It's not the first time something like this has ever been done. A politician in Mexico has been doing it for the past year with a state owned helicopter:
And yet one can easily take a short drive across the Canadian border (if one lives near it, as I do) and buy Cuban Cigars that are illegal to buy or own in the United States. Yeah, that embargo is really effective. The ONLY country that recognizes it is the United States. Every other country in the world trades with Cuba. Not even our staunchest allies join us in the Embargo.
Businesses that do business with Cuba can't do business with the USA. Some small shop in Canada can sell Cuban cigars because they aren't doing business with the USA. But seeing as the USA has the largest market in the world, this is a very effective deterrent in getting others to stop trading with Cuba. What about the ships that carry goods across the seas. Can they make a stop in Cuba on their way to the USA? No. And examples like that make things much more difficult and expensive for Cuba.
For what it's worth, I've been to Cuba a couple of times, and it didn't seem to me like the people were suffering too badly. I lived in Mexico for a few years and have travelled all over that country, and learned to speak Spanish there. Both times I went to Cuba, within the last year or so, I rented a car and took 1200 or so kilometre road trips, including jaunts across the middle of nowhere. And I just couldn't see how they were suffering any worse than tens of millions of people in Mexico. In fact, it seems like peasants in Cuba live much more peaceful and less stressful lives than those in Mexico. People in Mexico disappear, and the state is often responsible. The narco war is bullsh*t. People there live under a constant threat, a fear for their own safety. In contrast, people in Cuba have no sense of fear of crime. It's shocking. And I reject that I was only seeing what they wanted me to see, since we travelled pretty much where ever we wanted, hours on backroads, picking up passengers and talking to them, and so on.
I'll grant you a couple of things. Yes, they have a very authoritarian government, but I perceive it more like Singapore than a brutal dictatorship. People are free to go about their day to day business, but there are strict penalties for breaking the law. Probably not going to send out the death squad on the first offence. It's like the signs I saw in Singapore saying what the penalties were for things. Outside the bar it says drunk driving first offence, so many thousands of dollars fine and so many days in jail. Second offence, a few more thousands and a bit more time in jail. Third offence, you're going to get a serious beating/canning.
Second, they don't have the material wealth that we do. That is obvious, quite apparent, and not really in question. They have the bare necessities and few luxuries. Partly because of the embargo, partly because of their own economic system, and partly due to the fact that they are a small nation and don't have the vast natural resources that countries like my own do.
So, sure, it's a police state, they don't have a lot of material wealth, but when you take everything into consideration, such as the freedom from crime, knowing that they will always have at least enough food to live on, a roof over their heads, freedom from religion (i.e. they have lots of sex which many Slashdotters can't really say), decent medical care and education, they're really not suffering any worse than tens or even hundreds of millions of peasants in Latin America. Which is what most of them would be if it weren't for the revolution.
I can recognize that the upper class of Latin American countries would never want a Cuban style system, but for the peasants, the vast marginalized peoples that are practically forgotten even by their own countrymen in places like Mexico who just see them as stupid Indians, in the sierra of Guerrero for example, I fail to see how they would be any worse off living in Cuba.
The UN Human Development Index ranks Cuba slightly higher than Mexico. I think it is only fair to compare the standard of living in Cuba to other countries in the region with similar histories, not to the United States or Europe.
I'm using an Android phone with Rogers Pay as you go in Canada. There is a configuration setting to disable mobile data, it's very easy to turn off and use with Wifi only. They don't sell Android phones on pay as you go plans, but that doesn't mean you can't buy the phone outright, buy a pay as you go chip separately, and disable the mobile data option on the phone. I'd be quite surprised if the situation in the US were any worse than here.
I have never been to Cuba, but I know that getting out of the tourist areas and talking to the locals is not as easy as you think.
A tourist agent once tried to sell me a trip to Cuba. Among several matters we discussed was transportation. He told me tourists are not allowed to drive cars in Cuba, the only way to rent a car is getting one with a Cuban driver.
There is no problem with a foreign tourist renting a car in Cuba or driving around by themselves. The rental cars have a different coloured plate so the cops know you're tourists and will pretty much leave you alone. There are restrictions on the movement of Cubans throughout the country, I don't know what they are exactly, but white people in a rental car can pretty much pass freely through any checkpoint when crossing state lines or on the outskirts of the cities, usually without stopping. But if you're carrying any Cubans or other Latino people, they should probably duck.
Also, if you are a decent person and willing to stop, it is pretty hard not to have any contact with the locals since hitch-hiking is extremely common on the island, and the locals will not think twice about jumping in the car with you if you let them. Whether they actually talk to you or not depends on the person. My own experience is that soldiers and young women might not say a word to you, not that that stops them from jumping in your car to catch a ride, but guys and older people will talk to you if you engage them and let them know you're just normal people on vacation cruising around their island for fun and to get to know their culture and country. If you're nice and willing to finance it, you can even organize a pig roast or something and party with the villagers. But it helps, of course, if you speak decent Spanish. This is my experience as a Canadian, anyway (we are freely allowed to travel to Cuba). But, in honesty, I found it very hard to communicate in Spanish in the resort areas, where it seems like they have certain people fluent in English who are authorized to mingle with the tourists, and the others are probably under direction to not acknowledge any Spanish coming out of the mouth of a white person beyond the extreme basics, like "una cerveza, por favor!". I had a hard time being understood in the resort areas, but off resort, cruising around, picking up hitch-hikers, miraculously most people seemed to understand me just fine.
But the law specifically says you cannot possess such material. It does not state that you cannot *view* the images. Which means that while the cache constitutes likely proof to show that he did view it -- that is not a criminal act. The distinction you're trying to erase is exactly the one that prevented him from being convicted.
In the link to the decision you can see in the second paragraph that the Criminal Code of Canada apparently does make this distinction. There are two charges: Possession of Child Pornography, and Accessing Child Pornography. This guy was charged with possession, not accessing. If the charge had been made under s. 163.1(4.1) (accessing) rather than s. 163.1(4) (possessing), the outcome likely would have been different. The cops screwed up, it's as simple as that.
The problem is that out-of-the-blue it could all change for you. They are keeping a record now of when you enter and leave (photos of your license plate or when they scan your passport going back into Canada), and they can see that you have a history of doing that. But if you ever try and do something unusual or make a small mistake, you could have a seriously different experience. Don't think it is always so easy for Canadians. It isn't. Even if you've never had a problem, your day could come. It can be as easy as mistaking what neighbourhood of Detroit you're going shopping in. Make a minor, innocent mistake to the front-line officer, and get yourself sent to secondary, then you might learn the hard way what everyone else is talking about.
The Liberals would be deciding the outcome. Right now, I'd say they'd vote against (this issue wouldn't spark an election), but if other issues crop up and there are calls for an election, the Liberals would probably prop up the current government until they get their own party ready for an election.
In the last bulletin sent out by our local Liberal M.P., there was mention of the Conservative government's "failure to protect Canadian cultural industries by not pursuing copyright reform and for having cut the public diplomacy budget". I don't have the bulletin any longer to quote exactly, but that is more or less what one of the articles said. So I don't have much hope that the Liberals would be vehemently opposed to such legistlation.
What kind of security do they have in Canada? If this is how they deal with people crossing the border who don't have the required identification, then I'm very surprised something major hasn't happened there.
Well, anyone crossing the border into Canada, presumably, has already been cleared in the United States anyway. They certainly scan passports, etc., at the airports, and it is only (white) people who declare themselves American/Canadian citizens at land crossings who might get through without having their papers checked. And post 09/11/01, they are generally asking to see ID on both sides of the border now. This was not always the case prior to 09/11/01.
That would open a huge loophole. I could work for a year at minimum wage in a high-tech job and then get "paid" with a luxury car. In your system, I'd only get taxed for the approximately $5/hr and not the $60,000 luxury car.
I'm pretty sure that in Canada, where I am from, all contests specifically exclude employees or relatives of employees. If a company has a contest with a free car being the prize, no employee or immediate relative of an employee is eligible by law to win this car. So not taxing prize winnings does not really open up this loophole in countries that don't tax prize winnings.
Additionally, in Canada, you must be able to answer a skill testing question in order to win the prize. Supposedly, this changes things from mere gambling, and also, most contests must be open to everyone, and there is usually a process for non-customers to be involved in the contest for free by sending in for a ballot by mail.
I know that back in the 70's, when I flew from Vancouver to Melbourne, I spent about 6 hours in a locked terminal in Hawaii, waiting for my plane to come in for the next leg from Dallas or somewhere like that, and there was no thought of putting the pax through immigration - we were all just in transit, and so effectively we were treated as never having entered the country.
I understand that since September 11th, everyone going through the U.S. must pass customs and immigration, even if they are in transit only.
For example, in January 2002, I travelled from Vancouver to Hawaii, on a plane headed down under. They made all the Aussies/Kiwis get off the plane and pass through U.S. immigration with us, even though they were turning around and getting right back onto the exact same plane they had just got off.
I also understand that Mexicans, for example, can no longer travel to Canada with a stop-over in the U.S. without a proper U.S. visitor visa issued by the embassy, whereas prior to September 11th, they would stay in the holding areas that you speak of.
I think Tecate is great. So is Sol. They're the two major mass-produced beers in Mexico, I believe, and I think they're quite good.
How could you forget Corona? Probably Mexico's most recognizable export. Corona, Modelo Especial, Sol, Victora and Negra Modelo are the most common here in Michoacan. I don't see much Tecate in these parts, though it is certainly around. If you were to drive only in the northern regions, you'd think Carta Blanca was Mexico's national beer, though there is no sign of it anywhere down this way.
Mexico happens to have universal health care coverage... Most immigrants are not here to take advantage of the US health care "system" such as it is
Mexico's "universal health care coverage" is nothing like it is in Canada. In Canada, our universal health care coverage is based on someone legally residing within a certain province. Everyone is entitled to the same coverage, as long as you legally live in Canada. In Mexico, the system is based on your employer paying into the IMSS social security plan. You are only entitled to go to a social security hospital if you have a formal job and you are properly registered with IMSS. Many employers understate how much they are paying you, which lowers the amount you can collect from the social security plan in times of need.
There is a huge informal economy here in Mexico. Most of the illegals who are going to the states would not be entitled to what you called the "universal health care coverage" in Mexico or any social services since they are not formally employed, ie. paying into social security and their taxes. It is extremely common that even if you are working in an office type job at a small business, that you are still not paying into your social security or taxes.
In practice, this does not occur for many businesses in Australia. Small businesses like cafes, bakeries and the like set their prices to the nearest 5 cents or 10 cents, so no rounding occurs.
In Australia & NZ the tax is included in the price of each item, whereas in Canada & USA the tax is applied afterwards. Prices in Canada / USA usually end in a 5, 0 or 9, but it is the tax being applied which gets you one of the other digits in the penny column. They would have to adjust to a system of including taxes in the price, which I have never seen anywhere in Canada/USA. Or they could start listing odd prices which don't end in a 5, 0, or 9, which would also be quite unusual for us.
Here in Mexico they have 10, 20 and 50 cent coins. Only the 50 cent coin is in common usage. A common thing to do here at grocery stores and 7/11 style convenience stores is to round up for charity. If your total comes to 100.56 pesos, they ask if you want to donate the 44 cents to charity, you pay 101 pesos and the tiny charity donation is listed on your receipt, and gives you a nice round number. The larger chain stores will give out those 10 & 20 cent pieces, or round, but all the small stores just set their prices to the nearest peso. But the sales tax is included in the price here, so they can do that easily without having to quote people odd prices (listing the price as 6.09 @ 15% tax to get $7.00, for example).
SMS is not cheaper when I've already paid for my monthly minutes. Why pay $0.10 to send a message ($0.20 for message and ack) when I can just use the minutes I've got. At this point I am just wasting money.
It depends where you are. Here in Mexico, most people (non-corporate users) seem to be using the prepaid phone plan. It costs about 40 cents / minute to make a voice call, 10 cents to send a 360 character SMS message, and 20 cents to send a MMS message which can be very long. For these people, it is much more economical to send an SMS or MMS message than to make a voice call.
Also, because not every home here has a 24/7 broadband Internet connection, or even a computer, cell phones do serve more as portable messaging units than as "phones" for many people here.
I do realize that in Canada or USA sending text messages seems a little silly when almost everyone is on a plan, but in other parts of the world prepay is much more common and with prepay it is often cheaper to send a message since you aren't using minutes that you have to use up anyway.
The important part here isn't about cell phones -- after all, with cell phones, you DO have the alternative of buying a phone that's never been locked directly from the vendor. Sure it's more expensive, but at least you have the choice. Much more important, IMO, is the following from TFA:
I don't think you can get an unlocked phone in Canada. I'm under the impression that such a thing doesn't exist, unless you bring it in from a foreign country.
Abortion is the biggie because many of us cannot in good conscience vote for "pro-choice" candidates, although we might be in favor of the more compassionate liberal agenda as it pertains to social programs and civil rights. This leaves us with a no-win situation and we just end up choosing the lesser of evils, which is often a "pro-life" candidate.
So while voting to save American fetuses you turn a blind eye to voting to unnecessarily kill or indirectly cause the death of potentially hundreds of thousands of adult human beings in other countries, including thousands of US soldiers for no good reason?
At least in the United States, a prepaid account can no longer place or receive calls if it has not been "topped up" in the last x days. Then, assuming we're still in Canadian dollars, it's $70 + $45/mo including monthly top-up cards. Or are network operators forbidden to expire accounts this way in Canada?
$10 / month is the minimum with Rogers Wireless, one of the three major companies here in Ontario. If you don't pay, you lose your credit at first, but not the number itself for another month or two.
Lets say I have one e-mail account "smarty@blah.com".... what SMTP server should I use ?
1. When I'm connected to isp1.net
2. When I'm connected to isp2.net
3. When I'm connected to isp3.net
You should use a third party mail server, with the SMTP daemon listening on another random port in addition to port 25, so that you don't have to worry about this at all. I assume connections to port 25 on foreign hosts are blocked by each of your ISPs, but this isn't a problem if your mail server is listening on a non-standard port as well.
It isn't set up by default on my computer (with Fedora Core 2). When listening to music with xmms, gaim can not play notification sounds when I get messages. This can be really annoying when having to switch back and forth just to see if something has been written in the conversation.
Where does this clout come from? Surely it comes from the fact that they have obtained a substantial number of votes in past elections.
It comes from the fact that there are four major parties with elected members of parliament. They didn't just get a substantianal number of vosts, they actually won in many instances.
I guess the point is that in the USA, you can vote for a "third party", but it is almost a given that either a republican or democrat will win. In Canada, there used to be a real possibility that any of four parties might win a seat outside of Quebec. But two parties recently merged, so the real possibilities outside of Quebec are one of three parties might win. But that is still better than having only two. But then you add in the Quebecers, and there are four major parties in the house of commons.
The government doesn't decide on a case by case basis whether it is too expensive to treat someone. That happens in other countries like NZ, but not in Canada.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not the first time something like this has ever been done. A politician in Mexico has been doing it for the past year with a state owned helicopter:
Admite edil ganar Guinness con helicóptero estatal
And the state government justified it with the excuse that "this type of aircraft needs to be in continuous operation".
And yet one can easily take a short drive across the Canadian border (if one lives near it, as I do) and buy Cuban Cigars that are illegal to buy or own in the United States. Yeah, that embargo is really effective. The ONLY country that recognizes it is the United States. Every other country in the world trades with Cuba. Not even our staunchest allies join us in the Embargo.
Businesses that do business with Cuba can't do business with the USA. Some small shop in Canada can sell Cuban cigars because they aren't doing business with the USA. But seeing as the USA has the largest market in the world, this is a very effective deterrent in getting others to stop trading with Cuba. What about the ships that carry goods across the seas. Can they make a stop in Cuba on their way to the USA? No. And examples like that make things much more difficult and expensive for Cuba.
For what it's worth, I've been to Cuba a couple of times, and it didn't seem to me like the people were suffering too badly. I lived in Mexico for a few years and have travelled all over that country, and learned to speak Spanish there. Both times I went to Cuba, within the last year or so, I rented a car and took 1200 or so kilometre road trips, including jaunts across the middle of nowhere. And I just couldn't see how they were suffering any worse than tens of millions of people in Mexico. In fact, it seems like peasants in Cuba live much more peaceful and less stressful lives than those in Mexico. People in Mexico disappear, and the state is often responsible. The narco war is bullsh*t. People there live under a constant threat, a fear for their own safety. In contrast, people in Cuba have no sense of fear of crime. It's shocking. And I reject that I was only seeing what they wanted me to see, since we travelled pretty much where ever we wanted, hours on backroads, picking up passengers and talking to them, and so on.
I'll grant you a couple of things. Yes, they have a very authoritarian government, but I perceive it more like Singapore than a brutal dictatorship. People are free to go about their day to day business, but there are strict penalties for breaking the law. Probably not going to send out the death squad on the first offence. It's like the signs I saw in Singapore saying what the penalties were for things. Outside the bar it says drunk driving first offence, so many thousands of dollars fine and so many days in jail. Second offence, a few more thousands and a bit more time in jail. Third offence, you're going to get a serious beating/canning.
Second, they don't have the material wealth that we do. That is obvious, quite apparent, and not really in question. They have the bare necessities and few luxuries. Partly because of the embargo, partly because of their own economic system, and partly due to the fact that they are a small nation and don't have the vast natural resources that countries like my own do.
So, sure, it's a police state, they don't have a lot of material wealth, but when you take everything into consideration, such as the freedom from crime, knowing that they will always have at least enough food to live on, a roof over their heads, freedom from religion (i.e. they have lots of sex which many Slashdotters can't really say), decent medical care and education, they're really not suffering any worse than tens or even hundreds of millions of peasants in Latin America. Which is what most of them would be if it weren't for the revolution.
I can recognize that the upper class of Latin American countries would never want a Cuban style system, but for the peasants, the vast marginalized peoples that are practically forgotten even by their own countrymen in places like Mexico who just see them as stupid Indians, in the sierra of Guerrero for example, I fail to see how they would be any worse off living in Cuba.
The UN Human Development Index ranks Cuba slightly higher than Mexico. I think it is only fair to compare the standard of living in Cuba to other countries in the region with similar histories, not to the United States or Europe.
I'm using an Android phone with Rogers Pay as you go in Canada. There is a configuration setting to disable mobile data, it's very easy to turn off and use with Wifi only. They don't sell Android phones on pay as you go plans, but that doesn't mean you can't buy the phone outright, buy a pay as you go chip separately, and disable the mobile data option on the phone. I'd be quite surprised if the situation in the US were any worse than here.
I have never been to Cuba, but I know that getting out of the tourist areas and talking to the locals is not as easy as you think.
A tourist agent once tried to sell me a trip to Cuba. Among several matters we discussed was transportation. He told me tourists are not allowed to drive cars in Cuba, the only way to rent a car is getting one with a Cuban driver.
There is no problem with a foreign tourist renting a car in Cuba or driving around by themselves. The rental cars have a different coloured plate so the cops know you're tourists and will pretty much leave you alone. There are restrictions on the movement of Cubans throughout the country, I don't know what they are exactly, but white people in a rental car can pretty much pass freely through any checkpoint when crossing state lines or on the outskirts of the cities, usually without stopping. But if you're carrying any Cubans or other Latino people, they should probably duck.
Also, if you are a decent person and willing to stop, it is pretty hard not to have any contact with the locals since hitch-hiking is extremely common on the island, and the locals will not think twice about jumping in the car with you if you let them. Whether they actually talk to you or not depends on the person. My own experience is that soldiers and young women might not say a word to you, not that that stops them from jumping in your car to catch a ride, but guys and older people will talk to you if you engage them and let them know you're just normal people on vacation cruising around their island for fun and to get to know their culture and country. If you're nice and willing to finance it, you can even organize a pig roast or something and party with the villagers. But it helps, of course, if you speak decent Spanish. This is my experience as a Canadian, anyway (we are freely allowed to travel to Cuba). But, in honesty, I found it very hard to communicate in Spanish in the resort areas, where it seems like they have certain people fluent in English who are authorized to mingle with the tourists, and the others are probably under direction to not acknowledge any Spanish coming out of the mouth of a white person beyond the extreme basics, like "una cerveza, por favor!". I had a hard time being understood in the resort areas, but off resort, cruising around, picking up hitch-hikers, miraculously most people seemed to understand me just fine.
But the law specifically says you cannot possess such material. It does not state that you cannot *view* the images. Which means that while the cache constitutes likely proof to show that he did view it -- that is not a criminal act. The distinction you're trying to erase is exactly the one that prevented him from being convicted.
In the link to the decision you can see in the second paragraph that the Criminal Code of Canada apparently does make this distinction. There are two charges: Possession of Child Pornography, and Accessing Child Pornography. This guy was charged with possession, not accessing. If the charge had been made under s. 163.1(4.1) (accessing) rather than s. 163.1(4) (possessing), the outcome likely would have been different. The cops screwed up, it's as simple as that.
The problem is that out-of-the-blue it could all change for you. They are keeping a record now of when you enter and leave (photos of your license plate or when they scan your passport going back into Canada), and they can see that you have a history of doing that. But if you ever try and do something unusual or make a small mistake, you could have a seriously different experience. Don't think it is always so easy for Canadians. It isn't. Even if you've never had a problem, your day could come. It can be as easy as mistaking what neighbourhood of Detroit you're going shopping in. Make a minor, innocent mistake to the front-line officer, and get yourself sent to secondary, then you might learn the hard way what everyone else is talking about.
The Liberals would be deciding the outcome. Right now, I'd say they'd vote against (this issue wouldn't spark an election), but if other issues crop up and there are calls for an election, the Liberals would probably prop up the current government until they get their own party ready for an election.
In the last bulletin sent out by our local Liberal M.P., there was mention of the Conservative government's "failure to protect Canadian cultural industries by not pursuing copyright reform and for having cut the public diplomacy budget". I don't have the bulletin any longer to quote exactly, but that is more or less what one of the articles said. So I don't have much hope that the Liberals would be vehemently opposed to such legistlation.
What kind of security do they have in Canada? If this is how they deal with people crossing the border who don't have the required identification, then I'm very surprised something major hasn't happened there.
Well, anyone crossing the border into Canada, presumably, has already been cleared in the United States anyway. They certainly scan passports, etc., at the airports, and it is only (white) people who declare themselves American/Canadian citizens at land crossings who might get through without having their papers checked. And post 09/11/01, they are generally asking to see ID on both sides of the border now. This was not always the case prior to 09/11/01.
That would open a huge loophole. I could work for a year at minimum wage in a high-tech job and then get "paid" with a luxury car. In your system, I'd only get taxed for the approximately $5/hr and not the $60,000 luxury car.
I'm pretty sure that in Canada, where I am from, all contests specifically exclude employees or relatives of employees. If a company has a contest with a free car being the prize, no employee or immediate relative of an employee is eligible by law to win this car. So not taxing prize winnings does not really open up this loophole in countries that don't tax prize winnings.
Additionally, in Canada, you must be able to answer a skill testing question in order to win the prize. Supposedly, this changes things from mere gambling, and also, most contests must be open to everyone, and there is usually a process for non-customers to be involved in the contest for free by sending in for a ballot by mail.
I know that back in the 70's, when I flew from Vancouver to Melbourne, I spent about 6 hours in a locked terminal in Hawaii, waiting for my plane to come in for the next leg from Dallas or somewhere like that, and there was no thought of putting the pax through immigration - we were all just in transit, and so effectively we were treated as never having entered the country.
I understand that since September 11th, everyone going through the U.S. must pass customs and immigration, even if they are in transit only.
For example, in January 2002, I travelled from Vancouver to Hawaii, on a plane headed down under. They made all the Aussies/Kiwis get off the plane and pass through U.S. immigration with us, even though they were turning around and getting right back onto the exact same plane they had just got off.
I also understand that Mexicans, for example, can no longer travel to Canada with a stop-over in the U.S. without a proper U.S. visitor visa issued by the embassy, whereas prior to September 11th, they would stay in the holding areas that you speak of.
I think Tecate is great. So is Sol. They're the two major mass-produced beers in Mexico, I believe, and I think they're quite good.
How could you forget Corona? Probably Mexico's most recognizable export. Corona, Modelo Especial, Sol, Victora and Negra Modelo are the most common here in Michoacan. I don't see much Tecate in these parts, though it is certainly around. If you were to drive only in the northern regions, you'd think Carta Blanca was Mexico's national beer, though there is no sign of it anywhere down this way.
Mexico happens to have universal health care coverage... Most immigrants are not here to take advantage of the US health care "system" such as it is
Mexico's "universal health care coverage" is nothing like it is in Canada. In Canada, our universal health care coverage is based on someone legally residing within a certain province. Everyone is entitled to the same coverage, as long as you legally live in Canada. In Mexico, the system is based on your employer paying into the IMSS social security plan. You are only entitled to go to a social security hospital if you have a formal job and you are properly registered with IMSS. Many employers understate how much they are paying you, which lowers the amount you can collect from the social security plan in times of need.
There is a huge informal economy here in Mexico. Most of the illegals who are going to the states would not be entitled to what you called the "universal health care coverage" in Mexico or any social services since they are not formally employed, ie. paying into social security and their taxes. It is extremely common that even if you are working in an office type job at a small business, that you are still not paying into your social security or taxes.
In practice, this does not occur for many businesses in Australia. Small businesses like cafes, bakeries and the like set their prices to the nearest 5 cents or 10 cents, so no rounding occurs.
In Australia & NZ the tax is included in the price of each item, whereas in Canada & USA the tax is applied afterwards. Prices in Canada / USA usually end in a 5, 0 or 9, but it is the tax being applied which gets you one of the other digits in the penny column. They would have to adjust to a system of including taxes in the price, which I have never seen anywhere in Canada/USA. Or they could start listing odd prices which don't end in a 5, 0, or 9, which would also be quite unusual for us.
Here in Mexico they have 10, 20 and 50 cent coins. Only the 50 cent coin is in common usage. A common thing to do here at grocery stores and 7/11 style convenience stores is to round up for charity. If your total comes to 100.56 pesos, they ask if you want to donate the 44 cents to charity, you pay 101 pesos and the tiny charity donation is listed on your receipt, and gives you a nice round number. The larger chain stores will give out those 10 & 20 cent pieces, or round, but all the small stores just set their prices to the nearest peso. But the sales tax is included in the price here, so they can do that easily without having to quote people odd prices (listing the price as 6.09 @ 15% tax to get $7.00, for example).
SMS is not cheaper when I've already paid for my monthly minutes. Why pay $0.10 to send a message ($0.20 for message and ack) when I can just use the minutes I've got. At this point I am just wasting money.
It depends where you are. Here in Mexico, most people (non-corporate users) seem to be using the prepaid phone plan. It costs about 40 cents / minute to make a voice call, 10 cents to send a 360 character SMS message, and 20 cents to send a MMS message which can be very long. For these people, it is much more economical to send an SMS or MMS message than to make a voice call.
Also, because not every home here has a 24/7 broadband Internet connection, or even a computer, cell phones do serve more as portable messaging units than as "phones" for many people here. I do realize that in Canada or USA sending text messages seems a little silly when almost everyone is on a plan, but in other parts of the world prepay is much more common and with prepay it is often cheaper to send a message since you aren't using minutes that you have to use up anyway.
The important part here isn't about cell phones -- after all, with cell phones, you DO have the alternative of buying a phone that's never been locked directly from the vendor. Sure it's more expensive, but at least you have the choice. Much more important, IMO, is the following from TFA:
I don't think you can get an unlocked phone in Canada. I'm under the impression that such a thing doesn't exist, unless you bring it in from a foreign country.
Abortion is the biggie because many of us cannot in good conscience vote for "pro-choice" candidates, although we might be in favor of the more compassionate liberal agenda as it pertains to social programs and civil rights. This leaves us with a no-win situation and we just end up choosing the lesser of evils, which is often a "pro-life" candidate.
So while voting to save American fetuses you turn a blind eye to voting to unnecessarily kill or indirectly cause the death of potentially hundreds of thousands of adult human beings in other countries, including thousands of US soldiers for no good reason?
At least in the United States, a prepaid account can no longer place or receive calls if it has not been "topped up" in the last x days. Then, assuming we're still in Canadian dollars, it's $70 + $45/mo including monthly top-up cards. Or are network operators forbidden to expire accounts this way in Canada?
$10 / month is the minimum with Rogers Wireless, one of the three major companies here in Ontario. If you don't pay, you lose your credit at first, but not the number itself for another month or two.
I think the slashdot article is longer then the actual article being linked.
The CBC has a good article about the case today.
1. When I'm connected to isp1.net
2. When I'm connected to isp2.net
3. When I'm connected to isp3.net
You should use a third party mail server, with the SMTP daemon listening on another random port in addition to port 25, so that you don't have to worry about this at all. I assume connections to port 25 on foreign hosts are blocked by each of your ISPs, but this isn't a problem if your mail server is listening on a non-standard port as well.
google.ca returns 11 results (2 before dupes), and ca.yahoo.com returns 5.
The name of the country to the south, Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, translates to The United Mexican States, dipshit.
You realize that none of the September 11th hijackers entered the country from Canada, right?
It isn't set up by default on my computer (with Fedora Core 2). When listening to music with xmms, gaim can not play notification sounds when I get messages. This can be really annoying when having to switch back and forth just to see if something has been written in the conversation.
Where does this clout come from? Surely it comes from the fact that they have obtained a substantial number of votes in past elections.
It comes from the fact that there are four major parties with elected members of parliament. They didn't just get a substantianal number of vosts, they actually won in many instances.
I guess the point is that in the USA, you can vote for a "third party", but it is almost a given that either a republican or democrat will win. In Canada, there used to be a real possibility that any of four parties might win a seat outside of Quebec. But two parties recently merged, so the real possibilities outside of Quebec are one of three parties might win. But that is still better than having only two. But then you add in the Quebecers, and there are four major parties in the house of commons.
The government doesn't decide on a case by case basis whether it is too expensive to treat someone. That happens in other countries like NZ, but not in Canada.