Wild Bill

That's your opinion and you're entitled to it! That's freedom! Some might say the same about you. That's THEIR opinion and they are also entitled! BTW, do you laugh much? Beyond an occasional crude snigger? How good are you at laughing at yourself? Just curious. I have a suspicion.

Me too, Angus, although more from a "build it" perspective. Me, I can't see the point in using small speakers and cabs, throwing away tons of efficiency and tone and then trying to get it back with more power and exotic materials. I'm not saying it can't be done but it is an inefficient and therefore MUCH more expensive way to go about it! I run a vacuum tube Bogen receiver, about 30 watts per side. I have 4 70's style larger cabinets mounted on shelf brackets towards ceiling height. My turntables vary, favouring an early 80's style strobe style Sony with a Pickering cartridge. I have to smile at some of the modern tables. Many are actually poorer technical specs than what was common in the golden years! And more expensive! That's because of marketing and production volumes. A thrift shop vintage turntable can be an excellent bargain, especially if you can get it serviced if it needs a new belt or whatever. Stylii for the better cartridges are still readily available on the Net. Older designs of cabs, particularly classic Klipsch or better yet, Altec Lansing studio monitors are available on the Net if you google deep enough. Me, I would never use a speaker with less than a 12" cone. That's my techy side coming through! You need a big cone to properly reproduce a long bass wavelength. A 15" would be even better! Some designs get away without a horn but certainly a horn makes it better. You might want to google up and read about the Altec Lansing "Voice of the Theater" cabinet, which is truly famous! A good driver for such cabinets might set you back about $125 or less, if you know where to source. The large size can be a bit much for today's smaller rooms but for those of us who can squeeze them in the reproduction is mind-boggling. I wouldn't get too hung up on the specs of solid state amplifiers or receivers, if I were you. Even the crudest of SS units will feature distortion specs of under .25 %. Given that the human ear cannot distinguish differences in distortion levels below 3% it is ridiculous to compare one unit with .1% THD against another featuring .15% THD. Even though distortion is cumulative when added up through all the units in the chain to your ear any modern system will be adequate. No, what you pay for is features and durability. Knobs that won't fall off, in other words! Except when I'm building an amplifier, I must confess I never think about such things. I just crank up some ZZ Top, to 11!

Good point, jbg. I've noticed that many folks try to be fair but miss the distinction between a qualitative point and a quantitative one. Yes, it's true that there are many Muslims who are civilized. The point is, how many? What percentage? It's not enough to point out that there are SOME! At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, SOME Germans did not support Hitler but their numbers were so small and/or ineffective as to be irrelevant. Are the numbers of Muslims who stand up against the militants significant? Are their actions in rooting out dangerous and violent Islamists in their community significant and effective?

Me, I like free pie! And free beer to wash it down! Perhaps I should vote NDP?

Ah,my good Dr. Dre! Remember we are dealing with Americans! I have much respect for our American neighbours. They are in the main an honourable people with much to admire in their values. Even amongst their ordinary people we see more generosity than Canadians, as witnessed by their MUCH higher percentage of donations to charity than the average Canadian! However, they an be an insular people, like Hobbits in the Shire. They know their own history back for generations but anything outside their own borders is "queer as news from Bree!" This cosmopolitan ignorance cuts across the entire gamut of their society. Levels of education seem irrelevant. I still recall being in Dallas on business and having another salesman ask me "Oh, you're a Canadian? You're from Ontario? I have a cousin in Winnepeg. Perhaps you would know him?" The salesman was a Texan. Perhaps Texans are worse than others about this, I don't know. However, I saw no reason to expect that either of the Bush presidents was well informed of the world outside his country's borders. Presidents rely on advisers, I'm sure. Still, they are the top man in charge and one would expect that they would make decisions first and foremost from their own gut, using their advisers to fill in the details. These men obviously had no idea of the details of the socio-political-religious factors involved with Iraq and its neighbours. The invasion was accomplished swiftly and efficiently but that was because of the competency of the American military. The decision to occupy Iraq and how to do that was political. That was revealed to be boneheaded! The one that made me question if the Bushes' heads "zipped up the back" was when they disbanded the Iraqi military, leaving hundreds of thousands of men with no jobs or source of income to feed themselves and their families! Men trained to kill expected to just sit home and die quietly in the dark! This was far from the only such decision made! So no, they're not stupid, Dre. They're just ignorant of pretty well anything besides themselves. Once in a while we can meet a pleasant exception but I truly think that in the main my generalization is accurate. Yet despite all, I enjoy their company! It may take many more decades but if we keep working on them they will get better!

I don't understand why this is accepted as a mitigating factor. Is this not the very definition of a sociopath? Perhaps Richard Smoke would fit the same definition. If a non-native were to be convicted as a sociopath he would be placed in medical custody, at the very least. Certainly, the diagnosis would not be used as an excuse to lighten his sentence.

Not really ambulance chasing, August. In my example a larger company applied for and received a patent which was a duplicate of something patented over 75 years ago and long since passed into public domain. They then threatened up and coming competition, knowing that if it ever went to court their patent would be found to be bogus but confident that they could make it more expensive than the "little guy" could afford to fight. However, I agree with you that we should all fear government involvement. People still cheer today at the fact the Rockefeller Standard Oil company was broken up as a monopoly, by the Anti-Trust Act. Nobody ever noticed that when the dust settled the price of gasoline was MORE expensive than before the forced breakup!

If natives were to make more Canadians mere cannon fodder in their fight against the government, it would be naive in the extreme to assume they would vent their anger at the government and not at those immediately attacking them! Nobody likes being used as a pawn. The counter reaction could be larger than expected. Far more effective to target specific responsible politicians. THEN ordinary citizens might actually help!

Are you handy with wood? If so, you might consider rolling your own loudspeaker enclosures. This is the weak link today. The marketing trend with store-bought speakers is towards smaller units. This defies physics for tone and efficiency! They talk about using "space age" cones and magnets but this is just technobabble. This is the reason why modern systems are forced into amplifiers of several hundred watts for even apartment systems. The extra power is to try and overcome the efficiencies of today's speaker cabinets. In the 50's theatres achieved LOUD movie sound with only 50 watt drivers! That was with only one driver in one cabinet for the whole theatre! But the cabinets were the size of small refrigerators. Those classic hifi designs are mostly public domain now and can be easily googled. If you're good with cutting plywood and "gluing and screwing" you can make some MARVELLOUS designs! Some nice wood stain can make them quite "woman approvable", too. Just remember to use solid wood or good quality plywood, like Baltic birch. You don't want any voids between the layers. If the wood can "wiggle" it will suck out the bass frequencies. When you want to choose a speaker send me a PM and I'll tell you some convenient Cdn sources.

Again CC, while you may be right there's still reality to consider. It's sad but true that if Harper did what you suggested he'd be political toast! ANY party who did that would be toast! The vast majority of Canadians just don't think that deeply. They want cheap stuff in their stores. They don't see the connection with that cheap stuff and their jobs. Unless public perception changes, you're asking whoever is in power to commit political suicide. It ain't gonna happen! As has been said by someone before "Democracy is a system where the common man deserves to get what he wants, good and hard!"

All that may be true Manny but it doesn't matter. I came from that world and I know how things work. The sad fact is that if ONE company making computer boards or hard drives or whatever moves to China or some similar country, it becomes IMPOSSIBLE for any company here to compete with them! By a light year! So if you run a company in the USA or Canada and a competitor has moved over there, you either follow or you die. Period and end of story. So what else are you supposed to do?

Your impression may be true Star. Then again, it may not. It may have been that the newspaper article you saw gave that impression without coming right out and saying so. Why? Because the paper may have a bias. They want you to believe that because they're not a Tory paper. If they came right out and said it when it wasn't true they could be sued. This is how all propaganda works. It's not always the facts, its how you present them. I learned long ago to read such articles very carefully. After a while you begin to see if the language is actually clear or more "weaselly". Then again, it may be true! Although if they were willing to sue U S Steel why wouldn't they sue Electro Motive? Although it could be that EM has a portion of its business remaining in the community that the government hopes will be saved. If they sue they might lose that as well. All I'm saying is that we should always be skeptical! Look for clear statements and not inferences in news reports! Even if there's not a political bias the source may simply be trying to pump something up to sell more papers.

A complete rejection? True! But if you were around and paying attention the CPC had barely been formed when we saw some kind of "refurbishing the image" program happening. Soon we were led to believe that Brian was some kind of party "elder statesman" that Harper consulted often! To a Reformer, this was totally ridiculous! Brian had been Satan himself, as far as we had been concerned. And Steven Harper had said all sorts of terrible things about him. I was struck by this at the time. Obviously it was payback for something to do with how the wheels had been greased to allow the new merged party to be formed. I had just stopped laughing as the idea had become rather stale when the Air Bus scandal broke! There went all thoughts of "elder statesman"! Harper immediately started to distance himself from Mulroney, so that what had hit the fan did not stick to him as well! Now we take a poll and the man who had won the two largest majorities in our history can t get a single vote! Deservedly so!

I spent my career in the electronics industry so I have some experience and perspective to offer. Yes, quite often price fixing appears to happen. I say appears because it is not always true price fixing. Sometimes with a new device of high technology there are patent and cross-technology agreements that must be paid. These can add to the price of the device and actually swamp out costs of materials and production. This means prices after distribution costs are factored in can end up similar. Or, it can be an out and out price fixing scheme but this is very rare. The more manufacturers involved the more unlikely it becomes, as most companies are reluctant to run the risk of charges. To have as many as are named in this lawsuit seems incredible to me but I suppose its possible! There's another possibility. Remember that this springs from the USA, the land where you can sue and get millions for dumping a McDonalds hot coffee into your lap! How common is it for lawyers to have any sort of the technical knowledge involved in making such displays? How many lawyers can put a new plug on a lamp? I know for a fact that such knowledge in government agencies is virtually unknown. I make my living building and servicing guitar amplifiers, mostly those based on old-fashioned vacuum tube technology. The circuits involved with such have been public domain for decades, yet a peculiar situation has developed in the market. A small "boutique" maker of guitar amps will design and build an amplifier that uses circuits that date back to the 1930's and 40's. One day he's shocked to get a letter from a very large manufacturer, whom I shall not name. It will be from their lawyers, claiming patent infringement and threatening to sue unless he stops production immediately! How can this be, one might ask? How can there be a new patent on a circuit using obsolete technology? The answer is that the US Patent Office does NOT screen new applications any longer! It costs money to do that. So the big bully company submits an application which is just something cribbed from a 50 year old design and the patent office rubber stamps it! From the patent office's perspective, they don't want to waste their time and money. Besides, if it is truly bogus a court of law should easily be able to sort it out! This is true in theory but not in reality. The little boutique manufacture simply can't afford the sort of lawyers hired by the much bigger company! He is completely in the right but since he is outclassed by money he has to "cave" and stop producing his product. So in technical areas we can't always trust the government. Now lets move our viewpoint to modern times. A lawyer can make a great name for himself taking on large corporations and winning! What's more, he doesn't have to convince a judge on the technical merits. The judge would never understand them anyway! No, all he has to do is put up enough smoke that to such a judge it appears there must be a fire and he'll win! Lawyers for American government departments have done this many times before in the electronics industry. Microsoft has been sued for being a monopoly. Intel and others also. I am NOT saying price fixing never happens! I'm just pointing out that we can't always believe the government lawyers either. BOTH sides can be guilty of having an agenda! Consider what happened to Conrad Black. There are some grievous questions about his actual guilt but even more, his punishment seems far harsher than that given to many other rich men convicted of similar "white collar" crime. If you look behind the scenes you will find the prosecuting lawyers often seemed driven to "take down a rich bastard!" They ended up with enhanced professional reputations by taking advantage of the popular view that "a rich guy like him may not be guilty of THIS crime but he must be guilty of enough other stuff so who cares? How else could he have gotten so rich if he wasn't crooked?" So with this case I don't see how we at our level can possibly tell who's truly guilty or not! From my perspective, either side or even both could be acting under false pretenses.

Ah CC, the family I'm sure couldn't care less about what happens in general. All they care about is that Smoke left their loved one with permanent brain damage and received a rather light sentence, apparently because of his race! I know that if someone hurt me or one of my loved ones I could not be so charitable as to forgive him because someone 50 or 100 years ago treated someone of the same race as him poorly. I don't see people as races or tribes. I see them as individuals. As they treat me and mine so shall I respond. I would take my revenge against the specific individual(s) who had wronged me. I cannot conceive of retaliating against an individual who had nothing to do with doing me harm, simply because he and the perpetrator were of the same race. Just as I cannot understand how Smoke could have done what he did to that old man. To me, it was just a naked expression of pure evil, no different than a southern cracker lynching some poor black man.

Maybe so. Certainly such a Minister couldn't do a worse job than what we've seen before.

8 full pages of posts and still not a single vote for Brian Mulroney! :lol: "Elder statesman" of the CPC! Advisor to Steven Harper!

Please don't take me literally, CC. An aboriginal MP is still an MP. I just don't really trust ANY politician! I won't forgive and trust someone just because of their race.

Or perhaps they all made such claims because they thought it was a button to trigger western support...

Seems to me a native MP could be said to have a conflict of interest. Then again, we'd be fools to carte blanche trust ANY MP!

I've never thought that, CC! Like most things, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle. Fanatics on any side of an issue rarely inspire confidence. And they NEVER admit they may have been wrong! They just weasel like a lawyer and change what they've stated before, moving the goalposts to make things look better for them. Human nature, I suppose. You'd best be careful discussing this with me or we'll BOTH get branded racists!

Oh Star, Rae's term was worse, far worse! He was totally unprepared to win! Some of the steps he took to address the recession would have been funny if the effects weren't so sad. I'll give you some examples with which I have first hand knowledge. Within a couple of weeks of Rae's win, we had a situation in Hamilton over what is now called the Red Hill Creek Expressway, which was to provide a rapid highway link between upper and lower Hamilton, connecting at one end to the 403 and at the other down to the QEW at Stoney Creek. Although polls had always shown overwhelming popular support for the project,well organized protest groups had managed to block the expressway from being built, with claims that it would cut down several millions of trees and have asphalt pavement from one horizon to the other, with squirrels and small animals trapped in the tar with their asses sticking up, to be run over by wicked automobiles. Anyhow, at that time the Ontario NDP was a champion for such groups. When you don't expect to win and deliver you can take your support from anywhere, I guess. Anyhow, the project had finally been approved, building contracts issued and bulldozers had begun taking out scrub cedars and other trees. Contrary to the propaganda of the activists, the trees involved were anything BUT giant sacred native sequoias. After only a week or two in power Rae's government suddenly cancelled the project! The people of Hamilton went ape! Thirty years of delay had made traffic a genuine pissoff in Hamilton and had been a major obstacle to attract new business to the manufacturing plants that had been closing down and leaving the city, taking their jobs with them. Rae's spokespeople seemed to have no idea of the consequences of their action, or the negative reactions of the Hamilton townspeople. I saw Rae's transport minister on television, saying "We will investigate alternatives, like perhaps Highway 27." Leaving aside the mistake in citing Hwy 27, which is in Mississauga, when he meant Highway 20, his statement revealed his ignorance that all alternatives had been studied 10 times over during the 30 year delay. There WERE NO other practical alternatives! Worse yet, the contractors all were holding signed contracts which had been arbitrarily cancelled. The lawyers threw a party for themselves as they commenced litigation against the government. The public outcry eventually grew so loud that Rae's government held a public meeting at a banquet hall in Stoney Creek, which I attended. Our new MPP, Mark Morrow, was there. Mark was a rookie who rode the wave into office. He had had maybe two election signs, which I think his mother put in for him. Yet there he was, our new man! It was similar to the last federal election in Quebec, I guess. They put up a microphone at either side of the room, saying that people on both sides of the fence could line up and take their turns alternately at the mike. We were warned quite severely that a person would only have one opportunity to speak at their microphone, so make it good!. Well Star, immediately I started to chuckle! There must have been 400 people, lined up and out the door, to speak at the microphone for those opposed to the NDP's action. Meanwhile, there was less than a dozen speakers who supported it! I witnessed this with my own eyes! After a while the moderators had a problem. They ran out of NDP supporters with hundreds of those on the other side still waiting to speak! So much for "you better make it good!" They decided to let both sides alternate and those few who supported the government got to take turn after turn after turn. It was an obvious put-up job trying to mollify the populace. Mark Morrow made the greenhorn political mistake of obviously paying no attention to the speakers. At one point a woman attacking the decision stopped and started to demand that Mark at least pay her the courtesy of listening to her words! Mark acted like he didn't understand why she was upset, like a teenager who hasn't yet learned proper courtesies and graces. It's not hard to understand how the situation came about. I can imagine a plausible scenario. I doubt if Bob and his people had any idea of what was happening in Hamilton! Why would they? Hamilton has always kind of been "Nowhereville". They hadn't even had time to set up their desks and find the washroom when some of their Hamilton eco-warrior activist supporters call Bob up and say "Bob! They're killing trees down here! You better come down and stop it! They're HURTING THE PLANET!" I'm sure Bob was not completely a rube and would have asked "Are you sure there won't be any negative political repercussions?" "Don't worry!" the eco-warriors would have told him. "The whole city is on our side and will love you for it!" So poor Bob and his crew would have been rushed into a hasty decision that exploded in their faces. When Bob's term was finally up, construction of the Red Hill Creek Expressway immediately started up again. The project was finished and few drivers in Hamilton would ever want to go back! Recently, several large enterprizes have come to Hamilton and given in toto nearly 10,000 new jobs. All of them cited improved transportation links as one of the reasons they decided to come here. Another thing I witnessed was new policies at the Highway Dept. I had a personal friend who had worked there for years and had climbed a fair way up the ladder. He told me that Rae's people had decided the Highway Department had to hire several thousand casual workers, immediately! These workers were only to be kept until they had accumulated enough paid weeks to qualify for EI. The problem was that this left insufficient time for safety training sessions, which had always been mandatory for any and all new hires. Rae's people waived it! Also, they had no work of value for them! So the word came down from Queens Park that they were to be put on crews building and repairing concrete overpasses along the QEW from Hamilton to Niagara. Star, it was the dead of winter and well below freezing! Hardly the time to pour concrete! By spring all the work was so frost damaged it had to be done over. It was about that time that my friend had enough and went back to the family farm in Binbrook. Before that he and the other old hands had always assumed that although they could always expect a bit of political silliness it was understood that the roads had to be kept plowed and the bridges in good repair. Rae's people showed them that their political masters considered such ideas to be irrelevant. Large numbers of other workers like my friend quit at that time. Rae's NDP also showed total ineptness with how finances and businesses worked. Before Rae, companies were required by law to match employee pension contributions in large, unionized businesses. Due to the recession going on at the time, the NDP decided to give companies like Stelco some cash flow relief, in order to retain jobs. Stelco was allowed to let their contributions "slide" for an unspecified amount of time. 10 years later Stelco was nearly bankrupt and up for sale. It was discovered that one of the problems with being sold was that there were hundreds of millions of dollars delinquent in outstanding pension contributions! Potential buyers didn't want to assume that debt! Then there were the Rae Days! To try to balance his books, ole Bob came up with the idea for everyone in a government job to work a few days for free each year, to afford some necessary savings. It would also mean that fewer workers would have to be laid off. Rae seemed to expect that his good report with CUPE and others involved would mean they would cheerfully accept the idea. Instead, they went screaming yellow zonkers and refused to comply! And on and on and on, Star! I'm willing to grant their hearts may have been in the right place but they were total boneheads in how they governed! They never expected to be in power so they had no preparation or experience to apply. No Star, McGuinty has done some goofy and expensive faux pas but he's nowhere in the Bob Rae/NDP league!

And that's what Lamer recognized. Normally, oral history is treated as hearsay but Lamer recognized that a non-writing society must "be given a break", so to speak. However, he also recognized that the evidence must be weighed carefully, since the natives may have inadvertently changed the history over the years. They could be perfectly truthful and sincere, just wrong! As I had said and if you read the link, what has always offended me is the attitude certain native champions have expressed on this board that oral history has been accepted as both literally true and sacrosanct! Even though Lamer was overturned by what appears to a layman like myself as a bad decision, directly contradicting Lamer's point that oral evidence can be sincere but wrong, the SCC still left some gaping holes. Sooner or later a case will crop up that demands the point be re-addressed. Meanwhile, it seems I was right not to accept the idea that the acceptance of oral history was absolute. Obviously, the court recognizes that there may be some distance between sincerity and truth.

No, the trucker antennae scenario equates to many people arriving at what seems to be a logical conclusion but is totally wrong because they didn't know or understand all the facts. I guess that is what makes an educated or considered opinion more valuable.

You confuse me, CC! I never said that ALL SCC judges were politically correct and biased. I said that SOME could be, the same as anyone else! I was responding to YOUR statement, which appeared to me to be saying that ALL SCC judges agreed on the ruling to accept oral histories and that ALL judges since then had reaffirmed that ruling! That of course would be ridiculous. I simply meant that while SCC decisions must be a majority they do not have to be unanimous. The judges on the bench at that time who were in the MAJORITY with the decision are all we can say with certainty did agree with that decision. Anyhow, I did a google and was promptly overwhelmed with "lawyertalk". So far it appears to me that this oral history claim dates back to a "Delgamuukw Decision" about land claims on the west coast, where it was decided that oral history IN SOME INSTANCES could be accepted in court, rather than treated as history as before. I found a .pdf which means I can't cut and paste but here's a quote from one of the provincial judges, one Justice McEachern, who was satisfied over the need to accept oral evidence, given that the tribes involved did not practice writing. This was a case in British Columbia that had its final ruling overturned later by the Supreme Court. http://osgoode.yorku.ca/osgmedia.nsf/0/FB9F32F8A02BD842852571B10076FF5E/$FILE/Legalizing%20Oral%20History.pdf McEachern accepts that what is common knowledge in a tribe of events long before any of them were alive are likely acceptable but always verification must be made before oral histories can be accepted. He acknowledges that sometimes natives can be wrong or their history coloured their sincere beliefs. "the fact that the plaintiffs' claim has been so much discussed for so many years, and the further fact that so much of the evidence was assembled communally in anticipation of litigation, or even during this litigation, must be taken into account." "When I come to consider events long past I am driven to conclude on all the evidence, that much of the plaintiffs' historical evidence is not literally true." "I am satisfied that the lay witnesses honestly believed everything they said was true and accurate. It was obvious to me, however, that very often they were recounting matters of faith which have become fact to them.If I do not accept their evidence it will seldom be because I think they are untruthful, but rather because I have a different view of what is fact and what is belief." When his decision was overturned much of his treatment of oral histories were ruled invalid. The SCC judge was a Chief Justice Lamer, who essentially agreed with the difficulty in verifying oral histories but essentially stated that because the aboriginals usually had no other evidence it should be accepted at face value, regardless. This is what I mean about judges having different opinions and also allowing politically correct values to colour their judgement. Chief Justice Lamer's decision remains controversial in the legal community to this day. "Lamer instructed that the oral histories should have been placed on an "equal footing" with other kinds of historical evidence. But how exactly are trial judges to do this if they cannot distinguish between historical fact on the one hand and legend, myth and cultural values on the other? Or was Chief Justice Lamer suggesting that oral histories could be placed on an equal footing without distinquishing these various elements? Unfortunately, Lamer did not answer these questions." I don't pretend to understand all this as well as a lawyer but one thing seems clear. The idea of oral histories from natives being accepted as on a par with written documents is still moot in legal circles. Some posters on MLW would have us believe that this decision was handed down from Moses at Mount Sinai and must be accepted without question. Others would add that any SCC decision is universally shared within the legal community and will never, ever be amended or revoked by any future panel of SCC judges. This is obviously a load of road apples! The decision was controversial at the time and remains so to this day. If a case of sufficient stature comes to trial again it is a certainty that aspects like oral history and verification will be revisited for further legal clarification. Some native champions may not be 100% happy at that time. I should have known there'd be something like this hiding beneath all the righteousness and frankly, racism.