Two hands working will achieve more than a million hands praying.

a

Registered with the do-not-call list? Expect more calls, says consumer watchdog

I read it, briefly fumed then went on to find something else. In the end, my wrath returns to this topic because I have received on my cellphone, which is an unlisted number, numerous unsolicited spam calls from automated machines! Utterly disgusting that my phone is being bombarded with such trash. The worse is that I wanted to prevent anyone other than those I voluntarily gave my number to calling me.

916-219-8163
949-256-9160
866-529-5998

Above are just three such numbers from whom I have received automated phone calls from (I love my cellphone for that reason. The numbers were stored in my recently received calls list). The DNC List is utterly worthless. I’d sooner place all my blind faith in the Liberal’s Gun Registry – the million dollar boondoggle – than this travesty. At least that registry was somewhat worth the paper it was metaphorically printed on.

This is just further proof that the CRTC doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Canadian consumer. It’s controlled by the large media conglomerates who want an easy profit and will do anything to increase their quarterly profit, even if it means selling their soul.

While I intend to file a complaint (do so here), I’m airing my grievances here so that anyone who does a search for those three numbers can see that these clearly belong to unscrupulous telemarketers who are violating the laws of our land. That the laws implemented here in Canada are being violated by Canadians themselves all for the sake of making easy money. It’s a bloody scam. I’m weary about complaining because it requires my phone number and it’s going to the sale lot of immoral scavengers of human misery. I was tempted not to until I was told that my number was already on their file… so it’s not as although they can do any more damage. Assholes.

In addition to ‘bitching’ through the complaints option, I’m also writing to my MP (though, I wouldn’t count on Ron Oliphant for much) and to my party, who I’ve received a decent reply from in the past when I’ve written about legitimate concerns.

It should be noted that all of the calls I’ve received are from machines. If you want to determine if it’s a machine, just wait a couple of seconds. The message won’t play and it waits until a human voice speaks. A human would notice if the ringing has stopped…

a

a

That’s right. English is not allowed, even if those are vintage posters that are adorning the walls of your pub, strictly up as decor and nothing more. Sounds crazy right? What nation in their right mind would allow for such a law to exist? Is it France? Any one of those more oppressive nations that find freedom of expression to be detrimental to public health?

No, this is in Canada. This is specifically in la belle province; Québec. This little law is found in the The Charter of the French Language. The same set of laws is also referred to as the Québec Language Charter.

The specific article in question from the charter is article 58, which states:

Public signs and posters and commercial advertising must be in French.

They may also be both in French and in another language provided that French is markedly predominant.

However, the Government may determine , by regulation, the places, cases, conditions or circumstances where public signs and posters and commercial advertising must be in French only, where French need not be predominant or where such signs, posters and advertising may be in another language only.

This article of the language charter was cited by the OLF (Office de la langue francaise) watchdog against the Montréal pub, McKibbins Irish Pub, that received a complaint because it hosted a bilingual menu, bar service and displayed imported vintage posters (from Ireland) on the walls that were strictly in English.

The watchdog ruled that this pub was in violation of article 58, despite that the posters were not advertising any product.

Montréal by all rights is also a bilingual city and it has a sizeable English speaking population. To have bilingual menus shouldn’t be punished. Businesses wishing to cater to different language groups should have the freedom to do so.

Those who don’t, have to answer to the Quebec Language Police. Is this an exaggeration? Not by any means. This group does exist. That is the colloquial term for the OLF. While they aren’t the same as the religious police (see: Mutaween), they still have no place in a democratic nation. They have no right to tell someone they can’t use English. They can ask that French be presented along side, which in this case it was.

If Québec wants to enforce this kind of narrow-minded thinking, then it should just declare its independence from Canada because it insists on violating the citizens’ Charter (see: Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom) rights, the second article of which guarantees the right to freedom of expression, thought and belief.

2.b – freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication

Quebec language police nab Montreal bar

a

It happen to me! And why did this horrible thing happen to me? What could I have been possibly doing at the time to deserve having this happen to me? Was I looking at a website I shouldn’t be looking at or was I doing something else equally as naughty? What could I have possibly done to incur the wrath of Microsoft, who feels it necessary to treat legitimate users like common thieves?

What did I do to deserve this? I was only trying to plug my MP3 player into a USB port on the back of my computer and I unplugged my USB mouse. Now, when I plugged my mouse back in, I found it wasn’t working and I tried to reset the wireless receiver for my mouse as well as the mouse. Upon failing to do so, I got a pop-up window telling me that it was an unrecognisable USB device, so I rebooted.

Upon rebooting back into Windows, I encountered a window telling me that “significant changes” were made to my hardware so I had to reactivate Windows. I had known about this kind of thing (see: Namaste, Microsoft)but until tonight, it had never happened to be before. Alas…

Mind you, I haven’t had this install of Windows up for long. I recently got a better desktop (Athlon Dual-core 4200+) than the one I had before, which was an Athlon AMD 3200+ , and I had to upgrade from my old, loyal faithful 60gig IDE drive since my newer machine had no way for my IDE drive to work. So, on my first SATA drive, I installed my copy of Windows XP Pro (Vista is too buggy for my liking and takes way too much file control away from me) and I had no problems with my legitimate product key. This was back in December of 2007.

Now when Windows Activation pops up, after your first boot, it kindly informs you that you have 3 days to register your product. It registered successfully. Fast forward to today where my itsy-bitsey little itty-witty action of unplugging my wireless USB mouse triggers a ‘significant change’. So, now I can’t even use my legitimate key.

I wasn’t even touching any part of the MoBo. It was something as meaningless as a mouse. Mice break all the time. Why should Windows think that this is a ‘significant change’? Do they want to inconvenience their clients; their business clients whose last concern is that replacing a mouse would amount to a loss of productivity because they have to reactivate Windows in order to continue business? Or do they reserve this “privilege” for home users who are likely to only buy a Windows (genuine) product once every few years?

Microsoft is nothing else knows how to make the Windows experience nothing short of aggravating. Thanks to this, I, or rather my husband, (since I’m at work tomorrow), has to call Microsoft’s ‘support’ desk to resolve this. Too bad I’m going to miss the fireworks.

a