Be careful not to mix up governments and economic systems. Pure communism is only an economic system (i.e. it's actually possible to have a democratic government and a communist economic model). Nazism is a form of fascism, which is a system of government. Stalinism was a dictatorship - also a form of government.
The economic spectrum ranges from capitalist to communist, with socialism somewhere in the middle. Since there are no strict examples of pure capitalism or pure communism in the world (and probably never will be) we all basically live in socialist economies, which lie at various points along that spectrum. As an example, Americans like to dub Canada a socialist country, because it has universal health care, but Canada and the U.S. are actually close together on the socialism continuum: both have public schools, welfare, and strong labour unions, for instance.
On the other hand, there are tonnes of different governments... democracies, republics, monarchies, dictatorships, fundamentalist regimes, you name it. Many are also combinations of those systems.
Americans are much more likely to be up-front and open about their opinions on more controversial topics, though, I'll give you that. The Canadians I've met personally are pretty much universally just plain NICE. They don't bring up topics that are likely to be controversial.
This is certainly true in general, and explains why in Canada, Americans are considered "arrogant". However, individual differences are far greater than these cultural tendencies, so there are still many arrogant Canadians, and many nice Americans. Gotta love diversity!
I guess they must at the same time be dreading them, eh?
I doubt it... I'm pretty sure that blood is still thicker than borders. (and ours is a pretty thin border);-)
People here tend to not be so open to people they don't know and don't welcome personal questioning. Once you get to know someone they'll appear less grumpy.
What's even more funny is that even though the original post is comparing Britain and Canada, I can see a similar difference in attitudes between Canada and the United States. Being Canadian, I'm a bit taken aback when someone in the U.S. turns to me in an elevator and starts talking about how it's such a "blessed day" today. Also, perhaps a dozen times, I've had complete strangers (Americans) start complaining about "God damned foreigners" and how they're ruining America. I always find that one quite amusing: "Where y'all from anyway?" (smile)
I don't mean to say all my experiences are like that, but overall, I find that Rick Mercer had it right when he said "Americans are very generous, both with their money, and their opinions." To us 'foreigners', it might seem rude, but as you've pointed out, it's really just a cultural clash.
If you give your address to friends and family, they will either send a forward (which ads your email address to the headers and is picked up by spammers)
I guess I don't tend to forward jokes. I've seen them all, and tend to believe that most of my friends/colleagues have too. My friends also know that I don't like getting forwards, so they tend not to send any to me. The few that do have caved into putting me on the list as a Bcc.
or get a virus, which can also pick up your email address
As has been pointed out in other discussions, when you don't use MS Outlook, you don't get viruses.
And anybody running an SMTP server that records email addresses could harvest you for spam.
Fortunately, Yahoo seems to be pretty good about not doing that (and not selling my address in general, unlike other web email services).
Back to my first point... it HAS worked. I didn't say I don't get any spam, just that i get NEARLY none.
When I was in university and making web pages and stuff, I used to get tonnes of spam. When I posted to newsgroups I got tonnes of spam. However, these days, I just have two addresses... one for personal email, and the other for work email, and I rarely ever get spammed.
My personal email address is a yahoo account, and work email is provided from the company I work for. I give out my email addresses to friends and lots of contacts from work (and it's printed on my business cards).
I NEVER do these things: -post to newsgroups with a real address, -put my personal address on a website, -give a real address when filling out surveys, etc. online -sign up for newsletters -give my email to anyone who asks over the phone ("Sorry, I don't have a computer, but yes, I'd like to order that CD-ROM drive") -give my email address to Radio Shack -enter my personal info into my browser
Basically, I just refuse to allow my email address to proliferate. If I do happen to get spammed, I just don't reply, and it tends to go away, but it's really rare anyway.
Of course, if I ran a website, I'd create a unique email address just for that purpose, and I'd expect to have the sh!t spammed out of it, but at least it would be separate from my real addresses.
I was going to try to make a case for TCP in the timeclock example where a larger machine is available. I just can't see a good reason for the TCP overhead in this app. I mean, what exactly are they going to be sending... Something like "Employee 308 clock in", which the server is going to say "Got it, employee 308"?
Actually, the timeclocks he describes are fully fledged PCs, I believe, and they do support a full TCP stack already. However, considering the differences in complexity of the server, I still would favour a UDP solution.
As an example, for the server to implement TCP, you would need to listen on a port, deal with an incoming connection (maybe fork off another process), deal with connection timeouts, etc.. With UDP, you can just have one single procedure that's called when a packet arrives. The procedure parses out the employee number from "Employee 308 signing in", updates the employee database, and sends a UDP message back, i.e. "Employee 308 signed in". This tolerates dropped packets (the employee just swipes again), and most importantly, the implementation is practically stateless, and that's a much simpler architecture. Never underestimate the KISS principle.
Not necessarily. A better rule is that people who build sequencing and acknowledgements in should have used TCP. But if you can do without one or the other then sometimes UDP is worth it, but not often.
I agree. In this case, you don't need sequencing, because there's only ever one transaction out there from each client at any given time. The transaction is as simple as "12345"->"OK". The UDP protocol is so much simpler to program (and you don't have to worry about managing connections) that for this particular application, it certainly seems worthwhile.
Dude, I hate sound flame-y, but do you have any understanding of what you implemented? That you got lucky and it "works" is totally irrelevent to the fact that it's completely unreliable. All it takes is one flakey piece of Ethernet dropping packets to SCREW UP FREAKING TIMESHEETS.
Ok, calm down...
Now, I agree that UDP is built to be a fast, not-so-reliable protocol. One would initially presume that this is not the best thing to use on a punchclock system.
However, you have to look at the whole system.
First of all, if you put all the punchclocks, and the servers on the same subnet, then you've eliminated dropped packets due to routing.
Secondly, if you send an acknowledgement back to the clock, then it can display to the user "OK, you're signed in" or "ERROR, please retry". If you lose either the "sign-in" packet, or the acknowledgement packet, then all the user has to do it swipe again to retry.
Thirdly, these kind of systems always (should) have a manual backup, so if, for some reason, the system records Buddy punching in at 7 am, but never punching out, then a supervisor can go in and manually update the database to fix the problem.
Just remember that programs like this don't exist in a vaccuum; they are always part of a larger picture, and they need to function in that framework.
It's interesting to note that domestic television satellites didn't reach North America until 1972, 10 years after Telstar. Here's a link to a Communications Satellites Short History. From that page:
In 1965, ABC proposed a domestic satellite system to distribute television signals. The proposal sank into temporary oblivion, but in 1972 TELESAT CANADA launched the first domestic communications satellite, ANIK, to serve the vast Canadian continental area. RCA promptly leased circuits on the Canadian satellite until they could launch their own satellite. The first U.S. domestic communications satellite was Western Union's WESTAR I, launched on April 13, 1974.
Wow! I remember using MORAY (a modeller) and POV on my 386, probably about 10 years ago. That was some pretty cool stuff, but I can remember rendering times > 10 hours. Oh, how times have changed.
From a quick search on the internet, it appears that MORAY still exists, but the link I found to their homepage was down. Does anyone around here use MORAY as their modeller?
Re:first blasphemous post!
on
High Score
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· Score: 4, Funny
how the heck do I post a message without havink to reply?
You still have to 'reply', but only to the original article. Just click the big REPLY button at the top of the page, just under Katz's drivel.
There is absolutely no reason why free speech is a required right, it may be desireable but it is never required and society can function extremely well without it (look at pretty much anywhere outside of the USA).
You can't be serious. You think that there's no such thing as free speech outside of the USA? What about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? In particular, check out the section titled "Fundamental Freedoms". I guess I probably have to remind you that Canada is, in fact, outside of the USA.
Anyone else live outside the USA and have freedom of speech? Speak up!
Exactly! I work in the U.S. (but live in Canada) and the guys at work keep giving me sh!t for using a metric/ISO type of date in my filenames. But it makes bloody sense! Not only is 7/4/02 ambiguous, but it makes sorting soooo much more difficult.
The worst is that I see people use the 7/4/02 format on legal documents too... I just hope that controversial contracts are never signed before the 13th of the month, or else there might be confusion.
I would think that such bots already exist that filter not only that but removing NOSPAM from e-mail addresses
That's why my next email address will actually be something like "myname.NOSPAM@whatever.com". Somehow we must continue to prove that we're smarter than the machines! ha ha
When I learned "metric" time in school, the idea was there was a set order that everything appeared in: biggest to smallest. Therefore, the time now is 2002 07 04 23:04. That still makes a lot of sense to me, compared with 7/4/02. It always confuses me - which is the month, and which is the day? Just to be sure, I've actually started spelling out the month like this: 4 JUL 2002. That way, there's no doubt.
I don't want my children watching a show made by a coke fiend.
Then don't let them watch it! Besides, I still think it was aimed at the University age crowd... something to watch while you're drinking a few beers before you head out to the bar in first year.
Re:Have you learned nothing?
on
Cyber-Attacks?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The (approximately) 9,000 km border with Canada is completely uncontrolled except at major highways and urban areas.
Yes, but none of the 9/11 terrorists came through Canada. In fact, doing so would be pretty silly, since then you'd have to go through two immigration procedures, and both Canada and the U.S. share a list of known terrorists.
It would be easier to smuggle yourself into the U.S. aboard a ship than trying to cross the "completely uncontrolled" U.S.-Canadian border. Actually, the border between the U.S. and Canada employs quite a few high tech gadgets, such as motion detectors, IR video surveillance, and even low-level radar to track anyone trying to cross the border without going through a checkpoint. Forested areas are clearcut for 10 metres (or yards) each side of the border to make anyone crossing visible to surveillance.
Most of these practices are in place to catch drug smugglers, but they are equally effective against anyone trying to sneak across the border.
Re:Have you learned nothing?
on
Cyber-Attacks?
·
· Score: 2
some kid in fuckwad Arizona calling himself "Mafiaboy"
I'm pretty sure that Mafiaboy was from Canada, not Arizona. Not that we're proud of him... but if you're going to rant, then get your facts straight.
Actually I wish the entire idea of a forced Pledge of Allegiance would be done away with.
Being a 'foreigner' (to you), I don't think it's right to interject my opinion as a "right/wrong" type of argument, so let me just right down a few random thoughts to ponder:
As a ritual, this "Pledge of Allegiance" of yours certainly sounds like something that Saddam Hussein would make all the children in Iraq do. It doesn't sound like a very good method of promoting critical thinking in your children, though it might promote a sense of unity, I admit.
I don't know... I was just hit with the realization in the last few days/weeks that the rest of the western world used to see the U.S. as the "good" guys, but that view is rapidly changing. It seems like the U.S. is far too self-righteous to be the world leader it sees itself as. Perhaps the only future for America is as a bully.
Personally, I'm hoping that the E.U. (European Union) will step forward and form the building blocks of the first world government. Oh well, we can hope, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Be careful not to mix up governments and economic systems. Pure communism is only an economic system (i.e. it's actually possible to have a democratic government and a communist economic model). Nazism is a form of fascism, which is a system of government. Stalinism was a dictatorship - also a form of government.
The economic spectrum ranges from capitalist to communist, with socialism somewhere in the middle. Since there are no strict examples of pure capitalism or pure communism in the world (and probably never will be) we all basically live in socialist economies, which lie at various points along that spectrum. As an example, Americans like to dub Canada a socialist country, because it has universal health care, but Canada and the U.S. are actually close together on the socialism continuum: both have public schools, welfare, and strong labour unions, for instance.
On the other hand, there are tonnes of different governments... democracies, republics, monarchies, dictatorships, fundamentalist regimes, you name it. Many are also combinations of those systems.
Actually, these non-metric people would say 12 cm is about 4 11/16 inches. ;-)
Americans are much more likely to be up-front and open about their opinions on more controversial topics, though, I'll give you that. The Canadians I've met personally are pretty much universally just plain NICE. They don't bring up topics that are likely to be controversial.
;-)
This is certainly true in general, and explains why in Canada, Americans are considered "arrogant". However, individual differences are far greater than these cultural tendencies, so there are still many arrogant Canadians, and many nice Americans. Gotta love diversity!
I guess they must at the same time be dreading them, eh?
I doubt it... I'm pretty sure that blood is still thicker than borders. (and ours is a pretty thin border)
People here tend to not be so open to people they don't know and don't welcome personal questioning. Once you get to know someone they'll appear less grumpy.
What's even more funny is that even though the original post is comparing Britain and Canada, I can see a similar difference in attitudes between Canada and the United States. Being Canadian, I'm a bit taken aback when someone in the U.S. turns to me in an elevator and starts talking about how it's such a "blessed day" today. Also, perhaps a dozen times, I've had complete strangers (Americans) start complaining about "God damned foreigners" and how they're ruining America. I always find that one quite amusing: "Where y'all from anyway?" (smile)
I don't mean to say all my experiences are like that, but overall, I find that Rick Mercer had it right when he said "Americans are very generous, both with their money, and their opinions." To us 'foreigners', it might seem rude, but as you've pointed out, it's really just a cultural clash.
DON'T PANIC!
I have tried your method. It doesn't work.
Lay off on the pr0n sites for a while.
Your technique won't work.
It has for (literally) years.
If you give your address to friends and family, they will either send a forward (which ads your email address to the headers and is picked up by spammers)
I guess I don't tend to forward jokes. I've seen them all, and tend to believe that most of my friends/colleagues have too. My friends also know that I don't like getting forwards, so they tend not to send any to me. The few that do have caved into putting me on the list as a Bcc.
or get a virus, which can also pick up your email address
As has been pointed out in other discussions, when you don't use MS Outlook, you don't get viruses.
And anybody running an SMTP server that records email addresses could harvest you for spam.
Fortunately, Yahoo seems to be pretty good about not doing that (and not selling my address in general, unlike other web email services).
Back to my first point... it HAS worked. I didn't say I don't get any spam, just that i get NEARLY none.
When I was in university and making web pages and stuff, I used to get tonnes of spam. When I posted to newsgroups I got tonnes of spam. However, these days, I just have two addresses... one for personal email, and the other for work email, and I rarely ever get spammed.
My personal email address is a yahoo account, and work email is provided from the company I work for. I give out my email addresses to friends and lots of contacts from work (and it's printed on my business cards).
I NEVER do these things:
-post to newsgroups with a real address,
-put my personal address on a website,
-give a real address when filling out surveys, etc. online
-sign up for newsletters
-give my email to anyone who asks over the phone ("Sorry, I don't have a computer, but yes, I'd like to order that CD-ROM drive")
-give my email address to Radio Shack
-enter my personal info into my browser
Basically, I just refuse to allow my email address to proliferate. If I do happen to get spammed, I just don't reply, and it tends to go away, but it's really rare anyway.
Of course, if I ran a website, I'd create a unique email address just for that purpose, and I'd expect to have the sh!t spammed out of it, but at least it would be separate from my real addresses.
I was going to try to make a case for TCP in the timeclock example where a larger machine is available. I just can't see a good reason for the TCP overhead in this app. I mean, what exactly are they going to be sending... Something like "Employee 308 clock in", which the server is going to say "Got it, employee 308"?
Actually, the timeclocks he describes are fully fledged PCs, I believe, and they do support a full TCP stack already. However, considering the differences in complexity of the server, I still would favour a UDP solution.
As an example, for the server to implement TCP, you would need to listen on a port, deal with an incoming connection (maybe fork off another process), deal with connection timeouts, etc.. With UDP, you can just have one single procedure that's called when a packet arrives. The procedure parses out the employee number from "Employee 308 signing in", updates the employee database, and sends a UDP message back, i.e. "Employee 308 signed in". This tolerates dropped packets (the employee just swipes again), and most importantly, the implementation is practically stateless, and that's a much simpler architecture. Never underestimate the KISS principle.
Not necessarily. A better rule is that people who build sequencing and acknowledgements in should have used TCP. But if you can do without one or the other then sometimes UDP is worth it, but not often.
I agree. In this case, you don't need sequencing, because there's only ever one transaction out there from each client at any given time. The transaction is as simple as "12345"->"OK". The UDP protocol is so much simpler to program (and you don't have to worry about managing connections) that for this particular application, it certainly seems worthwhile.
Dude, I hate sound flame-y, but do you have any understanding of what you implemented? That you got lucky and it "works" is totally irrelevent to the fact that it's completely unreliable. All it takes is one flakey piece of Ethernet dropping packets to SCREW UP FREAKING TIMESHEETS.
Ok, calm down...
Now, I agree that UDP is built to be a fast, not-so-reliable protocol. One would initially presume that this is not the best thing to use on a punchclock system.
However, you have to look at the whole system.
First of all, if you put all the punchclocks, and the servers on the same subnet, then you've eliminated dropped packets due to routing.
Secondly, if you send an acknowledgement back to the clock, then it can display to the user "OK, you're signed in" or "ERROR, please retry". If you lose either the "sign-in" packet, or the acknowledgement packet, then all the user has to do it swipe again to retry.
Thirdly, these kind of systems always (should) have a manual backup, so if, for some reason, the system records Buddy punching in at 7 am, but never punching out, then a supervisor can go in and manually update the database to fix the problem.
Just remember that programs like this don't exist in a vaccuum; they are always part of a larger picture, and they need to function in that framework.
It's interesting to note that domestic television satellites didn't reach North America until 1972, 10 years after Telstar. Here's a link to a Communications Satellites Short History. From that page:
In 1965, ABC proposed a domestic satellite system to distribute television signals. The proposal sank into temporary oblivion, but in 1972 TELESAT CANADA launched the first domestic communications satellite, ANIK, to serve the vast Canadian continental area. RCA promptly leased circuits on the Canadian satellite until they could launch their own satellite. The first U.S. domestic communications satellite was Western Union's WESTAR I, launched on April 13, 1974.
Wow! I remember using MORAY (a modeller) and POV on my 386, probably about 10 years ago. That was some pretty cool stuff, but I can remember rendering times > 10 hours. Oh, how times have changed.
From a quick search on the internet, it appears that MORAY still exists, but the link I found to their homepage was down. Does anyone around here use MORAY as their modeller?
how the heck do I post a message without havink to reply?
You still have to 'reply', but only to the original article. Just click the big REPLY button at the top of the page, just under Katz's drivel.
There is absolutely no reason why free speech is a required right, it may be desireable but it is never required and society can function extremely well without it (look at pretty much anywhere outside of the USA).
You can't be serious. You think that there's no such thing as free speech outside of the USA? What about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? In particular, check out the section titled "Fundamental Freedoms". I guess I probably have to remind you that Canada is, in fact, outside of the USA.
Anyone else live outside the USA and have freedom of speech? Speak up!
131,000 British thermal units of energy are required to produce one gallon of ethanol, but a gallon will only give you about 77,000 Btu of fuel energy
One REALLY big question... does the 131,000 BTU figure include the energy absorbed from the sun?
and it makes sorting date fields trivial
Exactly! I work in the U.S. (but live in Canada) and the guys at work keep giving me sh!t for using a metric/ISO type of date in my filenames. But it makes bloody sense! Not only is 7/4/02 ambiguous, but it makes sorting soooo much more difficult.
The worst is that I see people use the 7/4/02 format on legal documents too... I just hope that controversial contracts are never signed before the 13th of the month, or else there might be confusion.
I would think that such bots already exist that filter not only that but removing NOSPAM from e-mail addresses
That's why my next email address will actually be something like "myname.NOSPAM@whatever.com". Somehow we must continue to prove that we're smarter than the machines! ha ha
When I learned "metric" time in school, the idea was there was a set order that everything appeared in: biggest to smallest. Therefore, the time now is 2002 07 04 23:04. That still makes a lot of sense to me, compared with 7/4/02. It always confuses me - which is the month, and which is the day? Just to be sure, I've actually started spelling out the month like this: 4 JUL 2002. That way, there's no doubt.
... on the Riemann Hypothesis:
Riemann Hypothesis
Ooooooh, I just can't wait until I can get Nimda on my Television!
I don't want my children watching a show made by a coke fiend.
Then don't let them watch it! Besides, I still think it was aimed at the University age crowd... something to watch while you're drinking a few beers before you head out to the bar in first year.
The (approximately) 9,000 km border with Canada is completely uncontrolled except at major highways and urban areas.
Yes, but none of the 9/11 terrorists came through Canada. In fact, doing so would be pretty silly, since then you'd have to go through two immigration procedures, and both Canada and the U.S. share a list of known terrorists.
It would be easier to smuggle yourself into the U.S. aboard a ship than trying to cross the "completely uncontrolled" U.S.-Canadian border. Actually, the border between the U.S. and Canada employs quite a few high tech gadgets, such as motion detectors, IR video surveillance, and even low-level radar to track anyone trying to cross the border without going through a checkpoint. Forested areas are clearcut for 10 metres (or yards) each side of the border to make anyone crossing visible to surveillance.
Most of these practices are in place to catch drug smugglers, but they are equally effective against anyone trying to sneak across the border.
some kid in fuckwad Arizona calling himself "Mafiaboy"
I'm pretty sure that Mafiaboy was from Canada, not Arizona. Not that we're proud of him... but if you're going to rant, then get your facts straight.
Actually I wish the entire idea of a forced Pledge of Allegiance would be done away with.
Being a 'foreigner' (to you), I don't think it's right to interject my opinion as a "right/wrong" type of argument, so let me just right down a few random thoughts to ponder:
As a ritual, this "Pledge of Allegiance" of yours certainly sounds like something that Saddam Hussein would make all the children in Iraq do. It doesn't sound like a very good method of promoting critical thinking in your children, though it might promote a sense of unity, I admit.
I don't know... I was just hit with the realization in the last few days/weeks that the rest of the western world used to see the U.S. as the "good" guys, but that view is rapidly changing. It seems like the U.S. is far too self-righteous to be the world leader it sees itself as. Perhaps the only future for America is as a bully.
Personally, I'm hoping that the E.U. (European Union) will step forward and form the building blocks of the first world government. Oh well, we can hope, right?
Okay, getting waayyy OT. Sorry.