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Comment Re:Morsi was only president for his supporters (Score 1) 68

I'm not sure how the Alberta NDP party, being in power for 4 years, spent 20 years pissing off the blue collar. Nor do I understand how the Alberta NDP enacting populist measures, such as raising minimum wage and offering universal daycare, continues this alienation of their populist voters. Nor do I understand where in Alberta did they ever promise electricity would get cheaper.

Comment Re: Let's just get the makers vs takers out of the (Score 1) 1116

A thought is, while employers have to pay more taxes for BI (hopefully), there would no longer be any need to enforce minimum wages as BI is the minimum wage. You would make BI + employed income, so employers would just have to pay you whatever minimum amount to make your time worthwhile to work for them. Want $x a month for luxuries, and have 160 hours of free time a month? Find a job that nets $x/160 per hour.

Comment Re:Funny how this works ... (Score 1) 184

First off, one of the many differences between Canadians and Americans is that Canadians tend to put more trust and faith into their government and are more willing to allow governmental involvement in our lives. A great example of this is the CBC, which is wholly owned by the Canadian government; another are the crown corporations in Saskatchewan (SaskTel and SaskPower, to name a couple). It is completely Canadian of me to think that government control is not, in itself, a bad thing.

As for what the commission determined in 1999, let's quote section 44 (emphasis mine)?

44. In the Commission's view, there is no explicit or implicit statutory requirement that broadcasting involve scheduled or simultaneous transmissions of programs. The Commission notes that the legislator could have, but did not, expressly exclude on-demand programs from the Act. As noted by one party, the mere ability of an end-user to select content on-demand does not by itself remove such content from the definition of broadcasting. The Commission considers that programs that are transmitted to members of the public on-demand are transmitted "for reception by the public".

To be 100% sure we aren't quibbling about what "on-demand" refers to, let's then look at section 43 that explicitly defines the term.

43. The Commission considers it important to distinguish between the ability to obtain Internet content "on-demand" - the non-simultaneous characteristic of Internet services - and the ability of the end-user to "customize", or interact with, the content itself to suit his or her own needs and interests.

Section 45 refers to the ability for the user to interact with the content itself, not to select the content. Therefore, Netflix falls completely within the purview of the CRTC.

Comment Re:Funny how this works ... (Score 1) 184

Then what Canadian -- let me help you out -- Canadian -- just in case that wasn't clear enough -- CANADIAN government body should "legislate" what gets sent across Canadian -- let me help you out -- Canadian -- just in case that wasn't clear enough -- CANADIAN networks to Canadian -- let me help you out -- Canadian -- just in case that wasn't clear enough -- CANADIAN end users? I would imagine that, since the Canadian -- let me help you out -- Canadian -- just in case that wasn't clear enough -- CANADIAN federal government is allowing the CRTC to act in this regard, they think that its the CRTC mandate; and I bet they are a better arbiter of that then some random internet tough guy like yourself.

Comment Re:Pull your head out (Score 1) 665

Consider Occam's Razor. If you already believe in an all-powerful sky fairy, then believing that the all-powerful sky fairy did something you don't understand is the easiest, most reasonable explanation. If you don't already believe in an all-powerful sky fairy, creating that belief as part of trying to understand something becomes infinitely more difficult.

Comment Re:Bullshit (Score 1) 224

No, it was to ensure remuneration. Just because the words of the statute don't mention it explicitly doesn't mean that it was not the driving force. If it weren't for the money, we could just skip the entire debate.

No, it was to promote science and useful arts. Ensuring renumeration by offering a limited monopoly is the means to this end but most certainly not the end unto itself.

Copyright protects the livelihood of the creators of works of knowledge or creativity to ensure that they may do so with the knowledge that they will receive just remuneration for their effort.

Maybe once, originally.

In a way, its no different than the ownership of real property - you can't pick up real property and move away with it, and anybody can walk on it.

No, it is completely different than the ownership of real property. Copyright is a temporary monopoly on an intellectual work so a creator can temporarily receive just renumeration, but then said work is surrendered to everyone so that everyone can use it, improve upon it, refine it, for additional profit and to give society as a whole a greater wealth.

Meanwhile, "real property" is something that is owned for as long as the owner wishes, to be used for whatever the owner wishes.

Comment Re:in 1975, when I was in High school (Score 2) 336

You need to understand the following to understand why the turnaround. From 1960-1990, 2-3% per decade less sunlight as reached the Earth's surface. In that same time period, global average temperatures maintained or increased. So... despite the fact that the Earth received less energy from the Sun for 30 years straight, it never cooled as expected.

I'll let that sink in for a moment. Climate is driven by the Sun's energy. The Sun's energy is reduced. The climate, with less energy from the sun, should get colder. But, it didn't.

Now, the trend of global dimming is reversing. And, the climate is warming up faster than it should purely from global brightening. Many scientists believe that the ice age we should have gotten in the 1970s and 1980s was masked by global warming happening back then. But, now, we just have global warming.

I won't lie: there may be people who are jumping of the bandwagons to keep them in the spotlight. I don't know this James Hansen. The one thing to point out is that at least is willing to change his views to match the evidence. Unfortunately, that's a very rare thing today.

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