I believe all this "Canadians are dirty rotten thieves" stuff the "IP proponents" are pulling is due to the fact that the current government is working on revising our copyright law. I suspect that they are trying to pressure the Canadian government into getting their way.
It is NOT. There are NO current copyright bills being considered at the moment. And the minority government has far more problems than pleasing foreign media conglomerates...
This is really irrelevant; there is no copyright law reform bill pending before parliament, and it is a minority government that's just over a year old, so there is a very big chance there will be elections this year, so the problem will be postponed at least a year further, giving us chance to organize.
"Last I checked, unemployment was at record lows."
For dismally paying part-time crappy service jobs...
Who made your car? For those of you who answer Honda, Toyota, Nissan, etc. Well then you are far more to blame than "republicans".
Well, since you're a republican, let's pick a topic you fuckers are notorious for harping about: "personal responsibility".
It's the U.S. automakers own damn fault if they produce crappy gas-sucking cars that break down after a few months on the road that nobody want.
It's been clear for 30 years, people have been jumping to ricers in droves, yet the U.S. automakers have yet to clue-in on this fact.
Morons.
"Gasoline is nearly back to $2 a gallon."
Thanks to aggressive imperialistic foreign policies that piss-off the rest of the planet against 'mericans.
Actually it is due to market economics, if anything military actions in the mid-east make oil prices go up. Also its not imperialism if you don't want the land, we never did, we wanted regime change. We fully expected that the new regime would act just like the Saudis and the Kuwaitis, ie in their own interest not ours.
The market forces are controlled by the U.S. so even though it is not effected by guns and warships but rather through bonds and money, the net result is the same: financial empires run by croporations that suck middle-east countries dry while being run by puppet dictators.
"Home ownership is among the highest (possibly THE highest) in the entire world."
With a record number of people squeezed tight by the balls by the banks, living paycheque to paycheque, trying to make ends meet while working an unsecure job, racking up record stress levels to the point of being psychotic...
Not really, long term homeowners were able to refinance at far lower rates and divert a significant chunk of their monthly income from interest payments to spending money. Some recent homeowners are having problems because they over extended themselves with credit, they bought too fancy of a place, went for exotic variable or interest-only mortgages, and gambled that ever increasing valuations will make it all work out. Those who did not over indulge in credit and went for traditional fixed mortgages are doing very well.
Again the "personal responsibility" harp, eh?
How about financial institution misleading and predatory lending?
I know, "caveat emptor"... This is companies preying on people's ignorance.
"Americans can go to school, work hard, become successful, more readily than anywhere else in the world."
Only if their parents have the money to send them to schools that don't suck, thanks to the rich gutting the public school networks.
Untrue, our public school failings have little to do with federal or state funding. Per capita spending is extremely high yet public school results are exceptionally low. Have to blame that on a few decades of liberal social experimentation and bureaucratic waste diverting money from the classrooms to administration, not on the republicans. Disinterested parents and a culture of dependency don't help either, of course that brings us back to several decades of liberal social experimentation doesn't it?
Sure, blame the victims. It's their own fault if the rich have skimmed the cream.
If your going to slam the republicans at least pick the topics they are truly to blame for.
Okay, let's blame the republican for record deficit spending, record foreign debt, record foreign trade deficits.
"Given the state of government" waaah waah waaah....STFU
Last I checked, unemployment was at record lows.
For dismally paying part-time crappy service jobs...
Gasoline is nearly back to $2 a gallon.
Thanks to aggressive imperialistic foreign policies that piss-off the rest of the planet against 'mericans.
Home ownership is among the highest (possibly THE highest) in the entire world.
With a record number of people squeezed tight by the balls by the banks, living paycheque to paycheque, trying to make ends meet while working an unsecure job, racking up record stress levels to the point of being psychotic...
Americans can go to school, work hard, become successful, more readily than anywhere else in the world.
Only if their parents have the money to send them to schools that don't suck, thanks to the rich gutting the public school networks.
My god people...what the fuck do you want?
A good life, free from greedy predators, like anyone else in the world.
These people don't want everyone to be happy...they want everyone to be equally miserable. Worthless turds.
The rich assholes like you only want themselves to be happy, with the rest of the world can die to fatten them.
So, this means that I get to download anything I want while in Canada free of guilt and cost... right?
More than that, you can borrow CDs from public libraries and copy them into your digital collection, then share that digital collection on a peer-to-peer system and, of course, download music, as the supreme court has decreed that this is legal according to the current copyright law.
Better yet, at this moment, there is no bill pending consideration that would change that; bill C-60 died a year ago when elections were called.
And finally, given that there will likely be elections this year, there is no chance that such a bill may pass in the near future.
Currently, there is no copyright bill pending parliamentary attention to "revamp" canadian copyright law. The last attempt, C-60, has died when elections were called about a year ago.
So it is time to contact your members of parliament and inquire about their intentions towards that aspect (if there are any), or simply brief them with the issues.
I produced a better product than he was trying to force me to accept in the original timeframe. Still wasn't enough for him, the sabotoge continued. Rather than sit there and watch my my career languish I chose to get the hell out of Dodge to far greener pastures.
If you had said "General Motors" or "Pontiac" instead of "Dodge", I would have asked you if your first name was "Zachary"...
..humans do. They need to stop fining "corporations" and instead determine which named human made the offending decision, the guy who finally issued the order to do such and such offending thing, then freeze that guy's salary and compensation for five years (or more, to make sure they don't just raise it quickly to cover the loss to his check) and make that human pay the fine out of his own wallet, exactly the same as when joe sixpack gets a fine.
This won't work. It goes against the veil of secrecy that has been used for centuries to shield the people inside the croporation from the rightful wrath of the outsiders. And, besides, if compelled to do so, croporations will always blame an expendable low-level scapegoat for the bad deed, whilst the executives will escape scot-free.
Well, Cingular top executives were sitting around in a restaurant one day, and one of them said, "How can we permanently lower our sales to computer professionals?"
-- Who gives a shit about those? said the most junior executive. They're always bitching and moaning and they nitpick through our customer service contracts. It's a crowd we'd rather not have.
-- Yeah, that's true. Let's ditch the computer pro market, they're geeks anyways!
How big is Canada's bloc of religious wackos who think anything sexual is so horrible it needs to be banned?
It's negligible. Negligible enough that the current (minority) federal government who has ostensibly been elected on a platform that could conceivably cater to that segment of wingnuts has been forced to hastily ditch most of it's platform (power is more important to catering to their perceived constituency), most importantly, scrapping plans to illegalize gay marriage.
Québec has a bigger-than-life influence in Canada, and, being french, is centuries ahead of the english in terms of sexual enlightenment (in Montréal, we have sex-shop advertisement in the subway and animated sex advice columns on the subway electronic information system).
Oh, and I forgot to add that we've been having pr0n movies on TV (NOT cable) for more than 20 years.
When I was a kid, I was sent to a french school where everything was imported from France, teachers, schoolbooks, comrades and the teaching methods.
One of those was the teachers encouraging other students to laugh at you whenever you screwed-up.
Since I screwed-up a lot, I soon developped the ability to not give a rat's ass about what other people think of me, an ability that has served me pretty well in the decades since.
But of course, in a politically-correct ages, busybodies have to have something to do, too, no?
The real villain is not sprawl per se, but it's genitor: usage segregation.
Newer areas in/around towns are zoned per use. Houses here, stores there, strip malls there and industries there.
Those areas are seldom contiguous.
In old cities (both in north America and Europe), you'll see mixed land use: stores on the first floor, housing higher, and maybe some industries.
Where I live, next door is a music recording studio, on the next block is a soap company warehouse, a small garage (no gas pumps) as well as many houses. On yet another block, four nice beautifully maintained farmhouses keep piling architectural and landscaping awards year after year, right next to a "wedge house" featured in a well-known classic novel right by the railroad crossing.
On the other side of the tracks stands old factories turned into lofts, a food wholesaler and some factories, right by the old canal (that has been re-opened to pleasure crafts after 30 years of being closed).
5 blocks from there is a major farmer's market, and the whole neighbourhood is served by two subway stations, and a 5 minute ride into downtown. The neighbourhood "main" street (which is actually 20 miles long) has all the services; bank, post office, drugstores, restaurants (from the lowly greasy spoon or Mc Donald's to exotic or ritzy eateries with shows).
I've had three jobs in that neighbourhood; being able to come home for lunch is a big advantage (now I telecommute -- which saves me a 1.5 hour commute); this is a quality of life that is unnatainable in suburbia, thanks to the million problems not brought about by having a car.
And it is a quality of life that would not be possible without mixed land use.
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure I'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes. In the meantime, you'll continue to have lights on and sufficient power to write "Viva la revolution!" on that wonderful piece of modern technology you are using, which was doubtless developed and constructed by a worker's cooperative and not a gigantic multinational that I probably own a tiny part of.
Actually, where I live, the electric power is generated by a State-owned company, which not only provides us with the **CHEAPEST** and cleanest (zero carbon, zero nukes) power in the world, but also exports heavily to the USA.
In addition, it also has the only northeastern grid that did not conk-out during the last blackout.
And to add insult to injury, of all the north-american power utilities, it enjoys the absolute very best credit rating, mostly thanks to it's extremely well-maintained physical plant and overdesigned distribution network.
My parent's tax dollars went to it's nationalization 40 years ago, and since then, I have enjoyed continuous dividends by the way of reduced electric rates.
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This is really irrelevant; there is no copyright law reform bill pending before parliament, and it is a minority government that's just over a year old, so there is a very big chance there will be elections this year, so the problem will be postponed at least a year further, giving us chance to organize.
It's the U.S. automakers own damn fault if they produce crappy gas-sucking cars that break down after a few months on the road that nobody want.
It's been clear for 30 years, people have been jumping to ricers in droves, yet the U.S. automakers have yet to clue-in on this fact.
Morons.
The market forces are controlled by the U.S. so even though it is not effected by guns and warships but rather through bonds and money, the net result is the same: financial empires run by croporations that suck middle-east countries dry while being run by puppet dictators. Again the "personal responsibility" harp, eh?How about financial institution misleading and predatory lending?
I know, "caveat emptor"... This is companies preying on people's ignorance.
Sure, blame the victims. It's their own fault if the rich have skimmed the cream. Okay, let's blame the republican for record deficit spending, record foreign debt, record foreign trade deficits.What do you have to answer to that, redboy???
Fucking republicans.
This will work as well as the chinese one...
Better yet, at this moment, there is no bill pending consideration that would change that; bill C-60 died a year ago when elections were called.
And finally, given that there will likely be elections this year, there is no chance that such a bill may pass in the near future.
So it is time to contact your members of parliament and inquire about their intentions towards that aspect (if there are any), or simply brief them with the issues.
Technology seems to be lacking, here...
What's the use to show the person's picture? All chinese look the same!
-- Yeah, that's true. Let's ditch the computer pro market, they're geeks anyways!
I'll gladly do it. I live an arm's length away from the furthest reach of the DMCA.
Québec has a bigger-than-life influence in Canada, and, being french, is centuries ahead of the english in terms of sexual enlightenment (in Montréal, we have sex-shop advertisement in the subway and animated sex advice columns on the subway electronic information system).
Oh, and I forgot to add that we've been having pr0n movies on TV (NOT cable) for more than 20 years.
One of those was the teachers encouraging other students to laugh at you whenever you screwed-up.
Since I screwed-up a lot, I soon developped the ability to not give a rat's ass about what other people think of me, an ability that has served me pretty well in the decades since.
But of course, in a politically-correct ages, busybodies have to have something to do, too, no?
Newer areas in/around towns are zoned per use. Houses here, stores there, strip malls there and industries there.
Those areas are seldom contiguous.
In old cities (both in north America and Europe), you'll see mixed land use: stores on the first floor, housing higher, and maybe some industries.
Where I live, next door is a music recording studio, on the next block is a soap company warehouse, a small garage (no gas pumps) as well as many houses. On yet another block, four nice beautifully maintained farmhouses keep piling architectural and landscaping awards year after year, right next to a "wedge house" featured in a well-known classic novel right by the railroad crossing.
On the other side of the tracks stands old factories turned into lofts, a food wholesaler and some factories, right by the old canal (that has been re-opened to pleasure crafts after 30 years of being closed).
5 blocks from there is a major farmer's market, and the whole neighbourhood is served by two subway stations, and a 5 minute ride into downtown. The neighbourhood "main" street (which is actually 20 miles long) has all the services; bank, post office, drugstores, restaurants (from the lowly greasy spoon or Mc Donald's to exotic or ritzy eateries with shows).
I've had three jobs in that neighbourhood; being able to come home for lunch is a big advantage (now I telecommute -- which saves me a 1.5 hour commute); this is a quality of life that is unnatainable in suburbia, thanks to the million problems not brought about by having a car.
And it is a quality of life that would not be possible without mixed land use.
In addition, it also has the only northeastern grid that did not conk-out during the last blackout.
And to add insult to injury, of all the north-american power utilities, it enjoys the absolute very best credit rating, mostly thanks to it's extremely well-maintained physical plant and overdesigned distribution network.
My parent's tax dollars went to it's nationalization 40 years ago, and since then, I have enjoyed continuous dividends by the way of reduced electric rates.