I don't think it would have been different in any other Canadian city. Say Calgary, for example. They sent their cops to the G20 in Toronto to help out:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2010/06/28/g20-calgary-g8-police-security-protest.html

I think it would have played out pretty much the same in any Canadian city. The times they are a-changin'.

I would have agreed with you prior to the G20 in Toronto in June. But Canada is becoming just as fascist as any other western state, maybe more so, complete with intimidation, beatings, and groundless mass arrest. You may be thinking of the old Canada, where if they wanted to abrogate rights, they had to do so legally through an act like the War Measures Act. Now they don't even bother with the legal niceties.

How I Got Arrested and Abused at the G20 in Toronto, Canada

That would explain all the taxes and fees as well. Thought you got a cheap flight? Guess again. There are no cheap flights once they add the cost of a cheap flight in additional charges.

Sounds pretty causal to me. Some say ASCII is harmless, but it just leads to Unicode, and before you know it, an epidemic of unwanted crack babies. Very sad.

Just say no to text.

Nor loss of habitat, something the article you link to also mentions.

I have a file system that allows me to create directories that I can give meaningful names.

People email me about stuff, and I used to put those into meaningfully named folders, but now I rely more on search. I email myself about stuff I want to be able to recover through search.

Years ago I wrote a simple web based calendar program that runs on my local computer. That's my home page.

That's about it. Pretty simple.

Because as Rumsfeld so sagely noted, "democracy is messy". Lets hope Jobs never runs for office and tries to set up iGovernment.

Yikes. According to the summary, it was $100 per message, plus punitive damages. Those are some punitive damages, esp. considering the per message value is punitive. Unless they believe emails are worth $100 each. In which case I should advise my correspondents to stop emailing me and just send the money instead.

Hah, jokes on me. Repeated meme blindness.

2002 called. They want their joke back.

Spam seems an attractive way of getting a message out because it is so inexpensive per message. Given the volume, the amount per message to act as a deterrent doesn't have to be that high. A buck would probably do it. Though perhaps he's really rich and they wanted a figure that equates with certainty to "all your money". I guess that's not an option when sentencing -- "How much ya got?"

Hows about genetically engineered super carbon capturing hemp? Or lichen, as presented in Kim Stanley Robinson's Forty Signs of Rain trilogy. Or perhaps all of the above, none are mutually exclusive. The problem with trees is that they take time to grow, and in the meantime, it would be good to have something that grows more quickly.

I'm with ya. My last job used texting as part of the emergency paging service -- texts were sent to the on call team. The sound indicating an incoming text still seems like a harbinger of doom. Should get around to changing it.

I hope your kids are filing patent applications for their ideas. They may not have perfected mirrored optical media or the optical drive with post it note scanner, but someone might, and then bam -- college paid for.

Corn sugar, corn syrup, it's all sweet. But not as sweet as 'angel kisses'. I guess they just didn't have the nads to suggest it be changed to that.