And if somebody does get in through another means, do you really want to have to take the time to unlock the door to go in after him?

Yes, wouldn't it be wonderful is somebody released a Water resistant or waterproof mobile.

(more standardized wireless charging would be nice though)

I don't really agree with the whole "stealing jobs" thing, but some concern with these types of visas include

* Foreign workers are at the mercy of employers
Yes, even when they come here on a decent wage, employers often use the visa to push for unpaid OT, or to have them look the other way in the face of workplace violations
* Investing in workers
This is perhaps a bigger issue to me, and the issue itself goes beyond work visas etc. The relationship between companies and their employees is sour. Companies used to invest in their employees more, and in-turn they often got more loyalty. Except for some union situations, it's easier to get rid of employees and re-hire than to invest in training. If the foreign worker is more qualified that's as least something, but it would be nice if companies considered training existing employees or offering more education advancement opportunities. There's ignored value in keeping somebody around who knows the workings of a company, even if he/she is missing some of the technical merits for a position.

However, I don't fault foreign workers for taking better-paying jobs in better-paying environments.If somebody offered me a 50% raise to work in a tropical country I'd have a hard time passing that up.

How about a stipulation that any project that fails must release applicable resources to the public domain, as well as records on the use of applicable funds.

That public domain clause would include source code, artwork, template designs, patents, etc etc. The records, well, that just helps know that funding didn't pay for somebody's vacation and/or drug+alcohol habit.

eh? I've still gotten OS updates for Samsung devices after the new models came out (except for the rooted/custom devices).

If the manufacturer fails to provide the update, Cyanogenmod tends to be a good option afterwards. They're still building nightlies for my old i9100 (Galaxy S2)

Indeed. Perhaps the OP has not noted that there are a *LOT* of Android TV/streamer devices out there. Most of those work with a keyboard/mouse (or, preferably, an "air mouse"). I've had no issues using the core Google Apps, Netflix, XBMC-android, etc. Perhaps "Angry Birds" might be a little annoying with a mouse but more of the media-centric stuff works very nicely. As it is I've pretty much migrated my former Linux media box to an Android box that runs Play, Netflix, XBMC, and a few other media apps.

Replying to my own comment. Good shows stand up themselves. "Just for Laughs Gags" for example, has a segment in the US and even Asian markets/Mexico. Perhaps that could be considered a kooky "Canadian" sense of human, and it's certainly popular everywhere.

Being so close to the USA leaves us vulnerable to sort of being swamped, culturally.

What *is* culturally *Canadian*? Seriously, we've all seen the stereotypes like mounties and beavers (or a mountain and a wolf a la "Due South"), but is that really a defining part of Canadian identity?

I enjoyed "Bon Cop Bad Cop", but it wasn't really special content-wise. I certainly hope that we're not expecting that "Trailer Park Boys" or "Corner Gas" is really Canadian? Do we expect the actors to drink Canadian beer instead of Bud?

A lot of so-called American movies are actually shot in Canadian cities too, so scenery-wise they're pretty domestic. Ditto for Canadian actors (particular comedic actors) in American movies.

When I used to play with MC, some of the most fun I have had on my friends' server was to mess with them.
"oops, I have no idea how that lava field got underneath your farm. What, a creeper opened a hole to it and all the sheeps became BBQ. That's terrible!"
or
"A random which in your house which blew up a gigantic hidden stash of TnT? Where did that come from?"

Yes, but those are restrictions imposed by nature, not a monopoly/duopoly. There's a big difference.

So does the bill of rights/constitution and many other things. Rights and humane treatment can benefit bad people who take advantage of it. The issues is that a lack of rules and accountability is more of a DETRIMENT to honest, good people (and benefit to corrupt, bad officials, etc) than it is beneficial to terrorists.

Or, as put by H. L. Mencken

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all"

This also applies to covert/illegal surveillance, etc

I've definitely seen the tourrettes swearing-under-breath-or-at-imaginary-figures types, however there have also been a good number that will out-curse a shipload of sailors when they don't get their way, for example when:

* Being told to move from a certain area by authority figures
* Being offered food instead of cash, then being told... no I won't just give you cash
* Being ignored when getting in people's face for handouts, or being told to get lost.

You know, I actually have no problem with these two
* Bean with bacon megarocket paint-job DLC
* Officially licensed NFL team helmets, 1.99 each

If people want to spend money on cosmetic stuff without affecting gameplay, go right ahead. I quite enjoy Dota2/TF/etc. People who care about such things can spend a bunch of money playing dress-up (or make money selling items acquired from drops). Those that do not can play generally unaffected by those that do (I say generally because I have at times had a "WTF is that character" moment early in a game of DOTA when somebody has a character with odd looking accessories.

Well, there's that one desktop for GIMP which previously had only floating windows with no MDI-parent-container interface.

the ability to not run any metro (or whatever it's called) apps whatsoever.

Here here. Performance-wise, I'm fairly happy with Win8. Installing a start-menu replacement helped kill off the fugly tiles. My biggest headache recently was that some comflict between AMD APU+Win8+AVG made the system unbootable (spinning logo on startup forever). It worked fine with another antivirus though, and has been stable since.

Now usability. Getting rid of the tiles is great, but every time I have to hit Windows Update it drops me into that f***ing Metro fullscreen POS. No more tray icon or a window I can shuffle off to another monitor.

Bring back the built-in start menu, but more importantly kill Metro! Possibly, make it optional. It makes 0 sense for a desktop and actually makes the OS less usable.