Quebec

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Quebec free software group suing over government's no-bid Microsoft contracts

Kurt sez, "FACIL, the Quebecois Free Software advocacy group, is suing the Quebec provincial government, accusing them of abusing a legal loophole to essentially create 'no-bid' government software contracts for Microsoft. For a province that once considered independence from Canada, never mind independence from indentured servitude to US corporations, this is sublimely ironic." Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused and goes against other legal requirements to buy locally. "It shouldn't be the rule," Facil president Mathieu Lutfy told CBC News. "It goes against the public markets policy of the government, which requires them to stimulate competition and look for local alternatives. It's really an absurdity." Quebec government sued for buying Microsoft software, FACIL contests government practices in the Superior Court...

Quebec government being sued, for buying Microsoft!

This certainly qualifies as an interesting development. CBC is reporting that FACIL, a non-profit organization that promotes the adoption of free software in Quebec, is suing the provincial government for buying Microsoft software. More specifically, they are alleging that Quebec's provincial government refuses to allow competing bids (including bids from free software vendors) in preference of large players like Microsoft. Allow me to quote from the CBC article. read more

Land Grabs and Lawsuits

Two Quebec-based firms are being sued in Canada by the occupied West Bank Palestinian village of Bi'lin.

Re-enact Bullitt With GPS Maps

So you've driven to San Francisco in your 2008 Bullitt Edition Mustang. You have the Garmin plugged into the cigarette lighter, an iPod full of Lalo Schifrin and you're not leaving until you've blown out your shocks on that street where Steve McQueen caught air again and again. You know, the really hilly one? Wait, there's more than one really hilly street in San Francisco? Since the SF Convention and Visitors Bureau is highly unlikely to provide a map of historical sites where you can burn out your tires and terrify pedestrians, the kind folks at Seero.com have a solution: a GPS overlay of the entire chase, mapping out every fender-smashing second. Seero calls it "geo-broadcasting," and the same technology can be used with live or pre-recorded videos. For example, in your Bullitt reenactment, you can send out a live geo-broadcast to let the folks back home see where you bottomed out your Mustang, the very streets you marked with a trail of oil and the exact spot you were taken into police custody.Seero is the brainchild of Justin Cutillo, David Rothschild, and Dan Rummel who started the site to let us poor slobs stuck behind computer screens see the world through someone else's eyes -- or at least through someone else's Flip. Rothschild said technology has "just gotten up to speed within the past year or so" to enable such live GPS-linked video shenanigans as Alex Roy's insane Cannonball Run record. Unlike other video sites, Seero uploads the exact coordinates of where a video took place from a GPX file collected by a GPS device, and lets the user pair the GPS data with the video file. "If you knew you were taking a turn, you could pause the video and line it up. It's as simple as that," Cutillo said. According to Rothschild, interest in the site grew from fans of geocaching expeditions and "outdoorsy adventures" to a dedicated "niche market of gearheads and bikers" who want to record their travels and remember exactly where that awesome pie stand was, or to chronicle just how lost they got in the far reaches of Quebec. One user hooked up a video camera to a remote-control plane and showed off films of the French countryside, while another walked across the Pacific Crest Trail. Needless to say, Cutillo and Rothschild admit they're jealous of some of the trips Seero users submit to the site. For those of us who thought GPX was a company who makes those boomboxes they sell in drugstores, the Seero interface is also cool for creating mashups like the McQueen video, to show exactly where a chase scene took place or even to overlay GPS coordinates to an old family road trip Super 8 movie. Home users will even be able to follow along the exact route of car chases, as Seero is planning to link up local news choppers with GPS and video technology that will be broadcast live. We're anxiously awaiting the O.J. Simpson white Bronco mashup. By the way, the jump shown above was filmed on Filbert Street. Photo courtesy Seero. Which famous chase scene would like to see get the GPS "geo-broadcasting" treatment? Use the Reddit widget to let us know. Show suggestions that are: hot | new | top-rated or submit your own suggestion   Submit a Prediction While you can submit as many suggestions as you want, you can only submit one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed. Back to top

Personal endorsement for Anne Lagacé Dowson, candidate in Westmount-Ville-Marie, Quebec

Earlier this summer, I heard from Anne Lagacé Dowson, a 20-year veteran of CBC Radio who had quit her post to run for the New Democratic Party in a by-election in the Quebec riding of Westmount-Ville-Marie. I've known Anne all my life (literally -- she was my babysitter when I was an infant) and so I was glad to hear that she was doing this amazing thing, but I was even more delighted when she said that her campaign and her party were both passionate about the digital freedoms issues that I campaign on and she asked if I'd be willing to offer her my endorsement. I've just spent half an hour on the phone with Dowson and I'm happy to say that based on what she told me about her platform, I'm absolutely delighted to offer her my unqualified endorsement. Dowson pointed out that the NDP is the only federal Canadian party with a dedicated digital affairs critic: the always-sharp Charlie Angus, a former punk musician late of the band L'Etranger, who I used to see headlining punk shows when I was a teenager. Angus and the NDP have led the political criticism of the Tory Bill 61, a Canadian version of America's Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a copyright bill that was drafted in secret, without input from Canadian stakeholders, including coalitions of Canadian creators and music labels. The NDP has also led the pack on criticising the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, another secretly negotiated proposal, this time for a global treaty on copyright that would dramatically increase the search, seizure and surveillance obligations to Canada and other signatories, forcing them to spy on everyday individuals to protect the profits of a few giant record companies. Dowson also endorsed the NDP's activism on net neutrality -- Canada's major ISPs, Bell and Rogers, have led the world's Internet companies in a race to the bottom, imposing secret caps, spying on users, blocking protocols, and even blocking downstream ISPs' customers (so that ISPs that buy their backhaul from Bell are subject to the same filtering as Bell's own retail customers). Dowson's riding is close to Outremont, where an NDP candidate upset the longstanding Liberal incumbent, and Dowson's bet her future on a similar result in Westmount-Ville-Marie. She tells me that she's already met people at their doors who told her that issues of digital freedom were key to them, and she points out that the current Liberal opposition has had dozens of opportunities to boot out the truly loathsome and autocratic Tory government and have instead voted with them on issues from Canada's war involvement to Canada's positions on network freedoms. As mentioned, I've known Anne and her family all my life, and know her to be trustworthy, incisive and principled, an impression reinforced by her impressive reporting on CBC. I'm even more impressed, though, by her sophistication on digital issues. I talk to a lot of politicos in my routine, and it's rare to meet someone who really understands these issues as well as Dowson does. There are only 75,000 voters in Westmount-Ville-Marie; I don't know how many of them read Boing Boing, but if you're in that riding, I hope you'll go to the polls on September 8 and cast your vote for Anne Lagacé Dowson. Anne Lagacé Dowson...

Ontario, Quebec Residents Owe Ottawa $18.1 Million In Unpaid Parking Fees (AHN)

(AHN) - Ottawa has accumulated over $24 million in uncollected parking fees due to lack of enforcement procedures. - Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:35:27 GMT

Iggy and the Stooges' gear was stolen, help 'em find it!

Boing Boing reader Eric Fischer (nycentral13@gmail.com) says: Iggy and The Stooges are in the middle of a huge tour and this is a disaster - not to mention some rare kit gone forever. Please help if you can. If anyone who reads this and lives in or near Montreal, Canada or if anyone has information, ANY INFORMATION! please, please, PLEASE as soon as possible contact Eric Fischer at: nycentral13@gmail.com cell phone: +1 646 932 1907 IGGY AND THE STOOGES EQUIPMENT STOLEN ON AUGUST 4, 2008 OUTSIDE THE EMBASSY SUITES HOTEL 208 SAINT ANTOINE OUEST, MONTREAL, QUEBEC, CANADA all equipment was in a rented penske 15 foot yellow truck with u.s. (michigan) license plate number AC46493 parked immediately outside the hotel, the theft had to have happened in the morning, between 6:30 and 7:30 am... More details on the stolen stuff, with photos and serial numbers, after the jump....

Quiet Neighborhood 4-Plex 1589 Quebec Ct. #2 (sunnyvale) $1275 2bd

Quiet family neighborhood Large 2 bedroom 1 bath with new paint, laundry in building, clean downstairs apartment. Convenient location near Sara Park and shopping. Ready for move-in 1 yr.lease, then month to month. Drive by first, then call (408)621-3307 to make appointment to see.

McCartney wows Quebec

Sir Paul McCartney performs his greatest hits and speaks French to more than 200,000 fans at a Quebec concert opposed by nationalists.