when you pry from my cold, dead hands.

As a Canadian, I am half-bored by this and half-annoyed. This is ridiculous.

Another US organization slammed Canada as being a hotbed of music piracy because our CD sales had dropped off 7.4%. The US market had dropped off over 10% but nothing was said about that.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4996/125/

The US should manage its own problems - it has enough. We should manage ours - we have enough, too. This is a joke but it's an offensive one.

What if hundreds of thousands or even millions of westerners drew and posted online depictions of the prophet Mohammed? Would that finally make the point that secular cultures are not bound by religious law and enjoy the freedom to ignore dogma as desired? Would that finally show them that trying to enforce your religious directives on other cultures is pointless and going to backfire?

Or would the more extremist sects and individuals declare a Fatwa against all those participating? Wouldn't that leave them brutally outnumbered?

Most Muslims are peace-loving. It'd be an interesting experiment. If we could get critical mass on something like this, what sort of numbers could we get?

Anyone interested in helping me start this?

I didn't say it was a lot - just that it wasn't completely free. I was agreeing that we had cheaper medical care.

I thought the OP was on crack in regards to the six weeks vacation. That's France or something - not Canada.

We have tribunals and judges well-versed in case law and guidelines in order to interpret whether or not an utterance or written item can be considered hateful...this determination is made by looking for the motivational intent of the item in question.

For example:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081010/muslim_complaint_081010/20081010?hub=Canada

The tribunal ruled against a group of Muslim complainants in regards to a Macleans article essentially warning people about the potential for a Muslim-ruled world.

The cartoons themselves were also brought before a tribunal:

http://newatheism.blogspot.com/2008/01/mohammed-cartoons-and-civil-rights-in_28.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Levant#Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy

The complaints generated by this were dismissed or withdrawn. There is some sanity here.

Six weeks vacation? What sort of crack are you smoking? Basic employment guidelines are 2 weeks paid vacation per year for a full-time employee. You can also simply be paid for that and not given the time off in some circumstances. A good unionized job probably gets you 3-4 weeks to start and moves you up with seniority but you are only guaranteed 2 weeks.

Yes we do get "free" health care. That means that our monthly user fees are based on our income (from free for the right poor people on income support or with a decent work medical plan all the way up to over a hundred per month for a family, at least in my province. That does not include prescriptions though and some user fees. We pay less than our southern neighbors for prescriptions, but we do still pay. We do get subsidization, again based on our income and also possibly by having a decent work medical plan. Still, given some of the horror stories I've heard from US friends in car accidents, I won't move south without a hell of a medical plan...

I see that most people are commenting on just the headline without understanding the issues because they haven't read the...

wait, this is slashdot. I suppose it's not surprising.

Still this is one time that not reading the article is going to bite you in the ass.

A custodial parent does have the right to discipline their child. This parent could remove access and legally post (from their account) comments on their child's wall. Whether or not they have the right to hack the kids account is really not clear at this point. First, a parent doing this is generally violating the terms of use agreement of the website in question. Second, there are specific laws in some regions regarding this type of approach which would make it a crime.

This situation is pretty clear - the mom vastly overstepped her bounds and needs to be smacked for it. If it were my kid and they were living with me, I'd ask to see their account - if they refused to show it to me or I saw things that were troubling, I'd deal with them by denying access to the computer at my house and grounding them unless they deleted their account permanently or cleaned it up.

Parents do have ways to coerce their kids into cooperating. If the kids want to call family services falsely to get mom and dad back, go ahead. Their new home isn't likely to have a computer or parents that care or necessarily even be that safe an environment. Foster parents cover the gamut from loving, capable people to those who are prone to abuse children. I would never let my kid blackmail me. Don't like the rules, you may leave...my dad said that and I hate to parrot him now but he was right. Boundaries are too important to make deals and give up moral authority on.