Thank you for re-upgrading to charter! You're all set to rock and roll for the next 30 days and 30 nights.

This is a false or misleading statement. The reasons for some Canadians having to wait or not being able to have a doctor are different. Canada has had a terrible drain on it's medical system with doctors and nurses going down to the US, because they make more money there. This has lead to new programs to entice them to stay in Canada. It looks like they have been working, but it's a 10 year study and we need to see the numbers.

As a Canadian who has been though the healthcare system in Ontario, and had family members who've had been through health care in Quebec, Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia, Halifax and Newfoundland.Labradour, I can tell you the parts that work and the parts that don't.

I'm a type I diabetic and I've had cancer twice. I've had a sarcoma in my saliva gland and as a result of radiation therapy, I've had melanoma skin cancer crop up on my body as well. I've had four major surgeries on my body. Two of them were serious complicated nervous system surgeries or lymphatic resecctions. I've been through my fair share of Canadian health care.

First things first. It's not a national healthcare. Anyone saying national healthcare doesn't know what they're talking about. The provinces and territories have their own health care. Granted, the territories get a lot more help from the Federal Gov't, but the health needs of people in Ontario are different from those in Manitoba.

Let's get into the brass taxes. I've had the nerve surgery and radiation therapy that was done on my face evaluated at a hospital in West Virgina as part of a study to compare American HC vs. Canadian HC. For my first surgery, I got to choose my doctor, I was given a list. They recommended one doctor, who was an expert in North America for nerve surgery, but he was recovering from a surgery of his own. They suggested I wait for him to be ready, but if I wanted to proceed, I could wait if I wanted.

I waited and surprise, no facial paralysis. I then had to do 30 days of intense radiation therapy in my parotid bed, to make sure they got it all.

I paid a total of $300 dollars in parking. I also have private health insurance for diabetic supplies, which means any medication I had to get to deal with the after effects of radiation had an 85% payback.

Years later when the effects of radiation had settled and I had a tumour form from the radiation, I had gone to my family doctor, saw a specialist the next day and then within the week I had an excision done. It came back positive and within a week of that, I was given a sentinel node biopsy to see if it had spread.

It had.

Within a month of the first examination, I had a full lymphatic ressection of my left leg and groin done. This wasn't as complicated as the facial nerve surgery, so I got a list and a suggestion of who to do the surgery.

That came back clean, but I now deal with a lot of complications from that.

That surgery cost me nothing.

In West Virgina at a hospital (they didn't tell me which one they used.) The total for all the exams (CT, MRI, etc.) the surgery and the radiation therapy came out to $275,000. Give or take.

This is why it drives me nuts when I see people get things wrong about Canada. We have problems, oh yes we do. For example, don't be over the age of 65 in BC or Quebec. The diagnostics training in Nova Scotia or Newfoundland if pretty terrible. But, I got to choose my doctor, and I saw everyone really quick. Why? Because you don't fuck with melanoma.

So, I'm sorry Trancecoach, I saw that video you linked. The guy lost a lot of credibility at "Communist State of Canada." You're already skewing your message to say something. You are just plain wrong about health care in Canada, the way you talk about. I am living proof of how well it works.

I'm a self employed photographer and the most I've ever had to pay was for parking at the hospital. That was the $300 dollars. I paid my taxes and that paid for my health care. If I didn't, and if other Canadians didn't, I would not be here, as with many other Canadians.

Critique us for the things we do shitty, but I have yet to see anyone do that. I see talking points and misinformation from people just spreading false info.

Get your facts straight. I know how it works in Ontario the best. But, I also know for a vast majority of the other country. I can tell you Saskatchewan has had an exodus of nurses, but that's not bad health care system. That's a gov't system that can't keep nurses in the province. If we can keep doctors and nurses, the system works great.

The guy you linked to, most of his sources for data are absolute crap and he misleads a lot of his talking points. This stupid lottery doctor that happened was because it was an isolated town in the wilderness and there was only one doctor left after the other passed away. So yes, he had to do a lottery for people so he wouldn't get swamped, unless it was an emergency. It was a town, I believe about 10,000 people, but I'm not sure on that.

You've been gifted an upgrade to Charter member status by an admiring sifter. Enjoy your super powers for the next 30 days!

You've been gifted a 30 day chartership by a powerful, admiring Sifter.

Enjoy!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Hey mister Italian ant eater, you've been gifted a 30 day charter membership by an admiring Sifter. Cheers!

You've been gifted a 30 day chartership by an awesome human being. Enjoy!

The X1 allows you to transfer the license once (borrow or sell the title) to a friend that's on your friends list for 30 days.

Select partners (Gamestop obviously) will be able to resell used games, I'm sure they have some huge massive contract with MS for this.

The big kicker is the online requirement, the system will check authentication once every 24 hours or once per hour if you're on your account but not on your machine. If you fail the check (internet goes down etc) you're unable to play any games, although the Bluray and media center functions remain unchanged.

Overall Microsofts policy and lackluster handling of the situation and info has been terrible overall. For the first time in years (since ps1 gen 1) I'll be getting a Sony system to pair up with my PC for games/entertainment.

@artician

One thing we're lucky for in Australia is mandatory warranty legislation can be interpreted beyond a year to reasonable expectations of lifetime for a product, so say claiming repair/replace costs after 3 years would not be unreasonable.

@Darkhand

Agreed, the obsessive level of detail on what you can and can't do really feeds into Yahtzee's whole thing about endless asterisks to playing a game.

For the first, I don't imagine it being a big factor in preventing piracy on a console and I struggle to see how forcing a connection feeds into a rationale of improving the bottom line. Surely all the multimedia features and TV integration that required internet access would be a sufficient draw to connect to the web already?

The second is pretty clear. The 30 day friend requirement is to prevent selling the game directly to a stranger thereby dis-intermediating the retailer. Limiting gifting to one and preventing you from passing a disc around is clearly to prevent a single-player game being bought by one and passed around to many. I can't imagine their loaning options when you become available being particularly generous. But it's interesting to see how MS appears to be concerned about catering to both retailers and distributors. Perhaps it gives them a rationale to charge higher licensing costs while also avoiding the direct blame for imposing limitations? Either way, pretty shameless.

Hope they were all dead-Nothing will infest your otherwise uninfested home in less than 30 days that a breading pair and a few egg-sacks.

Thanks for re-chartering and helping support the Sift! You're all powered up for the next 30 days.

The camera was in the passengers lap and the officer came up on the passenger side. On a freeway it is standard procedure to come up on the non-traffic side in case someone sideswipes the car.

I just wish I could see his badge number because he should be on write-up for that crap. It's people like him that give other DPS officers a bad reputation.

The reason why he let them go is because Reckless Driving in Texas is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine and/or 30 days in jail plus the speeding ticket. Most officers will not bother with this if the person is foreign because they will most likely not be in the country long enough to show up for trial. If he had been a long time resident, it would be up to 200 dollars for the fine, up to 300 for the ticket (depends on location, we have some different scales in certain cities), 2 points on his license (doesn't block you from keeping it, just means that you have to pay extreme renewal fees), and the possible jail time. Anything over 10 days would be served at County, so I guess it is possible for anal violation, but I've never seen someone get more than 10 for RD.

Thanks for re-upgrading to charter. Your 30 days of bliss start now. Enjoy!

"We have received the hardest and most tragic news that... comandante President Hugo Chavez died today at 4:25 pm," -(Maduro, VP).
Elections will be held in 30 days, and Vice President Nicolas Maduro will assume the presidency in the interim, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said in an interview broadcast on state-run VTV.-

As a follow-up, she apologized and the judge removed the requirement that she spend 30 days in jail. Yay!

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Teen-Who-Flipped-Off-Judge-Gives-Emotional-Apology

So is this a "commercial" or is it "viral"?

Good program. Good PR. I'm glad they are doing this, and it will start to help to repair the Davis police's reputation after the recent pepper spraying of protesters.
That said. I have no problem with them issuing warnings or citations for people riding on the streets without lights or proper reflectors. Hopefully the viral video will have a broader positive effect than citations.
Another thing police could do with any sort of 'not up to code' violation, would be to issue a citation, but wave the fee if you can demonstrate that you have fixed the problem within 30 days.. for example, by mailing in a copy of the receipt for a bike light.