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When exactly has Microsoft shared any of its profits with its shareholders?

Currently Canada is offering a competition for independant developers as well:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20061108.wtelefilmm1107/BNStory/Technology/home

Actually a few days ago the Japanese minister of trade, Akira Amarai, publicly expressed similar concerns. He is worried about Sony's long term competitiveness as well as the effect that the poor reputation of the Sony brand has had on all Japanese electronics in general.

but it's not the one its designer intended. Indeed, on a segway, you look like a total dork and you're dangerous (I was passed by one on the sidewalk, I can attest to this).

But there's one area where segways excel, and that's giving a lot of freedom for disabled people to move around. Each time I hear about a segway story, it's about some handicapped person who finds it marvellous. Like this story for example, or this one which are rather typical.

So in short: I reckon segways should be banned on public thoroughfares, and allowed anywhere for disabled people.

As far as 'letting' them in... that is a farce... there are so many other ways to cross our borders than to focus just on the border guards...

"I think their terrrorist-to-civilian kill rate was lower than the military-to-civilian kill rate of their enemies. Sorry for the lack of citations on this part, but it's hard to track down these numbers."

You are 100% correct and the numbers are not even close.

According to the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs the ration for Israelis killed is 43 civilians / 119 military

For Lebanon , Hizballah claims it lost 74 combatant and Israel claims the number is closer to 500.
I will use the numbbers ussued by Israel.

The total number of Lebanese killed was untill a few days ago between 1,300 and 1,600 (the number keeps going up as more bodies are pulled from the ruble).

So working by Israel's claims their kill ratio is around 1000 civilian / 500 military.

Of course at this point some people start claiming it is the intentions that matter and not the number of civilians killed ...

HIV is an INCURABLE disease, which kills %100 of it's victims.

This is not true. Just last week I read this article about people who get HIV but never show any symptoms.

Another article on the same topic:
article

Dolphins have been known to jump over nets in the open ocean.

See here for another discussion of the article in question.

other forum

This time I am talking about your post. Aljazeera is not nearly as fundamentalist as e.g. Fox News, but even if it were, it would not automatically mean that a "science article" published there is nonsense.
Like every other news source, they get most of these articles from agencies that sell them.

So if you prefer to read that nonsense from a different source, go here:
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.2 0060819.LETTERS19-12/TPStory/Comment
    http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=14&click_id= 143&art_id=vn20060817031855765C442092
    http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html ?id=3d68da16-b7b1-4334-bf4d-aa9ebdd0f303&k=89468
and probably hundreds more all over the internet.

But how about a movie http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.2 0060812.NOTE12-4/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Movies/

There are wierder online PR things. See the Megaphone Desktop Toolbar. This is a piece of software designed to pump up pro-Israel responses in online polls and blogs. The toolbar pops up "alerts" when some central site sends them out. Nothing new there. But when it tells the user about a poll, the options are to vote their way, automatically, or not to vote at all. Site-specific scripts do the voting for you. Cute.

It is supposedly distributed on behalf of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That's a new development - government sponsored adware. But that may be a fake endorsement. The "gyius.org" site itself has a "cloaked domain", and the "standwithus.org" site with the endorsement has phony domain registration info. There's no real contact info for either. There's an EULA with no real company name, and mention of a remote update capability. So this may be some clever scheme to get people to install adware/spyware.

Somebody in the security business or the press really should chase this down. There's been an article in The Globe and Mail, but it's not about the technology.

my only question is, would it recognize her mood?
http://images.theglobeandmail.com/archives/RTGAM/i mages/20060207/wface0207/0207face.jpg
i understand that she was the world's first facial transplant patient. but i mean, come on. what kind of art does she earn with that face? i vote, picasso! it is priceless!
(note, this is only a joke, ..kinda.)

I used to think of Canadians as kinder/gentler versions of us Americans. Never did I think something like this would come out of Canada...read this I guess this isn't as obtrusive as Big Brother, let's call it Middle Brother... -ed xia

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.2 0060628.TEETH28/TPStory/National/
http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id= 7691
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/ece/news.cfm?story= 47563

and here is one of the papers:

Growth Modification of the Rabbit Mandible Using Therapeutic Ultrasound: Is it Possible to Enhance Functional Appliance Results?
http://www.angle.org/anglonline/?request=get-docum ent&issn=0003-3219&volume=073&issue=06&page=0631

They don't know why ultrasound stimulates growth, but it does.

For the engineers in the room...

http://www.ece.ualberta.ca/~jchen/

Article from the Globe & Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.2 0060628.TEETH28/TPStory/National

Having been in Ontario for one NDP term and BC for two. I'm rather glad they don't have much of a say at all. NDP policies of feed the unions and Tax the rich tend to drive the economy down rather than up. NDP platform last election was pretty much a joke as well.

Your also playing with words when you say "lowest tax bracket" as if it means the poor will get taxed more. In Canada if your below a certain income level you don't pay income tax. The poorest are now getting a break on their sales tax while still not paying income tax. It's also important to note that the IMF was against the change because they worry we won't be able to tax old people enough since they make no income.

You beat me to it! I was going to say the same thing, but post this story instead.
I say we blame scuttlemonkey for letting this slip through the cracks.
Bad (scuttle)monkey!

I just bought a pair of New Balance shoes, and I only buy NB athletic shoes because they still make some in the USA (check the inside label, because they also make some models abroad).

I do too, but mostly because they're not total ripoffs and they come in size 15. However, I don't think I'd pay a premium for them relative to other shoes with equivalent satisfaction ratings and build quality.

I'm also a bit of a woodworker/tool junkie, and I refuse to buy tools made in China. I'll settle for Japan, Europe or Mexico if USA isn't available. But nothing from Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, etc.

Congratulations, there's a young girl in Thailand that's being sold into sex slavery because she or her parents can't get a job at the local tool plant. BTW, that computer you just typed your post on? Lots of it came from China, Malaysia, etc. Hypocrisy? You're soaking in it!!

The only people to blame are consumers. Demand something else and you'll get it. Settle, and you get sweatshop labor. "Free Tibet" isn't just a bumper sticker slogan. If you really cared about it, you would change your ways.

Sweatshops are better than fuckshops. Or starvation. Frankly, I consider it a moral imperative to buy products made in developing countries. The fact that it fucks over unionized labor is just sweet, sweet icing on that cake.

BTW, you think that SUV of yours is American-made? HARDLY.. More like Hecho en Mexico... Try a Toyota if you want American made (and to thumb your nose at greedy unions)...

The US pursues trade practices that are to its own advantage because they are to their own advantage, not because they feel insulted by some guy they've never heard of before.

If you look back at the history of the softwood dispute, you will the see that the Liberals did indeed pursue a resolution through appropriate channels. Or was Emerson just dilly-dallying when he was a Liberal? Somehow I doubt that he was, or why would Harper have recruited him?

If only 90% of people who voted for the Conservatives actually wanted them to win, that means that a party that was wanted by less than a third of voting electors is now leading the country... That makes your 'left-field' look like a vast majority that is effectively disenfranchised right now... On the up side, if the Conservatives change tacks and become interested in meaningful electoral change (e.g., proportional representation instead of the tokenism they are currently engaged on), this kind of poor electoral outcome should become less common in the future.

Damn Americans. I hate those bastards.

But it appears the slashdot editors don't find an article about a major Canadian politican having a pardody site removed from DNS and unregistered to be an important story. Most likely because said politician is from the Liberal party.

"My Office has had the website suspended through CIRA [Canadian Internet Registration Authority] and CDNS [Canadian Domain Name Services] and it will be down as soon as 6 p.m. I think the issue with the website has been dealt with. . . ."

I understand though, clearly if Bush or a repub had done the same then Slashdot would reject it as well.

Read more here

This, my friends, is real censorship.

BTW, this op-ed was interesting.

This comment in particular... Her greatest worry, she says, is what she calls "the liberal betrayal" -- the failure of the West to defend its own liberal democratic values against those who would destroy them.

I agree with that. It's one of my complaints against the Bush Administration. That they are refusing to defending democratic values, and instead appear to be doing everything they can to give ammunition to those who oppose democratic values.

Interesting.

Just so we could get past the vague, liar thing, could you be more specific? Exactly what actual liberties do you think people are trying to take from you? Voting? Free speech? Free association? Freedom of religion? Any suggestion of quartering troops in your house?

As to the terrorism thing, the news there seems to be rather concrete, even if not well known, and at times disturbing. There is nothing vague about this at all.

It is not so much that anyone does or does not believe this BS. What defines what we "believe"? The press is pwned pure and simple. As long as Leno sticks to safe material(*) and the press doesn't run any news, the average man on the street won't know or care. As long as the man on the street doesn't know or care and the administration presents a clear and present danger to the well being of the elected representatives, Bush gets a free pass. This whole mess has hit stage two: I believe (I hope) that many reps have realized that this is not going a good direction and they are all waiting for someone (else) to lead the charge.

The Boston Herald: "It should go without saying that most of us who lead ordinary lives are in no danger of having our e-mails intercepted or our phone conservations eavesdropped on."

Do the Herald's editors actually believe this? Are they telling their sources "Hey, no worries, call us any time"? Are they actually telling their staff that it is business as usual? Or are they deliberately deceiving their readers?

If it is the former, the editors might as well fire the whole newsroom because there's no point paying all those reporters just to surf AP and Reuters. After all, as Jean Lambert put it: "the thought of having a hunting accident in my living room did not appeal to me."

(*) Aside to jay Leno: I realize that you're no Colbert and you have other reasons for wimpy material but but even NBC should be able to afford a few decent writers. Lately you remind me of the radio show on Good Morning Vietnam and not in a good way.

Jill Lawless from Associated Press reports: "The code has been cracked.

London lawyer Dan Tench and The Times newspaper on Friday both claimed to have solved the riddle of a code embedded in a judge's ruling in

The Da Vinci Code copyright lawsuit.

It reads: "Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought.""

"Tench, who brought the code to the world's attention last week, said the key lay within the pages of Brown's thriller.

At one point Brown's cryptographer hero Robert Langdon explains the Fibonacci sequence -- a mathematical progression that involves adding a number to the two numbers before, so that 1 is followed by 1, then 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. That sequence, when repeated and substituted with letters from the alphabet, spells out the cryptic message."

"The message reveals a significant but now overlooked event that occurred virtually 100 years to the day of the start of the trial."

"John "Jackie" Fisher, is a 19th-century admiral credited with modernizing the British navy and developing its first modern warship, the Dreadnought."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20060428.wdavincicode0428/BNStory/Entertainment/h ome

The story is covered HERE

They seem to be surprised at the furor. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.2 0060421.IBPHILIPS21/TPStory/TPBusiness/ They're in damage control mode now, but what will happen when the noise and fury dies down???

Agreed, and it doesn't go far enough. The morons who write these stupid headlines might try, just once in a while, to have it make sense. E.g. from Google news and Yahoo news:

The Leaker in Chief?
WTF is this story about? You'ld have to click the damned thing to guess.

Disney to use Web
They don't have a web site yet? Or maybe they're talking about spiders? Who knows?

The kind of hacking you want
Are they talking about computers, driving a cab, or writing a newspaper article?

Massachusetts miracle?
And?????

Sutherland pacts for 3 three more years of "24"
That one doesn't even PARSE. Is a verb too much to ask for?

Big Brother inmates released to vote

Would it be too much to ask for folks who are supposed to enlighten us to start actually communicating? I use the headline to tell me whether or not I want to click the link. I gave up paper newspapers long ago.

I sure hope journalists don't make more than minimum wage, 'cause if they do they're all way overpaid.

Original Story

Mr. Raza's lawyer said in a court filing that the video was so widely circulated that one Internet site solely dedicated to the two-minute clip recorded 76 million visits by October, 2004.

Mr. Raza conceded in his examination that he didn't express much anguish when he spoke to Mr. Mukerji in May of 2003 about his sudden fame.

He said he was cautious because "everything I said was textually reported on the Internet. I signalled in more or less subtle fashion my unhappiness."

Mr. Raza -- who appears on the video as a chubby, ungainly young man -- recalled how other students got on tables and chanted taunts at him. "There was about 100 people in those halls. It was total chaos . . . Any opportunity was good enough to shout 'Star Wars!' "

He said in one class, where a document was shown through a projector, other students scrolled the text, mimicking the opening of the movie, as they sang the Star Wars theme.

And whenever he was in a public place, he said, strangers would call to him.

"Hey! It's Ghyslain Raza! Star Wars Kid, hey!"

He left the school and eventually, got a private tutor.

Didn't you just write:
"To get this straight: Instead of finding one of the countless case of information on this case, instead you decided to post a hopeful karma-whore on Slashdot, repeating a bunch of ignorant mistruths that you're unsure of?"

And then go on to say:
NTP is a purported patent troll, existing on fluffed up patents (many created using the continuation loophole of the patent office, allowing them to add news discoveries in other people's products into a long idling patent application)."

Maybe you should read this:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20060221.wpatentlyabsured-rim21/BNStory/RIM2006/h ome

So I guess if you invent something but can't make it profitable, you should give up all your rights and let someone else have it?

On a related note, Google is allowing AdSense publishers to click ads since click fraud isn't such a big deal.

Eric
How to find the BlackBerry OS version

Stanislaw Lem, aged 85, one of the world's greatest scifi writters has passed away. Most membered works include 'Solaris', 'The Cyberiad' and Pilot Pirx stories.

The Globe and Mail newspaper today has an article about growing meat in a jar. Test products so far taste like "jelly on fabric" ... yum ... http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20060327.wxmeat27/BNStory/Science/home

This country is going to have to come to a serious reckoning very soon on the subject of Intellectual Property. I may be annoyed by HBO threatening to sue me over shifting a few bits around the network, but there are things far worse. My mother recently had her gall bladder removed. But what if her doctor had not been able to tell her the result of the test to determine that because someone else held a patent on that diagnosis? I do understand the need for patents. It is entirely reasonable to protect an idea long enough for a company to produce a product and start making money. However, when a company can file patents and put them in a drawer waiting to sue someone who actually figures out how to implement them ( NPT vs. Blackberry); Microsoft can patent "A method, comprising: selecting pixels to be used as an emoticon; assigning a character sequence to the pixels; and transmitting the character sequence to a destination to allow for reconstruction of the pixels at the destination" (Smiley Face Patent); and, as mentioned in Crichton's article, a company can patent a link between elevated homocysteine levels and vitamin deficiency, something needs to be done.

This article on the globeandmail.com talks about the inventor of one such device and the associated software (RenCode) and how easy it easy for thieves and others to get their hands on it.

I really hope the data from the latest Mars probe gets included in this when it starts sending back pictures.

Equipped with the most powerful telescopic camera yet sent to a foreign world, the craft, known as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, is expected to photograph the Red Planet in unprecedented detail.

Its onboard optics can spot an object "as small as a kitchen table" on the surface as it cruises 300 kilometres overhead, said Robert Lock, the lead mission planner.

Let me be the first to say "cooooooool." We're gonna see a pile of little craters, cracks, busted probes, missile silos and little green men mooning the satelite!

Let's be blunt here. This is the government telling companies they can't try and be competitive, they can't make deals to offer premium services. This curtails competitive behavior.

I'll be equally blunt. Competitive with who?

Telecoms want to do this. Cable companies want to do this. Cell phone companies are mostly owned by the same telecom companies who all love the idea. That's pretty much the entire forseeable broadband market outside of municipal WiFi projects. Every middleman gatekeeper to the internet loves this idea because it lets them charge both producer and consumer. This also gives them extremely powerful leverage to pick what kind of services should thrive and which should die. Let me give you a hint on the latter -- 3rd party VoIP is the big thing that they all hate. Even cable companies are getting in on the anti-competitive action.

This is a raw power grab by an infrastructure monopoly, the purest form of anti-competitive deformation of the market for voice services. This all about turning a competitive market into one ruled by back-room collusion with companies that are willing to do business with the thugs setting up checkpoints on the information superhighway. Maybe you want to use iTunes to download some music but maybe someone like Bell Canada decides to buy a music service and would prefer for you to use their service instead. Therefore, they simply don't prioritize iTunes traffic like they do their own music site. Oh, it's not deprioritizing, it's just not giving highway access for competitors, forcing them to stick to surface streets instead.

Allowing this allows eyes on the internet to be monopolized, which they currently can't be. If you allow companies to treat their customers as a resource to sell to preferred partners, then the customers are the ones who lose out.

"Common antibiotic dangerous, Canadian study shows"

"SHERYL UBELACKER

"Canadian Press

"Toronto -- One of the most widely prescribed antibiotics in North America appears to dramatically boost the risk of potentially life-threatening blood sugar abnormalities, a large-scale study by Canadian researchers has found.

"The study found that the antibiotic gatifloxacin, sold under the brand name Tequin by manufacturer Bristol-Myers Squibb, is associated with an increased danger of both low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) and high blood sugar (hyperglycemia), when compared with other antibiotics."

More here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20060301.wanitb0301/BNStory/specialScienceandHeal th/home

> He didn't do the grunt work on it, but I don't think there's much question that the iPod is Jobs' creation at least as much as anyone else's.

Bingo, it is like his baby, he made sure it worked for him. Every iPod you buy has been refined by someone that gave a damn, maybe selfishly or maybe for you, but you still get the benefit!

Jobs is Quality Assurance incarnate.

Wozniak also chips in his two cents worth:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20060223.wxapple0223/BNStory/Front/home

--

Really...who is actually listening or reading to the majority of these things (including mine). For the majority, they are simply a place to vent or pontificate. Mainstream media like The Globe&Mail are using the principles of blogging to enhance their online offering. Once all the other mainstream venues open up then there will no longer be a need for a private soap box with limited audience.

Yahoo! is probably attempting to get into the media, and having bad publicity in the media industry has worse consequences than it would in the high-tech industry.
Yeah. It's apparent that they sure wouldn't want to do anything that would result in bad publicity.

Google for "shilling" or "Hype Council" Or try this article.

Your one of them aren't you! ;-)

Joke alert for the clueless, that last bit was meant as humor.

Why don't you GTFO of a Nintendo thread and advertise your fucking shit back on /b/, you fucking PLANT?

Those of you who don't get it : http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20060208.gtplugged08/BNStory/Technology/AtPlay

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/docume nt/v4/sub/MarketingPage?user_URL=http://www.theglo beandmail.com%2Fservlet%2FArticleNews%2FTPStory%2F LAC%2F20060202%2FRRIM02%2FTPBusiness%2FCanadian&or d=1139505702575&brand=theglobeandmail&force_login= true
(warning, soul sucking registration required)

Thursday, February 2, 2006, Page B1

WASHINGTON -- Research In Motion Ltd. secured a key victory yesterday after U.S. patent authorities rejected the last of five contested patents at the heart of a bitter legal battle between NTP Inc. and RIM, maker of the BlackBerry.

So NTP has 2 options now

1) Run and hide in a closet and cry
2) Get humiliated when they get their arse handed to them in court

On the other hand, RIM's been acting like a spoiled brat the entire case. I'm canadian, and i support them, but the perjury and refusing to accept settlement when it was low were marks off their score card for me.

I read an article somewhere a while back (yes, really!) that went into the story behind the creator of NTP as well as the founder of RIM. Both had very similar backgrounds and both were engineers with a thing for wireless technology. The chap who founded NTP had a separate company that sold pager technologies to telcos. He boomed and busted a few times and in the end he set up a company called NTP to patent the IP he had developed over the years.

Independently of all this RIM developed what eventually became the BlackBerry in Canada. The NTP chap realised he was using his patented technology and decided to sue him. According to the article RIM could have settled way back but decided not to. The article attributed this to the founder's personality.

Anyway, the article left me thinking that RIM was the Goliath and NTP the David in this battle. It was a good read

I found it!! Google is my friend. It was posted by The Globe and Mail. It's a good read.

Currently, homosexual marriage is legal. The incoming party wants a new free-conscience vote on the matter. The previous vote, the one which passed the bill, was not a free vote since the NDP and Liberals kicked anyone out of their party who voted against it. While a few people who towed the party line might now vote against it (to a very likely backlash from their constituency), others, who voted against it before will vote for it now since they feel that the country has already spoken on the matter and consider the issue closed even if they personally disagree. Current projections look like a new vote would be passed by a small, not slim, margin. The Globe & Mail, arguably Canada's most respected newspaper, recently had an article on the matter.

An expansion on the brouhaha...

Sarmite Bulte, a Liberal Party Canidate was defeated in her riding in this mondays' election, possibly in part due to the media (i belive) started by Jack Kapica's column in the Globe and Mail (link ... actual article about this issue here).

In short, she was previously the Canadian Heritage minister, and she was being wined and dined and donated to by the media industry, and advocating copyright reform that would allow DMCA style C&Ds. She was replaced with an NDP canidate, which made me pretty happy.

Actually, RIM's main data center is already located in Waterloo, Ontario. RIM has already argued that US patent law didn't apply because of this, but that didn't get them anywhere with the judges.

Eric
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Not only that, but if some deranged lunatic runs away with the ballot box and drives over it with his truck, all you have to do is put the ballots in another box... http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews /TPStory/LAC/20060124/ELXNBRIEFS24-2/TPNational/Ca nada

It turns out that a feature/flaw on Rogers' website allowed you to check to see what cable channels your neighbours subscribed to. All you needed was a subscriber's name, phone number, and postal code (easily available information), and you could find out if the neighbours were subscribing to the Hustler Channel or Hard On Pridevision. Funny shit. Unfortunately Rogers fixed the problem.