No - that would be Telus. The area of Alberta where I lived - a new landline waiting list was over 2 years. Well, that was when a time was quoted or you weren't told unequivocally "no." Customer service is a joke.

Now, after moving to Toronto, my experience is vastly different. Rogers is giving me 10mbs at home for prices comparable to what I paid in the US, respectable speed and 6gb tethering with mobile... 50 mbps available (if you want to pay). Plus, a healthy bit of competition has the major companies (Rogers, Telus, and Bell) competing for subscribers with phone, mobile, TV, and internet packages - and a corresponding increase in quality of customer service here.

It all comes down to location when dealing with these corps in Canada.

To elaborate further - It comes down to whether you are perceived as "business professionals" or technicians.

Increasingly IT is being seen as less of a strategic resource and more or a cost of doing business. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than by the disappearance of the CIO from the executive board. More and more often, this role is being relegated to reporting to the CFO.

If the helpdesk consists of technical school types or computer science trained with a career track that leads towards system administration or development, then uniforms are not unreasonable.

If, however the helpdesk workers are business-college grads that are looking to be moved into corporate or IT management, then I would strongly resist the change. The uniform shirts are more likely to create the perception of "techie guy" that might hurt when applying for non-technical promotion.

The good news is that GSM encryption lasted 21 years (more or less).

And in truth, the effort was probably really exceptional. There is really little chance that criminals could reproduce his work, because they are all uneducated and stupid. Plus it is illegal in Britain and the US, so that should discourage potential snoopers.

Whew - catastrophe narrowly avoided!

Nah - your argument is spot on: this is a responsible move by AT&T to discourage further stress on an over-capacity network.

It simply removes the possibility of implementing your solution.

Well, if the the restaurant is required to find some place for you to sit or stand quietly while ordering what you want and eating it, then this is an accurate analogy. In the US, cell phone providers are not allowed to refuse service - even for creditworthiness - unless you already owe them money. Since the iPhone is the biggest reason for AT&T subscriber growth over the past year or so, this is simply their way to cope with a drastically overloaded network and limit the number of new subscribers in NYC.

And yet the French are so proud of their pizza! My first weekend their and my hosts proudly and flamboyantly served a greasy egg-topped mess to "make me feel at home." It made me feel something, alright.

Bentham's panopticon is all about deterrence - stopping unwanted "user" (prisoners) actions. Google, however, makes money based on users continuing to behave normally while they watch, and then taking additional (purchasing) actions based on what Google knows.

The evil governments of conspiracy theories also aren't interested in deterring individual behavior - but instead want to identify the way users think. They can then identify those users and make interventions to stop them from infecting others.

Google's experience with the Patriot act and Yahoo's (and Google's) run-ins with China should have taught him a lesson about the need for privacy.

Did you read TFA? The man had cybersex and phone sex with a 12 year old girl. He was acquitted because he said he hadn't made plans to meet her (yet?). That definitely does not qualify as not committing an offence - the question at hand was "which offence."
The original judge took a narrow view of the law, which I'm a fan of. Upon review, the appeals court clarified the need for concrete plans to meet.

The discussion on conversations not needing to be sexual in nature is taken from one of the Justice's comments that non-sexual conversations are often the precursor to trust and a physical meeting. Justice Fish specifically stated that an "intent to meet" must also exist in these situations.

From one of the video links in TFA:
It doesn't matter what age the child actually is, but instead on what age is claimed. This was a direct request from the police - it ensures the continued ability to run sting operations.
So, no - you can't get hauled in for not knowing, unless you are trolling the age specific (ie. 10-13) chat rooms.

Indeed - because sitting at the family computer is the only place that kids chat online, these days.

Cell phones, laptops, media players, game consoles, kindle... Not to mention the abundance of public access available at schools and libraries.

Young teens (that seem to be the target, here) would not be able to function socially or educationally in the US or Canada with only supervised internet access.

Having gone through the research/submission/revision/publication process of science multiple times, I can vouch for the fact that Science is indeed done by consensus. Research will be conducted on a topic until the same conclusion has been reached by multiple authors, likely using multiple methods. The later verifications most likely will try to give some sort of "value added" by integrating complementary theories, but those previous conclusions will be tested often.

That aspect of your argument is definitely true. That is one of the ways that consensus is built - repeated analysis and conclusions that verify the validity of the initial findings. One thing that is often lost in the CRU scandal is that there have been many independent researchers that are coming to the same conclusion using different methods. Mann and Jones' behavior is the result of the politicized environment and partisanship that exists around climate change science - an environment they definitely helped create (chicken or the egg?). Given the number of climate change proponents that jumped to justify the leaked emails as perfectly innocent and refused to see anything damning in them, it makes it difficult to give the rest of the (nearly uniformly) honest scientists the benefit of doubt.

I'll agree that Ender's Game and the subsequent books are great, but for the purpose of a class you should look at Card's "Maps in a Mirror." It is an anthology of short stories that cover most of his writing career. The biggest benefit for this particular edition is that includes forwards for each story about what he was thinking, going through, and aiming for when he wrote the stories. This offers an awesome insight into what the author intended, and can be a great introduction to the desired analytic skills.

100%? Hardly. Have you actually read the "privacy" policies for Google products? It amounts to "your data is ours, and we can share it." Couple that with the fact that Google toolbar and even Google Desktop now comes on most consumer laptops and you have now have an uninformed public sharing all of their information with a corporate Big Brother. Google has been getting a bit of a free ride so far, and it is about time a few more people noticed.

You'd be surprised at how secure Nigeria actually is. In fact, it's so secure I'm currently having difficulties getting money out of the country. You may be able to help, though - I'll send you an email with details.