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Vancouver Off-Topic / Current EventsThe off-topic forum for Vancouver, funnies, non-auto centered discussions, WORK SAFE. While the rules are more relaxed here, there are still rules. Please refer to sticky thread in this forum.
POLICE REMINDING EVERYONE TO LOCK DOORS AND WINDOWS AFTER BIZARRE BREAK-IN
July 3, 2013
One man is in custody after a bizarre break-in to a home in east Vancouver prompting police to remind residents to lock their doors and windows.
At about 7:00 last night, the resident of a home in east Vancouver found a naked stranger in his kitchen, cooking eggs. When confronted, the stranger fled from the home.
Police were called, and a 30 year-old Burnaby man was arrested a short distance away.
It is believed the suspect was in the home for 20 to 25 minutes, and had even taken a shower before being discovered in the kitchen.
Charges of being unlawfully in a dwelling house have been requested.
There have been 1157 residential break-and-enters in Vancouver so far this year, and the Vancouver Police Department is hoping that homeowners stay vigilant, particularly since 400 of these break-ins show no signs of forced entry.
Warmer weather is here and more people will be spending time outdoors, and leaving windows and doors open to stay cool.
“Ensuring your doors and windows are locked is a simple deterrent,” says Constable Brian Montague. “Don’t make it easy for someone to break-in to your house.”
Pyramid in Peru torn down by developers
Officials lodge criminal complaints against two firms after building at El Paraiso, one of Peru's oldest archaeological sites, destroyed
(before after)
Real estate developers using heavy machinery tore down a 20ft (6m) tall pyramid at one of Peru's oldest archaeological sites, cultural officials have said.
Rafael Varon, deputy minister of cultural patrimony, told reporters on Wednesday that the destruction occurred over the weekend at the ruins of El Paraiso, a few miles north of Peru's capital, Lima.
He said his agency has lodged criminal complaints against two companies for the damage – identified as Alisol and Provelanz – and has moved to seize the equipment used. People who answered the telephone at both companies said no one was available to comment.
Peru's tourism ministry says El Paraiso was built some 4,000 years ago and was a religious and administrative centre, long before the rise of the Inca culture encountered by the Spanish conquerors.
Marco Guilen, director of an excavation project at El Paraiso, said the people who tore down the pyramid "have committed irreparable damage to a page of Peruvian history".
"We are not going to be able to know in what ways it was constructed, what materials were used in it and how the society in that part of the pyramid behaved," said Guilen.
Varon said people apparently working for the two companies tore down one pyramid and tried to destroy three others, but were stopped by witnesses.
Mayor Freddy Ternero of San Martin de Porres, the town where the ruins are located, said the pyramids were sited in agricultural fields and were not guarded, though he said the minister of the interior sent police to protect it after the incident.
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Was in Abbotsford Tuesday getting cheap gas. On no tax day at Superstore, I bought enough shit to get the 35˘/litre off gas coupon (offer of the week). Limited to 100 litres max. I paid with my PC Mastercard and got a further 7 cents off per liter discount. That's 42˘ off per litre on already cheaper Abbotsford gas prices. Gas was $1.27 per litre on Tuesday. I love Superstore.
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5,000 year old ruins torn down by property developers in Peru
Unfortunately, this happens ALL THE TIME.
Mexico is the worst for it.
Just a few months ago part of a Nazca line was taken out.
There is little the international community can do unless these sites are protected under UNESCO.
OH, and something to think about....the public finds all this always so shocking and adopt this whole, "OMG, HOW COULD THEY" attitude towards this stuff, but what would you say if a site out in Pitt Meadows that represented some of the earliest adoption of agriculture in the PNW and dated older than this Peru site is now sitting under the new Abernathy Way.
Or, how about a 10,000 year old site that is now a vineyard just outside of Kamloops?
May not be a pretty little pyramid, but it is no less important. I could blow your mind with the shit that has been destroyed in the province for the sake of "progress".
A new Vancouver-based internet provider says it will be offering fibre internet at a speed of one gigabit per second — 60 times faster than the Canadian average — for a comparable price to that lumbering average connection. Broadband costs Compare internet services across Canada
OneGigabit, a small start-up launched by computer networking and telecommunications specialist Eric Kuhnke, says that for $45 to $65 a month, he will be offering speeds comparable to those offered by Google Fiber, and also with no bandwidth caps. Google's blazing-fast internet service caused a buzz in the U.S. when it first launched last summer in Kansas City, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo., for a modest $70 a month.
A recent report from internet metrics company Ookla showed the average monthly Canadian internet bill is $54 for an average download speed of just 16.6 megabits per second. A gigabit per second is the equivalent of 1000 megabits per second.
According to Google, with its gigabit connection speed:
You can stream at least five high-definition videos at the same time (allowing multiple people to watch different things in different rooms of a house or download).
You can download an entire 14-gigabyte digital movie in less than two minutes.
You can transfer data over the internet faster than you can write it to a thumb drive.
But ultra-fast internet speeds are typically only possible if the "last mile" — the wiring that connects a building to the rest of a telecommunications network — is made of fibre optic cable. That is only the case if the traditional copper wiring has been recently upgraded to fibre technology.
'We could not have done this two years ago or even 18 months ago. The radio equipment was half the speed and double the cost.'—Eric Kuhnke, OneGigabit
Because of that, the availability of fibre internet is limited in Canada, mainly to certain buildings and neighbourhoods in urban centres, and it isn't cheap.
Advertised fibre internet packages from major internet providers such as Bell, Rogers and Shaw top out at 175 to 250 megabits per second and cost $115 to $226 a month.
In Vancouver, Shaw offers one gigabit per second internet service in small pockets and 250 megabit service in other areas for $115 per month. Novus, a Vancouver-based internet provider launched by the Concord Pacific Real Estate Group, offers 300 megabit per second service for $113 a month in certain buildings in B.C.'s lower mainland, mostly highrises, including many built by Concord Pacific, which put fibre optic cable in them when they were constructed.
However, Kuhnke estimates that 98 per cent of Vancouver buildings don't have fibre, and most buildings that do are large office towers. Real estate clients targeted
OneGigabit's plan is to negotiate with real estate owners, managers and developers and hook up entire small- and medium-sized apartment, condominium and office buildings that don't currently have a fibre connection. Computer networking and telecommunications specialist Eric Kunkhe launched OneGigabit in Vancouver last week. (Courtesy Eric Kuhnke)"To be frank, it's uneconomical to serve a single client, with the construction costs that are involved to run fibre to one particular tenant to the building," Kuhnke explained in a phone interview.
That's why he is targeting as clients the owners and managers of both existing buildings and those that are about to be built — in fact, he said, costs are significantly reduced if plans to run fibre to the building are made during pre-construction planning.
Building owners and OneGigabit would share the cost of running the fibre to the building, which is cheap if it's strung on telephone poles and more expensive if it is run underground using a technique called microtrenching. The fibre inside the building, connecting directly to each unit, would be paid for and owned by the building itself.
In cases where the building's location makes fibre installation problematic, Kuhnke has a backup strategy — he is installing rooftop microwave transmitters similar to those used by mobile phone carriers to beam the data from building to building.
According to OneGigabit, the technology can transmit data at up to two gigabits per second over distances of up to eight kilometres.
OneGigabit would cover the cost of the networking equipment, and building owners would commit to a monthly fee per unit for internet service for a fixed length of time, such as three years, with the option to continue the service after the contract is up.
That fee, which would vary between $45 and $65 per month depending on the cost of connecting that particular building, could be passed on to residents in their maintenance fees. Residents would have the option of subscribing to competing services if they wish, but the building would still have to pay the contracted fee to OneGigabit for its service. In cases where it is too difficult to lay fibre, OneGigabit provides a gigabit-speed connection using rooftop microwave transmitters. (OneGigabit)Kuhnke, whose start-up is backed by two private investors, said advances in technology are what has made his business model viable.
"We could not have done this two years ago or even 18 months ago," he said. "The radio equipment was half the speed and double the cost."
The cost of fibre has also fallen dramatically in recent years, thanks to the economies of scale provided by its large-scale installation in Taiwan and China, said Kuhnke, who spent many years working in Asia as a network and telecom contractor.
"Those cities are so far ahead of us."
Kuhnke said that, following OneGigabit's launch last week, the company quickly signed up a condo developer who wants to get fibre in before the concrete for the foundation is poured as well as another real estate company that is renovating a building in Vancouver's Gastown neighbourhood in order to attract tenants at a higher lease rate.
He added that if OneGigabit does well in Vancouver, he would like to expand it to other urban centres in Canada. 'There's no reason why it can't work'
Catherine Middleton, a professor at Ryerson University who holds a Canada Research Chair in Communication Technologies, told CBCNews.ca in an email that she expects Kuhnke's business model to be successful, since it allows for financing of the network and provides a high-quality service to residents. One OneGigabit uses a technique called microtrenching to connect buildings with fibre optic cable. In this photo, the paler grouting shows where the fibre was laid, 20 centimetres below the surface, without digging up the street.(OneGigabit)Len Waverman, Dean of the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University in Hamilton, and a researcher whose specialties include the telecommunications business, said he thinks the microwave technology that Kuhnke is taking advantage of is "very exciting."
"There's no reason why it can't work," he said, although he cautioned that microwave transmission is less reliable than fibre, especially in bad weather.
Waverman said he could see a demand for gigabit speeds among smaller businesses, but he questioned whether many people would want it in their homes.
"I just don't see what a gig to the home would do," he said. "It's nice to say you have it available, but if you're using it just to download lots of movies, I don't see what the business proposition behind that [would be]."
Middleton said affordability is the key to consumer demand. She noted that a 2012 CRTC report showed 75 per cent of Canadian households had access to download speeds of 50 megabits per second or higher in 2011, but at that time only 0.3 per cent of households subscribed to those speeds.
She added, "If the price were comparable to lower speed services, as it is in Kansas City [with Google Fiber], I expect that demand would be high."
So in in Washington right now and walk into the IGA to pick up a bottle of rum and walk about and they sell mother fucken Apple Pie moonshine... So picked up two bottles fuck ya Posted via RS Mobile
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dinosaur
Unfortunately, this happens ALL THE TIME.
Mexico is the worst for it.
Just a few months ago part of a Nazca line was taken out.
There is little the international community can do unless these sites are protected under UNESCO.
OH, and something to think about....the public finds all this always so shocking and adopt this whole, "OMG, HOW COULD THEY" attitude towards this stuff, but what would you say if a site out in Pitt Meadows that represented some of the earliest adoption of agriculture in the PNW and dated older than this Peru site is now sitting under the new Abernathy Way.
Or, how about a 10,000 year old site that is now a vineyard just outside of Kamloops?
May not be a pretty little pyramid, but it is no less important. I could blow your mind with the shit that has been destroyed in the province for the sake of "progress".
Don't see those stories on the news, do you?
I've no problem with sites being developed over as long as they're not deemed extremely significant and a proper application process is done
especially if the sites had already been researched/documented in some form or another i realize researchers will deem all sites highly significant and find reasons to always research said sites but i don't think its fair or necessary to go that far if it gets in the way with growth/development
the issue i have with the story i posted is that it was a significant site and the developers had torn it down without permission
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my view of whats significant and say what the government would deem significant is very different and when i speak of being "deemed extremely significant" i leave that up to the government to decide and hopefully they'll have consulted universities/museums/et al. in deciding the value of a site and weigh it against what the proposed development would provide
Funny enough, it is not up to the universities, museums, and even the gov't to determine what is significant enough to protect. TBH, there is NO sure-fire significance ratings in BC that can and will protect any archaeological site. The BC Archaeology Branch has a set of guidelines in regards to site significance, but it is up to the archaeologist hired to determine. And even then, it doesn't mean much.
Recommendations can be made (which was actually one of my jobs as an archaeologist) as to how a site is mitigated, but the only time a site is left alone is because of money.
Example: Walmart in Pitt Meadows was scheduled to be built on a piece of untouched land which meant an Impact Assessment needed to be conducted. They found it to be a human burial site. There is no law that says they can not built over it....however, the mitigation plan was very expensive and walmart declined.
She taught me right from wrong and always told me to stay positive and help others no matter how small the deed - that helping others gives us meaning to carry on. The sun is out today and it's a new day. Life is good. I just needed a slap in the face.
Horticultural Hate: The Mystery of the Forest Swastikas
Quote:
Over 20 years ago, a landscaper in eastern Germany discovered a formation of trees in a forest in the shape of a swastika. Since then, a number of other forest swastikas have been found in Germany and beyond, but the mystery of their origins persist.
Blame it on the larches. Brandenburg native Günter Reschke was the first one to notice their unique formation, according to a 2002 article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. To be more precise, however, it was the new intern at Reschke's landscaping company, Ökoland Dederow, who discovered the trees in 1992 as he was completing a typically thankless intern task: searching aerial photographs for irrigation lines.
Instead, he found a small group of 140 larches standing in the middle of dense forest, surrounded by hundreds of other trees. But there was a crucial difference: all the others were pine trees. The larches, unlike the pines, changed color in the fall, first to yellow, then brown. And when they were seen from a certain height, it wasn't difficult to recognize the pattern they formed. It was quite striking, in fact.
As he was dutifully accomplishing the task he had been given, the intern suddenly stopped and stared, dumbfounded, at the picture in his hand. It was an aerial view of Kutzerower Heath at Zernikow -- photo number 106/88. He showed it to Reschke: "Do you see what this is?" But the 60-by-60 meter (200-by-200 foot) design that stood out sharply from the forest was obvious to all: a swastika.
Reschke is actually a fan of his native Uckermark region of northeastern Germany, extolling its gently rolling hills, lakes and woods, as the "Tuscany of the north." But what the two men discovered in 1992 in that aerial photograph thrust this natural idyll into the center of a scandal.
A Swastika as a Birthday Gift?
Reschke chartered a plane to fly over the area, and indeed, a neatly delineated swastika was clearly visible. The local forester, Klaus Göricke, set out to uncover the origin of the troubling larch formation, and he found out that the trees had been there for a long time. By measuring the trees, he came to the conclusion they had been planted in the late 1930s. That means that for decades, during every spring and autumn, a massive swastika took shape in the Kutzerower Heath -- surviving the Russian occupation, Communist rule in East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall without ever attracting notice.
The fact that it went undiscovered for so long was in part due to the short period of time each year that it was visible. Furthermore, it could only be seen from a certain altitude, and the airplanes that headed north out of Berlin were already much too high for passengers to see the swastika in the forest. Private planes, on the other hand, were forbidden in East Germany.
It didn't take long for rumors to spread about how the swastika got there in the first place. A local farmer claimed that he had planted the trees as a child, with a forester paying him a few cents for each seedling he put in the ground. Others reported that it was put there as a sign of loyalty after a nearby villager had been taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp by the Nazis because he had secretly been listening to the BBC. Still another version holds that a local Nazi leader ordered the trees planted on the occasion of Hitler's birthday. Finally, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported that it was planted in gratitude to the Reich Labor Service for building a street in Zernikow.
Just go and read and then think to yourself, "what sick f*** makes that connection for the purpose of PETA?"
Seriously? Not at all respectful of the families, or the victims. I really dislike them as an organization.
had a couple short "convos" with peta reps regarding native seal hunting and omg they couldn't come up with a legitimate reason or solution other than they didn't want cute seals to die and they didn't care about native culture/industry
Sonick is a genius. I won't go into detail what's so great about his post. But it's damn good!
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On my way home from Abbotsford, I took Hwy 1 instead of the cheaper (no toll) Lougheed route. When I get to the 208th overpass, I see these two kids on their bikes sitting mid span. They looked like they were up to something, so I was totally prepared to duck out of the way of something. They were just above the right lane and I was in the left. There was a large spot of water on the road, so I figured the bastards were throwing water bombs at cars. As I get just under the overpass, I see dude in a jeep behind me swerve like he was gonna get shot by a missle or something. He loses control of the jeep and shoots across three lanes of traffic and ends up in the median/ditch. Looked like something right out of a movie. He didn't flip the jeep but it was one helluva rough ride for him.
Not 100% sure if the kids did anything, because they were sitting on their bikes, but I did see something odd on one of the bikes - something shiny. I had my dashcam on, but not sure if anything will show up as the sun was right in front of me. Damn windshield of mine has so many pits in it, it looks like a disco ball with all the sparkles that show up from the sunlight.
I saw a couple of other cars, through my rearview mirror, immediately pull over, so I left it at that. Hopefully the dash cam shows something.
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Originally posted by v.b. can we stop, my pussy hurts... Originally posted by asian_XL fliptuner, I am gonna grab ur dick and pee in your face, then rub shit all over my face...:lol Originally posted by Fei-Ji haha i can taste the cum in my mouth Originally posted by FastAnna when I was 13 I wanted to be a video hoe so bad
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Did you call the cops to investigate?
Nope. The dude in jeep was OK. Didn't flip the car. The kids would have been long gone by the time any cops get to the overpass. I was going to get off at 200th and head over there, but at 17:43, traffic is shitty.
I just looked at the footage. I thought it was three lanes, but it was two. It was a cream colour Jeep Sahara that got involved. The two boys were moving over to the right lane as I got to the overpass and sure enough, there was a puddle of water in my lane. It looked like a plastic water bottle they were about to throw over.
Fricken dumb ass kids.
I will call it in. It might help prevent this kind of thing from happening again. They should cover the overpass with a fence or something.
__________________
Quote:
"there but for the grace of god go I"
Quote:
Youth is, indeed, wasted on the young.
YODO = You Only Die Once.
Dirty look from MG1 can melt steel beams.
"There must be dissonance before resolution - MG1" a musical reference.
Originally posted by v.b. can we stop, my pussy hurts... Originally posted by asian_XL fliptuner, I am gonna grab ur dick and pee in your face, then rub shit all over my face...:lol Originally posted by Fei-Ji haha i can taste the cum in my mouth Originally posted by FastAnna when I was 13 I wanted to be a video hoe so bad