Yeah, like all those people who are "Proud to be American!", just because they were born in the United States of America. What a total bunch of douchebags.

(My apologies if that broke everyones sarcasm meters. Your warranty replacements are in the mail).

Yaz

Probably because for some 2000+ years, certain major religions have been trying everything they can to make gay people feel shame over their orientation.

Yaz

I was in the same boat you were. I was a very happy TiVo customer here in Canada, until we moved to an HDTV.

The funny thing was having to try to convince the customer service woman at TiVo that no, I couldn't upgrade to TiVo HD. The concept that I couldn't get a CableCard from my local provider was so alien to her that I had to explain it several times (and even point her to TiVo's own webpage explaining why TiVo HD wasn't available in Canada). Even then I don't think she was quite convinced.

I guess that TiVo had so few Canadian customers that she really hadn't had to deal with the situation before. I still miss out old TiVo; the Motorola box we got from Shaw is great for 1080p video and Dolby Digital audio (neither of which our TiVo 2 could handle); but the user interface and software absolutely suck compared to the TiVo. It's always trying to do dumb stuff, like start a new scheduled recording on the tuner I'm using to watch something, even though nothing is being recorded (or is scheduled to record) on the other tuner at the time; menus you can't move back up from (even if you're several screens down, if you need to go up one menu you frequently (but not always!) have to exit entirely and start over again, drilling back down to where you wanted to be), not being able to filter out all the myriad of channels we don't get form the listings (I've simulated this by setting up a "favourites" list containing only those channels we get, but the way the interface is setup managing this when a few channels change often means I have to remove the favourites list and start over again), and ugly, ugly on-screen graphics (crappy fonts with no smoothing, no built-in upscaling for SD channels, so the entire UI changes to a more compressed version to fit within 480p, etc.). I could probably go on all day. I believe they have better boxes available now, but as I had to buy this one, I don't see it as worthwhile to "upgrade" to another non-TiVo box that is probably equally crappy.

Yaz

See, the creationists are going about this all wrong. What they need is a meta-theme park, where you go and spend time with a Jewish carpenter wearing hippy clothes who peaches to you all day about God and love while you help him build an Ark-based theme park.

See, in this way you get lots of free labour to build your theme park from all the True Believers, and should any heathens get in, you get to have hippy carpenter guy preach the good word to them all day.

The only drawback to all this is it means Mr. Ham would have to employ someone who is Jewish, and he might feel that is against God's divine will.

Yaz

Thus far, in every case that has occurred within Canada, the first alerts received by police about radicalized Muslims has been from Imams at various mosques.

The Muslim community has stepped up, and has been doing exactly what you extol. However, holding radical ideals isn't against the law in Canada; unless you can prove that a) an illegal act is being planned, or b) support is being given to an illegal organization, there isn't much the police can do except monitor the people involved.

The attacker from Monday's attack in St. Jean-sur-Richaleau was being monitored by police, and had even recently been questions by them. They had confiscated his passport, as he had booked a flight to Turkey (purportedly to cross into Syria to join ISIS/ISIL), but as he hadn't broken any Canadian laws, were unable to detain him. I have little doubt the way police were alerted to this person in the first place was via people at his local mosque.

Unfortunately, the police don't announce how they find out about the radicals they are tracking (news today has it that the RCMP is tracking 90 people for radicalist activities), in part to protect their sources. This is why you don't hear about it much in the media, but people on the inside know that it's been the leaders of Canadian mosques who have been at the forefront of reporting radical Islamic activity in this country.

Yaz

Sigh...that was, naturally, a typo. It was intended to read that the Queen is not a patent troll.

That said, you can take your nomination and stick it where the sun doesn't shine.

Yaz

Something I left out of my previous post; generally, the Government of Canada doesn't own the patent; instead it's owned by Queen Elizabeth II, in Right of Canada, and represented by the minister of the relevant government agency.

Here's an example I picked purely because of it's humorous title, particular when you relate it to the Queen as owner: APPARATUS FOR PERFORMING SCROTAL CIRCUMFERENCE MEASUREMENT ON BULLS.

Yaz

As a generalization you're correct, however, in the case of patents, they technically aren't held by the Government of Canada, but are instead held by the Queen. This is usually written as "HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN, IN RIGHT OF CANADA AS REPRESENTED BY THE MINISTER OF..." in Canadian patents.

Of course, in a practical sense, the Queen is going around acting as a patent troll. She may own the patents, but control tends to lie with the minister of the responsible government agency.

Yaz

I noticed that myself. However, as someone who has a few patents to his credit, it's not unusual for companies (and I suppose governments) in North America to file patents in both countries to improve their overall protection. The patent systems in the two countries are subtly different, and patents are still a national jurisdiction (meaning that US patents are unenforceable in Canada, and vice-versa). Things patented in the US but not here in Canada are fair game in Canada, as things currently stand. Canada also doesn't permit quite as wide a range of things that can be patented as the US does, so you can run into a situation where a Canadian company holds a US patent for an invention or process, but which doesn't have an equivalent Canadian patent.

A patent lawyer can probably provide a lot more detail, but if the US Government wants to assert its right to protect its patents in Canada, it has to file them with CIPO.

Yaz

Uh...I'll just leave this here...

Yaz

I have a handful of patents where I'm listed as the Inventor, and have some experience in this area.

First off, my case is somewhat different form yours in that while I'm listed as the inventor, the patents in question are owned by one of my former employers, as I came up with the inventions during my employment with them. While this does have the downside of my never being able to monetize them, the upside is if a prospective employer can't really pressure me into giving them anything for free -- they get to take that up with the cadre of lawyers retained by a certain corporation associated with the words "big" and "blue".

So here's a few (hopefully helpful) tips and ideas, based on my experiences:

• - Go ahead and list the patents on your resume, but keep the details light. I only provide the patents numbers, patent office that granted the patent (CIPO, USPTO), and the title. They tend to catch the eye of anyone reading your resume, and can be a great conversation piece when talking to an interviewer. However, even when discussing face-to-face, keep the details as light as possible, particularly if you're talking to a technical interviewer. The reasons for this are two-fold: a) if the idea is applicable to their area of work, they may be tempted to try to use it unlicensed (it can really suck to have a great idea of how to do something in your head, only to know you can't use it), and b) if they're already using it unknowingly, you put them in a potentially tough legal position. Neither situation is good for you as a prospective employee, so if they ask you for details on your patents, tell them you'd rather not discuss them for their own protection, and if they insist that they can go and read the patents themselves (suggest they only do so after speaking with their own legal counsel, however). Any smart hiring manager will actually appreciate this response (it's always worked really well for me at least).
• - Just because they hire you to do a job doesn't mean they have the right to everything you own as well. I presume you know how to drive. You wouldn't expect your employer to be able to borrow your car without paying you for it, right? If they hire you and come to you wanting to license your technology, that has to be a separate deal.
• - Worried somewhat about being pressured into allowing a potential future employer free license to use your patents? Incorporate and reassign the patents to the corporation. You don't have to let them know that you are the corporation if you don't want to. This gives you a firewall between your patents and your professional life.

Yaz

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

In my case, I answered that I have no toys, but that isn't entirely accurate. It's more that my daughter has inherited all my toys at this point -- so when I sit down with her to play legos, it's her toys I'm playing with now.

The quantity of toys in our house has only increased. Anything that was mine is now hers, but that doesn't mean I don't get to sit and play with them anytime I want -- with a 4yo playmate to sit down and play with me at that!

Yaz

That's a pretty big assumption. Could it not be more likely that HDM made the list and CoN didn't because a) HDM being banned by Catholic schools was fairly recent and somewhat wide-spread, whereas CoN was, from what I can find, only ever challenged in a few school districts, some of which happened decades ago, and/or b) because the poll writer lives somewhere where CoN wasn't challenged or banned, and thus wasn't aware that it had been challenged/banned elsewhere?

FWIW, I went to public school, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was required reading in Grade 5. I didn't write the poll, but had I done so, I probably would have left it off too purely due to not being aware that anywhere had ever found it sufficiently controversial to keep away from young readers.

But hey, if it makes you feel better to blame atheism, have at it. Most of us have heard worse, and have had to form pretty damn thick skin.

Yaz

Install iTunes somewhere, sign up for an account (you can do so without providing a credit card number), and download the album. Apple has been selling music DRM free for the last several years, so it's just standard AAC. Once you have it, remove your account, delete iTunes, and add the music to whatever music program you prefer to use.

Unless, of course, you live in Canada, where copying music from a friend is still perfectly legal.

Yaz