I may be taking a simplistic view of this, but I've always thought it would be better to let people design buildings, web pages, whatever, however they wanted to, and then leave it to engineers to come up with products to allow accessibility for anyone who can't use the 'normal' methods of access.
Didn't the inventor of the Segway first make a wheelchair that could walk up stairs?
Unfortunately, these solutions are often expensive, but so are the widespread accessibility that is built into products nowadays. Either the company making the product has to pay, or we could subsidize the development and deployment of accessibility tools with a corporate tax. In essence, take the money that's going to be spent on making web pages accessible, and use it to develop and distribute more capable accessibility tools that can read normal web pages.
It's just a thought. I'm not saying it would work.
Never trust the media to correctly use technical terms (just think of the hacker/cracker debate). The best book I ever saw about demographics and generations was Boom, Bust and Echo. It focuses on Canadian demographics (the country which also has the most pronounced baby boom in the world), and it defines Generation X as those born from 1960 to 1966. Here is a chart from that book. It defines 1967 to 1979 as the "Baby Bust".
Generation X is the tail end of the boomers. The idea is, when they got out of high school, the job market was saturated with previous boomers already trying to make their way up the corporate ladders. Many Gen Xers went back to school, came out and still ended up not being able to find work.
I would recommend that book for other reasons - it is easy to read, and really thought provoking, no matter what country you're from.
Re:Thank GOD I was born in 1976!
on
Generation Wrecked
·
· Score: 2, Funny
That's what I thought... year of the dragon, baby!
A student who goes to grad school knows that he wants to get into research, and, yes, that's what grad school is all about.
This is not always true. For instance, my wife is studying to be a Clinical Psychologist, and to become a practicing Psychologist, you need to have your Ph.D. (though sometimes a Master's will work too). While it's true that you have to do research to get your Ph.D., a "Clinical Psychology" program exists to train Clinical Psychologists. "Clinical" specifically means you work with people to help them, not to do research.
That said, my wife did have to take the GRE as part of the application process.
Re:100,000 pieces? Is that a lot?
on
Lego Addictions
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Can I get that in terms a simple consumer like me can understand?
When I was a kid (yikes), lego sets usually cost about 10 cents per brick. Using that factor, 100,000 pieces is around $10,000 worth! That's not allowing for current prices, either, which are probably a lot higher.
That's no beter; those hosers don't even have freedom of speech.
All I know is, my American friends keep asking me to tape the TV show "Wild On..." for them because it's censored in the U.S., but fully uncensored in Canada. If you're not familiar, it's a travel show that plays on the E! network, where they go all around the world and show you the really hot places to party. The last show I saw had naked bungie jumping... apparently it was free if you jumped naked.
Plus, this year, "The Ozborne's" is apparently being broadcast in Canada on CTV uncensored. That will be interesting!
If people started flooding across the border into Canada and claiming refugee status, people certainly take notice.
While you're welcome to come and visit us in Canada, you'll find it very hard to claim refugee status here. To qualify as a refugee, you would pretty much need to prove that you face death upon returning home. The only way to do this is if you're going to be tried for a capital offense in the U.S., and in that case, the U.S. just has to promise not to give you the death penalty if they find you guilty, and then you'll be extradited.
However, all you really need to do is find a job in Canada, and then you can apply to immigrate here. I've met a lot of American immigrants, but no American refugees that I can remember.;^)
I suppose, if the U.S. acts unilaterally against Iraq, and then the U.S. starts drafting soldiers, then as long as Canada doesn't go to war with Iraq, you could probably dodge your draft up here. I don't know if that's considered refugee status or not. It probably is. Americans draft dodgers did come to Canada during the Vietnam war because Canada never fought in Vietnam, but we did fight in Korea, so you couldn't do it back then.
How ironic that a creationist would use a scientific principle to try and prove the existence of God. If you want to use the 2nd law of thermodynamics in an argument, then go and get a physics degree. In the mean time, check out this page and call me in the morning.
we only probe the ports on your computer that you have made public
Isn't that like saying, "we only searched houses of people who left their front door open"?
Where I'm from, leaving your front door open is a public invitation for neighbours and friends to knock and come in, but police and investigators still don't have the right to come in and search my house without an invitation or a warrant. Also, if someone came in and stole my TV while I was busy in the kitchen, they would still be a criminal. Of course, if they just listened to a few of my CDs and left, that probably wouldn't bother me too much.
Re:Shut up, Wesley! I'm walking through a door!
on
Star Trek: Pick A Plot
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Imagine the sound a sliding glass door makes when the track is rusty, and you know what those doors sounded like...a far cry from the pleasant "woosh!" we hear on TV.
What, like you were THERE or something?;-)
Honestly, that Wesley was a real hacker... anyone who could program a tricorder to isolate the TECH frequencies of the mid-band TECH spectrum, and do it using only 3 buttons! That was awesome! (I always figured the buttons must have been "1", "0", and "Backspace", so you would have to program it in binary machine code.)
Hey, I'm not a lumberjack, or a fur trader.... I don't live in an igloo or eat blubber, or own a dogsled.... and I don't know Jimmy, Sally or Suzy from Canada, although I'm certain they're really really nice.
I have a Prime Minister, not a president. I speak English and French, not American. And I pronounce it 'about', not 'a boot'.
I can proudly sew my country's flag on my backpack. I believe in peace keeping, not policing, diversity, not assimilation, and that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal. A toque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch, and it is pronounced 'zed' not 'zee', 'zed' !!!!
Canada is the second largest landmass! The first nation of hockey! and the best part of North America
Actually, Northwest still has signs posted which say that nail files are allowed, and I have STILL had them confiscated twice. Not only that, but you can buy them after the security check in the terminal! I think that the shops just have a deal with the security guys.
Being Canadian, I had the same initial reaction as you, but you don't understand the U.S. voting system. Voting in the U.S. is like filling out a tax form... it just goes on forever and ever. You have to vote for everything at once - local, state, etc., and there seem to be "sub votes" within them. Not to mention, they elect their judges and senate.
I know what you're feeling though - in Canada we use a pencil and a piece of paper. There are, say, 5 local candidates, each with a little box beside their name and you vote for one of those five by putting an 'X' in the box. However, we don't vote separately for the leader of the country, since we have a parliamentary system. Plus, our senate and judges are appointed by elected officials.
It does make sense though, with such low minimum wages, that the U.S. could afford to just hire people off the street to hand count ballots.
As for storing them electronically, that's a bad idea. Most people would not (and should not) accept various decaying charges on a vast bank of capacitors (I'm speaking of DRAM, of course), or magnetic deviations on a disk as proof of someone's vote. There really needs to be physical evidence that a real person can see and verify, or else the system can too easily be corrupted.... all of a sudden I feel like I should go and get all my money out of the bank!
we have something like 15 millian cows in the US alone, and we haven't even begun to milk that source yet
Yep, in Canada we've been studying a method of building a big dome over the U.S. and siphoning off all the methane from cow farts. Such a dome would have other benefits as well.;^)
If Cananda is such a great place, why do almost everyone in the country live as close to the 39th parallel as possible?
If you weren't a dumb American, you'd realize it's *warmer* towards the south of Canada. (You would also realize it's the 49th parallel, but nobody ever accused Americans of knowing where their border was.)
Since you're so interested, however, consider the fact that even though 80% of Canadians live withing 2 hours of the United States, very few actually live in border towns. Canadians live farther south for the climate, but not so far south that we have to smell the rancid stench of the United States.
BTW, Cuba is a great vacation spot - cheap as hell, great cigars, and no Americans. So sad you can't join us.
I can't believe the posts so far in this story. You'd think that there would at least be SOME amount of rational posts on/.
I think that we Canadians have offered our friendship to the U.S. long enough. The Americans are obviously not intelligent or mature enough to even bother acknowledging anymore. You wonder why people hate you? It's not a mystery to Canadians.
Screw the United States. The next time Osama knocks down one of your buildings, don't come whining to us for blood donations, places to land international flights, or donations for the victims. I, for one, couldn't give a shit. I'm sick of giving without even getting a thankyou.
I can't believe the posts so far in this story. You'd think that there would at least be SOME amount of rational posts on/.
I think that we Canadians have offered our friendship to the U.S. long enough. The Americans are obviously not intelligent or mature enough to even bother acknowledging anymore. You wonder why people hate you? It's not a mystery to Canadians.
Screw the United States. The next time Osama knocks down one of your buildings, don't come whining to us for blood donations, places to land international flights, or donations for the victims. I, for one, couldn't give a shit. I'm sick of giving without even getting a thankyou.
Here's how Canada would react:
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 2
what do you think the rest of the world would do?
Well, we Canadians would be happy to take any of you who managed to smuggle yourselves over your northern border to freedom. We might even come up with a catchy name like "the Underground Railroad".
Many people in the past came to Canada because they were fleeing oppression in the United States. We are happy to have them.
... back when I was in high school, there was a local story about a meteorite landing in the back yard of this guy in London, Ontario. They even interviewed a geologist from the local University of Western Ontario who said he was 75% certain it was a meteorite. Later he retracted his comment:
Blob no meteorite A strange blob that an expert believed plummeted from the heavens suddenly became less alien yesterday after it was found to be a lump of asphalt covered with paint. "I'm kind of embarrassed," said David Dilon, a member of the University of Western Ontario's geology department, who said he had been 75 percent certain the object was a meteorite.
Slashdot Mirror
I may be taking a simplistic view of this, but I've always thought it would be better to let people design buildings, web pages, whatever, however they wanted to, and then leave it to engineers to come up with products to allow accessibility for anyone who can't use the 'normal' methods of access.
Didn't the inventor of the Segway first make a wheelchair that could walk up stairs?
Unfortunately, these solutions are often expensive, but so are the widespread accessibility that is built into products nowadays. Either the company making the product has to pay, or we could subsidize the development and deployment of accessibility tools with a corporate tax. In essence, take the money that's going to be spent on making web pages accessible, and use it to develop and distribute more capable accessibility tools that can read normal web pages.
It's just a thought. I'm not saying it would work.
Never trust the media to correctly use technical terms (just think of the hacker/cracker debate). The best book I ever saw about demographics and generations was Boom, Bust and Echo. It focuses on Canadian demographics (the country which also has the most pronounced baby boom in the world), and it defines Generation X as those born from 1960 to 1966. Here is a chart from that book. It defines 1967 to 1979 as the "Baby Bust".
Generation X is the tail end of the boomers. The idea is, when they got out of high school, the job market was saturated with previous boomers already trying to make their way up the corporate ladders. Many Gen Xers went back to school, came out and still ended up not being able to find work.
I would recommend that book for other reasons - it is easy to read, and really thought provoking, no matter what country you're from.
That's what I thought... year of the dragon, baby!
That's how this Telezapper works.
...in order to secure their products, Microsoft today announced its new line of security software: "MS/GNU/Linux".
A student who goes to grad school knows that he wants to get into research, and, yes, that's what grad school is all about.
This is not always true. For instance, my wife is studying to be a Clinical Psychologist, and to become a practicing Psychologist, you need to have your Ph.D. (though sometimes a Master's will work too). While it's true that you have to do research to get your Ph.D., a "Clinical Psychology" program exists to train Clinical Psychologists. "Clinical" specifically means you work with people to help them, not to do research.
That said, my wife did have to take the GRE as part of the application process.
Can I get that in terms a simple consumer like me can understand?
When I was a kid (yikes), lego sets usually cost about 10 cents per brick. Using that factor, 100,000 pieces is around $10,000 worth! That's not allowing for current prices, either, which are probably a lot higher.
Just like the U.S. arms both the Israelis and the Palestinians? I agree.
That's no beter; those hosers don't even have freedom of speech.
All I know is, my American friends keep asking me to tape the TV show "Wild On..." for them because it's censored in the U.S., but fully uncensored in Canada. If you're not familiar, it's a travel show that plays on the E! network, where they go all around the world and show you the really hot places to party. The last show I saw had naked bungie jumping... apparently it was free if you jumped naked.
Plus, this year, "The Ozborne's" is apparently being broadcast in Canada on CTV uncensored. That will be interesting!
If people started flooding across the border into Canada and claiming refugee status, people certainly take notice.
;^)
While you're welcome to come and visit us in Canada, you'll find it very hard to claim refugee status here. To qualify as a refugee, you would pretty much need to prove that you face death upon returning home. The only way to do this is if you're going to be tried for a capital offense in the U.S., and in that case, the U.S. just has to promise not to give you the death penalty if they find you guilty, and then you'll be extradited.
However, all you really need to do is find a job in Canada, and then you can apply to immigrate here. I've met a lot of American immigrants, but no American refugees that I can remember.
I suppose, if the U.S. acts unilaterally against Iraq, and then the U.S. starts drafting soldiers, then as long as Canada doesn't go to war with Iraq, you could probably dodge your draft up here. I don't know if that's considered refugee status or not. It probably is. Americans draft dodgers did come to Canada during the Vietnam war because Canada never fought in Vietnam, but we did fight in Korea, so you couldn't do it back then.
How ironic that a creationist would use a scientific principle to try and prove the existence of God. If you want to use the 2nd law of thermodynamics in an argument, then go and get a physics degree. In the mean time, check out this page and call me in the morning.
we only probe the ports on your computer that you have made public
Isn't that like saying, "we only searched houses of people who left their front door open"?
Where I'm from, leaving your front door open is a public invitation for neighbours and friends to knock and come in, but police and investigators still don't have the right to come in and search my house without an invitation or a warrant. Also, if someone came in and stole my TV while I was busy in the kitchen, they would still be a criminal. Of course, if they just listened to a few of my CDs and left, that probably wouldn't bother me too much.
Imagine the sound a sliding glass door makes when the track is rusty, and you know what those doors sounded like...a far cry from the pleasant "woosh!" we hear on TV.
;-)
What, like you were THERE or something?
Honestly, that Wesley was a real hacker... anyone who could program a tricorder to isolate the TECH frequencies of the mid-band TECH spectrum, and do it using only 3 buttons! That was awesome! (I always figured the buttons must have been "1", "0", and "Backspace", so you would have to program it in binary machine code.)
This reminds me of: The Joe Canadian Rant:
Hey, I'm not a lumberjack, or a fur trader....
I don't live in an igloo or eat blubber, or own a dogsled....
and I don't know Jimmy, Sally or Suzy from Canada,
although I'm certain they're really really nice.
I have a Prime Minister, not a president.
I speak English and French, not American.
And I pronounce it 'about', not 'a boot'.
I can proudly sew my country's flag on my backpack.
I believe in peace keeping, not policing,
diversity, not assimilation,
and that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal.
A toque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch,
and it is pronounced 'zed' not 'zee', 'zed' !!!!
Canada is the second largest landmass!
The first nation of hockey!
and the best part of North America
My name is Joe,
and I am Canadian!!!
Actually, Northwest still has signs posted which say that nail files are allowed, and I have STILL had them confiscated twice. Not only that, but you can buy them after the security check in the terminal! I think that the shops just have a deal with the security guys.
Being Canadian, I had the same initial reaction as you, but you don't understand the U.S. voting system. Voting in the U.S. is like filling out a tax form... it just goes on forever and ever. You have to vote for everything at once - local, state, etc., and there seem to be "sub votes" within them. Not to mention, they elect their judges and senate.
... all of a sudden I feel like I should go and get all my money out of the bank!
I know what you're feeling though - in Canada we use a pencil and a piece of paper. There are, say, 5 local candidates, each with a little box beside their name and you vote for one of those five by putting an 'X' in the box. However, we don't vote separately for the leader of the country, since we have a parliamentary system. Plus, our senate and judges are appointed by elected officials.
It does make sense though, with such low minimum wages, that the U.S. could afford to just hire people off the street to hand count ballots.
As for storing them electronically, that's a bad idea. Most people would not (and should not) accept various decaying charges on a vast bank of capacitors (I'm speaking of DRAM, of course), or magnetic deviations on a disk as proof of someone's vote. There really needs to be physical evidence that a real person can see and verify, or else the system can too easily be corrupted.
Direct from Toronto: Naked News!!!
we have something like 15 millian cows in the US alone, and we haven't even begun to milk that source yet
;^)
Yep, in Canada we've been studying a method of building a big dome over the U.S. and siphoning off all the methane from cow farts. Such a dome would have other benefits as well.
How does that work? His first post is -1, and his reply, which is a carbon copy of the first, gets +3?
/. phenomenon.
Obviously, some of the moderators are American, and some are from the rest of the world. Duelling moderation... a new(?)
If Cananda is such a great place, why do almost everyone in the country live as close to the 39th parallel as possible?
If you weren't a dumb American, you'd realize it's *warmer* towards the south of Canada. (You would also realize it's the 49th parallel, but nobody ever accused Americans of knowing where their border was.)
Since you're so interested, however, consider the fact that even though 80% of Canadians live withing 2 hours of the United States, very few actually live in border towns. Canadians live farther south for the climate, but not so far south that we have to smell the rancid stench of the United States.
BTW, Cuba is a great vacation spot - cheap as hell, great cigars, and no Americans. So sad you can't join us.
I can't believe the posts so far in this story. You'd think that there would at least be SOME amount of rational posts on /.
I think that we Canadians have offered our friendship to the U.S. long enough. The Americans are obviously not intelligent or mature enough to even bother acknowledging anymore. You wonder why people hate you? It's not a mystery to Canadians.
Screw the United States. The next time Osama knocks down one of your buildings, don't come whining to us for blood donations, places to land international flights, or donations for the victims. I, for one, couldn't give a shit. I'm sick of giving without even getting a thankyou.
I can't believe the posts so far in this story. You'd think that there would at least be SOME amount of rational posts on /.
I think that we Canadians have offered our friendship to the U.S. long enough. The Americans are obviously not intelligent or mature enough to even bother acknowledging anymore. You wonder why people hate you? It's not a mystery to Canadians.
Screw the United States. The next time Osama knocks down one of your buildings, don't come whining to us for blood donations, places to land international flights, or donations for the victims. I, for one, couldn't give a shit. I'm sick of giving without even getting a thankyou.
You really mean that?
Come on up.
what do you think the rest of the world would do?
Well, we Canadians would be happy to take any of you who managed to smuggle yourselves over your northern border to freedom. We might even come up with a catchy name like "the Underground Railroad".
Many people in the past came to Canada because they were fleeing oppression in the United States. We are happy to have them.
... back when I was in high school, there was a local story about a meteorite landing in the back yard of this guy in London, Ontario. They even interviewed a geologist from the local University of Western Ontario who said he was 75% certain it was a meteorite. Later he retracted his comment:
Blob no meteorite
A strange blob that an expert believed plummeted
from the heavens suddenly became less alien yesterday
after it was found to be a lump of asphalt covered
with paint. "I'm kind of embarrassed," said David
Dilon, a member of the University of Western
Ontario's geology department, who said he had been 75
percent certain the object was a meteorite.