Slashdot Mirror

Slashdotters tend to say Microsoft or SCO is evil, too. Does that mean they think all Microsoft or SCO employees are evil? Not usually (there are some who are completely irrational). Just because common knowledge on Slashdot is that CEOs are overpaid, doesn't mean ALL CEOs are overpaid. Is your CEO taking home $33.4 million dollars per year? That was the median compensation for CEOs of America's 100 largest corporations in 2002. Or perhaps he's taking home more like $300,000 to $500,000/yr, or maybe even $1,000,000/yr.

When a CEO takes home more money in a severance package after being 'fired' by the board of directors than you could ever hope to earn with an average salary of $60,000/yr over a 45 year career, it's not hard to believe that they were overpaid.

The reference came from the print version, however it can also be found online. Indeed there was a whole issue dedicated to CEOs.

Cheers!

The reference came from the print version, however it can also be found online. Indeed there was a whole issue dedicated to CEOs.

Cheers!

Uh, lemme get this straight...

Car Exhaust is causing solar flares?

MOD PARENT FUNNY!

Meanwhile, maybe you should read a little more about Green House Gases...

Google has around US$700-million in annual revenues, and it makes about US$100-million a year in profits. Google is growing better than 20% every 12 months. source

They (Google) should have taken what Moneybags was offering while the going was getting hot. Now it seems like they want to be a slight be greedy, which in this economy with it's uncertainty due to political factors, Israel, (fake)War on tError, etal, it's likely they're going to luck out. Heck even Warren Buffett is taking his money elsewhere, and anyone in the economics field knows he knows how to make money.

Incidently, AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.) is offering an ACR-700, a 731 megawatt plant for $700 million US, built anywhere in the world.

While 0.0001% would be a poor reply rate for conventional advertising, the internet offers an economy of scale that makes this a financially viable business as the commission from the one-in-a-million people who respond is enough to pay for the cost of delivery (plus profit).

I submitted an article this week (rejected, of course) about a National Post Business Magazine article on the world's #4 spammer who says he realized the potential for income when his first batch of spam sold 40,000 decks of playing cards depicting Iraqi leaders the U.S.A. wanted to capture. He now boasts a sale rate of close to 0.2%, which is phenominal for his line of business.

The article also mentions that in just one spam run, 6000 people purchased penis-enlarging pills for US$50 per bottle. How many emails can a spammer send on the commission from $300,000 worth of orders for a product that is probably little more than sugar?

The reason people keep spamming is because other people keep buying their crap. If it wasn't profitable they wouldn't do it.

There is new privacy legislation in Canada that takes effect Jan. 1, 2004. It has teeth. Have a look.

Of course, since the bars record the information, it makes it easy to discover members of the class :)

The Globe and Mail is the older and generally more respected newspaper. The National Post is a recent upstart. It is generally considered much more right-wing and a bit downscale.

Found link: Canada's National Post weighed in on Saturday with the article, "A reasonable discussion hijacked".

A good article coming from the National Post. One of the biggest rags in the western world.

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Boy, that MSNBC article was bad. They even mispelled the researcher's name. It is "Akiko Mizutani" not "Aikiko Mizutani".

Here is some better coverage of the story. discovery, NationalPost, and Ananova.

And here is a nice page from the Insect Vision, Navigation and "Cognition" Laboratory at ANU, but it doesn't cover the dragonfly work.

It isn't scary because it is fast, or upside down or any of that fancy stuff.

It is scary because it is old and made of wood, and every moment you get the feeling that the wood is going to snap and you will die.

The new fancy coasters are so strong with reinforced whatchamacallits and you know deep down that they are safe.

Not this one. I swear that if you don't hold on you'd go flying out after the first hump.

--jeff++

There is good reason to doubt that SARS is in fact
a coronoavirus. Only 40% of Canadian cases tested
positive by nasal swab PCR for the suspected
coronavirus, and less than one third of them tested
positive for serum antibodies, according to
this press report.

• Columnist rthomson@nationalpost.com
• his Editors tcorcoran@nationalpost.com & dfrancis@nationalpost.com,
• the Website Editors financechannel@canada.com & feedback@canada.com,
• and the Letters Department letters@nationalpost.com & fpletters@nationalpost.com

This sounds just like the sentiment expressed by the band Sum 41 in this article today.

Indeed, when a group of "real punks" attempt to spit on the band outside the Much showcase, Steve shrugs off their derision as a sign of success.

"It's nice to be so big that people who hate us stand outside in the cold to tell us they hate us," he says.

I've already posted a link to this ranking in another comment. Canada came forth - something to be proud of. I guess more liberal attitudes towards pot really don't affect children badly. I think it's more about what we expect from our children - if we set our expectation low then of course they won't achieve!

A billion dollars wasted for something that doesn't work and can never be accurate? And isn't even completed?
Gun Control costs way out of control in Canada (and half the guns *not* registered).
http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id=%7B8A0875B 6-13A0-46B9-BF90-82A99356D24F%7D http://www.nationalpost.com/national/story.html?id ={A02202BA-AA91-446F-BFA4-361EA9A160A1}

Bear in mind, this is *only* news from yesterday. There is a lot more. One could go into the probable death of the tourist industry in Cansda. You know, the tourist that used to go there to hunt wild game. On the other hand, they are apparently not trying very hard to keep out those who might be terrorists. That would be profiling I guess. Then, I was also appalled by some problems in the other direction. Best summarized by thie one web site which describe how citizens in the USA on the southern border are virtually being overrun by illegal aliers, sometimes armed with full auto weapons. Tell me how you would resist that and be unarmed. http://www.ranchrescue.com/ So, where is our govenrment?!?!?!?!

Well, we have New York City, Chicago, and Los Angleles. Each of these cities have been the murder capitals of the US in the past three years respectivly, yet each one bans guns. Washinton DC is no better, nor Maryland. Yet that is where the DC sniper did his task.

Gun bans are also not working in Great Britain, where even toy guns and air guns are banned or in the process of it, yet crime is soaring.

Gun bans did work in Nazi Germany however. Just ask the Jews (that survived). Gun bans in some US States did work also in a way. They prevented the Black slaves from defending themselves against the Klan raids. Everything here is documented elsewhere.

Moral of the story: Banning guns leaves good people defenseless. Bad people don't care about the ban.

At least one local paper in virtually every major city, including Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Halifax, is owned by the CanWest Global. The same organization owns the National Post, one of the two national papers, and Global TV, one of three national broadcasters. CanWest Global is owned by Izzy Asper, who is an open supporter of the ruling Liberal party and is chummy with the Prime Minister. (In most cities, the only other paper is owned by the Sun group, which publishes tabloid-quality news at best.)

CanWest Global has ordered every member paper to run unsigned national editorial, and not to publish local editorials that contradict the national line. Within the past few months, Russell Mills, the editor of the Ottawa Citizen, was fired by the parent company for publishing an article suggesting that the Prime Minister had been involved in a conflict of interest.

Fifth place, my ass.

I am an engineering student, but I love to read. Her insights (especially while reading Ulysses) are wonderfully helpful to someone who has a limited knowledge of literature. To boot, I have something that I can really associate with my mother about.

There's something intangible about picking up a 30-year old copy of your favourite novel and knowing that 5 or 6 other people have enjoyed it as well. This might seem sappy, but reading something from a monitor (or even from the screen of an iPaq) just doesn't have the same soul as reading from paper. It's the same reason why the National Post (a Canadian newspaper, eh?) will ALWAYS be better than The National Post.

Let's keep books of literature and education alive and relegate more soul-less forms of communication (like porn) to the computer world.

Windside
--------

STFU, eh.

I'd say you give the game away when you pick Noam Chomsky, who is at the rabid fringe of the left as your example of a mainstream liberal. Certainly, most actual liberals would contest any characterization of Mr. Chomsky's inanities as `mainstream'.

As for bias in the media, I would like to point out that on a normal evening on Fox I can see representatives from a wide range of left and right groups debating the issues, while CNN (and much more so ABC, CBS, and NBC) do not seek to provide such balance. Indeed,if you tried to describe the broadcast networks as `center' or `mainstream' to most Americans, they would laugh at you -- there's a reason Bernard Goldberg's book Bias is a nationwide best-seller while the broadcast networks are losing viewers hand-over-fist to Fox.

Or better yet, don't. His brand of histrionic, contentless anti-Americanism has become so empty and repetitive that even the left doesn't take him seriously any more.

However, I have *NOT* heard of any recent discussion of similar religion-meets-technology from the Jewish world (at least not since "Is it OK to use a telephone on the Sabbath?")

How about Jewwwwws Innnnnn Spaaaaaaace?

Oh and for an interesting read on the ignorance of American's towards the rest of the world, check this out.

My favorite part is "27% of Americans think Japan is their biggest trading partner; 25% think it's China; 14% know that it's Canada.". 1/4 of the USA believe China (a communist country) is the largest trading partner with the US. I would laugh if that weren't so sad.

Spiderman was just a better movie

I agree, but had trouble pinpointing exactly why the new Star Wars movies weren't as good as their predecessors.

There is a brilliant article here that does explain exactly why. The gist of the article is that the two new Star Wars movies are missing any sort of Han Solo character. There is no 'cool' guy to offset all the earnest Jedi assholes -- who are basically divinity students -- and just a little more exciting. It's like Beverly Hills Cop without Eddy Murphy.

There is a very insightful point in the article describing how the re-mastered Star Wars has Greedo shoot Han Solo first, making it look like Han Solo acted in self-defence, and effectively 'nicing' up his character. In the original, he shoots first. In the new movies, only robots get shot.

I just have a small correction here... I think the price went from $40 CDN (not $30) to $45. The caps you have seem correct, but I have to wonder, how do you consume 5GB/month when your upload is 16KB/s (especially without P2P)? That's a solid 3 hours a day of uploading. I guess if you ran a file server... For more info on the changes to Bell Sympatico, here's a link.

I agree with you that these changes should prompt the users to consider other options. I certainly will be. All those posters complaining that we can't expect flat rate service haven't looked into all the service providers competing for my dollars.

"I have always considered Steve Ditko to be Spider-Man's co-creator," Stan Lee wrote in 1999. "Steve's illustrated version of Peter Parker/Spider-Man and his coterie of supporting characters was more compelling and dramatic than I had dared hoped it would be ... Also, it goes without saying that Steve's costume design was an actual masterpiece of imagination. Thanks to Steve Ditko, Spidey's costume has become one of the world's most recognizable visual icons."

That quote comes from a story in the National Post:

"Action Is His Reward", by Jeet Heer

Here is a link to a summary of the speech. I'm trying to find more, but this will give you the general idea.

-Kiahale

Yes, I actually did the contest even though it expired. It was simple base-4 encryption (with numbers directly corresponding to letters a = 1, z = 26 etc etc etc). Check the contest website here. there is PDF file there with the code. The math question they asked was trivial. I am almost 99% sure answer was (1000000*1000001)/2 .

I first saw this in a Canadian newspaper called The National Post (article). The funny thing was they neglected to say that the contest was expired and I was under the assumption that it was still going.

If anyone's interested in the real story, they should go to this story in the National Post.

Amongst other things, it talks about how the code is the first part of the challenge. The coded message leads to a math problem (which is actually kind of fun and has a rather elegant solution). Solve the math problem, and you get into school with the chance to win a scholarship.

Having gone to the site and gone through the decode and solve phases, I can happily report that the "code" isn't really a code at all. As the site hints, it's basically "coded" by being written in base-4. The challenge is really in the math problem, which requires applicants to find the summation of all decimal digits in the sequence of natural numbers from one to one million. While this isn't impossible, it does require some thought and intelligence. I thought it was a great idea for students who liked math and computer science (the problem can also be solved with a simple brute force algorithm) but weren't neccessarily that stellar students nor interested in lengthy University applications.

Heck - I spent an hour coming up with a solution and then verifying it with a quick little Java program. It was fun! Give it a shot!

(As a Troll-y sidenote, I'd like to mention with some degree of bitterness that I submitted this story, except when I did it, I got the facts right. Apparently this warrants a rejection, and irrelevant whining about the DMCA warrants approval. Do you ever wonder why /. gets a bad reputation from time to time?)

It goes to the right of testifying against oneself. In the US, I believe you call it the "Fifth Amendment".

Here's the scenario: You talk to your lawyer, being honest with him, to discuss your methods of defense. As of yesterday he must tell the authorities what you said, and not tell you that he is doing so.

In an adversarial justice system, such as we have, it is the responsibility of the Crown (government) to prove - beyond a reasonable doubt - your guilt. But with these new laws - your lawyer gets to tell the government details *retroactively* about your confession to him. It not only covers matters before the court, but past crimes as well. Once the door is open - it's wide open.

Essentially, you testified against yourself by assuming client-solicitor confidentially.

that isn't the way it works. people are supposed to be supported by their government.

welfare for all, they say, but then there's no one to pick up the check.

to the original National Post article (http://www.nationalpost.com/news/national/story.h tml?f=/stories/20010816/648534.html) is here. (http://www.islamway.com/eng/html/article.php?sid= 110&mode=thread&order=0)

Troops deployed in response to Pentagon attack -- (Canada's) National Post. Please ignore the very, very tacky graphics and tabloid-like banner.

Canadian border open, airline travellers stranded -- ditto. Note that many aircraft were diverted to Canadian airports. If you know someone who was on a flight, they may be in Canada right now.

The National newscast says that the US military just brought in an aircraft to Vancouver (BC) airport; no news on why.

Canada dot com -- looks like WIC (a media conglomerate) has created a site that encompasses news from BCTV, Vancouver Sun, etc. I can't get the links to work, but some look interesting.

Christian Science Monitor -- don't be put off by the title: it's a *very* high-quality paper.

The Village Voice -- not sure how high-quality this will be, but it has an amazing photo, plus information on the DFLP.

Boston Globe -- again, good quality reporting. There's a Breaking News page as well. Indeed, their breaking news is great.

PLEASE POST LINKS TO FOREIGN MEDIA. I've been searching, but I simply don't know the names for any English foreign media, save the BBC.

Troops deployed in response to Pentagon attack -- (Canada's) National Post. Please ignore the very, very tacky graphics and tabloid-like banner.

Canadian border open, airline travellers stranded -- ditto. Note that many aircraft were diverted to Canadian airports. If you know someone who was on a flight, they may be in Canada right now.

The National newscast says that the US military just brought in an aircraft to Vancouver (BC) airport; no news on why.

Canada dot com -- looks like WIC (a media conglomerate) has created a site that encompasses news from BCTV, Vancouver Sun, etc. I can't get the links to work, but some look interesting.

Christian Science Monitor -- don't be put off by the title: it's a *very* high-quality paper.

The Village Voice -- not sure how high-quality this will be, but it has an amazing photo, plus information on the DFLP.

Boston Globe -- again, good quality reporting. There's a Breaking News page as well. Indeed, their breaking news is great.

PLEASE POST LINKS TO FOREIGN MEDIA. I've been searching, but I simply don't know the names for any English foreign media, save the BBC.

Chances are that things won't get hard enough in the US to prompt people into moving up here.

Don't despair though, things are looking up for our economy. As long as our current federal government and the west coast provincial ones keep moving to the economic right we should be in better shape in about a decade. Just make sure that Brian Tobin doesn't become the next PM. (Seriously, I'd rather we had Chretien for the next decade).

Salon
Cnet
The Economist
Washington Post
National Post (Includes trial timeline)
NY Times
Globe and Mail
and heh.. MSNBC

You're absolutely right. I saw this interesting story in Canada's National Post newspaper recently. American humour is very different from that of cultures including the British. American comedies work on British TV as it's often simple humour, but the best British comedies rarely work in the other direction as they're just not understood and only found funny by a small minority. Consider Mr. Bean, quite popular in the US, it's actually considered unsophisticated and unlearned across the pond. As the article I linked to mentions, "American jokes reflect a pompous and boastful sensibility, the British and French prefer self-mockery". American humour tends to be much more superficial, which is probably why I can't find much good satire, and why the best satire on American TV (The Simpsons) has been reduced to cartoon form.

There's a lot more research being done on non-embryonic stem cells than the recent McGill announcement. See this overview of current research by Michael Fumento, writing in the National Post.

The National Post, the source for this article, is well known as an unashamedly pro-business newspaper. They frequently publish articles which defend existing business practices regardless of their cost - as an example, one of their regular columnists, Terrence Corcoran, is famous for his articles denying the existence of global warming.

In this case, it's likely that the article is intended to reduce the perception of employers' liability for their employees' carpal tunnel injuries, and thereby to dissuade those who are possibly suffering from seeking redress.

The National Post, the source for this article, is well known as an unashamedly pro-business newspaper. They frequently publish articles which defend existing business practices regardless of their cost - as an example, one of their regular columnists, Terrence Corcoran, is famous for his articles denying the existence of global warming.

In this case, it's likely that the article is intended to reduce the perception of employers' liability for their employees' carpal tunnel injuries, and thereby to dissuade those who are possibly suffering from seeking redress.

Actually, both BCE (which owns Sympatico internet service, the CTV television network, a mini-satellite network, and a bunch of newspapers), and CanWest Global (which owns the 'Global' television network, a dizzying number of newspapers (or just has major interest in some), movies and many other ventures) had been recently investigated by the CRTC as part of their license renewal because of the fact there is some concern that these companies hold far too much control over the media and this threatens both the depth of coverage of stories as well as the objectiveness of the journalists covering them.

The problem is worse when the State-owned CBC is told by politicos to become more "profitable", then start to copycat the private media stations, and start competing for a bigger share of the advertising market. So, the State television becomes more like a whorthless popular pap provider like private networks than quality content provider for the minority of people who really understand culture (and are the only people who really matter - as opposed to the masses of corporate fare-sucking unwashed consumer hordes).

Interestingly, the people the most opposed to tha increase of advertising share are the private broadcasters; they're the most vocal in wanting to keep the CBC a State-operated network so it won't intrude too much in their lucrative advertising.

But it seems it still won't please the likes of Konrad Black, who would like the State minimized to the point that it solely looks at Konrad's interests (as long as Konrad doesn't pay any taxes for it), so Konrad keeps his crusade to destroy the State as much as possible, especially if it won't let him be anointed.

--

Actually, both BCE (which owns Sympatico internet service, the CTV television network, a mini-satellite network, and a bunch of newspapers), and CanWest Global (which owns the 'Global' television network, a dizzying number of newspapers (or just has major interest in some), movies and many other ventures) had been recently investigated by the CRTC as part of their license renewal because of the fact there is some concern that these companies hold far too much control over the media and this threatens both the depth of coverage of stories as well as the objectiveness of the journalists covering them.

The problem is worse when the State-owned CBC is told by politicos to become more "profitable", then start to copycat the private media stations, and start competing for a bigger share of the advertising market. So, the State television becomes more like a whorthless popular pap provider like private networks than quality content provider for the minority of people who really understand culture (and are the only people who really matter - as opposed to the masses of corporate fare-sucking unwashed consumer hordes).

Interestingly, the people the most opposed to tha increase of advertising share are the private broadcasters; they're the most vocal in wanting to keep the CBC a State-operated network so it won't intrude too much in their lucrative advertising.

But it seems it still won't please the likes of Konrad Black, who would like the State minimized to the point that it solely looks at Konrad's interests (as long as Konrad doesn't pay any taxes for it), so Konrad keeps his crusade to destroy the State as much as possible, especially if it won't let him be anointed.

--

Check out the article at the National Post. A Toronto based company called Mynix has a PC the size of a haldheld. Very cool, very portable! It's about 1" x 5" x 5 3/4", which is much smaller than a laptop and looks to have all the perks of a PC.

15 Aug 00 Cowpland resigns as Pres/CEO Burney takes over as interim CEO and hires Dogbert consulting for study

27 Sep - Q3 announced

2 Oct - Corel/Microsoft alliance announced

3 Oct - Burney confirmed President/CEO

15 Dec - Corel responds to rumours that it has not sold Linux div but considering options

8 Jan - Corel announces restructuring press conference for 23 Jan

'early' Jan - Cdn Competition Bureau in Ottawa and US DoJ start probe of Corel/Microsoft deal

23 Jan - Press conference shows new logo and not much else

25 Jan 01 - Cowpland Resigns from BOD

2 Feb - Q4 earnings

20 Feb - Microsoft asks for preferred shares to be converted to common shares that can be sold. They are also voting shares so if they do not sell them they have a greater say in Corel's business.

So it appears that Burney was going to announce the selling of the Linux division on 23 Jan but was stopped by the DoJ investigation. Cowpland sees the writing on the wall and bails out thus reducing his legal liability. Other possibilities were that he was disgusted with the Microsoft deal and the way the company was going or it was part of the deal that to get the financing Cowpland had to go within 6 months.

At least this explains the non announcement on 23 Feb but did Microsoft really spend $135 million just to get rid of Cowpland?

As an aside, I am hoping that Burney appoints a relative of Cdn prime Minister Jean Cretien or a high level Liberal crony as the new replacement director so that Corel can get some Canadian Govt contracts.

It is ironic that while the US Govt has ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly and has used illegal practices to dominate the office suite market, the Canadian Govt only chose to investigate the anti competitive practice of Microsoft investing in Corel.

Why did they not investigate in 1996 when Corel bought WordPerfect and the Canadian Govt depts started to choose Microsoft over Corel even though WP has been the standard in Canada for 15 years previous? I think it is because Bill Davis, Barbara McDougall and some of the other Directors were all high ranking Conservative party supporters. Even Derek Burney's dad was a former PC party fund-raiser and advisor to Brian Mulroney. Since the Liberals are in power for at least the next 4 years, Corel should bite the bullet and cut their Conservative ties. A good start would be with a new Liberal Director.