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How about our Pakistani allies?

"Newitz said that "Apple may have a case" in suing anonymous individuals for violations of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (the Act holds liable those who receive trade secrets that were knowingly misappropriated), "but the issue is how they're getting the information." She said that Apple's actions are following a "tortured route" and that the company seems to be attempting to "beat these journalists with litigation."

The EFF's position is that the Web sites in question are viable journalistic endeavors, which places their writers under reporter shield laws, both at the federal and state level.

The federal shield law, which is based on the First Amendment, guarantees the "free flow of information" and allows reporters to assure sources that they will remain anonymous.

"There is a loophole--it's not that a reporter never has to give up information," Newitz said. "They can be forced to reveal sources only if every other source is exhausted." Newitz said that she felt Apple has not come close to examining other potential methods of identifying the parties who leaked confidential information; she said that to her knowledge, Apple has never performed or admitted to performing an internal investigation into NDA (nondisclosure agreement) violations.

The facts of this case are a bit more nuanced than I have seen discussed so far. Does the First Amendment protect a reporter's right to withhold identify his or her anonymous sources? Yes. There are times when a reporter is asked to break this bond, and we are seeing a current case over the probable felony that resulted from revealing Valerie Plame's CIA affiliation where the issues are much more serious than this Apple business. In this more serious case, a crime was committed, and a couple of levels of courts have ordered the reporters to identify their sources or else face contempt charges. The New York Times, among others, continues to fight this pressure to reveal anonymous sources so as to protect the precendent for future anonymous sources.

This Apple case is not nearly as important, and no court is going to go around ordering reporters to reveal Apple news sources the way they are with those associated with the White House who may have committed a felony. And not only is the Apple case involving less serious information, it seems Apple hasn't even done the basics first: Conduct thorough in-house investigation into which employee is doing the leaking. Even the EFF says that once Apple has done everything else, forcing a news source to report the identity of an anonymous source might be on the table, from the legal perspective.

So for now, Apple is backing down. But this is not the clear-cut case that we've seen. It may yet come down to the Apple news sites being asked to reveal their sources, for it may well be that some Apple employees are violating the terms of their employment. And that's what Apple is really trying to do: Find employees who are violating contract rules. But first they have to do everything else to find out this information before they think of asking a reporter to give up his or her information. But that could yet happen.

You have to check this story then - very funny! Guns are so prevalent in Canada that gangs have a gun rental policy.

Same thing with Iran. I'm hoping they get nukes within a few years.

Why? Because people with nukes don't do stupid things (excluding the U.S. of course).

I've been saying this for a long time. Despite what the neocons would have you believe having nukes is a great way to make a country get its act together.

Right. Like Pakistan. Because they've been so responsible at handling their nuclear material. Why should we worry, since Kim Jong Il is so stable?

As the destructive power available to individuals grows through technological advancement, it's an open question whether civilization is long-term stable. A few thousand years ago, one person could, at most, kill tens of others before being killed themselves. Civilization (such as it was) was stable. Now imagine giving everyone on earth a button that would wipe out all life on the planet. How long do you think we'd last? We're somewhere between these two extremes right now. Do you really think demonstrably insane people having nuclear weapons is a good thing?

As a Canadian, I have to say that a lot of the Canadians *do* feel smug and righteous when talking about Americans. Need proof: Carolyn Parish. Believe me when I say, we Canadians hold some pretty un-Canadian views on Americans.

I really don't think they innovate

This is wrong on many levels.

The barrier to implementing research in China is much lower than in the rest of the developed world. Not only in an industrial sense, but in almost every field. Check out the foreign investment and developments in Beijing. People who think that China is just another cheap labour base are not taking in the big picture.

A professor was telling me that one of his collegues in China has graduate students willing to work 14 hour days 7 days a week, and lining up at his door to get a position in his lab. Contrast this with the declining number of graduate students (and the lack of funding for) in many fields in North America.

Now that we have globalization these patents really only help the management crust of the corporations. Everything else will get outsourced if it optimizes the finances, barring the so called "federal" corporations who are heavily subsidized by the government. Welcome to the new global community.

Yes, an independendt film maker doing a documentary could easily get distributed using BitTorrent, but..using footage from anywhere would stab him in the back echonomically... oh, the irony

Isn't that what they call "the American way"?

this one will rease your history..

it's so sad.

One Article
Another
Another that compares the Bush plan to what Europe already does (by the way, Europe already indexes against prices, just like Bush proposes)
Search google. It's easy to find more.

Is copyright killing culture? Some documentary filmmakers certainly think so.

Check out page 2 of the article, where one of the incriminating emails lists projected salaries and stock options for each of the "partners" in the new company.

They all have the position "partner", but Andrea Horan gets a 60K salary and 50 units while the others all get 150K and from 400 - 4000 units.

Ouch. I'll bet she was pleased to read that in the news.

She's also the only woman on the list... not to jump to conclusions w/o knowing the details, but double-ouch.

I recently told a guy who is responsible for IT at a public school about Firefox. He had not heard of it.

Seems a lot of people who should be in-the-loop never are. My wife is a teacher, and her school board announced that they had acquired licenses for StarOffice and OpenOffice. Great, since we use OO.o at home. Weeks after the announcement, she went and talked to one of the IT guys at her school and his face went completely blank.

Now, we shouldn't be too hard on this guy. Someone needs to be outsourced, just so I can keep my job and then "get fries with that" at lunch, and who better than the sad sack product of Red schools?

As many have noticed, IDC has changed the way they count linux market penetration. Last year they counted the number of installations and this year it all about revenue. For something that often comes free... Some event suggest that they are pro-microsoft.

Well after reading this, you will be sure they are : http://www.theglobeandmail.com/partners/microsoft/ ms/idc2.html

I doen't look like the usual anti-linux attack, it's much more subtle this time.

While Canadian students may have placed well compared to their southern neighbours, their results did slip from previous years as reported in the Globe & Mail.

Call my glass half empty ;-)

While Canadian students may have placed well compared to their southern neighbours, their results did slip from previous years as reported in the Globe & Mail.

Call my glass half empty ;-)

I'm presently on the move from Alberta to British Columbia for work, so yes, migration can also happen without leaving your own country. There has always been a place for mobile professionals in the world -- in the 1800s they were explorers, fur traders and mercenaries, in the 1900s they were generally business men, and in the 2000s they are engineers and exotic dancers.

-AD

He already did

Here is the print version of this article, and alternate news coverage.

You're welcome to come, but the last guy claiming 'Political Asylum' from the US was turned down. It doesn't matter anyway, the PATRIOT act affects us Here too.

Brazil's possible nuclear capability. It is likely that this capability means that Brazil is capable of delivering a nuclear payload a much longer distance than either Iran or North Korea.

I am not claiming that Brazil should be lumped in with either of these two nations, however it is an interesting opportunity to test a dual purpose launch vehicle and perhaps reflect the first of the 'developing' countries probable intercontinental capabilities.

Given recent trade tensions between Brazil and the USA I have no doubt that this is turning a few heads in the commerce / state department.

Are you insane? Canadian hospitals are open and providing the same level of service year-round. You may have a longer wait for some services in the winter, particularly if you show up in the emergency room with a relatively non-emergent problem--it's flu season, and there are more slips and falls, and so forth. This is untrue. My mother (who works at a hospital) routinely talked about having to close half of the available beds due to lack of funding. And occasionaly would close their doors to all but emergency cases, making people go to another hospital, which in some cases was over an hour away. globe article. Now this is temporary closure, there is also forced permanent closure link.

Iranian political analyst Mohsen Mofidi....:

..And Mr. Bush, he said, has learned from his mistakes.

Previously they weren't requireing an ohip card so a bunch got it for free (according to my personal recollection and According to this Globe and Mail article. I guess the motive being that if they made the procedure as painless as possible more people would get it. From the article

"Ontario Health Ministry officials held a conference call with the province's 37 public health officers and instructed them to start demanding proof of Ontario residency before giving anyone the shot.

In previous years, some clinics didn't ask for identification before giving the free vaccine, said ministry spokesman Dan Strasbourg. "The purpose here is to protect the health of Ontarians.""

It kind of pisses me off that americans would try to get free flu shots like that, they don't pay taxes in Ontario, I do. Just like I don't go to the states and try to get welfare they shouldn't come here and try to get free flu shots.

$69US is about $85cdn and unfortunately there are no Target stores in Canada yet. The word is that they are about to buy The Hudson Bay chain of department stores. If they do, they will be in every major Canadian market but I could not wait that long.

I was also a little leary of buying a Divx/DVD player as you never know how long the format is good for. Now that I have integrated my computer with my TV and stereo I am kicking myself for not doing it sooner. Whenever I want to watch something on my TV I just have to hit alt F5 and the display switches to the TV. With my wireless keyboard and mouse I can relax on my chesterfield(sofa)while surfing. My wife did not like watching a downloaded movie on the computer monitor so now we watch more movies together.

While this is good news, I hope it isn't seen by governments as an excuse to ease their environmental burdens in favour of bowing to economic/corporate pressures, and, I really hope it isn't seen as yet another excuse by the US government to duck out for even longer on signing the Kyoto Accords.

I realize the above accords don't directly affect the ozone layer, but, ask anyone on the street - the hole in the Ozone layer and the "Greenhouse Effect" are the same thing right? Maybe the hole lets more heat in or something...

It is a sad state of affairs when one feels so cynical, that the first thing that occurs when a hint of good news comes along, is, how will those in power exploit this?

The RCMP always had a political role and is keeping tabs on people with political affinities that purport to change the political system, no matter if it is advocated along legal channels or not.

But the RCMP has no problems in infliltrating and manipulating terrorist groups it setup. For example, 34 years ago, the RCMP arranged for a corrupt minister to be kidnapped and killed days before he was to be arraigned for being in the mob, thus not only sparing embarrassment to the government, but also giving a nice pretext to declare martial law and help eliminate the prime minister's political ennemies.

The RCMP, like all law-enforcement agencies, is notorious for going after the wrong people. For example, two years ago, it deliberately fed false information to the FBI who then deported a canadian citizen to Syria where he was tortured for a year.

My father, a notable academician, has an RCMP file because 30 years ago, he designed a poster for a russian cultural event. Thanks to this, I am barred from ever holding a security clearance. I am guilty for reason of parenthood...

More recently, I saw first-hand that the RCMP methods of investigation are horrenduously flawed. A former employer had sold computers to what turned out to be criminal telemarketing scammers, and they investigated the seized computer by mixing-up the hard-disks so much that they had to ask us to help them sort out their fuckup. They had put the servers hard disks in workstations and vice-versa... A total bunch of clueless morons.

The RCMP always had a political role and is keeping tabs on people with political affinities that purport to change the political system, no matter if it is advocated along legal channels or not.

But the RCMP has no problems in infliltrating and manipulating terrorist groups it setup. For example, 34 years ago, the RCMP arranged for a corrupt minister to be kidnapped and killed days before he was to be arraigned for being in the mob, thus not only sparing embarrassment to the government, but also giving a nice pretext to declare martial law and help eliminate the prime minister's political ennemies.

The RCMP, like all law-enforcement agencies, is notorious for going after the wrong people. For example, two years ago, it deliberately fed false information to the FBI who then deported a canadian citizen to Syria where he was tortured for a year.

My father, a notable academician, has an RCMP file because 30 years ago, he designed a poster for a russian cultural event. Thanks to this, I am barred from ever holding a security clearance. I am guilty for reason of parenthood...

More recently, I saw first-hand that the RCMP methods of investigation are horrenduously flawed. A former employer had sold computers to what turned out to be criminal telemarketing scammers, and they investigated the seized computer by mixing-up the hard-disks so much that they had to ask us to help them sort out their fuckup. They had put the servers hard disks in workstations and vice-versa... A total bunch of clueless morons.

National Post

Toronto Star

and others

You may want to check out some of the Canadian media. All media is biased, of course, but there's certainly less of a vested interest in skewing things in a partisan way as it pertains to US politics up here (read: no need, it's fairly f*cked as it is without skewing, IMHO).

Some sites:

TV/web - Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Newspaper - The Globe and Mail

Actually, a closely releated study was published today in Nature saying "that a different area of the brain is affected in dyslexic Chinese children who read the character-based language than in Western youngsters who use an alphabet language."

More information in this Globe and Mail article and from Nature itself.

There is another aspect to that, of course. One of my professors, Scott Nicholson, discussed the problem on CNN. I thought there was something about it on the website, but I couldn't find it in a quick look this morning. Anyway, he did a small piece discussing how little of a phrase one actually needed to find matches on the web. Four or five words is often enough.

He took a poll in one of my classes about turnitin.com and other sites. The students were overwhelmingly against it. Not because we're cheaters, but because we agree with the McGill student who fought the system. Many of us, oddly enough, consider turning in papers to a service who will keep it on file a copyright violation.

Dr. Nicholson's solution, and that of many others in our school is to use stepped assignments. If there is a large paper due at some point in the semester, we have to submit paper proposals by a given date. For some, we need to have outlines or a short presentation for the class at a later date. Most professors will allow students to submit papers for critique in advance of the due date. All of this is to not only make it more difficult for someone to buy or obtain a paper from somewhere, but also to help the students plan and work on the assignment over the semester rather than putting it off until the last minute.

And then, if necessary, there's always the Google trick.

Another article about this tribe states that, "Not only that, but adult Piraha apparently can't learn to count or understand the concept of numbers or numerals, even when they asked anthropologists to teach them and have been given basic math lessons for months at a time."

More details on this can be found here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews /TPStory/LAC/20040820/NUMBERS20/TPScience/

interesting quote:

Besides living a numberless life, he reports in a separate study prepared for publication, the Piraha are the only people known to have no distinct words for colours.

They have no written language, and no collective memory going back more than two generations. They don't sleep for more than two hours at a time during the night or day.

Even when food is available, they frequently starve themselves and their children, Prof. Everett reports.

They communicate almost as much by singing, whistling and humming as by normal speech.

They frequently change their names, because they believe spirits regularly take them over and intrinsically change who they are.

They do not believe that outsiders understand their language even after they have just carried on conversations with them.

They have no creation myths, tell no fictional stories and have no art. All of their pronouns appear to be borrowed from a neighbouring language.

AskSlashdot

accorting to this story http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews /TPStory/LAC/20040820/NUMBERS20/TPScience/in the Globe-Telegraph, the Piraha does not even distinguish between one, two, and many. Rather there is a word which conveys "oneishness" and another that conveys "twoishness". If the word for "oneishness" is applied to fish, out of context, it is impossible to tell if this means a single fish, two fish, a few fish, or a small fish. The piraha also do not have words for colors. It is a language which eschews all abstraction. Very weird.

In the Globe and Mail version of the story, they say:

In Wednesday's demonstration at the company's Tokyo office, the Micro Flying Robot barely managed to get off the ground by a couple of metres and crashed off a table at one point.

The Globe article does have a picture of it hovering in front of some guy's face, however!

Here's an in-flight picture, and another angle here.

How about writing an e-mail to the article's author, explaining his mistake? I just did that, and in 5 minutes he corrected the article. It now says:

"Brought to the John St. Pumping Station, the lake water is used to cool down other water that will then be used to lower the temperature in downtown buildings."

There. I would probably have mentioned something about "heat exchange", but the current version is not too scary for Joe Below Average and is technically correct.

RMN
~~~

Must be why you import everything else, schmuck.

Hmm... our $9.2B trade surplus with the US numbers don't seem to agree with you.

It's great that they're trying, but there is still a really big stretch of hurdles for the small investor. An AP reporter tried to do just this, and found out that most of the brokerage firms require a very large (~$50000) initial investment to open an account.
Here's the link.

Beckham has a reputation for missing penalty shots at goal by skying the ball high into the air, so someone has a sense of humour.

"A collector has paid more than $45,000 for the ball David Beckham booted high into the crowd during England's [national soccer team] penalty shootout loss to Portugal in the European Championship quarter-finals ... the auction website said the successful bidder was "goldenpalacecasino." That appears to be an online casino."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20040722.wbeck0722/BNStory/Sports/

Golden Palace are the new sponsors of what is now called the "Golden Palace.com Space Program powered by the da Vinci Project."
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/davinci_xpriz eupdate_040805.html

The Globe and Mail's registration system seems to be a bit more sophiticated than that of the New York Times for example.

As it says on their explanatory note, they only require registration from their most frequent readers.

It seems to be true: If I access the Globe through the proxy web server at my school, there is no demand for registration. It appears that they already have my mac address in a database, and probably the various IP addresses that have been assigned to it. But they are also keeping a record of my browser. If I switch to Firefox instead of my usual Galeon I can access the site without registering even if I don't use the proxy server at school

So if I were to register with them with a fake name/address/email, I would be fooling myself if I believed I was not giving them any more information about myself. They already know my ISP and hence probably have a rough idea about my geographic location. If I register they will know that I am concerned about my privacy enough to give fake information, but not so much that I'm willing to stop reading their precious content.

The Globe and Mail's registration system seems to be a bit more sophiticated than that of the New York Times for example.

As it says on their explanatory note, they only require registration from their most frequent readers.

It seems to be true: If I access the Globe through the proxy web server at my school, there is no demand for registration. It appears that they already have my mac address in a database, and probably the various IP addresses that have been assigned to it. But they are also keeping a record of my browser. If I switch to Firefox instead of my usual Galeon I can access the site without registering even if I don't use the proxy server at school

So if I were to register with them with a fake name/address/email, I would be fooling myself if I believed I was not giving them any more information about myself. They already know my ISP and hence probably have a rough idea about my geographic location. If I register they will know that I am concerned about my privacy enough to give fake information, but not so much that I'm willing to stop reading their precious content.

Looks like it's largely a volunteer project, on the cheap...

I wonder if those are Canadian dollars, too.

RBC,eh?

I wonder If their computer problems had anything to do with it...
(can't find the original story link, sorry)

The City of Toronto's website says the largest groups of immigrants to Toronto in the five years before the 2001 census were from China (45,901), India (25,560) and Pakistan (17,495).

Thanks for the kind words.

I'm sure you'll be interested to know that McNamara's views on Iraq are actually on the record in a well-known Canadian paper, the Globe and Mail. He was asked about and confirmed the G&M interview when he gave a speech UC Berkeley. Salon.com picked up the story, and of course sites like disinfopedia.org, bushwatch.com, etc., mentioned and/or linked to the G&M interview - but the mainstream press was suspiciously quiet about it even though no one refutes that the interview or subsequent comments at Berkeley took place.

While I won't usually cite USA Today as a source, the myth of the "Club Fed" prisons is just that: a myth.

They're certainly not as dank or dangerous as a maximum security state prison, but they're not country clubs, either.

USA Today article, RE: Martha Stewart and what she faces in prison

Similar article from Globe and Mail

Article from Australia's The Age regarding white collar criminals in the US

-l

I mean, how could you guys react to some game where you had to fight against (or play as) some Quebecois terrorist group?

Its already happened.

"I don't want to overdramatize this, but it's hard not to feel targeted when there's a game where you shoot at Quebeckers," said Jean Dorion, head of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal.

Personally, I could care less, but if someone made about killing people that could be identified with me, I'd be disturbed to. However, we cant let anything stand in the way of free speech, even things that may upset or disturb some people. Throw away the leaflet, dont buy the game, close the book, whatever, its your choice.

This is another marketing scheme by Microsoft employees to get Microsoft in the news and on Slashdot.

I certainly would never have known that a government official in Brazil compared Microsoft marketing people to "drug-dealers", if it weren't repeated in the quiet privacy of a Slashdot story.

Without a lawsuit, most Brazilians would never have heard what the official said. Now millions of Brazilians will know. What will be their reaction? Consider this. Less than two months after the September 11, 2001 bombing of the World Trade Center, at the costume parties celebrating the Brazilian equivalent of Halloween, many Brazilians came as Osama bin Laden. Brazilians and people from other countries think that the U.S. government is arrogant and out of control. Since 3 movies and 35 books published in the U.S. say this too, it can be said that the feeling is strong. Microsoft's legal action will be seen as more arrogance from the United States, probably.

My guess is that it is likely that this new move by Microsoft will only help sell Bill Gates Halloween masks. It certainly won't help sell Microsoft products.