National Rationals Association:

You can take my fractions from my cold dead hand!

Yes, pretty much everything in construction is still imperial, inches, feet, etc... However that is largely due to the fact that there is a huge amount of legacy non-compatible construction out there to build upon. You can't exactly charge over on a dime. Certain things are more metric than others, over a long time it will eventually happen.

Same goes for the height and weight. It is about common usage having momentum that takes a while to sort out. For example while I refer to myself in feet and inches as well, I have no idea what my father is talking about when he starts spouting about Fahrenheit... I'd need a calculator to convert it to C. Having said that... my oven is in Fahrenheit... so yes confusing.

However, it isn't so much that it is "forced" by government as some of the libby's in the US seem all afraid of. It isn't like Big Brother is going to come around collecting your 1/4 inch socket sets... However when you get your Driver's Licence it might have some weird number for your height like 180cm which isn't all that meaningful to you.

However that is something, perhaps one of the only things governments are good at, longer term things that over time make sense.

We are in a place where historians will likely refer to as the metric transitional period if at all.

"Environmentalist" is a pretty broad category these days.

Hydro makes more sense than just about every other power source available. It's big detriment is that it is only realistic in certain specific geographical areas.

Environmentalists have a harsh buzz on Wind Power as well... All the dead birdies and bats and such...
I've even seen them complain about Solar power installations potentially destroying bird habitat.

Everyone has an agenda.

Nukes have a bad reputation which is probably ill deserved. As a result just about all Nukes are "old" nukes, which should be no surprise are not the best Nukes, however building new, or even research into advancements is difficult with the reputation. To my mind these are the problem with Nukes that need to be addressed:
1) There is a disconnect between liability and profitability. In short, in my opinion Nukes should *not* be privatized. There is a fundamental gap that is insurmountable in my opinion.
2) TCO. Rarely or incorrectly accounted for. The fact is Nukes produce a fantastic amount of constant power for low cost. However, the capitol costs to actual build one are also astronomical, and construction is usually measured in decades.

The future is those experimental pocket nukes. They produce less power, however seem much more logical. For one, having your generation dispersed where you need it rather than centralized where the plant happens to exist is better for the distribution side of things. They would be cheaper and be able to be constructed in more reasonable time frames. They don't produce the same or quantity of waste. They don't have the same safety issues that the old guard have. Because they are safer, less waste, probably easier closure plans, that means a lot less liability, which might make it more suitable for private enterprise. It also adds a measure of redundancy to the system. If a reactor goes down at a huge producer, it's a pretty big deal. Should a pocket nuke need to be taken out of service, it's immediate neighbors could probably be able to pick up the slack.

One last thing on Hydro, for all the proponents of Wind and Solar, or transient generation, Hydro storage (i,e, dams, etc...) are really the *only* realistic method of energy storage at scale. As soon as they start taking about using batteries and the like, I know they are a loon and have no idea what they are talking about (never mind the environmental costs of lead batteries, or their more advanced brethren also diverted from some pretty toxic stuff).

I really doubt it was an arbitrary decision. I also have no doubt it is carrier specific and nothing to really do with "Canadian Versions" other than that particular carrier exists in Canada.

Likely reasons for the move:
1) They want to sell more phones. Planned obsolescence.
2) Introducing new OS onto old phone may have support issues they would have to address.
3) They are not making any more money (or as much anyway) off those old phones.
4) Training and support expenses to have staff in call centres to handle issues.

Hardly arbitrary. Greedy maybe, but not arbitrary.

The secret to curling is understanding that it isn't really a sport so much as it is a drinking game...

If you end up working in a unionized environment:
1) Always be changing positions, and applying for new jobs leveraging whatever projects you've recently been involved with. Ideally never stay in a position longer than 3 years. Do not expect any promotion, or any manager to go to bat for you or trust them, you have to do everything yourself, be mercenary.
2) Do not expect your union to do anything for you other than collect your dues.

I think it is funny that 90% of the comments for this topic are on negotiating/bargaining salary with management. I bet a big percentage on here would either be promoting unions as a tool for the workers, and another big percentage would be saying that unions are full of overpaid idiots. What many people do not understand about unions, is that they are pretty much all about "collective bargaining". Which means, if I don't think I am getting paid enough, I cannot go to my manager and ask for more money. I can't negotiate on my behalf for a better salary, it is done "collectively" by the union on behalf of everyone. There are a whole pile of union rules, however every single manager will know how to bend or break the rules, and most unions (at least from my experience) are toothless entities. So in a sense, the union is more of a disadvantage, as you do not even have the ability to do it yourself, and the union itself is pretty powerless to do anything for you. In fact many times management will blame union rules for a failure to follow through on promises. Anyway, I wish someone told me at the beginning, that you need to only look out for yourself, use positions only as stepping stones to your next better position and move on, keep doing that until you are content where you are, then stay there. Don't trust management, ever. If they say there is a delay, or they are looking into it, unless there is a contract in front of you to sign, be applying for opportunities elsewhere. I am the guy with the most experience, both in terms of years and content, the most competent, have more responsibility, and capable, yet I am the lowest paid guy in the room. Yet I have also struggled over the years to get out of hole of staying on one position too long, because largely the competition can cite other positional titles, as well as what is mentioned in this topic a lot, previous HR salary comparisons. Going to the unions reps will get you blank stares, shrugs, and emphatic pats, but not much else.

Anyway when I first started out, I had the idealistic understanding, that you get a job, and if you are good at it, be loyal, try to improve the business, and increase your knowledge, responsibility, and function they they will promote you in salary and position. This is wrong (at least in a union environment). Management will be more than happy to let you do all that without any additional compensation. If you want to get ahead, do it yourself, be a mercenary, the job is there to provide you with things for your next application/interview within a year or so (or less). Stay too long at any one position and you risk getting stuck there...

Problem solved.

Also, when population pressures become too great, the next epidemic/war/zombie apocalypse will take care of the rest...

After that it will be a series of max mad type thunderdome type facilities, two men enter, one man leaves kind of population control...

1) Not California, but a non-profit based in Oakland???
2) Poorest residents making 70,000$ who can't afford solar panels???
3) ???
4) PROFIT!

hate all religions equally?

The thing about power and those that wield it is, once you have it, you're loath to give it up...

To play devil's advocate a bit, a lot of responsibility comes along with that power. You know a la Spiderman etc... One might at the time of decision making balance the overreaching power with the ability to have the best and every source of information available to you in order to make said decisions, to which you will be ultimately judged and have to live with.

In addition, while the NSA may report directly to Obama, you are also assuming that they are giving him the whole picture. Every organization, probably NSA particularly, is going to have their own power struggles within it, and having access to information is likely one of those things that is pretty valuable particularly again when referring to an organization such as the NSA.

1) First assume that the Earth is a perfect sphere
2) ???
3) PROFIT!!!

Citation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Also there have been several launches of competing streaming content providers from both Bell and Rogers as well that offer additional options.

So far the a-la-carte packaging is a bit of a sham. I just signed up for cable and got it installed last weekend. I looked at the a-la-carte option, and they were not all that price competitive, nor very flexible. Many of the channels are not available either, only as part of larger packages, presumably because the content providers refused (AMC for example, and a lot of the sport channels).

That said, the actual legislative changes that come into effect actually do so in March 2016. So those that have offerings are really just testing the waters, or trying to get ahead of the ball for when the hammer really does drop. After March 2016, not only will they be *required* to do so, the way in which they do so, and the price points in which they do will change for the better. We'll see what the response is, they may try to sneak in more hidden fees, or contracts, or install fees, etc... or whatever end run they might make around the rules.

However one thing that does seem key that no one seems to have noticed, is that they are reporting in a percentage... of what? Instances of something being downloaded, or GB of volume. In the article it really only refers to bandwidth being used for piracy. That is key. As you say, movie quality may be down, however the big difference that anyone can tell you that has downloaded anything is the difference in storage needed, for say a movie VS a TV show. To get an entire season of something is going to be several magnitudes more than a movie. A movie in HD will be about 1.5 GB. The same quality TV will be like 20GB. So the BIG difference isn't so much that movies suck, it's that TV sucks. What I mean by that is that the best TV being produced now, is available on Netflix, House of Cards, Orange is the new Black, etc... Why bother pirating it? There are only a few exceptions to that rule such as Game of Thrones, which I am sure by itself makes up a fair chunk of the content they are actually describing.

I have no doubt that they are being intentionally misleading with their figures, as it wouldn't really reflect as a success on them, more of a failure of their clients.

MPAA owned subsidiary VPN services collected an increase of 3000% in Canadian customer information... All part of their evil plan to get at your information that the ISP refuses to give up!

Commercial Trucks should be paying their way, not personal transport. They are the ones that destroy the roads. It is just ANOTHER way corporations use tax money to make themselves more profit.

There is a reason why they are referred to as warehouses on wheels, and just in time delivery. It used to be that companies would have to have hubs, and warehouses, and keep product and stock on hand for availability. Now everything exists constantly on wheels, and those go over highways. Who pays for the highways? Taxpayers. Who increases their profits? Corporations.

It will never happen however because of: OMG! JOBS! You must hate 'Merica and Job creators! Making corporations pay more taxes will destroy the economy! Etc...

This this this!

I have run into this countless times.
They basically enact some draconian security policy regardless of any other consequences. It breaks stuff all the time. The response you get back is typically, too bad, this is how things are now, deal with it, it is your problem. They are a level above all IT that make arbitrary decisions, oftentimes ridiculous ones, and even going to the highest level of IT infrastructure, they are like sorry, nothing we can do, you'll have to take it up with Security.

Anyway as to answering the actually story about the survey, there are two points that are related.
1) Oftentimes, due to what we both just described, staff with no resources, sometimes have to get creative as to how to get critical systems and application to continue to function within the imposed framework. An example of this might be to get around a 1h mandatory firewall timeout, developers might put in a script to automatically do a small query simply to "touch" the DB behind said firewall just so your users connections are not dropped every hour of every day. If it every blows up in someone face, security will simply say, well we implemented our security policy, they are the ones that circumvented it, thus it is all their fault we hold no responsibility. Never mind they didn't consider the function of any applications it might break or what that would do to service, data integrity, or anything else. Another sore spot is locally imposed security policy making local backup pretty much impossible at any scale, however again, should something go wrong and data be lost, we'll we're the ones responsibility for local back up. Jerks.

2) As to why you don't say anything... Well apart from the obvious in that you really don't want to get in trouble, a lot depends on how that survey was worded. In many cases of a breach, either no one, or very few people know about it, and you want it to stay that way so as to avoid more breaches of the same. I doubt anyone really involved, wouldn't tell anyone, that is silly. However they may be very selective as to how they go about communicating the breach as they try to address it, usually as it may take a bit of time to do.