I recently discovered that new DVDs have previews at the beginning that I cannot skip. WTF, I already paid them for their content, now I have to have commercials to watch a DVD that I own?
Oh it gets better for us in Canada, I purchased Deadwood Season 1 yesterday from Future Shop (Canadian chain now owned by Best Buy), I come home and stick in disc 1, up comes a 2 minute long HBO promo saying how great HBO is and look at all these shows we have waiting for you... Thing is... HBO is NOT available in Canada, at least not legally, it is actually illegal to subscribe to it here.
Not that it stops some subscribing mind you, funny how satellite footprints don't honour the borders:)
I used to work for a company a few years back that worked with a person who was a self-proclaimed "internet marketing guru". He ended up being one of the main causes of the company I worked for going under.
His claim to fame was being able to get a cell-phone supplies outfit high rankings on AltaVista which was the top search engine at the time.
The thing is, this company had high listings purely because they were one of the first outlets for these supplies to sell online. Since it was before fancy flash files the site had loads of keyword texts on it naturally. I told the boss this many times because it was obvious.
So, this guy figuring he was a guru starts writing those "how to market" ebooks, sells them at hugely overpriced rates, etc. etc.
The company I worked for was basically his host but the boss had known this guy for years and wanted him to do this "magic" for him, I said fine let's see some results. The boss being naive makes a deal where each sale this guy brings he gives the guy 1/2 basically.
Well he never did manage to get our site anywhere near the top, his advice was most often dated and meaningless. I even asked the boss to get the guy to prove himself by getting his own marketing sites to the top for "internet marketing", he couldn't pull it off.
Our boss had an office to support, he had employees to pay, network overhead, server overhead, etc. etc. and yet he kept working with this guy who basically worked out of his apartment with no real overhead of his own. One December our office was on skeleton shifts with reduced hours, meanwhile asshat marketer was sent a cheque that totalled more than the combined payroll for us.
Eventually the boss took his own life one day in the parking garage of the office building, the office manager/receptionist was the one who found him one morning when she showed up for work. The company closed soon afterwards.
The sad thing is the asshat marketing guy had the nerve to threaten to sue the guys widow for the few measly dollars he was left owing after that, that is the kind of morals and ethics you are dealing with when entering into contracts with these folks. This guy was supposed to be a long time friend of that boss too.
Moral of the story, I don't believe any SEO type who is trying to sell some ebook or website subscription. There is lots of free advice online that will give you the same info that these assholes peddle at overinflated rates.
I've managed to cut incoming spam to two ISP MTAs by about 75% by moving SpamAssassin to the SMTP level, anything over a 10.0 is refused at the door.
RBLs already stop a large percentage before it even reaches the SpamAssassin check, so even if the spammer switch to using ISP MTAs when they can the SpamAssassin bit will likely still result in refusal.
It is pissing off the spammers.. to get past the RBLs only to be stopped by SA means they have to make their junk more and more legit looking and that is tough when new versions of SA tag any included domains quickly.
I dropped Quickbooks as well, I did use it for payroll for about 18 months but once I turned everything over to an accountant who was going to be doing her stuff in Simply Accounting I decided I didn't need to pay twice for the same thing.
Also, Quickbooks seems to have miscalculated owing taxes, at least one paycheque seems to have been in the wrong year. It resulted in an overpayment one year and a shortage the next, of course with the government if I hadn't called to correct this they expected me to pay the shortage while not giving credit for the overpayment.
Actually, at one point my company was approached by Iran Television to provide them with streaming services online. We declined the account mainly on advice from our legal department which pointed out that the US does have a trade embargo against Iran and that US companies are not supposed to be providing services to Iran, especially the Iranian government.
We would have been using EV1 or The Planet as NOC sources too so now I see it was wise to not bother.
The spammers have been streamlining the spam more lately to get around blocks, this means they are making them look more and more confusing to bayes filters, etc.
They're also using different subjects these days that almost require you to check to make sure they are not legitimate emails, things like "order status" means if you are expecting a shipment of something your ordered you are going to open that message.
I manage a couple ISP MTA frontends that use SimScan and SpamAssassin to drop anything scoring 10+ at SMTP level. This was working well for the nasty spammers but of late it is becoming much tougher again to block because the incoming messages are becoming less spam looking and more legitimate looking all the time.
As more of us install these types of blocking systems the spammers are of course going to adjust to get passed them. I am sure it must be quite frustrating to them to see a 100% block with certain domain/ISP addresses and the will focus on those domains until they find a message that will get through.
I've noticed that as well, how religious folks like to paint Athiests and non-religious folks as being some sort of alternative "religion", I had one guy stating to me that my Agnostic/Athiest beliefs were a religion just like his belief in invisible characters who look after him.
I think the brainwashing these poor folks have suffered from birth is quite troubling. When you look at countries where little other than religious doctrine is taught you see a very scary society which resists any and all change to retain the ancestral belief structures.
As a species we must move beyond this nonsense to progress further, otherwise we're destined to go the way of the dinosaurs, well we probably are destined for that anyway.
Yup, even though with all the billions of "souls" who passed before you none can apparently come back and confirm what religion is selling, funny that.
Well I guess there are folks who claim to be "in contact" but there is hardly any scientific proof to back it up.
I've always felt that ANY of my recently dead relatives and/or friends would have tried to contact me in some form, haven't noticed anything yet.
Maybe I'm just not listening hard enough or something I guess, what with this new White Noise movie coming out...
This works great actually. There are a couple of methods to do it. I do it with SimScan (www.inter7.com) with my ISPs incoming MTA system. It checks incoming SMTP bodies with ClamAV and SpamAssassin and drops the viruses at the gate and if the message scores 10+ in SA it drops those at SMTP with a 5xx error.
Our previous method was with qmail-scanner which would then quarantine viruses and mark spam and pass it on to the end-user MTA. That method caused many pages due to high CPU usage when spammers hit hard.
The new SimScan system is C based so it is a tad easier on load, hardly see any red events anymore.
An alternative is available with Exim's exiscan patches for those using Exim.
After applying this system at my ISP the incoming spam levels have been reduced dramatically, we can still pass thru to those not wanting the filtering but for the rest of the customers they are very happy to not have nearly as much junk in the inbox.
Some have actually called wondering why they are only really getting their legitimate email now:)
I do some work with a small cable ISP, originally I built their 2 network gateways for the 2 plants they operate. These were Linux boxes with transparent squid and iptables, etc.
Well a couple months back someone sold them on changing their DOCSIS system, so a guy comes in to help them do it. While doing so he convinces the boss to switch to Cisco routers at the gates.
Now they are having major issues with virus and worm infections on their network. I had the Linux boxes configured to block most of the bad ports, etc. and infections were kept to a minimum.
The sad thing is the guy sold the boss these new routers claiming the Linux boxes weren't the correct solution, this was during an attempted install of the new DOCSIS system. One of the gates had a bad NIC in it, well it wasn't bad until the idiots entered the room and touched the PC housing, the room is a static nightmare apparently and just entering the room has caused hardware failures. I spent hours on the phone with them trying to get this thing working and it ends up being static related yet again.
The old system allowed them to monitor usage, track down infected PCs quickly, etc. while the new system makes this much more difficult to manage. We're talking a less than 300 seat cable plant.
So, now I'm telling them they are better off educating the users and selling them cable routers whenever possible.
Meanwhile, DSL just showed up in their area and they are kicking their asses. I even recommended they become DSL resellers so they'd at least have options to keep some clients who find their cable modem service crappy.
Costco out here in BC now has the Panasonic DVD recorders that also double as DVR's, last I looked they were down below the $400 mark now.
Sure they don't feature the integrated IPG features so you'd have to set timers like a VCR but hey, it beats paying $25/month or $700 for the cableco version which ties you to the cableco.
Optionally you should consider going the ExpressVu route as they are now selling their 5200 PVR at reasonable prices ($299 comes to mind for new subs).
I'm a ExpressVu sub, had one of their early 5100 for a couple years now, I don't watch it myself but my wife loves the thing, except now she's whining she wants one with two tuners, three if I could manage it:)
I moved to Canada with my father and stepmom back in 1980 from Scotland, leaving behind my mother and a few siblings.
I haven't seen them since then, I have communicated with my mom a bit but we don't really keep in steady contact of any sort.
Of course this seperation not only from my real mom but also from the rest of our extended family has really left me with little sense of family life at all.
Right now I live in a different province than my dad, they are 1000km from me. I talk to them on the phone maybe every other month. They recently came to visit my wife and I, first time they had been here in 4 years. I have been to visit them once in the last 10 years.
My sense of family togetherness is all but gone, I spend little time with my wife's family too and they have a hard time understanding that it isn't them but me as I just don't get into family functions that much. Likely because I all but stopped having them at 13 when we moved here.
Do I miss it? Sure, but at the same time I realize life goes on, I realize I need to fend for myself through life anyway. Then again, my dad was never all that supportive, he was never the type I could turn to if I needed help financially, etc.
My wife's parents on the other hand are the complete opposite. They would help in an instant if we asked. She talks to them daily, etc.
Digital radio is up and running in many areas now, FM isn't going anywhere anytime soon and many folks just won't pay for the satellite radio services. Cars are already coming equipped with XM/Sirius receivers but they still get regular channels and digital add-on units are available as well for local digital channels.
It is called progress, hopefully all the money won't remain in a few corporations hands either. Companies such as Corus have managed to ruin much of the FM dial across the country much like Clear Channel has done down south. The digital bands should open up more channels and many of those will be filled with niche stations, there are more local community stations starting up across the land as more frequencies are being made available thanks to the digital migration.
Local news will always be there, just like your local newspapers. You can purchase the New York Times in most major Canadian cities every day, it hasn't killed their local newspaper industry.
Sorry, as a fellow Canadian I will not give up my eyeball rights to you, the CRTC or the government. I and I alone should be the sole chooser of what television services I subscribe to.
Your argument about local stations disappearing is silly, you even talk about listening to AM radio, well all the US AM stations have been clearly available to most of the Canadian population for decades and it still has not resulted in the loss of Canadian locals.
The laws in place for television services are there for 2 reasons, one is to protect culture and the other is to protect the Canadian broadcasting corporations from competition.
Why do you think we never had MTV until we recently got the awful MTV Canada? It was to protect MuchMusic, the rest of the planet had a MTV franchise before us, but here our cheap broadcasters chose to setup a clone rather than a franchised version. So we missed out on lots of great MTV content because they also chose not to purchase that programming for our eyeballs since they could produce much cheaper versions on their own.
Very few industries get to enjoy the protectionism the Canadian broadcasting industry has enjoyed for decades, all under the false pretenses of "protecting Canadian culture".
While these laws have allowed the domestic industry to not compete against US giants, it also keeps out many stations that actually do not compete with a domestic service. The government has no right to do that and most citizens would agree they have no real right to stop any media from being available as long as the content is legal.
What worries me about those who say they get their morals or worldview from "God" is just how did he deliver them? Voices inside ones head certainly are not proof of a God, indeed many folks have been locked up due to such voices.
I am more agnostic than athiest myself, on the fence so to speak. I don't believe there is any God like being who watches our every move and expects us to act in any certain way. I do see a possibility that our universe is a creation by some entity though, but I am also not convinced of that.
Why are people so willing to lie to their kids about the Santa Clause stuff until a certain age then come clean with them? Yet they aren't able to see that the whole God thing is largely the same type of belief system, it is based on "faith" with nothing there to back up that faith other than what they think in their heads. In essence then, if someone believes the Devil did it all then aren't they just as correct?
No doubt life is a strange occurrence and I doubt we will ever know just how/why the universe came into being, but that doesn't mean we need to continue using ancient supernatural stories as the basis of what some think happened.
I do feel that many need religion as a way of comforting themselves that they believe there is something else after this short existence they get to enjoy, it is quite hard for some to accept that it is simply lights out when you die. There really is no evidence saying anything else, I look at it like "I had no idea of time/existence before I was born, I likely will have none once I die either".
If I'm lucky enough some of the materials that make up me will end up in some future being.
Where I live there is ZERO codes, none, you don't even need a permit to build and you can build whatever you want on your land.
One guy has taken that to extremes, since we moved here 5 years ago he has continued to add to this 5 storey monster house that I swear he has no real blueprints for, it just seems to jut out in all kinds of weird directions. So far he has put not walls up either, just the frame and a few boards here and there.
As for my yard, I refuse to put lawn down. Firstly, we're built on gravel, so there is little topsoil there and what you put down just melts into the gravel anyway. Second, I hate lawns, they suck, I don't want to be cutting the damn thing when there is enough moisture to make it green, nor do I want a brown patch during the hot months (we're on a shared well so constant watering is a no-no).
I'm going for the desert look with some flower beds out in the front yard, I may put up a hedge to give more privacy. The back yard will be more of a veggie garden thing with a patio surrounding the cheapo pool we bought this year.
Vonage.ca for VoIP, another option if you are in BC, Alberta or Ontario is to use 101-8888 dial-around service when making calls within North America.
99cents for 45 minutes, 5 cents a minute thereafter, and you can also get free calls if you get lucky enough (we've been using this service for a couple weeks now and have received 2 free calls so far).
The UK operates a strict calling party pays approach
Found this out the hard way after calling my mom in the UK from here in Canada. While normally I'm looking at about 9cents/minute to the UK because she has a "mobile" I was stung 49cents/minute. OUCH!
Needless to say I don't call much. If she wants me to call more she best be getting a real landline.
I use an old Thinkpad in the kitchen as a surfing machine, good for looking up recipes, etc. Running Fedora Core 2 on it with XFCE as the desktop. A little slow (it is a 333Mhz P2 with 160MB RAM) but it does the job, I wasn't expecting to play Doom3 or anything on it but for basic surfing, email and even some development work it is well suited to the task.
Slashdot Mirror
I recently discovered that new DVDs have previews at the beginning that I cannot skip. WTF, I already paid them for their content, now I have to have commercials to watch a DVD that I own?
... Thing is ... HBO is NOT available in Canada, at least not legally, it is actually illegal to subscribe to it here.
:)
Oh it gets better for us in Canada, I purchased Deadwood Season 1 yesterday from Future Shop (Canadian chain now owned by Best Buy), I come home and stick in disc 1, up comes a 2 minute long HBO promo saying how great HBO is and look at all these shows we have waiting for you
Not that it stops some subscribing mind you, funny how satellite footprints don't honour the borders
I used to work for a company a few years back that worked with a person who was a self-proclaimed "internet marketing guru". He ended up being one of the main causes of the company I worked for going under.
His claim to fame was being able to get a cell-phone supplies outfit high rankings on AltaVista which was the top search engine at the time.
The thing is, this company had high listings purely because they were one of the first outlets for these supplies to sell online. Since it was before fancy flash files the site had loads of keyword texts on it naturally. I told the boss this many times because it was obvious.
So, this guy figuring he was a guru starts writing those "how to market" ebooks, sells them at hugely overpriced rates, etc. etc.
The company I worked for was basically his host but the boss had known this guy for years and wanted him to do this "magic" for him, I said fine let's see some results. The boss being naive makes a deal where each sale this guy brings he gives the guy 1/2 basically.
Well he never did manage to get our site anywhere near the top, his advice was most often dated and meaningless. I even asked the boss to get the guy to prove himself by getting his own marketing sites to the top for "internet marketing", he couldn't pull it off.
Our boss had an office to support, he had employees to pay, network overhead, server overhead, etc. etc. and yet he kept working with this guy who basically worked out of his apartment with no real overhead of his own. One December our office was on skeleton shifts with reduced hours, meanwhile asshat marketer was sent a cheque that totalled more than the combined payroll for us.
Eventually the boss took his own life one day in the parking garage of the office building, the office manager/receptionist was the one who found him one morning when she showed up for work. The company closed soon afterwards.
The sad thing is the asshat marketing guy had the nerve to threaten to sue the guys widow for the few measly dollars he was left owing after that, that is the kind of morals and ethics you are dealing with when entering into contracts with these folks. This guy was supposed to be a long time friend of that boss too.
Moral of the story, I don't believe any SEO type who is trying to sell some ebook or website subscription. There is lots of free advice online that will give you the same info that these assholes peddle at overinflated rates.
What kind of crappy ISP delivers messages containing *.SCR, *.CPL, *.COM, *.PIF, *.BAT and so forth to their customers?
:)
One that charges extra for AV and Spam protection
The rest of us provide it free with ClamAV and SpamAssassin.
I've managed to cut incoming spam to two ISP MTAs by about 75% by moving SpamAssassin to the SMTP level, anything over a 10.0 is refused at the door.
.. to get past the RBLs only to be stopped by SA means they have to make their junk more and more legit looking and that is tough when new versions of SA tag any included domains quickly.
RBLs already stop a large percentage before it even reaches the SpamAssassin check, so even if the spammer switch to using ISP MTAs when they can the SpamAssassin bit will likely still result in refusal.
It is pissing off the spammers
I dropped Quickbooks as well, I did use it for payroll for about 18 months but once I turned everything over to an accountant who was going to be doing her stuff in Simply Accounting I decided I didn't need to pay twice for the same thing.
Also, Quickbooks seems to have miscalculated owing taxes, at least one paycheque seems to have been in the wrong year. It resulted in an overpayment one year and a shortage the next, of course with the government if I hadn't called to correct this they expected me to pay the shortage while not giving credit for the overpayment.
I've also seen some banks starting to actually charge an extra fee for the Quicken formatted exports.
I dropped my Quickbooks subscription partly because of this new "policy" as it says a lot about Intuit.
Actually, at one point my company was approached by Iran Television to provide them with streaming services online. We declined the account mainly on advice from our legal department which pointed out that the US does have a trade embargo against Iran and that US companies are not supposed to be providing services to Iran, especially the Iranian government.
We would have been using EV1 or The Planet as NOC sources too so now I see it was wise to not bother.
Enabling Razor2, DCC, Pyzor and the SURBLs in 3.x series of SA seems to help a lot. Those are tougher for them to get around it seems.
Still, doesn't surprise me they'd be prechecking in SA before sending.
The spammers have been streamlining the spam more lately to get around blocks, this means they are making them look more and more confusing to bayes filters, etc.
They're also using different subjects these days that almost require you to check to make sure they are not legitimate emails, things like "order status" means if you are expecting a shipment of something your ordered you are going to open that message.
I manage a couple ISP MTA frontends that use SimScan and SpamAssassin to drop anything scoring 10+ at SMTP level. This was working well for the nasty spammers but of late it is becoming much tougher again to block because the incoming messages are becoming less spam looking and more legitimate looking all the time.
As more of us install these types of blocking systems the spammers are of course going to adjust to get passed them. I am sure it must be quite frustrating to them to see a 100% block with certain domain/ISP addresses and the will focus on those domains until they find a message that will get through.
I've noticed that as well, how religious folks like to paint Athiests and non-religious folks as being some sort of alternative "religion", I had one guy stating to me that my Agnostic/Athiest beliefs were a religion just like his belief in invisible characters who look after him.
I think the brainwashing these poor folks have suffered from birth is quite troubling. When you look at countries where little other than religious doctrine is taught you see a very scary society which resists any and all change to retain the ancestral belief structures.
As a species we must move beyond this nonsense to progress further, otherwise we're destined to go the way of the dinosaurs, well we probably are destined for that anyway.
Yup, even though with all the billions of "souls" who passed before you none can apparently come back and confirm what religion is selling, funny that.
...
Well I guess there are folks who claim to be "in contact" but there is hardly any scientific proof to back it up.
I've always felt that ANY of my recently dead relatives and/or friends would have tried to contact me in some form, haven't noticed anything yet.
Maybe I'm just not listening hard enough or something I guess, what with this new White Noise movie coming out
White Noise
In the "good old days" of c-band they also had unscrambled porn channels, now that was a selling feature :)
This works great actually. There are a couple of methods to do it. I do it with SimScan (www.inter7.com) with my ISPs incoming MTA system. It checks incoming SMTP bodies with ClamAV and SpamAssassin and drops the viruses at the gate and if the message scores 10+ in SA it drops those at SMTP with a 5xx error.
:)
Our previous method was with qmail-scanner which would then quarantine viruses and mark spam and pass it on to the end-user MTA. That method caused many pages due to high CPU usage when spammers hit hard.
The new SimScan system is C based so it is a tad easier on load, hardly see any red events anymore.
An alternative is available with Exim's exiscan patches for those using Exim.
After applying this system at my ISP the incoming spam levels have been reduced dramatically, we can still pass thru to those not wanting the filtering but for the rest of the customers they are very happy to not have nearly as much junk in the inbox.
Some have actually called wondering why they are only really getting their legitimate email now
I hear that!
I do some work with a small cable ISP, originally I built their 2 network gateways for the 2 plants they operate. These were Linux boxes with transparent squid and iptables, etc.
Well a couple months back someone sold them on changing their DOCSIS system, so a guy comes in to help them do it. While doing so he convinces the boss to switch to Cisco routers at the gates.
Now they are having major issues with virus and worm infections on their network. I had the Linux boxes configured to block most of the bad ports, etc. and infections were kept to a minimum.
The sad thing is the guy sold the boss these new routers claiming the Linux boxes weren't the correct solution, this was during an attempted install of the new DOCSIS system. One of the gates had a bad NIC in it, well it wasn't bad until the idiots entered the room and touched the PC housing, the room is a static nightmare apparently and just entering the room has caused hardware failures. I spent hours on the phone with them trying to get this thing working and it ends up being static related yet again.
The old system allowed them to monitor usage, track down infected PCs quickly, etc. while the new system makes this much more difficult to manage. We're talking a less than 300 seat cable plant.
So, now I'm telling them they are better off educating the users and selling them cable routers whenever possible.
Meanwhile, DSL just showed up in their area and they are kicking their asses. I even recommended they become DSL resellers so they'd at least have options to keep some clients who find their cable modem service crappy.
Costco out here in BC now has the Panasonic DVD recorders that also double as DVR's, last I looked they were down below the $400 mark now.
:)
Sure they don't feature the integrated IPG features so you'd have to set timers like a VCR but hey, it beats paying $25/month or $700 for the cableco version which ties you to the cableco.
Optionally you should consider going the ExpressVu route as they are now selling their 5200 PVR at reasonable prices ($299 comes to mind for new subs).
I'm a ExpressVu sub, had one of their early 5100 for a couple years now, I don't watch it myself but my wife loves the thing, except now she's whining she wants one with two tuners, three if I could manage it
Funny thing that family stuff.
I moved to Canada with my father and stepmom back in 1980 from Scotland, leaving behind my mother and a few siblings.
I haven't seen them since then, I have communicated with my mom a bit but we don't really keep in steady contact of any sort.
Of course this seperation not only from my real mom but also from the rest of our extended family has really left me with little sense of family life at all.
Right now I live in a different province than my dad, they are 1000km from me. I talk to them on the phone maybe every other month. They recently came to visit my wife and I, first time they had been here in 4 years. I have been to visit them once in the last 10 years.
My sense of family togetherness is all but gone, I spend little time with my wife's family too and they have a hard time understanding that it isn't them but me as I just don't get into family functions that much. Likely because I all but stopped having them at 13 when we moved here.
Do I miss it? Sure, but at the same time I realize life goes on, I realize I need to fend for myself through life anyway. Then again, my dad was never all that supportive, he was never the type I could turn to if I needed help financially, etc.
My wife's parents on the other hand are the complete opposite. They would help in an instant if we asked. She talks to them daily, etc.
Digital radio is up and running in many areas now, FM isn't going anywhere anytime soon and many folks just won't pay for the satellite radio services. Cars are already coming equipped with XM/Sirius receivers but they still get regular channels and digital add-on units are available as well for local digital channels.
It is called progress, hopefully all the money won't remain in a few corporations hands either. Companies such as Corus have managed to ruin much of the FM dial across the country much like Clear Channel has done down south. The digital bands should open up more channels and many of those will be filled with niche stations, there are more local community stations starting up across the land as more frequencies are being made available thanks to the digital migration.
Local news will always be there, just like your local newspapers. You can purchase the New York Times in most major Canadian cities every day, it hasn't killed their local newspaper industry.
Sorry, as a fellow Canadian I will not give up my eyeball rights to you, the CRTC or the government. I and I alone should be the sole chooser of what television services I subscribe to.
Your argument about local stations disappearing is silly, you even talk about listening to AM radio, well all the US AM stations have been clearly available to most of the Canadian population for decades and it still has not resulted in the loss of Canadian locals.
The laws in place for television services are there for 2 reasons, one is to protect culture and the other is to protect the Canadian broadcasting corporations from competition.
Why do you think we never had MTV until we recently got the awful MTV Canada? It was to protect MuchMusic, the rest of the planet had a MTV franchise before us, but here our cheap broadcasters chose to setup a clone rather than a franchised version. So we missed out on lots of great MTV content because they also chose not to purchase that programming for our eyeballs since they could produce much cheaper versions on their own.
Very few industries get to enjoy the protectionism the Canadian broadcasting industry has enjoyed for decades, all under the false pretenses of "protecting Canadian culture".
While these laws have allowed the domestic industry to not compete against US giants, it also keeps out many stations that actually do not compete with a domestic service. The government has no right to do that and most citizens would agree they have no real right to stop any media from being available as long as the content is legal.
Nanaimo has one too. Way overpriced so I never bother going in them.
What worries me about those who say they get their morals or worldview from "God" is just how did he deliver them? Voices inside ones head certainly are not proof of a God, indeed many folks have been locked up due to such voices.
I am more agnostic than athiest myself, on the fence so to speak. I don't believe there is any God like being who watches our every move and expects us to act in any certain way. I do see a possibility that our universe is a creation by some entity though, but I am also not convinced of that.
Why are people so willing to lie to their kids about the Santa Clause stuff until a certain age then come clean with them? Yet they aren't able to see that the whole God thing is largely the same type of belief system, it is based on "faith" with nothing there to back up that faith other than what they think in their heads. In essence then, if someone believes the Devil did it all then aren't they just as correct?
No doubt life is a strange occurrence and I doubt we will ever know just how/why the universe came into being, but that doesn't mean we need to continue using ancient supernatural stories as the basis of what some think happened.
I do feel that many need religion as a way of comforting themselves that they believe there is something else after this short existence they get to enjoy, it is quite hard for some to accept that it is simply lights out when you die. There really is no evidence saying anything else, I look at it like "I had no idea of time/existence before I was born, I likely will have none once I die either".
If I'm lucky enough some of the materials that make up me will end up in some future being.
Where I live there is ZERO codes, none, you don't even need a permit to build and you can build whatever you want on your land.
One guy has taken that to extremes, since we moved here 5 years ago he has continued to add to this 5 storey monster house that I swear he has no real blueprints for, it just seems to jut out in all kinds of weird directions. So far he has put not walls up either, just the frame and a few boards here and there.
As for my yard, I refuse to put lawn down. Firstly, we're built on gravel, so there is little topsoil there and what you put down just melts into the gravel anyway. Second, I hate lawns, they suck, I don't want to be cutting the damn thing when there is enough moisture to make it green, nor do I want a brown patch during the hot months (we're on a shared well so constant watering is a no-no).
I'm going for the desert look with some flower beds out in the front yard, I may put up a hedge to give more privacy. The back yard will be more of a veggie garden thing with a patio surrounding the cheapo pool we bought this year.
Ditto for my non-techie site ...
MS Internet Explorer = 84.6 %
FireFox = 6.3 %
Netscape = 3.2 %
Mozilla = 3.1 %
Safari = 1.3 %
Opera = 0.6 %
Unknown = 0.3 %
Vonage.ca for VoIP, another option if you are in BC, Alberta or Ontario is to use 101-8888 dial-around service when making calls within North America.
99cents for 45 minutes, 5 cents a minute thereafter, and you can also get free calls if you get lucky enough (we've been using this service for a couple weeks now and have received 2 free calls so far).
http://www.1018888.com/
The UK operates a strict calling party pays approach
Found this out the hard way after calling my mom in the UK from here in Canada. While normally I'm looking at about 9cents/minute to the UK because she has a "mobile" I was stung 49cents/minute. OUCH!
Needless to say I don't call much. If she wants me to call more she best be getting a real landline.
I use an old Thinkpad in the kitchen as a surfing machine, good for looking up recipes, etc. Running Fedora Core 2 on it with XFCE as the desktop. A little slow (it is a 333Mhz P2 with 160MB RAM) but it does the job, I wasn't expecting to play Doom3 or anything on it but for basic surfing, email and even some development work it is well suited to the task.