, Britain, France and Germany combined. Canadians also led in the average hours of Internet use per week with 5.1 hours, up from 3.9 last year. The net average hours of Internet use per week in Europe was 3.2, while Australia was 3.6. The United States saw the average hours per week on the Internet decline from 5.3 in 1999 to 4.2 this year. This decline of nearly one hour of Internet use per week in the U.S. "may be a sign of the medium's maturity and that people are becoming more economical and efficient in their use of the Internet," PricewaterhouseCoopers said Thursday, November 16th, in a release. The survey in Canada consisted of 802 interviews with"a sample representation" of the population, PricewaterhouseCoopers said, and it is considered to be accurate within 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
[The Halifax Daily News, 19 November 2000]

Canadians Lead the World in Internet Use,
Subscription to High-Speed Access Grows

16 November 2000

TORONTO, November 16, 2000 — The PricewaterhouseCoopers Canadian Consumer Technology Study 2000, released today, shows that Canada is a world leader when it comes to per household Internet access. The annual study, designed to investigate the extent and many uses of the Internet in homes around the world, found that almost half of the Canadian population is now on-line (48.2%), compared to 43% in the U.S., 38% in Australia, and 26% in Europe (U.K., France, and Germany).

Canadians also lead in the average hours of Internet use per week with 5.1 hours/week, up from 3.9 hours/week last year. The net average hours of Internet use per week in Europe was 3.2 hours/week, while Australia was 3.6 hours/week. The U.S. saw the average hours per week on the Internet decline from 5.3 hours/week in 1999 to 4.2 hours/week this year. This hour-long decline in Internet use per week in the U.S. may be a sign of the medium's maturity and that people are becoming more economical and efficient in their use of the Internet.

Overall household Internet access in Canada increased from 43% in 1999 to 48% this year. Most of this growth represents change in Quebec, which saw household Internet penetration grow from 29% last year to 42% in 2000. Growth of Internet subscribers in the rest of Canada has only increased from 48% in 1999 to 50% this year. This again reflects the adoption pattern already evident in the U.S. as its market is beginning to show signs of saturation with 43% of its population on-line.

Of Canadian household Internet users, 22% are using high-speed connections to the Internet, including cable modems (18%) and digital subscriber lines (4%). This is a growth over last year, when only 18% of Internet users were subscribing to high-speed service providers.

"Clearly, high-speed connections are on the rise. However, today's high-speed market is still largely an early adopter market. To sign up the general population, service providers will have to develop more compelling value propositions," said Peter Lyman, leader of the Information Communications and Entertainment/Media (ICE) practice for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Canada. "Our data highlights the fact that cost is the primary deterrent holding back the migration of consumers to high-speed."

Of the Canadians polled who were not yet connected, 24.3% said they expect to hook up to the Internet within a year. Of this segment, 29.2% said they were considering high-speed connections. The use of high-speed Internet access is higher in Canada than in many other countries. Only in Germany, where an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is widely available, is there more high-speed access.

Throughout Canada, research and information (92.2%) and e-mail (93.2%) are the top reasons for using the Internet. Interest in on-line banking has risen to 45% from 36% last year. Shopping is also making inroads as a reason to use the Internet, increasing to 28% from 22%.

Last year, 38% of Canadians said they'd be watching television if they weren't on-line. This year, only 32% said they would be watching TV if they weren't on-line. Reading topped the list (38%) of things people would be doing in the absence of the Internet.

About the Canadian Consumer Technology Study

For the second year in a row, PricewaterhouseCoopers has released the Canadian Consumer Technology Study, a study designed to investigate the extent and many uses of the Internet in Canadian homes. In addition to collecting data on Internet usage, a series of questions on digital television and attitudes towards the convergence of technologies was administered. This study is the Canadian portion of an international effort by PricewaterhouseCoopers to further the understanding of Internet applications on a household level and to identify trends in take up rates. Conducted by the PricewaterhouseCoopers' National Survey Centre in Ottawa, data collection consisted of 802 interviews with a sample representation of the Canadian population. The data is considered to be accurate to ±3.5%, 19 of 20 times.

Source:
Canadians lead the world in Internet use — Subscription to high-speed access grows
http://www.pwcglobal.com/extweb/ncpressrelease.nsf/docid/
0FBB779D0438216585256999004D6439

References:
PricewaterhouseCoopers website
http://www.pwcglobal.com/
PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada
http://www.pwcglobal.com/ca/eng/main/home/
PricewaterhouseCoopers: Canadian Consumer Technology Study 2000
http://www.pwcglobal.com/extweb/ncsurvres.nsf/docid/
0AD8B61796C17A148525699700708245

2000 November 18

New Suffixes Ease Dot-Com Crunch

Say hello to .biz, .museum and .info

MARINA DEL REY, California — Hoping to ease the dot-com name crunch, an Internet oversight board created seven new Web address suffixes Thursday, November 16th, including .biz, .name and .info.

The decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers capped a half-decade of discussion about how to relieve demand for addresses ending in .com. With some 20,000,000 .com names registered worldwide, easy-to-remember addresses have been all but used up.

The new suffixes, or Internet domain names, are the first major additions since the system was developed in the 1980s. The new suffixes could be in use by the middle of next year.

ICANN approved .info for general use, .biz for businesses, .name for individuals, .pro for professionals, .museum for museums, .coop for business cooperatives and .aero for the aviation industry.

More new suffixes are expected, ICANN chair Esther Dyson said.

There are already "regional" suffixes familiar to most computer users, such as .edu .gov, and .mil, which are for educational institutions, government agencies, and military organizations, mostly in the United States. But .com, .net and .org currently are the only suffixes designated as available to anyone worldwide — and all are becoming crowded.

The new suffixes are similar to adding area codes to the telephone system to accommodate growth.

They could make more simple addresses available and Web sites easier to find. A computer user, for example, could someday type ama.health to reach the American Medical Association Web site instead of www.ama-assn.org. The current name is so long because ama.org belongs to the American Marketing Association.

The new suffixes could also begin a new Internet land rush, with speculators and trademark holders competing to claim the best names first. ICANN (www.icann.org) must now negotiate contracts with companies or groups that made the winning proposals.

New suffixes have been under consideration since the mid-1990s, but there were disputes over how many and which ones. ICANN was designated by the U.S. Commerce Department in 1998 as the overseer of online addresses.

For this week's meeting, companies proposing new suffixes paid US$50,000 for the chance to become record keepers for the new names. As registry operators, they would be able to charge a few dollars for each name registered, an amount that could add up to millions of dollars for the most popular suffixes.

In all, there were applications for 191 new suffixes, with 47 surviving the first round for consideration in depth.

[The Halifax Daily News, 18 November 2000]

Seven New Domains Are Chosen to Join Popular .com

Vinton Cerf Named Chairman of ICANN

18 November 2000

Marina Del Rey, California — Seeking to expand the virtual real estate of the Internet, the board that oversees the Internet's addressing system decided Thursday, November 16th, on seven new domains to compete with the popular .com.

The board of directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as ICANN, selected .info and .biz for general use and .pro for professionals. Also added were .name for personal Web sites, .museum for museums, .aero for airline groups and .coop for business cooperatives.

Winners were selected from nearly 50 applications submitted by businesses and other groups seeking to manage the new suffixes, officially called generic top-level domains. Proposals that failed to win enough support Thursday include .web, .kids, .xxx, .union, .health, .travel and .geo.

Any new domains will not be put to use until next spring at the earliest. In the meantime, ICANN staff members will continue negotiations with the winning bidders to coordinate the business and technical aspects of the new domains.

"People are used to the .com space," said Sloan D. Gaon, director of business development with Register.com, a member of a consortium that had winning bids for .info and .pro. He added that heavy marketing would be necessary to "change the mindset of Internet users around the world."

The decision Thursday, November 16th, begins the largest structural change to the Internet since the late 1980s. While other domains, like .org and .net, were created to differentiate Web sites, the distinctions have largely been lost as groups have staked out property in cyberspace. The .com domain is by far the most popular, with more than 20,000,000 names.

Created in 1998 by the U.S. Commerce Department to open up the monopoly on registering domain names, ICANN ensures that each domain name is unique, preventing different registration companies from handing out the same address. The addition of new domains still requires the approval of the Commerce Department.

The businesses that offered proposals hope to make money by selling new names within the domains, although they suggested that profits might be years away. Afilias, a consortium of 19 current domain registries, including Register.com, that proposed .info, has said it expects losses of US$13,000,000 during its first four years, as it signs up an estimated 16,000,000 new Web sites. But those projections were based on its first choice, .web, which the board rejected. Thomas Barrett, an Afilias member, said the consortium would have to revise its estimates for .info, because it thought that suffix would be harder to sell.

"It won't have the same kind of acceleration you would see with .web," said Barrett, chief executive of Netnames International, a registry based in London.

Afilias also includes VeriSign Incorporated, whose Network Solutions unit long held the monopoly on the registration of names within .com.

The company overseeing .biz, JVTeam, which has roots in Australia and the United States, said it expected to register nearly 4,000,000 sites. The Global Name Registry, based in Britain, said it expected to register 14,000,000 customers for its .name site.

One of the day's largest surprises was the denial of Stanford Research International, whose proposal to tie geographic locations to .geo was hailed as "interesting and innovative" by ICANN staff members and board members.

Despite concerns about whether the technology was ready, .geo survived until the final round, when it fell victim to the board's quest for diversity among its winners. Stanford Research relied on JVTeam, which had already won with two other projects, for technical support.

Also failing to allay the board's concerns Vinton Cerf

was .kids, which was proposed as a safe domain for children to surf the Internet. "It's not possible to deliver, on a global scale in all cultures and age groups, a coherent and reasonably assured experience," said Vinton G. Cerf, a board member who is widely credited for helping found the Internet. After the announcement Thursday, five new board members were seated and Cerf was named new chairman, replacing Esther Dyson.

Unlike several of the large registry companies that submitted applications, the National Cooperative Business Association, which won with .co-op and .coop, does not have a large presence on the Internet. Paul Harven, association president, praised ICANN for not merely choosing "the same players shuffling the same deck."

[The Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 18 November 2000]

ICANN Announces Selections For New Top-Level Domains

16 November 2000

Marina del Rey, CA — The board of directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, (ICANN) today announced its selections for registry operators for new top level domains. The applications selected for further negotiation are the following:
.aero — Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques SC, (SITA)
.biz — JVTeam, LLC
.coop — National Cooperative Business Association, (NCBA)
.info — Afilias, LLC
.museum — Museum Domain Management Association, (MDMA)
.name — Global Name Registry, LTD
.pro — RegistryPro, LTD

The ICANN staff will now work through the end of the year to negotiate registry agreements with the applicants selected. The proposed schedule for completion of negotiations is December 31, 2000. The negotiated registry agreements must then be approved by the board of directors. Following that approval, the ICANN board will forward its recommendations to the U.S. Department of Commerce for implementation.

Source:
http://www.icann.org/announcements/icann-pr16nov00.htm

References:
ICANN — The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
http://www.icann.org/
ICANN Report on New TLD Applications, released 9 November 2000
http://www.icann.org/tlds/report/
History of the ICANN process for new TLDs
http://www.icann.org/tlds/
New TLD strings applied for
http://www.icann.org/tlds/tld-applications-lodged-02oct00.htm

Multimedia Archives of ICANN Public Meetings, November 13-16, 2000, at Los Angeles, California — (This online archive includes streaming video of the entire proceedings during all three meetings.)
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/la2000/

Vinton Cerf's personal home page
http://www.worldcom.com/about_the_company/cerfs_up/
Internet History
http://www.worldcom.com/about_the_company/cerfs_up/
internet_history/index.phtml
Interplanetary Internet
http://www.worldcom.com/about_the_company/cerfs_up/
interplanetary_internet/index.phtml
Vinton Cerf is co-designer of the TCP/IP protocol, the communications protocol that gave birth to the Internet and which is commonly used today. In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his partner, Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet...
http://www.icann.org/biog/cerf.htm
http://www.cio.com/archive/010100_cerf.html
http://www.senate.gov/~jec/cerf~1.htm
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/cra/networks.html
http://38.214.205.100/gld3/284.html
http://www.isoc.org/papers/truth.html
http://www.isoc.org/isoc/general/trustees/cerf.shtml
http://www.isoc.org/isoc/media/releases/cerf.shtml
http://www.americanhistory.si.edu/csr/comphist/vc1.html
http://www8.techmall.com/techdocs/TS980702-4.html
http://www4.nas.edu/pd/step.nsf/web/
biographical_information:_vinton_cerf?OpenDocument
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_12/b3673028.htm
http://www.itu.int/TELECOM/wt95/pressdocs/papers/vintmed.html
http://www.skywriting.com/cerf.html
http://www.bell-labs.com/user/zhwang/vcerf.html
http://www.quotegeek.com/Literature/Cerf_Vinton/
http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Internet/CerfHowInternetCame2B.html
http://www.alcatel.com/telecom/mbd/publi/newslink/9902/interview.htm
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/cerf.html
http://sln.fi.edu/tfi/exhibits/cerf.html
http://www.cariboo.bc.ca/cpj/current/cerf.html
http://144.75.4.3/covits/covitscerfbio.htm
http://www.city.grande-prairie.ab.ca/cerfsup1.htm
http://www.csmc.edu/pediatrics/cme/inetpeds/sld060.htm
http://www.mids.org/pay/mn/912/cerf.html
http://eye.hooked.net/netvalley/archives/mirrors/cerf-how-inet.txt
http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV63_STO49912,00.html
http://www.uib.es/secc1/honoris/vcerf/
http://www.cleveleys.co.uk/internet/cerf.htm

VeriSign Incorporated
http://www.verisign.com/

The ICANN Resolution — New TLDs

16 November 2000

"There were many complaints about which TLDs ICANN selected and the process it used to do so (including the fact that five newly elected At-Large board members could not take part in the decision.) Yet it certainly is a welcome step to have a set of diverse additions to the congested gTLD space. ICANN is changing the landscape of cyberspace..."
— An observer at the meeting

Here is the resolution that ICANN passed on November 16th, at the "raucous and historic Los Angeles meeting"...

"Selection of New TLD Proposals for Negotiation"

Whereas, in resolution 00.46 the Board adopted the Names Council's recommendation that a policy be established for the introduction of new TLDs in a measured and responsible manner;

Whereas, on 3 August 2000 the ICANN staff, acting under the President's direction, posted a "New TLD Application Process Overview";

Whereas, on 15 August 2000 the ICANN staff, again acting under the President's direction, posted Criteria for Assessing TLD Proposals that it would follow in making recommendations to the Board and instructions and forms for the use of applicants in applying to operate or sponsor new TLDs;

Whereas, 47 applications were received by the 2 October 2000 deadline for submission of new TLD applications;

Whereas, the non-confidential portions of the applications were posted and extensive public comments were received on them;

Whereas, on 10 November 2000, a report evaluating the applications prepared by an evaluation team consisting of ICANN staff and outside advisers was posted on the ICANN web site;

Whereas, many additional written comments were received on the web site, by e-mail, and otherwise;

Whereas, several constituencies of the Domain Name Supporting Organization have presented positions to the Board;

Whereas, several hours of applicant and public comments were presented at the in-person ICANN public forum held on 16 November 2000;

RESOLVED [00.89], the Board selects the following proposals for negotiations toward appropriate agreements between ICANN and the registry operator or sponsoring organization, or both: JVTeam (.biz), Afilias (.info), Global Name Registry (.name), RegistryPro (.pro), MDMA (.museum), SITA (.aero), NCBA (.coop);

RESOLVED [00.90], the President and General Counsel are authorized to conduct those negotiations on behalf of ICANN and, subject to further Board approval or ratification, to enter into appropriate agreements; and

RESOLVED [00.91], the President and General Counsel are authorized to retain legal and other assistance in support of the negotiations and related activities.

Sources:
The Berkman Center for Internet and Society
at the Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/icann/la2000/archive/new-tld-res.html
ICANN
http://www.icann.org/minutes/prelim-report-16nov00.htm

Reference:
ICANN: 7 Out of 44 Ain't Bad
http://www.thestandard.net/article/display/0,1151,20272,00.html

Commentary:
ICANN Should Approve More Top Level Domains

ICANN Use More Web Suffixes
by Declan McCullagh
The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed
Monday, November 20, 2000

If there's one thing on which the quarrelsome geeks who run the Internet can agree, it's that the online world badly needs some new suffixes to supplement the overcrowded .com, .org, and .net.

As far back as the mid-1990s, frustrated engineers and entrepreneurs proposed creating additional suffixes, known as generic top level domains (GTLDs) in the unflattering vernacular of Webheads. Five years, dozens of false starts, and a considerable amount of confusion later, a nonprofit group backed by the U.S. government has finally chosen seven new GTLDs. Its decision last week marks the first move toward relieving .com's congestion.

So why is almost nobody happy?

One reason is that the new suffixes approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers are woefully inadequate. Instead of picking GTLDs that would meet market demand, ICANN decided to approve the lackluster set of .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro instead. (If these were proposed brand names, you can bet most would fail the first focus group test.) Any more additions, ICANN's board members indicated, would not be approved until late 2001.

This is absurd. Technology experts occasionally wrangle over how many GTLDs the current setup can include, with the better estimates in the millions, but few doubt that the domain name system can handle tens of thousands of new suffixes without catastrophe.

ICANN could easily have taken a more careful look at more than 100 GTLD applications-each of the 47 hopefuls, some of whom suggested multiple names, paid $50,000 for the chance-it received in advance of last week's meeting. Or it could have reduced the application fee and thereby attracted more submissions. Approving more GTLDs would have been sensible, since .com domain names are in such terribly short supply. A Wired.com survey conducted in April 1999 found that of 25,500 standard dictionary words, only 1,760 were still available, and the problem of finding even a multiple-word domain name is more acute today.

"In an ideal world, they would have awarded all nonconflicting applications that met objective feasibility requirements," says Milton Mueller, a professor at Syracuse University. "Things that didn't break the system."

At a time when the market is demanding more competition and an end to this artificial scarcity, ICANN is responding far too sluggishly. That keeps a premium on .com and makes it more expensive for new entrants in the marketplace to obtain prime online real estate. It also has the effect of continuing the monopoly status of VeriSign's Network Solutions, which has a lucrative Commerce Department-granted right to collect $6 a year on each of the .com, .org, and .net domain names in use. (No wonder VeriSign paid $21 billion to buy Network Solutions earlier this year.)

Another problem is a predictable one: Politics. In the past, some of ICANN's duties had been handled by various federal agencies. Unlike what some regulatory enthusiasts have suggested, however, the solution is not encouraging the government to again become directly involved in this process. A wiser alternative is a complete or near-complete privatization of these functions.

ICANN has begun to act as a de facto extension of the Commerce Department, which by law has ultimate approval over additional GTLDs. That has given Internet users the worst of both worlds None of the competitive checks and balances that the marketplace would provide, and none of the procedural protections of government.

This quasi-governmental role is already threatening to derail, or at least delay, the arrival of new GTLDs. Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) last week asked the Commerce Department not to approve any new suffixes until it reviews the level of competition in the domain registration business. When the World Health Organization learned it didn't receive the hoped-for .health domain, it hinted it would take legal action. At least a few other disappointed GTLD hopefuls are likely to feel the same way. Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on Technology is unhappy that .union didn't make it. And so on.

There are a few ways out of this mess. Not all nations are overjoyed about the White House having a veto over ostensibly global top-level domains, so the process could be handed to the United Nations instead. But a Republican Congress may not go along, and, besides, the U.N. has displayed pro-Net-tax tendencies and scant appreciation for free expression.

If ICANN and the Commerce Department move too slowly, frustrated businesses could turn to alternative solutions. The OpenNIC project, which requires tech-savvy users to reconfigure their computers, already supports alternative GTLDs including .parody, .oss (for open-source projects), and .geek (still pending). But that risks balkanizing the Internet: On two different machines, the same domain name could lead to two different Websites.

Perhaps the best suggestion comes from Michael Froomkin, a professor of law at the University of Miami and a co-founder of the icannwatch.org Website. He suggests a round-robin process in which nations and non-profit groups would take turns adding a fixed number of new GTLDs, and ICANN would merely keep track of the master list. The number of domains added could double each round. The process might not make everyone happy, but it would have one important benefit: It might actually work.

Mr. McCullagh is the Washington bureau chief for Wired.com.

Source:
Cluebot.com
http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/11/20/1714249

2000 November 18

Nova Scotia to Levy 43¢ Fee for 911 Service

"It's roughly about $6 a year — it's not a major thing"

Nova Scotians will soon start paying an extra 43 cents each month on their phone bills for 911 service — plus 15 per cent BST (Blended Sales Tax).

However, Jamie Muir, minister responsible for emergency measures, said the charge, to take effect in January or February, isn't a tax grab. "It's a recovery fee," he said Friday. "It's roughly about $6 a year — it's not a major thing."

The new charge applies to the 750,000 phone lines in the province capable of dialling out, including all land-based residential and business phones, cellphones and fax machines.

It will bring in more than $3,200,000 next year after it's implemented and the fee for collecting it is subtracted, Mr. Muir said. "The actual cost of the system is about $1,400,000." The system needs another $1,800,000 in improvements, the minister added. In its last budget, the government claimed 911 costs $677,000 to operate and it planned to recover $745,000 through the new fee.

"It's going to cost you five times that and the government is going to reap a big windfall on it, so by any measure it's just a tax," said NDP emergency measures critic Darrell Dexter. "Were they just so desperately wrong in their budget estimates that they didn't know what they were doing six months ago?" Liberal critic Kennie MacAskill also called the measure a tax. "It's excessive to the ordinary Nova Scotian," he said.

Hidden telephone charges

Mr. Muir said the phone companies have a hidden charge of about 60 cents a month worked into their bills for costs associated with 911. The federal telecommunications regulator has already ruled the province is responsible for about $400,000 of the amount that the phone companies are charging, he said. But he said he didn't know whether the companies planned to drop their rates to reflect that or continue taking in the extra thousands of dollars as profit.

Sixteen Per Cent Collection Fee

The phone companies will keep about seven cents of every 43-cent charge per month — about $600,000 a year — as a collection fee, Mr. Muir said.

He said 911 improvements needed include a digital mapping system and highway markers throughout the province to help orient people calling the service from mobile phones. "Our 911 system is very good but it's got to be upgraded. We think it's a good investment and people will understand that it is." He said the money will be collected in a separate account and be used only for the 911 service.

If it turns out after the first year the costs for upgrades are mostly covered, the 43-cent charge will be evaluated again, he said. "We will take a look at the costs on an annual basis," Mr. Muir said. "We're not in this business to make money."

[The Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 18 November 2000]

43 Cents per Phone Line per Month will go to 911,
Poison-Control Centre

18 November 2000

Nova Scotians with a phone will start paying for the province's 911 system in the new year, as well as for the poison-control centre at the IWK Grace Health Centre, formerly funded by the hospital. Jamie Muir, minister responsible for the Emergency Measures Organization, announced yesterday the government will charge 43 cents per month, or $5.16 a year, per telephone line. The fee will also apply to cellphones and dedicated Internet connections.

Muir said this will bring in about $3,200,000 annually. Of that, $800,000 per year will go to the poison-control centre. The fees will also be used to upgrade computerized maps to make it easier to find people needing assistance, and to set up highway markers, he said.

Last year, the Hamm government said the monthly fee would be about $1, and the spring budget estimated it would generate $745,000 annually.

Muir said the fee will be applied only to outgoing telephone lines, not incoming lines. For example, a call-centre with 200 incoming lines and two outgoing lines would only pay 86 cents per month.

"It is important to note that Nova Scotians will not be charged per call to 911," he stressed. "In other words, the number of times a person calls 911 will not have any impact on this fee. It will remain consistent at 43 cents, less than the cost of a cup of coffee per month." The money won't go to the province's general coffers, but will be disbursed through a cost-recovery board, Muir said.

"It's certainly not a tax grab. This is really trying to see that we have a safety service that is second to none in Canada," he said.

But the Liberals and NDP argued it's a new tax. NDP critic Darrell Dexter wondered how the government's budget estimates could have been so far out of whack. "It is either a surplus over and above what they need to run the service, or it is evidence that they had so little information in putting together their budget projections that they are wildly inaccurate," Dexter said. Liberal critic Kennie MacAskill contended it will hurt small businesses. "It's excessive to the ordinary Nova Scotian if you run a business and you have a phone and a fax machine and a cellphone," he said.

[The Halifax Daily News, 18 November 2000]

2000 November 18

Tufts Cove Number Two Generator
Running on Natural Gas

NSPI Generates Electricity With Sable Gas

New Energy Source Gets Trial Run

As Nova Scotians flicked on their coffee makers this morning, some of the electricity they were using was generated with Nova Scotia natural gas. Nova Scotia Power Inc. is burning Sable gas in one of three boilers at the Tufts Cove generating station, as part of a complicated testing process that could take another two weeks.

Bill Hearn, special projects advisor for NSPI, said the station's second unit is operating full-out on natural gas. "It's been running very smoothly ... we're quite pleased with how the unit has responded to this new source," Hearn said yesterday.

He made his comments just after Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline president Pat Langan officially opened the consortium's Halifax lateral, which brings gas to Tufts Cove.

The $90,000,000 lateral pipeline, which connects to the main pipeline south of New Glasgow, was built with more than 80 per cent Atlantic labour, Langan said.

With the sound of gas hissing its way through a pressure reduction station behind him, Langan said it shows industry in this region is more than capable of seizing the new opportunities natural gas presents.

Gordon Balser, minister responsible for the Nova Scotia Petroleum Directorate, said the facilities that opened yesterday "should send a very strong and powerful message to Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada that gas is going to be an energy source of the future."

Three hundred kilometres to the northeast, however, the province's other gas lateral — which crosses the Strait of Canso to Cape Breton — still isn't in operation. Langan said Maritimes continues to negotiate with the Point Tupper lateral's builder and current owner, Sable Offshore Energy Inc. The line was completed earlier this year.

Because of concerns over quality defects in the pipe used to build the lateral, the National Energy Board would only allow it to operate at less than half of its design pressure. Langan said if everything goes as planned, a reduced flow of gas could be moving through the line by February or March of 2001.

Plans for a trio of transfer stations off the Halifax lateral have finally been sent to the National Energy Board for review, an official with Maritimes said. The stations are needed to move gas from the lateral into the local distribution system being built by Sempra Atlantic Gas in metro.

[The Halifax Daily News, 18 November 2000]

NSP's fuel challenge

Market price to determine if Dartmouth plant burns gas, oil

Nova Scotia Power is burning natural gas and selling it too.

"We sell it to various markets, there's various buyers" both in Canada and the United States, NSP president David Mann said Thursday, November 23rd, after a ceremony at the Tufts Cove generating station marking the first consumption of Sable offshore gas by a Nova Scotia company.

Nova Scotia Power, the province's largest electrical utility, is also the largest single customer for Sable gas. NSP, which owns a 12.5 per cent stake in the Maritimes and Northeast pipeline carrying Sable gas to New England, signed a ten-year contract with Shell Canada to buy 60,000,000 cubic feet of gas a day.

The company has spent $30,000,000 to upgrade its Tufts Cove generating station in Dartmouth to burn gas as well as oil. Mr. Mann said market conditions will dictate which fuel the station burns, which could leave NSP with excess gas capacity to sell. "Some days we might have all these units on gas, other days we might not," he said, adding that he couldn't say what the company might save by burning gas over oil. "That would depend almost on a day-to-day basis. Actually, the price changes hourly. That's why this is such a sophisticated challenge to us," he said. "Traditionally (the price of) gas has followed oil. What we're seeing at the moment is a parting of the ways here and no one knows how long that's going to last."

But he said the ability to switch fuels enables NSP to keep electricity prices stable, and he noted that no rate increases are planned for 2001 - the fifth year in a row NSP has maintained electricity prices.

"The price of fuel is a huge proportion of our overall costs," he said. "And so our ability to manage price for fuel enables us to keep our prices stable to our customers."

Although he wouldn't say where NSP might sell its excess gas capacity, he noted that prices in New England could skyrocket this winter. "You're going to see gas prices, for example in Boston this winter, if they have a cold winter as some are expecting, at levels that nobody would have ever anticipated five years ago."

Mr. Mann deflected questions on what proportion of its gas capacity NSP would burn and what it would sell. "We've contracted presently for about 62-odd million (cubic feet) a day and what we don't burn we sell at the marketplace," he said. "We are selling gas into the marketplace, but we're also burning gas. That would really be all I'd be prepared to say."

He said NSP has no immediate plans to divert excess gas capacity to its other generating plants and that the introduction of natural gas won't have an impact on the company's existing demand for coal. "We have no plans at the moment to refuel or make any changes in our other plants, although sometime in the future that may come."

He said NSP also has no plans to build a co-generation plant in Goldboro, Guysborough County, site of the Sable gas processing plant.

Mr. Mann wouldn't discuss the details of NSP's contract with Shell when asked whether the company paid a fixed or floating price for gas. "I really don't feel as though I'd want to get in a discussion around our contract. Those are pretty precious things."

Premier John Hamm, who was given a tour of the revamped Tufts Cove facility on Thursday, called the introduction of natural gas a "tremendous day" for Nova Scotia. "The benefit as I see it is choice," he said. "The consumer wins. The energy landscape in Nova Scotia will never again be the same." Economic Development Minister Gordon Balser said seeing Nova Scotia gas burning in Nova Scotia was "a dream that's finally come true."

Sable gas actually began flowing to the plant on November 7th, said plant manager Doug Campbell. Public tours of the Tufts Cove plant will be held today and Saturday from 10:00am to 4:00pm.

[The Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 24 November 2000]

2000 November 20

Intel's Pentium 4 Chip Arrives

Pentium 4 chip ready to ship — includes faster audio, video

Toronto — Intel Corp., the world's dominant maker of microprocessors for personal computers, said Monday, November 20th, its next-generation Pentium 4 chips are ready for the market.

The new chip is designed to process video and audio data faster, a feature that has grown in importance with the rise of music and video files that can be downloaded from the Internet. "The Pentium 4 processor is designed to give users performance where they can appreciate it most," Paul Otellini, Intel executive vice-president, said Monday.

Intel, which accounts for about 80 per cent of the market for personal computer microprocessors, has recently been challenged by Advanced Micro Devices Corporation, makers of the Athlon line of microprocessors, and Transmeta Corporation, maker of the Crusoe line of chips.

Intel's new Pentium 4 chip

Graphics software developer Corel Corporation of Ottawa and ATI Technologies Incorporated of Thornhill, Ontario, one of the world's biggest makers of specialized graphics hardware for computers, also say they hope the Pentium 4 will spur demand for the latest versions of their core products. "We like to think it provides our users an incentive to move up to CorelDraw 10," said Rob Hayami, business development manager for Corel, the Ottawa software company that is attempting to return to profitability after three quarters of losses. Professionals like graphics artists and computer-aided designers could do their work faster with CorelDraw 10 and a Pentium 4 computer because the software and hardware have been designed to work together, Hayami said.

David Nalasco, technical marketing manager for ATI Technologies, also said his company's products should get a boost from the latest Intel chip because of its ability to process video data quicker than previous Pentiums. "With some of new video cards we offer a kind of digital VCR feature," Nalasco said. "You can take a video input from cable, or whatever, plug it into the back of your video card and then you can both watch TV on the screen or record it to your hard drive and use your computer like a VCR," Nalasco said.

The older Pentium 3 chip didn't provide as good quality images, he said.

But industry watchers said Monday that the new Pentium 4 won't likely have much impact on the market this year, in part because the chip was announced so late in the year and because of an unexpected slowdown in the last half of 2000 has left a backlog of Pentium 3 products that must be cleared.

"It's going to take 12 months or even longer to ship in volume," predicted John Stanisc, who monitors the personal computer industry for market research company IDC Canada in Toronto.

The biggest importance of the Pentium 4, Stanisc said, is that it restores Intel's reputation as the king of chip makers — which had been challenged by smaller rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices, maker of the Athlon chips.

The two new Pentium 4 chips announced Monday have clock speeds of 1.4 and 1.5 gigahertz — about double the speed of a 733 megahertz chip. "In terms of end users, there are only a few groups that need this faster processing speed," Stanisc said. "In terms of the average user, they probably don't need that speed."

Fears of a glut of various technology products have hurt a wide range of companies in recent weeks, including Intel. The company's shares have fallen about 42 per cent since Aug. 31 when they closed at US$74.88 on the Nasdaq stock market. They closed at US$41.13 on Monday, down about 38 cents from Friday's close.

[The Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 21 November 2000]
[The Halifax Daily News, 21 November 2000]
[The National Post, 21 November 2000]
http://ca.dailynews.yahoo.com/ca/headlines/cpress/bs/story.html?s=v/
ca/cpress/20001121/bs/business_1173035_2.html

Intel Introduces the Pentium® 4 Processor

SANTA CLARA, California, Nov. 20, 2000 — Intel Corporation today introduced the Intel® Pentium® 4 processor, its newest microprocessor for high-performance desktop computers. The Pentium 4 processor delivers a new generation of performance for processing video and audio, exploiting modern Internet technologies, and displaying 3-D graphics. Its foundation is the new Intel® NetBurst® micro-architecture, a collection of unique technologies that will power Intel's most advanced 32-bit processors for consumer and business users over the next several years of computing. "The Pentium 4 processor is designed to give users performance where they can appreciate it most," said Paul Otellini, executive vice president and general manager, Intel Architecture Group. "Whether streaming content, playing interactive games, encoding video and MP3 files, or creating Internet content — the Pentium 4 processor is designed to meet the needs of today's most demanding computer users." Major computer makers and software suppliers around the world have spent months readying products based upon the Pentium 4 processor. All major desktop PC (personal computer) makers have Pentium 4 processor-based PCs or workstations under development. Many manufacturers are expected to start taking orders today and will begin delivery of PCs based on the Pentium 4 processor.

The Intel® NetBurst® Micro-Architecture
and Intel® 850 Chipset

The Pentium 4 processor with Intel NetBurst technology is the first completely new desktop processor design from Intel since the Pentium Pro processor, with its P6 micro-architecture, was introduced in 1995. Highlights include Hyper Pipelined Technology, which enables the Pentium 4 processor to execute software instructions in a 20-stage pipeline, as compared to the 10-stage pipeline of the Pentium III processor. Hyper Pipelined Technology supports a new range of clock speeds, beginning today with 1.5 and 1.4 GHz, with plenty of headroom for the future.

Faster processing of video and audio

For higher performance, the Rapid Execution Engine allows frequently used Arithmetic Logic Unit instructions to be executed at double the core clock. The industry's first 400 MHz system bus speeds the transfer of data between the processor and main memory. In addition, 144 new instructions have been added to further speed the processing of video, audio and 3-D applications. These and other technical innovations make Pentium 4 processor-based PCs the ideal machines for creating and experiencing Internet media. The Pentium 4 processor platform is based on the high-performance Intel® 850 chipset. The Intel 850 chipset's dual RDRAM memory banks complement the Pentium 4 processor's 400 MHz system bus, providing up to 3.2 gigabytes of data per second. Intel also announced availability of the Intel Desktop Board D850GB, which supports the new Pentium 4 processor in the ATX form factor. The Pentium 4 processor is Intel's highest performance desktop processor as measured by the SPEC CPU 2000 benchmark. The Pentium 4 processor at 1.5 GHz earned a SPECint2000 score of 535 and a SPECfp2000 score of 558. For more information on Pentium 4 processor performance, visit www.intel.com/procs/perf/pentium4/.

Pricing

The Pentium 4 processor is being introduced today at 1.5 and 1.4 GHz speeds. The Pentium 4 processor is manufactured on Intel's high-volume, 0.18-micron process technology and is available now. Pricing in 1,000 unit quantities is US$819 and US$644 each for the 1.5 and 1.4 GHz parts, respectively.

Note: The "micron" is a now-obsolete name for "micrometre".
0.18 micron = 0.18 µm = 180 nm

Intel is also shipping boxed Pentium 4 processors with 128 megabytes of RDRAM, the boxed desktop board D850GB, and a platform integration kit. These Pentium 4 processor platform building blocks are available through authorized distributors to members of the Intel Premier Providers program, enabling them to build and ship Pentium 4 processor-based systems immediately. Additional information about Pentium 4 processor is available at www.intel.com/pentium4, with launch information available at www.intel.com/pentium4/launch.

Source: Intel's official P4 launch release
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/dp112000.htm?iid=intel_p4+press&

References:
Intel Corporation
http://www.intel.com/
Additional information about Intel
http://www.intel.com/pressroom

2000 November 22

Aboriginal Peoples' Television Network

MR. SPEAKER: The honourable Minister of Justice.

Nova Scotia Legislature
RESOLUTION NO. 3462

HON. MICHAEL BAKER: Mr. Speaker, I rise with respect to my responsibilities as Minister responsible for Aboriginal Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, I hereby give notice that on a future day I shall move the adoption of the following resolution:

Whereas the Aboriginal Peoples' Television Network recently opened a new Halifax bureau; and

Whereas correspondent Maureen Googoo will be sharing news and information about Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq communities with the rest of Canada; and

Whereas the national network recently celebrated its 1st Anniversary;

Therefore be it resolved that this House of Assembly congratulate the local and national staff for including Nova Scotia in its programming.

Mr. Speaker, I request waiver of notice.

MR. SPEAKER: There has been a request for waiver.

Is it agreed?

It is agreed.

Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

Source:
Nova Scotia Hansard, page 9061, 22 November 2000
http://www.gov.ns.ca/legi/hansard/han58-1/h00nov22.htm#[Page 9061]

2000 November 22

EMO Gets Backup Generator

Sansom Equipment Ltd. of Truro will supply, deliver and install a new generator for the Emergency Measures Organization's emergency operations centre at the Lunenburg Municipality's office in Bridgewater. The cost will be $41,745. The Town of Bridgewater will share the cost of the 80 kW diesel generator, complete with an automatic transfer switch, 24-hour double-hull fuel tank, weatherproof and sound-attenuating enclosure. "That will supply power to this whole building," said acting chief administrative officer Pierre Breau. The generator will be installed next to the garage across the parking lot from the municipal building with an underground electrical conduit. The Sansom proposal was about $5,500 lower than the next lowest bid and $12,000 less than the highest tender.
[The Bridgewater Bulletin, 29 November 2000]

2000 November 23

MT&T Incorporation Act Amended

Bill 24
An Act to Amend Chapter 156 of the Acts of 1910,
an Act to Incorporate
the Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company, Limited

On this day, Royal Assent was given to the following Act of the Nova Scotia Legislature:
1 Clause 14A(1)(a) of Chapter 156 of the Acts of 1910, An Act to Incorporate the Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company Limited, as enacted by Chapter 73 of the Acts of 1990, is repealed.
[That's the entire text.]
Source:
Nova Scotia Government website
http://www.gov.ns.ca/legi/legc/bills/58th_1st/1st_read/b024.htm

Nova Scotia Legislature
Second Reading of Bill 24
An Act to Amend Chapter 156 of the Acts of 1910...

16 November 1999

Mr. Timothy Olive, (Dartmouth South):
Mr. Speaker, I would like to move second reading of An Act to Amend Chapter 156 of the Acts of 1910, an Act to Incorporate the Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company, Limited.

Mr. Speaker:
The honourable Leader of the New Democratic Party.

Mr. Robert Chisholm:
Mr. Speaker, I was just wondering if the member who is sponsoring this bill would take a few moments and explain to members of this House the reason behind the introduction of this bill. I would certainly appreciate it. I have a little bit of information, but I think there are other people here who would like to learn more about this bill, and the member for Dartmouth South could help us. I say this intervention in the form of a question. I wonder would the member for Dartmouth South mind getting to his feet to answer that question.

Mr. Speaker:
The honourable member for Dartmouth South.

Mr. Timothy Olive:
I would be very pleased to, Mr. Speaker. I thank the member for the question and for the comment. Yes, I did do a little research on this because I anticipated that I might be asked the question. As you may be well aware, the Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company, way back in 1910, passed a private Act to incorporate the company. Subsequent to that and in recent time, as a matter of fact, you are probably also aware that the Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company has amalgamated with three other major organizations in Atlantic Canada. The actual Clause 14A(1)(a) of Chapter 156, makes reference to the fact that the company is directly or indirectly controlled by Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company Limited and that clause is, in fact, being eliminated because it is no longer controlled by Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company Limited. I hope that clarifies the matter for the honourable member. (Applause)

Source:
Nova Scotia Hansard, 16 November 1999, pages 2144-2145
http://www.gov.ns.ca/legi/hansard/han58-1/h99nov16.htm#[Page 2144]

2000 November 27

Federal General Election
On The Internet

Federal Party Campaign Websites

Election Day: November 27

Liberal Party of Canada
http://web1.liberal.ca/
http://www.liberal.ca/
(Both URLs point to the same site.)

Canadian Alliance Party of Canada
http://www.canadianalliance.ca/index_e.cfm

Progressive-Conservative Party of Canada
http://www.pcparty.ca/

New Democratic Party of Canada
http://www.ndp.ca/

Other Registered Political Parties
(listed alphabetically)
all of these URLs were valid as of 27 November 2000

Bloc Quebecois
http://www.blocquebecois.parl.gc.ca/

Canadian Action Party
http://www.norat.com/steve/cap.htm

Canadian Clean Start Party
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2823/

Christian Heritage Party of Canada
http://www.chp.ca/

Communist Party of Canada
http://www.communist-party.ca/

Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)
Registered for elections purposes as the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada
http://www.cpcml.ca/

Green Party of Canada
http://green.ca/

Libertarian Party of Canada
http://www.libertarian.ca/

Marijuana Party
http://www.marijuanaparty.org/

Natural Law Party
http://www.natural-law.ca/nlp_index.html

Rest of Canada (ROC) Party
http://www.rocparty.ca/

Socialist Party of Canada
http://www.tcel.com/~sp/index.htm

Western Canada Concept Party
http://www.westcan.org/

Websites by/for Federal Party Constituency Associations
in Nova Scotia

Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough Liberal Association
http://pagliberals.tripod.com/pagliberals/index.html

Progressive Conservative Youth Association of Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough
http://www.angelfire.com/ma/rmhamilton/index.html

Canadian Alliance — Bras d'Or Constituency Association
http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/brasdor.htm

Canadian Alliance — Cumberland-Colchester Contstituency Association
http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/cumberland-colchester.htm

Canadian Alliance — Dartmouth Constituency Association
http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/dartmouth.htm

Canadian Alliance — Halifax Constituency Association
http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/halifax.htm

Canadian Alliance — Halifax West Constituency Association
http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/halifax-west.htm

Canadian Alliance — Kings-Hants Constituency Association
http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/kings-hants.htm

Canadian Alliance — Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough Constituency Association
http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/ipublish/alliance/

Canadian Alliance — Sackville-Musquodoboit Valley-Eastern Shore Riding Association
http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/sackville-musquodoboit-easternshore.htm

Canadian Alliance — South Shore Riding Constituency Association
http://www.reformsouthshore.ns.ca/
http://www.canadianalliancesouthshore.ns.ca/

Canadian Alliance — Sydney Victoria Constituency Association
http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/sydney-victoria.htm

Canadian Alliance — West Nova Constituency Association
http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/westnova.htm

Candidates Nominated in Nova Scotia

Liberal Party of Canada
http://web1.liberal.ca/

27 November 2000 Liberal Candidates in Nova Scotia Candidates nominated in all eleven ridings. http://web1.liberal.ca/site/microsite/default.asp?provinceID=7& provinceName_eng=Nova+Scotia&provinceName_fr= Nouvelle%2D%C9cosse&provinceShort=NS&language=eng
Bras d'Or-Cape Breton	Rodger Cuzner
No email address given. Primitive (one short page) campaign website in operation.
Cumberland-Colchester	Dianne Brushett brushett.liberal@auracom.com
Rudimentary campaign website in operation.
Dartmouth	Bernie Boudreau
No email address given. Primitive (one short page) campaign website in operation.
Halifax	Kevin Little cleetus@chebucto.ns.ca
Rudimentary campaign website in operation.
Halifax West	Geoff Regan electgeoff@geoffregan.com
G. Regan campaign website http://users.andara.com/~electgeoff/index.htm
Kings-Hants	Claude O'Hara claudeohara@ns.sympatico.ca
C. O'Hara campaign website http://www.ohara-liberal.org/ (regular version) http://www.ohara-liberal.org/maintext.html (text-only version) As of November 26th, this is the best, by far, of the campaign websites of the eleven Liberal candidates running in Nova Scotia.
Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough	Raymond Mason
No email address given. Primitive (one short page) campaign website in operation.
Sackville-Musquodoboit Valley-Eastern Shore	Bruce Stephen
B. Stephen campaign website http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/shelleyfraser/bruce-stephen/1main.htm No email address given.
South Shore	Derek Wells derekwells@ns.sympatico.ca
Rudimentary campaign website in operation.
Sydney-Victoria	Mark Eyking
No email address given. Primitive (one short page) campaign website in operation.
West Nova	Robert Thibault
No email address given. Primitive (one short page) campaign website in operation.
Note: It is not possible to provide links to, or even to report the URLs of these candidates' websites because they are part of the "deep web" — embedded in a database that cannot be accessed by an ordinary URL. To look at any candidate's website you have to go to the Liberal Party's website and work your way through. One important disadvantage of this design decision is that individual candidates are unable to state their website URLs in their campaign advertising or signs or leaflets. Comment by ICS: There is a serious design defect in thse Liberal campaign websites. Only part of each page is accessible to the viewer. When you click on the link — the candidate's name — pointing to the campaign website, this activates a javascript:openWindow command which opens a pop-up window. This pop-up window contains the biographical text. For some unknown reason, the website designer chose to arrange these sites so that some of the text extends below the bottom of the window, and thus remains beyond the reach of the viewer. You can drag the borders to enlarge the window area, but even when the window is enlarged to the maximum some of the text remains inaccessible. This is the way these candidates' websites (webpages?) work on my system, a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion 8665C computer bought new six weeks ago, Pentium3 500MHz with 128 megabytes RAM running Windows 98 SE, with MS Internet Explorer 5.50 browser — a reasonably up-to-date system on which any political website should (most do) display properly. With their main website containing such serious deficiencies a few days before a general election, it appears the federal Liberal Party has nobody minding the store — a clear indication the Party leaders have no knowledge of or interest in the Internet as a campaign tool. Mr. O'Hara's Kings-Hants campaign website at http://www.ohara-liberal.org/ is a separate website — set up on a hosting service separate from the Liberal Party's website — with an ordinary URL which can be stated in campaign advertising. This website does not suffer from the deficiencies of the federal Liberal Party's website.

Progressive-Conservative Party of Canada
http://www.pcparty.ca/

27 November 2000 Progressive Conservative Candidates in Nova Scotia Candidates nominated in all eleven ridings. http://www.pcparty.ca/election2001-e/candidates.asp
Bras d'Or-Cape Breton	Alfie McLeod
A. McLeod campaign website (all three URLs point to the same site) http://www.alfiemacleod.com/ http://www.angelfire.com/ns/alfiemacleod/ http://angelfire.lycos.com/ns/alfiemacleod/ There is no link to this website in the official PC Party candidates list. The website contact info does not mention an email address. The hit counter in the entry page reads 1666 at 12:20pm November 26th.
Cumberland-Colchester	Bill Casey bcasey@pcparty.ca caseyb@parl.gc.ca
B. Casey campaign websites http://bcasey.pcparty.ca/index.htm http://www.bill-casey.com/index.html Note: These two URLs point to two different websites.
Dartmouth	Tom McInnis
No email address given, and no campaign website mentioned in the official PC Party candidates list.
Halifax	Paul Fitzgibbons paulfitz@navnet.net hfxpchq@navnet.net
P. Fitzgibbons campaign website http://www.paulfitzgibbons.com/index.html
Halifax West	Charles Cirtwill elect.cirtwill@ns.sympatico.ca
No campaign website is mentioned in the official PC Party candidates list.
Kings-Hants	Scott Brison sbrison@yorkton.com sbrison@pcparty.ca kings.hants@ns.sympatico.ca
S. Brison campaign website http://sbrison.pcparty.ca/
Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough	Peter MacKay pmackay@pcparty.ca mackap@parl.gc.ca
P. MacKay campaign website http://pmackay.pcparty.ca/
Sackville-Musquodoboit Valley-Eastern Shore	Wade Marshall
W. Marshall campaign website http://wmarshall.pcparty.ca/index.htm There is no mention of an email address in the website contact info.
South Shore	Gerald Keddy gkeddy@pcparty.ca keddyg@parl.gc.ca
G. Keddy campaign website http://gkeddy.pcparty.ca/ G. Keddy campaign video online 3:20 http://www.pcparty.ca/vidasf-e.asp?vod=keddy
Sydney-Victoria	Anna Curtis-Steele
A. Curtis-Steele campaign website http://acurtis-steele.pcparty.ca/ There is no mention of an email address in the website contact info.
West Nova	Mark Muise muisem@parl.gc.ca
M. Muise campaign website http://mmuise.pcparty.ca/index.htm

New Democratic Party of Canada
http://www.ndp.ca/

27 November 2000 NDP Candidates in Nova Scotia Candidates nominated in all eleven ridings. http://www.ndp.ca/candidates/
Bras d'Or-Cape Breton	Michelle Dockrill michelle_dockrill@hotmail.com
M. Dockrill campaign website http://www.ndp.ca/candidates/default.asp?load=dockrill
Cumberland-Colchester	Jim Harpell jimharpell@ca.inter.net
J. Harpell campaign website http://www.ndp.ca/candidates/default.asp?load=harpell
Dartmouth	Wendy Lill wendy@wendylill.ca
W. Lill campaign website http://www.wendylill.ca/ This is a textbook example of an obnoxious website, designed mainly to show off the technical skills of the site designer, with much more attention given to glitz and tinsel than to content that a citizen might find useful in making a voting decision.
Halifax	Alexa McDonough alexa-mp@istar.ca alexa2000@ns.sympatico.ca
A. McDonough campaign website http://www.ndp.ca/meet_alexa/
Halifax West	Gordon Earle
No email address given, and no campaign website mentioned in the official NDP candidates list.
Kings-Hants	Kaye Johnson kaye.johnson@ns.sympatico.ca
K. Johnson campaign website http://www.geocities.com/kayejohnsonndp/ Note: This website was in operation from late October until November 18th, but disappeared on November 19th and never returned.
Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough	Wendy Panagopolus
W. Panagopolus campaign website http://www.ant.auracom.com/~cwest/wendy.htm The website does not mention an email address.
Sackville-Musquodoboit Valley-Eastern Shore	Peter Stoffer
P. Stoffer campaign website http://www.ndp.ca/candidates/default.asp?load=stoffer The website contact info does not mention an email address.
South Shore	Bill Zimmerman ndpsouth@istar.ca
B. Zimmerman campaign website http://www.ndp.ca/candidates/default.asp?load=zimmerman
Sydney-Victoria	Peter Mancini
P. Mancini campaign website http://www.ndp.ca/candidates/default.asp?load=mancini The website contact info does not mention an email address.
West Nova	Phil Roberts
No email address given, and no campaign website mentioned in the official NDP candidates list.
Note: As of November 26th, above is the latest information available in the official NDP candidates list at http://www.ndp.ca/candidates/#novascotia.

Canadian Alliance Party of Canada
http://www.canadianalliance.ca/index_e.cfm

27 November 2000 Canadian Alliance Candidates in Nova Scotia Candidates nominated in all eleven ridings. http://www.canadianalliance.ca/campaign/candidates.html
Bras d'Or-Cape Breton	John Curry
John Curry campaign website http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/johncurry.htm The website contact info does not mention an email address.
Cumberland-Colchester	Bryden Ryan sunshine@ns.sympatico.ca
B. Ryan campaign website http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/brydonryan.htm
Dartmouth	Jordi Morgan a.schwartz@ns.sympatico.ca
J. Morgan campaign websites http://www.jordimorgan.com/index.htm http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/jordimorgan.htm Note: These two URLs point to two different websites. J. Morgan biography (PDF, requires proprietary reader software) http://www.canadianalliance.ca/campaign/bios/morgan.pdf
Halifax	Amery Boyer amery@fox.nstn.ca
A. Boyer campaign website http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/ameryboyer.htm A. Boyer biography (PDF, requires proprietary reader software) http://www.canadianalliance.ca/campaign/bios/boyer.pdf
Halifax West	Hilda Stevens hildastevens@ns.sympatico.ca
H. Stevens campaign website http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/hildastevens.htm H. Stevens biography (PDF, requires proprietary reader software) http://www.canadianalliance.ca/campaign/bios/stevensHilda.pdf
Kings-Hants	Gerry Fulton ca.kingshants@ns.sympatico.ca
G. Fulton campaign website http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/gerryfulton.htm G. Fulton biography (PDF, requires proprietary reader software) http://www.canadianalliance.ca/campaign/bios/fulton.pdf
Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough	Harvey Henderson
No email address given, and no campaign website mentioned in the official Alliance candidates list.
Sackville-Musquodoboit Valley-Eastern Shore	Bill Stevens bstevens@accesscable.net calliance@excite.com
B. Stevens campaign website http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/billstevens.htm B. Stevens biography (PDF, requires proprietary reader software) http://www.canadianalliance.ca/campaign/bios/stevensB.pdf
South Shore	Evan Walters democracy@canadianalliancesouthshore.ns.ca
E. Walters campaign website http://www.canadianalliancesouthshore.ns.ca/index.html E. Walters biography (PDF, requires proprietary reader software) http://www.canadianalliance.ca/campaign/bios/waltersE.pdf
Sydney-Victoria	Rod Farrell
R. Farrell campaign website http://www.rodfarrell.com/rodfarrell.htm The website does not mention an email address.
West Nova	Mike Donaldson famlife@ns.sympatico.ca vicefam.life@ns.sympatico.ca
Mike Donaldson campaign website http://www.canadian-alliance.ns.ca/mikedonaldson.htm
Note: As of November 26th, above is the latest information available in the official Alliance candidates list at http://www.canadianalliance.ca/campaign/candidates.html.

Green Party of Canada
http://green.ca/

27 November 2000 Green Party Candidates in Nova Scotia Candidate nominated in one riding. http://green.ca/english/ridings/Ridings-NS.shtml
Halifax	Michael Oddy fernythicket@ns.sympatico.ca
M. Oddy campaign website http://green.ca/english/ridings/candidates/michael_oddy.shtml

Marijuana Party
http://www.marijuanaparty.org/

27 November 2000 Marijuana Party Candidates in Nova Scotia Candidates nominated in three ridings. http://www.marijuanaparty.org/eng/elections/ns.html
Halifax	Mike Patriquen ppat@ns.sympatico.ca
Kings-Hants	Jim King
Sackville-Musquodoboit Valley-Eastern Shore	Melanie Patriquen candidat@marijuanaparty.org
Note: No known candidates campaign websites.

Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada
http://www.cpcml.ca/

27 November 2000 Marxist-Leninist Party Candidates in Nova Scotia Candidates nominated in three ridings. http://www.cpcml.ca/mlpc/Candidates.html
Dartmouth	Charles Spurr
Halifax	Kevin Corkill
Halifax West	Tony Seed mlpcatlantic@yahoo.com
T. Seed campaign website http://www.cpcml.ca/mlpc/CANDtseed.html T. Seed interview http://www.mikmaq.net/english/issues/19991118a.html
Note: Above includes all known email addresses or candidates' campaign websites.

Communist Party of Canada
http://www.communist-party.ca/

27 November 2000 Communist Party Candidates in Nova Scotia Candidate nominated in one riding. http://www.communist-party.ca/election/candidat.htm
Kings-Hants	Jake MacDonald barb.m@ns.sympatico.ca
Note: No known candidate campaign website.

Natural Law Party of Canada
http://www.natural-law.ca/nlp_index.html

27 November 2000 Natural Law Party Candidates in Nova Scotia Candidate nominated in one riding. http://www.natural-law.ca/nlp_candidates/nlp_candidates.htm
Kings-Hants	Richard Hennigar hennigar@ns.sympatico.ca
Note: No known candidate campaign website.

Independent Candidates

27 November 2000 Independent Candidates in Nova Scotia Independent candidates nominated in two ridings.
Kings-Hants	Kenneth MacEachern
Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough	Darryl Gallivan
Note: No known email addresses or candidates campaign websites.

2000 November 27

Nova Scotia Radio Station
Breaks Web Blackout Rule
By Mistake

CIGO Says World-Wide Broadcast Was Accidental

The Internet blackout on election results wasn't as dark as Elections Canada wanted on Monday evening, November 27th, as vote counts were being reported for the general election.

Two websites illegally reported results in Atlantic Canada before polls closed elsewhere.

A British Columbia site remains unrepentant, while a Cape Breton radio station says its leak was accidental. Posting election results online before all polls are closed is illegal, since results in the east could influence voters in the west.

That law didn't stop B.C. software developer Paul Bryan from posting election results on his website ElectionResultsCanada.com shortly after 8:00pm Atlantic Standard Time, three hours before the polls closed in British Columbia. "The Internet is a global and international resource, and not under the sole jurisdiction of Canada," he said. Mr. Bryan said he agrees publicizing results could influence voters but thinks there are better solutions than an Internet blackout. "If you believe in the suppression of information to ensure the integrity of democracy then prevent disclosure of information to everybody until all the polls close," he said.

Bob MacEachern, manager of CIGO-FM in Port Hawkesbury, said the radio station planned to end its live online Internet broadcast but accidentally continued to broadcast on its website www.cigo.com/live.html. "It was a technical thing — a miscommunication internally," Mr. MacEachern said.

Mr. MacEachern said the station didn't realize what was happening until someone called the newsroom. "My first thought was 'Oh my God, we're breaking the law.' " The station shut down the Internet broadcast immediately and Mr. MacEachern doesn't think much harm was done. "I don't think we can take credit for the Liberal sweep across the country," he said with a laugh.

Election officials havn't called the radio station or Mr. Bryan in B.C., but he expects they will. "If their reaction is anything like what happened to Ivan Smith, I have to think they will," he said, referring to the retired Nova Scotian teacher who illegally posted the results of the September 11th Kings-Hants byelection. Election officials seized Mr. Smith's computer, and he could face a $25,000 fine but he has not been charged.

Mr. Bryan says he'd break the law again but hopes he won't have to. "The point is to challenge the law." he said. "I hope this law will not be on the books next time" But Mr. Bryan might be better off contacting his MP. Eelections Canada spokesman Dana Doiron says it's up to Parliament to make changes to the law, not Elections Canada. "We only enforce and enact the law set up by Parliament," he said. "We have a brand-new law set up in September and that's what we're using."

[The Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 29 November 2000]

Reference:
CIGO 101.5 MHz FM Port Hawkesbury for MS IE browsers
http://streams.localwave.com/hawk/hawk.asx

Web Sites Defy Broadcast Ban, Others Crash

Globe and Mail Update
by Jack Kapica
Posted 11:13pm, 27 November 2000

While major media respected the law and kept silent about the election results, at least two Internet sources started publishing them before the 10pm EST time limit set by Elections Canada.

In British Columbia, computer programmer Paul Bryan, who had announced he was intentionally challenging the law by posting results before 10pm EST at his Web site (http://www.electionresultscanada.com/), started posting the earliest vote tabulations from the Atlantic provinces almost three hours before polls closed in British Columbia.

And in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, radio station CIGO, which calls itself The Hawk 101.5, also broadcasts on the Internet (http://www.cigo.com/live.html). Monday night it failed to pull its broadcast from the Internet.

The major TV networks, which have the resources to project winners earlier than most media, had problems despite the obvious trend toward the Liberals. CTV News, which broadcasts simultaneously on the air and on the Internet, called for a Liberal majority at 10:04pm, minutes after polls closed in British Columbia, while the CBC National News held back until 10:22, saying too many of the races were too close to call until that time.

The man who beat both networks to the punch with raw results, the 30-year-old Paul Bryan, owner of In-Touch Software of Burnaby, B.C., had publicized his intention to defy the law as soon as the election was called. Elections Canada lawyer Johanne Massicotte wrote to Mr. Bryan last week "to ensure you are aware of the prohibition" against publishing results in an area where voting is still under way.

Undeterred, Mr. Bryan started posting the results as soon as polls closed in Atlantic Canada and started sending out e-mailed results to those who had signed up at his Web site before the election.

In September, retired Nova Scotia teacher Ivan Smith posted results of the Sept. 11 by-elections on the Internet. Acting on a request by Elections Canada, federal authorities seized Mr. Smith's computer equipment a few days later, but have yet to charge him.

Mr. Smith faces a $25,000 fine.

A spokeswoman for Elections Canada said the agency was aware of Mr. Bryan's plans, but could do nothing to prevent him from posting the results.

"You can't stop a criminal act before it's taken," Susan Clancy said.

CIGO Unaware of Legal Ban

Meanwhile, in Cape Breton, Scott Landry in The Hawk's newsroom told a Globe and Mail reporter that his broadcast was "Good stuff — we're having a lot of fun doing it."

But when he was told it was being heard across the country in violation of the law, he said, "What? I wasn't aware of it."

Minutes later, at 9:10pm, The Hawk pulled the plug on its Internet feed.

The election taxed the Internet's abilities to the limit. At the height of the ballot counting, between 10:00pm and 10:30pm, most Internet sites posting election results experienced major problems. The CBC results page took three to four minutes to load completely, and even at one point appeared to have crashed, but recovered soon after. And the CTV Web site crashed completely shortly after 10:15pm.

Among other Web sites publishing results, the National Post crashed several times after 10:30pm, and was completely off-line at 10:50pm, while CANOE was slow all night long.

The Globe and Mail's Web site, globeandmail.com, was the only Web site not to crash in the hour and a quarter after it started posting results.

Elections Canada, which supplies news media with the results and posts them on its Web site as well, was agonizingly slow, but the results were complete.

Source:
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate/
B/20001127/winternet_radioel?tf=RT/fullstory_Eve.html&cf=RT/
config-neutral&slug=winternet_radioel&date=20001127
&archive=RTGAM&site=SpecialEvents

Burnaby man breaks election rules on Net

Site with eastern results records half-million hits in two hours

Internet surfers got a sneak peek at the Liberal revival in Atlantic Canada Monday, thanks to a Burnaby software developer who defied election law by posting results on the Web.

While most British Columbians had to wait until 7pm to learn that many NDP and PC seats in the East had fallen to the Liberals, Paul Bryan's Web site posted preliminary election results from Newfoundland shortly after 5pm local time, two hours before polls closed here.

Later in the afternoon, results streamed in from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and P.E.I. — making clear the Liberal resurgence in the East.

Bryan's site, ElectionResultsCanada.com, was extremely popular. By 7pm, only two hours after the first results were posted, the site had registered more than half a million hits.

Results on Bryan's site tended to lag about a half-hour to an hour behind breaking results on the Canadian Press newswire.

And the exercise was not without glitches.

At one point in the evening, the site reported that — with almost all polls reporting — former Newfoundland premier Brian Tobin was running last in his riding of Bonavista-Trinity-Conception with only five per cent of the vote. But within minutes, the site was changed to show that Tobin had won his riding handily.

Bryan said the mistake was the result of a typing error, since he was posting all the results on his site himself.

In all, by the time polls closed in B.C., Bryan's site had results for 29 of the 32 Atlantic ridings. (He was unable to get any information on three of the 10 ridings in New Brunswick.)

Since polls in Ontario and Quebec closed only a half-hour before those in B.C., thanks to staggered voting times introduced in 1997, results from those provinces were not on Bryan's Web site early enough to make a difference to B.C. voters.

Bryan's primary source of information was a team of about a dozen volunteers scattered across the country who watched local news coverage and e-mailed results to him.

Radio Stations Inadvertently Broadcast Results

But Bryan also monitored the Web sites of local radio stations in Atlantic Canada that — while technically not supposed to make results available Canada-wide — had forgotten to shut off their Internet broadcasts.

"This whole system has more holes in it than Swiss cheese," Bryan said. "This law is crazy."

Broadcasting election results to the west before polls close is a violation of Section 329 of the Elections Act and carries a maximum fine of $25,000.

Bryan has for weeks been publicly vowing to defy the election law — and for most of that time he did not hear from Elections Canada.

However, last week he received a letter warning him of the prohibition — and of the fine. "It's certainly given me pause," he said, but he decided to soldier on.

It is not clear to what extent Canadians used the Internet to get information during the election campaign. But for expatriate Canadians, the Internet has been a vital source of information. Susan Chung, originally from Victoria, moved to California's Silicon Valley with her husband a year ago. "Canadian news never appears in the Valley," she said. Web sites for Canadian newspapers have become a staple of Chung's daily Web surfing, and Monday night she was monitoring the results online at Elections Canada's official Web site.

[The Vancouver Sun, 28 November 2000]

B.C. man flouts election rules

Posts election results on Web before polls close

VANCOUVER — A B.C. resident defied the federal Elections Act last night and began posting election results from Atlantic Canada on his Web site before polls closed in British Columbia.

"If federal-election results are available somewhere in Canada, I will make them available to anyone anywhere on the net," Paul Bryan, an Internet software developer, said on his Web site. "Welcome to the information age."

The Web site — www.electionresultscanada.com — began publishing the unofficial results from New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia two hours before the polls closed in British Columbia.

The polls in the Atlantic provinces closed at 4:30pm Pacific time.

Mr. Bryan said he lined up volunteers in Eastern Canada to provide him with results through the night.

In constrast to the United States, Canadian voters are officially shielded from knowing who's ahead until after the polls close in their provinces. This is meant to keep voters from being influenced by early returns.

Publicly broadcasting these results to British Columbia before the polls close is a violation of Section 329 of the Elections Act, and carries a maximum fine of $25,000. "If you are prematurely broadcasting results, you are breaking the law. That's the bottom line," Susan Clancy of Elections Canada said yesterday.

Mr. Bryan posted a letter on his Web site from Johanne Massicotte, counsel to the Commissioner of Canada Elections, stating: "We trust that, as you are now aware of the prohibition, you will comply with the Canada Elections Act by refraining to publish the results until all polls across Canada have closed on election day."

Ms. Clancy said charges may be brought against Mr. Bryan, or the commissioner may investigate the Internet broadcast.

But Mr. Bryan said that election gag laws have no place in a free and democratic society. "Ordinary citizens must step up and challenge such laws or else face losing their rights altogether," he wrote on his Web site.

[The Globe and Mail, 28 November 2000]

2000 November 27

Rising Sea Level

Online Exploration of the World-Wide Impact
of Global Warming on Coastline Communities

Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers
in Halifax, 26-29 November

Using the Web for collaboration, research, discussion,
and analysis, journalists will work through a process
to understand and present the issue

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Nov. 27 /CNW/ — Knowledge House Inc. (TSE:KHI) today launched Rising Seas, an international, Internet-based demonstration of collaborative, problem-based learning (CPBL), for a gathering of 700 international education leaders attending the 14th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (14CCEM) in Halifax November 26-29, 2000.

Over the course of the next three days, two virtual teams of high school students based in Halifax, Ottawa and Bermuda will work together collaboratively and online to explore the world-wide impact of the rising sea level.

The participating Nova Scotia students will actually be on-site at the Commonwealth Conference in Halifax, and both teams will include students from Warwick Academy in Bermuda, Gloucester High School in Ontario, and Parrsboro Regional High School in Nova Scotia.

Communication and interaction among all three locations will occur through a suite of online collaboration tools (including voice and text chat, Web cameras and Web-based document sharing software) Knowledge House is integrating in its recently announced SmarterTeams® e-learning platform.

"At Knowledge House, we believe that a collaborative, problem-based approach to learning is key to creating expert learners," said Louisa Horne, Senior Vice President, Knowledge House Inc. "CPBL programs combine the power of the Internet and related technologies with customized, authentic scenarios to actively engage learners, and ultimately advance learning outcomes for all participants. Rising Seas is just one example of how Knowledge House effectively integrates technology with curriculum to surpass established learning outcomes and provide a solid foundation for lifelong learning."

"Rising Seas" is a multi-disciplinary challenge, integrating learning from global geography, biology, mathematics, English and computer-related studies (see description below). The curriculum included in the demonstration meets learning outcomes of the Atlantic Provinces Education Foundation (APEF) and the Ontario Ministry of Education. Web-based research and Geographic Information System (GIS) technology will also be an integral part of the learning experience. In addition to addressing specific learning objectives, the interactive program will help learners develop the critical skills they need to live and work in the knowledge economy: problem solving, critical thinking, consensus building, conflict resolution and effective online and team communication.

The teams will share their work with interested delegates throughout the Commonwealth Conference, and will publish their research results on the final day of the conference. Their report will be posted on the 14CCEM web site (www.14CCEM.com), making it available to the global community. Rising Seas is one module in a suite of CPBL learning programs developed by Knowledge House, designed to be accessed from home and school settings.

Knowledge House is an education services company. Knowledge House was recently named New Business of the Year by the Metropolitan Halifax Chamber of Commerce and ranked by Atlantic Progress Magazine as the company with the largest year-over-year growth in sales and employees among the Top 101 Businesses in Atlantic Canada.

Students from Parrsboro Regional High School
(L-R) Travis Anderson, Erin McCarthy,
Justin Gilbert and Robin Roeslen,
at work on the Rising Seas project.

Students from Parrsboro Regional High School
(L-R) Bridget Harroun, Tricia Boland, and Bradley Forbes,
talk to the students at Warwick Academy in Bermuda
with Senator The Honourable L. Milton Scott,
Minister of Education for Bermuda.

Conference delegates

(L-R) Moderator: Dr. Esther Williams, University Librarian,
Laucala Campus, University of the South Pacific, Fiji
Dr. David Nostbakken, President and CEO, WETV Foundation, Canada
Peter Holt, National Operations Manager,
Outback Digital Network, Australia

Rising Seas Description

The program begins with a scenario inviting participating student teams to assume the roles of investigative journalists for a contemporary e-zine — Planet at Risk. They will be asked to prepare an article for a well-informed, environmentally conscious audience on a topic of major global concern — rising sea levels.

After viewing a video that establishes the atmosphere and setting for the problem, the aspiring journalists meet their virtual editor. The editor explains, through the use of instant messaging and e-mail, how the journalists will work as e-zine teams to assess the issue of rising sea levels.

Using the Web for collaboration, research, discussion, and analysis, the journalists will work through a process for problem solving to understand and present the issue. They will also work with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. Throughout their learning, students will be energized and motivated by ongoing messages from their editor. They will file progress reports and share their work with interested delegates throughout the 14CCEM. They will apply all of the knowledge and skills acquired through the project, to analyze their findings and publish their final e-zine articles to the e-zine Web site. Their report will also be posted on the 14CCEM web site (www.14CCEM.com), making it publicly-available all over the world.

Source:
Knowledge House Inc. news release, 27 November 2000
http://www.newswire.ca/releases/November2000/27/c8262.html

References:
14CCEM website — The purpose of this website is to provide information about the 14th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (14CCEM) taking place in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, November 27-30, 2000...
http://www.14CCEM.com/
Rising Seas
http://www.14CCEM.com/RisingSeas.html

Knowledge House Inc. website
http://www.knowledgehouse.net/
Rising Seas
http://www.knowledgehouse.net/RisingSeas/index.html

Gloucester High School, 2060 Ogilvie Road, Gloucester, Ontario
http://www3.sympatico.ca/gloucester.hs/schoolprofile/
http://www.octranspo.com/pi/Students_info/Gloucester.htm

Warwick Academy, 117 Middle Road, Warwick, Bermuda (founded 1662)
http://www.warwickacad.bm/

IBM Computer Bus at the 14th Conference
of Commonwealth Education Ministers in Halifax.
(L-R) J. Robert Renouf, Director of Finance,
Chignecto-Central Regional School Board,
(which operates the Parrsboro Regional High School)
and Ron Donnelly, Computer Bus Driver, IBM

Conference delegates inside the IBM Computer School Bus.

References:
Chignecto-Central Regional School Board, Truro, Nova Scotia
http://www.ccrsb.ednet.ns.ca/
1-800-66LEARN, IBM Canada K-12 Educational Software
http://www.can.ibm.com/k12/software/order.html

2000 November 28

Nova Scotia and Newfoundland Cut Off
from North American Telecommunications Network

Water Main Contractor Digs Into Fibre-Optic Cable

Amherst residents lost that long-distance feeling Tuesday, November 28th. They also lost Internet connections and couldn't use bank machines or debit cards after an excavator involved in installing a water line sliced Maritime Tel and Tel's main fibre-optic line linking Nova Scotia's and Newfoundland's phone systems with those across Canada. An MTT employee holds the cut fibre-optic cable

An MTT employee holds the cut fibre-optic cable

The incident occurred just outside Amherst near an entrance to the Trans-Canada Highway, only a few kilometres from the New Brunswick border. Cellphones were useless unless people travelled to New Brunswick, calling 911 was impossible and people couldn't even reach MTT's 811 or 1-800 service numbers.

The line was cut about 11am, interrupting long-distance calls from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to the rest of the country for about an hour.

MTT supervisor Bob Sutherland said most Nova Scotians didn't notice a disruption in data, Internet or cellphone services because the company was able to quickly divert the calls of all but 25,000 Amherst-area customers through other lines. Those in Amherst were left unable to make any but local calls.

But the loss of 911 service didn't prompt the town's emergency measures co-ordinator, Ed Childs, to declare an emergency. He did issue a warning, repeated several times on the radio, urging residents to call the fire station, police department or hospital if they needed emergency help. The three services were in constant contact through a radio dispatcher. Those who couldn't use their phones at all were advised to go to the fire or police stations or to the hospital. Extra police patrols were arranged, but officers didn't report any incidents related to the disruption in service.

People suddenly can't get money they need

For many Amherst residents, shopping was the biggest challenge — especially for those who wanted to use credit or debit cards.

Most businesses put up signs warning customers they w

2000 November 16

Salmon River Bridge Construction Underway On Abutments Built in 1931, 69 Years Ago

Main Suspension Cables Completed

Pedestrian Cable Suspension Bridge over Salmon River

Canada Gazette, 24 June 2000

2000 November 17

Thanks to to Bill and Melinda Gates

Nova Scotia LegislatureRESOLUTION NO. 3356

2000 November 17

Public Transit in Lunenburg County

2000 November 17

Canadian Internet Use Keeps Climbing

Survey Shows Canada Leads the World in Internet Use

PricewaterhouseCoopers study done to further the understanding of Internet applications on a household level and to identify trends in take up rates

Canadians Lead the World in Internet Use, Subscription to High-Speed Access Grows

16 November 2000

About the Canadian Consumer Technology Study

2000 November 18

New Suffixes Ease Dot-Com Crunch

Say hello to .biz, .museum and .info

Seven New Domains Are Chosen to Join Popular .com

Vinton Cerf Named Chairman of ICANN

18 November 2000

ICANN Announces Selections For New Top-Level Domains

16 November 2000

The ICANN Resolution — New TLDs

16 November 2000

"Selection of New TLD Proposals for Negotiation"

Commentary: ICANN Should Approve More Top Level Domains

ICANN Use More Web Suffixes by Declan McCullagh The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed Monday, November 20, 2000

2000 November 18

Nova Scotia to Levy 43¢ Fee for 911 Service

"It's roughly about $6 a year — it's not a major thing"

Hidden telephone charges

Sixteen Per Cent Collection Fee

43 Cents per Phone Line per Month will go to 911, Poison-Control Centre

18 November 2000

2000 November 18

Tufts Cove Number Two Generator Running on Natural Gas

NSPI Generates Electricity With Sable Gas

New Energy Source Gets Trial Run

NSP's fuel challenge

Market price to determine if Dartmouth plant burns gas, oil

2000 November 20

Intel's Pentium 4 Chip Arrives

Pentium 4 chip ready to ship — includes faster audio, video

Intel Introduces the Pentium® 4 Processor

The Intel® NetBurst® Micro-Architecture and Intel® 850 Chipset

Faster processing of video and audio

Pricing

2000 November 22

Aboriginal Peoples' Television Network

Nova Scotia LegislatureRESOLUTION NO. 3462

2000 November 22

EMO Gets Backup Generator

2000 November 23

MT&T Incorporation Act Amended

Bill 24An Act to Amend Chapter 156 of the Acts of 1910, an Act to Incorporate the Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company, Limited

Nova Scotia LegislatureSecond Reading of Bill 24 An Act to Amend Chapter 156 of the Acts of 1910...

16 November 1999

2000 November 27

Federal General ElectionOn The Internet

Federal Party Campaign Websites

Election Day: November 27

Other Registered Political Parties(listed alphabetically) all of these URLs were valid as of 27 November 2000

Websites by/for Federal Party Constituency Associations in Nova Scotia

Candidates Nominated in Nova Scotia

2000 November 27

Nova Scotia Radio Station Breaks Web Blackout RuleBy Mistake

CIGO Says World-Wide Broadcast Was Accidental

Web Sites Defy Broadcast Ban, Others Crash

Globe and Mail Updateby Jack Kapica Posted 11:13pm, 27 November 2000

CIGO Unaware of Legal Ban

Burnaby man breaks election rules on Net

Site with eastern results records half-million hits in two hours

Radio Stations Inadvertently Broadcast Results

B.C. man flouts election rules

Posts election results on Web before polls close

2000 November 27

Rising Sea Level

Salmon River Bridge Construction Underway
On Abutments Built in 1931, 69 Years Ago

Nova Scotia Legislature
RESOLUTION NO. 3356

Survey Shows Canada Leads the World
in Internet Use

PricewaterhouseCoopers study done
to further the understanding
of Internet applications on a household level
and to identify trends in take up rates

Canadians Lead the World in Internet Use,
Subscription to High-Speed Access Grows

Commentary:
ICANN Should Approve More Top Level Domains

ICANN Use More Web Suffixes
by Declan McCullagh
The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed
Monday, November 20, 2000

43 Cents per Phone Line per Month will go to 911,
Poison-Control Centre

Tufts Cove Number Two Generator
Running on Natural Gas

The Intel® NetBurst® Micro-Architecture
and Intel® 850 Chipset

Nova Scotia Legislature
RESOLUTION NO. 3462

Bill 24
An Act to Amend Chapter 156 of the Acts of 1910,
an Act to Incorporate
the Maritime Telegraph and Telephone Company, Limited

Nova Scotia Legislature
Second Reading of Bill 24
An Act to Amend Chapter 156 of the Acts of 1910...

Federal General Election
On The Internet

Other Registered Political Parties
(listed alphabetically)
all of these URLs were valid as of 27 November 2000

Websites by/for Federal Party Constituency Associations
in Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia Radio Station
Breaks Web Blackout Rule
By Mistake

Globe and Mail Update
by Jack Kapica
Posted 11:13pm, 27 November 2000

Online Exploration of the World-Wide Impact
of Global Warming on Coastline Communities

Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers
in Halifax, 26-29 November

Using the Web for collaboration, research, discussion,
and analysis, journalists will work through a process
to understand and present the issue

Nova Scotia and Newfoundland Cut Off
from North American Telecommunications Network