Slashdot Mirror

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

--Dan

Up here in Canada are economy is growing 55,000 new jobs in February and all i hear is how our economy is dependent on the USA economy.

Click here

And it's available in OGG!
For example: http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/02-03/ogg/qq0803 03a.ogg

CBC does entertaining science programing every weekend and week. The Nature of Things is a very good program hosted by David Suzuki who is always provocative. Bob McDonald of Quirks and Quarks on the radio give up-to-the-week science news that is very informative and interesting.

It just takes the right person, and the right subject. Not all science is for everyone. Space people might not care for the science of bugs for instance.

CBC radio will be (is) having a short bit on the operation. (12:32 est Probably it can be time-surfed at CBC Radio

River Oaks is a K-8 elementary school with a student population of about 800. A little over a decade ago, the new school was built, fully wired, and loaded with technology through partnerships with Apple (among others). There was one computer for every three students and a computer for every teacher.

I was a student in Oakville during River Oaks' heyday. I attended a less well-funded school in the same district, but was bused to River Oaks once a week to use their shop and kitchen facilities for classes. The school had some neat toys, there's no doubt about it--instead of paper sketches in shop class, we were using proper CAD software. We also did some work with computer controlled Lego Technics sets.

Did we actually learn any more? Nope. Was the technology overkill? Probably. I typed my papers on a Commodore 64 until my parents bought their first 386 when I was in Grade 8--but there I was, surrounded by all these shiny new Macs. (I thought that flying toasters were just the coolest thing...)

Now, River Oaks can't afford to upgrade or even maintain the technology they have in place. I imagine that other school districts face similar problems. After the 'gee whiz' wears off, what do you really need computers for in a school environment? Typing assignments. Doing research on the net. Preparing presentations.

How do you do these things? Have a few well-maintained computer labs in the school. As for those students who don't have a computer at home--they'll get by. I've been without a home computer for a month because I haven't gotten around to ordering some parts to repair my old clunker. I do my computer work on campus, and life goes on.

I believe their qualification of this as a first was that they were using a standard Internet connection (abet with hipri routing and a backup connection). I think the article mentions this, or possibly the CBC radio news bit where I first heard it. (I should have included a link to CBC Radio but between submission 5pm and publication 3am, it probably dropped off the news queue.)

The the author Dr. Amir Aczel was interviewd by Quarks and Quarks (a CBC radio show).

The interview aired on the December 14, 2002 show
You can listen to the the author in mp3 or ogg!

I highly recomend the book. It is technical, but very readable for anyone with a little math/physics background.

The the author Dr. Amir Aczel was interviewd by Quarks and Quarks (a CBC radio show).

The interview aired on the December 14, 2002 show
You can listen to the the author in mp3 or ogg!

I highly recomend the book. It is technical, but very readable for anyone with a little math/physics background.

The the author Dr. Amir Aczel was interviewd by Quarks and Quarks (a CBC radio show).

The interview aired on the December 14, 2002 show
You can listen to the the author in mp3 or ogg!

I highly recomend the book. It is technical, but very readable for anyone with a little math/physics background.

The the author Dr. Amir Aczel was interviewd by Quarks and Quarks (a CBC radio show).

The interview aired on the December 14, 2002 show
You can listen to the the author in mp3 or ogg!

I highly recomend the book. It is technical, but very readable for anyone with a little math/physics background.

• Machall - best..webcomic...ever (updates: "tues, thurs, sat" but more like when he gets around to it)
• Penny Arcade - a very popular, and very funny gaming comic (M W F)
• Megatokyo - a well drawn comic with a strong story mangaish (M W F)
• Ctrl-Alt-Del - cut and paste, but always funny (Daily)
• Something Positive - kinda cut and paste, but often very funny (daily)
• Real Life - cut and paste, but still a pretty funny gaming comic (mostly daily)
• Calvin and Hobbes - rereleasing C+H online, 10 years delayed...my personal fav (daily)
• Errant Story - a well drawn, story based modernish fantasy comic (updates every other day or so)
• Angst Technology - a game software firm and their antics (updates almost daily)

• (as if you need the link)Slashdot
• CBC News Canadian news from the CBC
• Debian Planet good debian news
• Footnotes GNOME news
• Ars Technica another tech site, often has interesting projects too...
• Anime News Network exactly what the name implies.
• Unconventional Conformity a blog.
• The Weather Network - for my local weather
• 
  
  And well, thats about it. That I check frequently at least. I do like webcomics and strongly suggest that you check out Machall Megatokyo and Errant Story if you don't already though! And then there's also everything2 but its not news and I can't check it daily (or else I would do nothing all day but read!) its too good at just drawing you in. And the anime turnpike to go browsing through Anime fansites...

The US governemnt is already doing some of these things. Back in October they deported a Canadian Citizen travelling from Tunisia, where he was vacationing, back home to Montreal.

During his stop over in New York, they discovered he was born in Syria, so they arrested him, and put him on a plane to Syria (despite being a Canadian Citizen). Since the law in Syria requires men over 18 to perform military service (he left when he was still pre-teen), Syrian Police locked him up for not performing his duty. He's been there ever since.

Nice, eh!

I wonder what kind of backlash would happen if something similar happened to an American Citizen while travelling through Canada. Perhaps then the American people will awake.

Is this a dream?

No, dubiously, this is reality.

Yes, all independent news sources should be cherished, but I would also encourage people to use this thing called the 'internet' in order to check out news from other countries, The BBC, or CBC news sites are very good, but try something like the tehran times for example. By reading all news sources, comparing and contrasting to each other, you can start to pick out the truth of the situation, and get a well rounded view. And it will at least raise some eyebrows if you start to notice a certain lack/onesided bias of information reaching you through your local media

I was born and raised in Canada, and now I'm currently living in New Zealand. I grew up watching american news side by side to CBC, and now I can compare CNN and BBC side by side here in NZ. It has become very obvious to me just how very biased and sensationalistic american media is. It's just awful, very US centric. All american media is so busy blasting outwards, hardly anything penetrates from the outside. You have to actively seek it out . I'm not saying other countries are always better BBC and CBC are pretty good examples of media, but I'm sure they show some bias. I just think the last media you should trust is your own, no matter where you are.

CBC has a story about poachers who got nailed by the Mounties for using eBay as a fence. I guess you can't sell "anything" on eBay. At least you can't get away with it.

This was the subject of this week's CBC radio program (available in .ogg) Quirks and Quarks : Bisecting Bioterrorism (ogg).

Is concerning to see the multitude of anti-Freedom directives produced in these last few years ...

This was the subject of this week's CBC radio program (available in .ogg) Quirks and Quarks : Bisecting Bioterrorism (ogg).

Is concerning to see the multitude of anti-Freedom directives produced in these last few years ...

"George Radwanski made the comment in his annual report tabled in Parliament Wednesday."

Most Americans don't know and many Canadians don't remember that Canada once fought its own "War on Terror" with a violent (and very small) sect of Quebec Separists during the late '60s and early '70s. It all came to a head during the October Crisis during which martial law was declared (via the War Measures Act) and citizens suspected of having ties to terrorists were rounded up. These measures were temporary of course, and the terrorist attacks ended afterwards but many people in Canada still wonder if such drastic measures were neccessary.

Did anyone see the pictures of the large dent and crack on the back of the left wing. It was taken during Ilan Ramon's downlink with the Isreali president. I saw it yesterday on either CBC newsworld or CTV Newsnet. They commented on NASA's reaction that it did not see of the footage. Also the story went on to say that the images where not being shown by US news media.
Niether Canadian news channel mentioned it this morning, and I have not found anything about it online.
I'm no conspriacy theorist, but this looks a little shady to me.

Cat poo Coffee

The CBC story is up as well, and seems much more certain about what happened, though they don't mention the Israeli that was on board.

This is a staggering tragedy. Hopefully NASA can find out what really happened soon.

--Dan

Some interesting things have been reported in the media around here. Some have said the data was encrypted, and that it was unlikely that anyone could get the data. If it was encrypted with anything recent, it would be near impossible to get the information off of it. If I were talking to the media and new it was encrypted

It was also mentioned that information was in a database, and the tables couldn't be linked very easily... but who really knows.

I happened to be listening to the New Democratic Party's leadership convention live: yes, they did use Web voting; and yes, they did encounter problems consistent with this worm, problems which gave rise to rumours of sabotage since it seemed that someone was denying access to login. [Were they using M$ $erver $000?.] Happily, things worked out just fine. I don't know what the full story is yet.

Israeli helicopters fire missiles into Anglican hospital in Gaza

Taken from a useful set of articles over at CBC News, including one on new weapons which mentions the microwave bomb. CBC's reporting tends to be less enthusiastic about things military.

Taken from a useful set of articles over at CBC News, including one on new weapons which mentions the microwave bomb. CBC's reporting tends to be less enthusiastic about things military.

CBC has a good article that explains how publication bans work in Canada.

If you're interested, you can listen in online at CBC Radio (Radio One or Radio Two) or BBC (1,2,3,4, etc., etc.) and find out what radio that isn't tied by umbilical cord to Big Business can be.

Everyone keeps asking what is up ATI's sleeve.... I can tell you: a big insider trading scandal. K.Y. Ho and his wife screwed over ATI for 6 million... I mean with a name like K.Y. Ho the guy deserves the money- but the company is already at the bottom of the market, and K.Y. is essential for ATI's succsess.
Ho has very tight relationships with manufacturers, one of ATI's advantages. This scam is going to kill ATI, even if they get off their stock price is extremely low. here is the link to the story

The CBC's radio science program Quirks and Quarks interviewed one of the researchers on this topic. You can listen to the MP3 here. Other stories this week had to do with the Spider Goats, among others.

Summary: The majority of the Anarctic continent is isolated from the rest of the world when it comes to weather patterns. Most research stations aren't in the isolated part, they are in the most northerly portions of the continent. They are warming. The isolated part of Antarctica is cooling. It's basically a re-analysis of existing data that has resulted in this conclusion.

The CBC's radio science program Quirks and Quarks interviewed one of the researchers on this topic. You can listen to the MP3 here. Other stories this week had to do with the Spider Goats, among others.

Summary: The majority of the Anarctic continent is isolated from the rest of the world when it comes to weather patterns. Most research stations aren't in the isolated part, they are in the most northerly portions of the continent. They are warming. The isolated part of Antarctica is cooling. It's basically a re-analysis of existing data that has resulted in this conclusion.

The CBC's radio science program Quirks and Quarks interviewed one of the researchers on this topic. You can listen to the MP3 here. Other stories this week had to do with the Spider Goats, among others.

Summary: The majority of the Anarctic continent is isolated from the rest of the world when it comes to weather patterns. Most research stations aren't in the isolated part, they are in the most northerly portions of the continent. They are warming. The isolated part of Antarctica is cooling. It's basically a re-analysis of existing data that has resulted in this conclusion.

CBC has a great radio show called Quirks and Quarks. If you live in Canada, you can listen on CBC 1 Saturdays @ noon. Best of all, you can download each segment in ogg, mp3, or real formats, put them in a playlist, and create your own custom show!

It's the people who make the most money off of the activities that threaten our long-term climate that have the most to lose from changes. As an example, Canada's federal government is moving to ratify the Kyoto agreement (after a decade of shuffling our feet). The loudest complainers about this are the oil industry and the Premier of Alberta (Canada'a largest oil-producing province). The problem here is that they control a large amount of money, and a goodly number of jobs. When the medical officer of a regional health authority spoke in favour of Kyoto, he was fired. The uproar over this obvious case of censorship was enough to get him his job offered back to him, but by that time the message was out: Supporting Kyoto could put your career in jeopardy.

It's clear that Oil Company and Alberta government research funding, is going to flow towards those scientists who are willing to critize Kyoto and away from those who might. The silence is deafening.

There's a second reason for the favour of Intervention vs non-destruction: If the government is spending $10M to change the path of a hurricane, about 5% of that ($500K) is likely to end up as profit in the hands of the owners/shareholders of the company that provides the process. There's no obvious profit path for stopping the (over)use of petrolium products.

Trust me, there are people (scientists and politicians) who would love to put forward alternative approaches, but they have a bitch of a time finding someone willing to put forward the resources needed to get their message out and their research done.

The CBC actually ran a TV report about this on the national news tonight! It included numerous mentions of TCP/IP and a quick "dummy's overview" of what it was, plus some reflections on what the modern Internet has meant for society.

The online article is here along with a link to a radio report. Hopefully they'll put the TV version on there too.

It was obviously a slow news day, but it was still nice to see such a geeky topic hit mainstream media.

CBC just (re)aired a documentary on the addictiveness of Everquest. They talk about one young man who committed suicide for reasons believed to be due to the game. http://cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/health/everqu est/

• Making clones of people
• Cloning stem cells
• Growing human embryos for research
• Sex selection
• Making changes to human DNA that would pass from one generation to the next
• Creating people who have animal DNA
• Buying or selling embryos, sperm, eggs or other human reproductive material

Unfortunately it seems that this legislation was killed when the parliament session was ended earlier in the fall (September, I think).

I do hope that the government someday figures out that it is time to pass the legislation first considered 13 years ago!

A decent summary on cloning laws in Canada: CBC website.

Can't find anyone who posted it, so I'll point out th eCBC story as well. Doubt it has anything the others don't, but I'm in the middle of making breakfast so I'm not going to check quite yet.

--Dan

faster than the Pope can turn into a serial killer.

Maybe it's time to come up with a new analogy? The pope, after all, is only humen. Popes make mistakes, And can be viewed as directly responsible for people's deaths, by refusing to change the church's policies regarding the use of contraceptives in AIDS stricken areas.

So last month, the American Physical Society, representing some 40,000 physicists, expanded the ethical guidelines for researchers, in their Statements on Profession Conducts document. The new guidelines call for more ethics training in science and urge all research institutions to adopt the same set of misconduct procedures. The guidelines also clarify co-authors' roles and duties, making it clear that when you put your name on a paper, your reputation is on the line.

Biologists faced similar scandals during the Gallo and Imanishi-Kari cases in the 90's. Unlike Robert Gallo and David Baltimore, who survived the scandal virtually unscathed, the physicists involved in today's scandals are actually being held accountable.

The above info was compiled from an article that originally appeared here.

Okay, this is a little bit offtopic but here it is anyway.

In Canada, the gun registry system was supposed to cost only 2 million dollars, because gun owners were suposed to pay 30$/year for their permit. After three years, it has cost 600 millions and not even all guns have been registered.

At 2 millions dollars the lifes_saved:dollars ratio was pretty high, but at 600 millions (and counting), it would have been better to invest it in hospitals or something like that...

Ref: http://cbc.ca/storyview/CBC/2002/12/03/auditor0212 03
GFK's

I'm sitting here in the relative security we have north of the border, and I just don't understand how you americans let your government gets away with this.

Just yesterday, Slashdot had a story about New York radiation therapy patients being strip searched in the subway in the name of anti-terrorism.

And now this. Another example of your rights being taken away in the name of anti-terrorism.

More recently, Canadian citizens (even ones that have been citizens for a long time) are stopped at the border and detained for questioning and registration just because they were born in one of a list of 6-7 countries. (And they say it's not racial profiling.) Is this not overkill?

Here's another interesting story. One Canadian was imprisoned for 34 days for purchasing gas at a gas station 15 metres inside U.S. territory, as locals had been doing for years, with approval, or at least acknowledgement from U.S. border officials. His crime: he had a criminal record and a rifle in the back of his truck (he was going hunting). They claim he was supposed to check in at the U.S. customs station which is another kilometre down the road (and was closed at the time)! Was he a terrorist threat? I doubt it!

And now a personal anecdote: I was canoe tripping in Quetico Provincial Park (of Ontario) and the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area (of northern Minnesota). It was so refreshing to be able to travel right along the border, maybe cross it for lunch and sleep in Canada, or zig zag down the centre of a lake or river and say "Canada, U.S., Canada, U.S." (kinda like that Simpsons episode where they go to Australia) We never went through U.S. customs; in fact we couldn't even find one if we tried. Next time I go back, I won'e be surprised if I see U.S. customs posts every other lake, with motor boats buzzing around in an attempt to keep out filthy-looking canoe trippers that have been in the bush for the last 30 days. Well... they could be terrorists.

In Canada, 56% of people think that Saddam's the biggest threat to world security, and 38% say it's Bush. (The poll results are here (PDF format)) Anyone surprised?

So now, the big question is why do Americans let the government walk all over the liberties and freedoms that they hold so dear to their existance?

Maybe you can answer that.

CBCran a little feature on OpenOffice.org on Thursday in which columnist Jim Brey discissed, briefly, Open Source generally and Open Office specifically. You can listen to it here.
Given that this is MainStream media, this is a solid endorsement for Open Office.

In a ZDNet interview Microsoft's Jeff Raikes stated"We can say there's only about 10 percent or 20 percent of the features that we'll use, but your 10 percent is going to be different from my 10 percent."

With the majority of the "Real Work" being done with 10 percent (+/-) of the features, I'd say OOo has a good chance to make serious inroads into the market. I still use Star Office on one of my laptops but will be looking at Open Office very soon.

CBCran a little feature on OpenOffice.org on Thursday in which columnist Jim Brey discissed, briefly, Open Source generally and Open Office specifically. You can listen to it here.
Given that this is MainStream media, this is a solid endorsement for Open Office.

In a ZDNet interview Microsoft's Jeff Raikes stated"We can say there's only about 10 percent or 20 percent of the features that we'll use, but your 10 percent is going to be different from my 10 percent."

With the majority of the "Real Work" being done with 10 percent (+/-) of the features, I'd say OOo has a good chance to make serious inroads into the market. I still use Star Office on one of my laptops but will be looking at Open Office very soon.

Canada is very unfriendly to some rodents, yet worships others. We have Wiarton Willie our groundhog in Ontario, the beaver as our national animal and on our nickel, Gainer the gopher [lovable SK Roughriders CFL mascot], yet in Alberta we have outlawed rats! Now we've outlawed patented mice! This tramples on rodent rights!

CBC's version of events

The mouse genome project - A success!

Canada is very unfriendly to some rodents, yet worships others. We have Wiarton Willie our groundhog in Ontario, the beaver as our national animal and on our nickel, Gainer the gopher [lovable SK Roughriders CFL mascot], yet in Alberta we have outlawed rats! Now we've outlawed patented mice! This tramples on rodent rights!

CBC's version of events

The mouse genome project - A success!

Interesting that this is a story today, because yesterday a group of Canadian elk ranchers announced a class action suit against the Canadian gov't for failing to take action against the spread of CWD. More details are here.

hectares? It was acres, according to the top level post.

I thought a hectare was 100 square acres.

2 spiders sq/cm? That's a lot of spiders. I think that had to be a typo.