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Hey, so it looks like Michael Ignatieff still doesn't understand parliamentary democracy?quote:On the coalition, Ignatieff writes that nothing had ever been proposed in Canada before similar to the Liberal-NDP deal that was crafted to remove Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government from power. Amazon informs me Iggy's book will arrive tomorrow. I'm stoking my hateboner.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 01:56 |
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# ? Jun 7, 2024 06:37 |
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Pinterest Mom posted:Hey, so it looks like Michael Ignatieff still doesn't understand parliamentary democracy? Although I'm sorry Harper won, I'm simultaneously not sorry this rear end in a top hat lost. I really loving hate how someone who was essentially an American style neocon managed to get that close to power. Poor Dion.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 02:02 |
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JoelJoel posted:Then the movie started and the boos got louder. I seem to recall that every member state gets an opportunity to address the General Assembly once a year. This usually happens in the fall but I don't remember why. (drat you Prof. Stan Natchfolger. I remember your name but not the content of your class.)
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 02:14 |
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Pinterest Mom posted:Amazon informs me Iggy's book will arrive tomorrow. I'm stoking my hateboner. Why the gently caress would you pay money for that
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 02:51 |
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I don't think I've ever loathed a Conservative politician as much as I do Michael Ignatieff.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 03:05 |
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THC posted:Why the gently caress would you pay money for that I'm really committed to disliking Michael Ignatieff. (Real answer: he's the most fascinating and frustrating and alien public figure in recent history, and I'm super curious to read his presumably frank take on a lot of different events and decisions in his political career. 2009 in particular was him just Mr. Magooing his way from obvious conservative trap to the next, and I want to know his perspective.)
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 03:14 |
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Pinterest Mom posted:(Real answer: he's the most fascinating and frustrating and alien public figure in recent history, and I'm super curious to read his presumably frank take on a lot of different events and decisions in his political career. 2009 in particular was him just Mr. Magooing his way from obvious conservative trap to the next, and I want to know his perspective.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA2pB3qQIkI
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 03:23 |
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mr. unhsib posted:I don't think I've ever loathed a Conservative politician as much as I do Michael Ignatieff.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 09:35 |
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Pinterest Mom posted:Hey, so it looks like Michael Ignatieff still doesn't understand parliamentary democracy? In his defence here, the public would certainly take it the way he describes, given the lack of knowledge of parliamentary democracy.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 15:50 |
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Is it worth talking about how RIM is basically dead now? Yesterday, they reached a tentative $4.7B buyout agreement. It used to have a market cap of almost $55B. Even Nortel was worth more when it was chopped up and sold off. Mostly I feel bad for Kitchener-Waterloo, and my dad who thought RIM was poised to be the next Apple despite having zero vision and no Steve Jobs.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 16:00 |
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a primate posted:In his defence here, the public would certainly take it the way he describes, given the lack of knowledge of parliamentary democracy. Sure, there would be initial pushback, but I think that two years of incumbency (and presumably good government) until a late 2010 or early-mid 2011 election would have gone a long way towards legitimising the idea of the coalition in the public mind. The Liberal/NDP accord in Ontario ended up working out great for everybody involved despite it being a deal where the third place party propped up the second place parties.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 16:30 |
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spacemost posted:Is it worth talking about how RIM is basically dead now? This has been coming for years. Anyone who didn't see this back in 2008 after the iPhone launch should have been able to see it in 2010/2011 when RIM still didn't have a product that could compete. They showed a complete lack of understanding of the market they were in, somehow believing that because they were pretty much the only game in town up until then, that made them the best. And after the market was very clear about what was wanted (or unwanted) they held on to their busted-rear end legacy system and lacklustre hardware until their brand became a joke. Then they followed it up with a product that doesn't work with any of their existing software base (backend included) and doesn't offer any advantages over phones that came out two years ago. They sat on their laurels and their business crumbled around them, it actually reminds me a lot of what happened to Nortel.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 16:37 |
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Given the timing of the Coalition flareup its pretty clear that its success would have hinged on how it was perceived by the public to perform on economic issues. The Canadian electorate has consistently shown that for the most part it couldn't care less about electoral procedures as long as Canadians feel that somebody halfway competent is managing the economy. This was especially true a few years ago when the Great Recession was just getting started and nobody knew quite how bad things would get either globally or locally. That is why Dion's poorly edited video was such a disaster. It made him look incompetent and foolish at exactly the moment that the Canadian people needed reassurance about his capability to lead.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 16:40 |
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infernal machines posted:And after the market was very clear about what was wanted (or unwanted) they held on to their busted-rear end legacy system and lacklustre hardware until their brand became a joke. Does anyone else do a smartphone with actual buttons, though? I'll have to run my BB Bold into the ground until no network supports it if not.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 16:42 |
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I think you guys are too hard on RIM. The problems started way before the iphone introduction. Everyone knew that BBOS loving sucked, including Jim 'who needs apps?' Balsillie. It was hard to develop for and RIM had no road map for fixing it until it was too late. Seriously, does anyone else remember when Jim Balsillie told the world that 'apps' were the wrong approach? Dumb gently caress.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 16:44 |
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Does anyone else do a smartphone with actual buttons, though? I'll have to run my BB Bold into the ground until no network supports it if not. swiftkey. I dumped my z10 because I discovered the magic of swiftkey. I miss the flick keyboard and gesture based UI but gently caress the z10 app 'ecosystem'. I'm perfectly willing to tolerate the absolutely poo poo-assed battery life of the Nexus 4 to be able to use apps.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 16:46 |
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Does anyone else do a smartphone with actual buttons, though? I'll have to run my BB Bold into the ground until no network supports it if not. This is a large part of what's kept them afloat in the last year or so. Die-hard physical keyboard users don't have a lot of choices, there are a few Windows and Android phones that have physical keyboards but they're terrible. Nokia used to make them but that (and Symbian) are completely dead too. Cultural Imperial posted:I think you guys are too hard on RIM. The problems started way before the iphone introduction. Everyone knew that BBOS loving sucked, including Jim 'who needs apps?' Balsillie. It was hard to develop for and RIM had no road map for fixing it until it was too late. That's the thing, they were never that good, the other options pre-iOS2 were just a lot worse (Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm) for mobile email. So they took their crufty "secure" infrastructure/software stack and tacked on bits and pieces until it basically didn't work any more. It was a system designed for email pagers in 2000, not a smartphone OS. The "apps are the wrong approach" mantra came about because the platform couldn't run anything like apps without another layer tacked on top. Their back-end BES infrastructure was even worse, and the fact that their internal servers route all "secure" BB traffic is just a joke (see the week long outages due to a single datacenter failure). It's a system from 12 years ago that they thought they could ride forever. infernal machines fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Sep 24, 2013 |
# ? Sep 24, 2013 17:04 |
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So basically another once great Canadian company falls victim to our corporate sector's bizarre unwillingness to invest sufficiently in R&D.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 17:34 |
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Helsing posted:So basically another once great Canadian company falls victim to our corporate sector's bizarre unwillingness to invest sufficiently in R&D. Please, it's also our public sector too now! Canada: Proudly luddite since 2005!
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 17:39 |
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Helsing posted:So basically another once great Canadian company falls victim to our corporate sector's bizarre unwillingness to invest sufficiently in R&D. Incompetent leadership will take even the greatest organization far (down the drain). There's some kind of lesson to be learned there.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 17:44 |
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bunnyofdoom posted:Please, it's also our public sector too now! Under Stephen Harper's strong stable national majority government we've proudly adopted the most cutting edge luddite policies of the corporate sector
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 17:46 |
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I was curious about government investment in Blackberry and found this: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-lends-265m-to-spain-s-telefonica-for-blackberrys-1.1341042 quote:Export Development Canada has loaned 200 million euros, or about $265 million Cdn, to Telefonica to purchase BlackBerry's smartphones and related services. Anybody know of any other stuff like this re: Blackberry? e: I wish I could get a loan 60x my disposable income from the govt.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 17:46 |
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The Nova Scotia government pledged 2 million/yr for five years as long as RIM keeps 400 jobs in the province. The investor who wants to buy RIM now indicated that the CPPIP or other public pension plans might provide some of the funding.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 17:52 |
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You all know that if you want to innovate just move 200 miles south?
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 18:14 |
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Personally I'm just hoping we get an ad about Stephen Harper costing Canada all of it's RIM jobs and a pledge to bring RIM jobs back.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 18:44 |
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PK loving SUBBAN posted:I was curious about government investment in Blackberry and found this: Uh, I think the reporter got that wrong. Telefonica is the fifth largest wireless provider around the globe. That's not millions in profit, that's billions.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 18:48 |
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BGrifter posted:Personally I'm just hoping we get an ad about Stephen Harper costing Canada all of it's RIM jobs and a pledge to bring RIM jobs back. I'm almost certain that's why they renamed the company to "Blackberry" back in July, just to kill this terrible joke. There hasn't been a RIM job in Waterloo since.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 19:02 |
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Helsing posted:So basically another once great Canadian company falls victim to our corporate sector's bizarre unwillingness to invest sufficiently in R&D. Well, at least Lazaridis did throw some personal cash towards the Perimeter Institute. But yeah, R&D spending is awful here.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 19:04 |
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PK loving SUBBAN posted:I was curious about government investment in Blackberry and found this: Seems like pretty standard stuff for export development. Every country helps out their big companies with things like this. It's not like they're pumping a spanish telecom for campaign donations. Besides, what else is the Canadian government going to do with 200 million euros?
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 19:32 |
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Guy DeBorgore posted:Seems like pretty standard stuff for export development. Every country helps out their big companies with things like this. It's not like they're pumping a spanish telecom for campaign donations. Besides, what else is the Canadian government going to do with 200 million euros? It's a way for the govt to indirectly subsidize to Blackberry. I was just wondering if anyone know of any other govt subsidies to Blackberry.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 19:56 |
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The Calgary mayoral race has begun. LOL @ people who are running against Nenshi (after the floods he has a 90+% approval rating) http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/calgary/Longshots+line+take+Nenshi/8850308/story.html Cacator fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Sep 24, 2013 |
# ? Sep 24, 2013 19:58 |
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Holy poo poo, Sue-Ann Levy actually manages to sound somewhat reasonable right up until the very end of this column. I think that has gotta be some kind of record.quote:SUE-ANN LEVY | QMI AGENCY
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 20:24 |
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eXXon posted:Incompetent leadership will take even the greatest organization far (down the drain). There's some kind of lesson to be learned there. Who could have foreseen that a company with two CEOs would be poorly run?
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 20:27 |
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Michael Ignatieff, Fire and Ashes, p. 8: "In the summer of 2006, when I was campaigning for leadership of my party, I appeared before the Montreal business community in the white dining room of Power Corporation. One of the business leaders asked me whether I could explain, in a sentence or two, why I wanted to be prime minister. The question caught me by surprise. I said it was the hardest job any country has on offer. I wanted to see whether I could handle the challenge." This is going to be good (Note: this was two years after Ignatieff accepted Alf Apps' offer to come to Canada and try to become PM.) e: this was immediately followed by three full pages going through the life histories of his great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents. I've missed Iggy Pinterest Mom fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Sep 24, 2013 |
# ? Sep 24, 2013 22:39 |
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I'm cross posting from the Toronto thread, because it seems like this applies outside Toronto as well, at least to other major urban centres. For those who haven't seen it, John Lorinc has written a great article over at Spacing Toronto explaining how the federal money for the subway has basically just killed the other two LRT lines and any hope we had of evidence based transit planning for the next decade.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 22:50 |
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Pinterest Mom posted:e: this was immediately followed by three full pages going through the life histories of his great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents. I've missed Iggy Isn't he descended from Russian nobility or something? I think like his grandfather or something was friends with Tsar Nicolas before the Communists.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 22:54 |
Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Isn't he descended from Russian nobility or something? I think like his grandfather or something was friends with Tsar Nicolas before the Communists.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 23:00 |
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HookShot posted:Yeah, I think Ignatieff would have been third in line to the throne or something had the czarship not ended. Makes sense, he was third in line to the throne here too.
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 23:09 |
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Isn't he descended from Russian nobility or something? I think like his grandfather or something was friends with Tsar Nicolas before the Communists. He was the Tsar's minister of education. They were minor royalty, I don't think they were actually in line for the throne? Iggy keeps taking fun petty side-swipes at people he doesn't like. He goes through pains to remind everyone that Trudeau was sleeping with Bob Rae's hot sister, and the only mention of Stéphane Dion in his account of the 2006 race is at the end, when he says that Dion's "many qualities include the fact that he was neither Bob Rae nor me."
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# ? Sep 24, 2013 23:40 |
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# ? Jun 7, 2024 06:37 |
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HookShot posted:Yeah, I think Ignatieff would have been third in line to the throne or something had the czarship not ended. Nothing quite that exalted - his grandfather was Nicholas II's last education minister. I only remember this because of the lede from a BBC profile I read once: BBC Scotland posted:Paul Ignatieff owes his life to the Polish language. Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Sep 25, 2013 |
# ? Sep 24, 2013 23:41 |