Bruce Toews

The minimum wage is not a living wage. With the cost of everything being what it is, you can't reasonably be expected to have a McJob and live comfortably, especially if you have a family to feed.

Many people believe that the answer to this problem is to raise the minimum wage. People don't have enough money, so the argument goes, okay, give them more money.

That sounds great on paper. But there is a problem. The value of money is fluid. And rarely, if ever, does that value increase. There was a time when you could actually buy stuff with a dollar. Imagine that. You could buy a whole lunch with a dollar. But no more. Why? Because of inflation. A dollar today is not as valuable, by a long shot, as a dollar in 1940 was.

So why not raise the minimum wage? Like I said, it sounds good. But here's the thing: no matter what you set the minimum wage as, people who earn it will still be making the minimum wage. Whether the minimum wage is 75 cents an hour, like it was in the early fifties, or fifteen dollars an hour, which is the goal for many jurisdictions, it's still the minimum wage. You raise the minimum wage, employers are required to pay more in salaries; those salary increases get passed on to the customer by way of price increases, and with those price increases comes inflation and a corresponding devaluing of currency. And it doesn't stop there. I'm going to use made-up numbers here to make a point. Say the minimum wage is $10 an hour. You start working for a company at minimum wage. In a year, your salary will be raised to $15 an hour. But in a year, the minimum wage goes up to $15 an hour. The net result? You've worked for your employer for a year, but now your salary increase is equivalent to the minimum wage increase, and so both you and the new guy who just started working for the company are making the same thing, minimum wage. So if an employer wants to be fair, she not only needs to increase the salary of her minimum wage employees, but she also needs to increase, proportionally, the salaries scales of her other workers, further adding to the devaluing of the currency.

I see two potential solutions here, neither of which is perfect, but I do think they're both better than chasing windmills by increasing the minimum wage. First, you need to get people off of minimum wage. Instead of just raising the floor, get people off of the floor. One way to do it might be to legislate that the minimum wage can only be paid to an employee for a set amount of time, after that a certain percentage of salary increase above the minimum wage is required. This idea would have to be refined as it is open to some abuse, but it's a start. The other idea, and this one isn't mine, would be to raise the income tax threshold, so that people making minimum wage do not pay income taxes. This would stretch the spending power for the minimum wage earner without devaluing the currency as quickly.

No, I don't think raising minimum wage solves problems. The problems are real and need to be addressed, and the best way to do that, I think, is to reduce the number of people making that minimum wage.

The phone rang. I answered. It was Dad. "Hi," he said brightly. "I was just wondering if you were watching curling on TV." He knew perfectly well that to me, watching curling on TV made watching paint dry seem incredibly exciting. But that didn't matter to Dad, he just wanted an excuse to call me - not that he needed one, of course.

This was one of those father-son rituals that got repeated often with my dad. Dad liked them, and he knew I did too. Looking back, I realize that much of our relationship was steeped in happy traditions: traditions which might not have seemed like much to the casual observer, but which meant the world to Dad and me.

I remember the summer when I was twelve. We had a ritual, you see. Most afternoons, Dad and I would go into town. During the car rides, we'd be listening to old-time radio shows I'd recorded the previous night off the radio, Dad reliving memories, me still discovering the theater of the mind he'd introduced me to three years earlier. We'd get into town, and go to the mall. Dad would give me a couple of bucks and I'd walk down the hall and talk a bit with my long-suffering friends at the local Radio Shack while Dad went to the coffee shop to discuss the latest pig-castration techniques or last night's hockey game with his farmer friends. Once I'd outstayed my welcome at Radio Shack, I'd go back down the hall to the Coke machine and grab a can of the sacred beverage, and stand beside the machine drinking my Coke and talking to any school friends who happened by. When Dad was finished having coffee, he'd come for me and we'd run any additional necessary errands, then go home. It was a wonderful tradition, which, thankfully, I appreciated while it was happening. It wasn't without its humorous moments, though. Once, while standing beside the Coke machine contentedly drinking my liquid wonderfulness, an elderly gentleman started asking me questions. He was trying to get me to say that I was being neglected by my dad who was off drinking coffee. Of course I knew I wasn't being neglected, and said so. I warned Dad that he might find himself being accused of neglect, and when I told him the story, he laughed. He was confident enough in himself and in me that anyone who knew us knew I was in no way being neglected. It was a wonderful summer.

My parents believed that I should try everything, and Dad did his part to make sure it happened. Taking me to organ lessons, guitar lessons, figure skating classes, choir and band practises, church youth functions - Dad took me to his share of these. When I wanted to try curling - playing is infinitely more fun than watching - Dad was right there, happily providing assistance. When I'd go around the province singing at fundraisers, if Dad could think of a joke for me to make at his expense, he'd hand it to me and encourage me to tell it.

In my darkest hours, Dad was there for me, encouraging me to weather the storms on my own if I could, but making it clear he had my back if I couldn't. During times of celebration, if I wanted someone to share my joy, I just grabbed the phone and called Dad. If I'd done something wrong and needed correcting, Dad explained the reasons to me, he didn't just correct.

Dad had a dream, when I was growing up. Someday, he told me many times, I would have a machine that could read books to me. He went to every seminar and workshop on the subject that he could, brought home all the literature that he could, and never let the dream fade in my mind. In the meantime, he read to me. And read to me. And read to me. Then he read to me some more. During hockey games on TV, we developed another little ritual: Dad watching the game, and reading Hardy Boys books to me during the commercials and intermissions. This frustrated young Bruce, who hated waiting during the plays, and sometimes when Frank and Joe were in real trouble in the middle of chapter 19, Dad would relent and read right through a playoff game.

Finally, the day came when Dad was able to realize his dream for me, and he mortgaged his tractor inorder for me to get the reading machine he'd so often told me about. Mom, every bit as wonderful as Dad, went straight to the bookstore and grabbed me a Star Trek book to read on my new machine. Everyone should have parents as wonderful as mine.

Fast forward to May of 2001. Dad is on his deathbed. We've said our goodbyes. No regrets form him, none from me. We know we have, at most, a couple of days more with each other. What do we do at this point? We find time to joke around with each other one last time. Why not?

Dad slipped into unconsciousness shortly after that. I had the privilege of singing to him many times during his final hospitalization, singing the hymns he loved so much, and which he and Mom had taught me to love so much in return. Dad was ready now for the one thing he'd wanted the most in all his life, to be with Jesus. I was holding him in my arms when he took his last breath. Though crying inconsolably, I wouldn't have had it any other way, and I am so grateful to my family for giving me the privilege.

I appear to be the only one in the family who remember what song was sung at Dad's grave when we shoveled the dirt back: "Safe in the Arms of Jesus". How appropriate.

Dad led by example. He hated the sentence "Do as I say and not as I do." Dad wasn't perfect, not by a longshot. If anyone had suggested he was, he would be the first to strenuously object. But Dad was the wisest man I have ever known so far in my life. If I grow to be a tenth as wise as he was, I will be a thousand times wiser than I am today. Thanks, Dad, for everything, including marrying my mom. I can't wait until we're together again so I can introduce you to my own bride.

In reading the social media entries (Twitter, blogs, etc.) of my fellow blind people, it seems to me that some blind people have but three expectations of sighted people: 1) make all the accomodations, behavioral changes, and attitude adjustments demanded of them immediately and without question; 2) Completely ignore their blindness when they don't want attention drawn to it; and 3) know intuitively, without fail, exactly when 1) and 2) apply, and how to comply. Oh, and we have a fourth expectation as well: 4) if 2) above causes trouble to the blind person, sighted people are to compensate for it immediately.

Essentially, these blind people want sighted people to be at their beck and call when they're needed, to fade into the background when they're not, and woe to the person who can't figure it out on the first try. These blind people launch vicious, bitter attacks on the sighted, and then wonder why so many sighted people don't seem to know what to do, and why they don't do it cheerily. They see every failure to comply with the four demands as discrimination, and they tend to adopt a take-no-prisoners attitude on social media. When someone suggests that maybe we need to nicely let sighted people know what we need and don't need from them, these people will almost invariably say that they don't have the energy to educate sighted people, but it never occurs to them that throwing a tantrum in a blog takes way more energy than letting someone know what they need and perhaps even getting a new friend out of the deal.

Now don't get me wrong. Discrimination and shabby treatment do exist. And I agree, that such behavior is unacceptable, and that perpetrators need to be held accountable for it. I also know that blind people will have bad days just like everyone else when things just rub them the wrong way. But by and large, I've found, sighted people aren't on some kind of campaign to make the lives of blind people miserable, as some of the tantrum-throwers seem to believe. Generally, I've found sighted people to be well-meaning and wanting to help, and a good majority of them are willing to listen to us when we try to explain something to them that they may not have had experience with before.

Part of the reason that it's important not to react in anger, bitterness and tyrades is that people are conditioned. If a sighted person holds a door open for a blind person, and the blind person turns around and gets angry at the sighted person for doing it (believe me, it happens), that sighted person is going to feel much less inclined to help a future blind person who may genuinely need assistance of some kind. Result? The blind person's ten seconds of "righteous rage" has netted losses all around.

The fact is, how to deal with blind people isn't always as intuitive as some of us may think it should be. Sighted people sometimes need this stuff explained in a caring, understanding way, and sometimes it falls on us to do the explaining. And those explanations will yield much higher dividends than railing against society, than throwing a fit, than insisting that every misunderstanding is a blatant act of discrimination. It also means that, when there truly is discrimination to be called out, when people truly do treat us badly and need to be held accountable, our words will carry more weight, and in this day and age when blind people need all the voices they can get, that's always a good thing.

Over the last number of years, I've heard the term "freedom of the press" invoked many times by the media, meaning a whole lot of things. When the government doesn't invite the media everywhere the media wants to go, the media cry foul, saying that freedom of the press is being violated. When the government doesn't release all the information to the media that it wants, the media make the same claim. I've even heard one media person say, and this is not a direct quote, "no one should lay a hand on another person [this was in reference to the alleged bodyslamming that took place a few weeks ago in the United States], especially a member of the media," as if freedom of the press gives media people an extra degree of protection from physical violence that the average person doesn't and shouldn't have."

So what does freedom of the press mean? Does it grant the media rights to go where it wants, to see what it wants, and to be even more protected from harm than the rest of us? Not in Canada, certainly, where all the above claims have been made. Canada has freedom of the press, certainly. But, lest you members of the media think this grants you special powers, all you're guaranteed is the right to express your opinions in the press. For that matter, it gives me, and any other lowly mortals the right to express our opinions in the press too. So the next time the government doesn't invite the media to an event and you have to dig for a story like your foreparents did before you, or next time they won't just hand you the document you want, or next time you and the fellow next to you gets a black eye and you want more protection than the other guy, don't invoke freedom of the press. It doesn't apply. If you want to express the opinion that you've been hard done by, though, that you can do, your freedom of the press guarantees it.

I've talked a lot in these entries about things in my childhood which I took for granted, underappreciated, etc. One of the things that does not fall into that category, though, is my mom's delicious home-made bread.

This was not at all an uncommon scene for me growing up. My brother and I would get off the bus after school. Walking down the driveway to our farm, I would smell the incredible aroma of bread baking in the oven. "Mom's making buns," I would casually point out to my brother. My brother couldn't smell it, he thought I was just making it up. But sure enough, when we got inside, that's exactly what was happening, and I was greated with a plate of piping hot buns that you couldn't touch comfortably, they were that fresh. I'm sure these would have tasted great with butter, peanut butter, or something else on them, but I was never interested. When the buns were that hot, I just wanted to eat them as they were.

One argument that we always had in the house was with my dad, who had grown up with bread that was, to our minds, rock hard. So when Mom was baking for Dad, she had to make the buns that way. Great test of jaw muscles, to be sure, and they were still delicious, make no mistake, but I, for one, preferred my bread to be softer.

I have a memory of me as a very, very young child. Mom was baking, and she pulled a pan of buns out of the oven and, as was her habit, put them on the ironing board, covered with a clean towel, to cool. Then she left the kitchen for whatever reason. Little Brucie, that's me, was very much aware of these buns, and was also of the opinion that the soft insides were the best part of them. So while Mom was out, I proceeded to scoop the insides out of the buns, eat them, and leave the shells on the pan. I'm not positive what Mom's reaction to all this was. I seem to recall she had a very hard time scolding me, because she saw the humor in the whole thing. She did seem to get the point across, though, that this was not to be done, since I don't remember committing any such crimes again.

Less common than the buns were the loaves of home-made bread that Mom baked. These made wonderful sandwich bread, or bread and butter to go with meat and potatoes. But what was really amazing was toast made from this bread. Getting such toast was very much a rarity. Mom always insisted on using store-bought bread for toast. "You don't make toast from home-made bread," she insisted. Until a very few years ago, I thought this was some form of pride, as if to say making toast from her home-made bread was some sort of insult. She never explained it, so I had to realize on my own that the reason she did not make toast from home-made bread was that the home-made bread wasn't quite as cohesive as store-bought bread. Slices tended to disintegrate a little in the toaster, leaving crumbs and pieces of bread that had to be extracted later. When I asked her if this was her reason, she said yes it was. Why she didn't just tell me that in the first place, I don't know.

Mom is well into her seventies now. Still going strong, she is definitely slowing down, and she can't make as much wonderful food as she once did. This is okay, she's earned a rest, and the food she does make is 100% as good as it ever was. And it's something special I can enjoy from time to time, an expression of the incredible love my mom has for her four sons. I have never tasted bread that tastes exactly as my mom's home-made bread does. A lot of other things can be learned by her daughters-in-law, but there is something special about the bread that no one else has been able to emulate. When the food from mom eventually stops, I think it will be a tie between the bread and the chicken noodle soup that I miss the most. But I am so blessed to have such wonderful memories; and, while the chance is still there, may I never pass it up.

It's a long-running tradition that goes back to at least 2009: the annual Toews on the Waves Christmas Novelty Special. Even though Toews on the Waves is no more, there are two specials every year that live on. They are the Weird Al special and the Christmas novelty special. And yes, Christmas will soon be upon us, so it's time to start thinking of this year's special.

This year, the TOTW Christmas Novelty special will be airing on Saturday, December 17th, from noon until 3:00 PM Eastern time. In the UK, that's 5:00 to 8:00 PM.

For three hours, we play great Christmas novelty tunes from yesterday and today: Bob Rivers, Stan Freberg, Weird Al, Spike Jones, Bob and Doug, and so many more. And each year I try to play a few things I haven't played before, to keep things fresh, and this year will be no exception.

I will be taking requests before and during the show, so you will have plenty of opportunity to let me know what you think a good Christmas novelty show should include. You can e-mail bruce at MushroomFM dot com, or you can send a tweet with your request to @FunGuyBruce. Even if you don't have a request, I hope you'll still drop by to listen and laugh your way into the holidays, and maybe drop me a note to say hi and let me know you're there, because, as I always say, you the listeners make it fun for the Fun Guys.

So please join me on Saturday, December 18th, from noon until 3:00 PM Eastern Time, only on the Home of the Fun Guys: www.mushroomfm.com.

A joyous thing occurs tonight,
I 'wait it with such yearning,
And in twelve hours, to it
My attention will be turning.

We all have many things we like,
That please our hearts so deep,
For me, it's grammar? Clearly not,
Oh no, my friend, it's sleep.

My bed awaits, tonight I will
Be snoring up a storm!
In ecstasy, I'll lie beneath
My blanket, soft and warm.

So keep your music, booze, and such,
Books, too, you all can keep.
To me, these things, they matter not,
So long as I can sleep.

I am a prolific user of Twitter, as many reading this will no doubt know. I enjoy the social interaction, I learn a great deal from it, and I have found it much easier, as a blind person, to use Twitter than Facebook. Unfortunately for me, most of my sighted counterparts prefer Facebook to Twitter, so I do try maintaining at least a utilitarian presence there.

On Twitter, a popular practice is to either quote or retweet the tweets of someone else. This is done either to help distribute information, or perhaps to show agreement or disagreement with what someone else has said.

It's the retweeting of opinions that I want to address in this blog entry. Both a positive and a negative aspect of Twitter is the ability to respond to something very quickly. We see a tweet, decide we agree with it, and retweet it, all in the span of ten seconds or less.

The positive aspects of this practice are fairly evident: it allows for a close to real-time sharing of opinions and ideas. However, the negative aspect of quick retweeting is also very present, and needs to be considered.

People are reactionary. I read something, my gut response it to react to what I have just read according to how it makes me feel. Does it pique my interest: Do I hope someone else will be interested too? Does it make me feel happy: Is it a positive message? Does it make me feel satisfied: Does it support a point I have been trying to make? Does it make me feel vindictively satisfied: Will it put someone "in their place" or get back at someone"? Does it make me feel angry: Do I want to lash out in response? These are probably the core reactions that prompt retweets, but doubtless there are more.

Some people have a nasty habit of retweeting something that sounds good to them, but they really haven't throught through what has been said. I think all retweeters, myself included, do this from time to time, but I'm talking about those who see something, think "Yeah, yeah," and hit the retweet button reflexively. Often, when I question such a tweeter, they'll say "Oh, I don't feel that way, I was just retweeting." To me this is a fairly flimsy method of damage control.

Retweeting can be a means of disagreeing with the person whom you retweet. You do this with a tweet before or after the retweet expanding on your own position on the matter. A quoted tweet is even better, you can attach your comment right to it.

But if you send a tweet out there without a position, you are telling the world that the views expressed in what you are retweeting are also your own. this is powerful.A retweeted opinion is still an opinion, so if you sign on to an opinion by retweeting it, you had better be willing to be taken to task for that opinion just as if it had been something you wrote. If you preach love, love, love, love, love, then retweet your joy over the misfortunes of someone else, for any reason, be prepared to answer to a seeming double standard. How do you lovingly say "I wish so and so were dead", or "I'm glad so and so got hurt", etc.? You can't. but I see this sequence of events played out constantly. What people of every political and religious stripe need to realize is that it's easy to love those with whom you agree; where the "love, love, love, love, love" preaching gets put to the test is with your response to someone with whom you disagree, or to someone whom you dislike, or to someone who dislikes or even hates you. If you are unwilling to love everyone, your "love, love, love, love, love" preaching is pretty empty and meaningless.

The above protracted example is one I often see with retweets on Twitter. People need to take ownership of their retweets in the same way they do of their tweets, if they want any credibility. By all means, take issue with someone by retweeting them, but make sure it's clear that that is what you are doing. Perception is reality on Twitter nine times out of ten. Rightly or wrongly, you will be judged by readers according to how they interpet your words or the words you retweet. So thinking about not only your intent, but how your words are likely to be received, becomes paramount.

You, and I mean you, are worthy of your opinions, of your thoughts. You, and I mean you, have something to bring to the table. Bring it. And make sure we all get the meaning you intended.

When I left Internet radio earlier this year, I had no intention of coming back, at least not for a long while. I felt I'd lived out my lifelong dream of being a broadcaster, I'd taken the dream as far as I could, and I just wanted to move elsewhere and see where life tok me. Through no fault of the station or its people, the process just wasn't fun for me anymore, and I saw that as my cue to make a dignified exit. Besides that, there was this whole business of getting married that required my immediate attention.

So no one was more surprised than I was a few weeks ago, when I tuned in to Mushroom FM and heard my voice on the air again. What had happened? Had I been drafted, forced back on the threat of being force-fed Pepsi? Roped in?

The answer was the latter: I'd been roped in ... by the lure of new technology, something which, to me, is often an irresistible force.

The process itself, called voice tracking, is nothing new - it's been around for decades. The basic idea is that a broadcaster is presented with a playlist for the program to be aired, then he or she records the voice breaks for that program, and if it's done right, the listening public has no idea the poor broadcaster hasn't been sitting there all night enthusiastically introducing his or her tunes. I've heard it done, with varying degrees of transparency, since my childhood in the seventies, when a low tone was used to signal the tape machines to be in sync with each other. Pretty smart stuff, really. You might be surprised at how many "local announcers" are really professional voices from across the continent being paid to sound local.

So if the technique is not new, where does the new technology come in? Combine the ingenuity of the people behind Station Playlist, which makes much of the software that comprises the backbone of Mushroom FM, with equally ingenious forward-thinking on the part of the Mushroom FM management past and present, aided by some, dare I say it, ingenious JAWS scripting on the part of Hartgen Consultancy, and you suddenly have a system whereby a broadcaster sitting on a couch in his living room in Winnipeg (that's me) can voice track a radio program housed at, and broadcast from, the station itself in New Zealand. Throw in a lot of hard work by Mushroom FM staff to mark the spot in the songs of the station's library where the vocals begin, and you have, at least for me, all the elements to turn that new technology into the irresistible force I mentioned earlier.

The result is that I now probably put in at least as much time with Mushroom FM as I did before, but I am doing it on my terms. I have ten minutes to spare? Great, I'll voice a few more tracks for Friday's show. I have to do five fifties shows for the week? No problem, as long as they're done on time, it doesn't matter when I do them. I don't feel like hand-picking my show content? That's fine too, the computer's come up with a playlist for me that I can choose to use or override at will.

So let's take a typical program for me, one of my Funny Fridays shows. I start by logging in to the playlist editor and navigating to the time during which my show is scheduled to air. The time slot is already filled up with comedy from the station's library. I have lots of choices here. If there is a song I don't feel like playing this week, I can just remove it, and replace it with something else, either from the station's library or from my own personal library of comedy. If I decide that two songs would be better off played in a different order, I can easily, using standard cutting and pasting, move the songs around however I want them. In this way I can create themes, use what the computer has picked for me, or hand-pick what will be aired. Often I may not like what the computer has picked, but the computer's choice suggests something I'd rather play instead, which can be really advantageous.

After I've organized the playlist into the show I want to broadcast, which I may have done over several sessions in multiple days, I go back and insert the voice breaks, something which itself may be done over multiple sessions. The irresistible technology has again made this very easy. All you need is a working microphone of decent quality and an on-air presence. The software is provided by the station free of charge for you to use. You go to the song before which you want to insert your break, press two keystrokes, start talking, press another keystroke, and pat yourself on the back (optional). That's the shrot version, anyway, but it really is just that easy. If, as I am, you are prone to flubbing the simplest of lines, you can redo them to your heart's content. The software does the rest, putting the voice breaks in precisely the right locations. Because the songs in the library have markers denoting the start of the vocals, markers which the software recognizes and uses, your voice breaks will end right where the vocals start, making your show sound, for all intents and purposes, live. If, also like I do, you have a penchant for not stopping right at the correct moment when doing a live show, this feature is a godsend because the software does it all for you.

Once your voice breaks are created, all you need to do is save your work, which involves an automated upload of all the required files to the station, and then you can sit back and listen to the station put it all together for you.

Does this sound simple? Does it sound like something you would like to do yourself? Well, all I can say is that this new procedure has breathed new life into the broadcasting dream for me; broadcasting is fun again, and I am thoroughly enjoying once more being one of the Fun Guys. If you think this might be for you, I encourage you to visit http://www.mushroomfm.com/join and look at the official explanations of what I have just talked about, as well as information on how to be a live DJ, if that's what you'd like to do. There is a very nice audio demo put together by Jonathan Mosen that lets you hear all the voice tracking procedures in action - it was this demo that got me excited about the possibility.

So check it out, and maybe someday soon, you too will be one of the Fun Guys!

Before we begin with the article, an update. Within a day of the announcement, Freedom Scientific came out with an episode of its FSCast podcast in an effort to help answer some questions that the public may have about the acquisition. I highly recommend that interested people listen to the podcast to see if any questions you may have are answered by it.

It was an announcement that surprised many people, including several who tend to be in the know; VFO Group, a huge player in the field of access technology, is acquiring Ai Squared, one of their biggest competitors.

One of the companies under the VFO Group umbrella is Freedom Scientific, maker of, among other things, the JAWS screen reader. Ai Squared, in turn, is the maker of, among other things, Window-Eyes, which has traditionally been going head-to-head with JAWS in the screen reader market. It is as a user of screen readers that I am writing this article. There are other products, such as screen magnification software, of which I am not in a position to comment, so I will restrict any comments here to a subject about which I at least know something.

Also, anything stated here must be construed as conjecture on my part. I have no special knowledge on this subject, so like most of you, all I can do is speculate, so this response to the merger must be regarded as such.

From what I have been reading, the biggest concern people have is that VFO Group will be gaining a monopoly in its field. I do understand this concern. Monopolies tend to scare people, and not without reason. ?However, I would like to make a few observations.

First, we don't know what is going to happen with the two screen readers. The implication is that they will continue to be made and distributed as separate entities, at least for the forseeable future. Will that continue, and if so, for how long? Maybe the companies themselves don't know the answer to this one yet, who can tell?

Next, we have much more choice when it comes to screen readers than we have ever had, at least for Windows PCs. When I started using Windows back in 2003, there were three choices: JAWS, Window-Eyes, and Hal. In 2016, the options include JAWS, Window-Eyes (which as yet is not going anywhere), Hal, System Access, NVDA, and for basic no-frills computing, Windows Narrator has become surprisingly useful in the last year. One of these competing screen readers, NVDA, is also a free product, something which forces any products expecting to be purchased to innovate. If pooling resources - financial, technological, human - might increase such innovation, I have to say I'm for it. We didn't have a free competitor in 2003. True, these two companies are merging, but I contend that, given what I have said earlier, the competition is still more robust than it was in 2003.

Finally, I almost never hear anyone complaining that there is only one screen reader available to users of Apple products, VoiceOver. And I'm not saying that people should be complaining: Apple has worked hard to allow unprecedented mainstream device accessibility. It still thrills me to be able to get an iPhone still in its cellophane and make it fully voicing without any sighted assistance. All I am saying is that, at least to me, it seems something of a double standard to worry about a monopoly on the PC side of things while not being at all worried about the monopoly which, one can't deny, does exist on the Apple side of things.

Mergers and company acquisitions are, of course, nothing new. The history book of human selective memory tends to only recall the mergers that have impacted people negatively. Many more mergers throughout history have been positive experiences for everyone involved.

What does the future hold for VFO Group and Ai Squared as a result of this acquisition? I honestly don't know. But I'm willing to give it a chance. Will this result in monopoly, or unity, or something else? We'll just have to wait and see, but I won't be doing my Chicken Little imitation just yet.