Maurice, What am I paying you for anyway?

Almost all sales/trade shows are like this. Car shows, tools, sporting goods, or even pet supplies; they are are all pretty much the same with model/actress/whatever standing around using sex to promote a product. I don't see why electronics/computers should be different. But it seems to be acceptable to bad mouth the "industry" about it. If this offends stop going to the shows, most major companies stream their events. Also pressure your suppliers and business associates not to go as well. But remember, the "booth babes" were banned before and E3 almost went under because no one went.

Say you've got a small company with 200 employees. They all do their jobs well enough that everyone makes their quotas each year. Someone decides it's time to bite the bullet and upgrade. So the company buys the new hardware/software and the transition is planned.

Now you have to find trainers($) to "update" 200 people's skills, you need to find room/equipment to teach them the new software($$). Create time away from paying work for the training($$$), pay employees to be trained($$$$). The company has to eat the lost productivity and disruptions due to training($$$$$). Pay out for learning materials($$$$$+), pay to have all those power point presentations with the company logo($$$$$++). So now everyone is finally trained to the new standard, but the company still has to deal with the lost productivity due using the "new" system. All the problems due to forced training, and the employees you had to fire or who quit/retired instead of being trained. And the costs go on and on for years, until the company adjusts.

A good example of this is a major Canadian bank the I worked for in 2005; the bank was still using DOS applications running in a DOS Box under NT 4, because the apps worked. It was easier and cheaper to train new employees to use the DOS apps, then to write a "Windows pretty" front end that gave the same functionality. The bank did change to XP in 2007, but all those apps were still there and could be called up in a DOS Box.

And one of the major reasons is that a teller that has been working in the same branch for 40 years; does not need to be retrained to do the job. The teller is doing their job just fine with the same software they always used, once that teller quits or retires a new person can be trained to use the XP front end.

Actually he was buying generics made in different places(China and India) and re-packaging them as made in Canada, they may have been tested(no paperwork was ever produced to say so as far as I know). He turned in his pharmacy license before he could be convicted of fraud, unethical behavior and malpractice. He was an idiot to be in the US, he knew there were open outstanding warrants for him in the US.

Actually the ruling says that Tucows as the register does not have to turn the domain name over to the person in Brazil, who demanded the domain(because the domain name is the same as his last name). The domain name was in use, and also hosted 14 active domain email addresses that did not have to be surrendered by the person that registered the name with Tucows. The court ruled that the domain name and the domain email have a "real value" which makes them equal to property(as in I can't demand you give me your car because my last name was ford).

If as the court has ruled that a domain anme is "property" that means as long as it is maintained, it requires a court order to seize it, and that a business with a domain name is entitled to all the rights and privileges or a "real" business(actual court orders to search or read domain email without holders permission, ect.) A very interesting judgement, I imagine this may go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. In the area of property, ISPs would not be able to take your site down without a court order as long as your paying for hosting. Just as a business can't be evicted as long as it pays the rent, without a court order. You would be able to sue in court for loss of access due to outages, as if the landlord blocked a door to a store. Or if you are hosting your domain on your own equipment, a real court order would be required to block DNS records. I imagine this has huge implications to Intellectual Property rights, Copyright, and legal copying/file sharing under Canadian Law. I imagine the US and the EU are going to have an apoplectic fit once the lawyers start really discussing this.

When "local" news stops being a recap of AP wire stories, and when "commentary" stops being a mix of advertising and thinly veiled slander maybe I'll watch a "local" newscast. Most "local stations" or owned and operated by media conglomerates for the sole purpose of selling advertising space. Actual local news in TV always seems to open with a violent crime, followed by a car chase, followed by pre-weather then a commercial. Then it's part of the weather, sports, cute story, and then the weather recap. There is no "reporting" there is political spin, reporting the news stopped years ago and the public has finally caught on. Now the "local" stations are complaining that the "regional" stations are unfair competition. Well the "local" stations help create the short attention span of the public now they have to live with it.

Yeah, lets force the government to $upport "local news" that will fix the economy and everything.

Actually it will most likely be distributed like the tax on all recordable media is. That is to say; it is not distributed, the money is collected and then SOCAN gets to decide how much if any of the money a writer gets which is usually $0.00(no money goes to artists or performers). There appears to be no public records at all; of how much money is collected and how much, if any is given out.
"Some money" is given to the writers(who are members) as determined by SOCAN's in-house system. None of this money goes to any performers; neither those with label contracts or independent musicians. This is just SOCAN once again trying to squeeze money from consumers since they couldn't get the Canadian government to extort money from the ISPs on their behalf. And it's one small step from having a voluntary system to having a mandatory system.

Bell/Rogers figures that "everyone" is getting rich off of their infrastructure and since they can't seem to get "pay for play" legislated federally this is their end run around other companies. What Bell and Rogers fail to grasp, is that in the end; this will not increase their revenue an appreciable amount. Small companies will have to stop buying bandwidth to resell as they loose their source of income. And large companies are buying bandwidth at a fixed price already. And with the exception of Netflix most consumers won't approach the caps that are being talked about.

Personally I was going to reduce my bandwidth with Shaw until I moved and now I get "free" internet as part of my rent. I could even get by with just the "free wireless" offered at city buildings and coffee shops for most of my day to day surfing. I'm sure that some consumers will re-thinking their internet usage and will shift a lot of it to cellphones/tablets/wireless devices that already have data plans.