I've been fiddling with some online insurance quotes just to see what happens when I change a few things (age, gender, single/married). I'm 22 and live in Ontario right now. When I give the proper information, I'm quoted at about $3300/year. It drops to $2800 when I hit 23. It drops to $1400 when I hit 25.
If I say I'm female, 22, and single, it drops to $2200. Male, married, and 22, $2800. In Ontario, car insurance is done by private companies which are allowed to discriminate based on age and sex. Since the government provides your insurance, they can't discriminate based on age, sex or anything else listed in the constitution.
So your province has adopted a system which (to my 22-year-old male driving ass) seems to be more fair.
I want to do it because there are no TIVO like boxes available for sale in Canada (except one that is built into a satellite reciever).
Rogers just came out with a PVR. It replaces the digital cable box. Price is a bit steep though. $600 for the PVR compared with $200 for the normal digital cable box. Or you can rent it for $25/month. The regular box is $10/month.
Canadian voters are a lot less loyal to a particular party. The most recent election I voted in was a local election. In local elections, people don't run as a particular party. They all run as independants. The election before that was the Ontario election. This time the Liberal Party won the majority of the seats. The 2 previous elections before that, the PC Party won the majority of seats. The election before those, the NDP won the majority of seats.
I never knew what a Lagrange point was. I found that Wikipedia gave the best explanation
Don't worry too much about that. My high school physics teacher didn't know what a Lagrange point was either. I had to bring in an explanation from some NASA webpage to convince him they exist.
The only reason I knew about them was a couple of old books I had bought at a library book sale. They were from the late 70s and talked about how we could put up thousands of giant space stations at the Lagrange points and move most of earth's population offworld.
Wow, and I thought I was cynical. For one thing, Ontario's voter turnout was 52%, not 30%. For another thing, the Supreme Court has made decisions that politicians would not want to touch with a 50-foot pole. They've struck down laws to do with marijuana and gay marriage. Very few MPs are in ridings where they could vote one way or another on those issues without pissing off a sizable block of voters.
I have no idea which way they'll rule on this one but their past decisions show me that there's some hope that they're not completely in the pocket of the politicians.
I'm wondering, could the tax on CD-Rs create a black market in them?
That depends on whether CD-Rs cost that much less in the US than in Canada.
Let's check out bestbuy.com and futureshop.ca (Futureshop is owned by Best Buy so prices should be similar).
Most brands seem to sell spindles of 50. Sorting by price at bestbuy, it looks like Imation CDRs are cheapest at $15 USD. Futureshop's cheapest seems to be $22 CDN. According to xe.com, $15 USD = $19.70 CDN.
You'd have to sell a lot of CDRs to make it worth the risk.
Another quirk of the law is that if a normal citizen from Canada goes to the US and buys a bunch of CDRs, he doesn't have to pay the levy on them. Customs fees may apply however.
Why was this modded down? It looks to me like a reference to the chorus of American Pie by Don McLean "drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry".
For the humour-impaired: grandparent post talking about robbing a bank with a Chevy + SOCAN wants a levy (tax) on ISPs = levy on the Chevy = genius
So when should the RIAA start targetting libraries? They're obviously aiding dirty, dirty piraty scoundrels such as yourself.
Thanks for the idea though. Section VIII of the Canadian copyright act makes it perfectly legal for me to go to the library, borrow a bunch of CDs, copy them for my personal use, and then return them. Distributing those copies would be copyright infringment because then it wouldn't be for personal use.
Of course, we all know 'indie' artists will never see a cent... not without making a lot of noise about it, at any rate.
Sure you can. All you have to do is register your songs with SOCAN. A couple times per year they calculate how many times your songs were played publically (mostly measured by how much it's played on the radio). Hopefully your indie songs will be played by some college radio station a couple times during the survey period so you can get a cheque for $2.
the time I had to fight a ban on the word 'deamon'
Not to be a nitpicking jerk or anything, but I'm pretty sure it's 'daemon' and pronounced 'day-mon' or 'da-eh-mon' rather than 'demon'. That might have made the fight to keep the term a lot easier.
We're only experimenting with hydroelectric power? A lot of the power generated in Ontario and in Quebec is hydroelectric and has been for years. In Ontario, we even call our electric company the hydro company.
I know in Ontario every library has 5-500 internet accessable computers, and on election day they could reserve them for elections.
Not completely true. My local library only has 2 public computers. It's a very small community and a very small library. Of course, the place they usually put the polling station is about a block away from the library so it wouldn't make a difference in bad weather.
They really should have made it a 2 DVD set and not try to stick the movie and all the extras on one middle-of-the-road quality disc.
That's odd. My copy of Star Wars episode 2 is on two DVDs. I do have the full-screen version though rather than widescreen (I didn't buy it, it was a xmas gift). I didn't notice too much in the way of artifacts on either disc.
In most elections that I have witnessed in Canada, either municipal, provincial, or federal, there is ALWAYS a paper trail. I mark my ballot with a big fat X in the appropriate spot on a voting card.
One recent exception to that was the last Ontario municipal election (the next one is Nov 10). It was a phone poll with no paper trail that I know of. I heard there were problems with busy phone lines, wrong pin numbers, etc.
This year the municipal election is being done by mail in smaller areas and (I think) by normal polling in cities.
2) It's not lightning fast. The major news media outlets want to be able to declare a winner before most people shut off their TVs at 10PM. It gives the viewer a feeling of closure. Waiting until 3AM for the numbers from Podunk, Iowa and surrounding municipalities does absolutely nothing for ratings.
We recently had an election in Ontario. This involved the paper ballot system. Polls closed at 8pm and results were complete enough for the media to call it a Liberal Party majority government in less than an hour. Individual ridings were called within 10-15 minutes.
Someone will say "Well, you only 10 million people in Ontario, it doesn't take long to count that."
Counting ballots scales very nicely. You have to count 10 times as many ballots, you hire 10 times as many people to count. It's not that hard.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally.
I wondered how long it would take before being a young, white, male of European descent would be useful.
I've been fiddling with some online insurance quotes just to see what happens when I change a few things (age, gender, single/married). I'm 22 and live in Ontario right now. When I give the proper information, I'm quoted at about $3300/year. It drops to $2800 when I hit 23. It drops to $1400 when I hit 25.
If I say I'm female, 22, and single, it drops to $2200. Male, married, and 22, $2800. In Ontario, car insurance is done by private companies which are allowed to discriminate based on age and sex. Since the government provides your insurance, they can't discriminate based on age, sex or anything else listed in the constitution.
So your province has adopted a system which (to my 22-year-old male driving ass) seems to be more fair.
Why are the US and Canada so in-sync in terms of media release schedules and standards, wether it be HBO or DVD region codes?
Where are you getting HBO in Canada?
Music yes, movies no. The movie industry doesn't get any cash and the law only specifies music. Even things like audiobooks are not covered.
I want to do it because there are no TIVO like boxes available for sale in Canada (except one that is built into a satellite reciever).
Rogers just came out with a PVR. It replaces the digital cable box. Price is a bit steep though. $600 for the PVR compared with $200 for the normal digital cable box. Or you can rent it for $25/month. The regular box is $10/month.
Canadian voters are a lot less loyal to a particular party. The most recent election I voted in was a local election. In local elections, people don't run as a particular party. They all run as independants. The election before that was the Ontario election. This time the Liberal Party won the majority of the seats. The 2 previous elections before that, the PC Party won the majority of seats. The election before those, the NDP won the majority of seats.
Lemme guess... it was by a bloke called O'Neill right ? O'Neill colonies ?
It was about O'Neill colonies, but neither book was by O'Neill.
I never knew what a Lagrange point was. I found that Wikipedia gave the best explanation
Don't worry too much about that. My high school physics teacher didn't know what a Lagrange point was either. I had to bring in an explanation from some NASA webpage to convince him they exist.
The only reason I knew about them was a couple of old books I had bought at a library book sale. They were from the late 70s and talked about how we could put up thousands of giant space stations at the Lagrange points and move most of earth's population offworld.
Sounds a bit like that charge on landlines for touchtone service.
Wow, and I thought I was cynical. For one thing, Ontario's voter turnout was 52%, not 30%. For another thing, the Supreme Court has made decisions that politicians would not want to touch with a 50-foot pole. They've struck down laws to do with marijuana and gay marriage. Very few MPs are in ridings where they could vote one way or another on those issues without pissing off a sizable block of voters.
I have no idea which way they'll rule on this one but their past decisions show me that there's some hope that they're not completely in the pocket of the politicians.
Ashliegh MacIsaac could probably use some money. Last I heard, he was bankrupt.
I'm wondering, could the tax on CD-Rs create a black market in them?
That depends on whether CD-Rs cost that much less in the US than in Canada.
Let's check out bestbuy.com and futureshop.ca (Futureshop is owned by Best Buy so prices should be similar).
Most brands seem to sell spindles of 50. Sorting by price at bestbuy, it looks like Imation CDRs are cheapest at $15 USD. Futureshop's cheapest seems to be $22 CDN. According to xe.com, $15 USD = $19.70 CDN.
You'd have to sell a lot of CDRs to make it worth the risk.
Another quirk of the law is that if a normal citizen from Canada goes to the US and buys a bunch of CDRs, he doesn't have to pay the levy on them. Customs fees may apply however.
Why was this modded down? It looks to me like a reference to the chorus of American Pie by Don McLean "drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry".
For the humour-impaired: grandparent post talking about robbing a bank with a Chevy + SOCAN wants a levy (tax) on ISPs = levy on the Chevy = genius
Not to mention that the moon people seem a lot less hostile than the martians. Damn martians keep shooting down our probes.
So when should the RIAA start targetting libraries? They're obviously aiding dirty, dirty piraty scoundrels such as yourself.
Thanks for the idea though. Section VIII of the Canadian copyright act makes it perfectly legal for me to go to the library, borrow a bunch of CDs, copy them for my personal use, and then return them. Distributing those copies would be copyright infringment because then it wouldn't be for personal use.
How about going to the store and knowing if you got the correct change?
Why would you need change when you pay by credit or debit card?
Of course, we all know 'indie' artists will never see a cent... not without making a lot of noise about it, at any rate.
Sure you can. All you have to do is register your songs with SOCAN. A couple times per year they calculate how many times your songs were played publically (mostly measured by how much it's played on the radio). Hopefully your indie songs will be played by some college radio station a couple times during the survey period so you can get a cheque for $2.
the time I had to fight a ban on the word 'deamon'
Not to be a nitpicking jerk or anything, but I'm pretty sure it's 'daemon' and pronounced 'day-mon' or 'da-eh-mon' rather than 'demon'. That might have made the fight to keep the term a lot easier.
We're only experimenting with hydroelectric power? A lot of the power generated in Ontario and in Quebec is hydroelectric and has been for years. In Ontario, we even call our electric company the hydro company.
I know in Ontario every library has 5-500 internet accessable computers, and on election day they could reserve them for elections.
Not completely true. My local library only has 2 public computers. It's a very small community and a very small library. Of course, the place they usually put the polling station is about a block away from the library so it wouldn't make a difference in bad weather.
They really should have made it a 2 DVD set and not try to stick the movie and all the extras on one middle-of-the-road quality disc.
That's odd. My copy of Star Wars episode 2 is on two DVDs. I do have the full-screen version though rather than widescreen (I didn't buy it, it was a xmas gift). I didn't notice too much in the way of artifacts on either disc.
Gotta wonder what that would feel like if it broke off and poked you in the eye.
Can I get these things on my glasses instead of contact lenses? I don't appreciate small wires poking me in the eye.
That scene shows up on the "Star Wars: Behind the Magic" CD. I'm not sure what source they had for it though because it looks like ass.
In most elections that I have witnessed in Canada, either municipal, provincial, or federal, there is ALWAYS a paper trail. I mark my ballot with a big fat X in the appropriate spot on a voting card.
One recent exception to that was the last Ontario municipal election (the next one is Nov 10). It was a phone poll with no paper trail that I know of. I heard there were problems with busy phone lines, wrong pin numbers, etc.
This year the municipal election is being done by mail in smaller areas and (I think) by normal polling in cities.
2) It's not lightning fast. The major news media outlets want to be able to declare a winner before most people shut off their TVs at 10PM. It gives the viewer a feeling of closure. Waiting until 3AM for the numbers from Podunk, Iowa and surrounding municipalities does absolutely nothing for ratings.
We recently had an election in Ontario. This involved the paper ballot system. Polls closed at 8pm and results were complete enough for the media to call it a Liberal Party majority government in less than an hour. Individual ridings were called within 10-15 minutes.
Someone will say "Well, you only 10 million people in Ontario, it doesn't take long to count that."
Counting ballots scales very nicely. You have to count 10 times as many ballots, you hire 10 times as many people to count. It's not that hard.