It’s finally happening. Draghi has decided to start directly monetizing PIIGS debt. The market’s reaction? Totally split as usual. Continue reading
Google’s infringement against Oracle: 9 lines of code!
In the copyright portion of the Oracle v. Google case currently going on regarding Google’s Android Operating System, the jury found that Google had infringed on 9 lines of code out of the 1.2 million lines in question. As best as I can determine, these are those 9 lines Continue reading
Why does Sandoz supply 90% of Canada’s injectable drugs?
I just learned that Canada is about to see its supply of injectable drugs run out. Pharmacies, hospitals, cancer centres, are all rationing crucial pain-killers, chemo-therapy drugs, and other drugs.
The proximate cause of this shortage, so the news tells me, is that the single company that supplies these drugs to the Canadian medical system, Sandoz Canada, has halted production. I’ve since read that a fire in one of the company’s plants, in combination with retooling to meet new FDA regulations, is the source of the shut-down.
The news tells me there should be a new government office in charge of monitoring the drug supply, an early warning system should be developed to warn of such a supply squeeze.
Well, here’s my question: Why is there only one supplier (Sandoz Canada) of injectable drugs in Canada?! Continue reading
Bill C-30 dissected
Bill C-30 is the rewriting of an internet surveillance bill formerly tabled as bill C-51, but not passed, in Canadian Parliament in recent years. It has just been re-tabled as “the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act” on February 14th 2012.
This new writing of the bill is virtually identical to its previous incarnation.
Why does this matter to you? Because this bill facilitates the creation of a telecommunications police state in which all of your telecommunications and digital activity are recorded for use against you, and forces your telco to surrender all of your personal information to the police on command, and all of this without a warrant. Continue reading
Finding information about the new Canadian Internet Surveillance bill is hard
I’ve been trying to write a piece on Parliament’s re-introduction of the old bill C-51 Internet Surveillance Bill. I’ve found information about the newly rewritten version of this bill and a couple other related bills very difficult to find.
The past versions of this bill would have allowed police to force your Internet Service Provider, and Cellphone Provider to hand over all of your digital particulars on command, at their discretion, without court warrant, for use as a surveillance tool against you, and to record all of your activities. The recordings would be handed over to the police should they receive a warrant any time afterwards. Continue reading
Internet Service Providers are not broadcasters afterall
Today, after a unanimous Canadian Supreme Court ruling, we can all finally breathe a sigh of relief in knowing what we already knew; that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are not broadcasters. I know that this seems like an obvious statement, but when the looting of hundreds of millions of tax dollars by Canada’s inept media producers is at stake (so long as ISPs are considered broadcasters by the Canadian Broadcast Act), nothing is as obvious as it may seem. Continue reading
The DMCA and SOPA all rolled up into one Canadian bill C-11
People who follow copyright have known for some time that with every new session of Canadian Parliament, a new version of the Canadian Copyright Modernization Act is tabled. If bills were named according to their intended effect, this one would be the “Turn The Internet Into A Police State and Take Some Of Your Rights Away Act”. Continue reading
Why government regulation of the internet is a really really bad idea in one clip
Whatever your stance may be on Net-Neutrality or SOPA or whatever, this clip should convince you that you don’t want your government in charge of the internet.
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Butterless Norwegians cling jealously to import tariff
Have you heard about the butter shortage in Norway?
It seems utterly ridiculous for a democratic nation to have a shortage of something so basic as butter. It’s the sort of thing one would expect to hear about happening in the old soviet bloc. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time with Norwegian grandmothers scrambling to get their hands on a pound (or kilogram) of the stuff to make cookies for Christmas.
Well, there’s an economic axiom at play here. Wherever you find shortages, you are certain to find price controls. And after about 10 minutes of searching, I found it. Continue reading
I can has Google Music Canada, and so can you!
Google music is just about the yummiest thing since sliced meat, but it’s only available in the US until Google manages to navigate the canadian music-communism regulatory labyrinth. That means it won’t be available in canada until the 12th of never.
But that’s ok! It’s pretty easy to set yourself up with a google music account, and once you have it, it will work from anywhere. You can upload your 20,000 songs to the great big Google in the sky, and listen to them on the bus, in the park, or even in your home! All you need is to install one of those proxy thingymajigs when you sign up for the account. Continue reading