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I think you numbers are out of date.

The individual limit for Canadian federal parties is $1100 and $0 for corporations/unions.

One difference between the US and Canada is that while Canada has the right to freedom of expression in the constitution, it also says "The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." This weakens our rights somewhat compared to the US, but avoids problems like this.

Asking a company delivering content to Japan to be compliant with Japanese laws is not unreasonable.

On the other hand, it is possible that they are not violating Japanese law. As has been already said, the internet is not a broadcast (radio) medium. Also, looking at Japan's constitution:

Article 21:
Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press and all other forms of expression are guaranteed. 2) No censorship shall be maintained, nor shall the secrecy of any means of communication be violated.

http://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Japan/English/e nglish-Constitution.html#CHAPTER_IX

I'm calling these films by their English names because I'm speaking English, btw - I don't really see the point in mixing languages up when there is a proper, official English title available.

While I agree with you on using English titles if available, if the Japanese one means nothing to you, there is a point in using the original title.

I don't speak Japanese, nevertheless, once I learned what Mononoke means (vengeful ghost, here probably better "spirit"), I prefer the Japanese title.

I cannot know for sure if it has the same sound for an Japanese speaker, but for me - while it is typical in Japanese stories for names to have related meaning - here the name seems to describe the role and the role to be the name. Completely ignoring the role in the English title of the movie lacks a lot, IMHO.

For me its like translating "The Last of the Mohicans" in a way that it sounds like "The Last of Johns" in another tongue.

Well, enough of that rant... :-)

I don't mean to say that you shouldn't use English titles, but I don't agree that there isn't a point with sticking closer to the original. But maybe that's just me (I am also one who prefers to watch a movie/TV show in the original language, if I am able to).

Yeah, Sony Stores across Canada, for at least 4-5 years now. I'm talking east and west coast, including Quebec ("La Maison Sony" - in Canada, if they bother to localize for Quebec, they are serious. Everything has to be in French to comply with fascist language laws). I've seen them mainly in malls but also bigger retail shops.

They are primarily focused on home entertainment (TVs, Playstations, stereos, etc.) Once I saw a laptop on display but the salespeople were clueless and more interested in the customers buying TVs and walkmans (i.e. the commissions probably suck).

Once I asked them if they could get accessories for my Picturebook and they referred me to Sony Service.

If the US Sony stores are doing PCs, I would be suprised if the same thing happens up here. It's a much smaller market with lots of competition from the big guys (Future Shop/Best Buy) and the local shops in major cities.

That said, my experience in the business trying to sell Sony PC hardware has been: can't get it through the distribution channel in Canada. Retail or grey market (i.e. via US) only. So there is a gap to be filled and maybe that will happen via Sony Store.

So perhaps this is news for Canada too...

The seller is listed as living in Hong Kong, says so himself, and from "Member since: Mar-17-00" (Source) I would suspect he's been there for a while. His eBay name is "lingjr", which is probably stands for Ling Junior. That's not a Japanese name. Lastly, the romanization of Dreamcast is "", or if that doesn't render, "doriimukyasuto" (Source).

I'm not trying to be a dick. I just think he isn't Japanese.

Simple question, simple answer. Get a Canon Wordtank.

The Wordtank models are single purpose (unlike a PDA) and do the job they were built for well. Look up Japanese (kana and kanji) from English, English/Kanji from kana. Menus are available in English. I used a Wordtank constantly for the first 3-4 years of Japanese study. The Wordtank dictionaries have probably improved, but I never trusted the definitions in the Wordtank as being more than a best estimate. You will end up using a paper dictionary in conjunction with the Wordtank, but nobody wants to carry around a bulky dictionary all the time.

I am no longer current on the Wordtank models, but this website should provide you with enough information to make that decision on your own. Avoid romaji based dictionaries (they will stunt your learning) or ones targeted at the Japanese market (by the time you have the skill to use one, you won't be asking Slashdot for help in choosing).

Two recommendations for online dictionaries:
Jeffrey's Japanese-English Dictionary Server
Space ALC

Good luck with your studies. It will enrich your life in many ways.

Jeffrey's is a really good online dictionary that I believe uses the same dictionaries. I have quick searches set up in firebird to make it even easier, for single word translations e->j and j->e, as well as skip code lookups.

Just type j-e oyasumi in to my location bar and up comes a translation.. meccha benri na.. ;)

Statute of Westminster in 1931. So Canada did have a choice.

Morse is universal, so talking to that Japanese will not be a problem.

Really?!! Then I wonder what the morris code for this kanji character is?

Epson is written "fGfvf\f""(E pu so n) (change your Encoding to Japanese to view the characters correctly)in Japanese. These letters are Katakana and usually used to write words from foreign languages. While your post was obviously meant to be funny, it would be much better when "Epson" would sound like a real japanese word.

Seiko would be a much better example, it translates to stuff like:
sexual intercourse or crude; immature; unpolished

Motorola makes a couple of PowerPC based microcontrollers. These come with a number of usefull peripherals (USB endpoints, ethernet interfaces, serial ports, parallel I/O ports, etc.), some RAM and some EPROM all on a single chip. In decades past, Steve Ciarcia built a small publishing empire on the practice of building homebrew personal computers on similar microcontrollers (Z80 variants, in his case). The same approach could be used today. If you don't want to use a PowerPC, there are similar beasts available based on other popular architectures.

• (n) series; system; grouping of enterprises; order succession; (P)

• affiliate company

• (n,vs) putting in order; systemize

looted directly from Jeffrey's JapaneseEnglish Dictionary Server

• Legislation enacted in 1999 that introduces the system requires the government to take relevant measures to ensure the protection of personal information. However, the Diet failed to enact a bill submitted by the government on the protection of information during its latest session, which ended Wednesday, amid concerns that the laws will also threaten the freedom of expression.