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Ha they're already copying this one. Very secure indeed :)

"This is fucking bullshit. You put wife-beaters in jail for five years. Some fucking rapists and child-molesters don't even go to jail for 5 years."

It's ridiculous, isn't it?
This murderer will most likely go to prison for only 5 years (!): article

Violent criminals get a slap on the wrist, and file-traders are locked away.

Pool, an American who moved DET from Virginia last year when Canadians invested in the private firm, said DET is "entitled to a royalty on international transactions done computer to computer. Those New Zealanders are using our technology, for heaven's sake, and they're going to pay or they're going to stop violating the 505284 patent."

This just showed up in my morning newspaper. Simple cause and effect that shows that video games don't have the corner on the violence market.

Should board games be outlawed next?

Some people pooh-pooh the RIAA's technical skills. Perhaps true, but they can afford to hire talent. I'm not sure if this made it to Slashdot, but here's an AP news article about the sort of people that they are hiring. "MediaDefender's engineers - previously in the business of foiling radar systems for the Pentagon". Hmm.

But not beyond their bank accounts to hire. Here's a news article on some of the type of companies being hired. (Note this: "MediaDefender's engineers - previously in the business of foiling radar systems for the Pentagon" Hmm.)

Q: How long will Microsoft support a platform that seems destined to be in the red for the next few years? After all, you have invested $3.5 billion on the Xbox and are still losing money on the sale of each unit.

A: We are being smart about bringing the cost of producing the Xbox console down. We can decide to not make it a long investment business and price it to get a better return, but this is a 10-, 15- and 20-year investment.

Does anyone think that this guy is enjoying his work a little too much?

Q: How long will Microsoft support a platform that seems destined to be in the red for the next few years? After all, you have invested $3.5 billion on the Xbox and are still losing money on the sale of each unit.

A: We are being smart about bringing the cost of producing the Xbox console down. We can decide to not make it a long investment business and price it to get a better return, but this is a 10-, 15- and 20-year investment.

No, you have art and you can get a gallery showing in Ontario. See here...

Can't afford the CDs but have a decent connection? Then just stream it if you listen to music when you're computing. A radio station in my home town plays nothing but Jazz. You can find it here: Cool FM.

It'll at least help you decide what other CDs you might want to buy.

Microsoft doubled their loss on the Xbox this past year, losing $190 million before taxes. But I'm faily sure that Microsoft more than made up for this loss in their other divisions.

Sony made a profit of $964 million for the fiscal year. "Sony (SNE) shares are down 40 percent this year, following declines of 8 percent in 2002, 35 percent in 2001 and 51 percent in 2000. "

Nintendo made a profit of $553 million. Their shares are also down, at around 35%. Not bad considering the competition.

Details here.
Too bad the authorities can't decide whether it can or can't be used at all...

Though they're not quite as bad as the Klingon speaking mentally ill in Oregon...

In the UK, some 390,000 individuals are followers of the force But as the original Canada.com article notes, the Jedi religion choce may have been a protest agains the government surveying religious preference.

Yeah, some of the life patent cases are getting a bit strange.

Don't worry. He was taken out.

Experts say SARS virus mutating quickly Happy happy..

Here's a media site with other good links.

That's one reason that they're thinking of this: "The federal government is considering setting up a Canadian version of the famed U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as authorities hammer together a new strategy to combat SARS and other infectious disease, Anne McLellan, the Health Minister, said yesterday." (Lots of other links on that page.)

My statements are based on the figures for Canada only. I live near Toronto and I do health-related research, so I have been following the development of SARS moderately closely.

My information is from recent news conferences held by public health officials. I don't have a link to breakdowns by age, but here is a link to an article (CanWest News and Associated Press, April 27) stating (my italics),

Officials were unable to say if he had underlying medical problems, unlike a 44-year-old York Region man who earlier became the first middle-aged, otherwise healthy Canadian to die of SARS.

The World Health Organization indicates that as of April 26, there were 142 cases of SARS in Canada, associated with 18 deaths.

Further, the WHO placed the global case-fatality rate at 4%. They state that

In the Canadian outbreak, the higher case-fatality ratio appears to be linked to the older age of the patients, who frequently have underlying chronic disease.

Also the virus mutates, the more it learns about how our immune systems work, the more vulnerable we become, so even you can survive it while its killing at a rate of 15%, when it mutates again it might kill at 25%, and then when it mutates again it might go up to 40%, so eventually over a period of years it could reach a 90% death rate or higher, so this disease is no joke, the Flu does not mutate like this.

Er. No. The virus doesn't benefit from killing its host, or even crippling it rapidly. A virus isn't a malevolent being, bent on cold-blooded murder. Its evolution will be guided by whatever mutations allow it to make more copies of itself. It is just as likely to mutate into something that just gives you a bad case of the sniffles, so you can keep going to work and give copies of it to all your coworkers.

Finally, influenza does mutate like this. That's why a new flu vaccine comes out every year--the protein coat of the flu virus changes from year to year, and health officials have to try and hit a moving target. If there is a new and unexpected mutation, we could face a Spanish flu type epidemic very easily. Fortunately, SARS actually isn't bad practice for this type of situation, so that health officials will be ready for the next flu epidemic. See a new disease? Stomp on it. Hard. That's how to handle it. This disease is certainly no joke--but it doesn't warrant panic.

Umm, the direct URL for TuneTracker should be: http://www.tunetrackersystems.com And let's not forget the URL to the story I mentioned.

From small hobbits to King Kong
Canada.com - 8 hours ago
Oscar best-director nominee Peter Jackson poses outside his Wingnut Films office in Wellington, New Zealand earlier this year. ...
RotK Delayed Until May 2004 Slashdot
Peter Jackson resurrecting King Kong in NZ Stuff.co.nz
Northland Age - BBC - Nzoom.com - The Scotsman - and 72 related

It's hard to blame them. Iraqi units have forced civilians to run in front of their advancing allied units in attacks against allied troops. They have faked surrenders and then ambushed troops who came to accept the surrender. Hospitals and schools are being used to store military equipment. Iraqi soldiers have abandoned their uniforms and are fighting in civilian clothing. American and British soldiers are risking their own lives to protect Iraqi civilians despite the best efforts of Iraqi soldiers and militia fighters (and anti-America media) to pin civilian deaths as the fault of coalition forces.

Iraqi Combatants Dressed as Civilians

"We were engaged from the city by

people dressed up in civilian clothes with AK-47s ... that's when I was shot in the hand," the 21-year-old corporal explained.

Menard pointed out that local Iraqi civilians had at first seemed happy to see the Marines. That changed, he noted, when the civilians "turned on us and started firing on us."

And, some of the enemy's fire came from a nearby hospital, the Marine remarked.
...
The Army sergeant pointed out that neither he nor his fellow troops want to kill civilians or innocent people in Iraq. However, Horgan noted, the circumstance of Iraqi fighters dressing up as civilians is "going to make it really difficult for us to discern who is 'good' or 'bad.' That's a shame."

Iraqi Civilians Blow up U.S. Troops in Suicide Attacks

Four U.S. soldiers were blown up by a suicide bomber posing as a taxi driver Saturday.

...
Iraqi soldiers have disguised themselves as civilians. They have faked surrendering to get the jump on coalition troops. They have used civilians as human shields.

And now they are sending out suicide bombers. An Iraqi official warned Saturday that suicide attacks would be "routine military policy."

In spite of the enemies' treacherous tactics...

Two U.S. Soldiers Survive Week in Desert... and nearly starve after giving away most of their food to needy Iraqis.

The soldiers said they were stranded when their truck's clutch failed on the way to tow an officer's Humvee that had broken down as the division was traveling toward Baghdad. They said a staff sergeant had ordered them to wait, and said they would be picked up.

No one did. So the two dug trenches to defend their position, and took turns on watch.

They gave most of their food to hungry Iraqi civilians, and watched nervously as white vehicles - a trademark of Saddam Hussein's paramilitary Fedayeen - passed by. Koppi had become a father 10 days before he was deployed, and he wrote poems to his wife.

"It has been weeks since we have spoken, I know her heart is close to broken," went one couplet.

You know the famous picture of a U.S. Army medic carrying an Iraqi boy?

The child in his photo was hit in the leg by shrapnel after

he and his family were used as a human shields by Iraqi irregulars.
...
Mr. Zinn said the story began early on Tuesday morning, after the Third Squadron of the Seventh Cavalry spent a night of non-stop ambushes as it worked its way north along the Euphrates River towards Baghdad.

"We'd spent about 24 hours being ambushed left and right.... I was sleeping in the back of

...the US pilot apparently failed to recognise that their tanks were a British make, with special coalition identification aids and even a large Union flag on another machine in the five-vehicle convoy.

"Combat is what I've been trained for. I can command my vehicle. I can keep it from being attacked. What I have not been trained to do is look over my shoulder to see whether an American is shooting at me."

According to the American War Library, the number of friendly fire casualties involving the U.S. military has gone up dramatically: Second World War (21 per cent of all casualties), Korea (18 per cent), Vietnam (39 per cent) and Gulf War (49 per cent).

Just heard on the news a few minutes ago that a similar quarantine is being considered for up to several hundred residents of Toronto. An entire hospital there has also been placed under quarantine once it was discovered a SARS victim stayed there. More information here.

ROTFL! Copy-pasting from an article linked by Slashdot (see excerpt here) that was so stupid that it got pulled by the publisher. Is that all you got? :)

though accidents will happen

These guys also have a GPS project: Stalkers now using global positioning satellite devices to track victims (Might make a good Slashdot submission, but I'm just not inspired at the moment.)

Canada shouldn't be in that list. We have not officially supported the US led war for Oi/H/H/H/H/H/H on Iraq thus far. It is going to be voted on in the HofC soon though.

The other nations have declared their support. We are kinda waffling, even though the polls show that the population is severely against war, and our PM even said himself that w/o a UN resolution we aren't going to war.

Ironically, the premier of Alberta (one of the largest sources of oil in the world) seems to support the war... not sure why though... :-P

Articles with general thoughts on Can/US Relations and Iraq in particular:
PM approves vote on Iraq
Friend today, foe tomorrow

Canada shouldn't be in that list. We have not officially supported the US led war for Oi/H/H/H/H/H/H on Iraq thus far. It is going to be voted on in the HofC soon though.

The other nations have declared their support. We are kinda waffling, even though the polls show that the population is severely against war, and our PM even said himself that w/o a UN resolution we aren't going to war.

Ironically, the premier of Alberta (one of the largest sources of oil in the world) seems to support the war... not sure why though... :-P

Articles with general thoughts on Can/US Relations and Iraq in particular:
PM approves vote on Iraq
Friend today, foe tomorrow

Maybe they did. This observer found the communications strange even before the problems.

Here is a link to the last audio received from Columbia: http://www.canada.com/toronto/globaltv/info/video/ 020103audio.ram

better then nothing

The drive contained a list of members, the information above and credit card numbers of members of the Co-Operators Life insurance company.

Check out this article (Regina Leader Post).

(OT: Have you noticed that there are more and more threads on Slashdot that has less then 10 comments? Hmmm...)

Co-operator's is recommending that those affected people monitor their credit report. However this is a new-identity goldmine. Birth Certificates, credit cards, passports, everything. Security experts recommend that people affected change all their bank accounts and credit cards and send letters to government offices, credit card companies and other companies as well.

Why should sick and innocent people suffer?

You do realize that Iraq rapes the wives of political prisoners (with an on-staff professional rapist) tortures its Olympic athletes who fail to perform, and cuts out the tongues of people who criticize the government, right?

The people of Iraq are already suffering - a few may be accidentally killed during the liberation, but the only thing we know for sure is that if we do nothing the suffering will continue. I know of no liberation in the history of the world that has been causualty-free for the oppressed, but I also know of no liberation in the history of the world where the oppressed have asked their liberators to please go home.

We're gone down several replies so perhaps I'm confused, but from your message, I take your reply to mean that the Canadian Alliance is supported by a majority of Canadian voters... Sorry to disappoint you, but the Liberal Party had the greatest percentage of votes in the 2000 General Election:

Percentage of valid votes:

Liberal Party: 40.8%
Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance: 25.5%
Progressive Conservative Party: 12.2%
Bloc Quebecois: 10.7%
New Democratic Party: 8.5%

Source: Elections Canada

If you're trying to argue (and I'm not saying you are) that the majority of Canadians support the Alliance today, well, the latest poll I saw here says:

Liberal Party: 52.1%
Progressive Conservative Party: 13.8%
New Democratic Party: 13.6%
Canadian Alliance: 10.5%
Bloc Quebecois: 6.9%
Undecided: 25%

But either way, it's the election that counts. Now, if you want to argue that the system doesn't fairly allocate seats in the House of Commons, go ahead, but don't go claiming the Alliance is supported by a majority of Canadians.

Sorry to have bothered myself with facts...

This site had posted the original story back on 16 Jan. It's about a British Columbia pig farmer who murdered dozens, maybe more, women and fed them to his pigs. The pork producers are also trying to get the story quashed.

http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=ecfb8e2 7-2032-4cbc-b0ec-765bfa866ec7

http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=a218f4a d-bd20-4439-b471-2c6d2b777aeb

http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=ecfb8e2 7-2032-4cbc-b0ec-765bfa866ec7

http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=a218f4a d-bd20-4439-b471-2c6d2b777aeb

Well, it is the Toronto Star.

The Globe and Mail is read by the people who own the country. (It's Toronto's national newspaper, except for the National which is Toronto's other national newspaper.) The Toronto Star is read by the people who whine when they don't run the country. The Toronto Sun is read by the people who don't care who runs the country, so long as she has big tits on page 3. Weeklies like NOW offer insight into: politics or performance art? (With the establishment's hand up their sock-puppet bum.)
-- Adapted from Yes, Prime Minister

Sending to your MP is good. Forget the ministers listed on the web site, since the Liberals around Cretien aren't about to start listening now. Just look at the $2M gun registry that will end up costing taxpayers 500 times that amount.

Back benchers are being heard now, so there is a good chance things can be changed if enough people take issue with the levy.

Snow season is here, and if we're lucky as a nation, perhaps Mr. Cretien will decide to take a walk in it.

(For our American friends, Trudeau, a former Prime Minister, took what has become a famous "walk in the snow" during which he decided to retire.)

A billion dollars wasted for something that doesn't work and can never be accurate? And isn't even completed?
Gun Control costs way out of control in Canada (and half the guns *not* registered).
http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id=%7B8A0875B 6-13A0-46B9-BF90-82A99356D24F%7D http://www.nationalpost.com/national/story.html?id ={A02202BA-AA91-446F-BFA4-361EA9A160A1}

Bear in mind, this is *only* news from yesterday. There is a lot more. One could go into the probable death of the tourist industry in Cansda. You know, the tourist that used to go there to hunt wild game. On the other hand, they are apparently not trying very hard to keep out those who might be terrorists. That would be profiling I guess. Then, I was also appalled by some problems in the other direction. Best summarized by thie one web site which describe how citizens in the USA on the southern border are virtually being overrun by illegal aliers, sometimes armed with full auto weapons. Tell me how you would resist that and be unarmed. http://www.ranchrescue.com/ So, where is our govenrment?!?!?!?!

Well, we have New York City, Chicago, and Los Angleles. Each of these cities have been the murder capitals of the US in the past three years respectivly, yet each one bans guns. Washinton DC is no better, nor Maryland. Yet that is where the DC sniper did his task.

Gun bans are also not working in Great Britain, where even toy guns and air guns are banned or in the process of it, yet crime is soaring.

Gun bans did work in Nazi Germany however. Just ask the Jews (that survived). Gun bans in some US States did work also in a way. They prevented the Black slaves from defending themselves against the Klan raids. Everything here is documented elsewhere.

Moral of the story: Banning guns leaves good people defenseless. Bad people don't care about the ban.

Okay, so I did manage to find one useful article in the Vancouver Sun online: 60-acre spider web baffles biologists

Thanks for the hint re: the Sun. Sadly, although "Halorates ksenius" is mentioned in the article, the search engine didn't find it. Figures. It took some work -- several hits produced search engine runtime errors -- but the last check struck gold.

Cheers!

Thanks for the hint. I checked the Sun and came up with this: 27-hectare spider web drapes fence on B.C. farm. What disappoints me about all of this is that there seems to be no agreement. One source says 60 acres, another says 24 hectares, another says 27 hectares and the professor says 60 hectares. The professor, I suppose, can be forgiven for his mistake on-air as he was probably nervous.

this will surely tag/profile you at echelon/nsa/

also this related story> about the alberta premier's adviser referring to "that idiot George Bush"...

-Capt. Communism

this will surely tag/profile you at echelon/nsa/

also this related story> about the alberta premier's adviser referring to "that idiot George Bush"...

-Capt. Communism

This is the same stuff, in more serious package:
Finnish police arrest Sonera telecom executives in privacy investigation

Two high-ranking executives at Sonera Corp., Finland's main telecommunications company, were arrested Friday in an investigation into whether the company violated the privacy of its workers.
The employees are Jari Jaakkola, an executive vice-president, and Henri Harmia, who was in charge of co-ordinating Sonera's $6.2-billion merger with the Swedish company Telia. Both have been suspended from the company. The charges of violating Finland's data-security laws come just weeks after police began holding three other Sonera employees who worked with corporate security. Police are investigating whether Sonera monitored the call records of its own employees in 2000 and 2001.

I can't help but think that this is related.