I argued with the cop responsible for bringing this technology to my region. I love the technology, and think it's very useful. However, I ALSO think it ought to have a zero-minute retention period except for hits against flagged plates.

Apparently, the police think it's a great idea to know where every plate was as far back as they can store the data - and since it only takes a short text string and a small confirming .jpg image for each plate, they can keep an awful lot of data. While there's great data mining potential there, like finding which plates were present at similar crimes across a long period of time to help identify suspects, I can just see so much more room for Orwellian abuse.

The Americans look like they believe they're circling the drain, and are attempting to grab everything they can to stay afloat beyond the whirlpool. What they don't see, is that every one of these attempts is a very short term gain and long term pain.

They've lost the industrial capacity competition to the far East and bet their economy on IP and pure service... IP ignores political borders regardless of legislation, and the service is something everyone can do better themselves.

Attempts to force the world to respect American IP law and rely on American services are doomed to fail and will eventually cripple them if they don't straighten out their shit in within the next generation or so.

I was speaking in generalities; I'd hardly comment on racial crime stats for a sample size of 3!

Also, working in a McD's is not the same as owning one... At least in Canadian franchises, the manager and the owner are completely different people. While the manager is an adult, it's not unknown for them to be barely older than the teens manning the cash registers.

And *I* wouldn't look down on either of them based on their country of origin or the wage they earn.

I'd actually *expect* immigrants to have a higher rate of crime than the population in general. After all, you usually don't immigrate to a country if you were well off back home. Often you have just enough to get out and escape your circumstances and you're coming from what *I* would call a shit hole. But I'm a privileged 1st-world middle class white boy.

So, there you are in a new country with a different culture and likely less education. You tend to get a bottom-end job (jobs the natives don't want, which is why they tolerate immigration in the first place). If you're first-generation, you sound funny and the natives treat you like a second-class citizen. If you're the child of immigrants, you may still sound funny and you're still culturally odd.

Don't fit in, have trouble with the language, can't get a good job, possibly less educated, possibly from a culture that doesn't have the same standards for personal interactions. Probably some racism directed your way. Yeah, I can't see how that could translate to a higher crime rate!

I just can't care about 'fair' when there's enough money being milked to make multimillionaires out of actors. Maybe the end product wouldn't cost as much if, say, an actor in a top end show made $80k/year. Maybe content producers could then produce MORE good content to get their profit.

I dunno, I guess I'm just crazy.

Even this is stupid. I don't want DVDs any more - I'm past that.

Sell it to me on a flash drive so I can up it to my media centre. Save me the trouble of ripping the disc.

Making them worth much less than you might expect, given that the Americans have recently shown they're quite willing to apply their laws to foreigners if they can reach them. .COM's fine because companies are already invested in it... but who would bother using a new TLD with that risk?

I was mistaken, sorry. The agreement isn't in effect until 2014... the "Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness Action Plan", announced late last year.

You've been modded 'funny', but it's more 'sad, but probably accurate'.

Canada already does this, which is why I haven't gone to any conferences or courses or on vacations that take me over the American border.

They have the right to ask as a condition of entry into their country. I have a right to say, "Hell no, I'd rather not go".

1) Brakes SHOULD override throttle. Worn out brakes might not do it without cutting the gas, though... and if somebody panics and jams their feet on gas and brake simultaneously, it'd be really nice if their stopping distance wasn't increased because of the throttle.

2) There once was a really nifty new pedal design - twist for throttle, press for brake. One pedal, two functions. Apparently after a bit of adjustment it drastically improved braking reaction time.

I agree with you on the validity of 'hate crime' as a category.

However, being a promoter of mob violence - say by reaching out to like minded people and suggesting they all go kill a black guy - that kind of thing is more dangerous.

Some racist kills a black guy, you get one dead black guy. Some racist forms a group and gets them all stirred up then suggests blacks should be killed, you can get a whole bunch of dead black guys.

I think the potential increase in victim count justifies a different law and sentence.

'Similar' is not 'same'. I wouldn't claim someone from New York and someone from Los Angeles were the same, and Canadians and Americans are different enough to warrant separate categories.

By your definition, the most of the Commonwealth may as well be one country.

After a certain point, you may as well forget the SIM and just build it into the device.

Items that are meant to be removeable and transferable need to be large enough for a consumer to manipulate with their fingers.

No, a person cannot be forgiven for implying Canada when they say US.

There are 50 states in the USA, and Canada has over 10% of the population of the Americans, meaning Canada is bigger than 5 average state populations combined. Though there are at least six major cultural groups within Canada, each of them is distinct enough from what you'd find south of the border that lumping them together is imprecise as best.

Anybody who thinks of Canada as 'North Wisconsin' is invited to either completely ignore us or educate themselves on the subject.