Perhaps, but at some point one has to decide on one's aliegences.
As the GGP suggests, it would be hypocrisy for me to leave Canada in disgust, but continue to hold a Canadian passport. I agree with that view.
Even though the present U.S. administration is trampling many aspects of the American Constitution, at least there are principles expressed in said Constition with which I agree that are sorely absent in the Canadian one. Furthermore, Canada is hardly an example when it comes to civil rights and liberties: just research "Security Certificate" sometime.
When the U.S. curtails civil liberties, Canada follows shortly thereafter, but, unlike the U.S., there is no constitutional appeal whereby one can cry "foul!" to rally a protest.
...you instead support a crooked, war-mongering, corporately-owned government in the States? yeeaaah.. you made a good choice there.
Better a government that wages war against others than one that robs it's own citizens blind. As for Bush's excesses, that too will pass. Frankly, I wish he'd turn his anti-terrorist attention northward. Cleaning up the communists in Canada and ridding it of universal health non-care would be a good thing. Last thing I need is some commie canuck coming down here and fucking things up for all us expats. I rather like the militia monitoring the border between Washington and B.C.
...and I don't know when you last lived in Ontario, but whenever I NEEDED to see a doctor...
Ah yes, in Canada people dont "need" to see a doctor for painful conditions like cellulitis of the elbow: they get "Managing the pain of Cellulitis" handouts (that a kind, but clueless, friend sent me). While generally not life-threatening, it can lead to septicemia (which is) and I was happy to be wheeled into the ER the day I went to see my doctor about my sore elbow "on fire".
And I didn't have to worry about whether my HMO or MedicAid covered it or not.
Me neither, see, I work for a living. I don't have to worry about dying before I get care, or having money but no doctors around, like I did in 2003 when I lived in Whitby, ON.
...now if you please rescind your Canadian citizenship and give back the Canadian passport at your earliest opportunity that would be great, thanks
At the earliest possible convenience, you can be assured of that (the Canadian government won't let one rescind citizenship without one being a lawful permanent resident elsewhere, and that's in the works). My son hasn't even bothered to assert his Canadian citizenship by blood, and travels on his American passport.
I dunno... corporations have done me pretty well, as a lowly wage slave. When times are good, I sock money away for a rainy day. When times get tough, and I lose my job, I slog it out and find another one.
I'd hate to live in a place like France, where employee rights are so strong, almost no companies are hiring new staff, resulting in a large unemployed population of mostly adult children of immigrants who find themselves stuck in poverty because no one can accept the overhead of giving them a job. And so the chickens come home to roost, and the hawks push more socialism to fix the mess. Sheesh.
Canada isn't much better -- I never lived as well as I can in the U.S., even with all the risks and uncertainties. (Even though I work here legally, if I were layed off, I'd have to high-tail it back. It's still worth the risks).
Get a grip. We're hardly perfect, and at least if she loses the suit and files bankruptcy, she can still get her kids to a doctor.
Gee, that'd be a miracle: Last time I lived in Ontario, there was a shortage of 1400 doctors in metro Toronto alone and the numbers were growing -- almost no doctors were taking new cases.
So, yeah, she gets to see a doctor "for free" (what is the tax burden again?) if she can (a) find one, and (b) wait to be seen.
This Canadian happily works and lives legally in the U.S., pays for and gets health care when ever I or my family need it. In Canada it would be illegal for me to pay a doctor to tend to me even if s/he was willing -- this despite that law being overturned by the Canadian Supreme Court (at least in Quebec) -- Canada having an insane "Notwithstanding Clause" in their constitution that lets the government overrule the highest court in the land.
Canucks can mod me down all they want, but, having severed all my ties with Canada, none of my income is taxed to support their crooked, communist, government. The best way I can fight them is to stop feeding them.
Now, I'm not an apologist for Stalinism, but socialism, in it's most basic form means "sharing."
No, a cooperative engages in "sharing". Free and Open Source Software is developed in a cooperative environment.
Socialism means "taking":
Some of my father's income was taken to provide universal health care.
When none of that universal health care was available to him, his life was taken, too.
Had he been left alone, to save his own money, he might have been able to spend some of it to save his life.
Socialists are thieving parasites of society.
RMS does not come after me, yelling, "You! Smart Programmer!! Code!!!... Or else!!!!"
Best I ever consistently did was a 3x3x3 in 45 seconds, and that was about 20 years ago.
15 second times boggle my mind -- I don't think I could even move the pieces that fast.
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...you'll see why it is really needed so badly. Of course, it can be misused...
I didn't say reflection wasn't useful -- it certainly is (as are C# Attributes, for that matter, which generalize the concept of metadata about types and objects being available at run as well as compile time).
But, I've seen it used way too often to take something that's been upcast to a base type, and selectively downcast it back into a type of interest, when the upcast is what's really wrong (and Java must have contributed to this, what with "generic" libraries returning Objects that then needed to be downcase, before Generics were added to the language).
The "smell" test for me is to see if the code that takes advantage of reflection, or other metadata about types and objects, can handle any values for the information it gets (or at least a large class of them), or just a few finite ones: i.e. a poorly coded open-coded case statement on type.
In general, what's missing in C++ has neen the ability for the compiler to pass knowledge it has about types and objects to the code it has compiled. C# fixes that, and Java does this by design (though far too often than necessary). Though, with C#, the separation between syntax and type has been become a bit to fuzzy for my liking: the use of foreach over an iterator is one example: the foreach syntax should be defined as a language extention as part of the definition of the iterator base class type -- Think Mary 2, if you want to look at languages with dynamic syntax.
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reflection is addictive though because unlike interfaces etc it doesn't require the classes to be designed for it.
Well, no, but it does require the class to expose a method that does the right thing. That isn't much different from the class implementing the right interface.
Where reflection comes in handy is when you have a plain old data struct, with data members, and you want to automagically generate a UI to fill in the struct members. For example, if you have a struct that holds all the possible command line arguments for a program, with a bit of work, you can automagically generate a command line parser to fill it in within the limits of the types your automagic routine understands.
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Those kinds of things are possible because the C++ template metalanguage is Turing Complete.
Of course, the syntax gets real ugly real fast, because, I think, the template metalanguage is Turinc Complete by accident, and not design, but it's amazing what you can do.
I haven't looked at Java Genrics closely enough to know if they have the same expressive power, but I suspect they don't.
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If they'd just create an Interface, they could stop with the "if" statements.
Exactly. It's as if they learn RTTI before they learn polymorphism. Though, if one were pedantic, one could argue that the vtable is as indicative of type as anything else.
In the embedded world, stripping your Java code down is one of the first things you do.
I dunno. I've never managed to get Java as fast and lean as I'dve liked it to be, and others insist that it can be. And don't get me started on RMI.
The kind of things I drool over are the Turing-completness of the C++ template mechanism, but that just goes back to wanting to get the compiler to figure out as much as possible for me.
Re:C++ is cross-platform, dont know what your smok
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And yet, Java programs tend to compile to smaller files than native code
Now where did I put that interpreter again? Ah! Here it is! *oof*. Geez, that's getting heavier every year.
Not sure what you mean by this. Pretty much all code with direct references are properly checked at compile time.
I refer to the trend I've seen where types are checked at run-time out of laziness instead of using plain old polymorphism.
Besides, you gotta love the ability to build a self-organizing program scheme in 20-30 lines of Java code. Doing the same thing in C++ is a PITA
Well, yeah. Anytime you have to shoehorn in your own pseudo-reflection mechanism, it's a pain. But, reflection is one of those things that cane be *so* abused, it isn't funny.
Then again, I spent a lot of time in the embedded world, where you do as much at compile time as you can to avoid spending the time, code, and memory, to do it at run-time. Footprint matters. (Though, sometimes clever interpretation at runtime can help you trade space for time, and that's handy, but you're still making a trade.)
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gotta......ugh......carry......all... *pant*...that... *wheeze*... run time type information...around. Whew!
Though, I will admit that reflection is one of the things I like about C#. Still, the whole idea of using RTTI to defer what should be a compile-time decision to run-time just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
However, in its pure form, an individual member of a community may not have voted for a particular tax; but they have their implicit agreement to the other members of the community -- In order to gain the benefits of being a part of this community, I have agreed to honor the system of the community itself, and that means going along with votes I don't like, or I can leave.
That's the "consent" argument.
Certainly, if one consents to a socio-political system that involves taxation, then one has agreed to be taxed, yes. And, in some limited circumstances, this might actually make economic sense: broad taxation, even with the inevitable redistribution of funds from those that pay "more than their fair share" to those that pay "less", might be more cost-effective than the overhead of precise billing. In fact, on a local level, this works rather well: I like high quality schools in my town that benefit all children, because educated children are more likely to be procuctive citizens. It breaks down, however, the wider the geographic scope of the taxation becomes. If I move into a new town, then yes, one can argue that I've accepted the tax structure that might exist there.
But, what exactly have I consented to? The present tax levels? The power the government has to change them? The power to deny me the right to leave? The 1995 Quebec referendum on separation, if sucessful (It failed by the slimmest of margins) would have broken the province into ten economic zones, with different levels and kinds of taxation in each, and a prohibition to move from one zone to another to avoid the levels and kinds of taxation in a particular zone.
You could argue that in moving to a particular place, one has consented to all the powers the local (district, county, state, or federal) government has. But I disagree: to what extent do I have a choice and can consent freely? Consent is acceptance of a contract, and a contract is a meeting of minds. Where there is no meeting of minds, there is no contract, and hence no consent. Most likely and rationally what I have consented to, in my mind, and in order of importance and relevence is (a) the status quo, (b) my freedom to leave should the status quo change to my detriment, (c) that the cost to leave should not change from what it is when I arrive. No rational person, and certainly no libertarian, would consent to arbitrary rule by a popular mob with no hope of escape.
It is far better to have less government power than to excuse more by way of the freedome to leave: more government power might make such a freedom quite illusory when it would matter. I've been there, seen that, and left by the skin of my teeth and the fortunes of a vote too close for comfort.
Even this uncomfortably slippery argument for government power by consent does not address the issue of the newly franchised: those that only recently have the power to vote. To what have they consented before they can vote? Nothing, I'd say. First, their power to consent is not recognized (minors are not generally recognized as being able to contract, except for "necessaries", in most jurisdictions), so they can't be legitimately taxed. The carrot of socialized services can be dangled in front of them so as to "encourage" consent, and if the youth are poor and hungry, they will readily do so, though this can hardly be called consenting freely. Best then, for us to empower our children with the skills to support themselves (and this harks back to the value of education, so long as it isn't socialist pablum), so as they enter adulthood, the can make a free choice: there is no more powerful voice of non-confidence in government than the youth rejecting all it might offer.
The receipt requires several keys to decrypt, of which you only hold one. The other(s) are held by the party for which you voted, or in escrow for them.
Now, I suppose you could argue that escrow is not secure since the escrow agent could be corrupt (and collude with the thug in your example), but then you have the usual recourse to argue the whole election was rigged.
Why would you need to prove to a *nobody* who you voted for, if there is no benefit to you? That smacks of duress and collusion between the escrow agent and thug. Of course, you could argue that the judiciary is "in on it" and equally corrupt, when your complaint of election fraud is thrown out, but at that point you're dealing with "If I don't win the election, I'll kill everyone's kids"-type corruption, and a completely secret ballot won't help you. It may interest you to know that the 1995 separation referrendum in Quebec, Canada, had the pro-separation Quebec government threatening to raise taxes if they did not win a separation mandate. Not quite a death threat, but damn frightening nevertheless. (The soap and jury boxes, being expended, and the ballot box ineffective, the time comes to reach for the ammo box).
So, yes, a receipted ballot can never be completely secret, but the secret can be made to be known only to a sufficiently "comfortable" large number of individuals and organizations that must cooperate to reveal it. If you believe that even this is insufficient protection, then you might as well give up on the value of government powers distributed between multiple branches.
The larger question, however, is whether those that did not vote for a taxing body, can be exempt from taxation by it. As a libertarian, I think the answer should be "yes", since taxation is nothing more than theft by a popular mob, but I expect that many will disagree.
One of the great things about America is that morons like this school's staff often get their asses served to them on a plate. $117,500 is a lot for a school district to shell out
Unfortunately, that means the taxpayers.
Now, while it can be argued that the idiots who voted for the school board officials who decided to suspend this student deserve to pay that settlement, I don't think the entire school board electorate should.
On the assumption that the settlement will come out of future real-estate taxes that fund the school system, those who can prove they did not vote for the idiots should be exempt from contributing to the settlement. No one is giving up a secret ballot here -- one can chose between anonymity and a refund and decide what matters more (though I think one would be proud to prove they didn't vote for an idiot).
Yes, yes, this requires secret receipts for votes, and tax levies become a bit complex, but hey, that's what computers are for.
I know of a green card holder with two American children very close to deportation because he once pled guilty to a charge of domestic abuse, while quite innocent (as in, his mentally deranged wife's sister and aunt were witness to her calling 911 claiming abuse because he left the hosue to spend time with his friends). He pled guilty on the (bad) advice of an lawyer not familiar with immigration issues in the belief that the short term effect of a fine, or a short stint in jail was better than going through an extended trial. IOW, he pled guilty in the interest of expediency, not knowing the long-term consequences for a non-citizen of a spousal abuse conviction.
In fact, a traffic violation can be considered "moral turpitude" as far as an immigration hearing goes, and so, when I was charged with an illegal lane change, I sooner paid $350 in legal expenses to fight (and win) the charge than pay the $85 fine. Of course, I had the $350 to spend on a lawyer. Not every one does.
In this case, the deportation is being appealed by the narrowest ability to fund the appeal, on the primary grounds that the circumstances of the abuse conviction (including sworn affadavits by said sister in law and spouse's aunt) were never made known to the judge hearing the deportation case. It is hoped that the appellate judge will either throw out the deportation (criminal convictions do not automatically mean deportation under the law -- the judge has discretion), or at least stay it until a judgement is rendered on reopening the prior abuse case to see if an innocent verdict might be at hand.
But, all that costs $$$ - $3500 just to file the appeal.
Furthermore, if there is a law and I have choice between complying and going to jail guess what's going to happen? We'll comply.
Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death
Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.
No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The questing before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions
If my company were to buy one book, scan it, and put the digital data on 5 computers, that would be blatant copyright infringement.
Maybe, maybe not. It might very well be fair use, though not useful to your company.
Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Does copying the scanned text onto several computers benefit you? (Ignore anything other than the act of copying the book.)
2. Does it harm the copyright holder?
3. Is it educational?
4. Are you copying the whole book, or part of it?
The answers are yes, no, no, and yes. That roughly places it in the same category as "time shifting" TV programs. You benefit minimally in that you can access that book in several different places. But, unless your employees are accessing a copy simulataneously in different places, I see little argument for copyright infringement. Of course, if that was your whole intent, then, yes, you would be guilty of copyright infringement since it deprives the copyright holder of their profit on each copy that your employees would otherwise need.
But, consider the case where you have one employee who needs access to the information in that book in several different places at different times. Imagine that computer networks don't exist or, that the computers are intentionally not internetworked. A plausible scenario would be if the book described the creation and management of public/private key pairs for a public key cryptosystem and you are a certificate authority with several parallel key pair generation machines (which are intentionally not internetworked) all operated by one person (O.K., a bit less plausable, but work with me here...) and exist for reasons of operational redundancy.
No. A price shock in fixed costs increases the barrier to entry in a market but does little to affect existing "players".
Of course, no cost is truely fixed: licenses and leases have to be renewed, equipment, bricks and mortar decay and depreciate. But, while not completely fixed, the drain on profits is a dependent on the passage of time and relatively indenpendent of output.
I know that I am more charitable when I have more money to be charitable with.
I also know that some social issues requires large sums of money strategically directed toward solving them.
Finally, I know that large groups of people, operating independently, will generally not focus their charitable giving, unless the cause affects them personally, or is "close to home".
It stands to reason the that the "big" relatively invisible problems can only be solved by "big" problem solvers. After all, that's the socialist's argument for big government.
Unfortunately, the overhead of govenment grows as fast (some would argue faster) than its budget. Not so with a philantrhopist: they can only "grow" the "overhead" of their family so fast. Bill Gates could give away 99% of his wealth and still live quite comfortably. Further, governments only attack the local, popular issue du jure -- no doubt ro purchase future votes, the currency of the elected. Thus, they do not "give", they "invest".
There is, therefore, a place in society for very wealthy individuals to focus relatively large sums of money against widespread social ills that generally affect the very poorest of the poor.
The socialist will argue that governments can do better. But the evidence is clear: philanthropy is a pleasantly rampant tendency among the very well off and attacks problems that governments either will not or can not.
Therefore, it is appropriate to support the capitalist economic model that can give rise to the extraordinary concentration of wealth, and is one of the reasons I am a Libertarian.
The fact that the US originally invented DNS is irrelevant.
Well, no. What is relevent is that DNS is not patented.
If DNS were patented then an argument could be made that use could only come with the permission of the patent holder. And that argument would stick to anyone that accepts U.S. and international patents, voluntarily or "otherwise".
That is not the case.
There is nothing stopping the U.S. from "taking it's root nameservers home," figuratively. Mappings resolved by other nameservers that weren't synchronized would (or could) just be ignored in the U.S. The DNS would split, likely across national or multinational boundaries. Instead of a single DNS, there'd eventually be interoperability among them: perhaps an international root service.
It is this that other nations want to transgmogriphy the existing DNS into, yes?
Clearly, there is no need to do this for country-name TLDs, like.us, or.ca., or.fr.
But, I sure as heck don't want my hollan.org domain subject to a registrar outside the country where it was originally registered. I registered it with a U.S.-based registrar, expecting it's resolution to be subject to U.S. law within the U.S. and resolved by name servers synchronized with the U.S.-based root servers -- I won't point to root servers that aren't synchronized by agreement. In other words, if hollan.co.fr wants to usurp hollan.org, as resolved in the U.S., they'd better make a case in a U.S. court, thank you very much. I think most TLD subdomain holders would agree. Note that this strikes me as reasonable despite not being a U.S. citizen: I wanted a.org domain, registrars were all U.S.-based, and I accepted that fact. If I wanted a.ca domain, I would have applied for one (which, AFAIK, I couldn't get because I did not have a commercial presence in multiple provinces when I looked into the matter - first come, first served doesn't seam to exuist there).
If this means that non-country TLDs split across national boundaries, and one will have to register an unambigous country-specific domain along with their.com,.org, etc. so be it.
But to argue that non-country TLDs registered in the U.S. should suddenly be subject to non-U.S. arbitration is absurd: why would the U.S. agree to such a thing?
It is perfectly reasonable for the U.S. to argue that it will resolve non-country TLDs as it sees fit, and if others want to do otherwise, they're free to go ahead and try. However, I expect that any nation that wants to do serious business in the U.S. will have to have a U.S.-resolvable non-country domain to be taken seriously, and that the U.S. will try to pressure others to not split the non-country TLD namespace.
The U.S. has the benefit of inertia here, and I see no technical or ethical reason why they should give that up: they were first and the resulting inertia is the reward for such innovation.
The parent (renehollan) was not saying that everything is fine how it is, he was claiming that the US owns the global DNS system...
Er, no. I was pointing out that the U.S. (U.S.-residing individuals, to be precise) developed it.
While that certainly helps to lead toward a U.S.-centric deployment, it is by no means a requirement.
Put another way: you wanna control a DNS of your own? Well, make one!
It would be interesting if DNS were patented, though, and others could be enjoined from the distributed mapping of names to IP addresses. But, it isn't, and they aren't, so I repeat: "Build your own!"
All that cable won't resolve a domain name to an IP address.
You're suggesting the "play OUR way or we'll take our ball home" stragegy. Well, the U.S. seams to have plenty of balls of its own and doesn't need yours.
No one forced any one else to interconnect. The Internet started in the U.S. and others connected voluntarily.
Now, if DNS were developed in Helsini,.fi, things might have turned out differently...
Well, no, not really: the U.S. would have just seen the value of a distributed name service and started it's own.
Which is the reason why ONE SINGLE country should NOT be in control of internet domains
BULL FUCKING KAKA!
The U.S. built it, it's theirs. Tough shit that it's inconvenient for you: build your own. It's not the 'mericans fault that you now depend so desperately on something they built. Get along the way you did before!
This is a sorry excuse for coopting something useful with no investment of effort save the belief that theft requires less effort than work. I can't understand how anyone could consider that legitimate: it's rather like me building something out of thin air, and showing you how to build your own out of the thin air you have at your disposal, and yet, you still want mine.That's the gratitude I get for being generous enough to show you how to build your own? I think Fuck Off! is the appropriate response.
I wonder if there is some place where "Linus Torvalds" translates into "camel ass-fucker" or something equally vile. With this reasoning, the residents would petition that Linus be forced to change his name because he is so important and his current name is "inconvenient".
Bunch of damn communists, if you ask me. (Yeah, you didn't, but I've got karma so, nyeah, nyeah: mod me down.)
The big problem with aluminum smelting here is that it produces carbon dioxide gas: about 0.4 to 0.5 ton of carbon is oxidized for every ton of Al203 that is reduced. So that's 0.4~0.5 * (12 + 2 * 16) / 12 = 1.5 to 1.8 tons of C02.
O.K. So we have to build our smelter near a rainforest to get that C02 out of the atmosphere (and return the oxygen with which to burn the hdrogen produced by the "burning" of the aluminum in the car engine.
Any big drops in the Amazon river level anywhere? (Angel Falls also comes to mind, but I think it has too little volume for this purpose).
Slashdot Mirror
As the GGP suggests, it would be hypocrisy for me to leave Canada in disgust, but continue to hold a Canadian passport. I agree with that view.
Even though the present U.S. administration is trampling many aspects of the American Constitution, at least there are principles expressed in said Constition with which I agree that are sorely absent in the Canadian one. Furthermore, Canada is hardly an example when it comes to civil rights and liberties: just research "Security Certificate" sometime.
When the U.S. curtails civil liberties, Canada follows shortly thereafter, but, unlike the U.S., there is no constitutional appeal whereby one can cry "foul!" to rally a protest.
Better a government that wages war against others than one that robs it's own citizens blind. As for Bush's excesses, that too will pass. Frankly, I wish he'd turn his anti-terrorist attention northward. Cleaning up the communists in Canada and ridding it of universal health non-care would be a good thing. Last thing I need is some commie canuck coming down here and fucking things up for all us expats. I rather like the militia monitoring the border between Washington and B.C.
Ah yes, in Canada people dont "need" to see a doctor for painful conditions like cellulitis of the elbow: they get "Managing the pain of Cellulitis" handouts (that a kind, but clueless, friend sent me). While generally not life-threatening, it can lead to septicemia (which is) and I was happy to be wheeled into the ER the day I went to see my doctor about my sore elbow "on fire".
And I didn't have to worry about whether my HMO or MedicAid covered it or not.
Me neither, see, I work for a living. I don't have to worry about dying before I get care, or having money but no doctors around, like I did in 2003 when I lived in Whitby, ON.
At the earliest possible convenience, you can be assured of that (the Canadian government won't let one rescind citizenship without one being a lawful permanent resident elsewhere, and that's in the works). My son hasn't even bothered to assert his Canadian citizenship by blood, and travels on his American passport.
I'd hate to live in a place like France, where employee rights are so strong, almost no companies are hiring new staff, resulting in a large unemployed population of mostly adult children of immigrants who find themselves stuck in poverty because no one can accept the overhead of giving them a job. And so the chickens come home to roost, and the hawks push more socialism to fix the mess. Sheesh.
Canada isn't much better -- I never lived as well as I can in the U.S., even with all the risks and uncertainties. (Even though I work here legally, if I were layed off, I'd have to high-tail it back. It's still worth the risks).
So, take your socialist crap and shuve it.
Gee, that'd be a miracle: Last time I lived in Ontario, there was a shortage of 1400 doctors in metro Toronto alone and the numbers were growing -- almost no doctors were taking new cases.
So, yeah, she gets to see a doctor "for free" (what is the tax burden again?) if she can (a) find one, and (b) wait to be seen.
This Canadian happily works and lives legally in the U.S., pays for and gets health care when ever I or my family need it. In Canada it would be illegal for me to pay a doctor to tend to me even if s/he was willing -- this despite that law being overturned by the Canadian Supreme Court (at least in Quebec) -- Canada having an insane "Notwithstanding Clause" in their constitution that lets the government overrule the highest court in the land.
Canucks can mod me down all they want, but, having severed all my ties with Canada, none of my income is taxed to support their crooked, communist, government. The best way I can fight them is to stop feeding them.
No, a cooperative engages in "sharing". Free and Open Source Software is developed in a cooperative environment.
Socialism means "taking":
Some of my father's income was taken to provide universal health care. When none of that universal health care was available to him, his life was taken, too. Had he been left alone, to save his own money, he might have been able to spend some of it to save his life.
Socialists are thieving parasites of society.
RMS does not come after me, yelling, "You! Smart Programmer!! Code!!!... Or else!!!!"
15 second times boggle my mind -- I don't think I could even move the pieces that fast.
I didn't say reflection wasn't useful -- it certainly is (as are C# Attributes, for that matter, which generalize the concept of metadata about types and objects being available at run as well as compile time).
But, I've seen it used way too often to take something that's been upcast to a base type, and selectively downcast it back into a type of interest, when the upcast is what's really wrong (and Java must have contributed to this, what with "generic" libraries returning Objects that then needed to be downcase, before Generics were added to the language).
The "smell" test for me is to see if the code that takes advantage of reflection, or other metadata about types and objects, can handle any values for the information it gets (or at least a large class of them), or just a few finite ones: i.e. a poorly coded open-coded case statement on type.
In general, what's missing in C++ has neen the ability for the compiler to pass knowledge it has about types and objects to the code it has compiled. C# fixes that, and Java does this by design (though far too often than necessary). Though, with C#, the separation between syntax and type has been become a bit to fuzzy for my liking: the use of foreach over an iterator is one example: the foreach syntax should be defined as a language extention as part of the definition of the iterator base class type -- Think Mary 2, if you want to look at languages with dynamic syntax.
Well, no, but it does require the class to expose a method that does the right thing. That isn't much different from the class implementing the right interface.
Where reflection comes in handy is when you have a plain old data struct, with data members, and you want to automagically generate a UI to fill in the struct members. For example, if you have a struct that holds all the possible command line arguments for a program, with a bit of work, you can automagically generate a command line parser to fill it in within the limits of the types your automagic routine understands.
Look here
Those kinds of things are possible because the C++ template metalanguage is Turing Complete.
Of course, the syntax gets real ugly real fast, because, I think, the template metalanguage is Turinc Complete by accident, and not design, but it's amazing what you can do.
I haven't looked at Java Genrics closely enough to know if they have the same expressive power, but I suspect they don't.
Exactly. It's as if they learn RTTI before they learn polymorphism. Though, if one were pedantic, one could argue that the vtable is as indicative of type as anything else.
In the embedded world, stripping your Java code down is one of the first things you do.
I dunno. I've never managed to get Java as fast and lean as I'dve liked it to be, and others insist that it can be. And don't get me started on RMI.
The kind of things I drool over are the Turing-completness of the C++ template mechanism, but that just goes back to wanting to get the compiler to figure out as much as possible for me.
Now where did I put that interpreter again? Ah! Here it is! *oof*. Geez, that's getting heavier every year.
Not sure what you mean by this. Pretty much all code with direct references are properly checked at compile time.
I refer to the trend I've seen where types are checked at run-time out of laziness instead of using plain old polymorphism.
Besides, you gotta love the ability to build a self-organizing program scheme in 20-30 lines of Java code. Doing the same thing in C++ is a PITA
Well, yeah. Anytime you have to shoehorn in your own pseudo-reflection mechanism, it's a pain. But, reflection is one of those things that cane be *so* abused, it isn't funny.
Then again, I spent a lot of time in the embedded world, where you do as much at compile time as you can to avoid spending the time, code, and memory, to do it at run-time. Footprint matters. (Though, sometimes clever interpretation at runtime can help you trade space for time, and that's handy, but you're still making a trade.)
Though, I will admit that reflection is one of the things I like about C#. Still, the whole idea of using RTTI to defer what should be a compile-time decision to run-time just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
That's the "consent" argument.
Certainly, if one consents to a socio-political system that involves taxation, then one has agreed to be taxed, yes. And, in some limited circumstances, this might actually make economic sense: broad taxation, even with the inevitable redistribution of funds from those that pay "more than their fair share" to those that pay "less", might be more cost-effective than the overhead of precise billing. In fact, on a local level, this works rather well: I like high quality schools in my town that benefit all children, because educated children are more likely to be procuctive citizens. It breaks down, however, the wider the geographic scope of the taxation becomes. If I move into a new town, then yes, one can argue that I've accepted the tax structure that might exist there.
But, what exactly have I consented to? The present tax levels? The power the government has to change them? The power to deny me the right to leave? The 1995 Quebec referendum on separation, if sucessful (It failed by the slimmest of margins) would have broken the province into ten economic zones, with different levels and kinds of taxation in each, and a prohibition to move from one zone to another to avoid the levels and kinds of taxation in a particular zone.
You could argue that in moving to a particular place, one has consented to all the powers the local (district, county, state, or federal) government has. But I disagree: to what extent do I have a choice and can consent freely? Consent is acceptance of a contract, and a contract is a meeting of minds. Where there is no meeting of minds, there is no contract, and hence no consent. Most likely and rationally what I have consented to, in my mind, and in order of importance and relevence is (a) the status quo, (b) my freedom to leave should the status quo change to my detriment, (c) that the cost to leave should not change from what it is when I arrive. No rational person, and certainly no libertarian, would consent to arbitrary rule by a popular mob with no hope of escape.
It is far better to have less government power than to excuse more by way of the freedome to leave: more government power might make such a freedom quite illusory when it would matter. I've been there, seen that, and left by the skin of my teeth and the fortunes of a vote too close for comfort.
Even this uncomfortably slippery argument for government power by consent does not address the issue of the newly franchised: those that only recently have the power to vote. To what have they consented before they can vote? Nothing, I'd say. First, their power to consent is not recognized (minors are not generally recognized as being able to contract, except for "necessaries", in most jurisdictions), so they can't be legitimately taxed. The carrot of socialized services can be dangled in front of them so as to "encourage" consent, and if the youth are poor and hungry, they will readily do so, though this can hardly be called consenting freely. Best then, for us to empower our children with the skills to support themselves (and this harks back to the value of education, so long as it isn't socialist pablum), so as they enter adulthood, the can make a free choice: there is no more powerful voice of non-confidence in government than the youth rejecting all it might offer.
The receipt requires several keys to decrypt, of which you only hold one. The other(s) are held by the party for which you voted, or in escrow for them.
Now, I suppose you could argue that escrow is not secure since the escrow agent could be corrupt (and collude with the thug in your example), but then you have the usual recourse to argue the whole election was rigged.
Why would you need to prove to a *nobody* who you voted for, if there is no benefit to you? That smacks of duress and collusion between the escrow agent and thug. Of course, you could argue that the judiciary is "in on it" and equally corrupt, when your complaint of election fraud is thrown out, but at that point you're dealing with "If I don't win the election, I'll kill everyone's kids"-type corruption, and a completely secret ballot won't help you. It may interest you to know that the 1995 separation referrendum in Quebec, Canada, had the pro-separation Quebec government threatening to raise taxes if they did not win a separation mandate. Not quite a death threat, but damn frightening nevertheless. (The soap and jury boxes, being expended, and the ballot box ineffective, the time comes to reach for the ammo box).
So, yes, a receipted ballot can never be completely secret, but the secret can be made to be known only to a sufficiently "comfortable" large number of individuals and organizations that must cooperate to reveal it. If you believe that even this is insufficient protection, then you might as well give up on the value of government powers distributed between multiple branches.
The larger question, however, is whether those that did not vote for a taxing body, can be exempt from taxation by it. As a libertarian, I think the answer should be "yes", since taxation is nothing more than theft by a popular mob, but I expect that many will disagree.
Unfortunately, that means the taxpayers.
Now, while it can be argued that the idiots who voted for the school board officials who decided to suspend this student deserve to pay that settlement, I don't think the entire school board electorate should.
On the assumption that the settlement will come out of future real-estate taxes that fund the school system, those who can prove they did not vote for the idiots should be exempt from contributing to the settlement. No one is giving up a secret ballot here -- one can chose between anonymity and a refund and decide what matters more (though I think one would be proud to prove they didn't vote for an idiot).
Yes, yes, this requires secret receipts for votes, and tax levies become a bit complex, but hey, that's what computers are for.
I know of a green card holder with two American children very close to deportation because he once pled guilty to a charge of domestic abuse, while quite innocent (as in, his mentally deranged wife's sister and aunt were witness to her calling 911 claiming abuse because he left the hosue to spend time with his friends). He pled guilty on the (bad) advice of an lawyer not familiar with immigration issues in the belief that the short term effect of a fine, or a short stint in jail was better than going through an extended trial. IOW, he pled guilty in the interest of expediency, not knowing the long-term consequences for a non-citizen of a spousal abuse conviction.
In fact, a traffic violation can be considered "moral turpitude" as far as an immigration hearing goes, and so, when I was charged with an illegal lane change, I sooner paid $350 in legal expenses to fight (and win) the charge than pay the $85 fine. Of course, I had the $350 to spend on a lawyer. Not every one does.
In this case, the deportation is being appealed by the narrowest ability to fund the appeal, on the primary grounds that the circumstances of the abuse conviction (including sworn affadavits by said sister in law and spouse's aunt) were never made known to the judge hearing the deportation case. It is hoped that the appellate judge will either throw out the deportation (criminal convictions do not automatically mean deportation under the law -- the judge has discretion), or at least stay it until a judgement is rendered on reopening the prior abuse case to see if an innocent verdict might be at hand.
But, all that costs $$$ - $3500 just to file the appeal.
Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death
Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.
No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The questing before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions
Maybe, maybe not. It might very well be fair use, though not useful to your company.
Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Does copying the scanned text onto several computers benefit you? (Ignore anything other than the act of copying the book.)
2. Does it harm the copyright holder?
3. Is it educational?
4. Are you copying the whole book, or part of it?
The answers are yes, no, no, and yes. That roughly places it in the same category as "time shifting" TV programs. You benefit minimally in that you can access that book in several different places. But, unless your employees are accessing a copy simulataneously in different places, I see little argument for copyright infringement. Of course, if that was your whole intent, then, yes, you would be guilty of copyright infringement since it deprives the copyright holder of their profit on each copy that your employees would otherwise need.
But, consider the case where you have one employee who needs access to the information in that book in several different places at different times. Imagine that computer networks don't exist or, that the computers are intentionally not internetworked. A plausible scenario would be if the book described the creation and management of public/private key pairs for a public key cryptosystem and you are a certificate authority with several parallel key pair generation machines (which are intentionally not internetworked) all operated by one person (O.K., a bit less plausable, but work with me here...) and exist for reasons of operational redundancy.
That would strike me as a fair, if unlikely, use.
Of course, no cost is truely fixed: licenses and leases have to be renewed, equipment, bricks and mortar decay and depreciate. But, while not completely fixed, the drain on profits is a dependent on the passage of time and relatively indenpendent of output.
I also know that some social issues requires large sums of money strategically directed toward solving them.
Finally, I know that large groups of people, operating independently, will generally not focus their charitable giving, unless the cause affects them personally, or is "close to home".
It stands to reason the that the "big" relatively invisible problems can only be solved by "big" problem solvers. After all, that's the socialist's argument for big government.
Unfortunately, the overhead of govenment grows as fast (some would argue faster) than its budget. Not so with a philantrhopist: they can only "grow" the "overhead" of their family so fast. Bill Gates could give away 99% of his wealth and still live quite comfortably. Further, governments only attack the local, popular issue du jure -- no doubt ro purchase future votes, the currency of the elected. Thus, they do not "give", they "invest".
There is, therefore, a place in society for very wealthy individuals to focus relatively large sums of money against widespread social ills that generally affect the very poorest of the poor.
The socialist will argue that governments can do better. But the evidence is clear: philanthropy is a pleasantly rampant tendency among the very well off and attacks problems that governments either will not or can not.
Therefore, it is appropriate to support the capitalist economic model that can give rise to the extraordinary concentration of wealth, and is one of the reasons I am a Libertarian.
Well, no. What is relevent is that DNS is not patented.
If DNS were patented then an argument could be made that use could only come with the permission of the patent holder. And that argument would stick to anyone that accepts U.S. and international patents, voluntarily or "otherwise".
That is not the case.
There is nothing stopping the U.S. from "taking it's root nameservers home," figuratively. Mappings resolved by other nameservers that weren't synchronized would (or could) just be ignored in the U.S. The DNS would split, likely across national or multinational boundaries. Instead of a single DNS, there'd eventually be interoperability among them: perhaps an international root service.
It is this that other nations want to transgmogriphy the existing DNS into, yes?
Clearly, there is no need to do this for country-name TLDs, like .us, or .ca., or .fr.
But, I sure as heck don't want my hollan.org domain subject to a registrar outside the country where it was originally registered. I registered it with a U.S.-based registrar, expecting it's resolution to be subject to U.S. law within the U.S. and resolved by name servers synchronized with the U.S.-based root servers -- I won't point to root servers that aren't synchronized by agreement. In other words, if hollan.co.fr wants to usurp hollan.org, as resolved in the U.S., they'd better make a case in a U.S. court, thank you very much. I think most TLD subdomain holders would agree. Note that this strikes me as reasonable despite not being a U.S. citizen: I wanted a .org domain, registrars were all U.S.-based, and I accepted that fact. If I wanted a .ca domain, I would have applied for one (which, AFAIK, I couldn't get because I did not have a commercial presence in multiple provinces when I looked into the matter - first come, first served doesn't seam to exuist there).
If this means that non-country TLDs split across national boundaries, and one will have to register an unambigous country-specific domain along with their .com, .org, etc. so be it.
But to argue that non-country TLDs registered in the U.S. should suddenly be subject to non-U.S. arbitration is absurd: why would the U.S. agree to such a thing?
It is perfectly reasonable for the U.S. to argue that it will resolve non-country TLDs as it sees fit, and if others want to do otherwise, they're free to go ahead and try. However, I expect that any nation that wants to do serious business in the U.S. will have to have a U.S.-resolvable non-country domain to be taken seriously, and that the U.S. will try to pressure others to not split the non-country TLD namespace.
The U.S. has the benefit of inertia here, and I see no technical or ethical reason why they should give that up: they were first and the resulting inertia is the reward for such innovation.
Er, no. I was pointing out that the U.S. (U.S.-residing individuals, to be precise) developed it.
While that certainly helps to lead toward a U.S.-centric deployment, it is by no means a requirement.
Put another way: you wanna control a DNS of your own? Well, make one!
It would be interesting if DNS were patented, though, and others could be enjoined from the distributed mapping of names to IP addresses. But, it isn't, and they aren't, so I repeat: "Build your own!"
You're suggesting the "play OUR way or we'll take our ball home" stragegy. Well, the U.S. seams to have plenty of balls of its own and doesn't need yours.
No one forced any one else to interconnect. The Internet started in the U.S. and others connected voluntarily.
Now, if DNS were developed in Helsini, .fi, things might have turned out differently...
Well, no, not really: the U.S. would have just seen the value of a distributed name service and started it's own.
So, do the same.
BULL FUCKING KAKA!
The U.S. built it, it's theirs. Tough shit that it's inconvenient for you: build your own. It's not the 'mericans fault that you now depend so desperately on something they built. Get along the way you did before!
This is a sorry excuse for coopting something useful with no investment of effort save the belief that theft requires less effort than work. I can't understand how anyone could consider that legitimate: it's rather like me building something out of thin air, and showing you how to build your own out of the thin air you have at your disposal, and yet, you still want mine.That's the gratitude I get for being generous enough to show you how to build your own? I think Fuck Off! is the appropriate response.
I wonder if there is some place where "Linus Torvalds" translates into "camel ass-fucker" or something equally vile. With this reasoning, the residents would petition that Linus be forced to change his name because he is so important and his current name is "inconvenient".
Bunch of damn communists, if you ask me. (Yeah, you didn't, but I've got karma so, nyeah, nyeah: mod me down.)
O.K. So we have to build our smelter near a rainforest to get that C02 out of the atmosphere (and return the oxygen with which to burn the hdrogen produced by the "burning" of the aluminum in the car engine.
Any big drops in the Amazon river level anywhere? (Angel Falls also comes to mind, but I think it has too little volume for this purpose).