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Uh, first of all, which U of A? The University of Alberta is also known as the U of A, and it's definitely in Canada. I'm guessing that's not the one you mean.

At UBC, Dr. Hardy's lab grows the world's highest-quality YBCO superconductors in the world. (YBCO is the common abbreviation for them--yes, I know the proper name, but it's too ugly in HTML). He is part of a larger Superconductivity Research Group at the University of British Columbia. That group also works closely with the Muon Spin Rotation Group based at UBC and nearby TRIUMF. Disclaimer: I'm part of the Muon Spin Rotation Group.

We're also in the process of commissioning a Beta-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance apparatus and beamline at TRIUMF, which will be very useful for probes of the local magnetic fields within superconductors (and other condensed matter physics applications).

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the areas in which Canada leads in physics--it's just what I'm familiar with. I know we also recently opened a (privately funded) institute for theoretical physics, and they pay very generous salaries. We've also managed to recruit a few key quantum computing people up from the US.

I'm not trying to say Canada is the best in the world at everything, but we do have some very solid, well-respected programs in physics.

Uh, first of all, which U of A? The University of Alberta is also known as the U of A, and it's definitely in Canada. I'm guessing that's not the one you mean.

At UBC, Dr. Hardy's lab grows the world's highest-quality YBCO superconductors in the world. (YBCO is the common abbreviation for them--yes, I know the proper name, but it's too ugly in HTML). He is part of a larger Superconductivity Research Group at the University of British Columbia. That group also works closely with the Muon Spin Rotation Group based at UBC and nearby TRIUMF. Disclaimer: I'm part of the Muon Spin Rotation Group.

We're also in the process of commissioning a Beta-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance apparatus and beamline at TRIUMF, which will be very useful for probes of the local magnetic fields within superconductors (and other condensed matter physics applications).

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the areas in which Canada leads in physics--it's just what I'm familiar with. I know we also recently opened a (privately funded) institute for theoretical physics, and they pay very generous salaries. We've also managed to recruit a few key quantum computing people up from the US.

I'm not trying to say Canada is the best in the world at everything, but we do have some very solid, well-respected programs in physics.

Uh, first of all, which U of A? The University of Alberta is also known as the U of A, and it's definitely in Canada. I'm guessing that's not the one you mean.

At UBC, Dr. Hardy's lab grows the world's highest-quality YBCO superconductors in the world. (YBCO is the common abbreviation for them--yes, I know the proper name, but it's too ugly in HTML). He is part of a larger Superconductivity Research Group at the University of British Columbia. That group also works closely with the Muon Spin Rotation Group based at UBC and nearby TRIUMF. Disclaimer: I'm part of the Muon Spin Rotation Group.

We're also in the process of commissioning a Beta-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance apparatus and beamline at TRIUMF, which will be very useful for probes of the local magnetic fields within superconductors (and other condensed matter physics applications).

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the areas in which Canada leads in physics--it's just what I'm familiar with. I know we also recently opened a (privately funded) institute for theoretical physics, and they pay very generous salaries. We've also managed to recruit a few key quantum computing people up from the US.

I'm not trying to say Canada is the best in the world at everything, but we do have some very solid, well-respected programs in physics.

Uh, first of all, which U of A? The University of Alberta is also known as the U of A, and it's definitely in Canada. I'm guessing that's not the one you mean.

At UBC, Dr. Hardy's lab grows the world's highest-quality YBCO superconductors in the world. (YBCO is the common abbreviation for them--yes, I know the proper name, but it's too ugly in HTML). He is part of a larger Superconductivity Research Group at the University of British Columbia. That group also works closely with the Muon Spin Rotation Group based at UBC and nearby TRIUMF. Disclaimer: I'm part of the Muon Spin Rotation Group.

We're also in the process of commissioning a Beta-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance apparatus and beamline at TRIUMF, which will be very useful for probes of the local magnetic fields within superconductors (and other condensed matter physics applications).

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the areas in which Canada leads in physics--it's just what I'm familiar with. I know we also recently opened a (privately funded) institute for theoretical physics, and they pay very generous salaries. We've also managed to recruit a few key quantum computing people up from the US.

I'm not trying to say Canada is the best in the world at everything, but we do have some very solid, well-respected programs in physics.

Most consumer-grade crypto is pretty trivial compared to these problems

I have to agree. Maxwell's equations in point form are the most beautiful mathematical expressions I have ever seen. See here for an example.
-- hgc

There's no such thing as non-bias. Everyone has a bias of some sort, because we haven't grown up in a vacuum.

The point is to try and recognise your biases. And in trying, you must remember that you will NEVER be perfectly succesful.

Note that having a bias doesn't necessarily mean that you are wrong. I'm biased against neo-Nazi's, the KKK, and the campus fascist's at my university who insist that only they have the right to express an opinion because their's are politically correct and everyone else is just biased.

Recognise that the line between bias and opinion is very slim indeed.

Recently, however, our university's trial subscription to the online edition of the prestigious journal Nature and its associated monthlies expired. Our university decided to join with Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, and the University of California in boycotting what was deemed an untenably pricey subscription fee by the Nature publishing group ($30,000 CDN) for a service with significant restrictions in the timeliness of content. Our librarian's letter outlines our school's position on this issue. Nature's own site licensing policies are available here.

Recently, however, our university's trial subscription to the online edition of the prestigious journal Nature and its associated monthlies expired. Our university decided to join with Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, and the University of California in boycotting what was deemed an untenably pricey subscription fee by the Nature publishing group ($30,000 CDN) for a service with significant restrictions in the timeliness of content. Our librarian's letter outlines our school's position on this issue. Nature's own site licensing policies are available here.

I also don't understand why he could not find the type of people he wants. I think it comes down to either their working environment or there compensation.

Try to look at any decent CS programs in last ten years and you could find most of them contains numerical analysis courses and facaulty members whose research interests are in numerical analysis.

Of course my unversity (university of british columbia) is one of them:)

Ricky

• http://www.chem.uci.edu/education/undergrad_pgm/ap plets/bounce/demon.htm
• http://www.maxwellian.demon.co.uk/name.html
• http://musr.physics.ubc.ca/~jess/hr/skept/Weird/no de1.html

Check those out, and if that's not enough, just do a search for "maxwell's demon" or a similar phrase.

Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.

There is another link from Wired but it is from '94. I remember this being an issue and there was a promise of reform but I can't find anything recent abut the quota system. Does anybody else have more current information?

"Students in a B.Eng. program should make themselves fully aware of the APEGBC Code of Ethics (http://www.apeg.bc.ca/about/act_code.htm) and apply its principles in their work."

It does apply to them. If it didn't why do they even mention it?

Ummmm. Why do they mention it? They don't mention it. UBC Engineering isn't even a B.Eng. program. It's a B.A.Sc. program for undergrads. This is a nitpick, but you're the one who started down that path of quoting little facts. Go back. Re-read the article, now go to the correct school's website before you start quoting things! It's UBC, not UVic!

"Professional Engineers and Professional Geoscientists shall act at all times ... and with fidelity to the public needs"

Note the part where it says "at all times". It does not say "when being paid" or "when working". Doing something like this is not showing "fidelity to the public needs".

Undergraduate students are not Professional Engineers. Even after graduating, there is a process to go through (not the least of which involves paying regular dues) to become and remain Professional Engineers.

"Students in a B.Eng. program should make themselves fully aware of the APEGBC Code of Ethics (http://www.apeg.bc.ca/about/act_code.htm) and apply its principles in their work."

It does apply to them. If it didn't why do they even mention it?

Ummmm. Why do they mention it? They don't mention it. UBC Engineering isn't even a B.Eng. program. It's a B.A.Sc. program for undergrads. This is a nitpick, but you're the one who started down that path of quoting little facts. Go back. Re-read the article, now go to the correct school's website before you start quoting things! It's UBC, not UVic!

"Professional Engineers and Professional Geoscientists shall act at all times ... and with fidelity to the public needs"

Note the part where it says "at all times". It does not say "when being paid" or "when working". Doing something like this is not showing "fidelity to the public needs".

Undergraduate students are not Professional Engineers. Even after graduating, there is a process to go through (not the least of which involves paying regular dues) to become and remain Professional Engineers.

"Students in a B.Eng. program should make themselves fully aware of the APEGBC Code of Ethics (http://www.apeg.bc.ca/about/act_code.htm) and apply its principles in their work."

It does apply to them. If it didn't why do they even mention it?

Ummmm. Why do they mention it? They don't mention it. UBC Engineering isn't even a B.Eng. program. It's a B.A.Sc. program for undergrads. This is a nitpick, but you're the one who started down that path of quoting little facts. Go back. Re-read the article, now go to the correct school's website before you start quoting things! It's UBC, not UVic!

"Professional Engineers and Professional Geoscientists shall act at all times ... and with fidelity to the public needs"

Note the part where it says "at all times". It does not say "when being paid" or "when working". Doing something like this is not showing "fidelity to the public needs".

Undergraduate students are not Professional Engineers. Even after graduating, there is a process to go through (not the least of which involves paying regular dues) to become and remain Professional Engineers.

ERTW, Baby!

--

Anyhow, you can read all about it at http://www.cs.ubc.ca/doc/world/exec/intro.

If you will be living abroad for a while, you have to look at the rate of inflation that you will be dealing with. To figure out if you are adequately compensated, may I suggest this resource of a measurement that accounts for inflation and other forms of currency fluctuation.

The Purchasing Power Parity measurement, or PPP, measures productivity and standard of living while factoring elements such as varying standards of living in different countries. Find out how to calculate it for any country at the above link.

Purchasing power parity (PPP) is a theory which states that exchange rates between currencies are in equilibrium when their purchasing power is the same in each of the two countries. This means that the exchange rate between two countries should equal the ratio of the two countries' price level of a fixed basket of goods and services. When a country's domestic price level is increasing (i.e., a country experiences inflation), that country's exchange rate must depreciated in order to return to PPP.

Unless you are paid in dollars, you will experience the dramatic fluctuations in PPP experienced by native IT workers and for that matter all workers in that country. This is, of course, not the case for those countries whose currencies are pegged to the dollar.

Perhaps, IT workers, due to their crucial role in all global economies, can work to give countries whose currencies are especially unstable a bit more stability. Take the risk, ask to be paid in the native currency, and the company you work for will have an incentive towards building stability in its foreign posts. Also, shoot for more long-term work rather than projects of a few months. It would be a good thing for information technology folks from the West to get some understanding of the perspective of the rest of the world.

"Hey, Joe, got a light?"

"Yeah, Bob, just a sec...I need to light up my smoke first..."

Ka-BOOOOOOOOOOOM

And I've seen an engineer lose a finger because the iron pinky ring that engineers wear got shorted across a car battery.

The outlets on the battery must have been pretty close together for the Iron Ring to short it out. The largest Iron Ring I ever saw belonged to a guy that had a pinky roughly the size of my thumb, and that's still not quite an inch across.

ERTW!

--

I know about all these issues. Some of the freedoms in my list were pipe dreams - like the freeways free of idiots - but most of these problems are an order of magnitude greater in Canada than they are in the US. Hence, I still feel that the United States assures more civil rights than Canada.

A high school classmate of mine - who has a brilliant mind and had a promising future - has been popping out kids like a Pez dispenser. With every kid, she gets an extra hundred or so dollars a month from welfare.

My solution to that problem is you establish a baseline welfare rate for a given number of children, with cost of living in the city factored in. From there, for every child that the mother conceives while she's on welfare, will result in a box of condoms being delivered to her and a $100/mo deduction from the welfare benefits she receives.

Further, while a civilized society really must provide a welfare safety net to those who are temporarily down-and-out, it should be very much enforced as a safety net, not a lifestyle. I propose that, rather than having social workers refer to their charges as "clients" - which implies that they're not burdens - we have social workers refer to these people as "scum", in order to reaffirm the welfare recipient's need to use the system only for as long as it takes to get their lives together.

Predictably, I've been called a heartless bastard. I call it common sense.

Exactly. Your mother used the system the way it was meant to be used. She probably also instilled a work ethic in her children, too. My hat is off to your mother, I'm glad she made it through a tough time without becoming addicted to sitting at home and watching soap operas all day.

$40,000/year, no dependents. 33% taken right off the top. 15% added on every purchase (federal sales tax at 7%, provincial sales tax at 8%). 7% taxes on raw materials, added to 7% when the factory sells its finished product, added to 7% when the wholesaler sells it to retail, then the federal sales tax is added again. This was supposedly less than the manufacturer's sales tax.

Corporate tax on profit: >50%. That gets passed down to the consumer.

Oh yeah, and fuel is taxed to the tune of about $0.40/liter, including federal GST.

The high taxes are a recurring theme in a survey done by the University of British Columbia to figure out why so many of their graduates took their degrees and ran south.

And, at least you get something for your taxes. From the best defence in the world to the prestige of a space program. As the saga between the Canadian Department of Defence and the Katie will prove, in any sense of the word, the Canadian military is a joke.

Politically-correct leftists have already destroyed freedom of speech here.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a nazi; I don't think Ernst Zundel should be saying the stuff he says. But when the guy is denied a right to speak because he might offend someone (myself included), the dangers of that government regulation are far greater than the dangers of his unsavory banter.

I'd rather have the right to shake my head and curse him for being an idiot, rather than worry that someday the same mechanism which silences him may be used against me.

Actually, I have, and this was one of my pipe dreams.

I've driven in a lot of parts of the United States, though, admittedly, not in Atlanta. And I'll say this: even Boston has better drivers than Toronto.

To defend them, there is a problem with a mass immigration of unskilled Mexicans, so I can understand the border control target-practice. However, your girlfriend, flying in and presenting the appropriate paperwork, is not a problem and shouldn't be treated as such.

Now, upon returning to the country of my citizenship - especially after coming back from the United States, where far more opportunities abound for me than in Canada - one would expect that the Kanada Kustoms Kommies could treat me with the same dignity, respect and helpfulness as the American authorities who welcome me in as a visitor. Nope, they don't. And nope, I'm not the only one with a gripe. Note that this link also contains many remarks about Canada's limited freedom of speech as encountered by a small Vancouver gay and lesbian bookstore. More power to them!

National unity in Canada is not comparable to Republicans versus Democrats. When all is said and done, the right and left come together and celebrate their country on the 4th of July.

For over thirty years now, a substantial and important part of Canada has been trying to leave the country and strike out as its own nation. Quebec's come very close. It's been a relatively peaceful process - no civil war like the US had in the 1860s - but as an attempt to appease Quebec, they've been getting special treatment on every level for thirty years. This is a drain on the rest of the country.

Even so, they're still not satisfied. Let 'em go if they want to. They'll come crawling back when they've realized that they'll have no stability.

Yeah. But you can at least go to a private hospital, pay money and get fast treatment. I can't; when I get sick or injured, I'm at the mercy of a government entity that depends on disenfranchised, unionized doctors. That scares me.

Amen to that, my friend!

Well, coming from UBC, you should know that you can do the same thing in beautiful Vancouver, Canada at UBC. If you have had previous background in math/stats, you can pick up the undergrad pre-reqs in a measly 6 courses...one term if you have your mind set on it, 2 if you're not so crazy. Although the undergrad program suffers from an enrollment glut without the corresponding increase in funding, the graduate program is much better, AFAIK.

Well, coming from UBC, you should know that you can do the same thing in beautiful Vancouver, Canada at UBC. If you have had previous background in math/stats, you can pick up the undergrad pre-reqs in a measly 6 courses...one term if you have your mind set on it, 2 if you're not so crazy. Although the undergrad program suffers from an enrollment glut without the corresponding increase in funding, the graduate program is much better, AFAIK.

I helped out with organizing a student conference/competition one year, and one of the things we needed was a website. Naturally, since we're a student organization, our intent was not to gain profit - just to meet costs. That meant that we didn't have a whole lot of money to splurge on a website (in fact, our budget was already stretched to the limit). A few calls around, and one of the newest ISPs in town had jumped at the opportunity to provide free space for our website. In return, we offered them a spot in our "sponsors" listing, both on the website, and in the conference package.

--

people aren't starving or suffering from malnutrition because food isn't constructed properly, they're starving because not enough people care to do anything about it. Don't blame the food, blame society.

Like most complex social issues, you can't place the blame on just one thing.

Consider famine, for instance. The most popular view of famine is that it's caused by lack of food supply, and that the solution to it is supplying food to impoverished regions. But according to Nobel winner Amartya Sen , famines are not caused by lack of food supply, but due to economic and social factors - mainly purchasing ability and electoral feedback.

Famines never occur in democracies, because elected officials are responsive to feedback since they want to be elected again. During the 59-61 famine in China, between 14-40 million people died - a staggering number - yet nothing was done because a totalitarian system prevented the feedback loop between victims and govt. officials. In cases like this, genetic engineering or a better supply chain doesn't really help much.

The root cause of starvation is economic and social. Even China and India produce enough food to feed their entire populations - it's the way their system is structured that causes the problem. Of course, this doesn't mean that a more nutritious supplement doesn't help. IIRC, thiamine supplements in wheat/bread are required or encouraged by the FDA, in order to save American lives on a statistical scale. In large scale trials, thousands or millions of lives can be saved even with vitamin supplements, but that's not the main solution to nutritional problems.

The root cause is the underlying social and economic infrastructure, and that requires a bigger fix, and will save more lives in the long run.

However, because of the size of the problem, even a "minor fix" such as genetic engineering can save human lives on a massive scale. So it may well be a good solution in certain areas, providing the domino effect and technical details are resolved.

w/m

Check out FairTunes for an example of how some Canadians are rewarding artists without stifling the free music scene.

I can't say the response in Canada to MP3s has been too much different in nature than the US, although it's probably less heavy-handed.

At the University of British Columbia (yes, that's in Canada, in Vancouver), Napster is officially persona non grata, but it's not actually blocked, and they don't seem to care unless you're pigging bandwidth. The University of Victoria has been less lenient, and has forced some students to uninstall Napster while campus security watched, with the threat of suspension if caught using Napster again. I'm not too sure about other universities in Canada, but I suspect they're somewhere between UBC and UVic.

Remember, Canada doesn't have the DMCA, or UCITA, and the MPAA and RIAA aren't based here. That's got to count for something, too :-)

...at UBC...

This always has been a great research university. If only the provincial government hadn't backed out of the proposed KAON upgrade to the TRIUMF particle accelerator, we'd have some kick-ass particle physics happening here, too. Oh well, at least we still have the biggest cyclotron around.

Anyway, now that I'm done bragging, I thought I'd post a link to more info about the telescope. Enjoy!

I think it's time for Gowachin Law. Litigation is too unchecked-- the purpose of law has become nothing more than launch pad for an all out assault on our society. (at least the kind I'd like to live in)
I think new law should have to face trial to exist and in trials the prosecution should face consequences stiffer than just not winning.

Ethics UBC Canada

In an attempt to avoid "embarrassing" various of the Dictators who would be showing up for the conference, the Canadian government attempted to place all sorts of operational restrictions on protest at the conference. This was rather problematic given that the main leaders' conference was going to be at the University of British Columbia.

Despite some questions in RCMP ranks, about the legality of these restrictions, some very constitutionaly questionable actions were taken. Among the most questionable were the pepper-spraying of protestors, and the MOST questionable of those was when staff seargent Stewart walked up to a group of protesters in an area which, up until then, they had been allowed and -- on about 9 seconds warning -- sprayed the whole group including a CBC reporter.

In response to complaints about RCMP overreaction at the event, Cretien made a couple of comments, including one that "At least it was better than using Baseball Bats". At a later protest, when Cretien returned to Vancouver, police DID use baseball bats on protestors.

Numerous CBC articles on apec here. and Here .
Some comments from the protestors' point of view

OH, and while I'm at it: some video on the Soldier of Fortune story. (to stay on topic).

One thing to note here is that Maria Klawe (head of SWIFT) used to be the head of Computer Science. She did so much for UBC CS that she became a VP of the university, but she reserved the time to continue her research. (i.e. this is one serious geek babe!)

A quote from one of her Technical Reports just caught my eye:

But another, equally critical, issue is at stake: by systematically discouraging girls from entering the fields of math and science, a way of approaching those fields that may be qualitatively different from the approach taken by males is also lost. Women are needed as engineers, scientists, and technologists. They are needed for their numbers; they are needed for the fresh outlook they may bring to these professions.

One thing to note here is that Maria Klawe (head of SWIFT) used to be the head of Computer Science. She did so much for UBC CS that she became a VP of the university, but she reserved the time to continue her research. (i.e. this is one serious geek babe!)

A quote from one of her Technical Reports just caught my eye:

But another, equally critical, issue is at stake: by systematically discouraging girls from entering the fields of math and science, a way of approaching those fields that may be qualitatively different from the approach taken by males is also lost. Women are needed as engineers, scientists, and technologists. They are needed for their numbers; they are needed for the fresh outlook they may bring to these professions.

One thing to note here is that Maria Klawe (head of SWIFT) used to be the head of Computer Science. She did so much for UBC CS that she became a VP of the university, but she reserved the time to continue her research. (i.e. this is one serious geek babe!)

A quote from one of her Technical Reports just caught my eye:

But another, equally critical, issue is at stake: by systematically discouraging girls from entering the fields of math and science, a way of approaching those fields that may be qualitatively different from the approach taken by males is also lost. Women are needed as engineers, scientists, and technologists. They are needed for their numbers; they are needed for the fresh outlook they may bring to these professions.

I am Dyslexic of Borg
Resemblance is fertile
Your ass will be laminated

Gee, no mention of how the Bronfmans really made their money. Bootlegging!!! Here is an interesting link. Freaking hypocrites!

There's a project out of UBC (University of British Columbia) that has a program for teaching teenagers Java. It involves programming a Virtual Family. A bit reminiscent of the Sims idea... The website is here
Look for links pertaining to 'Virtual Family'. It's intended for Win95/98, and I believe it's still being worked on. I am not sure if you can just 'buy' a copy, I think you may have to get a beta version and give them feedback on it, after using it. (I may be wrong here... info should be on the website).
---

A resource for those interested in introducing kids to programming - last year, we held a conference for Grade 9 girls, and the sessions I led made use of "The Virtual Family". This applet (and tutorial) was designed to interest junior high school kids in programming, and teach them some fundamental Java concepts while allowing them to mess around in the code, make changes and see the effects. Most of the kids enjoyed it, and several of the really keen ones requested copies for home.

You can The Virtual Family applet from the SWIFT site. They will send you a cd containing the source code and the tutorial (which is the coolest part IMHO) if you sign a NDA.

YS

...which is still pretty ridiculous. As of 27 April 2000, US$1 is equivalent to GB£0.6350. See http://www.x-rates.com/tables/GBP.html.

Some other sites with currency exchange rate info:

• http://www.currency-exchange-rate.com
• http://www.rubicon.com/passport /currency/ccfram.htm
• http://www.currency.co.nz/
• http://pacific.commerce.ubc.ca/xr/

I saw something similar to this in the book The Joy of Pi, and there was a footnote about some other research on the topic. There's an interesting paper online called On The Rabbinical Exegesis of an Enhanced Biblical Value of Pi . Here's the abstract:

"We present here a biblical exegesis of the value of pi, pi(Hebrew) = 3.1415094..., from the well known verse 1 Kings 7:23. This verse is then compared to 2 Chronicles 4:2; the comparison provides independent supporting evidence for the exegesis."

They come up with an actual value of pi in the Bible as approximately 3.1415094... (which is about 0.003% deviation from pi)!

JimD

SWIFT site

I've found an English page on which they desribe that a RSA key was cracked using 400 MIPS-years in 1995 and that they think a company spending big efforts on it can crack every 512 bit RSA encryption. Look at: PGP Attacks

While it's true that we are much less fettered by export regulations than our neighbours to the south, we still do have some restrictions on the export of software here in Canada. For more information, see the following web pages:

Canada's Export Controls
Excerpts from the Export Control List of Canada
The Wassenaar Arrangement, which Canada has signed
Crypto Law Survey of Canada

And, more generally,
Electronic Frontier Canada

There's also one being run at the University of Iowa College of Business), which has links for current political markets including the 2000 Congressional, 2000 DNC, 2000 RNC, and New York Senate races. Let the games begin!

A little poking around reveals there are also a few markets open in Austrian politics.

And finally, I think that the site referenced in the USA Today article is here: http://www.posdaq.co.kr, but since it's in Korean, I'm not totally sure about that :-)

There's also one being run at the University of Iowa College of Business), which has links for current political markets including the 2000 Congressional, 2000 DNC, 2000 RNC, and New York Senate races. Let the games begin!

A little poking around reveals there are also a few markets open in Austrian politics.

And finally, I think that the site referenced in the USA Today article is here: http://www.posdaq.co.kr, but since it's in Korean, I'm not totally sure about that :-)

I agree with you on the foolishness of "Young
Earth" studies. (Young Earthers believe all geology was a result
of a biblical flood and the world is as old as the bible seems to say,
and look for "science" that supports this view). But just calling the
"Young-earth" crowd foolish doesn't necessarily convince anyone. You
need proof. Here is a brief history of the universe that must all be
argued away by the young-earthers.


A brief history of the world:

The universe itself is about 14 billion years old, give or take a billion.

The world is about 4.55 billion years old. This date
is probably when the moon was created by a large impact with
the earth. The oldest rocks we can find are about 3.8 billion years
ago. Primitive lifeforms exist from this era. Until 2 billion years ago the
earth was an inhospitable place, basically devoid of oxygen.
During the paleozoic era, from 540 million years ago, to 250
million years ago, complex life evolved in the sea and plants formed on
land. The first reptiles evolved. A number of mass extinctions occur in
this time, but 250 million years ago, a really big mass extinction
happens. Was it volcanism? More than 90% of existing species become
extinct.

The Mesozoic era, from 250 million years ago, to 65 million years
ago, is the age of reptiles. Dinosaurs appear. 65 Million years ago,
something big hit the earth and caused a huge round of mass extinctions
known as the kt
event. The dinosaurs disappeared. This is the "big break" for the
mammals that became eventually our species. Between 65 million years
ago and 4-5 million years ago, really ugly mammal forms evolved into
things that look like people. 4-5 million years ago, we have evidence
of some of our first recognizable forerunners. A. Afarensis ("Lucy")
is between 3 and 4 million years old. 400,000 years ago we find Homo
Sapiens. 200,000 years ago we find evidence of Homo Sapiens Sapiens
-- modern man.

By contrast, civilization with recorded history only begins 10,000
years ago between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in modern-day
Iraq.

Here's a page for a class project at UBC that might lend a little credibility to this:

http://casas.ee.ubc.ca/475.tinystk.html

It's short, so I'll quote it here:

Tiny TCP/IP Stack

TCP/IP has become the most widely used protocol for data communications. Although several free versions of software to send and receive data using TCP/IP are available, this code is too large to embed in small microcontroller-based products.

The purpose of this project is to write the smallest possible TCP/UDP/IP stack that is interoperable with most existing software (even if not necessarily standards-conformant).

You will be supplied with the relevant standards (RFCs) and a sample implementation (BSD 4.2) as a starting point. The success of the project will be measured by the size of your implementation (the target is approximately 2k of code and less than 1k of data). The code will be written in C. You will demonstrate your implementation by writing a very simple HTTP server operating over a SLIP link.

Project Status

We succeeded in getting a very small (about 1kB RAM, 2kB ROM) HTTP server. However, it ignored all IP options and only implemented the TCP protocol. The server could only serve two very simple HTML pages which were stored in ROM. It took two students a total of about 120 hours. We used only SLIP over a 6850 serial port to keep the physical interface as simple as possible. Due to the space constraints, the code "squashes" all layers of the protocol stack (SLIP/IP/TCP/HTTP) into one. It cannot be used as a general purpose stack. The code is not available.

H.263 will do as well as Sorenson Video; Quicktime
supports it, and the format is open. See UBC's SPMG site.

Also, the problem with Sorenson Video is with
Apple's restrictions. Sorenson would gladly make
a xanim library if Apple would let them.

Anyway, personal accounts of the situation are here, at the APEC-Alert! homepage.

Now, doesn't this sound a bit like what goes in in China (altho perhaps to a lesser extent)? But we don't live in a fascist country... whatever.

jaraxle

Good to hear. However, contrary to popular belief, crypto is not "free" in Canada. For one thing, we have a joint agreement with the U.S. which means American encryption technology may be exported to Canada as long as it remains under the same restrictions once it reaches Canada. (i.e. cannot re-export to the world what we import from the U.S.A.). And there are some other restrictions as well. Click the following links for some more information.
http://insight.mcma ster.ca/org/efc/pages/doc/crypto-export.html
http://axion.physics.ubc.ca/ECL.html
In addition, Canada recently signed on to the multi-national agreement (big word starting with W) which places further restrictions on our freedom with regards to cryptography. What we need is a poster child to challenge the constitutionality of these laws, as you have done in the States.