I don't care at all if Google "tracks my searches," since they're tracking most of my web habits anyhow via all their cleverness and ad networks. There's no escaping that. But I don't need to hand them a real-world identity to connect all that stuff to, or an easy way to connect me-on-one-machine with me-on-another.
You do realize that they don't need you to have a Google account to get your real-world identity and link it to multiple machines, right? They just need a few people you know to have Google accounts. The rest is statistics (unless you keep your site browsing siloed between computers).
I got invited by one of the devs -- and sent out invites to myself when the invite mechanism was turned on (wow! I got *3* invite vouchers!). Now I wish I'd created more addresses back then:D
I can understand the earlier developments relating to this whole incident being on Slashdot. There was the technological aspect to it. But at this point, this is purely political wrangling. There's no technology involved here. There's no science involved here. There's no mathematics involved here. Just realpolitik.
The "technological" angle is really the issue of the US government sub-contracting technological work, and giving those people no legal protections that you'd expect for someone working for the government. This is something that everyone in the tech field should think seriously about when considering doing government contract work.
The Surface 2 is basically sold out everywhere. Whether that's because sales are amazing, or they underestimated demand, or a little of both, I can't say. I got one for myself this Christmas. It's a really great tablet. Only downside I see is lack of apps, but it has enough apps to get everything done.
It really only needs one app: an Android emulator:)
Actually, there's an interesting parallel between GPL'd code and patents. Both require the process to be public, and both assert restrictions on how those other than the original authors can use the information. In both cases, you're saying "I want the information to be readily available, but I'm putting some limitations on how this can be used, to protect the creators."
The problem with this is that unlike patents, the GPL doesn't have a sunset clause; this means that the information is tied to the will of the creators in perpetuity.
BSD on the other hand is more free in that it encourages innovation -- "what I've created is mine, what you build on it is yours, if you do build on it, give me credit for the part I did and don't plagiarize." Compared to this, GPL is "what I've created is mine, what you build on it must also be mine and must be distributed by my rules."
So, GPL is protective -- it is trying to protect the commons against people innovating something based on the commons and then using it to outcompete other code that stays in the commons. In may situations, this is worthwhile; it protects against predators. BSD however is permissive -- it is trying to provide one more step in the ladder, one more wheel that doesn't need to be created, and can be held in common. Sure, it can be abused by corporations, paedophiles, terrorists, etc., but if there are bright people who can see the value of what their predecessors did, they can continue to innovate under BSD and outcompete the predators for the good of all. Predatory use of BSD code usually only lasts one generation, because once the code has been forked, the private code doesn't get the *continued* community contributions and analysis.
There are places for both; I would hate to live in a world ruled by GPL, but would also hate to live in a world where it didn't exist.
disclaimer: I use both gcc and llvm/clang -- depending on what I'm attempting to build.
I think the "evil" of BSD is that it can always outcompete GPL, being more free, but can be abused for short-term gain in ways that GPL protects against. So GPL can never be a BSD killer (unless it has a monopoly), but BSD CAN be a GPL killer due solely to innovation.
You're going to need to get the entire setup reviewed by an authorized electrical engineer who is certified by the local municipality.
Why the hell would you need that? Do you require a mechanical engineer to individually review every proposed plumbing change? No. Your plumber simply complies with code, the same as your electrician complies with code when he installs a new light over your garage. That situation will continue. Any attempt by the power company to force engineering review of electrical changes would be met by such an enormous outcry from electricians all over the country that it would die the moment it was proposed. I don't see conditions changing to allow it, either. The safety-at-any-cost culture has limits. (Though it may not seem that way.)
The reason you need it is due to the fact that the changes you make don't just affect your property; they effect the entire power grid. Essentially, by providing power back upstream, your solar array becomes part of the electrical grid, and must meet stricter requirements than consumer-level electrical systems.
If you had a well and were feeding water back into the municipal drinking water system, you'd have the exact same issue.
Sure. Just show me the batteries that match gasoline in terms of energy per unit weight/volume, cycle life, and charge speed.
Why? Most of the energy stored in gasoline is released as heat (direct conversion and via friction). Only a small part is converted into kinetic energy that directly benefits the driver of the vehicle.
All you need is a battery in a vehicle designed to make efficient use of that battery that is able to accomplish the same amount of work as the equivalent gasoline-powered vehicle. Remember, you no longer have to design the vehicle to have continuous explosions going off under the hood, so there are fewer parts, less energy loss on the drive train, and lighter materials (for the most part).
Considering what we've been able to engineer with gasoline over the past century, we should be able to push that knowledge forward into EV efficiencies in fairly short order (and already are). So cycle life should cease to be a problem. Charge speed? More of an issue, but there are enough EVs on the road already that for many actual use cases, this appears to be a non-issue. For the areas where it IS an issue, why not go to a generator model (like diesel-electric trains)?
Lets say it takes them 8 hours to rig up your home, they will need 2 people. Include 0.5 hour travel time, and 3 hours of administration 20 Man hours, they will probably be at say $50 an hour Pay and benefits. That is $1,000. You are also assuming that the number of workers will grow faster then the demand for solar panels. I doubt that will be the case, the demand for panels will probably be higher then the number of workers, thus their rates would go up. Efficiency in installation will be absorbed in increase demand.
Actually, you're missing a few things here.
Anyone can install their own panels, and as the tech gets cheaper/more commoditized, this will become easier.
HOWEVER
Installing panels that are on the same circuits as the public grid requires extra infrastructure on the grid, and a guarantee that everything is set up right. It's bad enough with plumbing, where the worst thing that could happen is that you start feeding septic into the local water supply or burst the access pipes -- it gets a lot worse when messing with electrical equipment.
So you're going to have to have some way to verify that the user hasn't tampered with the components, and there's going to need to be a certified technician in there somewhere if you want to stay on grid power as well.
And then there's the permits. You're going to need to get the entire setup reviewed by an authorized electrical engineer who is certified by the local municipality.
Now the electrical engineer is going to be paid significantly more than you'd want to pay the technician, so even if you install yourself, you'll need to pay a technician to verify the parts and installation, and then an EE to verify the safety of the entire system.
OR
The local power conglomerate will offer to set it all up for you, with their people and their products, which get an automatic OK from the municipality. There will be a significant markup on parts and a virtual monopoly on installation. The results should be pretty easy to figure out.
The best one I've seen so far is putting solar capture into roadbeds, which contain their own capacitance. Of course, this would still have to be connected to the grid, as there would be too many problems with individuals tapping directly into the "free" power generated.
Oh yes, this has the added benefit that anyone producing anything remotely in the same ballpark as the trolls' portfolios can send them a letter with that question, even if they're reasonably sure they don't infringe. And this means that the trolls can't safely auto-respond with "yes" or "no" without investigating their own claims first, as either way they can end up with an invalidated patent portfolio.
Fairly hard. One of the requirements for asking for a declaratory judgement is that you have to either have been sued or have a reasonable fear of being sued by the patent-holder. If the patent-holder hasn't actually sued anyone yet, it's easy for them to v get DJ actions dismissed. Even if they're sued others but not sued you, traditionally it's been easy for them to argue that you don't have any reason to believe you'll be sued yet (not that that is not a promise not to sue you in the future). In this particular case Medtronic sustained their DJ because Mirowski had already put it in writing that it believed Medtronic infringed the patents, and if they do then the next step if Medtronic didn't agree would be to sue.
Easy solution: first step is everyone contacts the patent trolls stating "I am the author of x. It works like this. Do you have any reason to believe this infringes your patents?"
At this point, the trolls have 3 options: answer "yes" at which point it's ready for declaratory judgement, answer "no" at which point that can be used as evidence if they ever DO decide to sue (bad move for any patent troll) or not answer the question in a timely manner, which can also be used as evidence.
And if everyone did this, it would have the added benefit that the courts wouldn't be bogged down, as all the wasted time would have to happen in the troll's offices.
Please feel free to suggest improvements/rebuttals.
Sorry; I was assuming salt -- but one should never assume when it comes to communicating password security.
Also, the GP was assuming that my hash was being saved in cleartext on his server. This is also a bad idea -- the only thing I should *present* to the server is the salted hash; the server should then offload verification to a verification server and not store anything but the fact that my current session is authenticated (and this should be done with a keypair token). We've got lib_pam for free; we should always be using it.
why not just bioengineer dominant male infertility?
In theory, that sounds like the fastest route to reducing rat populations. One generation, and done.
In practice, it simply isn't likely to propagate, so dominant mail infertility is an oxymoron. (I can only assume you had your tongue firmly lodged in your cheek when you suggested it).
However non-lethal chemical castration can work to make a drastic temporary reduction in population, if rats weren't so smart. You would have to come up with constantly changing feeding techniques so you don't end up eradicating only those rats that eat corn, or only those that live in buildings.
I'm curious: why don't you think it would propagate? Something similar has already successfully been done in certain species of mosquitoes successfully. Dominant male infertility propagates through the females, who carry the dominant gene to their male and female offspring. The male offspring cannot reproduce, but still compete with the males that can, which provides a slow generational decline (which is important) in population, until the only female mice still in the area are all carrying the dominant gene, and the only virile males are ones arriving from elsewhere. Eventually the population gets low enough that the dominant gene carrying females don't spread much further, but there are enough in the local population to repress any reproduction booms. This tecnhique wouldn't be effective in one generation (you'd barely get a foothold in the local population in a single generation), and it wouldn't eradicate rats, but it would put a check on the population boom cycle.
If your password for Adobe is Adobe123, and Adobe leaks your password (AGAIN), nobody is going to be getting into your email, or your facebook account, or your bank account, etc., etc.
Even if the user is stupid, it's not like the site author couldn't dedicate a few minutes to to code evaluation of the password and tell the user 'Not good enough, not even secure in the least, do you want to see a picture of people who think that password is secure?' and display some of those Faces of Meth people.
even this lolcat is smarter than you
If a website knows enough about my password to know it's not secure, it knows too much about my password. All it should ever get is my password hash. Of course, they could build some logic into the endpoint code that checks for the obvious, but that should be as far as they're able to go.
Oh no, they'll go read all the junk emails I'm probably getting at Junk123@google.com! And then they'll know every free software website that has username:Junk123 password:Websight123 Then they'll be able to download all the free trial software they want without having to make a new account! The horror!
Actually, you might be surprised in the PII that can be gathered through junk email boxes. Plus, they'd probably coopt it to use as a spam source, which makes one more kitten die.
And worse than "password"? Oh, please. In the most contrived example, you might find a way. But generally, "password" has a death grip on most worstest. Just couldn't resist tacking on the rubber-necker woot-woot, could you?
While you're probably right, so are they... even if it's by accident. I've actually seen people using their social security number as their password and the last 4 digits of their telephone number as their user ID. In fact, I've seen situations where this is generated by the site in question with no visible means for the account holder to change them.
Bioengineer RFID chips into all the NYC rats so you can tell where every one of the little bastards are at all times.
Woudln't work -- not only are they intelligent enough to remove the chips and hide them in other mobile objects, NYC gets a constant stream of rodent migrants coming in by land, air and sea. At which point, if you could bioengineer an RFID chip that would be dominant, why not just bioengineer dominant male infertility?
Troll? Really? Instead of leading people on or being sarcastic, I answered the question -- people get upset when their rent goes up. As a disclaimer, I've been hit by the exact situation where I live, although it's a different megacorp bussing its employees around. It's definitely affected rental rates in the area. Unions don't seem to mind, as they're driving the buses (and it's not a pro-union area). But people who have lived in the area for generations are getting a bit upset that their children are being forced to either move away or take a job with the megacorp.
For the rest of us, new music is promoted through social media and "if you listen to this, you might also like...." on streaming radio.
Do you know of a such a service that is available in Canada?
Yup: unfortunately, it's called Facebook. There are also YouTube streaming channels for music. There are more streaming services that don't do recommendations, such as music.cbc.ca, Songza, and of course, you can just go to http://www.musiccanada.com/whe... and pick from the list.
I just knew someone was going to point that out... I didn't feel like going into a long explanation as to the Queen's various titles. Thank you for doing it for me.
Of course, Queen of Canada isn't quite correct either -- we really have to ask Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, par la grâce de Dieu Reine du Royaume-Uni, du Canada et de ses autres royaumes et territoires, Chef du Commonwealth, Défenseur de la Foi for permission. It's in her role as Head of the Commonwealth that we have to ask her to intervene.
And yes, there is no "Queen of England" -- she's Queen of the entire Queen/Kingdom, of which England is but one state.
The problem is: how do they tax them? Based on whether they work inside city limits or commute elsewhere (such as itinerant labourers do)? The problem is that the normal avenues of taxation (fuel taxes, sales taxes, etc) are being evaded inside the city, and so the only taxation that really hits them is property tax -- which for rentals, is reflected in raised rental rates for the entire area. They could, of course, put tolls on all the routes between the city and these company's HQs; busses would still have to pay per-head, and they could recoup some money there. But that wouldn't bring rental rates back down significantly, as the companies would still be paying the tolls, not the employees.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't care at all if Google "tracks my searches," since they're tracking most of my web habits anyhow via all their cleverness and ad networks. There's no escaping that. But I don't need to hand them a real-world identity to connect all that stuff to, or an easy way to connect me-on-one-machine with me-on-another.
You do realize that they don't need you to have a Google account to get your real-world identity and link it to multiple machines, right? They just need a few people you know to have Google accounts. The rest is statistics (unless you keep your site browsing siloed between computers).
I got invited by one of the devs -- and sent out invites to myself when the invite mechanism was turned on (wow! I got *3* invite vouchers!). Now I wish I'd created more addresses back then :D
This would be just huge as a switch completely to the dark side for Google. I might even be looking for my pitch fork.
Did Googling for it show 0 results?
I can understand the earlier developments relating to this whole incident being on Slashdot. There was the technological aspect to it. But at this point, this is purely political wrangling. There's no technology involved here. There's no science involved here. There's no mathematics involved here. Just realpolitik.
The "technological" angle is really the issue of the US government sub-contracting technological work, and giving those people no legal protections that you'd expect for someone working for the government. This is something that everyone in the tech field should think seriously about when considering doing government contract work.
The Surface 2 is basically sold out everywhere. Whether that's because sales are amazing, or they underestimated demand, or a little of both, I can't say. I got one for myself this Christmas. It's a really great tablet. Only downside I see is lack of apps, but it has enough apps to get everything done.
It really only needs one app: an Android emulator :)
Actually, there's an interesting parallel between GPL'd code and patents. Both require the process to be public, and both assert restrictions on how those other than the original authors can use the information. In both cases, you're saying "I want the information to be readily available, but I'm putting some limitations on how this can be used, to protect the creators."
The problem with this is that unlike patents, the GPL doesn't have a sunset clause; this means that the information is tied to the will of the creators in perpetuity.
BSD on the other hand is more free in that it encourages innovation -- "what I've created is mine, what you build on it is yours, if you do build on it, give me credit for the part I did and don't plagiarize." Compared to this, GPL is "what I've created is mine, what you build on it must also be mine and must be distributed by my rules."
So, GPL is protective -- it is trying to protect the commons against people innovating something based on the commons and then using it to outcompete other code that stays in the commons. In may situations, this is worthwhile; it protects against predators.
BSD however is permissive -- it is trying to provide one more step in the ladder, one more wheel that doesn't need to be created, and can be held in common. Sure, it can be abused by corporations, paedophiles, terrorists, etc., but if there are bright people who can see the value of what their predecessors did, they can continue to innovate under BSD and outcompete the predators for the good of all. Predatory use of BSD code usually only lasts one generation, because once the code has been forked, the private code doesn't get the *continued* community contributions and analysis.
There are places for both; I would hate to live in a world ruled by GPL, but would also hate to live in a world where it didn't exist.
disclaimer: I use both gcc and llvm/clang -- depending on what I'm attempting to build.
I think the "evil" of BSD is that it can always outcompete GPL, being more free, but can be abused for short-term gain in ways that GPL protects against. So GPL can never be a BSD killer (unless it has a monopoly), but BSD CAN be a GPL killer due solely to innovation.
Short summary: BSD + innovation > GPL; BSD - innovation GPL.
You're going to need to get the entire setup reviewed by an authorized electrical engineer who is certified by the local municipality.
Why the hell would you need that? Do you require a mechanical engineer to individually review every proposed plumbing change? No. Your plumber simply complies with code, the same as your electrician complies with code when he installs a new light over your garage. That situation will continue. Any attempt by the power company to force engineering review of electrical changes would be met by such an enormous outcry from electricians all over the country that it would die the moment it was proposed. I don't see conditions changing to allow it, either. The safety-at-any-cost culture has limits. (Though it may not seem that way.)
The reason you need it is due to the fact that the changes you make don't just affect your property; they effect the entire power grid. Essentially, by providing power back upstream, your solar array becomes part of the electrical grid, and must meet stricter requirements than consumer-level electrical systems.
If you had a well and were feeding water back into the municipal drinking water system, you'd have the exact same issue.
What you really need is something that sorts on exif fields, and also generates a normalized histogram xsum for the image itself.
More intensive, but not too bad these days. Imagemagick combined with exiftool, xargs, sort and sed should get you what you want.
Sure. Just show me the batteries that match gasoline in terms of energy per unit weight/volume, cycle life, and charge speed.
Why? Most of the energy stored in gasoline is released as heat (direct conversion and via friction). Only a small part is converted into kinetic energy that directly benefits the driver of the vehicle.
All you need is a battery in a vehicle designed to make efficient use of that battery that is able to accomplish the same amount of work as the equivalent gasoline-powered vehicle. Remember, you no longer have to design the vehicle to have continuous explosions going off under the hood, so there are fewer parts, less energy loss on the drive train, and lighter materials (for the most part).
Considering what we've been able to engineer with gasoline over the past century, we should be able to push that knowledge forward into EV efficiencies in fairly short order (and already are). So cycle life should cease to be a problem. Charge speed? More of an issue, but there are enough EVs on the road already that for many actual use cases, this appears to be a non-issue. For the areas where it IS an issue, why not go to a generator model (like diesel-electric trains)?
Labor cost is always the issue.
Lets say it takes them 8 hours to rig up your home, they will need 2 people. Include 0.5 hour travel time, and 3 hours of administration 20 Man hours, they will probably be at say $50 an hour Pay and benefits. That is $1,000. You are also assuming that the number of workers will grow faster then the demand for solar panels. I doubt that will be the case, the demand for panels will probably be higher then the number of workers, thus their rates would go up. Efficiency in installation will be absorbed in increase demand.
Actually, you're missing a few things here.
Anyone can install their own panels, and as the tech gets cheaper/more commoditized, this will become easier.
HOWEVER
Installing panels that are on the same circuits as the public grid requires extra infrastructure on the grid, and a guarantee that everything is set up right. It's bad enough with plumbing, where the worst thing that could happen is that you start feeding septic into the local water supply or burst the access pipes -- it gets a lot worse when messing with electrical equipment.
So you're going to have to have some way to verify that the user hasn't tampered with the components, and there's going to need to be a certified technician in there somewhere if you want to stay on grid power as well.
And then there's the permits. You're going to need to get the entire setup reviewed by an authorized electrical engineer who is certified by the local municipality.
Now the electrical engineer is going to be paid significantly more than you'd want to pay the technician, so even if you install yourself, you'll need to pay a technician to verify the parts and installation, and then an EE to verify the safety of the entire system.
OR
The local power conglomerate will offer to set it all up for you, with their people and their products, which get an automatic OK from the municipality. There will be a significant markup on parts and a virtual monopoly on installation. The results should be pretty easy to figure out.
The best one I've seen so far is putting solar capture into roadbeds, which contain their own capacitance. Of course, this would still have to be connected to the grid, as there would be too many problems with individuals tapping directly into the "free" power generated.
http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
http://buildipedia.com/aec-pro...
http://www.wpi.edu/news/20089/...
Oh yes, this has the added benefit that anyone producing anything remotely in the same ballpark as the trolls' portfolios can send them a letter with that question, even if they're reasonably sure they don't infringe. And this means that the trolls can't safely auto-respond with "yes" or "no" without investigating their own claims first, as either way they can end up with an invalidated patent portfolio.
Fairly hard. One of the requirements for asking for a declaratory judgement is that you have to either have been sued or have a reasonable fear of being sued by the patent-holder. If the patent-holder hasn't actually sued anyone yet, it's easy for them to v get DJ actions dismissed. Even if they're sued others but not sued you, traditionally it's been easy for them to argue that you don't have any reason to believe you'll be sued yet (not that that is not a promise not to sue you in the future). In this particular case Medtronic sustained their DJ because Mirowski had already put it in writing that it believed Medtronic infringed the patents, and if they do then the next step if Medtronic didn't agree would be to sue.
Easy solution: first step is everyone contacts the patent trolls stating "I am the author of x. It works like this. Do you have any reason to believe this infringes your patents?"
At this point, the trolls have 3 options: answer "yes" at which point it's ready for declaratory judgement, answer "no" at which point that can be used as evidence if they ever DO decide to sue (bad move for any patent troll) or not answer the question in a timely manner, which can also be used as evidence.
And if everyone did this, it would have the added benefit that the courts wouldn't be bogged down, as all the wasted time would have to happen in the troll's offices.
Please feel free to suggest improvements/rebuttals.
Wouldn't revolting be treason?
Only if they lose.
Sorry; I was assuming salt -- but one should never assume when it comes to communicating password security.
Also, the GP was assuming that my hash was being saved in cleartext on his server. This is also a bad idea -- the only thing I should *present* to the server is the salted hash; the server should then offload verification to a verification server and not store anything but the fact that my current session is authenticated (and this should be done with a keypair token). We've got lib_pam for free; we should always be using it.
why not just bioengineer dominant male infertility?
In theory, that sounds like the fastest route to reducing rat populations.
One generation, and done.
In practice, it simply isn't likely to propagate, so dominant mail infertility is an oxymoron.
(I can only assume you had your tongue firmly lodged in your cheek when you suggested it).
However non-lethal chemical castration can work to make a drastic temporary reduction in
population, if rats weren't so smart. You would have to come up with constantly changing feeding
techniques so you don't end up eradicating only those rats that eat corn, or only those
that live in buildings.
I'm curious: why don't you think it would propagate? Something similar has already successfully been done in certain species of mosquitoes successfully.
Dominant male infertility propagates through the females, who carry the dominant gene to their male and female offspring. The male offspring cannot reproduce, but still compete with the males that can, which provides a slow generational decline (which is important) in population, until the only female mice still in the area are all carrying the dominant gene, and the only virile males are ones arriving from elsewhere. Eventually the population gets low enough that the dominant gene carrying females don't spread much further, but there are enough in the local population to repress any reproduction booms. This tecnhique wouldn't be effective in one generation (you'd barely get a foothold in the local population in a single generation), and it wouldn't eradicate rats, but it would put a check on the population boom cycle.
If your password for Adobe is Adobe123, and Adobe leaks your password (AGAIN), nobody is going to be getting into your email, or your facebook account, or your bank account, etc., etc.
Even if the user is stupid, it's not like the site author couldn't dedicate a few minutes to to code evaluation of the password and tell the user 'Not good enough, not even secure in the least, do you want to see a picture of people who think that password is secure?' and display some of those Faces of Meth people.
even this lolcat is smarter than you
If a website knows enough about my password to know it's not secure, it knows too much about my password. All it should ever get is my password hash. Of course, they could build some logic into the endpoint code that checks for the obvious, but that should be as far as they're able to go.
Oh no, they'll go read all the junk emails I'm probably getting at Junk123@google.com! And then they'll know every free software website that has username:Junk123 password:Websight123 Then they'll be able to download all the free trial software they want without having to make a new account! The horror!
Actually, you might be surprised in the PII that can be gathered through junk email boxes. Plus, they'd probably coopt it to use as a spam source, which makes one more kitten die.
And worse than "password"? Oh, please. In the most contrived example, you might find a way. But generally, "password" has a death grip on most worstest. Just couldn't resist tacking on the rubber-necker woot-woot, could you?
While you're probably right, so are they... even if it's by accident. I've actually seen people using their social security number as their password and the last 4 digits of their telephone number as their user ID. In fact, I've seen situations where this is generated by the site in question with no visible means for the account holder to change them.
Of course, that was way back in 2013.
and Numbers Stations....
Bioengineer RFID chips into all the NYC rats so you can tell where every one of the little bastards are at all times.
Woudln't work -- not only are they intelligent enough to remove the chips and hide them in other mobile objects, NYC gets a constant stream of rodent migrants coming in by land, air and sea. At which point, if you could bioengineer an RFID chip that would be dominant, why not just bioengineer dominant male infertility?
Troll? Really? Instead of leading people on or being sarcastic, I answered the question -- people get upset when their rent goes up. As a disclaimer, I've been hit by the exact situation where I live, although it's a different megacorp bussing its employees around. It's definitely affected rental rates in the area. Unions don't seem to mind, as they're driving the buses (and it's not a pro-union area). But people who have lived in the area for generations are getting a bit upset that their children are being forced to either move away or take a job with the megacorp.
Do you know of a such a service that is available in Canada?
Yup: unfortunately, it's called Facebook. There are also YouTube streaming channels for music. There are more streaming services that don't do recommendations, such as music.cbc.ca, Songza, and of course, you can just go to http://www.musiccanada.com/whe... and pick from the list.
I just knew someone was going to point that out... I didn't feel like going into a long explanation as to the Queen's various titles. Thank you for doing it for me.
Of course, Queen of Canada isn't quite correct either -- we really have to ask Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, par la grâce de Dieu Reine du Royaume-Uni, du Canada et de ses autres royaumes et territoires, Chef du Commonwealth, Défenseur de la Foi for permission. It's in her role as Head of the Commonwealth that we have to ask her to intervene.
And yes, there is no "Queen of England" -- she's Queen of the entire Queen/Kingdom, of which England is but one state.
The problem is: how do they tax them? Based on whether they work inside city limits or commute elsewhere (such as itinerant labourers do)? The problem is that the normal avenues of taxation (fuel taxes, sales taxes, etc) are being evaded inside the city, and so the only taxation that really hits them is property tax -- which for rentals, is reflected in raised rental rates for the entire area. They could, of course, put tolls on all the routes between the city and these company's HQs; busses would still have to pay per-head, and they could recoup some money there. But that wouldn't bring rental rates back down significantly, as the companies would still be paying the tolls, not the employees.