On Wednesday Saskatchewan Labour Minister, David Forbes, announced the governments plan to increase minimum wage. It will be increased over three intervals. The first increase will increase the minimum wage from the current $7.95 to $8.25 on January 1st, 2008. Then it will be increased again May 1, 2008 to $8.60 per hour. Then the final increase will occur one year after that, May 1 2009, and set the minimum wage to $9.25 per hour. Increasing the minimum wage can be helpful and harmful to business. On one hand it might cause more people to look for jobs and might increase the amount of people willing to work. On the other hand, doing business will cost more as more money will be spent on labour. Right now with a booming economy, finding employees is hard to do and this wage increase might help out. Could this be a pre election tactic by the NDP to gain votes? Most probably, expect an election call soon.
Yearly Archives: 2007
Halo 3 First Week Sales top 2.63 million
Halo 3 broke all records this week selling around 2.63 million copies in just five days, 2.3 million coming on day one alone. The release of the most hyped title of the year pushed Xbox360 hardware sales to 125,000 for the week, beating Nintendo’s Wii console but still not able to match the juggernaut that is the DS. If you look at how many copies were sold and multiply that by the average cost, of say $60, you get a total of $138 million dollars. It is interesting that when you compare this total to almost any other form of entertainment that video games are truly a major form entertainment now. Ten years ago people would laugh if you said a video game would become the highest grossing first day entertainment medium. This is great news for Microsoft who has been pursuing a long journey into peoples living rooms to control their entertainment. This is more than just a positive sign for Microsoft but a positive sign for the entire video games industry.
Halo DS Was Real — First-ever Video Proof
A while back IGN Wii editor-in-chief Matt Casamassina made a blog post, claiming that he had played Halo on Nintendo DS. Well, he’s updated his blog today with proof that such a game at one time really did exist. He released a short video clip of him playing some pre-release build of Halo on DS. The game itself has been said to resemble Goldeneye Rogue Agent. I think it looks like a lot of fun and it would have been interesting to be able to play it on the DS. There are a lot of rumors floating around that Bungie is going to be developing for other the Microsoft soon. Which seems hard to believe as Microsoft bought them and have been making games for Microsoft since then. I have to say that this Halo DS would sell quite a few copies and really provide some awesome multi-player action on the DS.
Threat of Recession Looms in Canada
The Canadian economy has been the talk of the town recently with the dollar reaching parity with the American dollar for the first time since 1976 and the housing market really heating up. These things are both offsetting the effects of inflation and helping to keep the economy running along smoothly. Luckily our economy right now is really based on trading natural resources and with our agriculture. Grain prices are reaching their highest levels in a long time and thats helping farmers make money. Oil is always at or near the highest level it has ever been so thats helping out the Oil companies. The problem with such a hot economy is that it is bound to cool off eventually its just a matter of when. The USA is having a lot of problems recently with its crisis on sub prime lending, a cooling housing market and the poor state of their economy. A lot of that will have trickle down effects into Canada. Today, to add to the whole mess, is a strike by GM workers at their Saginaw plant. This is going to cause over 80,000 workers in Canada to be layed off as a result of the disruption in the automobile creation chain. With such a large lay off this will be a devastating blow to our economy. Unemployment numbers are going to rise big time and the longer the strike lasts the more harm that will be caused to the economy.
So with the high Canadian dollar hurting exports and then the GM layoffs raising unemployment, the economy is going to be in for a great shock. It is hard to believe that this will all just pass by and we will be unaffected. My prediction is for a recession in the USA followed by a recession in Canada. The USA will be harder hit but Canada will be going along for the ride with this one.
The Canadian Dollar is Officially Worth More than the American Dollar
Not since 1976 has the Canadian dollar been worth more than the American Dollar. It has been a long road with times where the currency was worth almost half as much as the US Dollar. Times have changed and the USA currency isn’t the machine that it once was. The rising dollar has less to due with the super strong Canadian Economy and more to do with the very weak and troubled US economy. When you compare the Canadian Dollar to the Euro, it has been rising slightly but it is basically the same level it was a year ago. 1 Euro is 71 cents Canadian. One thing for certain with the new found parity with the US dollar is that some prices are going to have to change soon. Most prices have been set at an exchange rate of 1 CDN = .80 USD and that is no longer the case. It would be nice if all the prices of goods fell in Canada but I expect that the United States will have to raise their prices more to keep up with the rest of the world. This dramatic rise in the Canadian dollar has sure helped to keep inflation very low. Hopefully our exporters won’t be affected too badly by the change and the economy can keep on chugging along.
Original Command and Conquer released as freeware.
Command and Conquer just had their 12th anniversary of its landmark RTS franchise. To kick the celebration off, they have a special surprise which new and old Command & Conquer fans will enjoy. EA is providing the original Command & Conquer Gold as a free download, compatible for Windows XP! The game itself is a classic and very much playable today. I love when developers release their games as freeware long after the game itself has fallen away from public sale. Thanks EA for giving this classic back to the gamers.
Sask Wheat Pool … Viterra
The Sask Wheat Pool (TSX: SWP) officially announced their new name for their company today in Balgonie. A new name was needed for the company as a way to show the recent merger of the Sask Wheat Pool and Agricore United. The new name is Viterra which isn’t a word you can find in the dictionary. The word itself seems to contain the word terra which is latin for earth or land. With a made up word like Viterra it will take some getting used to for farmers who have been using the Wheat Pool name since 1924. With the amount of influence the company has on the Canadian prairies we will be seeing a lot of the new name.  To me, it sounds a little like Viagra, so maybe its just what this old company needs.
Troubled Times Ahead For Sony
It has been rumoured that Sony is going to drop the price on the newest model of their Playstation 3 once the existing supplies of the 60gb model have been sold through. They are expecting the old models will be sold out by October which just so happens to be the time that Microsoft AAA titles will be releasing for the Xbox 360. The 80gb PS3 is currently retailing for $599 and the 60gb is selling for $499. With news of future price drops it only leads to speculation that Sony fears they are losing the console war. Sony has a lot riding on their console as it is also pushing their Blu Ray movie format. Consumers will ultimately decide whether this price drop will be enough to keep the PS3 alive and the Blu Ray format for that matter.
CPU Desk – Made From Several Hundred Old CPUs [ Pics ]
Matt Tovey collected several hundred old CPUs during a company upgrade and made this awesome desktop! Then he posted the process with pictures. This is a very clever idea that is a way to reuse all those old CPUs that are no longer useful. I would have a hard time doing this with just my old processors. Either I would have a really small table or it would be a table with a very small amount of CPUs. Lets see… a 486, a pentium, a 386… Yep a very small table indeed. Someone should make these things and start selling them. It would have to be a bit pricey since it would take a while to make but the old CPUs can be found for very cheap. This isn’t something that everyone is going to have and good luck seeing it in an Ikea catalogue.
Paramount and Dreamworks drop BLURAY – go HD DVD.
This is wonderful news for the HD DVD camp. Just when people were talking about the end of the format wars approaching this can of worms got opened up. Now I know they probably just didn’t choose to make more money on sales, but I believe this will force a lot of consumers to take a better look at the formats and decide what is right for them. I know I am a fan of HD DVD as I own an Xbox 360. I don’t like the shenanigans that Sony constantly pulls when they talk about their formats. They really like to create the most proprietary formats and throw it down the throats of their consumers. With Paramount and Dreamworks HD DVD will be able to enjoy the Shrek series, Star Trek movies, Transformers, as well as a large number in their collections. The format war is back on!