Interesting that you'd think that, seeing as I've received replies from Ralph himself in the past. I LIKE my MP. He does his duty by his constituents, and actually TALKS to them.
Sent to Ralph Goodale (my MP), Stephen Harper (PM of Canada), and Vic Toews (the jackboot who insultingly claims I support child pornography because I won't kiss his ass):
I DO NOT consent to searches and spying by the government, CSIS, the RCMP, or any other police force in or out of Canada without a proper warrant.
I have nothing to hide, but it is a matter of principal. I have a right to private communications unless someone can explain to a judge WHY I should be investigated and convince them to sign a warrant.
This bill is useless in reality anyhow, because anyone but the most technically illiterate criminal will use an anonymizer and encryption, so the spying will net no proof of a crime, even if someone is surfing child porn like a psychotic fiend.
This is nothing more than a fishing expedition and an attempt to violate Canadians fundamental right to privacy.
Just say "NO" to politicians who stoop to claiming you support Evil Horrible Unimaginable Thing just because you value your own rights.
It's about time the North American companies that outsource to cheap offshore providers started inspecting those facilities and ensuring that abusive slave-labour environments aren't being created to save money and increase profits.
If North America wants respect in the world, our companies need to export the GOOD things about our Canadian and American legal systems, not use offshoring to ESCAPE our regulations.
Kudos to Apple for grabbing the bull by the horns. (Or is it a dragon by the beard this year?)
I DO NOT consent to searches and spying by the government, CSIS, the RCMP, or any other police force in or out of Canada without a proper warrant.
I have nothing to hide, but it is a matter of principal. I have a right to private communications unless someone can explain to a judge why I should be investigated and convince them to sign a warrant.
This bill is useless in reality anyhow, because anyone but the most technically illiterate criminal will use an anonymizer and encryption, so the spying will net no proof of a crime, even if someone is surfing child porn like a psychotic fiend.
This is nothing more than a fishing expedition and an attempt to violate Canadians fundamental right to privacy.
Just say "NO" to politicians who stoop to claiming you support Evil Horrible Unimaginable Thing just because you value your own rights.
When there are risks of company devices being hacked and used to spy on corporate data, is it any wonder that many companies still refuse to allow personal devices to be connected to the company networks?
Still, you have to wonder how much of these issues are due to poor maintenance and management of the corporate infrastructure enabling the penetrations and attacks.
I've heard of ONE incident where a penetration was actually a zero-day exploit and did not happen because someone didn't upgrade a server or change passwords after employees left the company. 25 years. A quarter century. And only ONE incident that wasn't someone's failure to perform due diligence of maintenance?
That doesn't say much for North America's corporate security policies, does it?
In both the US and Canada, we "outsource" manufacturing to foreign nations with contracts that pay so little the foreign employees get less than an hour's minimum wage in terms of our own dollars for a 12 hour or longer day. It's offshored slavery.
We dump our used electronics and other garbage on third world nations to "clean up" and "recycle", while using environmentally hazardous manufacturing processes in the foreign nations where we've contracted outsource manufacturing to be done. It's offshored environmental damage.
Now they've taken it a step further, and are using policy to offshore racism by blaming all of Africa.
The US has made it an official policy to offshore the racism, slavery, environmental abuse, and a host of other issues that are illegal in the U S of A, all the while preaching "freedom" and "rights" to the rest of the world while they shove their own hatred down the gullets of foreign nations.
Not that Canada is any better -- we bitch at China about human rights issues while we treat our First Nations people worse than animals.
I always stroked out those "all your code are belong to us" clauses and signed beside the cross-out before handing over employment contracts. When the person doing the hiring would question it, I'd explain that I had MSS Code Factory under development, show them the project, and make it clear that they did NOT own something I'd worked on since the late '80s to early '90s.
I never had a single employer complain about me doing that.
Blaming an entire nation or people for using technology is blatant and disgusting RACISM.
Can't have all those "niggers" learning how to use computers and benefitting THEMSELVES, can we?
The US, OECD, and Interpol SICKEN me with such statements and "legislation". They'd get LYNCHED if they tried to apply such blanket statements in their homelands.
I appreciate it's not easy to get the translations for some languages onto devices that don't properly support UTF character sets, but if they support UTF properly with the full symbol set, then as far as I'm aware it covers 98% or more of the languages used on the planet.
Whining about the "difficulties" of typesetting different styles used by the Bibles is disingenuous and pathetic. It is no harder to specify the format of a fragment of a Psalm song than it is to format a paragraph of plain text if you're using any kind of half-assed layout description language and a decent text processor. That's what such products do -- automate layout management.
I agree there may be some languages which aren't well served by such tools, in particular anything which uses a pictographic form such as original Chinese vs. Simplified, but even the Chinese themselves don't use the Original Chinese forms much any more.
Did you ever watch "X-Files?" How about "Stargate SG-1?"
Any show that was produced by "Alliance" or "Atlantis" pictures was a can-con product.
Don't confuse the CBC with being THE source of can-con -- it's not. The CBC is just more prone to produce documentaries and docu-dramas than the other can-con providers, and are more famous for it because they used to be our only national broadcaster.
You bitch about it being an "Ontario centric" media form. Was "The Beachcombers" set in Ontario? How about "Little Mosque on the Prairie" or "Corner Gas?"
Careful, man, your generalizations are showing...:P
But you are correct: If there is no current levy paid by the cable and satellite content delivery systems, then nor should there be one applied to the ISPs.
But I've always been under the impression that the cable and satellite content delivery systems do pay a levy.
But OUR Canadian version does not have nearly the teeth nor the clout that the American MPAA do, much though they might wish they did. And I believe that stems from the simple fact that ours is only an association of labels, not a FINANCE house for the labels as is the case in the US.
(I'd have though you'd realize I'm Canadian from the domain of my company in my sig -- why would an American get a.ca address? *LOL*)
Do the cable and satellite distribution companies that carry those broadcasters pay?
Then so should ISPs.
Maybe there should be an exception for business-contract ISP clients because they aren't media-hungry "typical" consumers, but if the other signal carriers are being charged a levy, so should the ISPs.
One reason there is no "MPAA" in Canada is we provide the startup funding for film projects through government grants instead. Every movie, TV show, etc. that you see with "Funded in part by the Canadian Government" including the products of some really big name and well known studios leverages that funding.
Would you rather see us have an MPAA type organization pounding us and hounding us over so-called piracy when you preview or prelisten to downloaded or streamed media?
I think Can-Con funding is cheap compared to being raped by an MPAA.
Historically, Canadian broadcasters had to have a certain minimum percentage of Canadian content in their broadcasts. That's what we can't expect ISPs to deliver, because they have no control over what content their subscribers choose to view, download, or transmit.
But paying a percentage of revenue into the national funding pot the same as broadcasters do is not at ALL unreasonable, as a significant chunk of the content the ISPs stream IS Canadian content that they should pay a share to fund. CTV, CBC, Global, etc. all have web streaming services that the ISPs carry into Canadian homes, and they should pay their tithe like any other content distributor.
Before you bitch too much about supporting the CBC and other Canadian content, consider this:
The fact that Canadian consumers of media and tax payers pay a significant share of the production costs of Canadian media has a great deal to do with why the general public in Canada has a right to copy, backup, and otherwise consume media they own.
The very fact that we are allowed to OWN media stems in part from the fact that we pay for part of it, even if we don't buy a copy of a particular finished product.
We would not have the liberal copyright laws in Canada that we do were it not for Can-Con funded at public expense.
Although the ISPs should not be subject to trying to provide any particular percentage of Canadian content in a global web environment, I don't think the content creators are being unrealistic or unfair if they expect the ISPs to pay a portion similar to what cable providers pay to fund Can-Con.
The content producers are right: It's the traditional "Canadian Way."
Developers shouldn't test their own code, but some of them are viciously effective at testing other people's code. For example, I knew a fellow who would regularly do perverse things during testing like pasting GIFs and JPEGs into text fields, trying to open binaries instead of XML files, and other such perverse things that regular users do by accident all the time. Very, very few people produced application code that this man couldn't break.
But he had a bit of history in testing. When he was working for the Navy designing tests for anti-missile and anti-aircraft gun systems, he came up with a nasty little test.
The hard-wired two Tomahawk cruise missiles together and launched them at the test ship. The guns aimed at one, then the other, trying to decide which was the bigger threat and had to be taken out first. Because a guidewire was keeping the two Tomahawks running in tandem at the same speed and distance from the ship, the gun system had a fit, spasmed the barrels back and forth for a few seconds, then gave up and put itself into "idle" mode.
They added a random "just pick one" step to the algorithm to fix the problem.
I like having hard copy of important documents filed away for future reference. They don't take up nearly as much space as my paperbacks, CDs, and DVD collections do, so the 1-2 boxes of paperwork is just flat out not worth worrying about for me.
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Interesting that you'd think that, seeing as I've received replies from Ralph himself in the past. I LIKE my MP. He does his duty by his constituents, and actually TALKS to them.
Sent to Ralph Goodale (my MP), Stephen Harper (PM of Canada), and Vic Toews (the jackboot who insultingly claims I support child pornography because I won't kiss his ass):
You make some excellent points, but I can't accept some of your statements.
The slaves of the old Southern United States were housed, clothed, and fed by their masters, too.
But they were still slaves.
It's about time the North American companies that outsource to cheap offshore providers started inspecting those facilities and ensuring that abusive slave-labour environments aren't being created to save money and increase profits.
If North America wants respect in the world, our companies need to export the GOOD things about our Canadian and American legal systems, not use offshoring to ESCAPE our regulations.
Kudos to Apple for grabbing the bull by the horns. (Or is it a dragon by the beard this year?)
I DO NOT consent to searches and spying by the government, CSIS, the RCMP, or any other police force in or out of Canada without a proper warrant.
I have nothing to hide, but it is a matter of principal. I have a right to private communications unless someone can explain to a judge why I should be investigated and convince them to sign a warrant.
This bill is useless in reality anyhow, because anyone but the most technically illiterate criminal will use an anonymizer and encryption, so the spying will net no proof of a crime, even if someone is surfing child porn like a psychotic fiend.
This is nothing more than a fishing expedition and an attempt to violate Canadians fundamental right to privacy.
Just say "NO" to politicians who stoop to claiming you support Evil Horrible Unimaginable Thing just because you value your own rights.
Even the Nazi's "Stazi" had to report to someone.
Tories on e-snooping: 'Stand with us or with the child pornographers'
Rick Santorum's problem is Rick Santorum's platform and politics.
Say what? Did you really think about that sentence before you hit "post"?
Competition drives companies to use new technology. Technology saves money, enabling companies to drop prices further to compete.
It's a self-serving cycle of profitability.
If AT&T weren't passing on those savings, where do you think the price drops came from? Thin air? The phone fairy?
When there are risks of company devices being hacked and used to spy on corporate data, is it any wonder that many companies still refuse to allow personal devices to be connected to the company networks?
Still, you have to wonder how much of these issues are due to poor maintenance and management of the corporate infrastructure enabling the penetrations and attacks.
I've heard of ONE incident where a penetration was actually a zero-day exploit and did not happen because someone didn't upgrade a server or change passwords after employees left the company. 25 years. A quarter century. And only ONE incident that wasn't someone's failure to perform due diligence of maintenance?
That doesn't say much for North America's corporate security policies, does it?
Then to add insult to injury, we blame the nations who have the employees living in slave labour conditions for their "human rights violations."
North America disgusts me a LOT of the time.
In both the US and Canada, we "outsource" manufacturing to foreign nations with contracts that pay so little the foreign employees get less than an hour's minimum wage in terms of our own dollars for a 12 hour or longer day. It's offshored slavery.
We dump our used electronics and other garbage on third world nations to "clean up" and "recycle", while using environmentally hazardous manufacturing processes in the foreign nations where we've contracted outsource manufacturing to be done. It's offshored environmental damage.
Now they've taken it a step further, and are using policy to offshore racism by blaming all of Africa.
The truth hurts, bub -- suck it up.
The truth hurts, doesn't it?
The US has made it an official policy to offshore the racism, slavery, environmental abuse, and a host of other issues that are illegal in the U S of A, all the while preaching "freedom" and "rights" to the rest of the world while they shove their own hatred down the gullets of foreign nations.
Not that Canada is any better -- we bitch at China about human rights issues while we treat our First Nations people worse than animals.
I always stroked out those "all your code are belong to us" clauses and signed beside the cross-out before handing over employment contracts. When the person doing the hiring would question it, I'd explain that I had MSS Code Factory under development, show them the project, and make it clear that they did NOT own something I'd worked on since the late '80s to early '90s.
I never had a single employer complain about me doing that.
Blaming an entire nation or people for using technology is blatant and disgusting RACISM.
Can't have all those "niggers" learning how to use computers and benefitting THEMSELVES, can we?
The US, OECD, and Interpol SICKEN me with such statements and "legislation". They'd get LYNCHED if they tried to apply such blanket statements in their homelands.
The solution is simple. Only allow the patenting of IMPLEMENTATIONS, not ALGORITHMS.
Algorithms are DISCOVERED, not invented. They have always existed, the techniques by which computing gets done.
Can you imagine the shitload of trouble we'd all be in if some of the authors of the great programming texts and guides had PATENTED their algorithms?
*shudder*
I like a quote I read recently:
I appreciate it's not easy to get the translations for some languages onto devices that don't properly support UTF character sets, but if they support UTF properly with the full symbol set, then as far as I'm aware it covers 98% or more of the languages used on the planet.
Whining about the "difficulties" of typesetting different styles used by the Bibles is disingenuous and pathetic. It is no harder to specify the format of a fragment of a Psalm song than it is to format a paragraph of plain text if you're using any kind of half-assed layout description language and a decent text processor. That's what such products do -- automate layout management.
I agree there may be some languages which aren't well served by such tools, in particular anything which uses a pictographic form such as original Chinese vs. Simplified, but even the Chinese themselves don't use the Original Chinese forms much any more.
Did you ever watch "X-Files?" How about "Stargate SG-1?"
Any show that was produced by "Alliance" or "Atlantis" pictures was a can-con product.
Don't confuse the CBC with being THE source of can-con -- it's not. The CBC is just more prone to produce documentaries and docu-dramas than the other can-con providers, and are more famous for it because they used to be our only national broadcaster.
You bitch about it being an "Ontario centric" media form. Was "The Beachcombers" set in Ontario? How about "Little Mosque on the Prairie" or "Corner Gas?"
Careful, man, your generalizations are showing... :P
But you are correct: If there is no current levy paid by the cable and satellite content delivery systems, then nor should there be one applied to the ISPs.
But I've always been under the impression that the cable and satellite content delivery systems do pay a levy.
But OUR Canadian version does not have nearly the teeth nor the clout that the American MPAA do, much though they might wish they did. And I believe that stems from the simple fact that ours is only an association of labels, not a FINANCE house for the labels as is the case in the US.
(I'd have though you'd realize I'm Canadian from the domain of my company in my sig -- why would an American get a .ca address? *LOL*)
Do the cable and satellite distribution companies that carry those broadcasters pay?
Then so should ISPs.
Maybe there should be an exception for business-contract ISP clients because they aren't media-hungry "typical" consumers, but if the other signal carriers are being charged a levy, so should the ISPs.
One reason there is no "MPAA" in Canada is we provide the startup funding for film projects through government grants instead. Every movie, TV show, etc. that you see with "Funded in part by the Canadian Government" including the products of some really big name and well known studios leverages that funding.
Would you rather see us have an MPAA type organization pounding us and hounding us over so-called piracy when you preview or prelisten to downloaded or streamed media?
I think Can-Con funding is cheap compared to being raped by an MPAA.
Just to clarify:
Historically, Canadian broadcasters had to have a certain minimum percentage of Canadian content in their broadcasts. That's what we can't expect ISPs to deliver, because they have no control over what content their subscribers choose to view, download, or transmit.
But paying a percentage of revenue into the national funding pot the same as broadcasters do is not at ALL unreasonable, as a significant chunk of the content the ISPs stream IS Canadian content that they should pay a share to fund. CTV, CBC, Global, etc. all have web streaming services that the ISPs carry into Canadian homes, and they should pay their tithe like any other content distributor.
Before you bitch too much about supporting the CBC and other Canadian content, consider this:
The fact that Canadian consumers of media and tax payers pay a significant share of the production costs of Canadian media has a great deal to do with why the general public in Canada has a right to copy, backup, and otherwise consume media they own.
The very fact that we are allowed to OWN media stems in part from the fact that we pay for part of it, even if we don't buy a copy of a particular finished product.
We would not have the liberal copyright laws in Canada that we do were it not for Can-Con funded at public expense.
Although the ISPs should not be subject to trying to provide any particular percentage of Canadian content in a global web environment, I don't think the content creators are being unrealistic or unfair if they expect the ISPs to pay a portion similar to what cable providers pay to fund Can-Con.
The content producers are right: It's the traditional "Canadian Way."
Developers shouldn't test their own code, but some of them are viciously effective at testing other people's code. For example, I knew a fellow who would regularly do perverse things during testing like pasting GIFs and JPEGs into text fields, trying to open binaries instead of XML files, and other such perverse things that regular users do by accident all the time. Very, very few people produced application code that this man couldn't break.
But he had a bit of history in testing. When he was working for the Navy designing tests for anti-missile and anti-aircraft gun systems, he came up with a nasty little test.
The hard-wired two Tomahawk cruise missiles together and launched them at the test ship. The guns aimed at one, then the other, trying to decide which was the bigger threat and had to be taken out first. Because a guidewire was keeping the two Tomahawks running in tandem at the same speed and distance from the ship, the gun system had a fit, spasmed the barrels back and forth for a few seconds, then gave up and put itself into "idle" mode.
They added a random "just pick one" step to the algorithm to fix the problem.
I like having hard copy of important documents filed away for future reference. They don't take up nearly as much space as my paperbacks, CDs, and DVD collections do, so the 1-2 boxes of paperwork is just flat out not worth worrying about for me.