As I expected, there is at least one comment about how "Not everyone is obsessed with amassing property."

That comment was, of course, made in response to someone talking about how large their bed is. Yes, owning a bed is now considered "amassing property" by some nutjobs.

Regardless, my whole point is different than that. Property size can correlate directly to where you live.

As an example, merely by living in a colder climate -- one requires an entire array of winter gear that someone without ice, snow, and -40C temperatures does. This expands to more than merely coats, boots, and portable heaters. It also includes things such as snowblowers or snow shovels, skis and snow shoes (instead of just a bicycle for summer exercise).

I can think of many tools I own, merely because of the climate I live in. Tools such as booster cables, battery booster packs, extension cords with lights (to show that they are working, when you plug them into your block heater for your car).

This sort of logic expands to what type of dwelling you live in. If you live in a house, instead of an apartment -- well then, you're going to likely want some form of lawn mowing device. Rakes, shovels, work gloves. Soon, the list expands, a variety of tools to repair your dwelling -- unless you want to throw money at contractors merely to paint your house and the like.

My point? Well, clearly the comment I mocked at the starting of this post was thrown by someone that doesn't comprehend these things.. and likely there are others as silly as well.

Don't even get me started on what is required if you own a farm. Or your own business. Such things are your "belongings" as well, but to be inane enough to pull the "greed" card -- well, small minded indeed.

There are many areas of Quebec that are very unilingual friendly. I live in an area that has almost a 50%/50% split of english/french language, and it is very rare to go to a store where you can't get service in english.

Of course, by some odd and strange course of events, this is also the poorest municipality in Quebec. :P

I'm Canadian too, and I have no idea what you mean when you say "We really hate the French".

Perhaps you shouldn't speak for a whole nation, when you're merely speaking for yourself, or your peer group?

I grew up in Southern Ontario, in a small community without a single Quebecer or French person around for hundreds of miles. I now live in Quebec, and (clearly) have no problem with "the french". I moved here because I live in the Capital region, and I can get an acre of land, 20 minutes from downtown Ottawa, surrounded by farmland, for 1/2 the price of a home on the Ontario side!

I do have issues with *some* french people, but I also have issues with *some* people from a broad spectrum of society.

I think what you really hate are 1) mostly quebec politicians and 2) dumbasses that happen to be french.

Suck it up buddy. #1 and #2 exist in every culture group, and language group, and genetic group, worldwide. ;)

Google has really gotten out of control. Their entire business shows this, externally it appears as if they are completely disconnected from department to department, and that interdepartmental communication is poor.

It also "feels" like Google has little tyrants running around, pulling sections of departments in all sorts of weird directions.

Why do I say these things? Well, searching is very annoying on Google now, if you actually know what you want.

Often Google ignores quotes, providing responses as if the quotes were not even there. It now in many cases rejects the use of the + modifier, which used to allow one for force that search term to show in responses. Even words in quotes are often spell checked, and modified for you on the fly.

These features are neat, but they aren't neat if you can't turn them off. There needs to be a search option such as "never ever ever fucking change any aspect or part of this search term, no matter what, you damned idiots at Google, I want all words to show up from my query, I want words in quotes to appear precisely as they are written".

I've had issues trying to search for people, even in quotes. "David" mapping to "Dave", when I know the person never appears as "Dave" anywhere, etc. Issues with IT terms being modified, such as searching for (linux "hpsa") and getting matches for (linux "hspa") or (linux "hsdpa").

Many times Google provides these changes without any explanation, with any 'did you mean?' statements, and just jumbles those responses up with what you are looking for.

Fine Google, fine. You want to "help" people find what they want. That's great. However, there is a segment of the population that knows PRECISELY what they want, and can actually TYPE at a keyboard. For them, precise searches such as (dave OR david) are preferred to typing (david) and getting responses for "dave" too.

Provide an advanced interface, and one that actually works -- as your "search enhancements" have actually made your advanced search form useless as well! Stop messing with my search queries, so that every month my search queries don't mean something else. I'd like a search for "some phrase" to actually mean the same thing, and not become quoteless the one time I use your search engine, and remain quoted the next.

I hate, I mean absolutely loath M$. I came up through Pet -> vic20 -> c64 -> amiga -> linux. I've never, ever, ever had M$ as a main OS on any desktop. I hate them, their products.

How much does it say, and I can't stress this enough, that I've tried using Bing to see how it will response to direct search queries? How much does it say, that someone so anti-microsoft has been put off by Google's complete and total lack of any coherent or even remotely detectable customer service? You can't get an issue resolved, on any front, with any problem, with any product, period, at all, ever from Google.

Google's only response to anything, is complete and total silence -- unless there is some massive issue that has 90% of their customer base enraged.

Get this Google. Get it straight. The party is over. You have actual, real competition now. Yes, M$ is annoying, but now your products are in direct competition with other people's products, for the first time ever. You need a new corporate culture.

Because your current corporate culture?

IT FUCKING SUCKS!

Goatcx link

Google's voice search, and translate, and all other speech -> text products are absolutely useless. I find a very, very, very low success rate.

Good luck if I'm driving in a car too, and the background noise adds to the difficulty.

I know many other people that are in the same boat, but these are all locals. I wonder if other people think it's just great to have to repeat themselves 10 times, or if others do not have the same issues. I do not believe that local dialects and pronunciation is the issue, the english I hear here, seems to be the same english I might hear on Northern US news reports, on TV stations.

However, as it sits? Useless!

No, it isn't free. Google has a for-profit motive in you using these services. Google makes money off of information you sign away, when you sign up to these services.

I suppose you think that a piece of fruit was free, if I demanded you give me a fish for it? No cash exchanged != free.

Outside of the whole free/not free argument, is the concept of longevity. Linux distros are "more free" than Google services, but I certainly wouldn't use one that would disappear without security updates on a regular basis. Likewise, Google throwing out lots of 'cool' services, and then canceling them without *years* of notice, means I simply am unable to trust Google with my time, my energy, and in fact, my trust.

So, where does that leave Google? It leaves Google with fewer and fewer people using their services (which they *do* make money from, when you use it).

How is that good for Google? How is that good for the end users?

It isn't, for either...

Google really, really, really needs to get over this adolescent stage, and move on to some form of stability.

Weekly delivery of bills, junk mail, offers etc is enough. Lay off 60% of the delivery workforce, the other 20% will be needed for daily "express" deliveries.

Alternatively, deliver 3 days a week. Does anyone really need mail delivery daily?

Bah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dzieka%C5%84ski_Taser_incident

It was *international news* multiple times, for weeks on end (as each part of this incident hit the news, over the months).

Do you *read* the news.

By the way, before you try to claim that the above showed no wrongdoing by the cops:

1) you can be a cop, and be reprimanded without being charged or fired. That's still 'wrongdoing'.

2) there was a financial settlement involved. The burden of proof in civil court is 50.1%, and in criminal court it is much higher (beyond a reasonable doubt is likened to 99%). Financial settlements do NOT occur unless there is a very good chance of a finding of liability in civil court.

3) *FOUR COPS* tasered an unarmed man. FOUR. At once!

4) the RCMP tried to supress video of the incident

5) likely, charges will be laid when this is all over

Now, on the other side of the coin, this was the action of 4 police officers, not the entire RCMP. The real problem here is, that these cops should have been fired and charged with manslaughter, long long ago.

Note, if I'm operating a crane, and through misjudgement I kill a man -- I'd get charged and most likely convicted of manslaughter. The guy in the above wikipedia article was not threatening anyone, nor approaching anyone aggressively.

While I do think that cops get a bad rap too often, if you don't want to work in a profession where you must be *very* careful of how you perform your job (heavy equipment operator, electrician, medical profession, police, etc).. then, DO NOT APPLY FOR THAT JOB.

If you kill a man, in ANY profession, and you do so due to improper / accidental behaviour, YOU NEED TO BE CHARGED, IMMEDIATELY!

I understand that in the US things are a bit different -- but here, generally speaking (in Canada), not obeying a cop does NOT provide immediate cause to assault a citizen. For example, the 'don't tase me bro!' guy incident would not have happened here, unless a cop was acting illegally. That's because, there's nothing the 'don't tase me' guy did *wrong*, if he was in Canada.