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Television Media

iCraveTV To Relaunch 138

Posted by emmett from the just-ask-for-roger-at-video-bargainville dept.
BurpingWeezer writes "The CBC has a story about iCraveTV relaunching their service this fall. Apparently they will be broadcasting some channels for free but they will focus on specialty channels like MuchMusic. The specialty channels are to be broadcast on a subscription basis for around C$9 a month. iCraveTV is currently developing security software to restrict users of the web site to those of Canadian origin. Under Canadian copyright laws television broadcasts may be re-broadcast without permission if there is no modification to the broadcast in any form." I'm interested to see how they'll make sure I'm Canadian through software.
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iCraveTV To Relaunch More

iCraveTV To Relaunch

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  • IP Verification (Score:3)

    by Aphelion ( 13231 ) on Sunday June 11, 2000 @01:53PM (#1009919) Homepage
    They could check each IP against the
    American Registry for Internet Numbers at whois.arin.net, which happens to list the owner of nearly every IP in the Americas.

    Anyone not matching, or not listed, could be denied.

    Of course, there is always a way to work around this. Then again, all encryption exports are curbed in the same manner, and it's acceptable to the government. Add a click-through agreement, and you're set for legality.
  • This is kinda harsh, but . . .

    Let's put aside the fact that, at best, I will have 144kbps where I live (if it is installed within the six weeks I'm told I will have to wait).

    Let's put aside the fact that I can't tolerate cable programming, except some of the more high-prices services like CineMax, Encore, HBO and so on.

    Also, let's put aside the fact that since the only decent cable channels are those which play movies which I could simply rent for far less per month from a local movie store (or subscribe to over ugh DivX, if I had it).

    And, finally, let's put aside the fact that I haven't watched television since January 27th, 2000.

    Why on earth would I pay $10 and up to watch grainy, choppy television on my 21" computer screen? Seriously, what legitimate reasons are there for sitting in front of a computer screen on at your desk, watching a handful of television channels that you could get on your television a few feet away? This whole idea seems like it's just destined to fail, even if almost a million people signed up when it was originally offered.

    Give me some unique content, a promise that I will not find your servers constantly bogged down and that I can make use of TiVo-like services to record, pause and replay content and maybe -- just maybe I could comprehend that I might possibly be interested.

    ...But probably not...

    I'll be interested in television again when I can completley choose the content and time of viewing -- and not just from four channels and eight movies. I want to be able to watch four episodes of Dr. Who (which episodes, left to me to choose), an episode of FarScape and then, finally, an episode of The Munsters and perhaps a couple Muppet's shows. (Well, perhaps not those shows specifically, but you get the point.)

    I'm a dynamic person in a changing world and I don't want to sit passively in front of a television, hoping that the networking gods have decided to grant me something entertaining from their static programming for the evening -- and then keep my fat ass glued to the sofa watching some Meridith Baxter Bernie HallMark chick-flick just because I'm too lazy to get up or too mind-numbed to turn off the tube.

    So maybe it's "big news" because it's television broadcast over the internet. Whoo. Amazing. Staggering. Imagine that... Porn sites have been doing this for years now, only without exactly the same content or content providers, of course. But if Paying $10 or $20 or $50 bucks per month to watch television on your fancy $1500 iMac makes you feel like you're a techno-god or getting the full use out of your over-priced computer, then go for it.

    By the way, I wonder what plans they have for moving this service to the US? I know they have a lot of battles to fight before trying to do so, but if I recall, they have an office in Mountain View (California). Now, what would they be doing there?
    ---
    icq:2057699
    seumas.com

  • Nortel? That statistic is incorrect. (But, as we all know, 99.8824% of all statistics lie) -Kysh
  • * 'Class A' is obsolete terminology.
    * Portable netblocks could be pretty much anywhere
    * Below a /24, netblocks are not often SWIP'd,
    even though it's possible to piece out smaller
    bits of that netblock to pretty much any locale
    * Dynamically checking the assignments of
    netblocks from a whois against arin (whois -h whois.arin.net) is possible, but painful. Not to mention that you'd have to find an easy way to interpret the data you got back. And what happens if you have a major US backbone that services .ca, but retains SWIPs of their netblocks? You're f*@d.

    -Kysh
  • I'm from the south, I have a southern accent. My
    grammar is better than 90% of the people I speak
    with or talk to online. English is my first
    language.

    About accents, regional accents are not a sign of culture. They're a sign of region.
    ---
    > And the way some people in the US mangle words
    > such as internet (inner-net), roof (ruff) and,
    > route (rout) and many other words.

    -Incomplete sentence.

    -Sentence begun with conjunction.

    -Proper pronunciation of 'Router' (Such as Cisco)
    is 'Rowter' (Monosyllabic). I almost laughed my tail off the other day when I heard a canadian pronounce it 'rooter'. A 'Rooter' is something used to pull up weeds. See 'roto-rooter'.

    -Canadians talking about stupid accents are being
    pure hypocrites. All accents are stupid, if one
    is prejudiced against people from the region of
    origination.

    -Kysh
  • The easiest way is checking credit card info .. I doubt many americans have canadian credit cards and if so ..I think that it will be a small enough number that the US networks won't really give a shit anyway.

    ---
  • > "If there is hope it lies in the proles." -George
    > Orwell, 1984

    I think it was Goldstein who said that
  • Mmmmmm..... proxy server.

    Paul

  • Applies to USA I guess but interesting nontheless.

    Complete article here [2wire.com]

    Table 1
    Nielsen//NetRatings Streaming Media Audience Trend, (At-Home, Month of April 2000)
    Streaming Media Unique Month Audience Percent Reach
    Nov-99 21,001,940 28.04 Dec-99 21,212,660 28.62 Jan-00 24,668,930 32.04 Feb-00 25,266,510 33.01 Mar-00 27,216,400 33.34 Apr-00 28,905,730 36.00
    Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, June 2000

    Table 2 Total Web Audience, by Connection Speed (At-Home, Month of April 2000)
    Percentage of Connection Speed Percentage of Online Streaming Media
    Audience Content Audience
    Modem 14.4 Kbps 6.6% 4.8% Modem 28.8/33.3 Kbps 33.6% 29.5% Modem 56 Kbps 51.1% 53.6% High Speed (over 56 Kbps) 8.6% 12.1%
    Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, June 2000
  • ... Now I eat humble pie. If iCrave carries TreeHouse (kinda like Nick Jr.?) then all those non-Canadians who manage to "RRRroll up the rim" can watch Früvous hanging with Tansie and Rosabelle! (Sorry, I have kids, TreeHouse is about as good as TV gets in this house.) I don't see the draw for a product like this. With tier 2 service we get dozens of channels, including greats like CPAC and TV5, but there is still very little worth watching. Am I supposed to dump Shaw and pick up iCrave? Or just double up my TV tax?
  • Yup, a Canadian CC and proxy server and you're set to watch...
  • People, I've been involved in **way** too many culture wars. I can think of sooo many "funny" insulting things to say about another country that they're just not funny anymore. Keep it clean. What you may find funny might not be funny to someone else.

    Oh yeah, and I am Canadian. =P
  • The law in question was Canadian, and applied to people rebroadcasting without permission. Don't DBS providers generally have permission from the networks they carry, just as cable companies do? Maybe not, what do I know.

    I think the first guy was probably right that there's a distinction between content and signal modification, but if it isn't specifically worded that way, I can see the broadcasters winning in court anyway.

    This is a good test of slashdot: does anyone actually read replies after more than a day has passed?

  • > #1: Say "The Rant" blindfolded.

    I can't. I only watch TVO.

    > #2: What is Canada's greatest aerospace acheivement?

    Greatest ever actually put into production, or the greatest one covered up and buried to save the US aerospace program?
  • Canada doesn't have "zip codes" it has "postal codes", and anyways, that's not what they used to ask for: What did they ask for? You guessed it... area codes.
  • I wrote a column for a trade magazine [tvbarn.com] earlier this year profiling the "rogue" founder of iCraveTV. In it he explains the biggest problem facing his nationality-sniffing technology: figuring out whether a user from AOL.COM is logging in from Canada or another country. Apparently ordinary checkers get spoofed all the time on this. But he claimed near-100 percent detection for his i-wall system. And for those of you wondering what the cable companies' role in all this is, you may be surprised what he says.
  • It was winston, he wrote it in his diary. That book sucks anyway, it's a straight ripoff of "We" by Zamyatin.
    --
    "HORSE."
  • the majority of Canadian Internet users use cable modem or ADSL. In cities, cable modem and 56K modem access are about the same price.

    Are you on crack? that is absolutly not true. the Majority of canadians are still on dialup modem connections. Which is still much cheaper, at about 18$/month for dialup, and about 39.95$/month for cable/DSL (which doesn't include the high setup cost for cable or dsl).
  • Well, I'm a Canadian, and just about everyone I know with Internet has at least a cable modem... I have fullrate DSL... I think there will be plenty of market with this. Now if they switch to Windows Media Player I will be happy... I'd sooner support Microsoft than RealNetworks and plus WMP is preinstalled on Windows Me :) (Don't worry! I have Debian on dual boot!)
  • Hmm.. It's strange they didn't ask:

    If you walk down to the nearest McDonalds and order Pizza, do they laugh at you? (McD's sells pizza here)

    Do you avoid drinking Mountain Dew after supper because of the high caffeine content? (Dew doesn't contain caffeine here)

    Color or Colour? (detects Americans, but not Brits)

    Which is correct: "I'm gonna go buy a soda" or "I'm gonna go buy a pop"?

    Did you hear of the Bare Naked Ladies before 1997?
    What about Blue Rodeo, or the Tragically hip?

    Does Moses Znaimer control your pop culture?

    Is your takehome pay actually LOWER since you got that raise last month, due to taxes?

    Where's Nunavut?

    What's east of Quebec?

    I could go on and on, but I won't. This is already offtopic enough.
  • <i>"I'm interested to see how they'll make sure I'm Canadian through software."</i>

    The software will use DragonSpeak and verify that you repeat the phrase "Roll up the rim to win." correctly.

    Ack. Sorry...Canadians in the crowrd will recognize a moderately bad Tim Horton's commercial :)

    Dana

  • okay, considering that I'm canadian, your comments sound american anyway. Personally I love strange brew. They almost made a sequel of it recently. Bob and Doug Mackenzie are the best, so take off eh.. Anyways. Oh an by the way, the correct answer for #3 is Rocket Richard because your still in mourning..

    Anyways, here's the real questions that would be asked:

    #1: Say "The Rant" blindfolded.
    #2: What is Canada's greatest aerospace acheivement?
    #3. When was the last time the leafs won the Stanley Cup?
    #4: What is the Royal Canadian Air Farce?
    #5: What is the tallest free standing structure in the world?
    #6: Spell Color.

    That's good enough. Any Canadian should be able to answer all of those without any thought..
  • I agree that Cdn telecom is way ahead of the US. I'm on a farm in Saskatchewan 50 miles from the nearest city and I bet within a year I'll have high-speed wireless internet access. I think that prediction is pretty accurate because construction on the tower that will serve the area with the so-called 'wireless cable' TV has already begun and the same company offers the wireless company, too. Can't wait!
  • Yes, DBS providers must have permission to rebroadcast. In fact, Dish Network recently had to cut off a couple of stations because of a lack of retransmission consent. But this has nothing to do with converting the disgnal from analog to digital, as the previous poster stated.
  • My original reply was just to ask whether or not the Canadian law that allows anyone to retransmit a broadcast without permission as long as it isn't modified in any way would count conversion from analog to digital as a modification or not. A simple question. DBS providers have no relevance to the matter at hand since they have permission to retransmit.
  • okay Detroit-boy (the so-called "Hockeytown" - in someone's deranged dream maybe...)

    bring it on baby...

    who's better than badboy?
    who was Laura Secord?
    what is a CEGEP?
    what's the best game you can name?
    elmer the safety _______?
    what does the PETRO in PETRO-CANADA stand for?
    what is a vachon half-moon?
    what ship was the pride of the american side?
    name the most famous canadian military victory?
    what does bombardier make?
    what is poutine?
    what's the logo on a pack of player's cigaretes?
    ...on a bottle of ex?
    what is KD?
    where can one buy the President's Choice?
    what is Canada Trust?
    what does someone want when they ask for your SIN?

    (yeah, I know these are all easy ones, but he said keep it simple - ones most Canucks would get - even the dumb ones - if you want some more challenge just ask)
  • >#3. When was the last time the leafs won the
    >Stanley Cup?

    what are you trying to do torture us?
    at least the cup will be in wasaga beach this summer!

    >#4: What is the Royal Canadian Air Farce?
    the worst show on television and/or iCraveTV
  • nope....Cnadian Authentification Quiz should go like this...

    Q: you a canadian?
    a: yes

    Beep

    A real Canadian answers all questions with an Ehhhhhhhh?

    Question: Whois Douane
    Answer: Whatever

    And a real Canadian knows that Douane is not the name of the Guy who works for Canada Customs.
  • Maybe by backtracing your IP? That's the only thing I can think of...

    --

    The success of Win 9x does not surprise me. Many people wouldn't know a decent OS if it bit them on the -- OW! HEY! Where'd that fscking PENGUIN come from?

  • ...for this company to make money?
    To view TV content off the net requires more than dialup. So that the market segment is minute. and how many Canadians are there? 25 Million? how many have good connections? 1%? of those, who will want this?

    ----------------
    Programming, is like sex.

  • Two words: venture capital.
  • hey SEE,

    I saw a PETRO-Canada in upstate New York last year on my way to the Aidirondacks

    ...you guys seriously, *seriously* need some Canadian Tire stores tho' buddy
  • This is good. Well I am a Canadian citizen and all, but the fact is I dont watch much tv. Maybe if I could get it on my computer (yah,I know about tv tuners) I would watch more. Sigh, something more I can waste my bandwidth on.
  • just use a canadian proxy and you're good to go(assuming they have a rock solid way of determining your IP is canadian). their server will say "oh look, canadian, ok good"
  • How far back can you trace it, if you're using IP-spoofing or even an anonymizer of some sort?
    What if you put a server in Canada, streamed to it, then from there streamed out to the rest of the world?

    ----------------
    Programming, is like sex.

  • Really?

    Thud... Sound of falling over....I rember doing contract work for Bell Canada in Toronto in 76 on glass Fibre. But when was it implemented?

    I live in a Montreal suburb. The 2nd largest City in Canada. With the Bell monopoly we had large areas of Montreal still cant have ASDL.

    I got tired of waiting for Ma Bell telling me to wait till 02 and ended up going with (Sound of Vomit> Videotron. The company that hired all the CIS service rep rejects.

    Now i dont know about out west or other areas of Canada, but in Montreal Bell has been dragging their heels still insisting that i use DataPac for my computer comm needs. Funny in Vermont where my cottage is i have had Fibre for 7 years, out in the boonies.

    Go figure
  • Hey, anyone know if there's anything like this in the US? I know there's an online company that will tape shows for you and then you can watch them later, but I haven't heard of anything like this.


    One Microsoft Way
  • PQ in Quebec means Pack Quick
  • naw, you're a citizen of the B.S.A.
    the Border States of America and in an original six city to boot

    you're a snow-addled half-canuck - kind of like the Northern English have quite a few things in common with the Scots
  • With a 56k connection available through work which is also available at 30 prime locations in Canada,
    most of which i do business with or have family at, i dont pay a penny of personal, work benefits be having me online across the country and if i REALLY need something huge i get my friend with cable or my brother with DSL to burn it for me ...

    I wouldnt split too many hairs on this on, but if the same deal could be had with DSL or CABLE we are switching!!!! ICRAVE TV, yah id watch it to be amused, heck i still like going out to the movies
    try beating that for eye/ear candy!!
  • Nah -- it's not that I'm an American, it's that I blabber[1]. When asked where I went to college in an over-the-phone credit card application, I gave lots of detail, including the per-capita income rank in the U.S. of the county in which it's located[2].

    [1] Unless you are saying there are no Canadians who blabber, in which case I will be forced to name a long list of prominent Canadians who do. And I'll probably also throw in their political affiliations, home towns, and other detail.

    [2] Third in the U.S., after Manhattan and whatever county Silicon Valley's located in. And we still don't have a four-star restauraunt within a hundred miles.
    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • You know what's funny? People in rural areas can get high speed service easier because their isn't so much bitching over territory. I live downtown in Our Nation's Capital and I only have one choice for high speed service: cable. Good thing it was the right one. :)

  • I doubt you would find my accent laughable. I have friends from California and Washington state and we all speak with the same accent.

    There are minor vocabulary differences between US English and Candian English.

    Of course we have our Quebec and Newfoundland accents. Mind you most people speak French in Quebec; thus the french accent speaking english. And you have your Lousianna, Mississippi, Kentucky, North/South Carolina, Arkansas and so on...... The worst thing is that these people speak English as a first language.

    And the way some people in the US mangle words such as internet (inner-net), roof (ruff) and, route (rout) and many other words.

    BTW: We say about not a-boot.
  • From what I understand, it's for Canadian citizens, but nothing's stopping you from viewing it in the US.
    -Antipop
  • I'm American and I think it's quite funny, actually. :)

  • It's featured on a bunch of really bad commercials. "Sir, I hear something. 'R-rr-r-roll?' Sir, I think we're Canada". Yes, there actually are commercials like that here.
  • Mcdonalds also only sells poutine in quebec, its too bad too, it's really good!

  • Re:Determining your Canadian (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > Pizza, do they laugh at you? (McD's sells pizza here)
    "Pizza" is using the term pretty loosely.
    Toast with tomato sauce is more like it!
  • who's better than badboy? neil sadaka

    who was Laura Secord? That's a trick question, as that is a anagram of an acronym for L.O.U.S.E.R.C.A.R.D, more commonly known as an SIN card

    what is a CEGEP? "can't even get no penicillin"

    what's the best game you can name? the nameless game.

    elmer the safety _______? glue.

    what does the PETRO in PETRO-CANADA stand for? petro-fied flapjacks

    what is a vachon half-moon?

    what ship was the pride of the american side?

    name the most famous canadian military victory?

    what does bombardier make?

    what is poutine?

    what's the logo on a pack of player's cigaretes?

    ...on a bottle of ex?

    what is KD?

    where can one buy the President's Choice?

    what is Canada Trust?

    what does someone want when they ask for your SIN?

    :)Fudboy
  • damn dirty mouse. jumpin to the submit button. and this was going to be a funny reply. only i was replying in the wrong place, wasn't I? or is it weren't I not? Damn, I guess I'll have to be a full time troll now.

    :)Fudboy
  • As I understand it, the law refers to content. You cannot change the content. You can do whatever you want with the signal.
  • Get a list all of the class A's (I'd assume there's more than one)used by Canada and check the IP of users that try to access the site.

  • Ask /. covered this a few months ago:
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl? sid=99/10/16/1535210 [slashdot.org]

    --
  • To view TV content off the net requires more than dialup. So that the market segment is minute. and how many Canadians are there? 25 Million? how many have good connections? 1%? of those, who will want this?

    Your question is how is it possible for them to make money. Lets assume your figures are correct. 25 million Canadians total, only 1% have a high speed internet connection. Thats 250,000 people, at $9 a month equals 2.25 million dollars a month.

    Now sure, not everyone is going to use it, 25% of that 1% maybe? Thats still 62,500 people with a monthly revenue stream of $562,500 or 6.75 million dollars per annum.

    This isn't chump change here, but of course, your numbers are way off, I'm willing to say there are more then 1% of Canadians who have high speed internet connections, and it will be increasing constantly. Not to mention I used iCraveTV on my dialup, and really it was viewable (was great for me, we don't get cable out here) so I don't see why you're limiting it to high speed internet users.

    -- iCEBaLM
  • Hmm... kinda makes me want to get in the proxy server business in canada! Really now, there's no way to _really_ verify where the end-user is sitting. Sure, checking the IP address against ARIN is a nice preliminary check, but there are plenty of ways around that.
  • The correct answer is C right?

  • I remember a while back when I was coding perl for an australian company that was making a website for only australian's (it was about financing), our testing method was

    $name = lc($namein);
    if ($name eq 'bruce') {
    ...
    }

    O well, it will certainly be interesting to see how they do it..
    /nutt
  • Reading through the comments I am finding ignorance.

    Canada has over 30 Million people now, not 25 million. Believe it or not, but Canada is extremely progressive and ahead in the telecommunications game. And how much money was IcraveTV making before?? Anything it makes under the new pay-schedule is a bonus!

    Canadians do NOT eat blubber... and the beaver is a proud and noble animal. =)

    If you haven't seen the cool Molson Canadian ad on TV (no idea where it is broadcast to).. you can view it online here :
    http://www.adcritic.com/c ontent/molson-canadian-i-am.html [adcritic.com]

    It attempts to dissuade a lot of the myths that Americans have about Canadians... in a very tongue-in-cheek manner.

    I hope you get it. [smirk]

    antidigerati
  • just-ask-for-roger-at-video-bargainville dept ... great Moxy Früvous reference!

    Once I was the King of Spain ...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Except it can't work.

    Many large organizations, including backbone ISP's have addresses registered to the US under ARIN, but actually used in Canada.

    You can tell if it's US or Canada fairly easily, but telling if it's Canada is almost impossible.

  • Isn't digitally encoding an analog video signal a modification? Is there specific wording in the law that would allow it? Otherwise my uneducated guess would be that it's going to fail in the courts again.

    If that were true, then DBS providers would be breaking the law. They get very few signals digitally native.

  • The University of British Columbia [www.ubc.ca] (UBC) in Vancouver is responsible for the ".ca" TLD.

    I am Dyslexic of Borg
    Resemblance is fertile
    Your ass will be laminated

  • "Hello, ICrave"

    "Hi. I'd like to sign up..."

    "Unfortunately the world is going to end today at 8:00.... 8:30 in Newfoundland"

    If they 'get it' they're Canadian. :)

  • Look at the USAToday site, it's "powered" by a lycos search engine, (wee) - but lycos only allows americans to search the site, if you have an IP number from "outside" they redirect you somewhere else. ie. only if you live in the US can you search the site... (try writing support about that - the trained monkeys are not very helpfull)

    --

  • Hrm (Score:2)

    by GoRK ( 10018 )
    If I'd have known it was really this easy, I'd have written a perl script to automatically submit slashback's as news!!!
  • I think 'roll up the rim to win' donut shops are run by the CIA/FBI to enslave Canadians by doping the coffee w/ psychotropic drugs.
    Television isnt working as it did in the US, so they are trying another tact.

  • Ask Vinnie Technology (Score:3)

    by dexter_goodfeather ( 80841 ) on Sunday June 11, 2000 @02:52PM (#1009987)
    ICraveTV's service provider is ACEnetx.com
    If you checkout www.acenetx.com [acenetx.com], there is the technology that ICraveTV will use to restrict content to Canadians.
    This technology trademarked: "Ask Vinnie"
    ACEnetx has pattented "Ask Vinnie" technology that allows companies such as ICraveTV to restrict their content to specific geographical regions.
  • Ahem, living in Minneapolis, I know that 612 is not a Canadian area code. In any case, it was easy to work around it when they just used to area code "protection", and then for a while after that, you could just directly access the videos by saving the .RAM files to disk -- it was great, because I was able to catch The Simpsons a couple of times a day, and sometimes if the workload was slow enough, I'd watch Pokemon. Ahh, those were the days. I'm working on my The Family Guy collection at work these days.

    --
  • Determining Canadian citizenship would be easy. 90% of Canadian ISPs have their user's dynamically-assigened hosts end with .CA, or contain the 2 or 3 letter code specific to the Canadian provience they are connecting from. The codes are:
    • AB - Alberta
    • BC - British Columbia
    • MB - Manitoba
    • NB - New Brunswick
    • NF - Newfoundland
    • NS - Nova Scotia
    • ON - Ontario
    • PE - Prince Edward Island
    • QC - Quebec
    • SK - Saskatchewan
    All the site would have to do is make sure the domain ends with .CA .. if it doesn't, they can check for the existance of these characters.

    Or they could, by working with the Canadian Government, make a list of ALL of the ISPs that operate out of Canada, and filter for their domains exclusively.


    .- CitizenC (User Info [slashdot.org])
  • This is one of those posts where I have to ask:' What's up with the piss poor moderation?' I se plenty of other posts along the same lines, but none of those were marked as troll.

    At worst, I can see a possibility for redundant, but 'troll' is just inexcusable.

    Sorry, just my two cents....
  • Yeah, I Mother Earth is still good, but they were better on their ealier stuff. "Roll up the rim to win"... donut shops have way to much influence in Canada...
  • hmmmm....

    I seem to recall that's what they had in the first place, which caused all the commotion. Plus, on top of that they made you enter in your area code (for telephones), so Americans would have to figure out some Canadaian area codes.

    The long and the short of it is (so far as I know)that they ruled that it was so easy to circumvent the process that it was still intended to target Americans (and hence illegal).

    -rt-
  • Quebec is actually PQ, not to mention most ISP's do NOT use domains in the .ca TLD. Infact, out of about 5 or 6 locally, only two do, and none of them have the provincial codes in them. Usually a city code of some sort.

    -- iCEBaLM
  • I am Canadian [www.iam.ca] (Quicktime movie)
    What behind canadian is all about. =)

    -Earthling
  • Did you hear of the Bare Naked Ladies before 1997?
    What about Blue Rodeo, or the Tragically hip?

    "No, because CBC Radio 2 doesn't play those during drive-time. Sue me for liking Mozart."

    Where's Nunavut?

    "It's the Inuit territory carved out of the Norhwest Territories. And I personally prefer the proposal to rename the rest of the Northwest Territories 'Bob' to the proposal to name it 'Aurora'."

    What's east of Quebec?

    Answer 1:
    "Newfoundland and New Brunswick. Then Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island east of New Brunswick."

    Answer 2:
    "The Maritimes, the last stronghold of the Progressive Conservatives. I wish they'd face facts and join the United Alternative."

    ------------------

    Oh, BTW, I'm an American. Cross-border broadcasting works both ways.

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • Still, not everyone in Canada has a .ca address... for example, most (all?) of the .wave.home.com people are Canada.

    --
    http://www.alphapython.com/ [alphapython.com] for $20 domains


    __

  • Skill Testing Questions (Score:5)

    by NotQuiteSonic ( 23451 ) on Sunday June 11, 2000 @01:30PM (#1010005) Homepage
    1. Canada has a President? True/False
    2. We drive dog sleds?
    3. You can say the RRRR in Roll up the rim to win.
  • It's a fun little command, I bet they'll make ample use of it and either ban any IP that's not in Canada, or restrict it to just Canadian registered IPs. That's kinda tricky, though. Knowing iCraveTV from the past, though, they'll just put in a half-assed security effort, as they believe everyone should be allowed to access it, like before, only having to input a canadian area code. It was funny looking on all these websites that mentioned the site, they all said "To access this site, you must live in Canada and input a Canadian area code... such as 612, 451...", It was great ;)
  • I'm interested to see how they'll make sure I'm Canadian through software.
    Before entering this site, please answer the following question.

    Are you or have you ever been a citizen of Canada, and are you accessing this web site from within the borders of Canada, member of the British Commonwealth?

    1. Yes.
    2. No.
    3. That's a confusing question, eh?

  • 1%??? Not quite.. Up here in Canada we had DSL in the mainstream market WAY before the US.. I've had my connecttion for 3 years now, and thats not even in a big city (100,000 people here). Canada is one of the Global leaders in telecomminications, didnt you know that?
  • It could be as simple as using credit card info. Presumably, the 9 bucks (that's 6 bucks US, BTW) would be payed by Credit Card. When credit card orders go through, I know that some customer info is listed. I know that name is one of them, but I'm not sure about adress. I'm sure that if they use a Canadian bank for the credit card stuff they can check if the parent account for the card is of local origin (I mean, if I go out of country, the machines know to convert the money, right?). So that's how it could be done.

    On another note, to those who seem to be quoting that excellent "I Am Rant" beer commercial, if you haven't seen it yet, go visit: http://www.adcritic.com/cont ent/edge-102-i-am-not.html [adcritic.com] (this is at least as funny!). Sorry to people who can't play QuickTime. =(
  • Damned straight. Work for Nortel. Over 45% of the Internet runs on Nortel Equipment. Nortel HQ is in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. The largest R&D facility is right down the road from my house in Nepean. I work there.

    My name is Pat, and I AM CANADIAN!
  • Two TLDs:
    www.home.com
    www.interlog.com

    but www.sympatico.ca of-course...
  • Any self-respecting resident of the Metro Detroit Area would get those two *easy*.

    And as an American who watches "This Hour Has 22 Minutes", I doubt there's much that could trip me up without getting a large number of Canadians, too.
    Steven E. Ehrbar

  • Some older Canadian dictionaries give color as the correct spelling with colour as an alternative. The Gage Canadian Dictionary (circa 1977) is like that. However, the newer ones list the -our spellings first. Back in the '50s, Canadian spelling was a lot more British than American in other ways; in high school, my mom used spellings like programme and encyclopædia. I prefer program, but I've got to love the "ae" ligature in encyclopædia.

    I've also noticed, in more recent years, a lot more Americans spelling cancelled as canceled, as Noah Webster (inventor of American spelling) intended. Perhaps that's because, although American dictionaries have always given canceled as the correct spelling, so many Americans used cancelled and assumed it correct that few people bothered to check. The proliferation of spelling checkers on word processors is probably what has caused the change.

    It's kind of silly the way dictionaries try to influence spelling and fail. I've seen British dictionaries that tell the Brits to use -ize in words like realize, organize, etc., but -ise (as in realise, etc.) is still extremely common in the U.K.

    I've recently been alarmed by a lot of my fellow Canadians calling the last letter of the alphabet "zee" instead of "zed". Oh, well. At least we know that "zee" == "zed". I heard of one guy whose last name was "Fitzpatrick" and liked to order stuff by phone. Sometimes, when asked to spell his name, the operator on the other end would ask what a "zed" was. I guess I know where the other end of the line was...

  • Nah. There's several Tim Horton's here in Detroit, along with those ads.

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • "What is your name?"
    Chris.

    "What is your quest?"
    I would like to sign up for iCraveTV.

    "What is the water-speed velocity of a beaver?"
    African or European?
    "I don't know that!, AHHHHH!!"

    Hell, how many non-Canadians would even know the beaver is the national animal? (It's the most fearsome creature you have ever seen! :-)
  • As the "British" part was dropped years ago, the answer cannot be "yes", since Canada is now no longer a member of anything called the British Commonwealth.

    Second, I know plenty of Americans who say "eh". The standard southern Michigan caricature of Yoopers has them saying "eh" all the time, but plenty of southern Michiganians say it, too.

    Steven E. Ehrbar
  • I'm interested to see how they'll make sure I'm Canadian through software.

    My guess is they'll have some sort of "quiz" sort of like Leisure Suit Larry did back in the day (they figured if you knew the answers to certain questions, you're probably of age).

    For example:

    The common name for Coca Cola is:
    a) soft drink
    b) pop
    c) soda
    Of course the correct answer is B.

    Gordie Howe was:
    a) a Prime Minister
    b) a CNN news anchor
    c) a hockey player
    ...and so on.
  • The only relevant statistic I could find is that there were 24.8% [statcan.ca] of the 11.6 million households in Canada access the Internet from home. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything that says how many use a cable modem or DSL (or faster).

    In my experience (which I won't pretend is representative), the majority of Canadian Internet users use cable modem or ADSL. In cities, cable modem and 56K modem access are about the same price.

    So I'm going to say there are around almost one million households who would be the market for this. Mind you if the cable modem, the probably have cable TV. So that brings their market down to about one person, Joe in Windsor, who's too lazy to move his fat ass to the living room to watch his TV.

    So I agree with you: there isn't a very big market for this.

  • Name the Canadian Provences.

    There's only one Provence, it's in France.

    George
  • Actually, it's mainly the old cities that have the real problems... smaller towns have had several upgrades, and newer cities like Calgary (and Vancouver, to a degree) have no problem.
    The infrastructure in Montreal is rather old..
  • Perhaps, so they can get your credit card information, and hence, know what country you live in?
  • So? we're talking about canadian second-level domains here....
  • Yup. Internet users in general.

    In Canada, I'd sure like to see the numbers, but I'd bet that a great many people have broadband (as you call it).

    High-speed access is available in most towns and cities in Canada now, in many cases, from multiple providers.

    For instance, here in Calgary..we have cable, and 2 dsl providers.. plus emerging wireless stuff...

  • Determining your Canadian (Score:5)

    by jayhawk88 ( 160512 ) <jayhawk88@gmail.com> on Sunday June 11, 2000 @01:50PM (#1010053)
    I'm interested to see how they'll make sure I'm Canadian through software.

    I recently tried signing up for this service, despite the fact I'm American. I can tell you they're very serious about making sure only Canadians sign up. Here's how the signup process went.

    Service: So, your Canadian, eh?
    Me: Uh, yeah, I am........eh!
    Service: OK, so we just have to verify that, you know. Question #1: What is the worst movie of all time?
    Me: Strange Brew.
    Service: Correct. Question #2: What's up with those Americans?
    Me: I don't know, they need to relax a little I suppose.
    Service: Right. OK, just one last question. Question #3: Who's the greates hockey player of all time?
    Me: Um, that would probably have to be Wayne Gretsky.....eh?
    Service:.....That all you got to say on the subject?
    Me: Uh, yeah, I guess.
    Service: You poser! A real Canadian would have argued the point for 2 hours solid!

    Busted. So as you can see, their methods are totally full-proof. No American can talk about hockey for 2 hours straight.

    :-)
  • >I'm interested to see how they'll
    >make sure I'm Canadian through software

    login.html:
    <FORM ACTION="mainpage.php3">
    <INPUT TYPE=CHECKBOX NAME="can">
    By clicking this button, I acknowlege that I am Canadian, and that I am NOT a citizen of another country, trying to gain unauthorized access to your network. This is a legally binding contract between myself and the service provider. [insert rest of legal gobblygook here.]
    <INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="I AM CANADIAN">
    </FORM>

  • Verifying Canadian-ness (Score:3)

    by bridges ( 101722 ) on Sunday June 11, 2000 @01:53PM (#1010056) Homepage
    It'll clearly be a challenge-response sort of security scheme: For example:

    "ICraveTV Canadian-ness Challenge: Complete the following sentence: "Beauty, ____!"

    And of course, Hockey questions could be their bread-and-butter....

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