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Woh...hold the phone. Let's not call the iTunes music service a success just yet. While I am a huge fan already and it has definately won me over, let's not forget that us over zealous mac fans are just a very small portion of the market. When I tell my non mac friends about the store I have difficulty convincing them of its advantages...

And let's not forget about Apple's recent troubles porting their iTunes software to windows. This battle is far from over in terms of winning the rest of the market over. Some of the record labels are viewing the Mac situation as a small market test, as I believe Jobs sold it to them. They are unsure it should be moved to the windows platform so soon.

So as for purchasing TiVo... I am all for it, in the long run. My point is simply that we should be more careful with terms like "conquer." The iTunes music store is far from conquering anything... and with their recent removal of radiohead from the database...i think they are one step further at that.

How about Americans visiting other countries? Better pretended to be Canadians.

This is a very common Canadian myth. I think they teach it in the schools up there.

It's no myth. See:

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?GXH C_gx_session_id_=77a03ed5c97203e3&pagename=thestar /Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1035780008763& call_pageid=968332188492&col=968705899037

(This same article appeared on CNN.com back in late March, but unfortunately I couldn't find a link to it through their search engine, but was able to find a copy from the Toronto Star).

Quote:

While the rules enacted by the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University weren't quite as strict, the combined Minnesota schools did suggest another tactic to avoid becoming the target of anti-American rhetoric -- one favoured for decades by U.S. students hoping to keep a low profile. "We told them, if you're travelling or if you're out somewhere for the weekend, tell someone you're Canadian," said Stephen Burmeister-May, the director of international education.

So there you ago -- a US school that tells its students going overseas to tell people they're Canadian.

Yaz.

Seems like they are already stirring things up. Can't have our close friends to the north being naughty now, can we?

However, if we did that, then we would be no better than they are.

... Republican taking action to help those who needed it most ...

And that would be ... Haliburton? ... independant radio stations? ... the airline industry? ... the power industry set upon by the clean air act? ... those poor stock holders getting bled to death by dividend taxes? ... etc. ... etc. ... and oh yes I post as AC because of the atmosphere of polarization Bush and crew have established here and now ...

Domain Name: APPLEUNIVERSAL.COM

Registrar: BULKREGISTER.COM, INC.

Whois Server: whois.bulkregister.com

Referral URL: http://www.bulkregister.com

Name Server: NSERVER2.APPLE.COM

Name Server: NSERVER.APPLE.COM

Status: ACTIVE

Updated Date: 11-apr-2003

Creation Date: 11-apr-2003

Expiration Date: 11-apr-2004

Of course, this could be a "just in case" move on their part.

This is not news or even decent editorializing...so what are you going to do about it...Tell them what you think about this piece.

Radio is boring and homogenized, and it is hurting CD sales.

Labels should be more artist friendly

Michael Green's 2002 Grammy speech was annoying and pointless. (Even Janis Ian ripped on it.)

Decent recording can be done with reasonable studio costs (He even mentioned the new White Stripes album only costing $10,000 :-) )

Indie labels treat artists better than majors

Labels are a) greedy and b) want control of listeners

This guy is already halfway in our camp. Don't flame him, just educate him a little. In response to his claim that "sales of CDs are in a freefall", point to the recent Christian Science Monitor article we all read that said many indie labels have profits increasing 50-100% a year. Show him that the CDBaby sales figures keep getting better while the RIAA whiles that sales are disappearing.

He talked about musicians

"Of that lot, however, the musicians are frequently the worst off. They're the ones working two crap jobs, skipping meals to pay for studio time, braving treacherous Canadian highways during the dead of winter, sleeping in vans and in strange cities and generally living at the mercy of the capricious industry constructed around their music. Some of them are lucky enough to make a living at their art."

You mean the guy who thinks there was a conspiracy at the Oscar's to make boos against him louder?

http://www.wcfcourier.com/lifestyles/030331moore.h tml

or the one who makes a manipulative piece of film and calls it a documentary?

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pag ename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1 035780073241&call_pageid=968867495754&col=96948319 1630

Michael Moore is interesting and thought provoking but his work is definitely more one-sided and manipulative than the general media. (either that or he just isn't as good at being manipulative)

I don't think that's the point at all.

That "attitude" is HARDLY unique to America. Retorting with the typical "find another career field" isn't the answer. Most people - regardless of their nationality, home, race, or religion - invest huge amounts of time, money and passion into learning skills and a trade that interests them, that makes them generally happy and that they believe will provide a future for themselves and their families. Eventually, they lose their job because a company wants to move to Canada, Mexico, India, <Insert country here>. Regardless of the occupation - be it blue collar or white collar, it's devastating to lose your livelihood because it moved to another country. I suppose when a Canadian mentions This article Then it's different right?

I don't have the answer or the solution. Further, I don't believe for a minute that there aren't legitimate, sound business reasons to move business divisions to other markets. But to make such blanket statement that Buying things from Americans good, selling things to Americans bad is just plain ignorant. - We've been buying electronics from Japan, toys from Hong Kong, shirts from Pakistan, and shoes from Taiwan for decades.

I will add to this if you please. The portion I am adding reads like a conspiracy theory. Its not. It has been documented in many places, including PBS and the White House itself.

I wont go into details here, I will allow one to read the material themselves. You can also watch the video as PBS online is currently hosting a story frontline did about the mess.

In brief:

The Project for the New American Century is a DC based think tank that has imagined a world under complete US military and economic domination (or "freedom" as it were). They have fiddled with and written documents concerning a post cold war world where the USA has become the Worlds Only Superpower and what that means from a Strategic viewpoint.

In the early days, Paul Wolfowitz produced a document that detailed the expansion of the American empire that seemed too radical at the time and was cleaned up and rewritten and stowed away. Over time, and through the most recent Coup by this incredibly radical group of men, this updated document, with the help of the PNAC, became the National Security Strategy Of the United States. Most chilling about this turn of eventls and policy is the new found policy of "pre-emption". Which I think we are seeing now in the creation of the 51st state.

Also chilling (to me anyway) is the fact that this is the "official story", the one being reported by the obviously biased media.

Anyway.. some more links..

CBC.ca's take.

More Canadian Insight

The Frontline Special

Some other nice canadian news sites are The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail.

For the most part now I'd rather drive to wherever I'm going then take an intra-continental flight. Security is so insane there, it's not even funny. just the other day a Canadian citizen was sent to India because INS officials thought (for some reason) her passport was invalid.

Not that any of this stuff is even necessary to prevent hijacking (just lock the cabin door, and have passengers fight back), or bombing (use bomb detectors!). Simple, obvious things like that are the way to prevent 9/11 type disasters, not creepy big-brother bullshit.

Its nothing more then a power-grab by totalitarians.

A Canadian woman (a Citizen) was deported to India during a stopover in Chicago. Keep up the good work you guys!

Under Windoze, this CD launches a program that wants to connect to somewhere via the internet.

Well, it is the Toronto Star.

The Globe and Mail is read by the people who own the country. (It's Toronto's national newspaper, except for the National which is Toronto's other national newspaper.) The Toronto Star is read by the people who whine when they don't run the country. The Toronto Sun is read by the people who don't care who runs the country, so long as she has big tits on page 3. Weeklies like NOW offer insight into: politics or performance art? (With the establishment's hand up their sock-puppet bum.)
-- Adapted from Yes, Prime Minister

From The Toronto Star: Tuesday's failed launch followed an accident on Oct. 15, when a Russian unmanned Soyuz-U rocket blew up half a minute after liftoff. Space officials said later that an alien object was found in the rocket's fuel line.

Apparently, the Star, while reporting on this story, has let the cat out of the bag about a previous incident. I tried to submit it earlier yesterday but I guess it looked a little shrill. Not so hysterical now huh ;-)

Bush is a Moron.

Not exactly breaking news...

Look at Michael Moore's site for more info on the removal of USA's civil rights with a sense of humour.

Or better, try reading Why Orwell Matters for a discussion on the need for constant understanding and evaluation of a gov't and its policies.

Merging Black Holes

With all due respect, and I'm a Canadian and I have served in our nation's armed forces, I think this is past tense. The logic of keeping piles of generals handy to suddenly recruit and train a whack of soldiers is kind of broken, given the nature of modern conflicts.

Not sure if I agree with that. Real conflict still generally build up over time. Even for the Iraq situation the US took quite a few months (a year?) to build up its forces surrounding Iraq before it began the offensive.

The constant criticism of the Canadian military, and calls for multi-billion dollar budget increases, might have some of its roots in the arms industry- An industry that wants to make us believe that we need loads of high tech equipment to sit rotting in warehouses, ready for multi-billion dollar upgrades 5 years down the road. Military equipment comes at a cost to social programs, healthcare, etc, or alternately higher taxes. Our individual soldiers are paid quite well (I was surprized when a friend recently joined to see the pay rates), have fantastic personal equipment and good bases.

While we hear constant cries about the "dangerous new world", the reality is that the classic militarism of yesteryear is a bygone thing: The US has nominated itself, and achieved by default, global policeman. Though this role is costly to her, it was a self-pursued role, and comes with a healthy bonus of being able to promote and pursue her own self-interests. Of course, simpleton morons like Pat Buchanan would try to cast such a role not as a self-serving role, but as a role which we should all send a cheque in the mail.

I *wish* we could actually help out some of the places that really need help right now. But we can't even keep a thousand guys in Afghanistan for a year, let alone buy those guys some appropriate camouflage fatigues in a timely fashion. And don't get me started on the Sea King or its replacements....

I think the camouflage issue was more of a political red herring: There isn't an armed forces on the planet, except perhaps the US, that has camo for every possible battlefield situation. The Afghan conflict came up just as a prior batch was destroyed and the new batch was on order. It happens. Personally I think, given the nature of the military, that some of the elite teams showed true military gumption and they quite literally made their own, creating some of the best camo possible. The Sea King is indeed an unfortunate reality, but again compared with the acquisition of a fleet of modern subs, missile frigates, and cormorant helicopters, it's amazing how much attention the Sea King garners. Again, take a close look at the $ vested interests who are looking at lining up at the trough.

We are a relatively small country, and the simple reality is that our military will always pale aside the US', just as the military of every other NATO countries does. I'm perfectly fine with that. We went into Afghanistan with troops that were perfect for the non-conventional modern warfare (i.e. snipers), did a great job, and got out after the situation had pretty much settled. Actually the causative factor for us leaving Afghanistan was probably the death of 4 soldiers by friendly fire: Given that the conflict was pretty much resolved, such a needless loss couldn't be repeated.

I wonder how much it will cost in Canada

Linquists examine the changing meaning of the word "Like" and its uses in modern speech. You appear to be using the "hedging" form:

For example, "like" can be a hedge, when the speaker is not quite sure what he or she is about to say is accurate. (Example: "He has, like, six sisters.")

Rogers High Speed Interet in Canada seems to going down that road as evidenced by this article and it's main competition Bell Sympatico has already "been there and done that." Face it, the days of unlimited Internet access are over. We can either throw in the towel, or switch to providers that support unlimited Internet access on mass.

oop yeah. that's my fault. the actualy link is too long for a /. sig so I have my server redirect to it. I've just recently done a reinstall on my server and haven't set that site up. I'm just going to change the sig. If you care to see it, you can go here

The plaintiffs cite several examples of poor treatment, including the case of Asif-ur-Rehman Saffi, a native of Pakistan, who was arrested at La Guardia Airport in New York on Sept. 30 after his tourist visa expired.

Although an immigration judge ordered him to be deported, the lawsuit alleges he was jailed until March and locked in an isolation unit. Guards allegedly subjected him to strip searches and "severe beatings to the point of unconsciousness," the suit said.

There's actually proposed legislation in Toronto to ban postering on utility poles. I think this legislation, along with the sentiment in the parent post, is misplaced ... these people have a right to express themselves, and postering is a reasonable and non-destructive activity. It might be unsightly, but so are SUVs, and nobody's banning those, much as they richly deserve it.

fuckola. Thanks for letting me know. The link it to my website which does a redirect because the actual link is to loong for the /. sig. It should be working now, but if it doesn't it's here.

Conspiratorial is the fact that I only saw this in foreign news (the star is Canadian).

Putting the fellows into fellowship, nudge, nudge

The fact is that in a free market such labels would already exist, because consumers would demand them!

With equal logic you could argue that companies didn't provide informative nutritional labels because consumers were demanding to have the information concealed from them.

In fact, such labels now exist because consumers did demand them through their democratically elected representatives. The free market is not the only way for consumers to make their wishes known.

A truly free market requires a free flow of information. Many companies, perhaps most, know that the best way to thwart the free market is to conceal and distort information. Government has a role to play to guaranteeing people have the information they need to make a decision.

According to this story Micron's not exactly picking the money trees either.

One interesting tidbit from that article to give you an idea just how much the DRAM market has turned - Micron recorded a record $625-million loss for its entire 2001 fiscal year, which came after a record $1.5 billion profit in fiscal 2000.

So I wonder if it's not that Toshiba wasn't doing ok (relatively speaking) but rather that they didn't have the pockets (or desire) to hang in there to watch it turn back (as one would expect it to in time).

I can't believe that the 3D View of the Experimental Hall (which I worked two weeks on as a summer student) is actually posted on Slashdot! Fame and fortune, here I come!

I think the original poster's comment about being happy to see better targeted ads applies here, too. The starbucks coupon would be welcome! The canopy? At least it would be a relevant pitch. How much do you hate telemarketers who call up and say "hi, can I clean your chimney?" and you say "sure, if you can find it. I have no fireplace!", frustrated at the irrelevance of the sales call. If, on the other hand, you get the call "Hi, it's Bob from Shyzmecca BMW. I see you bought a 328i last year, and at your last oil change, you had 16,000 miles on it. So you know, we have a promotion on this week, where you get a free interior shampoo and hand wax with every front brake pad replacement. When can I book you in?" Even though those BMW pads are twice the price of aftermarket pads, and even though BMW mechanics get paid on par with laywers and dentists, for the most of us, we'll still bite.

If tracking is used to give us relevant offers on stuff close to what we need, bring it on! The alternative is advertispamming, with every square inch of the earth covered in junk mail, billboards, and other strange advertising ideas.

Advertising, done properly, is only informing us of products or services that we might want. Isn't that half the reason we buy magazines, surf sites like pricewatch.com, etc?

It seems that Shaw, my provider, Cogeco and even Rogers are sufficiently prepared for this event. Of course old Ted Roger is going to lose a bit of his shirt on this thing and they have been slow to react because of their interests in @home and partnerships with AT&T, and there are still lots of people questioning if Rogers can support all of their customers. Atleast 10% may be without service tonight.

Shaw made the conversion months ago, mostly due to poor service from Excite, especially with email.

But thank god for out socialist interfering government, because by 2004 they are promising us broadband in every pot. Now if everyone had a computer too. Even the CRTC is not going to interfere with the net at this point anyway. Beside it is because of there regulations that I pay less for my cable service, only $40 Cnd, that is like 5 US, and I get more bandwidth and better service.

We may not be able to support a useful military, but we all can get streaming video of the latest war to our home from cnn.

Excuse me while I download the latest Suse version.

It is 40 below and I don't give a ...

Screw the movie, if you will be living in toronto you should be seeing this. One more reason Toronto is the best place to live in North America.

In related news, the Canadian government has announced today its first step towards national ID cards - the "maple leaf card" (no folks I am not making this up) to be issued to new immigrants to Canada. Sadly for those of us who would like to see IDs unforgeable, has such groundbreaking new anti-tamper technologies as "magnetic stripes" - (gasps of amazement) and "might one day maybe be upgraded to" fingerprints, etc. Sounds to me that the Canadian government is more interested in rushing something into useage, with no more thought to security than has been put into Canadian "tamper-proof" (read widely counterfeited) passports and other identification cards.

Toronto Star Article
Globe and Mail Article

It will be interesting to see if this card is expanded to cover all Canadian citizens at some point - a recent Globe and Mail Poll suggested 80% of Canadians would be willing to carry and show a national ID card. Of course, like Canadian border security and Canadian passports, this card too will become a farce if its not designed and implemented with a modicum of security. Somehow, to my brain, it seems pretty sketchy to entrust national security to a magnetic-stripe based card.

There are more submarines in Canada's biggest mall (West Edmonton) than in the Canadian Navy.... and Americans have better encryption on the cards in their TV sets (DirecTV, we all know how secure that is) than Canadians will have on their national ID cards. Bleh.

This may be true, but is certainly doesn't apply to the terrorists involved considering
"on the eve of their evil act, two were consuming vodka and ogling strippers at a bar". These people were not the strict pious muslems that people think they are. They could easily hide stenographic content in porn sites. In fact, that would be better considering people don't believe they would look at such images.

Salon is still up. Also, so is The Toronto Star, the largest-circulation paper in Canada. Salon's newswire listings are flooding with coverage.

The Toronto Star has a beautiful artical about DCMA and Dmitry.
Artical here

OK, I hoped I wouldn't have to dive into a resulting flamewar, but this deserves a response.

The answer is I wouldn't even consider living within an urban area where this was even a realistic possibility within my lifetime.

How could you consider even living in a city with your children if there was even the slimmest chance of this happening?!? Who cares if you know how to operate the gun. What about your kids walking home from school, staying at a friends house, etc. I don't want to lock my kids in a steel cage to protect them.

Not to say this never happens up in Canada, but practically, it just doesn't happen. I'm 26, and I can say I've never personally seen or heard a gun fired on the street in the city or near my home in my lifetime.

So I watch the statistics and if things are too probable for comfort, I MOVE. The probablilities of someone coming into my home are way less than say, my kids finding the gun+ammunition (even if they're stored seperately) than someone bursting into my home.

Let's try to dig up some Vancouver stats to justify my argument...

OK: http://king.thestar.com/thestar/homicides/graphs/v ancouver.html

So about 6 homicides per 100,000. Count my family, chances about 24 per 100,000, extended family, lets' say 1 in a thousand per year. That's for all weapons, not just guns.

More stats here. Last year there were about 1,000 firearms deaths in Canada, about 85% of those being SUICIDE. So 150 gun homicides total per year in a country of roughly 30 million. That's about 2 per 100,000.

Maybe I'm just being naive because I haven't been shot yet. I'll let you know when I am.

Oh well, there goes my karma...

The "volunteers off the street" rating system must be an American one. As far as I know in Canada, the ratings are given by a panel of selected reviewers. I'm assuming that the people on this panel were chosen/elected for their proven abilities, training, or their educational experience. There are different rating classifications here (as described in the article) than in the US, so it makes sense there is a different system for rating films, tv and video games. Any Canadians out there who have more information on this, please let me know.

I know for a fact that Muchmusic does a similar type of panel for music videos they will air. They review potential videos for extreme violence, violence against women, and unnecessary sexual content. The US equivalent, MTV, generally only scans for nudity and sex. An example is a Duran Duran video from about 3-4 years ago. It featured a robot woman who serviced the band's fantasies. Both music stations had complaints about the video and requested the band clean it up. But while Muchmusic was concerned about how women were portrayed in the video, and what message it was sending viewers, MTV only wanted the woman's ass covered up a bit more. It just shows the major differences in attitudes between Canada and the US when it comes to media ratings.

I saw Monkeybone last night and I'm still digesting it. The action sequence towards the end of the movie was some of the funniest bits of movie making in years. Some of the movie, however kind of dragged on and was just inappropiate. The theatre I was in was full of kids who didn't get the sex jokes (That seduction thing with the bed was the funniest thing I've seen in a long time!) and I think they were kinda disturbed by the Downtown stuff - heck, it weirded me out.
After I got back from the theatre, I wanted to see what other people thought so I checked out some other reviews.
Canoe and The Toronto Star hated it. Salon loved it, calling it a classic. The Globe and Mail was somewhere inbetween calling saying: Kids won't know what to make of it, adults will think it's for kids, and critics will eagerly dump on the thing. Of all the reviews I think I agree the most with this one.
I'm still undecided witch my opinion. It's much more than a simple gross out movie and there's some interesting imagry and throughts in the movie (exploring the subconscious) and there were some excellent lines ("Choke my monkey" hehe - still gets me). I really think it's going to take another viewing to get a real handle on this movie.
The Salon review linked above also has a bit on the studios reaction to the movie.

============

I use @Home in Calgary too, and for the most part service has been excellent. @home is not as homogenous as it first appears. I was talking to a tech just now about lost email problems. He is really a shaw employee not @home. He was very good.

According to this Toronto Star story , soon Shaw customers will be able to get Shaw email address and thus bypass their (notoriously flaky) @home email address.

It looks like shaw is as sick of @home as I am. What I take away from this, (and I can't believe im saying this) is that some cable/ISP's do care about customers. It's the fuzzy excite@home behemoth that is getting in the way.

This Toronto Star article from today reveals a bit more about the whole thing.

It turns out that the US government might have actually just pirated the code from a guy down there, and added the backdoors before selling it to the CSIS.. does this surprize ANY of you?

Here's CSIS' mandate:

http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/eng/ backgrnd/back1e.html

the reason why the USA and Isreal would be interested in it is because the CSIS database would contain info about the possible whereabouts of US Criminals in Canada, etc., etc.

They would also have access to extradition hearings and things of the sort, which I believe (IANAL) is a violation of Internation Law.

Here's another story on the topic that should be interesting for all you conspiracy theorists.

Thi s is a Toronto Star article about plans to put filters in Toronto's libraries. I think brings in a perspecive not usually mentioned. Basically the reason they want to add filters is because some teenagers are using the library computers to look at porno. When the librarian ask them not to (a reasonable thing to do, I hope you agree) it has lead to angry confrontations.

Actually Nortel is in a dead heat with Cisco to see who can spend the most outrageous sums of money for any kind of optical-networking startups. By-the-by there is also a good deal of research being done on all-optical chips, here's a li nk to some work being done at the University of Toronto. It would be incredible if this 'perfect mirror' could accelerate the likelihood of this coming to my desktop! PS the link showing as li nk is not my fault! I previewed and tried to correct it four times but Slashbug is at max power and is determined to make me look like a knob!

----

once they reach into the millions.
Heck, Royal Bank just admitted that some of its traders lied about stock values to manipulate peoples pension funds: Toront o Star

The rationale?
`Everybody does it,'' said one industry veteran.
Ah, so that makes it all better.

Pope

Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!

Yes, unfortunately. The Toronto Star even trotted out it's annual boilerplate ar ticle about it.

In the past, when the game was on FOX, it was a common practice to use rabbit ears to see the ads on WUTV-29, then switch back to CIII-41 for the action. Unfort, WKBW-7 (the ABC station) is a little trickier to pull in.

BTW, what did viewers who saw the Global version think of those fake ads they inserted using digital trickery on top of the scoreboard at the Georgia Dome? I was watching it with a friend who WORKS at Global and he was just shaking his head in shame...sadly, the over-the-top hucksterism at Global is making The New VR look professional...

So if someone watched the Superbowl on iCraveTV, they'd not see these $2 million dollar spots of advertising glory, but rather the standard Canadian "boring" commercials we regularly see.

Not to mention the cheesy "party updates" they kept carrying in some commercial blocks.

I never thought I would miss Candice Bergen, but I do. However, those "Get Smart" spoofs for Buck-a-Call are currently my pick for most annoying ads.

Any followup theories?

I don't think the fact that people would be subjected to the Canuck ads was much of a factor at all. If anything, perhaps Global put some pressure on the NFL because they knew that people would be using Icravetv to see the Yankee ads. (I know I was planning on it.)

-Strauss

We customers are nothing but pawns in all of this until the cable monopolies either get some solid competition or are forced to open their lines to outside ISPs.

In Canada, this has already happened.