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It's tuned into CBC, so cron records shows like Ideas, and Quirks and Quarks

I then have a script to download the shows when I connect my MuVo

It's great for when I'm doing chores around the house!

A couple of years ago, a friend's mother, Kathy Ahsby, did a short little documentary/opinion piece for Outfront on CBC radio. The archive is here.

This was back when we were really into CS (and we still were, right up until we split up around the time we went to university).

Kinda hilarious, because there's audio takes from the particular party in question (which I sadly missed).

Not such a meaningless statistic for sure. I notice the Canadian Broadcasting Corportion bought into the BSA's story, and gave it verbatum coverage without so much as a second of critical analysis. It didn't seem to occur to them that the BSA and friends have a clear lobbying agenda.

When governments are considering then need for strict new anti-piracy measures (that can easily be manipulated to institute anti-competitive, monopoly-supporting, practices), I'm sure these stats will have been repeated enough to be taken at face value and quoted ad nauseum.

Winning the battle in the media is more often than not winning the battle for public perception -- and shame on the CBC for being so ridiculously gullible.

Actually, mileage is getting worse

I'd agree with those points. Late at night on CBC radio, they even rebroadcast signals from other public broadcasters around the world. Deutshewelle, Radio Sweden, RFI, and tons of others. It's a godsend to information-junkie insomniacs like me. I've found CBC's daytime Radio 1 programming to be lacking lately, though.

(For the love of god, why is Richardson's Roundup still on the air? If it wasn't for The World At Six and As It Happens (imagine a public-radio general interest version of Slashdot) I'd go nuts.)

And I don't know about entertainment programs from those other broadcasters, but I do know that CBC really enjoys skewering the government on its' comedy programs. I dare anyone to watch "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" and then claim that the CBC is a mouthpiece of the government. :)

Radio 1. Talk/News.

Radio 2. Classical/Jazz/Blues/Alternative.

Radio 3. Indy. Wicked.

Free streamed concerts by cool bands.

Nice new-media convergence, combines musical, visual and performance arts.

Canadian Indy specific.

Radio 1. Talk/News.

Radio 2. Classical/Jazz/Blues/Alternative.

Radio 3. Indy. Wicked.

Free streamed concerts by cool bands.

Nice new-media convergence, combines musical, visual and performance arts.

Canadian Indy specific.

Radio 1. Talk/News.

Radio 2. Classical/Jazz/Blues/Alternative.

Radio 3. Indy. Wicked.

Free streamed concerts by cool bands.

Nice new-media convergence, combines musical, visual and performance arts.

Canadian Indy specific.

[...] since they stand for what we are NOT wanting to happen to US media.

Why? As you can see the "free market" thing isn't working that well.

In fact chances are you get a more balanced view of the world by a government funded news agency (that is as long as same is in a "democratic" state) than you will get from commercial news media.

Why? Because the people who work for example at the BBC are very much aware that people think of them as the voice of the government and they will try very hard not to act as a propaganda instrument.

Now private companies like Fox don't have that trouble because everybody seems to think they are independent, when in fact they rely way more on politics than say the BBC, Deutsche Welle or the CBC.

If you need the perfect example of that, you need not look any further than the police crackdown on protesters of the 1998 APEC summit in Canada. The quick summary is that protesters were sitting on a road where the president of Indonesia would be driving through when the cops came up to them, told them to leave. Literally the next second (the video proves this), one Sgt. Stewart of the Royal Canadian Mounted Chimps pepper sprayed the entire crowd. Many of the protestors had to be hospitalized. It is truly one of the most disturbing police actions in Canada in recent memory.

My point is, if people who lawfully assemble and then are given no realistic opportunity to disband when the police/government decide that they don't like what they've seen (because of the economic advantages that would've come due to Indonesia's human rights abuses no doubt), and the subsequent inquiry into the matter is basically a cover-up exercise by the pseudodictatorship in Canada with no punishment for any of the RCMP in question, I doubt the courts in Canada will rule any differently in this case here.

Top that off with mandated minimums of Canadian programming content for each station by the CRTC, and you see that Canada really isn't the place for free speech at all.

• The Guardian: "Taking sides" (BBC reported false Scud stories put out by US & UK military)
  
• Canadian Broadcasting Corp: " Iraqi TV reports fighting 150 km from Baghdad" (but no Scuds or WMD found in Iraq)
  
• Seattle Times: "Accidents cast doubts on Patriot missiles" (they didn't knock down many Scuds, but they were highly effective against British fighter jets)
  
• San Jose Mercury: "U.S. confident trailers were used to produce bioweapons" (no Scuds or anything else found yet really, but we definitely expect to find something really important Real Soon Now)
  
  

Umm, hello? No one's discussing the navally-launched seersucker which impacted outside a shopping mall in Kuwait city. We are discussing the fourteen or so SCUDs which were fired on ballistic trajectories from southern Iraq into Kuwait in the first week and a half of the war.

In case you weren't paying attention, here are some stories on those attacks.

• The Guardian: Iraq launches Scud missiles
• Canadian Broadcasting Corp.: Iraq lobs missiles at Kuwait
• Houston Chronicle: Patriot system proves its worth

I mean really, faced with fourteen SCUDs fired at Kuwait, your answer is `look, this one attack was with another type of missile, so there are no SCUDs'? Iraqi information minister Mohammad Sayeed Sahaf would be so proud...

And if you use solar power to electrolyse water, you have a solar powered car. The point is to create an infrastructure where you're not dependent on the type of energy - it makes no difference for your hydrogen powered car if the hydrogen was created by using coal, nuclear, solar or wind power, cow methane, or your mom pedaling on a stationary bike. You can always use the cleanest or cheapest or most readily available (depending on what your priorities are) way to create your hydrogen. With current cars, you're limited to crude oil, from which gasoline is created.

Are you kidding? Cops face more scrutiny in these situations. If a cop lets his emotions get the better of him (during the course of an extremely emotional job) for even an instant, he faces the loss of his job, or even faces jail time. See the case of Julie Cayer in Ottawa. A cop arrests a belligerent, abusive, resisting suspect, and in one brief moment while subduing her, bangs her head onto his car, and bang, he's guilty of assault.

Cops have to be extremely careful in everything they do. The benefit of the doubt is with the drug-smoking, wife-beating perp, who has every reason to lie. It's an extremely tough job.

In the old days, art copied things - but as photography came about, the necessity of that dropped away, and art began to *comment* on things.

One thing that art looooves to do is to comment on art itself. (basically one generation of art comments on the previous generation: e.g. post-modernism art being mostly comments on the modernism, etc (for the nit-pickers - i really forgot which "ism" comments on modern-ism, so if the fact is a little off, don't flame, ja?))

What it really boils down to is that for many years now, art has been very seclusive stuff - stuff commenting on previous stuff which were themselves comments on ever earlier stuff. For the non artist, besides the above as a background, one very, very important word of caution - unless you intend to keep track of what is the current subject of comment, and understand all the crap that came before that, I'd seriously recommend against spending money on the stuff. Besides very few items that eventually ends up famous for famous' sake (Mona-Lisa, for example, is viewed to be "famous because of it's fame" - that's another thing I got out of the class, btw), all you will be receiving in the end is a comment without any context to go with it, kinda like spending money for a single comment of slashdot, without knowledge of all its beowulf cluster of running jokes, previous stories with evil bits set, and you bought it just because it was moderated highly.

anyway, for decoration purposes, there are many decorating art you get at even malls these days. let me repeat: don't ever spend money on what *real* artist produces, unless you are very sure of what you are doing. (this in response to the auction site)

not to mention, most of the real art nowadays are crap anyways...

It's not quite that straight... Schmeisers story (the court documents give both sides pretty completely) is that he was spraying weeds with Roundup(tm) when he noticed that some of the canola in the area (which would have normally been killed by the herbicide) had survived --Finding that to be a bit weird, he sprayed a larger area and found a large patch that seemed to be roundup-resistant.. This appeared to be pretty much the area closest to the road.

The next summer, the seeds from the quarter section that he had sprayed were used to plant at least one of his quarter sections. This is the crop that Monsanto now claims to own. Part of the problem, however, is that the genetically modified seed has also contaminated the rest of his seed. If Monsanto wins a permanent injunction against Schmeiser ever using their seeds again, he'll not only have to turn over the seeds and profits from the mostly-monsanto patch... He'll also have to turn over any seeds with any monsanto contamination -- effectively, this will mean that he will have to destroy a couple of generations worth of breeding experiments because almost all of his stock now has at least a bit of monsanto seed in it.

Monsanto's claim was originally that he arranged (barter or sale) to have a monsanto-licensed farmer give him some of their roundup-ready seed (in violation of contract). Schmeiser claimed that it had appeared on his land, and he had the right to do what he wanted to with his crop. The (lower) courts decided that it didn't matter how the seed had landed on his land.. Monsanto had a patent on the seed, and nobody not licensed by them was allowed to use seeds with those genetics.

This decision could be especially problematic for some farmers because Canola is pretty much a weed. All sorts of farmers anywhere downwind from someone using Monsanto canola is likely to have at least a small proportion of genetically contaminated seed -- they could then have Monsanto going after them, as well.

The CBC also has a link to the Schmeiser/Monsanto story it includes all sorts of backgrounder links including the full court documents from (at least) the original court case. It tells the story pretty completely from both sides, if you're willing to read the affidavits.

The CBC also has a link to the Schmeiser/Monsanto story it includes all sorts of backgrounder links including the full court documents from (at least) the original court case. It tells the story pretty completely from both sides, if you're willing to read the affidavits.

The CBC also has a link to the Schmeiser/Monsanto story it includes all sorts of backgrounder links including the full court documents from (at least) the original court case. It tells the story pretty completely from both sides, if you're willing to read the affidavits.

Instead, the draft would require commercial e-mail to allow users to "opt out" of future mailings and to provide accurate electronic and physical addresses of the senders. It also would prohibit the "harvesting" of e-mail addresses that spammers using special software obtain from Web pages.

Something that I would like to know is how exactly a law that prohibits use of software that harvests e-mail addresses from web pages can be enforced. What would happen? My understanding is that HTTP log files can be checked to determine if "bots" have collected information on the web page. But how can they tell what those bots did? This is my understanding, I could be wrong, and correct me if I am. And even if they can, then spammers will just look for other ways of getting e-mail addresses. This actually could set the wrong kind of precedent. As they say at the EFF, "coding is not a crime." And is such a law even necessary? According to an article I read a while ago on the CBC web site, obscuring one's e-mail address so that it does not seem to have to format of an e-mail address works quite well. And if you want to annoy spammers, I've seen CGI scripts that generate several fake e-mail addresses. You can implement one of those on your web site if you would like to annoy spammers right back.

Also from the article:

State attorneys general think the proposed bill is riddled with loopholes, in addition to preventing states from enacting and enforcing tougher laws.

Loopholes. Great. And I wonder if any of the legitimate businesses that you do business with (within three years, and why three?) would be able to do what they want with your e-mail address once they have it. Such as selling them to spammers. So in a nutshell, I'd have to say that I still have yet to see any anti-spam legislation that I like

We've been doing the same thing with $1 and $2 bills for more than a decade. Any ones turned in are sent to the Bank of Canada for shredding.

Well, I guess the next step will be $20 coins. Can't print those on a bubble-jet.

"The first thing they did was to bring a large stone and try to smash up the computer," said Mike Phillips, director of the university's Institute of Digital Arts and Technology. "But I think that can be seen as a very definite act of creativity."

[...]

And even if there was little an editor could do with the results, the monkeys have found a publisher. Their collected works will be printed as Notes Towards the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

As for "scrubbing" ... come on, some of my audio files are an hour long.

The idea of originally calling them "bugs" because of an actual insect is incorrect.

People have been using the word "bug" long before computers to describe anomolies in system behavior. See http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/words/bugaboos.html

The fact that somebody actually found a real bug sometime later on was kind of ironic, so that story is what people remember...

When you have socialized healthcare you get what you pay for. That's why no medical advancements come out of nations with such systems.

Oh, so the sequencing of the SARS virus (one of them, anyway, now that there might be more than one) never happened in Canada, eh?

Twit.

Here is an old clip documenting the hippie movement in Torono that shows a young William Gibson.
I am sorry to say that is in WMV format.

The file can also be found here: http://ms.radio-canada.ca/archives/English/hippie1 9670904et1.wmv

Thanks Boingboing.net

... who go to the programme's homepage and get ogg files as an option.

Zimbabwe has always been one of the largest food exporters in Africa. A large part of their market is the EU and other countries that have strict rules on import on GM food. If any of the imported grain had been replanted in Zimbabwe, it would have been a disaster for the countries food export as they would have faced severe restrictions on export to a wide range of countries.

I just want to add that Zimbabwe had another very good (and at the same time sad, sad) reason to refuse the genetically modified crops: Patent issues.

Yes, genetically modified crops can be, and are, patented. If some of the GM grain accidentially makes its way into the Zimbabwean agriculture, the farmers that produce and sell these "contaminated" crops would be patent infringers according to the World Trade Organization, and hence could possibly be subject to criminal prosecution and be forced to pay damages (a case like this has actually occured in Canada!. Needless to say, this could be disastrous for an economy as weak as the Zimbabwean.

This is yet another example where Western patent laws may possibly wreak havoc on third-world countries, or prevent some relief measures (see also: generic AIDS drugs in Africa)

I saw a comment here about Neopets and I think this is a great site!! One you can play along with the little ones. Also, checkout the CBC kids site [www.cbc.ca/kids/] Definitely very good site directed at learning and the "safe environment" thing. Especially if the little kids can watch the CBC and see the special shows that go along with their counter parts on the site - infomatrix is good for 10 - 15, Get Set For Life is for the littler ones.

...in Toronto, causing Ontario public health officials to order 197 people into isolation.

And, by the way, it's now been discovered to be a relative of one of the many viruses that cause the common cold. But that kind of got overshadowed by all the war news.

As did the anti-war protest database being kept by the NYPD. But ignore this, it's off topic.

Here's my attempt to answer your question:

--------------

http://www.cbc.ca/news/iraq/issues_analysis/saddam _goodguy_030310.html
"American companies were allowed to sell chemical precursors to the Iraqis. Washington in the 1980s licensed dozens of other firms to ship biologicals to Iraq - deadly viruses and toxins, the sort of stuff Washington is now demanding Iraq destroy.

It's known the U.S. provided satellite intelligence and advice to Iraq. But there have been recent reports, based on interviews with military advisers at the time, that American strategists actually helped with battle and strike plans that resulted in use of chemicals."

------------------

Check out this site:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Scroll all the way down to Document 1, and read the summary:

Shortly after the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. embassy in Ankara reports that Turkish ports have a backlog of goods awaiting transshipment to Iraq, and that a substantial amount of Israeli goods transit Turkey for "Islamic belligerents," including Israeli chemical products for Iran. It remarks on "Israeli acumen" in selling to both Iran and Iraq.

If you click on the link for Document 1, and go to the last page of the PDF file, you'll notice:
"been waiting for a month to get a certificate of origin claiming U.S. provenance for a shipment of seventeen thousand tons of Israeli "chemical products" bound for Iran. He admired Israeli business acumen in selling to both sides."

---------

And I read somewhere that the US allowed the Pfaulder corporation to supply Iraq with blueprints for a chemical warfare plant. Try doing a search on Google.

The problem is that college educated people who have decided to pick a career to help children rise to their full potential are not immune to that stuff.

Let me quote what happened in 92 at Concordia University, Montreal.

Concordia Shootings
Concordia University is rocked when Dr. Valeri Fabrikant opens fire at the Mechanical Engineering department, killing four faculty colleagues and a secretary.

and

(page 2)
"In August 1992, after twelve years of bullying tactics, harassment and physical threats against colleagues and administrators, Dr. Valeri Fabrikant of the Mechanical Engineering dpartment killed four faculty colleagues and a secretary at Concordia University."

Interesting idea. However, I don't trust the system not to just process whoever they can at whatever rate they can.

A Canadian citizen of Iranian birth was living in New York. It wasn't widely publicized (enough, apparantly), but all foreign nationals born in Muslim countries were required to register themselves at the police station for fingerprinting, etc, but wasn't sure that he had to, being Canadian, so he stopped in to ask them. Turns out he was two days past the deadline.

So they put him in shackles, threw him in lockup in San Diego, and treated him about as badly as they could get away with.

The one thing I've learned from stories lately is 'Don't trust American authorities'. After all, you too could be a terrorist without even knowing it.

--Dan

The virus is so large that at first researchers mistook it for bacteria. Most viruses can only be seen with electron microscopes but this one was spotted through a high quality optical microscope.

don't you canadians realize that down here in the USA we don't care what you think?

really? for a country that doesn't care, you sure have a thin skin

While I do read the CBC regularly and recommend it, not only does your logic escape me (Syria is not participating in the attack either, but that hardly proves it is unbiased) but also your assumption is not precisely correct. It appears that there are a few Canadian troops "embedded" with the US/UK forces.

I will add to this if you please. The portion I am adding reads like a conspiracy theory. Its not. It has been documented in many places, including PBS and the White House itself.

I wont go into details here, I will allow one to read the material themselves. You can also watch the video as PBS online is currently hosting a story frontline did about the mess.

In brief:

The Project for the New American Century is a DC based think tank that has imagined a world under complete US military and economic domination (or "freedom" as it were). They have fiddled with and written documents concerning a post cold war world where the USA has become the Worlds Only Superpower and what that means from a Strategic viewpoint.

In the early days, Paul Wolfowitz produced a document that detailed the expansion of the American empire that seemed too radical at the time and was cleaned up and rewritten and stowed away. Over time, and through the most recent Coup by this incredibly radical group of men, this updated document, with the help of the PNAC, became the National Security Strategy Of the United States. Most chilling about this turn of eventls and policy is the new found policy of "pre-emption". Which I think we are seeing now in the creation of the 51st state.

Also chilling (to me anyway) is the fact that this is the "official story", the one being reported by the obviously biased media.

Anyway.. some more links..

CBC.ca's take.

More Canadian Insight

The Frontline Special

The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp) did a good report on Al-Jazeera. By all accounts these guys deserve praise for reporting the news. The Emir of Qatar promised Al-Jazeera that they would not be censored, and has kept that promise.

On the subject of airing images of dead people: An executive of Al-Jazeera said, and I paraphrase, "Such images are nothing new to the people of the Arab world."

CBC market place (a consumer-affairs type TV program) had an interesting show on just this topic a while back. Their conclusion was that extended warranties are great if you're selling them, but are a waste of time and money for the actual consumer. You'd be much better off putting the money you'd spend on them in a high-interest savings account as your "fix-it/replace-it" fund.

Here's the link to the web site. The page also has a link to the video, but alas, it's in Quicktime format.

Sorry, a quick addendum. The Canadian division responsible for the incident in Somalia was the Canadian Airborne Regiment, not the "1st Airborne". The unit has since been disbanded.

The victim was Shidane Abukar Arone.

CBC Newsworld report

Click here for the Somalia Inquiry Report.
Canadian Airborne Regiment Unofficial Homepage To get their side of the story.

Every story has two sides, and those who are truly interested in this case should be willing to consider both of them before making up their mind.

There will always be bias in these kinds of conflicts. The best you can do is read sites that are from each side of the extreme and extrapolate the facts to form your own opinion. Although if you don't have the patience or time to do that...bbc,cbc, and reuters are the closest I have seen to unbiased (In english)

Very true, but read this article. It will add a few clues to the pot:

Who's really behind Bush

If they were disinterested, the reports wouldn't be reliable (in terms of either timely or well researched).

"Disinterested" simply means that they don't have an interest or agenda themselves, that they have nothing to gain. It's not that they're bored, but rather impartial.

Mind you, since the UK is an interested party in the war, I'm not sure that the BBC is neccesarily the best way to go. I've been looking at the CBC page as well -- Canada is of course a US ally, but they're not happy with this whole thing and they don't mind saying so.

Good suggestion. But you say...

"CBC is the Canadian government owned national broadcaster. "

That makes our dear CBC sound like a wing of Canada's Government, which it is not. CBC may be publicly funded, but it does have independance. There have been many times when CBC has been the loudest critic of Government actions, presenting the case with much less bias than the other media conglomerates that live here.

CBC is public broadcasting. That means, or it is supposed to mean, that the people of Canada own the broadcaster. I pay taxes to keep them on the air, and (for once) I'm very pleased to do so.

Canada is not participating in the attack against Iraq and therefore any news reported out of Canada will be unbiased. CBC is the Canadian government owned national broadcaster. Click here for a direct link.

For all the flames this may bring me, the CBC webservers are still up and going well unlike CNN's (last I checked).

If you want to see the canadian news coverage of this event; try the CBC homepage above or http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/03/19/war030319.

For all the flames this may bring me, the CBC webservers are still up and going well unlike CNN's (last I checked).

If you want to see the canadian news coverage of this event; try the CBC homepage above or http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/03/19/war030319.

Actually, an article posted a little further down from here says that one person has recovered. Here's the link.

Not that I'm getting my hopes up over one person, but maybe the 'no one has recovered' is media hype.

The CBC has a story on the cases in Canada as well.

--Dan