I don't think the firmware is open source, but otherwise the Kobo reader is a canadian alternative. Its a startup with venture capital from our major bookstore chain Chapters, but it is setup as a separate enterprise.

We will never know for certain, since Blizzard would be suicidally insane as an organisation to publish internal polling and sales numbers. But given their 24 hour turn around, I believe the pressure was sufficient to give them serious second thoughts.

For what its worth, I was a 5 year WoW player who both cancelled my account (it was prepaid, so i am still playing -- i just cancelled the autotmatic resub) and ended up not buying Starcraft 2. I suspect a non-negligible number of people did the same.

The RealID functionality now offers: a) establish RealID, b) disable friends of freinds browsing for RealID, c) disable Facebook visibility for RealID. This would not have happened had people not freaked out. I personally refuse to enable it.

So does this plant run around asking for a MUL-TI-PASS?

Bing Crosby was a movie star and the world's biggest recording artist. Its like saying Michael Jackson made small Brad Pitt $s on the side via his movie career. He was very wealthy relative to the rest of the population.

I can only refer to Canada offhand, but I know that anecdotal experience like this does not reflect reality -- the murder rate, suicide rate, victim of a violent crime, and victim of theft rates are all higher in rural canada than they are in urban areas. There's a multitude of reasons for this -- a) isolation leads to greater chances of substance abuse and suicide, b) to rural areas have higher likeihood of access to firearms, c) education levels are lower on average, d) farms and rural business are more likely to go bankrupt, etc.

You are modded as funny, which is a sad reflection of the value judgment of the slashdot community. I type this from my desk as a director of IT, managing a department of 50+ computer science graduates and computer engineers -- my degreee is double major in english/history.

My boss, who is scary smart, has a masters in philosophy.

Sadly, technical degrees still do not provide very valuable training in the world of evaluation and judgement. "How to do this" is rarely more important that the ability to formulate an argument on why you should do it. I'd argue humanities, teaching you how to evaluate shades of gray and formulate arguments on subjects that don't have objective right/wrong answers, provide the ability to understand context -- and as a result is a better training ground for future managers and leaders.

Agree that the census is useful and valuable information. I also agree that the census intrustion is a minor inconvenience.

A safe way to have dealt with this, indeed, was to make it a fine -- say $100-200. Enough to encourage people to take the census, but not enough to be an undue burden to people who consciously objected.

I think what happened in this case, was that the opposition (particularly the Liberals, who greatly benefit from using census data to promote social programs) went for the jugular and made this a big issue; by turning this into a potential confidence of the house issue (note: Canada currently has a minority government) the conservatives dug in their heels.

I just don't see a 'conservatives trying to destroy our society' conspiracy here.

I'm going to call BS on this one. The story is pretty straight forward -- ~200,000 citizens did not fill out the long form of the census during the last approach. According to the current laws, this was punishable by substantial fines and mandatory imprisonment. The census bureau *never* pursue these fines or penalties. On the basis that a) the law was never enforced, and b) a strong libertarian minority within their supporters were railing against oppressive government, they removed the law.

While all the complaints around the accuracy of the data, the importance of the census, are valid.... this is still about simplifying the reach and authority of government -- something the slashdot community normally endorses. Had this been about liberalisation of pot laws, or eliminating government enforcement of copyright, etc... we've be hailing them as heros.

The solution to this is fairly simple -- make it illegal for oil production companies to subcontract drilling operations. They can then be held 100% accountable for all aspects of the oil economy, from exploration and drilling straight to the pumps of cars.

There is no great conspiracy here; subcontracting makes sense to both distribute financial risk and to encourage efficiencies. But when the end result is not just profit but a healthy ecosystem, pure 100% profit driven efficiency should not be the end goal. Oil companies can be very responsible, if you hold them accountable. I see as the responsibility of governments -- to regulate and mitigate the dangers of 100% laissez faire capitalism.

If you have a license plate registration, they *already* have your car information in a database. The inspection is more about whether you've modded your car, or let it fall into such disrepair that its not longer safe to drive @ 90mph.

While the WC Fields wino-stereotype is quite common in fiction, its actually not very common in the real world. Most alcoholics tend to be thin, and to a lesser extend borderline malnourished. Their poison of choice is alcohol, it occupies most of their spare time. In contrast, most western nations now have major dietary problems -- most people are overweight due to lifestyle, choice of foods, and lack of exercise. Its not that alcoholics or heavy drinkers are more healthy, its that they're not as unhealthy as the median (of fatties and smokers).

OS/2 was still the better OS, by ALOT. Its closed nature doomed its future, and there was alot of mistrust in IBM in the marketplace at the time, but in terms of stability w/ a gui inteface, it was unmatched. The OS lived on long past its best-before date in alot of utility devices like information terminals @ airports and kiosks, ABMs, and other devices into the mid-2000s.

To clarify, Canada has strong restrictions on automatic weapons (outright ban), and handguns (heavily regulated). Long guns are perfectly legal. There is an ongoing debate on the long gun registry, where at the cost of ~$ 1billion the government instituted a long gun registration service which has been a huge bone of contention in rural communities. Since it has been instituted (at least 5 years ago) there's no indication that its had a benefit to reducing gun-related fatalities.

I'm indifferent on gun legislation, as I don't own nor plan on owning firearms. But to state that Canada has an outright ban on firearms is not correct.

I'm trying to figure out why Canada decided to swing left wing of our American cousins, whereas Australia reads about some of the most egregious rights violations happening stateside and have a reaction of 'oh yeah, watch this!!!'.

*Not* that Canada is pure by any stretch of the imagination...in fact we seem to be regressing as a society too at the moment, but we're light years ahead of this type of nonsense.

Screw that... anything longer than 2 hours for a human ADULT is conclusively proven to be wasted activity... there's strong studies in multiple fields that show that the capacity for focus and absorbing/learning is limited... its why you can't realistically 'cram' for an exam and retain the information later... it stays in short term memory, you don't abosrb the comprehension. IIRC, the general consensus is 2hrs formal study, broken up by a minimum of 30 mins of divergent activity. Most working people figure this out intuitively...its called a coffee break / smoke break.