This isn't something to worry about if you're rich. No one's going to come out to your country estate and spy to make sure that your caviar jar is sorted into the glass recycling bin. See, creeping fascism isn't about government trying to control everyone, it's about motivating us to become better (that is, rich) so we don't have to worry about such things. I'm glad when governments care so much about encouraging their citizens to reach their full potential.
Oxdung. Utter oxdung. "Becoming better" is something for the unwashed, ungrateful colonists accross the Pond. In Britain, society is properly made by people who are born into a social class, and they steadfastly remain within that social class; otherwise would only mean that there is chaos and disorder. Look accross the pond where there is that dreadful "social mobility": you have a horrenduous crime rate, a dismal economic performance which is heading the country straight to the crapper and an enormously dysfunctional health-care system where too many people have no access to health-care.
Why is it that UK seems to lead in privacy-crippling, big-brother style techniques?
I live in a part of France that has been occupied by the britshit for the last quarter-millenium, so we have had plenty of time to observe them from without.
In comparison to the french, the brits are hypocrites (we will waste no time driving home what we think about you); they will say nothing at all to your face, or perhaps a "good morning" (sometimes supplemented by "isn't the weather wonderful today", even though there is a light drizzle), and then will gladly stab you in the back when you last expect it.
Their idea of a "community" is more tribal than anything else; they will form homogenous social groups that will exist in total, blissfull ignorance of other local social groups; such an attitude naturally fosters misundestanding of the other groups. The hypocritical mentality also means that people will covertly act against perceived greivances, by all means possible. You don't like the neighbour's face, choice of music or colour of motor-car? Goody! He brings his garbage too early, here is a way of getting back at him!
The limeys are hypocrites and they know it; hence their false veeneer of respectability and decorum (those who are called YOBS are in reality people who recognize the hypocrisy and are refusing to go with that oxdung, and let their true sentiments be expressed in the open -- believe me, beneath every stiff upper-lip is a contained YOB that would gladly jump at your throat at the earliest convenience), that perfectly explains the "curtain twitcher" busybody mentality. As such, such a development is certainly not a surprise, the surprise being that it has taken so much time to materialize.
Because thinking employees add more to a company than human automatons.
Actually no. Thinking employees will often challenge the boss' diktats, which is bad for the boss' morale. And nothing counts more than the boss' morale.
I love Quebec, but when it comes to politics, I hang my head. For example, you cannot even put up a poster in english. The stop signs say "arret", french for stop. In France, they say "stop".
You can put up a poster in english. However, businesses are not allowed to put-up a sign, a business sign, in english. The idea is to drive the point home to immigrants that they can't expect to live here without speaking french.
And businesses are not human, so they cannot enjoy human rights. No human has ever been prohibited from speaking any language at all.
In my personal opinion it's also a lot harder to fuck up a windows network setup and windows networking is a lot more intuitive (ie: you need less knowledge to passably manage it).
This is strange; I have no problems administrating NFS networks, whereas MS networks are big fucking huge pain in the arse to administer (ever compared the/etc/exports with the/etc/smb.conf file?) thanks to the hugely nonstandard terminology.
Cobol is still around because it's an extremely verbose language that is easy to understand (I never said "write into"), so managers can understand what their programmers are doing.
I don't believe that's the case, contrary to popular belief, Europeans steal as frequently as Americans do. And I'd be surprised if that were just limited to the US and EU, I'd suspect that other parts of the world have those issues as well, if not worse.
I live a day's drive from the US federal capital (yet I am not in the US) in a 2 million people city, almost downtown.
Some years ago, I had some guests from Boston; we were walking home at around 3 in the morning, and we passed through the nearby farmer's market where the produce sellers, at night, merely put a tarpaulin on top of their veggies.
The americans just could not believe their eyes (and that we could walk that late without being mugged). Yet, the area is one of the poorest in the country.
Not everybody is a thief like americans are. Or Europeans, for that matter.
Customs and "border guards" [...] can search your vehicle, personal effects, body cavities, etc. when you enter the country without a warrant.
Okay, I don't want my nether hole searched next time I enter the US. Where do I apply for the warrant???
(Some 12 years ago, I crossed into the US through a very remote border post in Maine, and I was wearing a fanny pack that one customs agent wanted to search. So I handed it to him, and he ran his finger through the small change with exactly the same look of a pervert who sifts through a pile of women underwear. Really creepy).
Reformers were the official opposition when the PC party almost slipped into non-existence.
Actually, no. When the Tories went from 222 to 2 seats, Lucien Bouchard's Bloc Québécois became the opposition.
If you mean distinguished? Do you mean like Brian Mulroney, the one that accepts $300,000 cash?
Yes, distinguished like Sir John A. McDonald, or like Robert Stanfield, or Joe Clark. And, yes, distinguished like Brian Mulroney, because he made **TWO** genuine efforts to try to have Québec ratify the 1982 constitution.
Or do you mean Stephan Harper, the one that we don't trust because he lies costing Canadian investors almost as much as US investors were hit with Enron?
I don't know how a rabid right-wing evangelist who only wants to turn Canada in a northerner United State could be construed as "distinguished"...
But I suspect you are a civil servant, they hated Reformers because they never hid their agenda of cleaning up bribe and corruption central, Ottawa.
The unwashed western huns only wanted to replace the rule-of-law civil service by unfetterred free-market by destroying the State so they could roam about and profit off everyone else, whithout a State to protect the poorer people.
But how a rabid "separatist" (I'm sovereignist; the french always has been separate) could get a civil service job in Ottawa???
Then maybe this whole thing is a ruse to trigger an election and they have no intention of ever passing the bill. It makes them look good to CRIA lobby, yet doesn't actually mean they have to do anything. If elected they will move the entire issue to the bottom of the legislative pile. Much like the Liberals always do with pot laws.
That could be it; I reviewed the actual bill with my lawyer, and he basically said that such a law would be unenforcable. It basically is eye candy to please a few vocal big mouths (the US media).
Like if the already thinly-stretched RCMP needed more imaginary crimes to go after...
Despite the conspiracy theories you're likely to hear about this, the reason why the DMCA sailed through Congress is the same reason it'll sail through Canada's legislative process... media companies are responsible for a nice chunk of GNP (and whatever they call it in Canada), and neither side, liberal or conservative, is willing give up that wealth.
Actually, no. It's only the foreign media conglomerates who are pushing for the law. Canadian artists are against it, and the canadian "industry" has not overwhelmingly been pushing in it's favour.
Much older, the PC Party joined the Reform party, so in fact PC Party now lives on in the Conservative party. Why Reformers ever did this was beyond me.
They did this to look acceptable. The Reform Party is a bunch of unwashed evangelist rednecks, which never amounted to any significance in Canadian politics. The Progressive Conservative Party, on the other hand, has had a pretty long list of distinguished leaders, and even though it mostly was the opposition, has had plenty of positive influence in Canadian politics (it was the party that founded Canada, for that matter, and the party that had built the transcontinental railroad).
The reform party as itself could never gain power, as it is dramatically opposed to all canadian values, so it simply swallowed-up the conservatives just to get the respectable name, thus giving themselves only a veneer of respectability.
These tories have been warned, enact this legislation and they will be destroyed politically. Harper won't be able to run for village mayor after we're through with him.
Yeah, but in the meanwhile, they will have enacted it, and you can bet your arse the liberals won't scrap it afterwards. After all, they haven't scrapped the GST as they promised...
(The GST is a classic case of ideologic stupidity. What the government did was replace a hidden 12% tax with a visible 7% tax, but they so badly explained it that people got to hate it).
That may be true in the US, but in Canada the general public seems to put a little more effort into elections than just voting for the person who has the most signs on front lawns.
And on telephone poles; up here, signs can be erected on public property.
Take a DVD seller, who makes an English language version, encodes only for region 1, and doesn't produce a subtitled version. That seller has effectively said that France wasn't intended as a market, that Katmandu wasn't a market, that Sri Lanka wasn't a market, etc. So, somebody who subtitles the work for local consumption hasn't cost the original rights holder any damages, as there wasn't a market, at the very least until they did something the original rights holder thought wouldn't be cost effective.
In Canada, only canadian-licensed satellite-dish operators can **SELL** (okay, "license") satellite TV subscribtions. US-based companies care not allowed to. Yet, there is flourishing "piracy" of US satellite signals, yet the courts have consistently refused to sue "pirates" for the very simple reason that they are "pirating" a signal that cannot legally be sold (okay, "licensed") in Canada, and thus, they are not depriving the US satellite operators of revenue(so there has been some cases of US bounty-hunters sent into Canada to kidnap sellers of pirating smart-cards and bring them to "justice" in the USA).
So, in your case, yes, it could be construed that the "piracy" you describe could not be inferred as illegal, especially as it does not deprives the producer of revenue.
Likewise, Microsoft does not sell Windows-2000 licenses anymore, so, it could be construed that since it's not available for sale, "pirating" it could not be construed as illegal (and the same ought to be for Windows XP once it's no longer "sold" in any form my Microsoft).
Often they are told by their bosses that "this is the policy, enforce it". It's not like they have the luxury of saying "hey I think this policy is stupid".
So if they don't tell you to stop, they could lose their jobs.
The nazis also were only following orders for the most part. Yet, that didn't prevent them from being hung high and dry in Nuremberg.
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Oxdung. Utter oxdung. "Becoming better" is something for the unwashed, ungrateful colonists accross the Pond. In Britain, society is properly made by people who are born into a social class, and they steadfastly remain within that social class; otherwise would only mean that there is chaos and disorder. Look accross the pond where there is that dreadful "social mobility": you have a horrenduous crime rate, a dismal economic performance which is heading the country straight to the crapper and an enormously dysfunctional health-care system where too many people have no access to health-care.
I live in a part of France that has been occupied by the britshit for the last quarter-millenium, so we have had plenty of time to observe them from without.
In comparison to the french, the brits are hypocrites (we will waste no time driving home what we think about you); they will say nothing at all to your face, or perhaps a "good morning" (sometimes supplemented by "isn't the weather wonderful today", even though there is a light drizzle), and then will gladly stab you in the back when you last expect it.
Their idea of a "community" is more tribal than anything else; they will form homogenous social groups that will exist in total, blissfull ignorance of other local social groups; such an attitude naturally fosters misundestanding of the other groups. The hypocritical mentality also means that people will covertly act against perceived greivances, by all means possible. You don't like the neighbour's face, choice of music or colour of motor-car? Goody! He brings his garbage too early, here is a way of getting back at him!
The limeys are hypocrites and they know it; hence their false veeneer of respectability and decorum (those who are called YOBS are in reality people who recognize the hypocrisy and are refusing to go with that oxdung, and let their true sentiments be expressed in the open -- believe me, beneath every stiff upper-lip is a contained YOB that would gladly jump at your throat at the earliest convenience), that perfectly explains the "curtain twitcher" busybody mentality. As such, such a development is certainly not a surprise, the surprise being that it has taken so much time to materialize.
Better go the pre-emptive way: make offside backups before the shit hits the fan.
Actually no. Thinking employees will often challenge the boss' diktats, which is bad for the boss' morale. And nothing counts more than the boss' morale.
You can put up a poster in english. However, businesses are not allowed to put-up a sign, a business sign, in english. The idea is to drive the point home to immigrants that they can't expect to live here without speaking french.
And businesses are not human, so they cannot enjoy human rights. No human has ever been prohibited from speaking any language at all.
This is strange; I have no problems administrating NFS networks, whereas MS networks are big fucking huge pain in the arse to administer (ever compared the /etc/exports with the /etc/smb.conf file?) thanks to the hugely nonstandard terminology.
And what does personal information (Name, SSN) has any utility for statistical analysis???
Cobol is still around because it's an extremely verbose language that is easy to understand (I never said "write into"), so managers can understand what their programmers are doing.
Yup. Talk about the Fishman Affidavit...
The court record would say so.
(Phone rings)
-- Hello? Sherriff's office!
-- Yes, miss smedley. Yes, I went yesterday and told the boys who swam naked in the river near your house to go elsewhere.
-- Well, I passed by some time ago, and they moved downstream a quarter mile, so you can't see them anymore.
-- Well, of course, if you use binoculars, you can see them!!!
I live a day's drive from the US federal capital (yet I am not in the US) in a 2 million people city, almost downtown.
Some years ago, I had some guests from Boston; we were walking home at around 3 in the morning, and we passed through the nearby farmer's market where the produce sellers, at night, merely put a tarpaulin on top of their veggies.
The americans just could not believe their eyes (and that we could walk that late without being mugged). Yet, the area is one of the poorest in the country.
Not everybody is a thief like americans are. Or Europeans, for that matter.
Okay, I don't want my nether hole searched next time I enter the US. Where do I apply for the warrant???
(Some 12 years ago, I crossed into the US through a very remote border post in Maine, and I was wearing a fanny pack that one customs agent wanted to search. So I handed it to him, and he ran his finger through the small change with exactly the same look of a pervert who sifts through a pile of women underwear. Really creepy).
Actually, no. When the Tories went from 222 to 2 seats, Lucien Bouchard's Bloc Québécois became the opposition.
Yes, distinguished like Sir John A. McDonald, or like Robert Stanfield, or Joe Clark. And, yes, distinguished like Brian Mulroney, because he made **TWO** genuine efforts to try to have Québec ratify the 1982 constitution.
I don't know how a rabid right-wing evangelist who only wants to turn Canada in a northerner United State could be construed as "distinguished"...
The unwashed western huns only wanted to replace the rule-of-law civil service by unfetterred free-market by destroying the State so they could roam about and profit off everyone else, whithout a State to protect the poorer people.
But how a rabid "separatist" (I'm sovereignist; the french always has been separate) could get a civil service job in Ottawa???
That could be it; I reviewed the actual bill with my lawyer, and he basically said that such a law would be unenforcable. It basically is eye candy to please a few vocal big mouths (the US media).
Like if the already thinly-stretched RCMP needed more imaginary crimes to go after...
Actually, no. It's only the foreign media conglomerates who are pushing for the law. Canadian artists are against it, and the canadian "industry" has not overwhelmingly been pushing in it's favour.
They did this to look acceptable. The Reform Party is a bunch of unwashed evangelist rednecks, which never amounted to any significance in Canadian politics. The Progressive Conservative Party, on the other hand, has had a pretty long list of distinguished leaders, and even though it mostly was the opposition, has had plenty of positive influence in Canadian politics (it was the party that founded Canada, for that matter, and the party that had built the transcontinental railroad).
The reform party as itself could never gain power, as it is dramatically opposed to all canadian values, so it simply swallowed-up the conservatives just to get the respectable name, thus giving themselves only a veneer of respectability.
Yeah, but in the meanwhile, they will have enacted it, and you can bet your arse the liberals won't scrap it afterwards. After all, they haven't scrapped the GST as they promised...
(The GST is a classic case of ideologic stupidity. What the government did was replace a hidden 12% tax with a visible 7% tax, but they so badly explained it that people got to hate it).
And on telephone poles; up here, signs can be erected on public property.
The government will be swept in an election before the bill can be made law, as it was for the last 6 years...
In Canada, only canadian-licensed satellite-dish operators can **SELL** (okay, "license") satellite TV subscribtions. US-based companies care not allowed to. Yet, there is flourishing "piracy" of US satellite signals, yet the courts have consistently refused to sue "pirates" for the very simple reason that they are "pirating" a signal that cannot legally be sold (okay, "licensed") in Canada, and thus, they are not depriving the US satellite operators of revenue(so there has been some cases of US bounty-hunters sent into Canada to kidnap sellers of pirating smart-cards and bring them to "justice" in the USA).
So, in your case, yes, it could be construed that the "piracy" you describe could not be inferred as illegal, especially as it does not deprives the producer of revenue.
Likewise, Microsoft does not sell Windows-2000 licenses anymore, so, it could be construed that since it's not available for sale, "pirating" it could not be construed as illegal (and the same ought to be for Windows XP once it's no longer "sold" in any form my Microsoft).
Is is as sad as when you get paid for providing whatever service your employer demands of you during the course of your employment there.
The nazis also were only following orders for the most part. Yet, that didn't prevent them from being hung high and dry in Nuremberg.
(resneer) The civil code has to conform nevertheless to the Constitution.
And some rulers use other things than pay to motivate their troops... :)