Actually... yes the do.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Just try explaining that to a U.S. company. Anonymized conversation:

Me - "How do I do [X] with our data?"
U.S. - "I can do that for you, just send me a copy of the database."
Me - "No, I can't ship our data to you. It's full of citizen's personal information."
U.S. - "Oh, well we can sign an N.D.A."
Me - "No, that won't work. The USA PATRIOT act allows the US government to compel you to give them that information. Our own privacy legislation prevents me from sharing that personal information with persons who can't or won't keep it private. When you combine the two, the only way for us both to comply with our respective laws if for me not to give it to you."
U.S. - "Oh, we've never had them come to us looking for that kind of information. And our lawyers..."
Me - "Doesn't matter, I still can't ship you the data"
U.S. - "Boy, you Canadian's sure have some funny laws"
Me - "Ummm.. yah - so anyways, how do I do [X]?"

I'm not evaluating whether the USA PATRIOT act is in general a good thing or a bad thing. But it is a hindrance on cross border commerce involving processing of personal data.

>Do you believe rehabilitation is impossible or do you want revenge?

I don't believe that someone who commits mass murder can be rehabilitated, no. It isn't about revenge; it's about public safety.

Someone once pointed out that hoping a rapist gets raped in prison isn't a victory for his victim(s), because it somehow gives him what he had coming to him, but it's actually a victory for rape and violence. I wish I could remember who said that, because they are right. The score doesn't go Rapist: 1 World: 1. It goes Rape: 2.

What this man did is unspeakable, and he absolutely deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. If he needs to be kept away from other prisoners as a safety issue, there are ways to do that without keeping him in solitary confinement, which has been shown conclusively to be profoundly cruel and harmful.

Putting him in solitary confinement, as a punitive measure, is not a victory for the good people in the world. It's a victory for inhumane treatment of human beings. This ruling is, in my opinion, very good and very strong for human rights, *precisely* because it was brought by such a despicable and horrible person. It affirms that all of us have basic human rights, even the absolute worst of us on this planet.

This is precisely why I lost all interest in Oculus the instant I heard that it had been acquired by Facebook.

Agreed. I know a lot of people who self identify as nerd/geek and they do like the show (myself included). Is suspect a lot of the backlash from people who feel the show is making fun of nerds/geeks rather than with them.

We have a show with main characters who are all likable, sympathetic and are vulnerable. The characters are aware that they are atypical and have their struggles with the "typical" world and typical challenges within "their own" community

Much like the British IT Crowd. (yah, I worked in that office for a while)

If I thought the jokes were in mean spirited, I wouldn't be watching.

Seedless watermelon involves crossing two lines (diploid and tetraploid) annually to generate a sterile fruit.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

I understand it seedless grapes are typically grafted from plant to plant and are perennial but I expect the "first" generation of them are produced in a similarity. That's how you could get multiple seedless varieties (green, red, black, etc.)

Of course, you realise that the Terminator Seeds thing is effectively a myth - right:

http://www.monsanto.com/newsvi...

Of course, we're quite happy to eat effectively some of these kinds of plants (seedless grapes and seedless watermelon).

And of course if you were worried about some of the GM gene's getting into the "wild", this would be a good thing. Then again, you'd expect one to be more concerned about our traditionally GM'd crops (i.e., bred) inter breading with their "wild" relatives.

$1USD per Oracle licence! How do we do it? Volume!

I'm still walking funny from the last time we negotiated with Oracle.

There was apparently the un-aired series finale that reportedly in the scrip included the fact that Venger was Dungeon Master's son and the children were there to help redeem him. Once this was complete, they had the option to go home; however, stayed for some other reason (I don't recall).

You could build an entire franchise off of this premise and probably make a lot of 40' something's very happy. Just imagine if the Transformers franchise built off the existing cartoon mythology rather than giving us racist-stereo-type robots and testicle jokes

And much more so for con-trails vs. soot :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

How would this do:

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/iss...

Purely energy wise, maybe, but what about the soot?

I recall hearing that one of the issues with flying is the amount of soot that is left in the upper atmosphere by a jet. The net result being that flying across North America (NY - LA) caused more greenhouse warming than driving an SUV for a full year (say 20,000km). The very black soot put out over the flight (cumulatively) causes more warming than the exhausts from the SUV (which for various reasons is not exhausting all that soot)

There is something else here. Climate data. As I recall there is a good amount of it that is "private". As in, researchers have been licensed to use the raw data by the people who have collected it (this may be another government, a university, a corporation that collects the climate data for its own purposes, etc.). However, they have not been licensed to publish it. And to be fair, that's fair. The data collectors spent money collecting the data and deserve to be compensated for amassing it.

By saying you can't use data that's not available to the public to set policy, you remove a larger amount data from the EPA and the results of any studies they are using become a lot squishier. They then can't say to that coal powered electricity generator you can't put 200 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere (or license it a $0.01/tonne)

That's the insidious part about this...

I've always been under the impression that academic dishonesty (cheating) has been grounds for expulsion ... basically for any accredited university.

As such eject them from the University, and good luck getting into any other 1st class schools with out a lot of work and growth (if ever).

The rest would seem to fall under the University's harassment policy. Which I'm sure has it's own way of removing trouble makers from class

What this says to me is that the Prof didn't activate the appropriate responses early in the term AND more so, the department head was asleep at the switch and didn't have a clue what was going on at the Prof's level (and provide guidance on how to address the issues with the class). And before you way it wasn't the department head's responsibility to do so, it is.

As a leader, your responsibilities not only include the direction of tasks and responsibilities for your subordinates. It also includes looking after their well being (and their subordinates). It's not enough to just provide Bob with safety equipment and training, you need to make sure Bob is using it. Likewise, it's not enough just to provide a harassment policy and enforce it, if Bob is not recognising he is being harassed, it's important to pull them aside and help them activate that process.