Its not about money with me, maybe I'm pessimistic, but I am ashamed of what society has become, what my generation has failed to do to improve the global community and the lack of political will to correct the wrongs of our generation. While I'd love that kid and strive to do the very best for him, every single day I look at him I would ask him to forgive me for bringing him into this world. I think the responsible, conscious adult chooses not to have a child for many reasons, and I think economics probably is a big factor, but for me it's my child's future and what his generation will be left to face.

I think the more modern a country is, the more the citizens are connected and the more messaging they are subject to and influenced by. We are inundated every day with hate, disaster, climate calamity, politics, etc. Someone living in a place disconnected from global affairs will have an entirely different outlook on the future - their world won't know about the big trash area in the pacific, or the growing CO2 issue, or trashing the rain forests, war in Afghanistan, nuke bombs in north korea, NAFTA, gas prices, how you need crippling debt to afford a quality education that everyone must get etc.etc.. It'd be interesting to know what the birthrate in rural america is vs. urban america.

I second this

IMHO you should only be able to sell a copy or "license" to use your DNA sequence, but that "license" should not be transferable to the next buyer.

Its odd that people blindly accept contracts without reading them or negotiating the terms. When submitting data like this to a database held by a third party, you'd better make damn sure there are stipulations in the contract to protect YOUR data! otherwise DON'T DO IT.

One more thing, if you give anyone any iota of information, expect that information to never again be private.

if i were firefox I would check to make sure Microsoft hasn't pattented this.

do the same to a linux box, and guess what?! its more secure than the windows one!

It has to be prior art, take a look at sites like altavista.com which were around long before google. Granted the two buttons are not there, but if you count links as buttons then certainly it's similar. What is a button used in this context btw? you could argue that it's a stylized link.

This leads you to (worst case) having every site on the net patient their design. Doesn't copyright cover this already? IANL

Universe series season 3 episode 4 takes a look at this topic. Was made in 2007.

Problem with the bonus is it's taxable. And you paid for the laptop with your cash after tax. You are out the taxed amount of money if they treat it as a bonus because it has to show up on their books. Bonuses in Canada are taxable as far as I know, but I am not an accountant.

In reality, I would keep the laptop for my own personal use or take it back to the store and say to the company if they would like to reemburse me, to have them buy me a work laptop instead.

Regarding personal data.. Its a bad idea to use company equipment for personal reasons.

1) backups are taken of all the data on the machine, so you can't know who is looking at your personal data. This is true of your encription methods. Maybe the company can't crack that partition, it doesn't change the fact that maybe some time in the future a method would be available. If the data is personal and important it doesn't belong on company equipment. It's just a bad idea.

Not too sure about this one anymore. Back in the day certainly.

me either

Often it is sufficient in canada to use a credit card to apply for those things that require trivial amounts of credit. It can be considered proof of established credit to have one and usually there is some insurance protection that the credit card companies offer the business to protect them.

In my opinion it is rediculous to demand a credit check for anything other than loans, mortgages, lines of credit or financing through xyz company. Since internet service is not one of these things and since the amount per month is trivial what you have to ask is why do they need the SSN? Further, in Canada if you no longer do business with company X there is (as far as I know, and I am not a lawyer) some legal recourse to get this information removed.

You have to expect now days that once you give out your SSN (and any other personal information) to any company, it is now in the public domain. Although there are laws to prosecute companies and individuals that divuldge this information to others, it still doesn't change the fact that the information is out there. These laws deal with the problem after the irreparable damage is done.

I would go without internet service/phone service etc before I gave any of this kind of information up.

I agree the parents are 100% responsible for the child until that child is considered an Adult by whatever region governing body.

humm...
so if I walk into a music store and walk out without paying for my copy of xyz music - I am stealing from the retailer since the retailer has already paid for the music from the distributer.

If I download said music from a P2P network - I am not stealing from anyone?

Just because one of the two examples was a physical tangable item has no bearing on the legality of the situation. You could say the same about a book. I argue that the majority of the value of a book is in the words and concepts in the book, not the physical paper it is written on eventhough the physical material has some value.

The item that is taken from the corporation is the value (read $) of the licence to use the work (in the case of music as ownership of the music is not transfered). I would say that the victim of copyright infringment's loss is concrete/real because the victim spent actual dollars creating (or purchasing licenses to use) the work.

I would agree with this.

Get a kid a pc give him a unprivileged account on it and disable the NIC. Let the kid do his book reports and homework wordprocessing on it.

When the kid needs internet access to do research, enable the NIC and monitor his use. Give him a 1/2 hr or 1 hr per day for recreational use of the net while being monitored and afterwords disable the NIC. I remember growing up, my parents allotted me 1 hour of tv per day until I was in jr. high school, the internet is no different. There is no reason a child of 10 years old should need to be on the net, or carry a cell phone etc. We all got by without it.

I realized very early in life after cleaning out PC's at work that I didn't want to waste my personal time doing the same thing to my own machine.

You are still responsible for your sons use of his computer....