Let this be a refresher lesson for everyone depressed at the deplorable state of where the IT world has wandered of late: Open may yet win the Browser Wars!

Noted today on the Mozilla press page, the Mozilla Foundation has joined forces with, dig this, a who's who of old old-school lock-in masters such as with Adobe, Apple, and Macromedia, together with competitor Opera and free-software sugar-daddy Sun Microsystems, and together they have a plan to create a new generation of open web browser plugins with an aim to "allow web developers to offer richer web browsing experiences, helping to maintain innovation and standards on the Net."

Without these improvements, enhanced interactivity could remain tied to a single, proprietary browser solution, which reduces choice and leads to monoculture on the web.

Hmmm ... oh, really? Sound like anybody we know?

This new initiative makes enhanced interactivity available without locking users in to a specific computing platform or web browser. This will allow users to choose among a range of browsers without sacrificing interactivity.

Somebody, I say, somebody say Amen.

[ Source: Mozilla Foundation Announces More Open, Scriptable Plugins ]

You might call this "Kill Bill II" -- in what has to be one of the shortest articles ever to grace the Globetechnology, and on a page where half the available ad-space has been purchased by Microsoft (how do you continue to do your business with such nasty people?), an anonymous Markham reporter files the lip-service story on how the Ontario Schools are fed up, and they just aren't going to take it anymore. Funding for schools, afterall, is supposed to go to educating the children, and as we all know, today there is a choice:

The Star Office productivity suite is being described as part of a movement to deliver superior technology to students while keeping spending in check.

According to the Globe, there's not much more to tell ... except that it is the largest- StarOffice 7 delivery in North America, with more than 2.5 million students having access to the alternative office suite, but that's hardly newsworthy.  read more »

We've been saying for a long time that wireless is going to be the strong player for the last mile. FTTH is all very nice to dream about, but the reality of the geography favours having no cat in the way, and the latest results from StatsCan seem to agree with us.

The wireless industry's operating profits, used as an indicator of its financial performance, reached more than $1.1 billion in 2002. This was 19 times the level of only $60.2 million in 2001. Wireless operating revenues increased 14.9% to more than $7.6 billion.

The story in the wireline industry was sharply different. Operating profits fell 13.6% to nearly $3.9 billion, as revenues declined 3.1% to $24.0 billion.

[ Source: Telecommunications statistics 2002 ]