Thank you. I hate having to point this out to libertarian types over and over and over again. They seem to want all of the benefits of society without paying the costs.
If not, then, in Canada (and in most parts of the United States, and most other countries for that matter) your ISP will be sending data through wires controlled by either the big telephone regional monopoly of the bit cable regional monopoly. Because those companies own the "last mile" wires.
They "own" it solely by virtue of the government granting them the right to put up lines FOR THE PURPOSE OF DELIVERING A ***PUBLIC*** SERVICE.
And they will throttle your traffic. You think you'll be able to stop them? You're wrong.
The government only has to make a law probibiting throttling. It only has to say so. After all, government is the one who granted telcos the "right" to lay down lines, so it has the right to dictate what has to be done TO DELIVER THAT PUBLIC SERVICE.
And even if you do happen to have those billions, and a cooperative municipality, you have to set your rates high enough to recoup that investment while competing with companies that already paid off their investment in wires decades ago.
Indeed, they have paid their investment decades ago. So they cannot argue that they will lose money.
Better yet, since those lines have been paid long ago, they can be recuperated by the government and run as a truly public service, just like roads are (and, as it happens, those telecom lines are just like roads).
Do you understand the problem now?
It seems that it is you who has a comprehension problem.
Agreed. I had high hopes for the Conservatives, hoping they would represent a sane alternate to the spend-spend-spend Liberals.
You prove yet again that conservatives are utterly ignorant and pretty stupid. Who was it who had the federal (not national - Canada is not a nation) debt ballooning far more than the liberals in the 1980? You guess ed it: Brian Mulroney, of the Progressive Conservative Party.
Who eliminated the deficit following that spending orgy?
Jean Chrétin, of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Now, everyone bitches about the liberals for the sponsorship scandal. How much money did that involve? 120 millions?
Now, who stole 45 billion paid into the Unemployment Insurance Fund by the canadian WORKERS (just the WORKERS, not a cent was paid by their bosses) in order to PAY FOR THE Conservatives expenditures? Paul Martin from the Liberal Party of Canada, while he was Chrétin's finance sinister.
Now, as a conservative, you should applaud the efforts made to have the POOR PEOPLE PAY FOR LOWERING THE TAXES OF THE RICH, by a liberal government.
So, how come you are STILL a conservative after that? It is either because you are stupid or because you are ignorant.
This is a case where a problem is being solved by law vice technical means.
Much like the SPAM problem, you'll never be able to legislate the Internet.
Consumers should vote with their money. If ISP#1 is throttling, then stop subscribing. No other ISPs in the area? Get satellite access.
In the mean time, engineers should start working on things like TOR, Freenet, and encryption to ensure that the content on the wires stays free.
In any event, if you allow government to make inroads into what can and can't be legislated online, pretty soon, they'll legislate everything.
This is one Pandora's Box that should not be opened.
Yet still another typical clueless american blabbering without thinking.
We know that you yankees have that big cultural hangup about anything that comes from the government. Well, we don't have that. We don't need to: we're the redcoats. Government works for US, not those slimy american colonists.
That said, pull that head out of your arse and look closely at what government regulates so you can enjoy a good life, like:
- Probibiting the addition of sawdust to bread. OMG! We can't put sawdust in our bread anymore! Those governmental regulations are bankrupting us!
- Prohibiting drivers without license of insurance. OMG! Now if we have to pay to learn how to drive and if we have to pay for insurance, no one will be able to afford to drive!!!
- Prohibiting the parking of unusable vehicles on property to keep property values from decreasing.
- Mandating the wearing of clothes in public.
- Prohibiting the sale of alcohol to minors.
- Prohibiting stealing money from banks. OMG! If we can't rob banks anymore, we gonna have to work for a living!!!
- Prohibiting driving on the wrong side of the road.
- Mandating the washing of hands by restaurant employees after they go to the toilet.
- Mandating the extermination of rodents from place where food is sold and/or prepared.
What will likely happen is that Rogers (the consumer) will located a new ISP provider that will not throttle their bandwidth and then say, "Goodbye Bell". That's how the free market works.
What you goddammed fuckingly terminally stupid yankees fail to get with your pigheadedly assinine fear of whatever the government decides to do is that there cannot be a free market when the last mile is totally unregulated private property.
You yanks are so fucking blinded by your cultural hangups against the government that you totally fail to see that the private monopoly granted to US telcos is the reason why the United States of America is a world laughingstock when it comes to broadband.
No day goes by without hearing from some croporate giant running roughshod over the laws, procedures or institutions of democratic countries.
The United States have let a handful of mega-croporations totally wreck it's economy with the blessing of the government that was elected while pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes.
It is time for the people to revolt, and put the croporations back to where they belong by firmly asserting the power of the government over croporations, if need by, by the croporate death penalty and the confiscation of the croporation's assets.
The government has thoroughly been subverted by croporate cronies; those should be charged with subversive sedition and thrown in jail and the key tossed in the Marianas trench.
Suppose company X distributes b0rk3d drivers, and won't patch them.
Now, Joe Blow manages to get them working by patching them here and there. Of course, if he distributes the patched drivers, he infringes on X's copyright, no doubt about it.
Now, if he distributes a patching application that applies the modifications straight into the binary, since his mods are his own, he's not infringing X's copyright at all.
Okay, now, suppose John Doe starts with a legit copy of, say "Bambi". Everyone has the legit copy of "Bambi".
Now, John Dow takes "Snow White" and XORs it with "Bambi" and distributes it. By itself, the result (let's call it "Snowi") is neither "Snow White" nor "Bambi".
But by XORing "Snowi" with "Bambi", you happen to get "Snow White". So, John Dow effectively encrypts "Snow White" in a one-time pad with "Bambi" being the key.
Is Joe Blow infinging on "Snow White"'s copyright???
It must be the operating thethans(TM) of the church of $cientology® who DDOSed it following the "leak" of their "holy" (as in "full of holes") "scriptures"...
Just move in the cube farm, and if the laptop disappear, well, the company will provide another one. With properly-restored backups, of course. Because the company has a backup policy, right?
The reason is very simple: to prepare for the real life.
5. Awful Textbooks
Thick, dry, black and white manuscripts are rarely a source of inspiration and sometimes can cause loads of confusion. Often, the text is poorly written and interrupted by lengthy equations with symbols that are different from those used by the professor during lectures.
In real life, one has to deal with awful specifications written by committees, reviewed by accountants and confirmed by MBAs. Then there are the requirement as enumerated by the customer that is clueless regarding what he wants.
4. Professors are Rarely Encouraging
During each class, a professor that would rather be tending to his research will walz up to a blackboard or ovehead projector and scribble out equations for an hour without uttering a single sentence to create some excitement.
In real life, there are pointy-headed bosses. 'nuff said.
3. Dearth of Quality Counseling
College students may not have a sense for how to build their resume and they might be clueless about the variety of career opportunities that await them. Unfortunately, some academic advisers do little more than post fliers about internships and hand out a checklist of classes to take. They should make some projections about the future job market, learn about the interests of each young scholar, and offer them tailored advice for how to best prepare themselves.
Engineers aren't noteworthy for social grace. As a matter of fact, as a kid, I fancied becoming an engineer, and that fancy was killed outright when I first met an engineer.
Later in my life, when I directed the work of several engineers, I found I was glad I did not become one. And the same goes when I meet that kid-cousin who just became one.
2. Other Disciplines Have Inflated Grades.
Other professions have inflated grades. Like marketers, salesemen or finance guys. This is real life, boys.
1. Every Assignment Feels the Same
Nearly every homework assignment and test question is a math problem. Only a few courses require creativity or offer hands on experience.
When I first laid hands on a Apple ][, I had plenty of programming under my belt. Back in that time, Big Blue(TM) (IBM) was the very personification of Evil. IBM was no different than Darth Vader. Or Lex Luthor.
You could do all you wanted with an Apple ][. Program it, modify it, make special hardware interface boards (Apple even sold a breadboard prototyping card you could plug into an expansion slot).
With IBM, you were stuck with IBM hardware, you had to use IBM software, and everything was meticulously engineered to be as incompatible with the real world as possible. Remember EBCDIC? IBM harware was truly fabulous and looked great, yes, but it still wasn't ASCII, nor would talk to otherwise standard components.
And with IBM, you were stuck with the high-priesthood. Heaven forbid users could write their own software, because IBM operating systems were meticulously crafted to be obscure as possible. It took years to learn to program on a big iron dinosaur.
Then, Apple brought out the Macintrash. The computer for the rest of them.
No expansion slots. No way to write software (the SDK initially ran on the grossly overpriced LISA).
Oh, yes, Apple was to have released some kind of Visual-Basic-like language, but the idea was nixed after Microsoft threatened to stop developping EXCEL for the mac if they released that.
With a Mac, you were back to the old high priesthood IBM was infamous for. You could only have software that the high-priests deigned you could have. Nothing else.
Oh, sure enough, eventually, as Macs got more performance, you could eventually get a reasonably-priced SDK for it. And then you had to learn how to program it, because it's operating architecture was totally different from what existed before. Before, your program used to control the OS. "open this file", "read keyboard" and so on.
Not so with the Mac. In soviet Macland, Operating System controls your program: "hey, the user clicked on this button!", "Hey! the user pressed on this key while the cursor was on his widget"! "Hey, the user pressed on the 'OFF' button" (whoops, that was on the LISA, not the Mac), and so on.
Mastering the main event loop was a black art, and took too long for many people to consider programming beige toasters.
In the meanwhile, sheep who know fuck-all about Von Neumann architecture flocked to buy beige toasters, and were so grossly indoctrinated into their quite inferior product (without it's handicapped mouse, a Macintrash is nothing but a sitting-suck -- you can't even turn it off without the mouse!!!) that they felt the need to proselyte their crappy toy to us, who know better and write programs by typing "cat > $EXECUTABLE".
Every once in a while, when I rummage through my books, I stop on "Against the fall of night" (the original version of "The city and the stars"), and I seldom resist picking it up and reading it again...
"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."
-- Richard Mulhous Nixon
The Candu reactor is a good export for Canada. AND it can use depleted uranium and other non-weapon-grade fuel. Which is exactly why they haven't been selling like hotcakes...
LOL, they probably were secret police. Or drug dealers. Nah, this was some 40 years ago, way before the was on (some) drugs, and besides, they were in one of that batch of Renault 8s the police department bought back then in a fit of hubris, a car no self respecting drug dealer would be caught within 100 meters of...
Slashdot Mirror
Better yet, since those lines have been paid long ago, they can be recuperated by the government and run as a truly public service, just like roads are (and, as it happens, those telecom lines are just like roads).
It seems that it is you who has a comprehension problem.Who eliminated the deficit following that spending orgy?
Jean Chrétin, of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Now, everyone bitches about the liberals for the sponsorship scandal. How much money did that involve? 120 millions?
Now, who stole 45 billion paid into the Unemployment Insurance Fund by the canadian WORKERS (just the WORKERS, not a cent was paid by their bosses) in order to PAY FOR THE Conservatives expenditures? Paul Martin from the Liberal Party of Canada, while he was Chrétin's finance sinister.
Now, as a conservative, you should applaud the efforts made to have the POOR PEOPLE PAY FOR LOWERING THE TAXES OF THE RICH, by a liberal government.
So, how come you are STILL a conservative after that? It is either because you are stupid or because you are ignorant.
We know that you yankees have that big cultural hangup about anything that comes from the government. Well, we don't have that. We don't need to: we're the redcoats. Government works for US, not those slimy american colonists.
That said, pull that head out of your arse and look closely at what government regulates so you can enjoy a good life, like:
- Probibiting the addition of sawdust to bread. OMG! We can't put sawdust in our bread anymore! Those governmental regulations are bankrupting us!
- Prohibiting drivers without license of insurance. OMG! Now if we have to pay to learn how to drive and if we have to pay for insurance, no one will be able to afford to drive!!!
- Prohibiting the parking of unusable vehicles on property to keep property values from decreasing.
- Mandating the wearing of clothes in public.
- Prohibiting the sale of alcohol to minors.
- Prohibiting stealing money from banks. OMG! If we can't rob banks anymore, we gonna have to work for a living!!!
- Prohibiting driving on the wrong side of the road.
- Mandating the washing of hands by restaurant employees after they go to the toilet.
- Mandating the extermination of rodents from place where food is sold and/or prepared.
You yanks are so fucking blinded by your cultural hangups against the government that you totally fail to see that the private monopoly granted to US telcos is the reason why the United States of America is a world laughingstock when it comes to broadband.
12956. Slashdot newbie, indeed... :)
Encrypt early, encrypt often (and do it properly).
This is insane.
No day goes by without hearing from some croporate giant running roughshod over the laws, procedures or institutions of democratic countries.
The United States have let a handful of mega-croporations totally wreck it's economy with the blessing of the government that was elected while pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes.
It is time for the people to revolt, and put the croporations back to where they belong by firmly asserting the power of the government over croporations, if need by, by the croporate death penalty and the confiscation of the croporation's assets.
The government has thoroughly been subverted by croporate cronies; those should be charged with subversive sedition and thrown in jail and the key tossed in the Marianas trench.
Interesting read. Thanks. I suggest you get acquainted with The Library of Babel (1941), by Jorge Luis Borges. You will find interesting parallels.
Suppose company X distributes b0rk3d drivers, and won't patch them.
Now, Joe Blow manages to get them working by patching them here and there. Of course, if he distributes the patched drivers, he infringes on X's copyright, no doubt about it.
Now, if he distributes a patching application that applies the modifications straight into the binary, since his mods are his own, he's not infringing X's copyright at all.
Okay, now, suppose John Doe starts with a legit copy of, say "Bambi". Everyone has the legit copy of "Bambi".
Now, John Dow takes "Snow White" and XORs it with "Bambi" and distributes it. By itself, the result (let's call it "Snowi") is neither "Snow White" nor "Bambi".
But by XORing "Snowi" with "Bambi", you happen to get "Snow White". So, John Dow effectively encrypts "Snow White" in a one-time pad with "Bambi" being the key.
Is Joe Blow infinging on "Snow White"'s copyright???
It must be the operating thethans(TM) of the church of $cientology® who DDOSed it following the "leak" of their "holy" (as in "full of holes") "scriptures"...
Since you're not paid to work there.
This is clearly none of your concern.
Just move in the cube farm, and if the laptop disappear, well, the company will provide another one. With properly-restored backups, of course. Because the company has a backup policy, right?
Later in my life, when I directed the work of several engineers, I found I was glad I did not become one. And the same goes when I meet that kid-cousin who just became one. Other professions have inflated grades. Like marketers, salesemen or finance guys. This is real life, boys. Every day on the job feels the same, too.
40 years ago, truckers had blue lights mounted under their dashboards precisely to stay awake.
When I first laid hands on a Apple ][, I had plenty of programming under my belt. Back in that time, Big Blue(TM) (IBM) was the very personification of Evil. IBM was no different than Darth Vader. Or Lex Luthor.
You could do all you wanted with an Apple ][. Program it, modify it, make special hardware interface boards (Apple even sold a breadboard prototyping card you could plug into an expansion slot).
With IBM, you were stuck with IBM hardware, you had to use IBM software, and everything was meticulously engineered to be as incompatible with the real world as possible. Remember EBCDIC? IBM harware was truly fabulous and looked great, yes, but it still wasn't ASCII, nor would talk to otherwise standard components.
And with IBM, you were stuck with the high-priesthood. Heaven forbid users could write their own software, because IBM operating systems were meticulously crafted to be obscure as possible. It took years to learn to program on a big iron dinosaur.
Then, Apple brought out the Macintrash. The computer for the rest of them.
No expansion slots. No way to write software (the SDK initially ran on the grossly overpriced LISA).
Oh, yes, Apple was to have released some kind of Visual-Basic-like language, but the idea was nixed after Microsoft threatened to stop developping EXCEL for the mac if they released that.
With a Mac, you were back to the old high priesthood IBM was infamous for. You could only have software that the high-priests deigned you could have. Nothing else.
Oh, sure enough, eventually, as Macs got more performance, you could eventually get a reasonably-priced SDK for it. And then you had to learn how to program it, because it's operating architecture was totally different from what existed before. Before, your program used to control the OS. "open this file", "read keyboard" and so on.
Not so with the Mac. In soviet Macland, Operating System controls your program: "hey, the user clicked on this button!", "Hey! the user pressed on this key while the cursor was on his widget"! "Hey, the user pressed on the 'OFF' button" (whoops, that was on the LISA, not the Mac), and so on.
Mastering the main event loop was a black art, and took too long for many people to consider programming beige toasters.
In the meanwhile, sheep who know fuck-all about Von Neumann architecture flocked to buy beige toasters, and were so grossly indoctrinated into their quite inferior product (without it's handicapped mouse, a Macintrash is nothing but a sitting-suck -- you can't even turn it off without the mouse!!!) that they felt the need to proselyte their crappy toy to us, who know better and write programs by typing "cat > $EXECUTABLE".
My god! It's full of stars!!!
Every once in a while, when I rummage through my books, I stop on "Against the fall of night" (the original version of "The city and the stars"), and I seldom resist picking it up and reading it again...
Well, at least they did not bring down You-Tube like Pakistan clumsily did when they blocked it...
"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." -- Richard Mulhous Nixon