Freedom of Speech? Canda has a wonderful section in its criminal code prohibiting willful promotion of hatred against identifiable groups (s. 319(2)) http://www.hrcr.org/safrica/limitations/r_keegstra.html for an example.
The link you provide is specifically about a high school teacher who clearly expressed his anti-semitic views to his students; I'm not sure what you are suggesting.. it is a good thing for him to be allowed to do so?
Just Google on "willful promotion of hatred" and "Canada" for examples on how this statute is being used. If I were to utter the phrase "Slashdot readers really need to get a life and maybe a girlfriend". That theoretically could fall under the Criminal Code:).
That is a bit of a cop out. You have not provided specific examples. The law in question (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/c-46/42686.html) specifically defines "identifiable groups":
Definition of "identifiable group"
(4) In this section, "identifiable group" means any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.
So, how is your statement illegal? Slashdot readers are not an identifiable group.
The biggest concern over this law recently was due to the addition of "sexual orientation". This upset the Religious Right(TM), since they are no longer allowed to legally preach hatred of gays and lesbians.
But even this is deceptive because if you built televisions specifically for 30 frames per second, you could simply reformulate the glow on the screen to last an extra 1/60th of a second longer. But perhaps this is (a) hard to do...
AFAIK, that was it exactly.. way back when the NTSC standard was set technology was appearantly not good enough to reliably refresh a 480 line image 60 times per second. Refreshing it only 30 times per second causes flicker, which is where this idea of interlacing reducing flicker comes from. (It is not an entirely accurate idea, as you point out).
If this is the same attitude that we see in Canada, I think you misunderstand -- people refer to THEMSELVES as being of their home country.. cultural differences are not (depending on where you are) perceieved to be undesirable, and such people are free to practice their culture.
This would be as oppposed to the American "melting pot" approach, where you are expected to quickly assimilate into the mainstream and become "American".
Looks like Slashcode ate your (X)HTML, but or just /> (with no closing tag) are both satisfactory.
However, since Slashdot declares its' pages as HTML 3.2 (I'm surprised they even do it at all; cehck the source), attempting to make it XHTML compliant is unfortunately totally pointless.
Mozilla/Firefox however appears to ignore all of this and write to the local drive and install just fine. Now I am not 100% sure if this is Mozilla or Windows causing this behavior to occur as I have not tested it enough, but it happens.
It's Windows. If any program could just go ahead and write to areas of the hard disk it is not allowed to by NTFS permissions, Windows would be so shockingly insecure it isn't even funny.
What you might be finding is that Firefox can be installed a bit differently; if you download the.zip you can unzip it anywhere and run it; Firefox will not mess around with other directories of the system.
Perhaps Windows has a NTFS permission like the 'noexec' filesystem mount in *NIX?
That's nothing. I can't even get at most of the icons on my desktop because they've run off the edge. (Text obscured to protect the guilty.)
My original plan was to download stuff to the desktop and then sort it and store it (because my old download directory, C:\down, grew to several gigabytes in size and was impossible to find anything in).
Eh? eDonkey enforces sharing -- you are automatically throttled to AT LEAST a 4:1 download/share ratio.. you can't disable sharing.. This is not Kazaa.
And there are no elitists who refuse you entry unless you have 50GB worth of files. (Chicken and egg, but nevermind that..)
It will refuse the section with the anti-counterfitting dot pattern (that is how a banknote is recognized; it is the same on many banknotes around the work).
Personally, I think the inclusion of a full VGA resolution screen is over-rated.
On a screen that is 10-15cm diagonal (rough estimate, I haven't seen the specs, but a larger PDA would be uncomfortable), the text is going to be too small to comfortably read -- in fact, the reveiw mentions that the PDA uses a special larger font so it is readable.
I'm happy with my B&W Palm m105 (160x160 screen), but I'd imagine a 320x240 colour screen should be good enough for most purposes.
I think the confusion comes about because people don't understand that the TV and VCR have seperate tuners; they tune the television to the channel they want to record and then don't understand why it doesn't happen.
For the techno-illiterate, this could be extremely confusing. I expect the grandparent meant that his grandparents would change the TV to the channel they wanted to record. (Because assuming that the VCR will magically figure out itself what channel you want without even turning on the TV is ridiculous.)
apart from the rather worrying idea of database theory being taught by getting students to create access databases
Eh? How is this different from using Filemaker for the same thing? They both completely obfuscate the concept of database theory with pretty clicky things..
Yes. You can just dump the stream with mplayer. However, I imagine you are looking to convert it to DVD-Audio or something so that you can play it on your stereo system. Here is the best way I can think of: (Windows)
1. Dump the stream (however you wish). It is important that you dump the raw stream and not record the audio produced by it (Total Recorder is out). Mplayer will do this.
2. Install Avisynth (http://www.avisynth.org).
3. Create a script like so: (save as h2g2.avs or the like)
DirectShowSource("h2g2file.wma")
Playing this back in a AVI player will be the same as an AVI without video, with 5.1ch WAV audio (it frameserves in real-time).
4. Install Besweet and Besweet GUI.
5. Load the AVS file into Besweet GUI.
6. Encode to 5.1ch AC3 or OGG or whatever you wish.
Slashdot Mirror
That is a bit of a cop out. You have not provided specific examples. The law in question (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/c-46/42686.html) specifically defines "identifiable groups":
Definition of "identifiable group" (4) In this section, "identifiable group" means any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.
So, how is your statement illegal? Slashdot readers are not an identifiable group.
The biggest concern over this law recently was due to the addition of "sexual orientation". This upset the Religious Right(TM), since they are no longer allowed to legally preach hatred of gays and lesbians.
Squish?
Why are the conversions even necessary? Is it totally impossible for an American company to build something in metric?
This would be as oppposed to the American "melting pot" approach, where you are expected to quickly assimilate into the mainstream and become "American".
Well, here in Canada at least, Pepsi Canada owns 7up Canada.
I doubt this practice is widespread -- is this a small, private college or something?
I mean, it makes it virtually a requirement for students to own computers.
However, since Slashdot declares its' pages as HTML 3.2 (I'm surprised they even do it at all; cehck the source), attempting to make it XHTML compliant is unfortunately totally pointless.
It's Windows. If any program could just go ahead and write to areas of the hard disk it is not allowed to by NTFS permissions, Windows would be so shockingly insecure it isn't even funny.
What you might be finding is that Firefox can be installed a bit differently; if you download the .zip you can unzip it anywhere and run it; Firefox will not mess around with other directories of the system.
Perhaps Windows has a NTFS permission like the 'noexec' filesystem mount in *NIX?
The Whitby, ON AMC runs 1st run movies. (At approximately TWICE the cost of the nearby Cineplex Odeon.. $12.50 per adult ticket! But nevermind that..)
My original plan was to download stuff to the desktop and then sort it and store it (because my old download directory, C:\down, grew to several gigabytes in size and was impossible to find anything in).
It didn't turn out as I had planned.
The people thirty seconds behind you are getting green lights all the way.
This sort of thing, by the way, actually prompted Elections Canada to put an FAQ on their website about ballot eating..
And there are no elitists who refuse you entry unless you have 50GB worth of files. (Chicken and egg, but nevermind that..)
Photoshop might refuse to output the image though, and a printer will anti-counterfitting technology will refuse it, though..
It will refuse the section with the anti-counterfitting dot pattern (that is how a banknote is recognized; it is the same on many banknotes around the work).
On a screen that is 10-15cm diagonal (rough estimate, I haven't seen the specs, but a larger PDA would be uncomfortable), the text is going to be too small to comfortably read -- in fact, the reveiw mentions that the PDA uses a special larger font so it is readable.
I'm happy with my B&W Palm m105 (160x160 screen), but I'd imagine a 320x240 colour screen should be good enough for most purposes.
The joke is still funny though; don't ruin it.
I think the confusion comes about because people don't understand that the TV and VCR have seperate tuners; they tune the television to the channel they want to record and then don't understand why it doesn't happen.
For the techno-illiterate, this could be extremely confusing. I expect the grandparent meant that his grandparents would change the TV to the channel they wanted to record. (Because assuming that the VCR will magically figure out itself what channel you want without even turning on the TV is ridiculous.)
The GTK 1 libraries are always included with Linux distributions (hell, the GIMP was GTK 1 until version 2).
dvd::rip
It would be extremely difficult for them to claim that removing Windows Media Player means removing DirectShow...
Anyway, I don't see why anyone would want it gone.. there is nothing proprietary about it; anyone can write a media player applications that uses it.
1. Dump the stream (however you wish). It is important that you dump the raw stream and not record the audio produced by it (Total Recorder is out). Mplayer will do this.
2. Install Avisynth (http://www.avisynth.org).
3. Create a script like so: (save as h2g2.avs or the like)
DirectShowSource("h2g2file.wma")
Playing this back in a AVI player will be the same as an AVI without video, with 5.1ch WAV audio (it frameserves in real-time). 4. Install Besweet and Besweet GUI.
5. Load the AVS file into Besweet GUI.
6. Encode to 5.1ch AC3 or OGG or whatever you wish.
Enjoy!
Sorry, it's a little roundabout..