I know we aren't supposed to complain about the options, but this is ridiculous. Why would they set up the ranges this way? Nearly everyone in the modern world lives more than 15,000 times their height away from their birthplace.
Uh, really? I live in a major Canadian city, about 6 km from the hospital I was born in, which is situated on the site of the hospital my mother was also born in, in fact. Many people living in the same city they were born in would be living within 15,000x their height (average human height in a developed country is about 1.7 m so 25 km).
Remember, the Slashdot crowd is an atypical sample of the population. We're much more likely to be single males of middle / upper middle class background. We have considerably more social mobility and moving across the country for a job is not an unreasonable proposition. Many lower-class and middle-class people here live in the city they were born in their whole lives. If they were born in a small town they *might* move to a major urban area when they're younger.
The UK version in which doctors are federal employees is one, but the Canadian system where the federal government is essentially the insurer is another.
While you got the general idea right, you got some facts wrong. The UK doesn't have a federal government to begin with, and universal insurance is implemented at the provincial level in Canada, with each province having its own insurance system.
I don't know Canadian law, but if satire is protected, couldn't someone put a small disclaimer on the website?
Satire and parody are broadly protected, but that wouldn't work if the material wasn't actually satire. It's like a terrorist putting up a disclaimer "these aren't instructions on how to build a bomb" while then describing how to build a bomb...
Pornography may be naked people having sex, or it may be sites critical of the government.
Oh no, this is actually about pornography. The government of China already openly and unabashedly censors political content it doesn't approve of.
While a risky move, Microsoft just needs to pull out of the EU and say "Piss off"
Lolwut? Why yes, Microsoft should pull out of the world's largest market, probably cutting their revenue by about 30%, just to stand up to some pushy EU bureaucrats, that makes good business sense!
the courts will very likely find the Minister to be incorrect in his interpretation of the constitution, and that everything he is proposing violates Section 8 of the Charter, "Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure."
I would point out the Supreme Court has ruled that that whether information is subject to protection by Section 8 is not at the whim of the government, but whether a person has a "reasonable expectation of privacy" of information which could "reveal intimate, personal information", in that particular situation.
It is not particularly difficult to envision a situation where linking an IP address to a name would potentially reveal personal information to the state. Imagine a woman posting on a support forum for victims of sexual assault which tracks posters by IP...
Since IP addresses and so on are identifying information, and this being information people would reasonably expect their ISPs to keep private, I suspect that this entire thing is just begging for a Charter challenge and to have the courts clearly specify that a warrant is required.
CanLII has a very interesting brief on section 8 of the Charter here.
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
