I just visited as of 22:28 pdt saturday (05:28 gmt sunday) and it was clear as possible.
I was hoping they'd pulled another stunt, perhaps with iStuff adverts above the judgment, however not when currently viewing it with Firefox 15.0.1 on Ubuntu 10.04 from Canada.
And, off of the front page was a link with the entirely sufficient (IMHO) text (viewable with slight scrolling):
On 25 October 2012, Apple Inc. published a statement on its UK website in relation to Samsung's Galaxy tablet computers. That statement was inaccurate and did not comply with the order of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. The correct statement is at Samsung/Apple UK judgement.
Oh crap, is that the scrolling everyone's talking about? Just read one of TFAs and it appears so. I thought the decision itself was what required scrolling. Meh, I hate Apple, but cannot get too upset about this.
Tried it with & without NoScript, both times text was centred horizontally & vertically within the page.
So, unsure if it's been changed (again) but I'm mildly disappointed - they appear to have done what was required without any fooling around.
The Right seem to live in this strange world, where you can change reality by wishing hard enough, or lying hard enough, or by denying evidence and truth hard enough.
A bit like how Communists and their whacked-out theories about how reality could be changed by willing it so, e.g. the New Soviet Man.
And a bit like left-wing crazies in academic literary circles with postmodernism; where they deny objective reality, and consider science and reason to be something not to be trusted, because it's invented by powerful people to keep the little man down.
So what we're really seeing, is right-wing postmodernism; where the FOX crowd deny objective reality, because they see rationality, science and evidence-based-anything as a liberal left-wing plot to repress and hold down Galtian supermen such as themselves.
In a nutshell, the modern American Right is losing credibility, because enough of them are so split from reality, that they think that simply making shit up, denying the truth, and being stupid will bend the world to their will. Serious right-wing thinkers like William Buckley would have been appalled by the intellectual and moral rot.
It's tragic and bizarre, but nobody's laughing, because they're dangerous and get into power often enough to cause serious damage, like expensive and pointless wars, massive environmental damage, and yawning inequality.
While I agree with everything you've said, I must point out that in stories that might touch on climate change, the craziness appears to be hemorrhaging from everywhere. Seeing people posting to a tech oriented site to dismiss scientists is truly depressing. (Note, I'm not vouching for the quality of that particular post that begat the thread, just commenting on the ridiculous nature of *some* of the comments - a surprisingly large number of comments).
I remember reading something on Slashdot *years* ago by someone (MBone?) that worked on Viking and still had some documents / protocol info in his garage.
Anyone who did work on Viking landers, I'd love to read what you think about this impending announcement.
Feel free to add any tales / memories that might be relevant; I'm sure there are some fascinating stories that could be told from a real space nerd.
Dammit, I wish I could find the original post referred to in my first line...
In Vancouver, a medium-sized city with about 2 million in surrounding area, there was exactly one person show up, and he was the single most boring person in Vancouver.
Shitty "party".
What's the population of St Petersburg? Fuck, it appears there are about 250,000 people in St Petersburg, 600,000 in Vancouver. Lame...
The court gave Apple a reasonable amount of rope and they hung themselves with it. If they had simply printed the required text who would have noticed? Instead they now have a publicity problem on their hands.
s/hung/hanged/
A pet peeve that I've encountered a lot this Hallowe'en season. That's all...
when reading this, my brain produces a level of gamma waves — those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory — never before reported in neuroscience!
When reading this, my brain produces a level of gamma rays — "ouch!"
I like a 4:3 monitor myself, but I'm not sure how it would translate to a laptop.
I'm thinking they'd make the keyboard more narrow so as to not expand the other dimension, or the laptop would become more square making most laptop bags useless. I'm already less than thrilled with laptop keyboards...
But I do wish there were more desktop monitors at 4:3.
I don't know. If I were Russia, I'd simply deny all knowledge of the guy while doing my damnedest to keep him alive. Arresting him on some kind of charges comes to mind.
If I were Georgia, I'd publish his picture, make it a huge deal, then make sure the whole world found out he died in order to discourage new recruits.
If I were Russia, I wouldn't mind at all if he died - so he cannot expose any (more) secrets about his handlers, etc.
I certainly might. In which case I'd chuck the phone into the bar's lost and found box and leave. I would not take something that had been found at the bar, that I knew was not mine, and that I knew somebody was really trying to get back, with me to my other job and have somebody lie about where I -- and their phone that I had taken with me -- was.
You would?
If I found something very valuable, I'd keep it with me so I could ensure it got to the rightful owner and not get stolen from the lost & found, as it may get pinned on me. Especially by such a pushy owner.
And, he didn't have somebody lie, the somebody did that because of the threatening behaviour of the Google guy.
So the bartenders friend doesn't like the Google employees tone so, instead of giving the owners their phone back and ending this situation, he sends him on a wild goose chase. Now replace Google with yourself and I'm sure you wouldn't find the goose chase necessary. In fact you'd probably think something fishy was going on.
If I were Google I might think something fishy were going on, but silly me with my super power called "introspection" I might think, "maybe I shouldn't have called back 10 times, making demands & threats. Maybe I should've said thanks and arranged the meeting."
Catching flies with honey instead of vinegar, etc.
Shitty bar. Guy loses something, it instantly becomes bartender's property? No lost and found box? No turning over to the police, or trying to find the owner? It's a bar after all, so, I expect people losing/forgetting stuff is a frequent occurence.
No wonder the guy didn't want the publicity and tried to spin it. As a bartender he's done.
Interesting how you learned to write without learning to read.
Bartender felt "harassed" so didn't stick around work for what he seemed to think would be a confrontational meeting.
Seriously? If it were your normal phone with photos of your family, and the person who found it took off -- with your phone, that you owned, would that be considered reasonable?
Forget everything about it being "unreleased". That is moot as hell. There's no provision of ethics that an object being "really really cool" gives you a different standard when it comes to returning lost property.
If I found a phone, had a friend contact the owner, then *pulls number from arse* a dozen calls came back about it instead of, "thanks, I'll be right there", I might question the sanity of the owner.
If the owner then started making demands on me, I'd be right pissed off. Wouldn't feel bad at all about going out to do something else if I'd been ordered to stay put or interrogated when trying to locate the owner.
I had to edit this down because of slashcode complaints of "junk characters"
MEASUREMENTS OR REPORTS OF TSUNAMI WAVE ACTIVITY
REPORTS OF 4FT OSCILLATIONS CONTINUING AT WAILOA HARBOR NEAR HILO
ON THE BIG ISLAND
4 feet is enough to turn your nap on the beach into a bad day.
I think you're reinforcing my point - don't ignore tsunami warnings, they're not fear mongering, and even for the 7.1 magnitude quake, no one at the warning centre was setting their hair on fire.
I highly suggest you read the article since the summary is highly edited to make Google look bad. Example: Google didn't send a private investigator. It sent a single Google employee who was jerked around by the bartender and his friend because they wanted to cling to their powertrip.
Bad Luck Google: Sends a guy to pick up a lost phone. Gets screwed around by the people who found it. Still offers a free phone to the guy. Gets called evil by the Internet.
Not quite how I read it. The guy that came to pick up the phone sent a flood of calls to bartender's teck-savvy friend (who'd contacted Google on his behalf). Bartender felt "harassed" so didn't stick around work for what he seemed to think would be a confrontational meeting.
Indeed, Google rep was described as pushy and seemed to threaten the other employee and maybe even the bar with some kind of charges, although the bartender was not resisting the return of the phone. Colleague that dealt with the rep didn't like being threatened and sent rep on "wild goose chase" to police station.
Seemed to me that Google's security team could've done a bit better job on the recovery had they used a bit less bluster and a bit more appreciation (aka people skills).
Now, I'm not sure how it worked out that the bartender, although offered a free phone to keep quiet, still seems to have provided photos to accompany the story. Should've taken the free phone and shut up about it. I believe the story contained a disclaimer about paying for the photos.
Fair enough, but they have not been "fearmongering". Plus it's better to have warnings that don't pan out than no warnings at all.
To quote one of the warnings, for a 7.1 magnitude from Queen Charlottes / Haida Gwai (emphasis added):
TSUNAMI INFORMATION STATEMENT NUMBER 1 NWS PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER EWA BEACH HI 521 PM HST SAT OCT 27 2012
TO - CIVIL DEFENSE IN THE STATE OF HAWAII
SUBJECT - TSUNAMI INFORMATION STATEMENT THIS STATEMENT IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY. NO ACTION REQUIRED.
AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS
ORIGIN TIME - 0504 PM HST 27 OCT 2012
COORDINATES - 52.9 NORTH 131.9 WEST
LOCATION - QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS REGION MAGNITUDE - 7.1 MOMENT
EVALUATION
BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA A DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS
NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII. REPEAT. A
DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO
TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII.
THIS WILL BE THE ONLY STATEMENT ISSUED FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS ADDITIONAL DATA ARE RECEIVED.
Of course, that didn't stop anyone from fearmongering and once more tens of thousands were evacuated needlessly - ensuring that hundreds or thousands won't follow evacuation orders when a real tsunami is coming.
And they'd be idiots for ignoring a tsunami warning.
It is about time to stop using logarithmic scales for earthquakes. A 7.7 isn't anywhere near as bad as a 9.0 or a 9.2 that created the tsunamis of Japan iand Indonesia respectively.
It's not the logarithmic nature of the scale that's an issue, but the type of earthquake. A subduction quake causes more water displacement, hence greater tsunami, for a given magnitude. This was not a subduction quake, but a parallel slipping.
if tell them to evacuate hundreds of times because of waves barely reaching the height of an average humans knee. (The 1m height reported is from peak to the lowest point - and the lowest point was 2 feet below normal sealevel.)
I've told you eleventeen trillion times not to exaggerate. I don't believe there's been a tsunami warning since the Japan quake.
The only sane course of action if you're somewhere in the pacific or indian ocean and hear a tsunami warning, is to tell people to go and fuck off. Stop crying wolf!
That's an insanely stupid course of action. You're quite welcome to follow it however.
Contact Metrotown and tell them that, if you're nearby you may boycott them, if you're "away", you've now heard of them and it's not good what you've heard.
General Inquiries
For general shopping centre inquiries including requests for donations or mall participation in community events call 604.438.4715 or email us at: info@metropolisatmetrotown.com
Others have made a good case for simply moving on, but another thought would be to move to another provider, then notify them via certified letter why you're moving and informing them that if/when the hole is exploited (and reiterate that you will not exploit it yourself), then the certified letter will be shared with the legal teams of those customers who have suffered damages.
i.e. "Here's your official notice of a potential exploit, don't say you weren't warned."
It won't provide preemptive help for their other customers but may make their damages somewhat recoverable through legal means.
Marketing isn't about promoting the things you personally like, it's about promoting the things your potential users like. Windows and Apple users don't care about privacy, freedom, security or ownership. Either convince them of the importance of those issues before pushing Linux or promote the Linux features they do care about (i.e. "Linux is free and has the best tools for downloading the latest movies").
I look at marketing more as promoting not what you think your potential users like, but simply what you have to offer.
Now to be successful, there should be significant overlap between those.
This story makes a great example, as this is a Windows 8 event and MS has the Sisyphean task of marketing TIFKAM (the interface formerly known as Metro) - certainly not what the users want (nor have been asking for).
Oh, and to add another thing, ICBC (Insurance Corp of BC) is, what's the term, a Crown Corp (owned by government).
While no one will claim to love it, nor any insurance company, and horror stories are out there, because they're the insurer of *all* BC drivers, they tend to find it useless to go to court to determine fault - hence the no fault insurance.
Saves a fortune on lawyers. Plus, profits are routinely put into things like research (the best info on child car seats apparently came from their research), or - they pay for high crash intersections to be redesigned to reduce crashes - saves them money in the long run. They've even been known to reduce rates when there's a year with excess profits (probably coincides with an election year, but hey).
And, despite some claims, it is not more expensive than other provinces where there is only private insurers.
Healthcare would be a hell of a lot cheaper if the government stayed the hell out of it.
From a Canadian perspective, couldn't disagree more. It's as close to a unanimously held opinion up here as one could hope to find, except maybe "Go Team Canada - win gold at the Olympic Men's Hockey".
i.e. Provincial governments buy drugs in bulk, enabling discount prices (on generic drugs vs brand name), enabling citizens to receive the savings.
Or, I pay $200 / m for medical insurance for two of us, which allows us to visit doctors or specialists for "free" as much as needed (except dentists).
While I imagine the few hypochondriacs out there abuse it, no one goes without treatment, making a healthier population and lower emergency room costs as minor issues don't fester into emergencies.
Slashdot Mirror
I just visited as of 22:28 pdt saturday (05:28 gmt sunday) and it was clear as possible.
I was hoping they'd pulled another stunt, perhaps with iStuff adverts above the judgment, however not when currently viewing it with Firefox 15.0.1 on Ubuntu 10.04 from Canada.
And, off of the front page was a link with the entirely sufficient (IMHO) text (viewable with slight scrolling):
Oh crap, is that the scrolling everyone's talking about? Just read one of TFAs and it appears so. I thought the decision itself was what required scrolling. Meh, I hate Apple, but cannot get too upset about this.
Tried it with & without NoScript, both times text was centred horizontally & vertically within the page.
So, unsure if it's been changed (again) but I'm mildly disappointed - they appear to have done what was required without any fooling around.
*shrug*
The Right seem to live in this strange world, where you can change reality by wishing hard enough, or lying hard enough, or by denying evidence and truth hard enough.
A bit like how Communists and their whacked-out theories about how reality could be changed by willing it so, e.g. the New Soviet Man.
And a bit like left-wing crazies in academic literary circles with postmodernism; where they deny objective reality, and consider science and reason to be something not to be trusted, because it's invented by powerful people to keep the little man down.
So what we're really seeing, is right-wing postmodernism; where the FOX crowd deny objective reality, because they see rationality, science and evidence-based-anything as a liberal left-wing plot to repress and hold down Galtian supermen such as themselves.
In a nutshell, the modern American Right is losing credibility, because enough of them are so split from reality, that they think that simply making shit up, denying the truth, and being stupid will bend the world to their will. Serious right-wing thinkers like William Buckley would have been appalled by the intellectual and moral rot.
It's tragic and bizarre, but nobody's laughing, because they're dangerous and get into power often enough to cause serious damage, like expensive and pointless wars, massive environmental damage, and yawning inequality.
While I agree with everything you've said, I must point out that in stories that might touch on climate change, the craziness appears to be hemorrhaging from everywhere. Seeing people posting to a tech oriented site to dismiss scientists is truly depressing. (Note, I'm not vouching for the quality of that particular post that begat the thread, just commenting on the ridiculous nature of *some* of the comments - a surprisingly large number of comments).
Here's the original post: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=278121&cid=20338487
Thank you!
That made for an interesting read, again. Threads like that are what make (made?) Slashdot such a great web site.
Now to self-flagellate for not finding that myself.
I remember reading something on Slashdot *years* ago by someone (MBone?) that worked on Viking and still had some documents / protocol info in his garage.
Anyone who did work on Viking landers, I'd love to read what you think about this impending announcement.
Feel free to add any tales / memories that might be relevant; I'm sure there are some fascinating stories that could be told from a real space nerd.
Dammit, I wish I could find the original post referred to in my first line...
Cheers
But - could the commenter make an argument that this is some form of illegal electronic surveillance?
I don't imagine that argument would hold much water.
It would be legal in that it's been mandated by a court, after all.
And, if the commenter were the juror, it would by doubly hard to argue that they should be allowed to post when they agreed to sequestration.
In Vancouver, a medium-sized city with about 2 million in surrounding area, there was exactly one person show up, and he was the single most boring person in Vancouver.
Shitty "party".
What's the population of St Petersburg? Fuck, it appears there are about 250,000 people in St Petersburg, 600,000 in Vancouver. Lame...
Agree completely, but 1 pedantic point:
The court gave Apple a reasonable amount of rope and they hung themselves with it. If they had simply printed the required text who would have noticed? Instead they now have a publicity problem on their hands.
s/hung/hanged/
A pet peeve that I've encountered a lot this Hallowe'en season. That's all...
when reading this, my brain produces a level of gamma waves — those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory — never before reported in neuroscience!
When reading this, my brain produces a level of gamma rays — "ouch!"
I don't really have a problem if they're investigating whether a juror made the posting.
Assuming that, if the poster was not a juror, they will retain their anonymity.
The "release the name" isn't "print it in the newspaper", it's released to the court, which won't release it further... will it?
I like a 4:3 monitor myself, but I'm not sure how it would translate to a laptop.
I'm thinking they'd make the keyboard more narrow so as to not expand the other dimension, or the laptop would become more square making most laptop bags useless. I'm already less than thrilled with laptop keyboards...
But I do wish there were more desktop monitors at 4:3.
I don't know. If I were Russia, I'd simply deny all knowledge of the guy while doing my damnedest to keep him alive. Arresting him on some kind of charges comes to mind.
If I were Georgia, I'd publish his picture, make it a huge deal, then make sure the whole world found out he died in order to discourage new recruits.
If I were Russia, I wouldn't mind at all if he died - so he cannot expose any (more) secrets about his handlers, etc.
I certainly might. In which case I'd chuck the phone into the bar's lost and found box and leave. I would not take something that had been found at the bar, that I knew was not mine, and that I knew somebody was really trying to get back, with me to my other job and have somebody lie about where I -- and their phone that I had taken with me -- was.
You would?
If I found something very valuable, I'd keep it with me so I could ensure it got to the rightful owner and not get stolen from the lost & found, as it may get pinned on me. Especially by such a pushy owner.
And, he didn't have somebody lie, the somebody did that because of the threatening behaviour of the Google guy.
So the bartenders friend doesn't like the Google employees tone so, instead of giving the owners their phone back and ending this situation, he sends him on a wild goose chase. Now replace Google with yourself and I'm sure you wouldn't find the goose chase necessary. In fact you'd probably think something fishy was going on.
If I were Google I might think something fishy were going on, but silly me with my super power called "introspection" I might think, "maybe I shouldn't have called back 10 times, making demands & threats. Maybe I should've said thanks and arranged the meeting."
Catching flies with honey instead of vinegar, etc.
Shitty bar. Guy loses something, it instantly becomes bartender's property? No lost and found box? No turning over to the police, or trying to find the owner? It's a bar after all, so, I expect people losing/forgetting stuff is a frequent occurence.
No wonder the guy didn't want the publicity and tried to spin it. As a bartender he's done.
Interesting how you learned to write without learning to read.
Bartender felt "harassed" so didn't stick around work for what he seemed to think would be a confrontational meeting.
Seriously? If it were your normal phone with photos of your family, and the person who found it took off -- with your phone, that you owned, would that be considered reasonable?
Forget everything about it being "unreleased". That is moot as hell. There's no provision of ethics that an object being "really really cool" gives you a different standard when it comes to returning lost property.
If I found a phone, had a friend contact the owner, then *pulls number from arse* a dozen calls came back about it instead of, "thanks, I'll be right there", I might question the sanity of the owner.
If the owner then started making demands on me, I'd be right pissed off. Wouldn't feel bad at all about going out to do something else if I'd been ordered to stay put or interrogated when trying to locate the owner.
You wouldn't?!?
Look harder:
I had to edit this down because of slashcode complaints of "junk characters"
MEASUREMENTS OR REPORTS OF TSUNAMI WAVE ACTIVITY
REPORTS OF 4FT OSCILLATIONS CONTINUING AT WAILOA HARBOR NEAR HILO
ON THE BIG ISLAND
4 feet is enough to turn your nap on the beach into a bad day.
I think you're reinforcing my point - don't ignore tsunami warnings, they're not fear mongering, and even for the 7.1 magnitude quake, no one at the warning centre was setting their hair on fire.
Um, look harder?
I highly suggest you read the article since the summary is highly edited to make Google look bad. Example: Google didn't send a private investigator. It sent a single Google employee who was jerked around by the bartender and his friend because they wanted to cling to their powertrip.
Bad Luck Google: Sends a guy to pick up a lost phone. Gets screwed around by the people who found it. Still offers a free phone to the guy. Gets called evil by the Internet.
Not quite how I read it. The guy that came to pick up the phone sent a flood of calls to bartender's teck-savvy friend (who'd contacted Google on his behalf). Bartender felt "harassed" so didn't stick around work for what he seemed to think would be a confrontational meeting.
Indeed, Google rep was described as pushy and seemed to threaten the other employee and maybe even the bar with some kind of charges, although the bartender was not resisting the return of the phone. Colleague that dealt with the rep didn't like being threatened and sent rep on "wild goose chase" to police station.
Seemed to me that Google's security team could've done a bit better job on the recovery had they used a bit less bluster and a bit more appreciation (aka people skills).
Now, I'm not sure how it worked out that the bartender, although offered a free phone to keep quiet, still seems to have provided photos to accompany the story. Should've taken the free phone and shut up about it. I believe the story contained a disclaimer about paying for the photos.
There have been 5 tsunami warnings of some description stemming from 5 different earthquakes in the pacific area within the last 30 days alone.
http://ptwc.weather.gov/
Fair enough, but they have not been "fearmongering". Plus it's better to have warnings that don't pan out than no warnings at all.
To quote one of the warnings, for a 7.1 magnitude from Queen Charlottes / Haida Gwai (emphasis added):
Of course, that didn't stop anyone from fearmongering and once more tens of thousands were evacuated needlessly - ensuring that hundreds or thousands won't follow evacuation orders when a real tsunami is coming.
And they'd be idiots for ignoring a tsunami warning.
It is about time to stop using logarithmic scales for earthquakes. A 7.7 isn't anywhere near as bad as a 9.0 or a 9.2 that created the tsunamis of Japan iand Indonesia respectively.
It's not the logarithmic nature of the scale that's an issue, but the type of earthquake. A subduction quake causes more water displacement, hence greater tsunami, for a given magnitude. This was not a subduction quake, but a parallel slipping.
if tell them to evacuate hundreds of times because of waves barely reaching the height of an average humans knee. (The 1m height reported is from peak to the lowest point - and the lowest point was 2 feet below normal sealevel.)
I've told you eleventeen trillion times not to exaggerate. I don't believe there's been a tsunami warning since the Japan quake.
The only sane course of action if you're somewhere in the pacific or indian ocean and hear a tsunami warning, is to tell people to go and fuck off. Stop crying wolf!
That's an insanely stupid course of action. You're quite welcome to follow it however.
Contact Metrotown and tell them that, if you're nearby you may boycott them, if you're "away", you've now heard of them and it's not good what you've heard.
Others have made a good case for simply moving on, but another thought would be to move to another provider, then notify them via certified letter why you're moving and informing them that if/when the hole is exploited (and reiterate that you will not exploit it yourself), then the certified letter will be shared with the legal teams of those customers who have suffered damages.
i.e. "Here's your official notice of a potential exploit, don't say you weren't warned."
It won't provide preemptive help for their other customers but may make their damages somewhat recoverable through legal means.
Marketing isn't about promoting the things you personally like, it's about promoting the things your potential users like.
Windows and Apple users don't care about privacy, freedom, security or ownership. Either convince them of the importance of those issues before pushing Linux or promote the Linux features they do care about (i.e. "Linux is free and has the best tools for downloading the latest movies").
I look at marketing more as promoting not what you think your potential users like, but simply what you have to offer.
Now to be successful, there should be significant overlap between those.
This story makes a great example, as this is a Windows 8 event and MS has the Sisyphean task of marketing TIFKAM (the interface formerly known as Metro) - certainly not what the users want (nor have been asking for).
Wetsuit? Check!
Tiny board and fin? Check!
Tiny sail? Check!
Windsurfing in 40mph wind? Priceless.
Bring on FrankenSandy!
Cost to fly US Coast Guard HH-60 Jayhawk - about $4000 / hr - not so priceless.
--
Can I make a suggestion that doesn't involve violence, or is this the wrong crowd for that?
Wrong crowd. Can you cost an Apache gun ship or something please?
Oh, and to add another thing, ICBC (Insurance Corp of BC) is, what's the term, a Crown Corp (owned by government).
While no one will claim to love it, nor any insurance company, and horror stories are out there, because they're the insurer of *all* BC drivers, they tend to find it useless to go to court to determine fault - hence the no fault insurance.
Saves a fortune on lawyers. Plus, profits are routinely put into things like research (the best info on child car seats apparently came from their research), or - they pay for high crash intersections to be redesigned to reduce crashes - saves them money in the long run. They've even been known to reduce rates when there's a year with excess profits (probably coincides with an election year, but hey).
And, despite some claims, it is not more expensive than other provinces where there is only private insurers.
I was with you right up until this:
Healthcare would be a hell of a lot cheaper if the government stayed the hell out of it.
From a Canadian perspective, couldn't disagree more. It's as close to a unanimously held opinion up here as one could hope to find, except maybe "Go Team Canada - win gold at the Olympic Men's Hockey".
i.e. Provincial governments buy drugs in bulk, enabling discount prices (on generic drugs vs brand name), enabling citizens to receive the savings.
Or, I pay $200 / m for medical insurance for two of us, which allows us to visit doctors or specialists for "free" as much as needed (except dentists).
While I imagine the few hypochondriacs out there abuse it, no one goes without treatment, making a healthier population and lower emergency room costs as minor issues don't fester into emergencies.