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They actually solicited applications after coming to office - https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/...

suspect it's more like they always built cars for the Canadian market in Canada, and with NAFTA, it makes economic sense to build one model in one plant and another in another. So the models built in Canada end up getting imported here and vice versa. But is there more to it?

There are a few reasons, including those that you've touched upon already: better educated population and universal medicare help, but so does cheap and reliable electricity (most of which is green in the main automative manufacturing centres due to our abundance of hydroelectric generation capacity), access to raw materials, and the lower Canadian dollar (which makes worker wages competitive). Automative in Canada actually has very strong unions, but even with that the manufacturers get highly educated talent that costs them less money to maintain.

Most automotive manufacturing in Canada tends to be mid-to-higher end lines; we don't have a wide variety of vehicle types, and don't make anything either compact or smaller, or in pickup truck form; Industry Canada has a list of passenger vehicles made in Canada in 2017 here (this list doesn't include military or commercial or mass transit vehicles, or anything that floats or flies).

One thing I will note, it isn't as if automotive manufacturers have been making a run on building assembly facilities in Canada. Most of the facilities in use have been around for decades. Thus, we can conclude that the value is sufficient to keep building vehicles with good sale values in these Canadian facilities, but not so much that manufacturing is leaving the US (or elsewhere) for Canada.

Yaz

For me, in Canada, being considered rural and remote with no access besides fixed mobile (4G with a shiny new tower), I get a 250 GB cap, probably with some government subsidy somewhere in there. Speed averages over 10/1 with one bar on the hub.
Here it is considered an essential service with the plan to connect everyone, ideally at 50/5 but with 5/1 being acceptable for remote rural and 3/1 for the far north. The far north is quite challenging, areas that can contain a couple of Texas's with maybe 35,000 people.
Interestingly, reading the faq at https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/..., seems broadband is defined as always on internet, or basically anything but dial-up.

If you look at the actual report, you'll find the differences between the prices in the US and Canada are not that dramatic. And they don't take into consideration all the lovely fees and service charges that get added to your cellular bill.

Here's a direct link to the report, because the article itself gives almost no useful data:

https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/...

they have bankruptcy for student loans

https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/...

Here in Canada, it's totally illegal.

Incorrect. It's illegal to use a device (i.e. an active jamming device) to block signals. There's absolutely nothing regarding passive devices or regulations that apply to buildings.

Sources: #1, #2.

If you think about it, including buildings is rather dumb. I know a lot of houses that have crappy cellular signals and I even rented an apartment almost a decade ago that had really poor cellular service unless you went outside on the balcony.

Here in Canada, it's totally illegal.

Incorrect. It's illegal to use a device (i.e. an active jamming device) to block signals. There's absolutely nothing regarding passive devices or regulations that apply to buildings.

Sources: #1, #2.

If you think about it, including buildings is rather dumb. I know a lot of houses that have crappy cellular signals and I even rented an apartment almost a decade ago that had really poor cellular service unless you went outside on the balcony.

Certainly not anonymous, unlike you, and certainly verifiable - I quit and sicced the feds on him and they yanked his corporate charter.. He paid to have it revived, they granted him a grace period, he didn't meet it and they dissolved it permanently.

Just because most people will just role over doesn't mean I have to - I am certainly not like "most people." I was going blind at the time, so I really wasn't in the mood to be screwed around with.

Please explain what the factor is in cars that's equivalent to the spectrum problem in Canada?

"In 2006, 98% of mobile spectrum was concentrated in the hands of Canada’s largest wireless companies,” Industry Canada said.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/i...

Until very recently, 98% of the mobile spectrum was owned by the three largest - Bell, Rogers, and Telus, which pretty much eliminates competition because there's no spectrum available for new companies to compete. The past year or so, the Canadian gov't has taken steps to change that by reserving a portion of new spectrum for "new/small" operators, but the *lack* of competition is exactly the problem in Canada. Unless you can point to a factor like spectrum availability that similarly constrains the auto market, then your analogy is terribly flawed, and your assumptions are invalid.

I can't speak to the canadian experience because I don't know the details.

Fair comment, as is my comment that in some situations competition isn't the solution.

The US situation is not readily apparent. You have to have specific knowledge of what is going on at various locations and collect those enmass to form patterns to grasp the climate of the competition environment.

I'm sure that the telecoms on both sides of the border use that argument - and deluge regulatory authorities with detailed information whenever this (competitiveness) issue arises. Niether of us is likely to possess the resources to do that, either for the U.S. or Canada.

To say "just look at canada" without providing the information to actually gauge their competition environment is not useful to me. You would either have to provide me with detailed information especially from competitors to the big three on a case by case basis or I would have to find that information myself.

I don't have the time for that personally and I doubt you're going to provide it.

Can we agree that since niether uf us is going to do the research ourselves we can least rely on regulatory bodies as the "least worst" source of information? That being (hopefully) the case, the following documents are likely to be relevant. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/arch... http://www.competitionbureau.g... Apart from these documents there is a raft of information/reportage/comment/analysis expressing concern about the Canadian competitive environement in this (telecomms/ISP) sector, from the Prime Minister on down . I doubt that the Competition Bureau or the CRTC would be spending large (by Canadian standards) chunks of cash on the sector if they believed either that the competitive situation was giving Canadians value for money or that the currently inequitable situation would resolve itself without external intervention. Well established oligopolies are very hard to shift and, as I mentioned before, the Big 3 telecomms providers here have been very successful at routing outsiders, even when those outsiders have significant support http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/0... from the (competition friendly) federal government.

Recent copyright law renders it illegal to break any digital "lock" mechanism, regardless of whether it's for the sake of format shifting or not. There are exceptions, but you'll note that platform shifting is not one of them:

Digital locks can be hacked for the following purposes:

• law enforcement and national security activities;
• reverse engineering for software compatibility;
• security testing of systems;
• encryption research;
• personal information protection;
• temporary recordings made by broadcast undertakings;
• access for persons with perceptual disabilities; and
• unlocking a wireless device.

source

Platform shifting is still legal, but not of, for instance, Blu-rays or DVDs

It's interesting that OP claims the government "owns" the "IP" related to the vaccine.

Something I left out of my previous post; generally, the Government of Canada doesn't own the patent; instead it's owned by Queen Elizabeth II, in Right of Canada, and represented by the minister of the relevant government agency.

Here's an example I picked purely because of it's humorous title, particular when you relate it to the Queen as owner: APPARATUS FOR PERFORMING SCROTAL CIRCUMFERENCE MEASUREMENT ON BULLS.

Yaz

They can be classified, but not "owned" except under very rare circumstances. While the ideal has been distorted, especially since 2000, the Federal government is still an employee of The People in the States, and doesn't really "own" anything.

Uh...I'll just leave this here...

Yaz

Still available in Canada as well. Telegrams Canada used to be run by CNCP Tel. AT&T Canada/Unitel Communications. But still offers full telegram and courier services.

You should look into the Web Experience Toolkit: https://github.com/wet-boew/wet-boew/.

The Web Experience Toolkit is an open source framework for developping Web sites that was created by the Canadian government, and is now developped by a community that spans various levels of government, the private sector and the open source community. It integrates with various CMSs, including Drupal (https://github.com/wet-boew/wet-boew-drupal) and WordPress (https://github.com/wet-boew/wet-boew-wordpress). This gives you the flexibility of using whatever platform suits your needs to host your site. It also allows you to create themes to adapt the layout and visual look and feel to your needs and branding and uses responsive Web design to make sites mobile-friendly.

You can see the various components of the Web Experience Toolkit in action on the Working Examples page: http://wet-boew.github.com/wet-boew/demos/index-eng.html. You can also see the responsive views in action using the responsive emulator: http://wet-boew.github.com/wet-boew/test/responsive-emulator.html.

For examples of Web sites currently using the Web Experience Toolkit, see:
Industry Canada: http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/icgc.nsf/eng/home
Service Canada: http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/home.shtml
Get Cyber Safe: http://www.getcybersafe.gc.ca/index-eng.aspx
City of Ottawa: https://ottawa.ca/en
Open Source Alliance of Canada: http://www.osacan.org/

There's no Federal corporation with that name (you can search at https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/scr/cc/CorporationsCanada/hm.html?locale=en_CA). They could be incorporated provincially? They could be a numbered company in an attempt to avoid pizza deliveries?

However, the Canadian court found that Pfizer had failed to essentially zero in on sildenafil with their claims. When it came down to actually stating that this molecule is the one that lab studies have found treats ED, Pfizer only ever mentions the core skeleton (known as "formula I") and never uniquely identifies sildenafil. It mentions sildenafil (not even by name, only by its R groups) in one claim, but never connects it and only it to ED. The court judgement notes that "formula I" represents 260 quintillion possible compounds, and therefore rejected the patent for vagueness.

Where DTV is effectively illegal...and you wonder why piracy is rampant on this stuff.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/h_sf05562.html

NOT lost revenue

Want some documentary evidence:

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/h_ip01456.html

The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada

Description: Industry Canada undertook a music file sharing study during 2006-07 to measure the extent to which music downloads over peer-to-peer file sharing networks, for which the sound recording industry receives no remuneration, affect music purchasing activity in Canada. The data used for this analysis are from a Decima Research survey conducted between April and June, 2006, on behalf of Industry Canada. The report, prepared by University of London researchers, Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz, found that music downloads have a positive effect on music purchases among Canadian downloaders but that there is no effect taken over the entire population aged 15 and over.

I agree in the case of competitors duplicating your goods and competing with you on the market. That forces you to lower your prices and gives you a shorter time frame in which to recover your development costs.

However, there's evidence that illegal file sharing has no impact on music sales, or maybe even a small positive impact. (Industry Canada)

If that seems paradoxical, consider that the money people don't spend when they download a pirated song must go somewhere -- like buying another song. And indeed, there are numerous studies showing that the people who pirate the most, are also the ones who buy the most music. (TechDirt)

It seems like people pirate music to get access a wider selection for the same amount of money, not to save money.

I know in Canada any goods sold must be of merchantable quality - which means they must work.

No, that's not necessarily true. There is no law in Canada requiring sellers to accept returns. Some provinces state that an implied warranty applies to all sales, but even this can be waived if the seller and buyer agree to do so. In case an implied warranty is breached, the buyer may need to take legal action to recover part or all of the purchase price.

The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales - An Empirical Analysis:

Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates. Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales.

The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada:

Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by 0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD. We are unable to find evidence of any relationship between P2P file-sharing and purchases of electronically-delivered music tracks (e.g., songs from iTunes). With respect to the other effects, roughly half of all P2P tracks were downloaded because individuals wanted to hear songs before buying them or because they wanted to avoid purchasing the whole bundle of songs on the associated CDs and roughly one quarter were downloaded because they were not available for purchase. Our results indicate that only the effect capturing songs downloaded because they were not available for purchase influenced music purchasing, a 1 percent increase in such downloads being associated with nearly a 4 percent increase in CD purchases.

I'm sorry, it may be counter-intuitive that piracy has a zero or positive effect on music sales, but we can't ignore the facts.

The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales - An Empirical Analysis:

Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero, despite rather precise estimates. Moreover, these estimates are of moderate economic significance and are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the recent decline in music sales.

The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada:

Among Canadians who engage in P2P file-sharing, our results suggest that for every 12 P2P downloaded songs, music purchases increase by 0.44 CDs. That is, downloading the equivalent of approximately one CD increases purchasing by about half of a CD. We are unable to find evidence of any relationship between P2P file-sharing and purchases of electronically-delivered music tracks (e.g., songs from iTunes). With respect to the other effects, roughly half of all P2P tracks were downloaded because individuals wanted to hear songs before buying them or because they wanted to avoid purchasing the whole bundle of songs on the associated CDs and roughly one quarter were downloaded because they were not available for purchase. Our results indicate that only the effect capturing songs downloaded because they were not available for purchase influenced music purchasing, a 1 percent increase in such downloads being associated with nearly a 4 percent increase in CD purchases.

I don't understand what you mean with your comment about the physical media supply chain.

It's entirely possible that people who were, say, buying 10 times as much media as the average person are now also exactly the people who are more likely to turn to 'piracy' to satiate their media desires. If that means they now buy 5 times as much media as the average person, that still suggests the notion that pirates buy more stuff than non-pirates; but they're still buying less than before.

True, but it defuses the argument that people have no reason to buy media if they have access to them for free.

There's also a Canadian study that compares how music sales are affected when the songs become available on filesharing networks, and finds that the net effect is zero (Industry Canada).

( wouldn't know about Sweden - Dutch law already allows downloads of media regardless of whether or not the copyright owners like it, which may impact behavior to begin with. )

Here in Sweden, it's been illegal for a few years to download music and movies that were put up on the Internet without the copyright holder's consent. (It's still legal to make copies for private use from authorised copies, e.g a store-bought music CD or movie DVD.)

I'm not sure about this, this would be a very hard thing to prove. How do you isolate the direct effects of piracy from normal market trends?

I've only browsed most of the studies, so I can't give a good answer. But it seems like many studies look at differences between consumers, and try to find correlations between pirating behaviour and purchasing behaviour. For example, the one by Industry Canada. Or this British one.

Generally, the people who pirate the most also spend the most money on music, if we include concert-going and merchandise.

So far, I've only found one (1) study which confirms the thesis that piracy adversely affects sales, and that's the study sponsored by the American recording industry.

Also, I'd like to point out that maximising the revenue from music/movie/software sales is not optimal for society. Quite to the contrary, if the same amount of music/movies/software can be sold to the public at a lower price, it's better for the economy. A market which can produce a music CD for $5 is more efficient than one which can produce the same CD for $10. From an economic standpoint, an industry's revenues should be as small as possible, as long as it stays profitable for it to produce its goods.

A much smaller amount of pirates, though, would have bought the content if it wasn't for a free alternative being around. These ones do result in at least a theoretical loss for creators. This group hurts smaller artists more than large publishers, since small sums of money matter much more starving musicians than those covered by the big, rich, greasy, wings of old publishers.

I think it's the other way around, since the smaller artist's music is harder to find online, they benefit more from the free advertising which piracy provides, and they tend to have a larger percentage of dedicated fans who are willing to go to concerts, buy merchandise and donate directly.

Many small bands have found that it's most efficient to just offer the music for free download, for example, the ones at jamendo.com.

Ah, so a computer program, song, or book is an "idea". OK. You don't need anything other than your head to have an idea, so you don't need a computer to share a program or song, yes?

To have an idea, no. To share an idea I might need language, or paper and pencil or even a whole movie to adequately do it.

I am supposed to believe a poll of "1,000 16- to 50-year-olds with internet access" commissioned by a politically biased group without knowing how the poll participants were chosen nor the questions asked? Would you accept a poll commissioned by RIAA with blind faith?

OK. A study by the University of Amsterdam:
http://www.ivir.nl/publications/vaneijk/Communications&Strategies_2010.pdf
By the Business School of Norway: http://www.bi.no/Content/Article____74866.aspx
By the Canadian Department of Industy:
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/en/h_ip01456e.html

All biased.

ZeroPaid as a source? Really? Do you have access to any non-biased sources? No? Didn't think so, you closed-minded fuck.

Zeropaid is just the guy who made an article from MPAA own number. Who could have clicked on their source, on Hollywood.com:
http://images.hollywood.com/site/HISTORICAL_AND_YTD_BOX_OFFICE_2009.pdf

You are hoisted on your own petard, dumbass.

No, Mr, I didn't. The total income is still greater. If it comes from recorded or live, I don't really care. It still means the increase on file sharing is not hurting artists.

Tell, shithead, do you still wear the clothes you did 15 years ago? Did you alter them yourself or take them to a tailor to be modified? Or, did you BUY NEW ONES? Well, what was it, asshole?

So what you are saying is that, even when people have the possibility of fixing their stuff, they buy new?
Well, then by that argument open sourcing is not that bad.

To answer your question, yes, I paid for tailors to fix my clothes, and yes I have 10+ year old clothes I still use. Not 15, since I've grew somewhat since I was 10.

Your analogy has the car as the software, not the computer. Now, if you don't know what you have already said, maybe you should shut the fuck up. Or, is it that you are trying to change your argument on the fly?

Where do you see the word computer on my analogy? Just because you're unable to apply it to software doesn't mean it wasn't my intent.

Wikipedia is software? No, it is a website whose articles are often biased and/or wrong.

Wikipedia is software, yes. You can download it here. Whether is on web format or a rich client is irrelevant.

Android and WebOS are both Linux, are operating systems, and are almost exclusively run on proprietary hardware where loading a new OS is difficult at best. The same goes for all those embedded Linux devices, in which the user almost never interacts with the OS, but are in fact appliances.

So? It's still open source being run by millions of people.

So, there are over 500,000 FLOSS FAILURES, including Linux on the desktop, for every moderate success. Tell me, where is OOo in your list? How about GNUCash? How about GIMP? Oh, wait, none of those are really successes. Most of the users for GIMP would prefer to use Photoshop. Even FLOSS supporters don't like GNUCash. All I ever hear about OOo is how slow it is and how it has crappy compatibility with MS Office.

Should I list the millions of c

But people do go to concerts, even though it costs ten or twenty times more than buying an album, so apparently, it provides something a recording does not. So far, independent studies have shown that illegal file sharing has a zero net effect on music purchases, for example, the Industry Canada report from 2007.

I do agree a blanket fee on Internet access is a stupid idea, though.

Yeah, I don't buy it. In Southern Manitoba - an area with half West Virginia's population, and four times the land area, there's nearly complete broadband penetration (pdf file).

Montana and Alaska are sparsely populated. The interior of Australia are sparsely populated, as is northern Canada. A good 2/3rds of West Virginia has > 10 people per sq. mile. That's practically jamming people in.

For those of you interested in under served markets -- check out the Canadian set of broadband maps (current to 2010) Maps here

Just an FYI currently where I am at (southern Alberta, just outside of Lethbridge). I am maxed out at 3Mbps down on a good day when my DSL isn't bottlenecked from the DSLAM. On average I get about 1.7Mbps with 120ms Ping to most places.

What I've never understood is why it wasn't a flat rate (modified by the scope of the infringing activity) plus all the revenues you gained from the infringing activity.

It used to be very similar to that; "In the corporate world treble damages often arise in regard to patent infringement, willful counterfeiting and antitrust lawsuits. Damages are calculated against the financial loss incurred by the plaintiff directly resulting from the actions of the defendant."

The problem in this case, and specifically the reason the damage award keeps bouncing around so hard (gaining and losing multiple zeros on the left side of the decimal point) is that damages in IP infringement cases are difficult to quantify, especially when the "damage" may be, in actual fact, a net effect of zero... or even an increase in sales of music on physical media.

From http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-boosts-cd-sales-071103/:

The researchers conclude that that people who download more music actually buy more CDs. They report: “We estimate that the effect of one additional P2P download per month is to increase music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.”

the canadian patent database has revealed all!

Patent 68307: FERTILIZER DISTRIBUTOR
Patent 70643: APPARATUS FOR DUPLICATING PHONOGRAPH RECORDS

so what it's trying to get across is that you are to give people shit and make copies of music. i'm pretty sure they stole this number from the RIAA.

the canadian patent database has revealed all!

Patent 68307: FERTILIZER DISTRIBUTOR
Patent 70643: APPARATUS FOR DUPLICATING PHONOGRAPH RECORDS

so what it's trying to get across is that you are to give people shit and make copies of music. i'm pretty sure they stole this number from the RIAA.

What the heck happened to all the public feedback they got in the last year via the copyright consultations? There were thousands of comments. Was it not clear enough that we don't want copyright to be the way that it was implemented in the U.S.?

Time to write another letter to my MP and Tony Clement (Minister of Industry).

Demands don't bug me. I'm proud to say we rarely cave in to this type of pressure. We still don't have the DMCA like laws the Americans want us to have, and I hope we don't go this route either.

While you're up in arms about it though, go write to the people in charge like I did and get your voice on file. It matters.

It may not be as eloquent as some people, but every thought counts I figure.

Inform yourself.

Canadian survey and study, which shows a direct positive influence on purchases due to downloading.

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/h_ip01456.html

The key findings of above study

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9086/canadian_govt_study_p2p_increases_cd_sales/

A Harvard Business School study with clear proof that sales are affected by downloads, for the positive.

http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf

A recent Norweigen school of management study, which shows not only are filesharers increasing sales they themselves are the largest purchasers of that media.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/86009/study-pirates-buy-10-times-more-music-than-they-steal/

This may sound in your head as something quite insightful, however when its broken down its clear it has very little meaning at all. Are you suggesting that the initial profit increase is somehow not an increase in sales? Or are you suggesting that a higher initial profit has nothing to do with sales? Or is it a preemptive statement and you are hoping to deflect arguments about current profit increases by the big media houses? Furthermore how does this statement help your case? You are agreeing and disagreeing with yourself in the same sentence.

Perhaps the US test is harder, however, I can assure you the basic HAM qualification for Canada requires that while you must know the maximum operating power you may use on each band, you certainly don't need any knowledge of what happens when you are exposed to RF to pass it, nor any idea of even something simple like how much RF passes through various organic materials. None whatsoever. I did my test less than 10 years ago, and I highly doubt it has changed. In fact, you can access the question bank here. If you can memorize the correct answer to all questions, congratulations, you just passed. I haven't done it myself, but the advanced qualification question bank is here, and I bet it also doesn't discuss these things.

Not saying that knowing this stuff isn't useful, but don't expect that speaking with a licensed HAM will get you any useful information on this stuff past "Don't glue to antenna to your hardhat" and exactly how much RF power any single point is likely to expose you to.

Perhaps the US test is harder, however, I can assure you the basic HAM qualification for Canada requires that while you must know the maximum operating power you may use on each band, you certainly don't need any knowledge of what happens when you are exposed to RF to pass it, nor any idea of even something simple like how much RF passes through various organic materials. None whatsoever. I did my test less than 10 years ago, and I highly doubt it has changed. In fact, you can access the question bank here. If you can memorize the correct answer to all questions, congratulations, you just passed. I haven't done it myself, but the advanced qualification question bank is here, and I bet it also doesn't discuss these things.

Not saying that knowing this stuff isn't useful, but don't expect that speaking with a licensed HAM will get you any useful information on this stuff past "Don't glue to antenna to your hardhat" and exactly how much RF power any single point is likely to expose you to.

AFAIK, that section is interpreted (sadly SCOTUS has more of a say in this than you do) to mean criminal law and has no bearing in civil law -- which is what we're talking about here.

I was under the impression that copyright contained criminal sanctions as well as civil ones - ie. if you engage in piracy (ie. large-scale for-profit copying) criminal charges can be brought against you.

If you are as pissed off about other countries trying to write our laws write your MP and the following Ministers.

Tony Clement
Minister of Industry
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ic1.nsf/eng/00093.html
minister.industry@ic.gc.ca

Bev Oda
Minister of International Cooperation
http://www.bevoda.ca/
Oda.B@parl.gc.ca

The Canadian government's copyright board says piracy "involves commercial-scale operations and a profit motive" - isn't that what this is?

Canada, they of the Great-White-Northern single payer system, has a substantial medical bankruptcy rate.

I could find nothing in any of the links on the page you linked to that gives any causes for individual bankruptcies, medical expenses or otherwise. Would you care to be more specific in your linking?

America is the only 1st World country where filing for bankruptcies for unpaid medical expenses exists.

Canada, they of the Great-White-Northern single payer system, has a substantial medical bankruptcy rate. It's less prevalent in Europe (though it still exists there too) but only because they have an even bigger social welfare state.

The majority of medical bankruptcies come not from lack of insurance, but from long illnesses that result in lack of income.

I agree, per the Yahoo! and Belgium issue. But:

http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/cgi-bin/sc_mrksv/corpdir/dataOnline/corpns_re?company_select=4496906

Corporation #4496906 BN #834768624RC0001
Corporation Name(s): FACEBOOK CANADA LTD.

Old Name(s) and Change Date(s)

Registered Office Address: [Latest address on file]
Care of:
Street: 3700 400-3RD AVE. SW
City: CALGARY
Province: Alberta
Postal Code: T2P4H2
Country: Canada

Country: Canada
Reg. Off. Eff: 2008/10/21

Status Date
Active 2008/10/21

ACT Name: Canada Business Corporations Act Proxy:
Incorporation:2008/10/21 Prospectus:
Amalgamation: Take Over:
Continuance: Revival:
Anniversary:2008/10/21 Intent to Dissolve:
Import: - Revocation of Intent:
Export: - Update:2008/10/27

The comments to TFA (I guess I'm not a real ./er either) include links to a properly rigorous academic study (and some news articles) that shows that downloaders spend more money, not less: for every CD downloaded, they buy 0.4 additional CDs. The study's authors also "find evidence that purchases of other forms of entertainment such as cinema and concert tickets, and video games tend to increase with music purchases."

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/ip01457.html
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/03/6418.ars
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4718249.stm

Did you notice the shift? A couple of years ago they'd just shrug it off,

You mean this?

• Open Source Software, which is part of the "Federated Architecture Program" from Treasury Board of Canada.

Let's see there is a position paper, a FAQ, a list of open source providers (from Industry Canada), and resources from Public Works and Goverment Services resource entitled Software Acquisition Reference Centre.

It may not gather a lot of steam in terms of office desktops, too many MSCE-certified types are employed as Computer System Administrators, called "CS'es" because of the abbreviation of their job classification who are not experienced Linux administrators, but I think areas such as embedded systems, and servers, systems that don't have user's calling a helpdesk for technical support, are likely areas where the adoption over time is possible.

Presently groups tend to be isolated or have insightful, competent management willing to fight to their use Open Source / Free Software within the Government of Canada, but those are rare, internally led experiences, often from smaller, newer teams of people already with appropriate skills.

One side-effect is that if government adopts Open Source Software, it may change their closed culture of treating soft resources as scarce, and actually promote sharing within departments across geographical regions and groups, as well as inter-departmental sharing of resources, which could have a significant impact on reducing spending on custom development. Personally, I think the cultural changes of infusing Open Source could be vastly worth more than the lisense / CALs they would not have to buy.

One example is not accepting binary / executable only deliverables from an private-sector contractor, in an Open Source culture that appears insane and unsafe, but too often currently binary deliverables are used as leverage into a form of black-mail which makes the government department at the mercy of the contractor(s).

> The FCC is selling a big chunk of the 700MHz UHF spectrum,
> right? So will some of my channels move?

See http://www.fcc.gov/dtv/markets/ and select your city for a list of channels and coverage maps.

Americans living near the Canadian border might be interested in http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/vwapj/DTV_PLAN_Dec08-e.pdf/$file/DTV_PLAN_Dec08-e.pdf (PDF document). It lists Canadian Analog/Transitional/Final frequencies. The Canadian analogue shutdown is scheduled for August 31, 2011

Can anyone reach the Trademark database at http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/app/cipo/trademarks/search/tmSearch.do?language=eng or is it /.'d?

http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/en/h_ip01456e.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3052145.stm

want any more?

but the concept isn't revolutionary- its evolutionary

Most inventions are evolutionary, in reading Kane's patent he hits on all the prior technolgies, patents, and inventions on which he based his evolutionary design.

http://patents.ic.gc.ca/cipo/cpd/en/patent/1186411/summary.html

He was definitely on the right track but the semiconductor technology wasn't ready.

And while I was skeptical at first when reading the article he actually had a decent patent, much better than the guy who claimed to invent the Sony Walkman when all he did was invent a belt to hold components for a portable player. He listed all kinds of concepts in his patent, i.e. miniaturized high fidelity audio components, but he did not invent them or the Walkman.

of course they'll pass it along since this is in the act "Generally speaking, ISPs are not responsible for copyright material communicated through their networks when they have no control over the content. They may become liable if they exercise some control in the communication of copyright material." http://www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/crp-prda.nsf/en/rp01164e.html