Canada is on the watch list primarily due to the Canadian Radio Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which regulars domestic broadcasting. Canadian radio and television companies are mandated to show a certain % of domestically created content. They also regulate which satellite signals can be broadcast by domestic carriers (e.g. Bell ExpressVu and Starchoice). So no we don't get HBO, but we get The Movie Network who licenses HBO content.
The US sees this domestic regulation of the radio waves as a trade issue, not as a copyright issue. We have domestic loopholes for copyright infringement, but we're far from the worse offender in the US' eyes.
Essentially this will come down to a management problem. At some point, people will avoid IT as a career altogether. And when that happens, demand will go up for people, more money will be offered, and people will hold their noses and come back. In the late 1990s perks for IT were tremendous -- stock options, lots of vacation, huge bonuses. Now IT is treated like 3rd world labour...its a necessary evil for most businesses, they hold their nose and pay for it.
If you've conditioned your workplace to disinterest women, you've effectively reduced your hiring pool by 50%. That's not a problem right now, but during the next industry crunch you'd f***ed. People management and staff retention is a strategic goal, not a tactical problem...too bad most of the industry right now is being managed quarter-by-quarter.
If you're looking for Space Opera (Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly, Babylon 5, Dr Who) then yes Blade Runner was a colossal failure in this regard.
Also, Ridley Scott is self-admittedly not the greatest story teller; his plots tend to be mechanical, and his dialogue wooden -- although he's gotten better over the years (unlike his brother Tony).
But to suggest Bladerunner is boring tripe if a grave mistake... it speaks to your own inability to appreciate subtlety, lack of exploding things, or a linear "insert tab A into slot B" plotline. Bladerunner isn't science fantasy, its science fiction...it uses reasoned and self-contained predicted science advances to investigate a theme of "what is human?" ontop of a blended film noir gothic motif. The cinematography and editing were exceptional, and the distopian future was a WELCOME change from 1970s pop-science films (the Black Hole, Star Wars, Buck Rodgers, even Star Trek: The Motion Picture).
"The embargo applies only to American companies, and it's perfectly just, as american citizens and companies that were expropriated by Fidel's revolution never received compensation for the theft. Don't they teach those things there on history/geography classes?"
Still waiting for US reparations for the Revolutionary War. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather's business interests were negatively impacted.
Although in spirit I agree the embargo only applies to American companies and citizens, in practice it hasn't been limited to such.
Most of the world recognises that the Cuban embargo is the result of confused Miami/Florida politics and a saving face gesture for American foreign diplomacy. The US does business with far worse countries and dictatorships than Cuba, and the embargo policy is a colossal failure -- if only because the rest of the world ignores it.
So she opted for a closed, proprietary OS with poor backwards compatibility bundled with expensive hardware, instead of the closed, expensive, proprietary OS with security holes bundled with cheap hardware? I think this would be the classic definition of a Pyrrhic victory...
So says the upper middle class IT guy/girl with 7/24 internet access and making an income in the top 20% of north america (probably more like top 5%). Sorry to say, but there's a TON of people living paycheque to paycheque, even in our comfortable first world, who probably have never had a brand new TV. Thrift stores, 2nd hand stores, garage sales exist and fill a need, which is vast.
I bought a spare TV for our basement from Bestbuy last year, to watch old VCR tapes and run a console. No HDTV at all. There was a $250 difference at that time to get an HD-capable LCD. Its really only in the last 12 months that a new HDTV set is in a disposable commodity range.
I don't know what the MTF on consoles are, but if the advantages of PS/3 aren't available for another 18 months or so, why not buy the PS/3 at that time? Why buy a minimally useful console now and have it collect dust/break down, when you can buy an 360 or Wii TODAY, play great titles, and maybe 2 years ago try something different. And 2 years from now the PS/3 will be cheaper too.
I think the biggest reason why people are thinking the PS/3 is a failure, is because the historical trend has been that if a console isn't a success at launch then its doomed. Sony might break that pattern with this release... people need to think about a different paradigm. More like graphics cards. I don't buy a $800 Nvidia XFORCE XTREMEM DUAL CORE SUPERCOOLED COLD FUSION card now, but I know its capabilities will trickle down to me in about 2 years time at a reasonable cost.
no modern medicine, advanced science, or advanced learning. they're too busy keeping the farm going, or maintaining their self-sufficiency. its a good life, but doesn't do much to advance human civilisation.
Walmart craptastic stuff is one of the by-products we suffer from, to support an economy that allows women to work, people to spend their lives working on advanced scientific theories that
have no immediate application, and allow for personal mobility.
One of western civ's greatest accomplishments was the concept of leisure time starting in the 18th century. we don't have to work 70 hour weeks just to survive now. we might work 70 hour weeks for personal advancement, or because what we're doing is fun and interesting, but my life isn't mapped out for me soon as I hit 13. A 70 year old pre-ww2 tech farmer is doing the same thing at 70 that he was at 16 or 18. Not an exciting life IMHO.
Canada is in Afghanistan today. We have our largest contingent of troops deployed since the Korean War. They're currently responsible for the Khandahar province.
I need to find a link, but IIRC our casualty rate is about 12x worse than an average US soldier in Iraq. Canada is on the front lines against the Taliban. Our deployment is relatively small though (commensurate with our country's population) of about 3000 troops.
But no, there have been no Taliban / Al Quaida attacks on Canadian soil. We lost many citizens in the WTC bombings though.
One point I need to clarify -- it was the CONSERVATIVES that asked for the 5 year expiry, it was not initially volunteered when the Liberals introduced this legislation. Thankfully they realised that the LIBERAL party couldn't appear to be more intolerant/harsh than the conservatives, so they implemented the 5 year expiry.
This current vote is very curious. The conservatives wanted to renew, on the basis of existing investigations, but the Liberals declined. So either the Liberals either admit a) they overreacted the first time, or b) are playing politics.
The Liberals in Canada have a history of being soft on terrorism. They took forever to add Hamas to the federal watch list, and the same with the Tamil Tigers -- groups that had significant immigrant community groups donating large amounts of money to the Liberal party (see: Richmond BC and Brampton ridings for starters). Ontop of that, the Air India bombing is STILL being investigated 20 years later and a the Liberals never committed crown commission for the largest mass murder in Canadian history.
I'm of two minds on this whole issue...carte blanche for the Conservatives will take us down a Republican party path that the US has followed and I don't want that; on the other hand I'm tired of the apologist, relativist Liberal party policies where they put politics ahead of good government.
Note to American slashdotters -- its not as good up here as you might think. We're just not in Iraq right now thankfully.
I know vaguely about the Wii, but have no idea about their titles or what the must have games are...but when I read this I almost crapped my pants -- my 8 year old inner child (who Jar Jar wasn't able to kill) is leaping for joy!
Doubling sales would be conservative estimate IMHO.
Something like 80% of Canada's population lives within 100km of the border with the US. We're very happy with our neighbours thankyouverymuch. The elect idiot presidents sometimes, but they don't get to see our parliament up close and personal... thank goodness.
Also, given that most of the northern US states are several hundred kilometers north of Ontario's Golden Horseshoe (where 1/3 of Canada's population lives, mainly around Toronto), they have lots of cold places to visit themselves. Oh, and the US has Alaska too.
Overall, Canada has a small population, huge reserves of natural resources, and the largest supply of fresh water in the world. Global Warming probably affects us less than most other countries...except for our arctic tundra eco system and the livelihood of the Innu. I'll callously say that this is a small impact per capita, although the impact felt by the Innu is huge.
Our datacentre has ~ 500 Solaris / HP-UX / AIX boxen, and ~ 1000 Windows servers.
15 minute change window to apply patch, another 15 minutes to reboot successfully and come back online. Multiply 30 min x 1500 = 45,000 minutes, or 750 hours. But we only have one weekly change window, Sunday mornings from 2-6am. Assuming finite number of staff, contingency (there's always going to be some problems), etc... we started last September. We might just make the deadline.
So yes, I think its a bit of a problem. There's also the unspoken assumption that people learned their lessons during Y2k and have sufficient date handling logic to address changes to DST...nothing hard coded in the underlying applications.
My wife worked for a wholesale landscaping company. They had a new invoice and inventory management system installed, and staff went on training. At the end of the course, the owner of the business asked how does he manually create an invoice without drawing down from the inventory...short answer was you couldn't, at least without adding inventory at the same time. He was livid but didn't explain why. My wife dug deeper afterwards and learned that the business probably made 20-40% of its revenue through fictitious invoicing... send small,
Ever since, i've removed all of my bills from automatic payment... i manually pay ever bill each month. Too much opportunity to accidentally pay for something you didn't receive, and good luck getting your money back after the fact!
If you don't like team chat in a FPS, please for the love of god don't start a Horde character in World of Warcraft -- you'll become suicidal after a brief 5 min exposure to Barrens Chat.
On the other hand, if you survive due to copious amounts of Zoloft, you can wear this shirt as a badge of honour!
This was the Liberal party of the Ontario Provincial Parliament. They also did it just before the Christmas break, to minimise debate on the subject when people were preoccupied with the holidays.
I am a bit disappointed in the federal government now though...the Conservatives aren't changing the policies of the previous Liberals in terms of media consolidation and copyright law. The more things change, the more they stay the same. We have more 3rd parties in Canadian politics than the US, but they serve more to offset the balance of power and have no real chance at governing (NDP, Greens, Bloc Quebecois).
How long it is until MS fixes this loophole is anybodies guess, but as of right now, it works.
I'm guessing never. Here's why -- an upgrade CD boot install of the 30 day trial version will never have to connect to the net. You can then follow these instructions to activate a 100% valid Windows Vista key.
So unless Microsoft issues a patch, which refers to the registry which looks up a stored parameter of the original XP key, and disables your working copy of Vista AFTER its fully installed, there is no 'fix' for this.
I'm guessing this work around was deliberately installed on purpose by Microsoft ANYWAYS, since down the road lots of people will be opening support calls having _lost_ the original XP media (or OEM partition...what a stupid solution) and the call centres will need a solution. If you figure MS printed several million boxes w/ CDs with this 30 day trial to start, there's enough copies of this work around in the wild to require indefinite support.
I agree midnight madness = retarded, a sign of a sick consumerist culture. But as a barometer of cultural significance, its worthy of tracking. Here in Toronto, i distinctly remember numerous events for Win95, 98, and XP releases. I didn't even realise Vista was launching this week until I read a slashdot article...and I work in IT.
Microsoft would be foolish to surrender Windows PC gaming. Frankly at this point its one of the few reasons why Windows PCs remain superior to Macs for home use -- kill this purpose off, and they've effectively destroyed the home market.
So yes Microsoft wants more people to game on the 360 than the PC, but they won't orphan the PC yet... there's increasingly less differentiators between a MC and beige box.
Slashdot Mirror
Canada is on the watch list primarily due to the Canadian Radio Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which regulars domestic broadcasting. Canadian radio and television companies are mandated to show a certain % of domestically created content. They also regulate which satellite signals can be broadcast by domestic carriers (e.g. Bell ExpressVu and Starchoice). So no we don't get HBO, but we get The Movie Network who licenses HBO content.
The US sees this domestic regulation of the radio waves as a trade issue, not as a copyright issue. We have domestic loopholes for copyright infringement, but we're far from the worse offender in the US' eyes.
"I'm told it is viral and will give you open source."
:)
Fixed your typo for you.
Essentially this will come down to a management problem. At some point, people will avoid IT as a career altogether. And when that happens, demand will go up for people, more money will be offered, and people will hold their noses and come back. In the late 1990s perks for IT were tremendous -- stock options, lots of vacation, huge bonuses. Now IT is treated like 3rd world labour...its a necessary evil for most businesses, they hold their nose and pay for it.
If you've conditioned your workplace to disinterest women, you've effectively reduced your hiring pool by 50%. That's not a problem right now, but during the next industry crunch you'd f***ed. People management and staff retention is a strategic goal, not a tactical problem...too bad most of the industry right now is being managed quarter-by-quarter.
If you're looking for Space Opera (Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly, Babylon 5, Dr Who) then yes Blade Runner was a colossal failure in this regard.
Also, Ridley Scott is self-admittedly not the greatest story teller; his plots tend to be mechanical, and his dialogue wooden -- although he's gotten better over the years (unlike his brother Tony).
But to suggest Bladerunner is boring tripe if a grave mistake... it speaks to your own inability to appreciate subtlety, lack of exploding things, or a linear "insert tab A into slot B" plotline. Bladerunner isn't science fantasy, its science fiction...it uses reasoned and self-contained predicted science advances to investigate a theme of "what is human?" ontop of a blended film noir gothic motif. The cinematography and editing were exceptional, and the distopian future was a WELCOME change from 1970s pop-science films (the Black Hole, Star Wars, Buck Rodgers, even Star Trek: The Motion Picture).
"The embargo applies only to American companies, and it's perfectly just, as american citizens and companies that were expropriated by Fidel's revolution never received compensation for the theft. Don't they teach those things there on history/geography classes?"
Still waiting for US reparations for the Revolutionary War. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather's business interests were negatively impacted.
Although in spirit I agree the embargo only applies to American companies and citizens, in practice it hasn't been limited to such.
Most of the world recognises that the Cuban embargo is the result of confused Miami/Florida politics and a saving face gesture for American foreign diplomacy. The US does business with far worse countries and dictatorships than Cuba, and the embargo policy is a colossal failure -- if only because the rest of the world ignores it.
So she opted for a closed, proprietary OS with poor backwards compatibility bundled with expensive hardware, instead of the closed, expensive, proprietary OS with security holes bundled with cheap hardware? I think this would be the classic definition of a Pyrrhic victory...
Haliburton was granted the no-bid contract to recover the data.
Link?
Not that I need it now...more for future reference...
So says the upper middle class IT guy/girl with 7/24 internet access and making an income in the top 20% of north america (probably more like top 5%). Sorry to say, but there's a TON of people living paycheque to paycheque, even in our comfortable first world, who probably have never had a brand new TV. Thrift stores, 2nd hand stores, garage sales exist and fill a need, which is vast.
I bought a spare TV for our basement from Bestbuy last year, to watch old VCR tapes and run a console. No HDTV at all. There was a $250 difference at that time to get an HD-capable LCD. Its really only in the last 12 months that a new HDTV set is in a disposable commodity range.
I don't know what the MTF on consoles are, but if the advantages of PS/3 aren't available for another 18 months or so, why not buy the PS/3 at that time? Why buy a minimally useful console now and have it collect dust/break down, when you can buy an 360 or Wii TODAY, play great titles, and maybe 2 years ago try something different. And 2 years from now the PS/3 will be cheaper too.
I think the biggest reason why people are thinking the PS/3 is a failure, is because the historical trend has been that if a console isn't a success at launch then its doomed. Sony might break that pattern with this release... people need to think about a different paradigm. More like graphics cards. I don't buy a $800 Nvidia XFORCE XTREMEM DUAL CORE SUPERCOOLED COLD FUSION card now, but I know its capabilities will trickle down to me in about 2 years time at a reasonable cost.
no modern medicine, advanced science, or advanced learning. they're too busy keeping the farm going, or maintaining their self-sufficiency. its a good life, but doesn't do much to advance human civilisation.
Walmart craptastic stuff is one of the by-products we suffer from, to support an economy that allows women to work, people to spend their lives working on advanced scientific theories that have no immediate application, and allow for personal mobility.
One of western civ's greatest accomplishments was the concept of leisure time starting in the 18th century. we don't have to work 70 hour weeks just to survive now. we might work 70 hour weeks for personal advancement, or because what we're doing is fun and interesting, but my life isn't mapped out for me soon as I hit 13. A 70 year old pre-ww2 tech farmer is doing the same thing at 70 that he was at 16 or 18. Not an exciting life IMHO.
Canada is in Afghanistan today. We have our largest contingent of troops deployed since the Korean War. They're currently responsible for the Khandahar province.
I need to find a link, but IIRC our casualty rate is about 12x worse than an average US soldier in Iraq. Canada is on the front lines against the Taliban. Our deployment is relatively small though (commensurate with our country's population) of about 3000 troops.
But no, there have been no Taliban / Al Quaida attacks on Canadian soil. We lost many citizens in the WTC bombings though.
I'm OOM you insensitive clod!
One point I need to clarify -- it was the CONSERVATIVES that asked for the 5 year expiry, it was not initially volunteered when the Liberals introduced this legislation. Thankfully they realised that the LIBERAL party couldn't appear to be more intolerant/harsh than the conservatives, so they implemented the 5 year expiry.
This current vote is very curious. The conservatives wanted to renew, on the basis of existing investigations, but the Liberals declined. So either the Liberals either admit a) they overreacted the first time, or b) are playing politics.
The Liberals in Canada have a history of being soft on terrorism. They took forever to add Hamas to the federal watch list, and the same with the Tamil Tigers -- groups that had significant immigrant community groups donating large amounts of money to the Liberal party (see: Richmond BC and Brampton ridings for starters). Ontop of that, the Air India bombing is STILL being investigated 20 years later and a the Liberals never committed crown commission for the largest mass murder in Canadian history.
I'm of two minds on this whole issue...carte blanche for the Conservatives will take us down a Republican party path that the US has followed and I don't want that; on the other hand I'm tired of the apologist, relativist Liberal party policies where they put politics ahead of good government.
Note to American slashdotters -- its not as good up here as you might think. We're just not in Iraq right now thankfully.
Technically, Pam is _born_ in Canada, but she's 'Made In the USA(tm)' if you know what I mean...
The Wiisaber. That alone will double sales.
I know vaguely about the Wii, but have no idea about their titles or what the must have games are...but when I read this I almost crapped my pants -- my 8 year old inner child (who Jar Jar wasn't able to kill) is leaping for joy!
Doubling sales would be conservative estimate IMHO.
A few comments...
Something like 80% of Canada's population lives within 100km of the border with the US. We're very happy with our neighbours thankyouverymuch. The elect idiot presidents sometimes, but they don't get to see our parliament up close and personal... thank goodness.
Also, given that most of the northern US states are several hundred kilometers north of Ontario's Golden Horseshoe (where 1/3 of Canada's population lives, mainly around Toronto), they have lots of cold places to visit themselves. Oh, and the US has Alaska too.
Overall, Canada has a small population, huge reserves of natural resources, and the largest supply of fresh water in the world. Global Warming probably affects us less than most other countries...except for our arctic tundra eco system and the livelihood of the Innu. I'll callously say that this is a small impact per capita, although the impact felt by the Innu is huge.
Our datacentre has ~ 500 Solaris / HP-UX / AIX boxen, and ~ 1000 Windows servers.
15 minute change window to apply patch, another 15 minutes to reboot successfully and come back online. Multiply 30 min x 1500 = 45,000 minutes, or 750 hours. But we only have one weekly change window, Sunday mornings from 2-6am. Assuming finite number of staff, contingency (there's always going to be some problems), etc... we started last September. We might just make the deadline.
So yes, I think its a bit of a problem. There's also the unspoken assumption that people learned their lessons during Y2k and have sufficient date handling logic to address changes to DST...nothing hard coded in the underlying applications.
We would have to share joint custody over Pamela Anderson though -- born in Canada, but Made in the USA(tm).
My wife worked for a wholesale landscaping company. They had a new invoice and inventory management system installed, and staff went on training. At the end of the course, the owner of the business asked how does he manually create an invoice without drawing down from the inventory...short answer was you couldn't, at least without adding inventory at the same time. He was livid but didn't explain why. My wife dug deeper afterwards and learned that the business probably made 20-40% of its revenue through fictitious invoicing... send small,
Ever since, i've removed all of my bills from automatic payment... i manually pay ever bill each month. Too much opportunity to accidentally pay for something you didn't receive, and good luck getting your money back after the fact!
If you don't like team chat in a FPS, please for the love of god don't start a Horde character in World of Warcraft -- you'll become suicidal after a brief 5 min exposure to Barrens Chat.
On the other hand, if you survive due to copious amounts of Zoloft, you can wear this shirt as a badge of honour!
This was the Liberal party of the Ontario Provincial Parliament. They also did it just before the Christmas break, to minimise debate on the subject when people were preoccupied with the holidays.
I am a bit disappointed in the federal government now though...the Conservatives aren't changing the policies of the previous Liberals in terms of media consolidation and copyright law. The more things change, the more they stay the same. We have more 3rd parties in Canadian politics than the US, but they serve more to offset the balance of power and have no real chance at governing (NDP, Greens, Bloc Quebecois).
How long it is until MS fixes this loophole is anybodies guess, but as of right now, it works.
I'm guessing never. Here's why -- an upgrade CD boot install of the 30 day trial version will never have to connect to the net. You can then follow these instructions to activate a 100% valid Windows Vista key.
So unless Microsoft issues a patch, which refers to the registry which looks up a stored parameter of the original XP key, and disables your working copy of Vista AFTER its fully installed, there is no 'fix' for this.
I'm guessing this work around was deliberately installed on purpose by Microsoft ANYWAYS, since down the road lots of people will be opening support calls having _lost_ the original XP media (or OEM partition...what a stupid solution) and the call centres will need a solution. If you figure MS printed several million boxes w/ CDs with this 30 day trial to start, there's enough copies of this work around in the wild to require indefinite support.
I agree midnight madness = retarded, a sign of a sick consumerist culture. But as a barometer of cultural significance, its worthy of tracking. Here in Toronto, i distinctly remember numerous events for Win95, 98, and XP releases. I didn't even realise Vista was launching this week until I read a slashdot article...and I work in IT.
Microsoft would be foolish to surrender Windows PC gaming. Frankly at this point its one of the few reasons why Windows PCs remain superior to Macs for home use -- kill this purpose off, and they've effectively destroyed the home market.
So yes Microsoft wants more people to game on the 360 than the PC, but they won't orphan the PC yet... there's increasingly less differentiators between a MC and beige box.