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"The components are being licensed under Microsoft's permissive license..."
"To prove his point, Abrams opened up a Virtual PC window where he was running Ubuntu Linux and demonstrated how ASP.NET AJAX could run well on Ubuntu's local server."

Interesting that Microsoft's "permissive license" allows running Linux in a virtual environment with no restrictions, but for a Linux user to run Vista in a virtual environment requires purchase of their most expensive license.

I wondered whether that announcement was in coordination with a change to their streaming policy. Apparently not:

"Find out why CBC.ca uses Windows Media Player."

Typical doublespeak BS: "using this format allows CBC.ca to deliver live radio streaming to the widest possible audience."

http://www.cbc.ca/listen/#

I don't know how you can say all that without mentioning that the standard streaming format for the CBC is Windows Media. As far as show downloads: I can find no rhyme or reason. Some shows are in RealAudio, some in Windows Media, some in MP3. Every show maintains their own archives HTML page, sometimes well and sometimes poorly. There obviously is no overarching strategy when it comes to digital distribution which is a sad state of affairs in 2007.

I don't know if they have an official position on it, but you may find this interesting: they have instructions for Linux/Unix users on http://www.cbc.ca/listen/ (the site for listening to CBC Radio online), and they specifically mention testing it with Gentoo and FreeBSD. They also have a couple of audio streams (the EST versions of CBC Radio One and Two) in Ogg Vorbis and seem to be encouraging people to try the format.

I doubt they [CBC] have an official position of open source software, or are otherwise in the habit of recommending a particular Linux distro to their readers.

Nah, might as well dismiss it as another crackpot letter to the editor, right? Wrong. The guy is a regular contributor with other articles, like this one to his name. So, yes, the author and the institution have issued an opinion. There will be more like that too.

If you listen to the BBC, you won't be using Vista anytime soon. As M$ jumps up the breakage of XP, there will be lots of people trying and liking free software.

The CBC has been pretty good about open standards and open source. I, along with over 70k other people, download the 1 hour free podcasts showcasing canada's independant music. These podcasts come in OGG format too! Recently they started a second podcast and a track of the day feature. The french canadian (bap.fm) also has an hour of free music per week mostly showcasing montreal area and french canadian music.

The CBC has been very responsive to complaints, comments, etc. Check it out at http://radio3.cbc.ca/podcasting/podcastplaylist.as px

Come on, you're just being mean to actual pagans. Anyone living today who believes in Mayan prophecies is just delusional.

Actually, the U.S. is fourth in per-capita CO2 production according to the most popular account system, with Canada, Australia, and someone else being higher than the U.S..
http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/gmaps/greenhou se-emitters/

And, if you include carbon sinks into the equation (the U.S. has a lot of forest and vegetation per capita), the U.S. becomes comparable or better than many places in Western Europe. (of course, including carbon sinks also greatly improves Canada and Australia)

Also, if you count China's man-made coal fires (which, like carbon sinks, are conviently kept out of most greenhouse gas statistics), China produces more CO2 per capita as well as overall.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2003/ denver_2003/2759983.stm

CBC has various weekly podcasts, including regional news highlights podcasts. It might not be what you or I would define as "regular", but they've at least been consistent.

Timothy Ball is an industry shill who has been debunked repeatedly. Please see the excellent CBC Fifth Estate documentary "The Denial Machine" http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/denialmachine/index.html you can even watch it online.

Sector Corruption in CBC mode typically means a severe shift to the left, followed by massively useless data types naive users think is important. http://www.cbc.ca/

Sorry, I think my level of facetiousness was unclear. I'm saying that a large part of the public anthropomorphizes Pluto, and that they view Pluto as "a cute underdog who is fighting for its rights against nasty scientists who want to take away its status as a planet", not that that is my view. The IAU's new definition and Pluto's "demotion" is one of the few astronomy-related stories that has gotten major attention in the media recently; it was, I think, the only astronomy story that made it onto my local NPR station's weekday talkshow. And it's one of the few astronomy issues that has any kind of foothold on the public attention span. Here are a few examples of what seems to be the general mindset regarding Pluto. And note how many of those things ascribe feelings or intentions to Pluto -- they're doing the anthropomorphizing, not me.

Of course there's lots of research going on; but the public seems to fixate on things that are of little consequence, when they could be getting interested in things that are hugely important to our understanding of the universe and our place in it. And they vote in politicians who make policy decisions about science funding, and a lot of things end up getting cut because (again, facetiousness:) "those nasty scientists made Pluto sad".

I, on the other hand, see Pluto as a very interesting object that doesn't have any desires at at of its own, and which deserves a lot more study by us humans. I don't particularly care whether it's a planet or not; as long as the scientific community uses a definition that's consistent and useful, that's fine with me. I await the arrival of New Horizons impatiently.

Honoring Tombaugh is fine. He did some great work. But declaring Pluto a planet as it passes overhead is not honoring him; that's just silliness. It'd be better to find a pre-existing science scholarship and rename it for him, or put up a statue, or donate good telescopes to a few high schools in his name, or declare April to be "Clyde Tombaugh Science Month", than to make some kind of silly protest against the scientific community's agreed definitions.

So with any luck the use of subliminal messages in advertising will remain an urban legend.... ha ha ha. They are already out there!

I work a lot in the gameing(gambling really, but we call it gameing) industry as a coder.
The national/public news organization up in Canada has been ripping apart one or the provincial lottery organizations lately. In the investigation they found that some KONAMI slots were displaying subliminal messages. They were flashing winning hands. This affected 3 newer types of slots(If I remember correctly, and the Ontario Lottery Corp pulled them immediately).

Point is, some people already knew subliminal worked and were using it. Oh ya, want a laugh? Konami says it was just a bug in the code.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/02/25/video-lo ttery.html
http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/02/26/1614216.shtml

Canada seems pretty reasonable. I'm going through the immigration process as have married a Canadian. As you're probably an American (judging by the reaction to that article!) you'll be able to integrate very well up here. In many ways the countries are very similar (the kinds of shops, the cars people drive etc.) Europe and the UK were a big culture shock for my wife and probably would be for you too (I'm from the UK). More importantly: in a study on privacy rights Germany then Canada were the top two.

To immigrate you may want to consider refugee status, sounds bad but the description fits quite well:

A Convention refugee is a person who is outside of their country of nationality or habitual residence and who is unable or unwilling to return to that country because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, political opinion, nationality or membership in a particular social group.

(Emphasis mine)

If you are seriously that scared of this project, and can prove it when you get here, then do it. There are more conventional routes of course: skilled worker for example.

This CBC article says that over the weekend they performed 20 maintenance operations that cause this.

Their web site says that they traced the source of the problem to software maintenance conducted on March 4, 2007.

Am I the only person whom finds 'Quirks and Quarks - The flagship science programme of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" really ... dumb?

As a long time (well, 18 months) listener to the programme, I find it terrible the lengths to which the host goes to ask the most inane, obvious and useless questions. Great selection of stories, access to key researchers, high production standards, but really, really dumb interviews.

Smart Researcher: 'So, we managed to slow down light, transform it into a meta state, then re-animate it.'
Bob McDonald: 'Gee, wow. So, you slowed light down? Then got it to move again later?'
SCR: 'Umm ... yes. [thinks: Isn't that exactly what I just said]?'
BM: 'Gee. Golly! [giggles]. Gee!'

I'm Australian, and I'm probably spoilt by The Science Show. To anyone whom listens to Quirks and Quarks on their commute, do youself a favour and download a dozen episodes of The Science Show aswell.

Time to make a plug for the best independant music radio station in the world. They already have 1 long running podcast.. over 70,000 downloads per week and they just started up 2 more. Best yet it comes in OGG format too :D.

CBC radio 3 and the french canadian station with its own podcast (today its all arcade fire!) BAP.fm

Should be a giant "shove off" , "get lost" , "stuff it", etc. ...

The problem is that the response wont be. Steven Harper has a reputation for being a lap-dog of the US/UK.

The only way to stop Canadian copyright laws being perverted is by taking action. Send letters to your MP, if this becomes a bill in Parliament then see if there's a peaceful protest you can attend. Make the government clearly realise that voters do not want a Canadian DMCA and that current copyright laws (particularly the clauses for 'fair use' this threatens) are good enough.

There is no compelling reason to have a Canadian DMCA. Harper has been deterred from ditching Kyoto, he can be deterred from this too.

2) How many "cities" are built on permafrost?

Quite a few apparently. Not talking about New York type metropolis centers but still, when you add all those little villages and towns, that's quite a few inhabitants. Try driving on a road that used to be permafrost and now it is melted, that should be fun.

Again another reference for you enjoyment: Sinking Alaska

Have you heard of Dowson city? Well here it is then.

This applies even more so to Siberia probably, it's just that we don't hear about it in the American media as much. It is understandable that our scientists and journalists are concerned with our continent first. I was surprised when Slashdot picked up a story about Siberia here

Have you actually BEEN to northern Canada?

Have YOU BEEN to Siberia?

Then I want to make a three-dimensional gyroscope

If you look at the region codes, you'll notice that most of these searches came out of Canada. I would guess this was Canadians who don't know how to spell "lice": http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/10/12/bc-s almon-lice.html

Emergencies Act (1985, c. 22 (4th Supp.)):
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/E-4.5/bo-g a:l_IV/en#anchorbo-ga:l_IV

Which replaced the War Measures Act
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/publaw/217566_26573.h tml
( http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~sprague/wma.htm )

I miss King Pierre:
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDCC-1-71-101-618/conflict_ war/october_crisis/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis

P.S. Stephen Harper is a dickwad!

I agree with this. As an example, the Bloc Quebecois earned about 3/5 as many votes as the NDP, but wields about 5/3 the power. Check the table on the right

"This has absolutely nothing to do with moral objection, as many Liberal members broke rank from their party and actually voted *for* the bill."

Not exactly. Only one Liberal voted for the measure:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/02/27/terror-v ote.html

"The proposal to extend the measures has somewhat divided Liberals in recent weeks, but MP Tom Wappel was the only Liberal who voted alongside the Conservatives Tuesday. He was a member of the subcommittee that reviewed the anti-terrorism measures."

The law was originally introduced by the Liberal party which is the exact same party that voted against it this time.

The law was a temporary measure that was up for renewal this year. Since it hadn't even been used once, they decided it wasn't worth keeping on the books. It's ridiculous to complain that they're somehow being hypocrites by repealing laws which serve no purpose.

his has absolutely nothing to do with moral objection, as many Liberal members broke rank from their party and actually voted *for* the bill.

Really? Because the CBC says a grand total of one Liberal voted for the bill.

You can't close your eyes and pretend that bad people don't exist and those advocating such an approach are ignorant in my view.

Not every law is a good law and not every law helps fight crime, no matter what the intentions were when the law was put into place. The fact that most of parliment recognizes this shows that they are at least less ignorant than you.

Also don't forget it was the liberals who invoked the "War Measures Act" which invoked military law to deal with the FLQ a French Canadian Separatist group accused of kidnaping a british diplomat in the 70's. http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-71-162-429-11/on_this _day/conflict_war/

> I mean, really - is anything in Canada a true target? My understanding that the "cells" in Canada were in place for attacks on targets in the US.

Besides those mentioned in the other post...

If Al-Qaeda has anything to say about it, then perhaps there are targets in Canada: CBC link

Both are sane positions, but I favor the one where civil rights are not taken away. A good day for all Canadians.

From http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/02/12/muslim-p oll.html

"Asked about the arrests last summer of the 18 Muslim men and boys who were allegedly plotting terrorist attacks in southern Ontario, 73 per cent of the Muslim respondents said these attacks were not at all justified and 82 per cent said they had no sympathy for those who wanted to carry them out."

IMO those numbers aren't high enough. Then again, I wonder what the numbers for a poll of non-muslims would be? Better? Worse? One Canadian high-school student told me his classmates cheered on 9/11. What the fuck?

Maybe Dell is waiting for Symantec and others to release all the craplets required for a typical Dell installation?

British Columbia's Premier, Gordon Campbell, got a DUI while in Hawaii. Bush would fit right in.

The CBC has the full story now.

The summary: MP3s are available on the Canadian store only; US visitors are redirected to the US store which still sells only DRM'ed WMA. They use a crusty old download manager based on ActiveX technology, which is why the store isn't available to Mac users yet. There are actually two different downloaders: an ActiveX plug-in for IE and a standalone Windows executable (for users of other browsers). MP3 files are available through either downloader, but the latter renames them to have a .wma extension. The renaming problem will be fixed today and a solution for Mac users will be available in 30-60 days (I hope it will include all non-Windows platforms).

... be elligible for parole in 10 years for raping a 14-year old girl and killing her and her family.

Indee, Conrad Black had to give up his Canadian citizenship in order to accept his knighthood.

One of the industry's most accomplished producers, Bob Ezrin agrees and said as much in his keynote address at last weeks East Coast Music Awards:

Interview with cbc after this speech:
http://www.cbc.ca/soundslikecanada/media/20070219b obezrin.ram
(apolgies for the real media link)

I'm looking for the text or a recording of his speech at the awards, no luck yet.

New Montreal video game studio shoots for top talent

Montreal is a fountain of talent in the arts. Low cost of living, good quality of life... its a happenin city.

I'd like to see them come just a little further east: to Bangor, Moncton, Saint John, Halifax, and Saint John's (NFLD). Maritimers have the skills, will work long hours and wages can be considerably less considering that the cost of living here is probably a third of what it is in Seattle or Vancouver.

"Your scummy lakes and city of Toronto don't do a damn thing for me, I'd rather live by the sea" -- Stan Rogers

I just got back from a week in Costa Rica, and the pickings on shortwave were awfully thin. All I wanted was news from the outside world. My Spanish is up to the task of ordering in a restaurant or asking directions. The local radio was far beyond my linguistic capabilities, though they played great music...

All I could get was Radio Netherlands and (for an hour each afternoon) the BBC World Service. I'm used to non-commercial radio, since the only radio I ever listen to at home is the CBC.

Streaming media is fine if you're at home. It's not fine if you're out in the bush.

...laura

Take the money you would've spent on satellite radio in the next 6 months (as well as the receiver) and purchase random recommended songs off iTunes (subscribe to last.fm for a good recommendation list based on your own tastes) or some other service instead, then bring them with you on random shuffle play.

I listen to CDs or other personal audio half the time (unless one of the shows I like on CBC radio happens to be on the radio, or the news). Paying for music I might not want to listen to strikes me as odd, personally.

CBC just posted an article questioning the authenticity of D-Wave's claims because there hasn't been any peer review done.

"Martin [owner] said his company believes its computer is performing quantum computations, but confessed they're not certain."

and...

"In the face of the questions, D-Wave CEO Herb Martin said his company's device is not a true quantum computer but rather a specialized machine that uses quantum mechanics to perform its calculations."

I think we should wait out on this one, folks.

Actually one of the first things Harper did was settle the softwood lumber dispute. Basically he agreed to settle for 80% or so of the money the US illegally took. For one overview see http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/softwood_lumber/

The last article was completely overblown, and this is even worse.

Need I even go into the many ways the US has violated our free trade agreement. How are different copyright laws even a violation?

Maybe because the copyright protections violate our basic copyright freedoms? There's no DMCA here.

In case you haven't noticed, we're lax in all areas of law. How has incarceration helped to reduce US crime rates? Why should copyright violation be a criminal offense? The last article was even so bold to say:

So camcording is a criminal offense, you just have to, shock, prove your case rather than assume guilt. I guess this article is *technically* right when it says:

What else did they complain about proving?

Is that 15th century thinking I hear? Are they going to blacklist every liberal country?

Please, the UK and Australia wouldn't even have these type of laws if the US and *AA and friends hadn't strong armed them into it. Are these the only shinning examples they can find?

These laws were made to protect minors from older perverts, not from themselves.

This is exactly how the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in R. vs. Sharpe back in 2001. In a 6-3 decision, the majority ruled that people can't be prosecuted for creating photographic or written material designed purely for their own use - as long as real pictures or videos do not show illegal acts.
The issue of private photographs between consensual underage parties was not part of the Sharpe case, but was specifically raised as an example of a valid exception to Canada's child pornography laws.

Otherwise it just looks like a panel of randomly placed LEDs

A month ago I was convinced the only way to halt the addition of CO2 into the atmosphere was to eventually stop harvesting it from the ground. However people quite rightly make the argument that we just don't have enough energy to do this. I think I have a better solution.

CBC News had a great article on Capturing Carbon. The idea is to capture CO2 from coal and gas plants and pipe it across country to locations where we can pump it into the ground.

It seems to me that if there are locations for carbon sinks, piping the CO2 to these locations is doing things backward.

Why not instead build a massive coal fired power plant directly over one of these carbon sinks. Generate electricity and pump the CO2 waste gas directly into the ground.

Then *don't* send power anywhere, but next door to the hydrogen generation plant. Convert water (from a stream or lake) into gaseous hydrogen and oxygen, and then pump the *hydrogen* to the cities in a spider's network of pipelines across the country. Transmitting power over power lines is notoriously inefficient, but we should be able to devise a system for near-lossless transmission of hydrogen gas.

Once the hydrogen is in the cities, local power plants can produce energy right in the city core, pollution free. Plus we'd be able to power our automobiles without oil.

By burning all of our coal, oil, and gas into these zero-carbon hydrogen generation plants, we'd still be able to extract fossil fuels and use their energy, but not put any of the CO2 into the atmosphere. Plus if we used only a few *enormous* power plants, we could use the very best CO2 reclamation technology and have the very highest carbon capture efficiency possible.

In the mid-term, hydrogen would run only to power plants, and to "gas" stations for vehicles. In the long term, we'd be able to pipe hydrogen into our homes and build a device that doubled both as power generator and hot water heater.

This I think would be a great solution to Australia's coal dilemma. Stop exporting coal. Start exporting hydrogen.

This idea might be pie in the sky. Could any Slashdotters be willing to take a stab at the mathematics of efficiency? I'm curious what the difference would be from converting from one power source to another and transmission differences over power lines.

You can understand this more easily if you jump back to the arguments over deficit financing... because money i little more than a mathematical artifice, it's easy to see that running a deficit now will force our kids and/or grandchildren to pay for our high life. With things like global warming, overfishing, groundwater depletion etc. etc. we are running an ecological deficit. The difference is that it's easier for a group of PR weenies to convince people that Global Warming (and/or it's causes) are unproven, and harder to convince Mother nature that it's a bad idea to call in the loan.

I actually had hopes in the Canadian government

Canada is unfortunetly under the minority rule of a conservative government that doesn't want to intervene too much in the economy etc. so it's normal that they reject net neutrality rules since they love big telco lobbying as well. This won't last too long. It's been a year since they've been in power and already the canadian population has become sick of this goverment. I predict elections this spring and with the result of a minority liberal government that will pay more attention to these netneutrality rules when time will come.

I suppose you want to return to see things like this (aka SponsorGate) again in the news. As I quote from the first link, "There were rumours that the money was little more than a vehicle to reward loyal Liberal supporters." -- None of this money happened to reach you did it? If it didn't, then you just basically paid for it in taxes to go to someone else. If you prefer tags like 'blamecanada' to be continuously applied then continue spreading Liberal support. Additionally, how much do you think Paul Martin's minority government achieved since technically its been about the same time frame? Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house.

http://www.saskndp.com/history/mouseland.html

The story you quote was, a you obviously know, often told by Tommy Douglas. For those who don't know, he was elected the greatest Canadian. http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/ He was an honorable man even when nobody was looking. Even in my darkest most cynical hours, I am forced to admit that there was at least one unimpeachably good politician.