A collection of stories tagged 'canada' from Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/ Copyright 2006 RoomforMilk.com. RoomforMilk is not affiliated with Slashdot.org. Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:07:18 EST Matt_dk writes to point out the upcoming tenth anniversary of the International Space Station in two days' time. "On 20 November 1998, a Russian Proton rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome for a historic mission: It was carrying the first module of the International Space Station ISS, named Zarya (Russian for 'dawn'). This cargo and control module, which weighs about 20 tonnes and is almost 13 meters long, provides electrical power, propulsion, flight path guidance and storage space. The launch of the module... heralded a new era in space exploration, as, for the first time ever, lasting cooperation in space was achieved between Russia, the US, Europe, Canada and Japan. Over the next ten years, many other modules were brought into orbit, and ISS developed into the largest human outpost in space. Since that time, the building blocks, transported by Russian launch vehicles or the US Space Shuttle, have expanded the ISS to the size of a soccer pitch and a current total mass of about 300 tons."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26236 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ubKqKF26PvQ/article.pl Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:05:07 EST TechDirt is reporting on a disappointing development out of Canada. An Ontario transportation board has fined PickupPal, a Web-based service for arranging carpools, because a local bus company complained of the competition. (TechCrunch apparently first broke the story.) "[The transportation board has] established a bunch of draconian rules that any user in Ontario must follow if it uses the service — including no crossing of municipal boundaries — meaning the service is only good within any particular city's limits. It's better than being shut down completely, and the service can still operate elsewhere around the world, but this is yet another case where we see regulations, that are supposedly put in place to improve things for consumers, do the exact opposite."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26161 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/hADxwMQPnik/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:05:02 EST The New York Times reports that China has "agreed to loosen restrictions on foreign news and information providers inside the country, settling a trade dispute with the United States, the European Union and Canada." Formerly, all such news sources required licensing through China's official Xinhua News Agency. Note that the focus seems to be on financial reporting and information, rather than all forms of news reporting.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26153 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/9pB4u3_tYqg/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:05:01 EST jbpisio writes with a link to this blog-post summary that the Canadian government has commissioned a pair of unmanned subs to explore the geology of two underwater Arctic mountain ranges; the subs' mission will be to provide evidence supporting Canada's claim to huge swaths of potentially petroleum-rich seabed areas. According to the linked article, "The submersibles, scheduled to be launched in 2010, would be sent on a series of 400-kilometre missions north and west of Ellesmere Island, Canada's northernmost land mass and the country's gateway to the open Arctic Ocean - the scene of an international power struggle over undersea territory and petroleum resources believed to be worth trillions of dollars." At least five countries (besides Canada, these are the US, Russia, Denmark and Norway) would like a slice of those trillions.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26057 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/2Fz8OkY0OI8/article.pl Sun, 09 Nov 2008 07:05:06 EST An EU document on the Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty was leaked. The main purpose of the trade agreement is to impose the European enforcement measures for IPR infringements on the US and emerging economies, widen the enforcement measures to include criminal sanctions for patent infringements, and introduce internet content filtering measures. Civil society groups such as the FFII criticize the ACTA process because negotiation documents are not made publicly available by the governments. The EU document ('fact sheet') from the EU Trade Commissioner explicitly mentions: 'Internet distribution and information technology — e.g. mechanisms available in EU E-commerce Directive of 2000, such as a definition of the responsibility of internet service providers regarding IP infringing content.'" And an anonymous reader adds Michael Geist's push for more transparency around ACTA negotiations in Canada.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25964 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/JLnFayOLJxY/article.pl Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:05:02 EST I have to decide on a mobile phone to develop for. We're building a house with some automation built in, and we want the mobile phone to be able to control certain aspects of it, and retrieve information on what's going on in the house. Our choices are the usual suspects: Apple's IPhone, RIM's Blackberry, Nokia's line (Symbian), any Android phone we can get in Canada, J2ME generic app, or a Web-based UI we would interact with in the phone's browser. What would you choose if you had to go with one? Which exact model? We will be buying a few to develop for, so price is a bit of an issue."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25753 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/TSRgL5bQ_eE/article.pl Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:05:03 EDT For those with a stake in the opposition of Jim Prentice's C-61, the Canadian DMCA, this previous week's election results will be displeasing. The Conservative Party, which promised to reintroduce the DMCA if elected, gained 19 seats this election, mostly at the expense of the flagging liberal party, a mere 12 short of a majority government. The increase in Conservative representation, as well as the relatively low profile of this issue amidst other, more pressing concerns, increases the likelihood that the son of C-61 will come to fruition. On a positive note, the number of MPs supporting Geist's copyright pledge has increased to 34. Given the Conservative Party's historic disregard of public opinion, however, the efforts of the copyright-pledge MPs will have to rally the full opposition across three major parties in order to defeat the bill. A mere 12 MPs now stand between the Canadian public and the MAFIAA's hungry maw."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25640 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/yW9YIn88Efc/article.pl Sun, 19 Oct 2008 21:05:01 EDT A team of internationally renowned astronomers and opticians may have found a way to make "unbelievably large" telescopes on the Moon. "It's so simple," says Ermanno F. Borra, physics professor at the Optics Laboratory of Laval University in Quebec, Canada. "Isaac Newton knew that any liquid, if put into a shallow container and set spinning, naturally assumes a parabolic shape, the same shape needed by a telescope mirror to bring starlight to a focus. This could be the key to making a giant lunar observatory.""Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25384 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/0GT7djft0pE/article.pl Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:05:07 EDT The BBC reports that Earth's most ancient rocks, with an age of 4.28 billion years, have been found on the shore of Hudson Bay, Canada. Writing in Science journal, a team reports finding that a sample of Nuvvuagittuq greenstone is 250 million years older than any rocks known. It may even hold evidence of activity by ancient life forms. If so, it would be the earliest evidence of life on Earth — but co-author Don Francis cautioned that this had not been established. 'The rocks contain a very special chemical signature — one that can only be found in rocks which are very, very old,' he said."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25110 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/QbvCMKGJeXk/article.pl Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:05:03 EDT Internet companies led by Google joined groups representing Web users to challenge the Bush administration's bid to toughen international enforcement against copyright pirates. The companies said the US courts and Congress are still working out the correct balance between protecting copyrights and the free exchange of information on the Web and a treaty could be counterproductive. "There's this assumption that what is good for Disney is what's good for America, but that's an oversimplification," said Jonathan Band, an intellectual property lawyer representing libraries and high-tech companies. "There's also what's good for Yahoo and Google." The U.S., Japan, Canada and other nations said last year that they would begin negotiations on an agreement aimed at cracking down on counterfeiting of such goods as watches and pharmaceuticals and the piracy of copyrighted materials such as software and music recordings. A leaked draft of the deal showed that the treaty could force Internet service providers to cooperate with copyright holders."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25000 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/o1-mMmtX9Gs/article.pl Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:05:18 EDT SecureWorks published the locations of the computers, from which the greatest number of cyber attacks were attempted against its clients in 2008. The United States topped the list with 20.6 million attempted attacks originating from computers within the country and China ran second with 7.7 million attempted attacks emanating from computers within its borders. This was followed by Brazil with over 166,987 attempted attacks, South Korea with 162,289, Poland with 153,205, Japan with 142,346, Russia with 130,572, Taiwan with 124,997, Germany with 110,493, and Canada with 107,483."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24989 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/KZhajUbhtLM/article.pl Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:05:01 EDT The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge have filed a lawsuit against the Office of the US Trade Representative in an attempt to get the office to turn over information about a secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement treaty being negotiated to step up cross-border enforcement of copyright and piracy laws. ACTA could include an agreement for the US, Canada, the European Commission and other nations to enforce each others' IP laws, with residents of each country subject to criminal charges when violating the IP laws of another country, according to a supposed ACTA discussion paper [PDF] posted on Wikileaks.org in May."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24899 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/xrP2kfosEq8/article.pl Fri, 19 Sep 2008 11:05:14 EDT JagsLive passes along the intelligence that New York has become the second state to issue drivers licenses with RFID tags (Washington was the first). The new "enhanced drivers licenses" cost $30 more than the old ones. They can be used instead of a passport for entry into the US by land or sea (not air) from Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Authorities say no personal information will be stored or transmitted by the chip, only an ID number that will be meaningless to anyone but DHS. Citizens of New York who prefer not to carry an identifying RFID chip can still get an old-style license.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24863 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Tz1vTzZZ57Y/article.pl Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:05:01 EDT Like the previous Bill C-60 before it, the proposed Bill C-61 that would bring DMCA-like laws to Canada is poised to die on the order table, never to receive a vote, as the current minority government falls. An election call is expected in days. Everybody expects that some form of these laws will be back yet again (third time's a charm?). There are too many interests pushing for change to let it go. But here's a chance for Canadians to influence politicians about it in an election campaign, and hopefully strike a better balance. And for those of you in the rest of the world who are laboring under a DMCA-like copyright law, let's hear your stories about why such laws are a good or bad idea, and if bad, how you would amend the law to make it tolerable. With the polls probably on Oct. 14th, Canadians will be looking for a few good ideas."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24585 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/1F7GnGvCD1Q/article.pl Sat, 06 Sep 2008 01:05:03 EDT CNN is reporting that a chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic. Just last month 21 square miles of ice broke free from the Markham Ice Shelf. Scientists are saying that Ellesmere Island has now lost more than 10 times the ice that was predicted earlier this summer. How long before the fabled Northwest Passage is a reality?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24543 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/6lUlg2quvyM/article.pl Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:05:03 EDT User AttheCoalFac pointed us to a interesting tech support story from Canada. Halifax actress and playwright Carol Sinclair was arrested and is now facing criminal charges after a repairman says she threatened to hold him hostage until he fixed her Internet connection. Mrs. Sinclair denies the allegations and says that she merely stated, 'I don't want to hold you hostage, but would you mind hanging around until the other technician arrives so that the two of you can sort it out.' She was arraigned in Halifax Provincial Court Friday and is now free on conditions including that she have no contact with the repairman or any employee from her ISP. Having a lot of experience on both sides of this issue, I'm not sure who I'm cheering for.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24525 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/PL1wjmFoAKs/article.pl Wed, 03 Sep 2008 12:05:28 EDT User AttheCoalFac pointed us to a interesting tech support story from Canada. Halifax actress and playwright Carol Sinclair was arrested and is now facing criminal charges after a repairman says she threatened to hold him hostage until he fixed her Internet connection. Mrs. Sinclair denies the allegations and says that she merely stated, 'I don't want to hold you hostage, but would you mind hanging around until the other technician arrives so that the two of you can sort it out.' She was arraigned in Halifax Provincial Court Friday and is now free on conditions including that she have no contact with the repairman or any employee from her ISP. Having a lot of experience on both sides of this issue, I'm not sure who I'm cheering for.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24511 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/381988951/article.pl Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:05:00 EDT The web is evil and must be stopped — because it makes public information too public. So says Canada's Privacy Commissioner. She wants to 'anonymize' court records by substituting initials for names. The Toronto Star quotes Jennifer Stodddart as saying 'The open court rule, which is extremely historically important, has now become distorted by the effect of massive search engines... Court decisions and other related documents, which contain all sorts of personal information, are now searchable worldwide, which was never intended when openness rules were devised.' All Stoddart's proposal would do is erect a minor barrier for the techno unsaavy. Researchers, reporters, geeks, and most teenagers would still be able to figure out who's who. Stoddart seems to believe only in an abstract notion of freedom and access — but only as long as not too many people use it and no one suffers. She cites the case of someone who is upset at reading the divorce case of her parents. Is Stoddart a danger or a menace? Or just clueless?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/24272 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/370595181/article.pl Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:05:01 EDT A team from the University of Maryland has won the 11th Annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition, held in San Diego, CA, this weekend. Twenty-five teams from around the world (US, Canada, Japan, and India) built autonomous submarines to complete a series of tasks using vision recognition, autonomous navigation, and sonar. Maryland unseated the 3-time record holder, University of Florida, to win first place. University of Texas at Dallas took 2nd, and a Canadian team, École de Technologie Supérieure, took 3rd."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/23964 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/355751322/article.pl Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:05:02 EDT The recently concluded 2008 Mozilla Summit, held in Whistler, Canada, was impacted by a rock slide that cut off the main highway between Whistler and Vancouver, where most attendees planned to depart via airplane. In true open-source fashion, summit attendees collaborated on a solution, opening a Bugzilla bug (severity: "blocker"), posting crash dumps, and proposing solutions, including chartering a flight (which would land first in TRUNK, then BRANCH). Eventually, attendees settled on a workaround which seems to have been successful. For next year's summit, organizers might want to consider a location with more redundancy."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/23921 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/353669862/article.pl Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:05:00 EDT Ars Technica is covering an interesting pilot program taking place in Ottawa, CA. 400 homes are being outfitted with fiber optic cables, however, the "last mile" of fiber is going to be sold outright to the homeowners rather than providing internet at a monthly fee. "In the future, it could become commonplace for homes to come with 'tails'. These customer-owned, fiber-optic connections would link them to a network peering point. Without the expense of rolling out last mile infrastructure to every home, many more ISPs could afford to serve a given neighborhood by running wiring to the peering point, leading to more competition and lower prices. Perhaps best of all, the growth of customer-owned fiber could make debates over "open access" and network neutrality moot, as robust telecom competition should prevent the worst of the monopolistic behavior exhibited by telco and cable incumbents. "Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/23907 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/352976233/article.pl Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:05:02 EDT A recently publicized issue with UK's O2 leaking private MMS to the Internet by making them available and searchable in Google has gained a lot of momentum and forced the company to promptly fix the problem. However a quick internet search shows that other mobile server providers, including those located in US and Canada, also make all MMS messages available in a similar manner. In fact, operators like Sprint and Boost Mobile will even let you see the phone number from which the picture or video was sent, download it, print it, forward it or reply to it from the same web page. Other operators like Canada's Bell, Solo Mobile, Verizon, Rogers and Quest appear to have removed or otherwise protected all MMS messages recently as all the cached search listings that show up for these providers are no longer available. There is no telling how many other operators' MMS listings can be accessed given correct search terms, but it looks like they are starting to get the idea and remove them from the web."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/23678 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/341452428/article.pl Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:05:01 EDT Solar race cars this week began their nine-day, 2,400 mile chase from Dallas to Calgary, Alberta using only the sun for fuel. The 24 teams in the American Solar Challenge race are mainly US college teams including entries from MIT, Ohio State and Northwestern. The University of Michigan's Continuum car is the defending champ, having won the Challenge in Australia last year. The University of Michigan has won four out of the eight North American Solar Challenges it has entered with its team of more than 100 engineering students, who have vowed to defend their title this year."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/23599 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/337475425/article.pl Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:05:07 EDT thepacketmaster learned of "...the possibility of Steven Hawking moving to Waterloo in Canada: 'A report out of Britain suggests Stephen Hawking is considering an invitation to come work at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics....But he's also being encouraged to move to Ontario by his University of Cambridge colleague Neil Turok, the mathematical physicist who will take over as Perimeter's executive director on Oct. 1. Perimeter confirmed last night that it has made a standing offer to Hawking...Turok is leaving Cambridge after failing to persuade university authorities, research councils and sponsors to spend $40 million...By comparison, Waterloo's Perimeter Institute has about $600 million in funding...The addition of Hawking to Perimeter's staff of top physicists would be a major coup for the research institute, founded in 1999 by Mike Lazaridis, founder and co-CEO of Research In Motion, which makes the BlackBerry.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/23590 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/337186236/article.pl Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:05:03 EDT A Canadian panel of leading scientists warns that nanomaterials appearing in a rapidly growing number of products might potentially be able to enter cells and interfere with biological processes. According to a story in the Globe and Mail, the Council of Canadian Academies concluded that 'there are inadequate data to inform quantitative risk assessments on current and emerging nanomaterials... Their small size, the report says, may allow them "to usurp traditional biological protective mechanisms" and, as a result, possibly have "enhanced toxicological effects."' The council is an independent academic advisory group funded by the federal government, but operating at arms-length from Ottawa. The 16-member panel that wrote the new report included some of Canada's leading scientists and top international experts on nanomaterials."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/23497 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/332837594/article.pl Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:05:04 EDT