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Ontario Promotes Private Crypto
An anonymous reader writes "Wired News has this story about the government of Ontario, Canada endorsing citizens to use encryption. 'While the US Congress recoils in horror at the prospect of a population armed with cryptographic tools, a government department in Ontario wants to make it clear that encryption is good. ' " After this and my recent trip to Ottawa, I think I may need to stop making Canada jokes...It's interesting to compare and contrast the crypto policies of various nations.
Let me differ. Ssh is a pain in the butt to install. I have tried this one and gave up. Laugh however you want about point-and-drool types, I just don't want to spend a week setting up ssh. It just isn't worth the effort presently.
Whatwhatwhat?
I'm a complete newbee to SSH, but I managed to install it from an RPM, from source, and rebuilt SRPM on a half dozen machines. Each machine, and each method took me less than 10-30 minutes (depending on compile times).
And as I remember, it was a mostly trivial task to get up and running. WIthin 2 hours after that, I figured out how to bring up port forwarding and now have various machines piercing firewalls and allowing me to work from home over an encrypted link.
WHeee!
Hmmm. But many US schools offer fairly insane levels of scholarships based on either need or merit. I'm not sure what, say, the *average* net cost is here, or how many people pay full-rate...
The other thing is, in the US, private schools aren't being subsidized that much by taxes, in constrast to the directly research-related funding that they do tend to get. What happens if you figure the Canadian gov't contribution to it? Is it still more efficient than ours, and if so, are there any obvious reasons why?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
No shit! Why the hell should I support some pregnant woman. She has brains just like everybody else. If she fucks up - her problem ! We are not fricking children anymore. .) That's charity !!!
I don't mind supporting people who are truly in need of support ( disabled, sick
Just like to point out, I meant to post that comment logged in.
Gryphon, in all my humble opinionated glory.
Perhaps it's a silly point, but it would seem less dangerous (from the shooter's POV) to have a school shooting in a suburban district which is unused to such and has low security measures, than in city schools experienced with gang violence. That, and it's far less likely that any students will be able to fire back...
Suburban schools haven't taken nearly as many safety measures, in general, and have less experience with doing so. If, say, I went mucker, it'd be a lot safer for me to do so in an upscale New England suburb, than in Chicago, or Dallas.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Funny how many Americans (I did not say all as I do not want to offend the handful of learned Americans out there) think that they are right in insulting a country where they know little about, if anything at all. Sorry, can someone remind me the last international standing on academics, including math and science (lets leave geo, his and econ completely out to save humiliation to the southerners...)oh, well I guess I won't be getting those stats any time soon, as few americans can count, spell, type let alone read, so where would they find that info anyway? Unless you know what you are talking about, keep you mouth shut. Canadians may be a quiet bunch, but when we talk, we have something informative to say, and we are usually right. Don't forget tweedledee, that the majority of your space program are ex avroaero boys from up north, that a significant number of your software programmers and computer engineers are Canadian born a raised, and that our minds run the world, we just let you guys spend the money to front our ideas. We may look stupid to you, but who benefits from our ideas for free? Hmmmm, now are our taxes really that high? Nope, we just make it seem so...
The poor are not a burden we can just dump. That's the way to a regime of terror. We, the people who have wealth, must give a small part of what we enjoy to those who are without. And, as the previous poster so insightfully pointed out, if people are starving, they're damn well going to stick you up!
Wah!
I am no linux expert. I have set up and use ssh quite a lot on my network. I something like setting up ssh is a problem for you, then you really ought to consider installing debian. A simple 'apt-get install ssh' handles it all for you. It's a 3 min download and a 5 second install. That's it. X11 forwarding, etc, etc....
I understand your remarks about PGP being difficult. You are right, but what is the alternative? Making some mua do everything automatically creates security holes and other security no no's.
You want you password cached so that you don't have to remember it? Well is that little cache file secure?
I'm glad to see other countries taking privacy so seriously, I worry about the U.S. It's not just the government, many many Americans are too reliant on corporations for their daily necessities. Sometimes you just have to hunker down and learn it yourself.
If you want control over yourself and your love-ones, you really have to take it. Don't ask for it. Don't say, "please Mr. CEO write something easier for me...' Don't be weak. Read. Learn. Work. It's time.
Bleeding Heart. Crybaby. Idealist. Take your pick.
What did you want them to do? Continue along the previous trend? I for one am glad Harris stayed in power. He's got the balls to do something rather than pander to all the SIGs out there demanding money for this and that and not proposing how to pay for it without raising taxes.
Why the HELL should welfare recipients get free money without any kind of tests to make sure they aren't pissing it away on drugs and alcohol? I see it all the time. Grab the cheque, cash it and go to the liquor store. Screw that!
Why the HELL should teachers get a 2 month vacation AND get 4.5hrs a day of non-class time? I realize that prep takes time but 1/2 your day for prep and marking?! Give me a break!
At the same rate, why should professors be allowed to constantly hike up their salaries and make the government pay for it? I'm not using their services! Friends of mine in university often tell me that the profs hardly do anything; they pass it on to the TAs to take care of so they can get on with research. Why should I subsidize that?
Hospital cuts were a bad thing. I won't deny that. A very bad thing. There needs to be much work done to figure a way to provide decent health care for all, while at the same time weeding out those who abuse the system and call the doctor for every scrape and every headache.
PLEASE NOTE I am making many over-generalizations here. I know people on welfare who scrimp and save and just can't get by. I know teachers who put their life blood into teaching children and dump hours of extra personal time into extracarricular activities. I'm sure there are professors who actually teach. What I am saying is that a few bad apples do spoil the bunch. I'm sorry the good has to suffer with the bad, but it's the only way to keep things from turning into total chaos and overspending hell. I really do feel sorry for those people caught in the system where there are now so many checks and balances and rechecks that no actual real work can actually get done. I however would rather proceed cautiously than full steam ahead with abandon.
Andrew
God bless America. Where the government has no problem with heavily armed idiots, but is deathly afraid of smart people with cryptography software. Go figure. Yet another reason to move to Canada, eh? ;-)
--- this comment is presented in WIDE SCREEN STEREO!!!
Yup, I was thinking of trying to join IBM in Ottawa after I finish school but decided against it. It appears that there's nothing in my field there.
According to IBM, "Ottawa has the largest concentration of database talent outside of Silicon Valley."
I'm not IT, so screw it. Maybe Cisco will pick up someone like me... Oh well, that's another four years ahead, with three just finished.
Seven years... If I don't go insane first.
"Yeah they do allow it but its heavily restricted and give the people no real power to fight an unjust government." I know this is very off topic, but have you ever heard of Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela? Both fought and defeated corrupt systems without any weapons.What they had was real power, weapons are just semi-real power. People have also tried to fight unjustice with weapons, but that rarely leads anywhere. Northern Ireland and the Middle East are examples of this. If a large majority (i.e. 90% of U.S. citizens against a possible future corrupt regime) wants to fight for their freedom they'll win with or without weapons. If a minority wants to fight for their freedom they will probably have better luck not using weapons. If they use weapons they will kill people and people will turn against them. Since they're the weaker part they will be defeated. If they don't use weapons, people might listen to their opinions and support their cause. If they are fought with weapons they might gain support from non-involved observers who might be a bigger threat against their oppressors.
Instead of starving people out and scaring the s*&t out of people who can't help themselves already, why don't we go and empower them with skills, knowledge and give them a kickstart?
But why *should* we? It's not my responsibility to make sure Joe Welfare Bum has food money, it's his! At the very most, we should implement a loan system, like we do for students.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
How many Canadians out there have actually read it? Right up front it says that the gov't can exempt a law from it if they like, and judges only have to uphold it if the infraction "brings the system of justice into disrepute."
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
You've obviously never examined counter-insurgency situations, nor history. Are you aware, for instance, that the Bolsheviks were seriously outnumbered by the White forces at the start of their insurrection? That the Maoists had to deal with a significantly larger and well-funded, but insanely corrupt (True. Chiang Kai-Shek and a certain Tong/Triad) Kuomintang? And so forth.
Have you studied the ACW? The Confederacy had remarkably poor access to industry, armaments, currency and so forth. They were *seriously* outmatched in just about every regard except generalship (for much of the war) and morale (for the early part). Were the population to rebel against the Gov't en masse here, however, it would be the citizens that have the advantages over population, territory, and production; the US has difficulty with situations where the people oppose them partly because they seemingly have lacked the stomach for such, ever since the conquest of the Philippines post-Spanish-American War (where the US *was* utterly ruthless against the rebels, largely imitating the Spanish pre-war tactics in Cuba).
And, according to your logic, the Finnish would have been routed by the Soviet Red Army within, oh, days, and the Warsaw Ghetto (one of the *most* overmatched situations in history...) wouldn't have held out an hour. And so forth. Insurgency situations are dramatically different from open-battlefield confrontations from the ACW era, as you'd know if you studied history a whit.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I think it was meant to be posted in the previous article re Oracle. A simple mispost.
~~~NO CARRIER~~~
TANSTAAFL. Those things were never free to begin with. Instead, you used to live in a situation where there was not a relationship between the expenses caused by individuals and the amount that those individuals had to pay. Now things are expensed fairly and there's accountability, and you're complaining?!? *sigh*
If you are unhappy with your "free" public education, why not fire the government from that job? I'm sure you can find someone who will give you a good education for a fair price.
---
Have a Sloppy night!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
uneducated Canadians
I'd have to high object since the majority of the American population probably couldn't pass their own test for citizenship.
I really don't have anything against Americans. Just America.
~~~NO CARRIER~~~
What's wrong with user fees?
Why should you get away with paying $20/mo for the 300 000 gallons of water you use while I pay $20/mo for the 300 I use?
Why should you get away with free garbage collection when you are wasteful and put out more than a 4-child family?
And your point about emissions testing... so you WANT your children to grow up in a world where they can't breathe the air? Give me a break! If your car's broken, FIX IT. don't bitch at the government for making you fix it so you don't add to the pollution problems!
You sound like you've been abusing the system for so long now that when it's time to pay for what you use you'll rant and rave at how unfair it is instead of owning up to it.
And no, I'm not some wealthy person driving my $60k car, drinking champagne and smoking cigars. I'm a hardworking person who has trouble getting by like the next guy but at least I realize that what is going on is called user fees and evens out the problems. If you were paying a flat fee before, you were subsidizing the guy next to you using more than yourself, or vice versa. If you're a big user, your fees go up. Otherwise they come down.
Yes harris offloaded on to the municipalities and for the most part I'm not happy with that. However, I am happier that my money is going to somewhere closer to home than it was before. My money now has more 'clout' where I live.
Personally I'd love to see road work turned over to private companies like it is in the US. introduce fair competition. you want the $5mil contract for resurfacing the roads? bid on it like everyone else and you've at least got a shot at it. THAT would bring about more employment and make things better (I think).
Andrew
>Therefore, this is the US's way of trying to not say OOPS 20 years from now.
Except that they're trying to shut the
field gate when the horse has already bolted...
Strong crypto is easy to get hold of here in Ireland (and the rest of the EU) They may wish it were otherwise, but the cat's out of the bag, and it isn't going back in...
The chinese and arab nations also, of course, already have strong crypto, and are not stupid enough not to develop it further ( notwithstanding certain idiot fundamentalist muslims (the majority of muslims are very nice, enlightened, reasonable people -more so than most cristians - but I'm an atheist anyway...) breeding out intelligence from their races by encouraging stupid, subservient women, who will of course bear them stupider children - intelligence is partly genetic, but not much sex-linked...
Choice of masters is not freedom.
AC speaks the truth. I spent some time living in London Ontario. Inside London was great.. Cable TV and internet everywhere.. 5 mins outside London, at a friends place... lets just say there are some areas of Canada where bell still uses party lines. I am not joking. Here we are in 1999 and major Telcos still force people to use partylines. I've also spent a lot of time in rural Australia. My uncle's farm (200kms from the capital city) has four phone lines going into it.. one for the business phone, one for the residential phone, one for the modem to their ISP, in the local calling area, and one for the fax. Even in the middle of the Australian desert, they have public payphones, solar powered with an immarsat uplink, but still ;>
My point is this.. Canada is a wonderful place. Just as long as you live in a decent sized city. Otherwise.. think yourself lucky if you have electricity.
I couldn't agree more. It should be criminal to shirk your duties as a father. THAT is legislation that should come in.
How the HELL you'd do it I have no idea. I would imagine if you ran away from your duties the mother woudln't WANT you around, but then you should have your wages garnished to support your children.
This topic gets me SERIOUSLY seamed. I honestly think that if dad's took a bigger role in their children's upbringing there'd be less violence in the world. Having a poor (or no) father figure is NOT healthy.
One of the cocnerns for governments about cryptography is obviously because of it's ability to be used to do the things the lawmakers talk about, like encrypting kiddy pr0n and other unpleasant things like that. Canada's culture dictates that the rights of the individuals are paramount over those of law enforcement, and they don't have a problem with them encrypting the stuff. For example, un-warrented participant surveillance is illegal in Canada. That's where you get a person to wear a "wire" to record their conversation with someone, who presumable, you the policeman, want to talk to. You can still do it, you just need to show just cause for a wiretap order.
Well the FBI doesn't own the web, nor does the US (though I have to admit that a large portion is physically located in the US).
Anyway I don't think that US/FBI can deny non-americans the right to own, use and sell encryption software they can just deny americans the right to sell/give encryption software to non americans.
Jilles
AFAIK, in belgium crypto is theorically and pratically not illegal. There is a law against it, _but_ the application texts where never published, so it's perfectly legal up to that time, which will probably never occur. The current trend is to make crypto non only legal, but to make digital signatures having a legal value.
This may be a silly question, but why is using encrypted mail *all the time* deemed to be a good thing?
When necessary, sure, but just for casual chats between friends, enquiries to companies, etc. I don't *want* to have to be using encrypted mail.
Admittedly at least part of this can be traced to the fact that Pegasus doesn't have perfect encryption integration, but I wouldn't change my mind anyway. It's just not required all the time.
Is that a new operating system, like GNU/Linux? Maybe the Wine people will get there one day.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I wonder if this is because the public found out that the RCMP was intercepting email?
;-)
At least its a step in the right direction.
Now, if we could just get the Canadian government to stop trying to steal 55% of your income.
You! Reading this article! Do you use ssh and pgp? If not, why not? You're part of the problem!
If you're not using PGP (yet), drop by http://www.pgpi.com/ and have a look around. http://www.pgpi.com/cgi/download-wizard .cgi will let you easily determine exactly which version of is appropriate for your OS and location. PGP installation is pretty straightforward and there is ample online documentation and tutorials. Not only does PGP become more useful each time a new person starts using it, but the more people we have using PGP routinely the harder it will be to remove our freedom to do so. There's no reason not to use encryption, except for inertia. And I guarantee it's not as hard to install or use as you may be thinking.
Using a nice pgp-aware mailer like mutt is a nice step, too.
If you ARE using telnet or rlogin or ftp, then you have problems now and you don't even realize it. Did you realize that every time you telnet or rlogin or ftp to a remote host that you are transmitting your username and password in clear text? Sniffing passwords is a trivial task, mostly due to the widespread use of insecure protocols such as telnet. ssh is a drop-in, secure alternative for telnet, rlogin, rsh, and ftp. Not only is it secure, but it's easier to use and more featureful as well. On top of security it adds such features as compression, encrypted traffic, encrypted tunnels, and completely automatic and secure X11 forwarding. Plus with RSA Authentication you can eliminate passwords entirely. A cracker can't crack a password that doesn't exist.
Unix users can obtain ssh from ftp://ftp.cs.hut.fi/pub/ssh/ and have it up and running in a matter of minutes. I recommend the 1.2.27 version of ssh (as opposed to the v2 platform) due to licensing difficulties with the v2 platform. Non-unix users have even more options.
For Win32 there's SecureCRT (http://www.vandyke.com) which is an excellent, albeit commercial solution. There's also a very nice, free implementation of ssh which works with Tera Term. You can grab it from http://hp.vector.co.jp/author s/VA002416/teraterm.html
There's even an opensource ssh for win32 at http://www.chiark.greenend.o rg.uk/~sgtatham/putty.html although I must admit that I'm not sure I trust an ssh implementation done by a guy who refuses to implement RSA Authentication.
For Macintosh, I understand that there's a nice plug-in for NiftyTelnet at http://www.lysator.liu.se/~jon asw/freeware/niftyssh/ although I've not used it.
There's never been a better time to be more secure. Simply by installing a couple of easy-to-use applications you could be on your way to a more secure, more private computing experience. Your data is yours, and here are two ways to ensure that it stays that way.
Yeah, I ripped this shamelessly from my .plan -- so sue me, it's still useful information...
Ontario only encourages it because large companies will spend their money in Ontario. They stick their servers in Canada, and now they can have they're strong encryption, while still operating in the US.
I believe Hushmail does this, they've got their servers running out of Vancouver, but are American owned
Man, now all they need to do is outlaw BOMBS! Culture is a strange thing. Different things tend to happen in different places. I would love to find a country where you didn't have to worry about shootings, or terrorists, riots, arson, or violence of any kind. Unfortunately, unless I am the only resident of that country, it isn't going to happen.
>Well, you get the governement you pay for... :-)
and I'm willing to admit that our dollar is crap right now so...
No, the Navy guy was definitely not from CSE. It was just the six of us in the second row.
PS. You guys should get a life.
True,
The guy was a member of a gun club or something. I think after that the UK imposed even stricter gun control rulings.
About the festivals, we have at least three big ones (30000+ people) of course some stuff happens but generally thinks go rather quiet (not on the musical side though). I have to say we had our football (soccer in the US) riots whith people ending up dead. God only knows what mess it would have been if guns would have been involved.
Jilles
It seems like half are anarchists, the other half are socialists (quibbling over their title)...
/. get knocked down as flamebait.
I'm surprised this article is at +2 as I read it... typically views that are against the mainstream
why is it that the US government wants to deprive its citizens from the benefits of encryption?
Actually.. for all that the US government does, it doesn't try to deprive its citizens of encryption. For all of DOJ's pleading for key escrow, the NSA seems to have little problem with purely domestic use; they just don't want any non-Americans to get access to cryptography. Hence, they wanted DES to be hardware only, because then Americans would have access to it, but export would be more easily controlled than it can be for a published algorithm.
My guess is, regardless of what Janet Reno, Bill Clintion, and their thugs want, the long-term NSA strategists (the guys who REALLY control crypto policy) would be perfectly happy if every US citizen and business used 2048-bit RSA and 168-bit tripleDES, as long as the rest of the world used a broken RSA implementation, and 40-bit single DES. In fact, I wouldn't put it above them to use their power of decryption to help a US business or two...
Well DUH!
Why bother throw away the big money when you can just mooch off someone else! That's what I love about this country, it's moocher's heaven!(except for the taxes)
-Universal healthcare paid through our taxes.
-Guaranteed military security from our allies who LIKE to throw the big money into fancy guns.
-unemployment insurrance + pogy
-government grants for homegrown music / film production (my brother nabbed I think it was 6 grand towards a film he was doing with his friend because his friend was like 1/16th)
Yep, I love this place
Well, for instance, I also don't agree with the fact that we export arms to countries that aren't our official allies. They can get weapons elsewhere, just not from us.
Why is this such a hard concept to grasp?
If the crypto is available overseas, just get it there! If US software developers (ahem - Microsoft!) wrote more intellegently structured products it'd be a cinch to add crypto "plug-ins" (a la photoshop, netscape, etc) that supplement the weak crypto in their products with whatever algorithm you choose.
I'm not at all against strong crypto - I'm just wondering why everyone is all conspiratory in thinking that the US is out to get US citizens. They're not. They're just trying to make it harder for other countries to get at them.
The internet is a wonderful mechanism for communciation. But, from the govenrments stand point, it makes protecting ourselves/themselves much more difficult. Prior to this, they could detect the amassing of arms and people and know to look out for an event. Now, all the organization can be done remotely, with all communcation taking place over the internet, will no clue being let on that there's something amiss.
Sure it hasnt' happened. But do you want that to happen (US citizens?)? No. There's more at stake than boosting our GNP...
My brother has what he describes as
"the little black and white TV with the most cable in the city".
50+ channels on a B/W set.
He insists on watching X-Files on it for the atmosphere, even when one of the other sets in the house are available.
prisons are more expensive than welfare. The more you'll cut on welfare the higher your crimerate + higher crimerate induces a call for heavier punishment -> even more money goes to prisons.
If you think thats leftist commy bullshit your probably just another american redneck who deserves to get involved in a shooting at the local school.
Jilles
No, actually CSIS is the intelligence agency. The CSE is the "Communications Security Establishment" which is similar to the NSA in the States. In fact, it is the Canadian arm of Echelon.
Visit their web page and say hi.
That's ALL they're trying to do! They're not even trying to deny americans the right use crypto to protect themselves... They simply do not want it to go past the national borders...
Granted, then you have people like the NSA trying to artificially weaken domestic products, but that's a completely different argument than allowing the export of commercial products.
I second that.
I lived four years in the US, and found the US to be full of the most ignorant and self-centred people I have ever met.
Any wonder Canada's been number one overall on the UN country's list for 6 straight years?
Sue me. Its the American way.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
It's very simple:
You don't like crime -> you pay
You want educated children -> you pay
You want to be taken care of when you get sick -> you pay
you don't like drugs -> you pay
So happens when you don't pay?
You get crime, uneducated children who die because there is no good health care and because they use drugs.
Eventually they get so sick of you that they shoot their teachers and fellow victims at their local school.
Sounds fammiliar? That's the US today. Rich people send their kids to expensive schools and live in neighboorhoods with fences around them. They lock out the missery that makes up the rest of the country and still complain about the little pieces of tax they have to pay (living in sweden where 50% of your income ends up being paid in the form of taxes and V.A.T. I can only dream of paying 15%).
Americans have no right to comlain about crime, drugs or their children shooting each other up in school. They get what they paid for (or rather they don't get what they didn't pay for).
Jilles
Check out http://www.zip.com.au/~roca/ttssh.html. It's a free implementation of ssh for Windows, with source available. It's built upon the Tera Term telnet client, for which source is available, and is one of the most configurable telnet clients that I've seen in Windows... And ttssh inherits all that. Check it out.
even on a per capita basis the murder rate is more than four times as high as in the Netherlands. Plus most of your recent school shootings seem to have taken place in wealthy suburbs.
Jilles
Dunno. Maybe they fear people spying on them, if the agency lacks the relative notoriety or alleged ferocity of others. :-) 'sides, we probably spy on Canada, and you wouldn't want your Government's secrets to leak out through us, eh?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Who the fuck do you think you will work for ?? ...
Chances are one of those rich motherf* so shut the fuck up and enjoy free ride.
I can't belive that after 70 years of shit going on in eastern Europe there are still idiots arguing for it
But this don't make anything better, because in Brasil we use mainly US made applications witch means that most of our software is restricted to US laws of export. Off course that inteligent people can use GNU tools but most of the population just sticks to windows.
Other problem is that no one realy cares for crypto or privacy, as I stated before (in other post) we already have a unique ID for all citzens (not that is realy a trheat because the Brasil's goverment is very messy so I don't think they would be able to track everyone), and people here are more or less careless about their rigths. It's common for instance to give up a right so you don't have to create a mess.
So the situation here is that we can use it, but we don't actualy use it.
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
After first questions I was hoping this was going to be funny post , but you spoiled everything with the second sentence.
It isn't even funny - just another stupid insult.
Next time come up with something better.
>Interesting how Ontario judges a "majority >government". It seems in ontario not all votes >are equal. In an after election tally, 55% of >the population voted against the present
>government.
That's total popular vote. The way our provincial elections work is each Riding has an Member of the Legislative Assembly. I don't know how many ridings are in Ontario, but here in Nova Scotia (Fresh off a recent election that put the tories in power, with a majority. It's not the grit win I wanted, but t least the freakin NDP didn't get in!) we've got 52. When a party wins over half of the seats in the Legislative Assembly, it's a clear majority victory. Things get a little tricky when you're under a minority government, less than half the seats are under the control of the governing party, so getting unpopular but neccesary legislation though can take some wheelin' and dealin' and such. McKlellen and the NS liberals found that out the hard way a month or two back with the budget being defeated and the election being forced.
No, he didn't. Do you know what the term "popular vote" means?
If there are 10 votes in the entire province, the last election would have broken down rougly along these lines:
4 votes for Mike Harris & the Conservatives 3 votes for Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals 3 votes for Howard Hampton and the New Democratic Party
So... Harris wins with just 40% of the popular vote. More people voted against him than for him.
The problem with our electoral system is that if many votes for a candidate come from an area of the province with more ridings (ie. Toronto and the 905 belt) that party gets more seats. Doesn't mean more people wanted that government in, and the results obviously do not reflect the will of the people.
Before anybody suggests I'm just anti-Harris, let me point out that the NDP got into power in 1990 with about 32% of the popular vote.
Our electoral system is flawed in that the results often do not represent the popular vote breakdown in the province. If a better system was used (there are many, I won't go into that here) Mike Harris would have won the last election, but he would have had a minority government, rather than the disproportionate majority he enjoys as the result of our flawed electoral system.
Sorry, but tuition fees started going up at most universities long before the Harris government was elected. I know, for example, that 10% tuition fee increases at the University of Waterloo have been happening pretty much every year since about 91-92. And I don't know what else Harris was supposed to do. The NDP nearly bankrupted the province. The government had to make cuts just about everywhere. And raising taxes or keeping them at a ridiculously high level does NOT bring in more money.
You neglect to mention that the majority of the cuts in health care (and to a large degree education) resulted from cuts in federal transfers. You should be blaming Chretien. The ONTARIO government is actually now spending MORE than they were on health care and education when they were elected. Besides, you can't spend money you don't have.
You also neglect the fact that the government is actually bringing in MORE money now after the tax cuts. All the new jobs created mean more people paying taxes, and more employers paying payroll taxes, etc. The cuts to taxes on small businesses and even corporations has resulted in more companies doing business in Ontario, which also means more money for the government. The socialists would be quick to suggest that this is because Ontario is riding the boom the US is having. That's nonsense, of course. Ontario would not have achieved that growth with the high taxes, employment equity, and other crap the NDP introduced. Ontario now leads all provinces in economic growth, and in fact, the increase in consumption as a % of Ontario's GDP has been much bigger than the increase in exports.
The Harris government for the mostpart has been an overwhelming success. That's why they were re-elected. Only a crazy bleeding heart socialist could possibly suggest that the province is worse
off today than it was in 1995.
The neat thing about CSIS is that no one knows /anything/ about them.
Actually, stuff comes out in the papers every couple of months. It often makes them look inept, such as them being sued in court by disgruntled former employees. Just because they are usually silent doesn't make them omnipotent. On what grounds do you equate CSIS with the massively-funded, spooky supercomputers-out-the-yazoo NSA?
I taught English in Europe for two years and Canadians were actively sought after. We were considered to have neutral accents, highly intelligible by Americans or British people.
That said, I'm from Ontario, and I do pronounce "milk" as "melk", something which my friends in Nova Scotia teased me endlessly about. Oh, and some of the people in Nova Scotia said "aboot", but mostly as a joke.
I also forgot to mention that it could be much worse. Look at the US. Many of the top universities there will cost you on the order of $40,000 a year. Even cheaper state universities there are still more expensive than the average university in Canada.
Also, the public education system here has always been terrible (the Universities are still pretty good though). So for a province that's among the lowest in North America in education spending, Ontario is finally getting good value for it's money. The taxpayers are no longer getting ripped off. If anything, the standardized tests and other metrics the government has implemented will finally SHOW how bad the system is and maybe people will endeavour to FIX it. I think that is already happening. There has already been talk about improving standards. This surely is better than spending a ridiculous amount of money and pretending the system is great because of all the money that goes into it.
come outside the states, then find yourself a school where such a incident has occured.
good luck
Jilles
All governments suck, to a pretty large extent. in fact, government, like cola, cars, pizza, music, and blue jeans, is a product. Buy too much of it, with low quality and high price, and it sucks. The difference is that the government can hold a gun to you head and make you buy. IMO, most western governments are about 2X larger and more expensive than they should be. Put them on a PC price curve for a few years are they will suck a lot less.
Which brings us to guns: Guns are a way for the people to stop buying. In the beginning, the U.S. didn't try to sell too much government, and had no fear of an armed citizenry. In fact, selling less governemnt was the major market differentiator for the U.S. when the U.S. was a startup. Now, however, its buy or die.
Is crypto like guns? According to U.S. export law it is. In practice, and in relation to the choice to buy less government, is crypto like guns? Yup. In fact, crypto is more dangerous: It enables stored value that cannot be detected like currency. It enables large scale plans to remain secret. It enforces elements of the consitution, like secrity in one's documents, that are now deemed dangerous. It is better than guns at limiting governments' ability to make us buy.
OK, so who here would buy less government if they could?
I wrote parts of this stuff
And if you say doing something will stop crime, and that there are evil people in their midsts doing bad things in secret, and couple it with a national fear that computers will someday make us their slaves, and that smart people want to take over the world,
...if you're lucky, they'll still allow trojan decoder rings in Froot Loops boces.
Regards,
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Not quite. Ontario understands politics and this really isn't a whole lot more than a ploy to convince techies that we can be happier here than in the US. The problem is that way too many of us are packing up our maple leafs and our two-fours of beer and heading south for bigger paycheques.
-Joe
It's simple. Provide ways for people to support themselves, or they'll make one. If you don't let people work to survive, they'll *take* what they need.
And I for one wouldn't blame them one bit.
There's a difference between not wanting to work and not being able to.
If you had children you had to take care of and didn't have any way of legally raising money would you sit there and watch them starve or get a baseball bat and go mug some rich fucker as he was getting out of his Jag?
And if those children barely manage to survive, what choice are they going to have except to do the same thing?
There are a lot more 'poor' people than rich people, so either treat them with a little respect, like the humans they are, or don't be suprised when they decide to take what the system has taken away from them.
And honestly, people like you will deserve it.
I thought this would be a discussion on why cryptography is a good thing, not an political endorsement.
I think its a little dubious to give credit to Mike Harris for some good policies that Ann Cavoukian - Ontario's privacy commissioner made.
And the moderators gave you a "informative" rating, I assume because your pro-Harris rant was "tied in" to cryptography at the end by claiming that "if you elect libertarians . . . the free crypto just comes with the rest of the goodies."
Patented nonsense.
I'm trying to avoid the temptation to enter a political debate with you, because I passionately hate Mike Harris as much as you like him. I can't think of a politician who has created more strife in society than he.
In fact, I can't think of a more undemocratic politican in Canada them him, and I believe that allowing citizens the right to use cryptography is extremly democratic.
Yes, but back to the cryptography. When it comes to governments, regardless of whether it happens to be one that you like or dislike, the price of democracy (to paraphrase someone) is constant vigilance.
Mike Harris has consistently shown a willingness to bend the rules of democracy (for example when he changed the rules of debate in parliament to limit the time the opposition had on the floor) to ram his policies through, and believe me, if for some reason cryptography was inconsistent with his economic policies (like for example if using it threatened trade with the U.S.), then we would lose it in a day, and any amount of protesting would conveniently be written off as "special interest"
Finally, to answer your question, "So what the hell does this have to do with crypto?"
Nothing as far as I'm concerned.
All this is very off-topic, and I'll join you in it.
...) and decide how much you care about them. Would you give food to a beggar? most people don't. Would you give food to a good friend? Yes. To a neighbour? Yes. Someone you met at a summercamp 10 years ago... THE POINT: caring for each other has a limit, and in the USA the limit is low. Even if something is potentially lifethreatening (like being sick) care is not always given.
>>You don't like crime -> you pay
In the US this usually means that if crime goes up, so do #cops. This helps. Yet it doesn't take away the reason for comitting crimes.
In the USA there is always a percentage of people who do not do as well as the rest. These 'losers' know this. They may not be skilled in 'living in society' but it is often thrown at their faces that they don't do well. They are often rejected and do not have a lot to lose. This is the key issue.
Why would you care about anybody if they don't care about you. Here is A MINDGAME: think about different groups (in/outside the USA, different status, education, social group,
So there is a large group of people who don't care about you and you're wellbeing because you don't care about them. So far, nothing is going wrong. Now here comes the 'loser'-group. They have nothing && don't care about you: they sometimes commit crimes... QED
nosig today
[flame bait on]
The USA is the only nation that went from barbarism straight into degeneration.
[flame bait off]
- A European.
PS: As others already pointed out there are actually a few other countries in America, not just the USA.
-- Truth suffers from too much analysis.
in essence you don't give a fuck. :)
in essence you're not contributing.
in essence you're e g o i s t i c.
in essence this is oversimplified, off course
nosig today
True, there is someone else who should instead: The fucking (pun intended) father.
That's what all those stupid politicans (including Jesse Ven-DUH-ra) who attack single mothers forget: There is a male prick in the picture, but who has run away from his half of the responsibility, like a little criminal.
Slightly off-topic, but I sometimes get pissed at certain elements of my half of the population.
I'm not so mad at the fact that people have to pay tons of money its the fact that the Government gets a 30% cut of the fees. This is no different than photo radar, except that everyone has to pay.
And lets not forget all the stories of price gouging by garages...
True. We're a violent people, although it's unclear why -- the statistics just show we are. {shrug}
'suppose the issue boils down to:
* Do the people trust the Government, and believe that this will continue?
* If that trust will be violated, will the people be able to do anything 'bout it -- and will arms hurt or help?
* Is it feasible to confiscate arms and keep them in the hands of police/military?
Depending on the answers to those questions, one may argue completely differently. I'd have to say that in the case of the US, #3 is right out (law enforcement would have to sweep the nation, and Customs would have to be *really* tight); #1 is a 'yes' for many today, but a distinct 'no' from the Founding Fathers; and #2 is questionable, in that it'd all end up a mess. Eh.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The teachers aren't the ones who caused the decline in our education, it was the Tory government. Massive funding cuts to programs and rapid changes made with out concern to impact were the cause of the two strikes.
If you'll notice Harris never once blamed the teachers it was always the evil unions fault. The unions did not start this strike, it was harris provoking teachers who would not stand by idly and let him destroy the education system. I have not met one teacher who didn't support the strikes against their the government changes out of their own free will.
Harris has done nothing for me but cause aggrivation. I'm glad I finally out of school because there will not be a quality education system in ontario...
Will Ontario promote Corporal Punishment next?
;)
(And how about General Education? Then again, Ontario does a good job of that, eh?
He did change election laws. For example, he reduced the minimum numbers of days required for a campaign. So the campaign was only 28 days, but for at least half a year before the election, we saw television commercials telling us all the great things his government did, and these commercials were paid for with your tax dollars. (although after some complaints the PC's did pay for some of the commercials) Did you notice that the commercials whose "purpose" was to inform us have disappeared now that the election was over.
He also changed the shapes of the ridings. For example, my old region voted against the PC's this round, but we were amalgamated with a conservative region.
Anwyay, if you like Harris and the PC's, that's fine. You have the right to like whatever political party you want to. But the most important point of my message still stands, and that is, you can't take something like the right to encryption for granted, regardless of whether a government you like or not is in power.
I have the feeling that you would like Harris even if his government was against encryption. The issue in this particular slashdot forum is encryption, not politics.
http://194.234.236.31/ and http://194.234.236.31/cgi/download-wi zard.cgi
For Those At the Ottawa linux showcase... Remember the mass quantities of rcmp guys in the second row of the ipsec talk???....
"Hey! Cryptography doesn't kill people! People kill people!"
Likening this to gun control is a bit weird, especially given the nature of the original story. People in Canada tend to do just fine without a gun in the bedside drawer, although that may be because of Canada's comparatively better health, welfare and education systems that go some way to lessening crime and so you don't have to fear for your life as much in Canada: there's nothing for the mad NRA people to focus on in Johnny Canuck's mind.
To some extent, this story doesn't surprise me at all: Canada is a much more laid back and liberal place than the States. Maybe I should move there away from "The Long Arm Of The Straw" here in the UK(copyright NTK.now, I think) -- it would be interesting to see some sort of test case come out, if the Canadian government ever has any problems over encryption. If indeed the USA or UK governments ever have any serious problems over conviction too -- has anyone heard of any such things?
If that happened, Ottawa would get rid of the problem of the Loonie falling against the greenback. Instead, Ottawa would have the problem of people and industry fleeing Canada's punitive taxes, and not having to take an exchange-rate hit to do it. Looks like serious reform (scaling back) of Canada's nanny state is going to be essential to survival, no matter what happens.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
If you get a login you can choose your OWN default.
Just a thought...
When I first read this I thought that, through some miracle, the Harris goverenment actually did something right for once. Looks to be a provincial comittee. Anyone know if this was due to Mikey's little gov't there? I'm looking for a reason, even one, not to hate him :-)
I'm also getting a DNS look up error on http://www.ipc.on.ca/, which was what the Wired article linked to. Anyone know if that's the right link?
Taber, Alberta.
One kid dead, one wounded.
Several days after the Littleton shooting.
-- Truth suffers from too much analysis.
But the fact is, I've met a lot of old-timers and `progressives' for such a small place. (note: I don't even have my driver's licence yet, so please understand that I've lived a very sheltered life ]=) I think part of this might be due to the `community spirit' that a lot of rural places have, which people mistakenly think to be workable in large-scale operations, such as running a province.
/.?! Wow.)
In a province dominated by one party, I must admit that the NDP has done a pretty good job finding middle ground. They've done what's needed to be done (eg. balancing the budget) As it stands right now, I would be very, very afraid if the Liberals or Conerva-- Saskatchewan Party came to power, because they're not even close to being able to make an effective opposition, let alone government.
Hey, isn't there a newsgroup where we could take this? sk.politics or something? ]=)
(Other people from SK read
Wow, I wrote this a long time ago.
Well, you sad sad people obviously can't think for your selves either... I keep hearing the same "Unions are Evil communists" argument over and over again... As an insider on these disputes, I have experienced both sides, and I'am definatly on the teachers side because most of what they want is a good thing... I why should large corporations and rich people get everything the easy way... spread the wealth...
Posted by Justin:
perhaps you mean CSE (canadian NSA)? i know there were a few of those registered for the conference. there also was a guy in the fifth or sixth row (i sat in the third row and politely declined the poking and prodding for me to take a bow when the slashdot joke came up) who had a white navy-looking uniform...maybe he was a CSE guy?
I came to US with 100 $ and almost no knowledge of English language. 7 years later I am making much more than average American does.
Don't fucking tell me there are no ways for people to support themselves. If you want - you will make it !!! It is as simple as that.
Sucks to be you!
Over here in Halifax/Dartmouth we've had competition between cable and ADSL for almost *2* full years now!
>NWT, Yukon, BC, Alberta, Sask., Manitoba, NS, >NB, Nfld., P.E.I.
;`)
Um, not quite. I suppose outside of metro Halifax/Dartmouth in Nova Scotia you're screwed, but ADSL is DEFINITLY available in NS. I know 4 people with their crappy 'mPowered' ADLS connections, while I and 5 others I know have the infinitly better 'Wave' cable connections. Of course, 'Wave' is only available where Accesscable offers services, so people across the harbor in Halifax with ?Eastlink Cablevision? I think... they're stuck with their slower 'Andara' cable systems. Goota love choice
Right. And what precisely do you do with those people who
just *Can*'t get a job, and do try?
One big problem is telling the difference between people who
try but can't find work and people who don't want to work,
but could easily find a job.
Although the Ontario government has screwed over it's citizens many many times over int he past four years, they do have one redeeming quality... they know business...
'Mike knows business'
.............
For every high-tech wonder like radar imaging satellites, you have cases like the Yugoslav war where simple plywood decoys fooled extensive efforts to find stuff.
There is never a guarantee that a revolution will succeed, or that the most horrifying tactics, as in Cambodia or Rwanda, won't be employed. But the ability of small arms to change the course of history is proven in some cases.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Don't forget They still have bans on 'hatefull' political speach. With harsher punishments for using computers. I personaly find this deplorable,
there taxes are still high, people talk funny, and it's cold. America may suck in many respects, but it's still better then canada.
Don't forget here, also all there doing is "recomending" that there citizens use it. Encryption in the US is still legal, its just being held up as a comercial industry by exsport restrictions (that prevent software from being put up for download, among other things) Allthough I'm sure Janet Reno would love to not alow us our encryption, there not really doing anything to take it away. (nor can they, I belive)
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Prisons do not have to be more expensive if you abolish
Constitutionally guaranteed rights for prisoners. Already
the second amendment does not apply in prisons, why should
any other? I have been a long time proponent of locking people
in literally four walls and no amenities of any kind. All you'd need
is to feed these people (you could bring that cost down by
standardizing rations and cutting down on expensive foods).
Prisons are not meant to be comfortable, healthy or humane,
they are meant as an extreme form of punishment.
Also developing encryption is good for Ontario business. Entrust Technologies is headquartered in Ottawa. I also recall the lead developer from the Ipsec presentation at the Ottawa Linux Symposium saying that he was from Ottawa. There's already a lot of software expertise in Ottawa and Toronto, so support like this makes it possible for Ontario to become a world leader in encryption.
As a new Ontario resident, I'm rather pleased, and pleasantly surprised to find a reason to like the Harris government.
Actually, I crack Canadian jokes because they're sooo easy. I meen what isn't there to make fun of about Canada? In Canada it's cold and polar bears keep on eating residents. They have a stupid sport and they enter their own players into the olympics! How snotty is that? Talking about snotty, they won't even allow themselves to be admitted as the 51st state! They would rather stay a wholly own subsidary of the state of New York! God do I hate those totally out of touch and uneducated Canadians.
They're politicians - and ideologues - which is a dangerous combination, even (especially!) if you happen to like their ideology, as I do. But at least you know what they stand for and what they're gonna do when elected. Here's a snapshot of their platform:
- Lower taxes. They were first elected with a promise to cut the provincial portion of income taxes by 30%. Even I thought they were blowing smoke up the voters' arses on that one - and then they did it. I was both pleased and stunned.
- Lower spending. The five years preceding the current administration saw a socialist administration which hiked welfare benefits by 20%, and taxes to match. Ontario was one of the highest-taxed, highest-spending, highest-deficit provinces when the socialists got the boot for the new crowd. All the spending cuts that were made in Ontario were also campaign promises.
- Generally libertarian business/social practices. Relaxed labor laws, less red tape, less governmental interference in private and commercial affairs.
Within a month of their election 4-5 years ago, this administration:- Abolished photo radar (brought in by the previous administration - no, not visible cameras on the side of the road as deterrents, but unmarked vans, driving along with traffic, designed to maximize revenue.)
- Abolished race quotas (the previous administration brought 'em in and said "they're not quotas, they're merely numerical goals for all businesses to meet or get fined")
- Repealed a rabidly pro-union piece of workplace legislation (umm, also brought in by the previous administration...)
- Cut welfare payments by 20%.
- Instituted the first part of a 5-year tax cutting plan.
Again - all of these things were election promises. This is the first time I'd ever seen a party elected with a platform of repeal laws, not enacting new ones. It was also the first time I'd seen a party actually do the stuff it said it would do during the campaign.Five years later, the previous administration's tax hikes had been completely undone, and the budget, which had been running $12B deficits annually, was within epsilon of being balanced. Well, you get the idea about what the current situation in Ontario is about. Ontario lived through five years under socialism, and then brought in the right-wing libertarians in a landslide of disgust with the socialists. That brought about 4-5 years of radical social change, after which Ontario ended up with the lowest provincial taxes in Canada, and a balanced budget to boot.
The best part? After five years of relative economic freedom (and incessant whining from bitter socialists about how the province was going to hell in a handbasket :), the voters finally got their chance to pass judgement on the new regime...
drum roll...
So what the hell does this have to do with crypto?
IMNSHO, if you elect libertarians - regardless of the party banner they happen to be running under - the free crypto just comes with the rest of the goodies.
Or maybe the 'need' to revolt against government wouldn't BE there if government didn't suck ass.
And it seems like Canada is taking steps to not suck.
# tar xzvf ssh-1.2.27.tar.gz ./configure
# cd ssh-1.2.27
#
# make
# make install
And Israel used to have problems with terrorist attacks on schools, until they started allowing the teachers to carry weapons. No more shootings in years. There's also a lessor in there.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I have to agree, USA thinks they can do everything in any countries...
They think they are so superior that they think they are the rulers of the world...
tsk, tsk...
It seems to me a major problem with many American politicians is that they seem to think they can have a free society without a criminal element. This is not possible. I see more and more people wanting to have their cake and eat it to. Sure we want the free exchange of political ideas, a society where new ways of doing things is rewarded, but as long we can't have [inset porn, paranoid delusions of terrorism, racism, or whatever your favorite scape goat is here]. Life does not work like this. Do you want to live in a free society? Their is a price to pay. Encryption is important in giving people the fealing of SECURITY to exchange ideas without fear (even if it be paranoid) of being looked on by some governmental force. The government cannot have the ability to monitor all information sent out over a widespread medium like the telephone service or the internet without becoming a danger to the ideas it was built upon. The freedom of thought is an essential part of a succesfull democracy, and it is the real freedom the bill of rights attempts to protect. If we loose that, then what was the purpose of guarding against [inset your favorite scape goat here] in the first place. Just venting ;).
The preceding passage has been checked for spelling, you will find no sentence without at least one mis spelled word
Of course if you go to a fully proportional system
of representation, you can wind up with a situation like India or Italy, where you have dozens of political parties dedicated to narrow special interests; nobody gets a majority government; government changes hands once a year; and very little ever gets accomplished. Political lobbying might be lower since no one party has control, but then some political parties might as well be lobbies due to the narrowness of special interests they serve.
It's similar to the wards/no wards arguments with municipal elections. Why does it have to be all one way? Why not have a mix of of both types of representation in a government with a certain number of seats assigned to each of the two formulas? That way parties with small but widespread popular support might still be able to elect a representative to promote their vues, while still allowing governments to rule effectively and not be held hostage to special interests. Don't special interest lobbies have enough power already that we need to entrench their abilities in the political system?
On the other hand, I have never taken a political science course, so what do I know?
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
That's all supposing you believe that public key crypto is secure. Which it's not feasible as being. Everything you need to decrypt PGP is accessible through the public key. When it was first created, RSA provided a sensible way of encrypting information. It is *extremeley* vulnerable to plain-text attack. When you break that, you can decrypt the session key, and hence the message. The only reason you haven't read about this is in the fact that it's much more valuable and useful if people continue relying on PGP/RSA being a "secure" means of communication. As soon as their patent expires (next year?) you'll be sure to read of exploits...
With that said, and given that PGP is decryptible, what the NSA really wants is to contain all further breakthroughs to the US. With projects such as Echelon, when these further breakthroughs take place, they'll be able to determine who sent the file, and even perform a substitution routine which will insert their public key into the whole process...
Yes, PGP is available all over. Is it secure? That's what you all'd like to believe. Not really though, to anyone willing to invest the resources, though. The NSA has resources. Therefore, this is an inconvienence... They need to retrieve public keys prior to decryption... So, given that, and given the inconvience of needing to discover how to break further crypto breakthroughs, it's quite sensible to think that the cats out of the bag with PGP...
Symetric key pose no problem now or in the future... How will you ever exchange them without the risk of inteception?!? Face to face works... but then, that's a trackable occurance. Public key was feasible before, but now??? If you believe it still is 99% secure, you're mistaken.
--- if you believe that the NSA or another government agency is after you, you've got bigger problems than the security that PGP can provide for you.
paraphrased from a PGP FAQ that's out there, floating across the net.
No teacher makes 80,000 a year... even the most experienced teachers with as masters degree only make about 60,000. Only a person who lives, breaths and eats the shit that Harris feeds them would believe lies like that.
The fact that teachers get paid through the summer is irrelavent. They could be paid for the 10 months they work and still be paid the same, but I think it would be a much better idea to have the pay spread out throughout the entire year.
I don't think you could handle being a teacher either, they are some of the hardest working people out there. How many other jobs out there do you bring work home with you even though you don't get paid for over time...???
Unions basicly exist to organize a group and to solidify efforts. I'm sure Harris would like it much more if teachers were a bunch of small splintered groups, thereby making it easier to bully them so he can make the rich richer and the poor poorer...
I think that you are reading into Harris' propaganda to much, because he would like every one to believe that unions are evil. I'm sure you noticed the great pains he went to separate the union from teachers. Which is completly BS, because they are the same thing. The overwhelming majority of teachers supported the strike and you know it. You are just affraid to admit it.
And please drop the communist insults. This isn't the 50's any more, and there is nothing wrong with being a communist if thats what you truly believe in.
Canada is probably the one nation that is REALLY pushing for a national DNA registry, and the USA is right on its heals. If that's the mark of a government that gives a damn about privacy and the rights of its people, then tell me what isn't.
"Personally I'd love to see road work turned over to private companies like it is in the US. introduce fair competition. you want the $5mil contract for resurfacing the roads? bid on it like everyone else and you've at least got a shot at it. THAT would bring about more employment and make things better (I think). "
Not *just* like the US. Local contractors bidding may decrease the cost. But in the US, the money comes from gov. grants, and the conditions are just plain stupid- you must go with the lowest priced contractor (regardless of quality), and everything is against local gov. going after a contractor that is not holding true to their word (as in promised schedule or road quality).
I would personally prefer a system where local government got to spend the money any way they want to. If the federal government forces them to hire people that build the roads on their side, there isn't much you can do.. complain to your congressman maybe? But if the local government screws up (by hiring without doing their homework, giving someone 'special priviledge' or insider information, etc) they are really going to be up Shite Creek.
However, I am one for local goverment control rather than big goverment. Let people locally decide how to run things.
It sounds to me (and I am an American in Florida here) that it is a union dispute and not a teacher dispute- as in, the majority of the teachers aren't rallying for a strike, the union is pulling them into it. It also sounds like the union is purposely making things worse (not allowing extracurricular participation, etc). I have no pity towards unions. I have pity towards people. Also, maybe I am off here but 60k canadian is still a lot in the US. That is more than I will make when I get out of school. My mother was a teacher for 15 years and the highest she was ever paid was $29k american. And yes, she chose to be paid year-round for easier budgeting of that paltry sum (she still had to get a summer job to make ends meet). She delt with the lack of education funds by taking about $200/month of her own money and spending it on materials for her classroom. In my high school, we had textbooks from the 70's (and I graduated two years ago). The scary thing? We didn't throw those books away when we got new books. We sold them to another school in Mississippi that apparently was a lot worse off then us. It sounds more like there are teachers who actively partake in their union, that have no problem telling their students 'the way things are.' When I see teachers like in the US, where there are garbage collectors who make more, who have to pay out their own pocket to give their students a decent education, I will listen to your cries of poor education. But this sounds more like people scared they will not be able to buy a new car this year due to "That bastard Harris". And in case you haven't figured out from my comments above, I think unions ARE evil. Pure evil. I have yet to be involved in a single union (zero of five) that hasn't been horribly corrupt and caused more pain than it cured. There are people who stand outside of businesses calling for unions here- clue update: they aren't employees of the store. They are employees of COMPETING stores, who can no longer handle the salaries the unions are demanding and stay competitive. So the unions start to picket outside of the businesses, they try everything to 'help the poor, poor non-unionized employees', trying to talk to employees and organize a strike, etc.
What about when the company you work for loses a contract, because a competing company in another country 'mysteriously got some inside information' on your bid? It has happened. Hope it doesn't happen to you.
Our taxes may be high, but at least we get free health care, and a crime rate 1/10 of what it is in the states...
No, people do not talk funny in canada... except for in Newfoundland, but lets not for get all the people in the USA that talk funny, such as southern US states, texas, california vally girls etc etc...
We don't have bans on "hatefull speech" we have bans on racism, hate crimes etc...
He is right though.. are you going to rob someone when odds are there are ten people with assault rifles in shouting distance?
I'm sorry, but I have to reply to this, for I too live in Ontario. In fact, unlike you, I still live there and don't have any plans to move out. Your post has certainly been very informative but I want to present the other side of the story.
:-)
Yes, Harris lowered taxes. At what cost? Cuts to Health Care, Education, Welfare, etc. I presume you are not aware that Ontario is now one of the worst places in North America when it comes to education spending? I am currently a university student. I make just barely enough money to pay for school, and I don't think I can handle any more of Harris's "tax cuts". (Tuition has already gone up like 30% since I started and I don't even know how much it's gonna be this fall.)
What about the teachers' strike last year? Harris changed the existing contract and shoved it down their throats.
What about overcrowded hospitals and shortage of doctors?
I could go on here but I'm just gonna say one more thing. Our famous libretarian has proposed mandatory drug & alcohol tests for people on welfare, as part of his election campaign.
So, as far as I'm concerned, this crypto thing is the only thing Harris did right. Well, there is another one actually. Now you can walk around topless anywhere in Ontario. Let's hear it for libretarians
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Uh-huh. Yeah sure you will. And if it ever becomes as bad as you think - you won't make it to Canada. So best be on your way right now...
Microsoft seems to make quite a living selling insecure software products.
SGI, Sun, HP, IBM, they all make decent bucks selling under current guidelines.
Yes, if we never ever faced the possibility of a confict again, exporting strong crypto would be fine. We don't have that guarentee. Therefore, this is the US's way of trying to not say OOPS 20 years from now. I'm all for the privacy of my communciations. I just don't understand why it's such a big deal that we *slightly* cripple our software companies by not letting them export ONE type of product (in this argument)
I do not live in Canada (rather US0), but
What's wrong with cutting welfare? If you ask
me, all gov'ts should immediately cease to
support any welfare or related benefits as
leeching and tell people to work or starve to
death, whichever they like more. Reducing
welfare is what Clinton's doing and it's gonna
be another century before we get all those beggars
off our backs (if ever).
I do not however support cuts in medical or
education fields (regardless of country).
Well, you get the governement you pay for... :-)
(Let's hope so.)
Wow, I wrote this a long time ago.
'nuff said.
I image that it would be possible to set up an encrypted loopback fs... then even if someone rebooted your box, they still wouldn't have access to your data. Anyone ever try this?
--Rob
Someone please moderate this FreeBSD post down, it's not suppose to be here, a simple "Off Topic" would do if a few of you have points to spare. I am just going to try to repost the stuff again in the other thread.
What's wrong with having a good, well thought out and working welfare system. A system that can train people and find them jobs.
Yes we can't have a system that rewards laziness, and we don't have to. There are a lot of progress in reforming the welfare system.
Instead of starving people out and scaring the s*&t out of people who can't help themselves already, why don't we go and empower them with skills, knowledge and give them a kickstart?
Real freedom is empowering people; giving opportunities to those who have none. Just because we f*&ked it up before doesn't mean it'll never work. It just means we still have to learn how to make it work.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
haha, yes, I like it. Stupid americans. Get over yourself
While I can only congratulate Canada I have always wondered about the encryption policy of the US, or rather: why is it that the US government wants to deprive its citizens from the benefits of encryption?
Of course I recognize that the answer is Big Brother Wants to Watch You, but really, what is the practical difference between encryption and e.g. using some obscure little-known language?
Imagine a group of people who for the fun and challenge of it invents and uses a new language in their conversations (written and oral) within the group. Languages have been invented before, this is not an overwhelming task, and I assume that artificial languages (like e.g. Esperanto) fall outside the scope of the US encryption law. Am I right?
Now, what is the practical difference between encryption and an artificial language in this case, since Big Bad Brother would be unable to decipher the contents in both cases?
--
Unselfish actions pay back better
I have lived under the Ontario Tory regime to for the past 5+ years and have experienced all that they have done to my province. Of course he did what he said he would do, but so did Hitler. Point is, it doesn't make you a good person if you do what you say... It is really more important how you do things, and Harris couldn't have done anything more wrong. He cut taxes, but he downloaded a lot of costs to the municiple governments. Things such as garbage collection which used to be free are now charged for, and our water which used to be a small flat rate is now going to a per gallon fee. Basicly, what ever we got as an income tax relief, we lost through additional costs... Oh, and lets not forget our education system, ranked as one of the worst funded in North America. Our fscking books are older than I'am, and they're falling apart. That and our teachers have gone on strike twice because of how bad the have been treated by the government. Not to forget, our environment is being sold out to corporate interests, senior citizens are being killed off by the government because of health care cuts... Oh, and about the photo radar being a cash hog for the government, you obviously forgot the forced emmissions testing by the government, in which the government recieves a 30% cut and EVERYBODY has to take it. If your car has something slightly off, it has to be fixed before you can even take the test, not to mention that I have heard of some people having to have over $1000 worth of repairs done to their vehicles to get them up to spec... You should really consider removing Harris' d*ck from your mouth before you rant and rave about all he's done... Open you fscking eyes for a change...
Just ignore those statements, they are looking for a reaction. Although that polar bear thing was funny.
They don't want encryption software on the web. Period.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
right. So why don't you *give* these people a job? You can't just cut off their air supply and let them starve. You have to provide a way for them to feed themselves. If a country is unable to provide people with jobs, it deserves to spend millions on welfare.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
>>
I'm a Canadian living in America, and I must say that the only Americans who make Canada jokes are the kind of dumbass morons who haven't been outside of their home state, let alone their country, and know nothing of world affairs. Plus, they like to chant "USA USA USA" when watching sporting events. Plus, they have short girlfriends named Debbie, and short, overbearing Moms who send them poptarts in the mail. On the other hand, Mike Harris is a Nazi.
WHOA! I think you are over the stereotype per line quota. I have trouble believing all of your statements, or that you are Canadian at all.
but I fail to see how crippling our software actually does any good. If you can't get your crypto here, you can get it somewhere else...
--Rob
And how would you (the general population) stop us? With your imaginary guns?
Scene at border:
Bang! I hit you! You're dead!
No, you didn't! You missed!
I hit you! Not fair! Mommmmm!
It's ironic that the cities you mention (BCE territory) have the slowest ADSL service I've seen in the country. Only 960kbps down/120 up.
(Oh, and a side point. PPPoE sucks!)
--
--
The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
Bad mouse Bad Bad Bad mouse!!
The northernmost point in California is several hundred miles further north than the southernmost point in Canada.
polar bears keep on eating residents
More people get eaten/mauled by pitbulls in a year in the states than have been attacked/killed by polar bears in the last century.
They have a stupid sport
WWF. What more can I say?
they enter their own players into the olympics! How snotty is that?
Can we say "Dream Team"?
they won't even allow themselves to be admitted as the 51st state! They would rather stay a wholly own subsidary of the state of New York!
You tried to invade us once; we sent ya packin'. Don't make us set the White House on fire again.
This is 100% BULLSHIT, and you were force fed it by union trash as school. You're just too damn stupid to realize it (stupidity caused by the other government's letting unions run wild).
Harris has done nothing but improve my life, and I was in OAC during the strikes. I put the blame for the strikes directly on who caused them, and who participated in them, the teachers, and the unions.
Now, on workstations, I am still using Linux, because of the better avaliability of software. But, for something like Oracle, I would prefer a direct port to FreeBSD if I were to ever use it. Because of the fact that Oracle has the potential to use a lot of memory, FreeBSD may have an edge in better memory management (always lower memory usage, IMHO it does a more efficent job freeing up used memory while caching the important stuff).
This lets them get away with a pathetically small defense force and spend the money on other things.
As a percentage of GDP, Canada spends about 1.2% as compared to 3.4% in the USA.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Saskatchewan? Ha. Saskatchewan is the most socialist place in North America. To quote `Hugh' from the Saskatoon StarPhoenix:
``Saskatchewan will be prosperous when all of the old socialists leave and the young entrepreurs stay.''
Red Roy manages to keep the province afloat only through high taxes, mining profits, and ignoring the poor condition of the roads. (Saskatchewan has to be one of the only places in the world where the quality of roads is a major election issue.]=)
On the other hand, from what I can tell, Alberta rocks.
And as for Internet access, I'm sure some of you will be surprised to hear that SaskTel was the first company (in Canada, if not the world) to offer consumer ADSL. They've been doing it for at least two years, I believe, but since I'm too lazy to check my facts, don't quote me. ]=) Unfortunately, I live in the *true* boonies, and it's not available here.
Wow, I wrote this a long time ago.
So in essence you pay the bastards their money
because you are afraid of them. They hold you
for ransom in your own home. Quite a wimpy
attitude you got there.
Right. And what precisely do you do with those people who just *Can*'t get a job, and do try? Wouldn't you like it if you had some hard times, and the government was there to pick up some of the slack for you?
My mouse caused my offtopic post. Have you checked the loyalty of your mouse recently.
Uh, I submitted this to the previous discussion, I am sure of it. How the heck did it end up here, I am luck I found it. Anyone able to switch the storyID it's attached to and move it over to the previous discussion?
I'm in Edmonton, and we've got Cable from @home & Videon, ADSL from telus, ISDN from a few people and I believe Videon offers OC-3's to downtown.
And I know BC also has ADSL and cable.
Maybe you should do a few minutes of research before thinking only the eastern provinces have high-speed internet.
"30 or 40 years ago . . . it seemed to be that mom was in the kitchen with the hot breakfast cooking as everybody woke up in the morning."
-- Mike Harris talking about why we need school breakfast programs. Child hunger is the fault of lazy mothers, apparently (November 1996).
"Just as hula hoops went out, and those workers had to have a factory and a company that would manufacture something else that's in, it's the same in government."
-- Premier Mike Harris offering solace to laid-off hospital workers (March 1997).
"He's there for the full school day, in uniform, fully equipped with a weapon and carrying out a whole range of duties while he's there or she's there. If a problem crops up, I think it certainly raises the comfort levels of the teachers as well, there's no question about that."
-- Solicitor General Bob Runciman explaining the role of armed cops in the school system (April 1999).
"My Solicitor-General didn't say that."
-- Mike Harris in denial (April 1999).
And of course, the truly classic Harris line :
"We have to make sure those dollars don't go to beer."
-- Premier Mike Harris explaining why pregnant women on welfare no longer get $37 per month to buy extra food. Officials in the Ministry of Social Services said they had no evidence of women misusing their allowance (April 1998).
Mike Harris - Hero of the white, middle class male. Champion of Crypto laws, enemy of hospitals, schools and free political protest.
Yes, he kept his promises on cutting taxes (the wisdom of which escapes me), but what about his promises not to close any Hospitals? The promises to prevent introduction of user fees (which have just about balanced the difference from the tax cuts anyway.)? What about promises to control tuition increases? What about him just dumping responsibily onto the municipalities, causing an organizational nightmare? What about the incresases in property taxes that we have because responsibilty has been shirked onto the municipalities?
Oh, but he cut provincial income tax. That makes everything all right. Silly me. I forgot that Cutting Income Tax is a magic phrase which trumps anything else he did wrong.
You figure "real power" consists of laws that makes it piss easy for suicidal teens to run around with guns and bombs?
Canada does allow private ownership of guns but it doesn't seem that way to americans because we don't have any phyco people that go around killing people (at least not many).
Many years ago a bunch of farmers and merchants sent a letter to England in which they made fun of their tea and said that the Britsh sucked. And so it was, that the United States of America was formed.
Now, these farmers and merchants were very smart. They understood that power (any form of power) cannot rest dominantly in the hands of a single party. If the Government has power, so must the people. This prevents the system's decline into tyranny. The government has guns, so must the people. The government has strong encryption, so must the people. Obviously this does not apply to military power because that would be insane.
If power is left unbalanced then corruption comes into play. All parties must be left in check with eachother so that no one can beat the shit out of anyone else.
Chances are, a good majority of the American people understand this. So if you're lucky, crypto laws will be forced to respect this basic axiom of political science.
52 % ??? Gee, how the fuck people are putting up with working 6 months basically for nothing. ...
And we bitch about having to pay 20 %
Personally I prefer SSL telnet. There are a few reasons, most importantly that SSL/TLS are open standards.
The next thing is that SSL telnet can be implemented directly ontop of your existing telnet daemon and autoswitch between encrypted & non-encrypted clients.
No special daemons, just your plain old telnet daemon with a few patches to authenticate and encrypt via SSL. Of you can just stick in a copy of sslwrap in front of your telnet daemon and not make any changes at all.
Not to mention once you get OpenSSL up and running, you can hookup SSL POP3, SSL SMTP, SSL FTP, SSL NFS, etc.
While most of these don't have Windows clients, SSL SMTP and SSL POP3 do. There is an SSL telnet client for windows, but I don't know how good it is.
And OpenSSL has a host of useful programs from md5 to sha which come in handy once in a while.
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
If your government has deteriorated to the stage where citizens require guns so that they can have political power then I would suggest that you run for the nearest border. Up here in Canada we can VOTE a government out of office. We can also discuss political issues in private and compose election strategies without the current government having a legal right to the complete transcript of the conversation.
True. I've seen panhandlers work the same street, for hours and hours, spending time on their rear when literally in LOS of places with "help wanted" signs -- week after week after week.
'sides, ANY system is going to hose people because of conflicting values.
* People should get what they EARN.
* People should get what they NEED.
* People should do what they CAN.
It's impossible in practice to balance these. If you reward everybody according to how much they do and what the market feels they're worth, some people aren't going to measure up. Judging from the US, that's a fact.
If you reward people according to what they need, and go redistribution-of-wealth, a) "need" is incredibly nebulous, b) people are going to work far less efficiently. You'll also have to start arbitrarily denying "wants". That's also borne out by history. Witness, say, the effects of Stalinism and Maoism.
To force people to do what they can, you have to pay them accordingly -- and not reward them for simply existing.
Fundamentally, somebody's going to get the shaft.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
You are missing the point. There is no law stating that being employed is ones right !
Country does not provide jobs - people who are smart enough to create wealth do. Yep, those rich motherf... everybody likes to bitch about.
The reason the US needs such a big army is cause they piss-off so many nations.