You seem a little harsh, and I have a hard time believing you're canadian.
Born 1961, Montreal, Quebec.
I've never had any of the above mentioned problems, and neither did my friend when he got lukemia.
Then you and your friend have been extremely lucky. Know this: the funds for that care, in some small part, came from an individual who never needed more than a routine doctor's visit, until he needed repair of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Left untreated this is a death sentence. The best surgeons in the U.S. have a 70% recovery rate. The surgery was denied in Canada. Had the patient purchased U.S.-style private health insurance, or even self-insured, with the tax dollars he paid for health care since it was was socialized in Canada, affording the surgery would have been a non-issue, with plenty of funds to spare. However, he was literally taxed to death, denied the means to save his own life with his own money.
I have never heard of this surgeon quota, and a quick google search didn't find me anything.
You think it would be front page news? Look deeper, like for waiting lists for moderate surgery, like hip replacements, etc. Why are there waiting lists at the same time that doctor's salaries are capped? If there are waiting lists, there is demand, yet supply is curtailed.
There are some problems, however. The salaries do need to go up for doctors and surgeons., as a lot (but certainly not all) do head to the US. Its not an astronomical number as you imply, though.
Salaries need to be established by a free market, and not capped by state fiat. As for transmigration between Canada and the U.S., a far greater percentage of Canadians leave to go south, than the reverse -- IIRC 1/10 as many Americans emmigrate to Canada, in terms of sheer numbers, but that translates into 1/100th of the population. IOW, Canadians are 100 times as likely to leave for the U.S. than the reverse. Wonder why?
Most life threatening surgeries/treatments are done quickly, but its the non life threatening ones that are the bitch. Waiting lists for knee surgeries and the like are almost a year!
See my notes on this above. When "most" is "less than would have happened on a free market with the patient's own funds", this is state-sanctioned murder.
More money and some internal competition is what is needed, and more money to doctors and less to management.
Only a free market can deliver this -- Canada has been throwing money at health care for decades, rather than letting the health care system earn what it deserves bassed on service and volume provided.
You're rant about how much you "hate it here" tells me that you're either not canadian or spent little time here or both. Either way, go back the the US, if you like it that much.
I was born in and lived in Canada from 1961 to 1997, left for the U.S. with family and lived there from late 1997 to early 2003, having to return for visa reasons. I would gladly leave again at the first opportunity, no doubt pleasing us both.
But ask and you'll find 98% of us are very happy here, and we can get started on what's wrong with the USA.
Of course 98% are happy! They rob and murder the remainder. Hence, my broad generalization that 98% of Canadians are liars, thieves, and murderers.
Time and time again, I've been told to lie on government forms to "get what I need", saying, for example, that I intend to live in Ontario permanently. A society where deceipt is an essential part of the culture, essential for survival is a very unhealthy one.
As for the U.S., there are plenty of problems there. In fact, compared to most Canadians, I called most Americans "paranoid, opinionated, blowhards". I figured if I was going to generalize and catch those that do not fit the description in such a wide net, I may as well seek the worst in the place I prefer. I reiterate, I prefer opinionated blowhards to murderers.
As with any generalization, there will always be those who do not fit the description. However, as that is my view of Canadian government, and Canada is supposedly a free representative democracy (despite being, constitutionally, a federal union of sovereign provinces), it stands to reason that, if it accurately describes the government, it must accurately describe the majority of the population (or at least those eligible to vote). So, let's apply the accusation to the way the nation has been governed.
Liars: socialized health care was promised as a tax funded government program. The taxes are collected but the care provided is less than could be obtained with the funds collected from the average middle class taxpayer on the free health insurance market. I paid a far smaller fraction of my income for far better health insurance when I lived in the U.S.
Thieves: because one can't opt out of the system and exclusively buy private health insurance with the tax dollars saved, the monies are effectively stolen. If you're arguing for forceful redistribution of wealth from the richer to the poorer, then make that argument. Do not pretend to offer the payers something they are not receiving.
Murderers: robbed of the means to purchase their own health insurance on the free market, some Canadians die because of the inferior care provided to them.
I will grant that the numbers of Canadians murdered in this way by the Canadian health care system is but a small minority -- if it were a serious problem, there would be an uproar, desite the generally non-revolutionary climate here. I will also grant that some lives may have been saved by the redistribution of tax dollars used to fund health care. I'll even accept that perhaps, the number of people murdered is far less than the number of lives saved.
But, regardless of how many lives can be saved by even a single death, in no way is that death so justified (unless, of course, the need to save those other lives is as a direct consequence of the actions of the would-be victim).
Born in Canada (sucks to be me), and having lived there and the U.S., I find Canadians a bunch of liars, thieves, and murderers, by comparison to Americans, who, at worst, are paranoid, opinionated, blowhards. I'll take the Americans any day -- no one ever died from an opinion.
Socialized medicine in Canada works like this:
1. You pay (via your taxes).
2. You are promised health care.
3. You get sick.
4. You wait (25% of all cardiac patients referred to a specialist by their general practitioner die before being seen).
5. You get care on a par with U.S.-style Medicaid.
Furthermore, if you move between provinces or are a returning expatriate (like me) (at least in the case of moving to Ontario), you have to sign a form that you intend to reside there permanently before being eligible for health care. As I hate it here and intend to try again for eventual U.S. citizenship via the H1B/Green Card route (heck, my three year old son is an American), I can not, in all honesty sign that form, and so, do not have health insurance. Nor can I buy it instead of the state insurance, legally. I pay to see a doctor.
Purchasing health insurance outside the system is illegal.
In Canada, you can have a sick patient able to pay top dollar for needed surgery, doctors who have reached the government quota on how many such surgeries thay can perform (to cap thier salaries, paid out of tax dollars) and thus can't perform it. Doctors are paid the same rate (well, indexed for geographic region), and can't differentiate on the basis of skill -- the best leave for the U.S.
Often it is noted that the cost of providing health care is less in Canada than the U.S. This may be true, but the quality of care available is far, far, inferior.
I've yet to learn of any government-granted "monopoly" that ever did more good than harm.
Indeed.
Unfortunately, once the monopoly is established, or, for that matter, any interventionist policy takes root (i.e. socialized medicine, government pensions *cough* Ponzi schemes *cough*), the market responds by adapting in such a way that any disruption of the government-backed entity would be away from a local minimum of other market responses to the artificial player.
Even though convincing arguments can be made that the "convenience minimum" is but a local phenomenon in the universe of all possible free-market solutions to deliver the same service, getting others to agree to take the pain to overcome the activation energy to move to an even lower minimum is very difficult: a know cost is often preferred over the need to invest over a potentially, but not guaranteed lower one.
This is the problem all libertarians face, in a well-esablished statist society: we are not starting from a state of nature, but rather a situation that, for many, is survivable, even as they complain about it.
I've done this for Teradyne, and similar things for FreeBSD, including extending the relevant installers, but, alas, in no case has my employer allowed me to share the work I did.
As others note, try "Linux From Scratch", though, you already know this.
Hitler is actually quite significant, in that Nazi history shows that it is relatively easy to subdue a nation into accepting the commission of horrible attrocities.
While anything else pales by comparison, for the very same reason, it shows that lesser attrocities are that much more likely to occur.
The "it can't happen here" mantra might have legitimacy when applied against an emergence of extreme Fascism or Naziism somewhere, but loses force of likelihood precisely because "even worse" things DID happen elsewhere.
Hitler contributes much to the effective use of propaganda and serves as a useful case study for that reason -- those that do not remember the past are bound to repeat it.
It is quite useful to be able to recognize a particular propaganda technique, trace it to it's origin, and, with authority, legitimately compare the past to the present within the context of that propaganda technique.
Taxes aren't that bad here, especially when you factor in the cost of medical insurance.
I am a Canadian with a graduate degree who worked legally in the U.S. for 5-1/2 years and have an American-born son. When Green Card processing was effectively shut down after 9/11/2001, and the telecom bust hit me, I had to return to Canada. Fair enough, I knew the H1B deal.
That does not mean I like it here. In fact, at the risk of overapplying generalities I find most Canadians liars at best, and thieves, and murders at worst.
1. Canadian health care: on a par with medicaid. 25% of all Canadians who are referred to a cardiologist die before they get to see one because of the waiting list.
2. Even this level of health care is not available to me despite the fact that my taxes pay for it. You see, to get it, (at least in Ontario), you have to claim to intend to never leave (i.e. live there permanently).
3. Purchasing private insurance instead of participating in the public plan (and agreeing to never leave, and thus be a tax slave forever), is illegal, even if you fund the public system.
Now, I made some strong accusations: that Canadians are (a)liars, (b)thiefs, (c)murders; at least the vast majority that support the status quo. Let's see how these accusations are backed up:
1. Liars. One is told that one will get health care "for free" via public tax participation. But, one does not get the care one could obtain on the free market based on what one has paid. Thus, the promise of health care is a lie. And a big one. Political students and other readers of "Mein Kampf" will recognize Hitler's "the bigger the lie, the better" propaganda point.
2. Thieves. Given that tax dollars are taken, by force, if necessary, with no commensurate compensation at free market levels, even a proponent of the legitimacy of tax collection on the basis if majority rule would see this as theft.
3. Because Canadians are impoverished to the point of not being able to afford proper health insurance, except for the rich who likely have to break the law if they do so, some die as a result. Enforcers and proponents of the system that does this are murderers and accossories thereto.
The U.S. and other nations have some of these attibutes, to be sure, but certainly not in the insidious combination that Canada does. If one points out the traps and pitfals, one is advised to "lie to get the service" (i.e. claim an intent to remain permanently, even when this is not true).
A nation with an entrenshed culture of lying as necessary to survive is surely one ruled by tyrants.
Clearly, I hate and dispise this Canadian nation whose citizenship I wear like a brand on my buttocks. Nevertheless, I live here and obey it's laws. One would think that a civilized society has room for political opposition -- flag burning and neo-Nazi marches are still legal in the U.S., despite the angst such expressions no doubt cause parents of sons and daughters who have fallen in her service, remebered with a revered piece of cloth; and survivers of 1930s German genocide of Jews. But this is not the case.
At every turn I am encouraged to not voice my opinions, that life "will be made difficult" for me by some ominious force. Is this Russia under Stalin, Italy under Mussolini, Germany under Hitler? Do I risk death for my views?
Having believed in American ideals (though, not necessarily present American political pressures which seek to quench them), and experienced life there, I am very much predisposed to dying on my feet, in mid-scream of my protests, than living on my knees. Perhaps it is the newness of my short experience of relative liberty compared to my upbringing, that I embrace a love of freedom over life itself whereas the American taste for the illusion of security has grown as the thrill of liberty gives way to the risks it implies, that leaves me with a giddy sense of patriotism to not a country, but to principle. But, the thought of the mere possibility of dying fr
Have you explained the issue to your MP, that you don't want the Canadian Parliament to make the same mistakes as the EU and US legislatures in extending copyright terms?
No, that is, "Not yet." Returning to Canada after having severed all ties 5-1/2 years ago (I was really expecting the green card by now, but world and economic events conspired to prevent this), it takes time to reestablish them. It also involved moving three times in 6 months (hotel to rental house to purchased home), so I haven't had an elected representative (you generally have to be resident in a voting district for a number of months, voting in the old district until then... of course when you don't have and old district things get interesting... Canadian law is generally blind to issues facing returning exaptriates... or even inter-provincial moves (you generally can't export a car between provinces with ease)). Basically, Canadians don't move -- for me to have owned two houses in 5-1/2 years in a foreign country, and profitted in the process, is mind-boggling to many here.
However, as things settle, I shall once again become more active politically, yes.
But, I remain concerned about restrictive U.S. laws. The U.S. was a recent bastion of liberty against Brittish imperialism (while Canada leaned toward being a "place of convenience, liberty be damned"). My son is an American citizen. And, finally, I hold dear many of the principles on which the U.S. was founded (to the point of being a damn lousy and unpatriotic Canadian). So, I am not without concern for the kind of legislative path upon which the U.S. embarks.
When I left the U.S. for "good" (well, I hope not), I let everyone know that they have a damn fine country, but they stand a very strong risk of losing everything for which it ostensibly stands, and that they should take care of it -- liberty is a fragile thing, purchased at a high price, literally a dying shame if it be lost anew.
You wouldn't think those fuckers weigh very much, but put 300 empty ones in a box sometime and see how much it weighs. Hint: It's a lot.
Yes. This figured into my cabinet design. I had a B&O Beosystem 5500 that I wanted to "show off" in a nice living room (yeah, I could get same audio quality for 1/2 the price, but better quality would cost much more, and I was willing to spend the $$$ for "the look" at the time). So, I helped design a custom cabinet for it which served to hold CDs and cassettes, misc cables, and had a shelf for an amp.
Imagine an trapezoid, make of Oak, with a drawer in the middle, the top of which can support an amp, the drawer holding up to 90 cassettes. This is the base of the unit.
The top is made of a much squatter, and a bit wider inverted trapezoid, which accomodates two side-by side drawers, each capable of holding 120 CDs (which seamed like a lot at the time). The top is open, designed to accept two granite slab inlays, shock mounted with rubber to the oak. This helps prevent room vibration picked up by the stiff oak from being transferred to the turntable (yes, I still have one) -- think impedance mismatch (oak to rubber to stone to component feet).
The equipment sits on top of the polished and beveled granite slabs (getting granite beveled costs a relative fortune!).
Without the granite inlays, the cabinet is unstable: unloaded, you can't open both drawers without it almost tipping: oak is a dense hardwood, heavy, and pulling both drawers out creates a trememdous torque. If one drawer was empty and the other full of CDs, a not unusual circumstance, opening one drawer would be sufficient to tip the whole cabinet over.
The granite inlays add about 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of mass about the centre of gravity. That, and the added mass of the B&O 5500 components, prevents such a catastrophe, even if both drawers are opened. So, the inlays serve a triple purpose: asthetics, sound dampening, and stability.
If anyone wonders why I chose granite over, say, marble, it was for the simple reason that marble is a softer stone, more porous, and easily stained, i.e. less practical in this application, and of no additional asthetic value (there are some gorgeous granites out there, Blue Pearl being one of them -- I opted for Jiuperana).
This is an excellent suggestion, and I have considered it.
However, there is more than just front cover and backside art worth keeping: liner notes, sometimes attached to the front art, but not always.
Also, I've found the binder-style CD storage systems to be flimsy, and have had fears of hundreds of CDs falling out. How do you deal with these issues?
Finally, front-cover art, at least, and all extra content ideally, should be available in machine-readable format. But that is a bit of a dream, and scanning gets to be a bitch after a while.
It's a good idea, but doesn't work for DVDs, which have different front and back-cover sizes. You are right about the bulk of CD cases.
I was a legal, in-status, non-resident alien in the U.S. from November 1997 to January 2003, initally on a (once-renewed) TN-1 visa, then an H1B with an LC approved by the Dept. of Labor in Illinois, waiting for an approval for lawful permanent resident status. Unfortunately, I lost that job, the H1B was transfered to a new employer in Texas, who also applied for an LC, as part of the process toward LPR status (i.e. green card).
The events of 9/11/2001 slowed LC applications trememdously, and the telecom bust resulted in my being layed off in Sept, 2002. Rapid request for a change of status to visitor (B2 visa) was approved by the INS, which let me put my home on the market, look for work in Canada (you can't legally look for employment in the U.S. on a B2 visa), and sell my home in Texas, while remaining in the U.S. until early January, 2003. The timing was such that I would not be a U.S. tax resident in 2003, and returned to being a Canadian tax resident on January 11, 2003, when I returned permanently (I had been flying back and forth in early January to settle affairs -- A Canadian selling a house in Texas to an out of state buyer in California using a mortgage lender who refuses POA for document signatures is an tortuous process, indeed).
I am now in Canada, working for ATI im Markham, Ontario, and have purchased a home in Whitby, Ontario.
Given the circumstances, it strikes me as deceitful to sign that petition. However, in previous cases, where I supported a movement in the U.S., I encouraged like-minded American citizens to support the petition, and will do that in this case. Given your reply, I will also encourage lawful permanent residents in the U.S. in the same way.
I still retain strong supportive feelings toward the U.S., particularly the principles on which the nation was founded. While animosity between Canadians and Americans over the U.S. action in Iraq is not surprising, it should be remembered that not everyone holds to what the media presents as "national popular opinion", or agrees with government policy and position. Besides, my three year old son is an American, so I have a very much vested interest in American affairs.
... that should have been "pornographic", obviously.
Seriously, though, we should be applauding the small labels that don't inundate with unavoidable crap at the start of a DVD: either via thank-you letters or other means of feedback.
Heh. My kids like to watch some of the movie promos (even for movies that have long past initial release), over... and over and over. Though, I should damn well be able to skip over them (hello deCSS and restructuring).
Re.: "Bob the Builder" and "Baby Bethooven". Yeah, my 3yo likes these two (when will Bob and Wendy get it on? Kiddie Porn, n.: a porographic derived work of an animated motion picture, the original of which was geared toward children viewers.). The "Baby *" series are actually excellent videos, BTW, but geared for younger children -- having grown up with them, he sometimes likes them when he need to relax.
No. I am not a U.S. citizen (though I lived there for over five years and my son is a U.S. citizen) and while I very much support this petition, would consider it deceitful to sign it as a non-citizen.
I don't give Disney more money than an occasional rental. Why don't you introduce them to Don Bluth movies, DreamWorks movies, and the like?
You didn't pay attention:-) Wives and kids do their own thing. IOW, I've tried to expose them to other forms of entertainment. Having seen my daughter go through the "Barney" stage, I will consider it no small victory if I can be spared my son from going through it (which would probably do him good as well).
Of course, this is easily effected by not allowing DRM in consumer gear, so that, sure, little Johnny can make and edit a DVD of his summer vacation for Grandma (and not care where copies wind up), but adult John can't make and distribute an independent feature film with the same protections the media cartel gets.
Personally I'm looking forward to the day when I can put all my (legally purchased) movie and music collection on my hard drive and throw away those DVDs, CDs and VHS tapes that take up so much space. If that means I never upgrade any of those DVDs to a DRM-ed HD-DVD format, then so be it.
Oh, I feel your pain.
As owner of several hundred CDs (for which I had a custom solid oak and granite cabinet custom-made to hold them and sport the playback equipment back in the day...), and a growing collection of DVDs, not to mention all the kids' videos (does anyone else hate Disney cases (yeah, yeah, don't feed the copyright monster, but wives and kids do their own thing)), I feel the storage blues as well.
I've archived almost all the CD audio to hard disk (losslessly), and plan to do the same with the DVDs. The video tapes are a bit of a toss up, though, as a movie mecomes dated, I'd probably be willing to pay the rights-holder a modest amount to provide a copy to me on more "modern" media, if I surrender the original (fat chance that will happen, when they can sell the DVD for more than the VHS cassette -- except I'm not likely to buy the former if I already have the latter, unless the price is commensurate with a "convenience factor" rather than a "license fee").
You know, I don't really have a problem with the concept of DRM, but rather with the most-likely uses and implementations. If DRM provided for (a) traditional fair uses and (b) was required to be field-upgradable to permit newly recognized fair-uses, I could live with it.
As it stands, I use DeCSS for the legitimate traditional fair use of serving a working copy of movies from a hard disk to a remote display device. I'd be happy to keep the video stream encrypted on my LAN and only decrypted by the end device, as long as I get to have any display device I own be capable of displaying the video I've licensed from and storage medium I own on any server I own over any network I own. In other words, protect yourself from unfair uses of your content, yes, but stay the fuck out of MY hardware except to the extent necessary -- at the end of the stream, however many such ends I may have.
Macro kernels are pretty much like turtles and sharks, very well adapted to living today, but dinosaurs nonetheless.
That's one of the more insightful comments I've seen in a long time.
Personally, I run a Linux kernel, and have worked with both Linux (continue to do so) and FreeBSD professionally, but I always found the idea of a monolithic kernel, you know, somewhat inelegant.
Notions like the Hurd, for example, therefore, are appealing, in an academic sense, but suffer from the chicken and egg problem of "I've got to have something working NOW for my existing application needs and don't have time to contribute to the next great thing". Sigh, would that I were back in school and had time to spare on kernel work. But, not 10 but 20 years have past me by as I run on the employment treadmill, with little time for such projects (though, if there were a Linux-derived O/S cross-development environment for the Hurd, that might be interesting to play with).
So, good luck to Plan9 and other post-modern kernels and operating systems.
Why don't you just fsck off to Yankland then, where you can become part of that ONE THIRD of the population that has NO HEALTHCARE WHATSOEVER!
I did.
And, I purchased far better health insurance than I could get in Canada.
Get this: I don't give a flying fuck about those who can't afford health insurance. I do give a damn when my hard-earned money is stolen to the point where I can't get adequate health care.
Canada's healthcare system is third-rate, befitting of the third-world slumhole that it is. Yes, I hate it that much, and will leave as soon as possible, no doubt pleasing both you and I.
By butcher, I didn't mean the dude at the supermarket. When I buy beef, I generally know the name of the cow from which it came, how it lived, how it died, and how it was handled after it's death.
No wonder the US cut off imports from Canada when a single infected cow was discovered in Canada.
Yes, no wonder. Of course, on this side of the border, as usual, there was the typical "Americans blowing things out of proportion" flap again, but, IMHO, quite justified. [Having lived in the U.S. for over five years, and liking it, it is fascinating to see the different spins both governments put on issues. Do note: not all Canadians agree with (a) their government, (b) popular opinion here. Some of us, like me, hate the government of Canada greatly. Like all socialist regimes, I consider it, and all who support it, murderous bastards. Note to Americans: Nationalized health care lets the state chose who lives and dies. By cutting off or back on service to the elderly, you can "save" social security, for example. It is no wonder 25% of all cardiac patients die in Canada before getting to see a specialist. Convenient. But, that is a rant for another day.]
Given the nature of BSE and CJD, U.S. paranoia was well-justified, though, it does look at this point that a single cow was infected.
Canada, unlike the U.K. has not changed its cattle feeding practices the same way, in response to this disease. The U.K. banned the feeding of offal (basically, the left over stuff when animals are slaughtered), back to cattle -- a major factor in the spread of BSE.
Canada merely banned the feeding of bovine offal back to cattle. So, you have bovine offal fed to pigs and chickens, and their offal fed back to cattle. Some have theorized that this offers a vector for BSE to reinfect cattle herds, though, as speculation, this has been ridiculed. But, because of the difference in Canadian and U.K. feeding practices, and government ignorance of this speculative threat, there is now quite a scandal about it.
Re:Kobe (koh-bee)
on
Chicken Run
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I've tried raw steak, and unfortunately it tastes pretty much like it smells - not too enticing. So to be enjoyable, that stuff must be dramatically different.
Mmmmm, steak tartare. Mmmmm.
Scrape filet mignon fine, with a sharp blade, add a raw egg (you can skip this, but the scraping leaves the fat on the back of the blade, and some find the resulting meat a bit dry -- the danger of raw eggs is duly noted), some fresh ground black pepper, shallots (just a hint), and smear thickly on freshly baked Cuban bread, like 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.
Mmmmm.
Of course, you'd damn well better trust your butcher. Beef is one of the few meats that are generally safe to eat raw: about the only thing it hosts is penicillin. However, if fouled from the contents of the entrails (E. Coli), or comes from a cow infected with Mad Cow disease (transmitted via the spinal cord and brain), it can be dangerous. In the simple case of surface fouling, of meat from an otherwise disease-free cow, a quick searing will do the trick. This is why rare steaks (from a reputable source) are perfectly safe to eat, but rare hamburger is not.
Now, in the case of steak tartar, the meat has to be free of contamination from the start, and shredded with clean knives, hence the need to trust your butcher.
Slashdot Mirror
Born 1961, Montreal, Quebec.
I've never had any of the above mentioned problems, and neither did my friend when he got lukemia.
Then you and your friend have been extremely lucky. Know this: the funds for that care, in some small part, came from an individual who never needed more than a routine doctor's visit, until he needed repair of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Left untreated this is a death sentence. The best surgeons in the U.S. have a 70% recovery rate. The surgery was denied in Canada. Had the patient purchased U.S.-style private health insurance, or even self-insured, with the tax dollars he paid for health care since it was was socialized in Canada, affording the surgery would have been a non-issue, with plenty of funds to spare. However, he was literally taxed to death, denied the means to save his own life with his own money.
I have never heard of this surgeon quota, and a quick google search didn't find me anything.
You think it would be front page news? Look deeper, like for waiting lists for moderate surgery, like hip replacements, etc. Why are there waiting lists at the same time that doctor's salaries are capped? If there are waiting lists, there is demand, yet supply is curtailed.
There are some problems, however. The salaries do need to go up for doctors and surgeons., as a lot (but certainly not all) do head to the US. Its not an astronomical number as you imply, though.
Salaries need to be established by a free market, and not capped by state fiat. As for transmigration between Canada and the U.S., a far greater percentage of Canadians leave to go south, than the reverse -- IIRC 1/10 as many Americans emmigrate to Canada, in terms of sheer numbers, but that translates into 1/100th of the population. IOW, Canadians are 100 times as likely to leave for the U.S. than the reverse. Wonder why?
Most life threatening surgeries/treatments are done quickly, but its the non life threatening ones that are the bitch. Waiting lists for knee surgeries and the like are almost a year!
See my notes on this above. When "most" is "less than would have happened on a free market with the patient's own funds", this is state-sanctioned murder.
More money and some internal competition is what is needed, and more money to doctors and less to management.
Only a free market can deliver this -- Canada has been throwing money at health care for decades, rather than letting the health care system earn what it deserves bassed on service and volume provided.
You're rant about how much you "hate it here" tells me that you're either not canadian or spent little time here or both. Either way, go back the the US, if you like it that much.
I was born in and lived in Canada from 1961 to 1997, left for the U.S. with family and lived there from late 1997 to early 2003, having to return for visa reasons. I would gladly leave again at the first opportunity, no doubt pleasing us both.
But ask and you'll find 98% of us are very happy here, and we can get started on what's wrong with the USA.
Of course 98% are happy! They rob and murder the remainder. Hence, my broad generalization that 98% of Canadians are liars, thieves, and murderers.
Time and time again, I've been told to lie on government forms to "get what I need", saying, for example, that I intend to live in Ontario permanently. A society where deceipt is an essential part of the culture, essential for survival is a very unhealthy one.
As for the U.S., there are plenty of problems there. In fact, compared to most Canadians, I called most Americans "paranoid, opinionated, blowhards". I figured if I was going to generalize and catch those that do not fit the description in such a wide net, I may as well seek the worst in the place I prefer. I reiterate, I prefer opinionated blowhards to murderers.
Liars: socialized health care was promised as a tax funded government program. The taxes are collected but the care provided is less than could be obtained with the funds collected from the average middle class taxpayer on the free health insurance market. I paid a far smaller fraction of my income for far better health insurance when I lived in the U.S.
Thieves: because one can't opt out of the system and exclusively buy private health insurance with the tax dollars saved, the monies are effectively stolen. If you're arguing for forceful redistribution of wealth from the richer to the poorer, then make that argument. Do not pretend to offer the payers something they are not receiving.
Murderers: robbed of the means to purchase their own health insurance on the free market, some Canadians die because of the inferior care provided to them.
I will grant that the numbers of Canadians murdered in this way by the Canadian health care system is but a small minority -- if it were a serious problem, there would be an uproar, desite the generally non-revolutionary climate here. I will also grant that some lives may have been saved by the redistribution of tax dollars used to fund health care. I'll even accept that perhaps, the number of people murdered is far less than the number of lives saved.
But, regardless of how many lives can be saved by even a single death, in no way is that death so justified (unless, of course, the need to save those other lives is as a direct consequence of the actions of the would-be victim).
It is still murder.
Socialized medicine in Canada works like this:
1. You pay (via your taxes).
2. You are promised health care.
3. You get sick.
4. You wait (25% of all cardiac patients referred to a specialist by their general practitioner die before being seen). 5. You get care on a par with U.S.-style Medicaid.
Furthermore, if you move between provinces or are a returning expatriate (like me) (at least in the case of moving to Ontario), you have to sign a form that you intend to reside there permanently before being eligible for health care. As I hate it here and intend to try again for eventual U.S. citizenship via the H1B/Green Card route (heck, my three year old son is an American), I can not, in all honesty sign that form, and so, do not have health insurance. Nor can I buy it instead of the state insurance, legally. I pay to see a doctor.
Purchasing health insurance outside the system is illegal.
In Canada, you can have a sick patient able to pay top dollar for needed surgery, doctors who have reached the government quota on how many such surgeries thay can perform (to cap thier salaries, paid out of tax dollars) and thus can't perform it. Doctors are paid the same rate (well, indexed for geographic region), and can't differentiate on the basis of skill -- the best leave for the U.S.
Often it is noted that the cost of providing health care is less in Canada than the U.S. This may be true, but the quality of care available is far, far, inferior.
Indeed.
Unfortunately, once the monopoly is established, or, for that matter, any interventionist policy takes root (i.e. socialized medicine, government pensions *cough* Ponzi schemes *cough*), the market responds by adapting in such a way that any disruption of the government-backed entity would be away from a local minimum of other market responses to the artificial player.
Even though convincing arguments can be made that the "convenience minimum" is but a local phenomenon in the universe of all possible free-market solutions to deliver the same service, getting others to agree to take the pain to overcome the activation energy to move to an even lower minimum is very difficult: a know cost is often preferred over the need to invest over a potentially, but not guaranteed lower one.
This is the problem all libertarians face, in a well-esablished statist society: we are not starting from a state of nature, but rather a situation that, for many, is survivable, even as they complain about it.
As others note, try "Linux From Scratch", though, you already know this.
While anything else pales by comparison, for the very same reason, it shows that lesser attrocities are that much more likely to occur.
The "it can't happen here" mantra might have legitimacy when applied against an emergence of extreme Fascism or Naziism somewhere, but loses force of likelihood precisely because "even worse" things DID happen elsewhere.
Hitler contributes much to the effective use of propaganda and serves as a useful case study for that reason -- those that do not remember the past are bound to repeat it.
It is quite useful to be able to recognize a particular propaganda technique, trace it to it's origin, and, with authority, legitimately compare the past to the present within the context of that propaganda technique.
I am a Canadian with a graduate degree who worked legally in the U.S. for 5-1/2 years and have an American-born son. When Green Card processing was effectively shut down after 9/11/2001, and the telecom bust hit me, I had to return to Canada. Fair enough, I knew the H1B deal.
That does not mean I like it here. In fact, at the risk of overapplying generalities I find most Canadians liars at best, and thieves, and murders at worst.
1. Canadian health care: on a par with medicaid. 25% of all Canadians who are referred to a cardiologist die before they get to see one because of the waiting list.
2. Even this level of health care is not available to me despite the fact that my taxes pay for it. You see, to get it, (at least in Ontario), you have to claim to intend to never leave (i.e. live there permanently).
3. Purchasing private insurance instead of participating in the public plan (and agreeing to never leave, and thus be a tax slave forever), is illegal, even if you fund the public system.
Now, I made some strong accusations: that Canadians are (a)liars, (b)thiefs, (c)murders; at least the vast majority that support the status quo. Let's see how these accusations are backed up:
1. Liars. One is told that one will get health care "for free" via public tax participation. But, one does not get the care one could obtain on the free market based on what one has paid. Thus, the promise of health care is a lie. And a big one. Political students and other readers of "Mein Kampf" will recognize Hitler's "the bigger the lie, the better" propaganda point.
2. Thieves. Given that tax dollars are taken, by force, if necessary, with no commensurate compensation at free market levels, even a proponent of the legitimacy of tax collection on the basis if majority rule would see this as theft.
3. Because Canadians are impoverished to the point of not being able to afford proper health insurance, except for the rich who likely have to break the law if they do so, some die as a result. Enforcers and proponents of the system that does this are murderers and accossories thereto.
The U.S. and other nations have some of these attibutes, to be sure, but certainly not in the insidious combination that Canada does. If one points out the traps and pitfals, one is advised to "lie to get the service" (i.e. claim an intent to remain permanently, even when this is not true).
A nation with an entrenshed culture of lying as necessary to survive is surely one ruled by tyrants.
Clearly, I hate and dispise this Canadian nation whose citizenship I wear like a brand on my buttocks. Nevertheless, I live here and obey it's laws. One would think that a civilized society has room for political opposition -- flag burning and neo-Nazi marches are still legal in the U.S., despite the angst such expressions no doubt cause parents of sons and daughters who have fallen in her service, remebered with a revered piece of cloth; and survivers of 1930s German genocide of Jews. But this is not the case.
At every turn I am encouraged to not voice my opinions, that life "will be made difficult" for me by some ominious force. Is this Russia under Stalin, Italy under Mussolini, Germany under Hitler? Do I risk death for my views?
Having believed in American ideals (though, not necessarily present American political pressures which seek to quench them), and experienced life there, I am very much predisposed to dying on my feet, in mid-scream of my protests, than living on my knees. Perhaps it is the newness of my short experience of relative liberty compared to my upbringing, that I embrace a love of freedom over life itself whereas the American taste for the illusion of security has grown as the thrill of liberty gives way to the risks it implies, that leaves me with a giddy sense of patriotism to not a country, but to principle. But, the thought of the mere possibility of dying fr
No, that is, "Not yet." Returning to Canada after having severed all ties 5-1/2 years ago (I was really expecting the green card by now, but world and economic events conspired to prevent this), it takes time to reestablish them. It also involved moving three times in 6 months (hotel to rental house to purchased home), so I haven't had an elected representative (you generally have to be resident in a voting district for a number of months, voting in the old district until then... of course when you don't have and old district things get interesting... Canadian law is generally blind to issues facing returning exaptriates... or even inter-provincial moves (you generally can't export a car between provinces with ease)). Basically, Canadians don't move -- for me to have owned two houses in 5-1/2 years in a foreign country, and profitted in the process, is mind-boggling to many here.
However, as things settle, I shall once again become more active politically, yes.
But, I remain concerned about restrictive U.S. laws. The U.S. was a recent bastion of liberty against Brittish imperialism (while Canada leaned toward being a "place of convenience, liberty be damned"). My son is an American citizen. And, finally, I hold dear many of the principles on which the U.S. was founded (to the point of being a damn lousy and unpatriotic Canadian). So, I am not without concern for the kind of legislative path upon which the U.S. embarks.
When I left the U.S. for "good" (well, I hope not), I let everyone know that they have a damn fine country, but they stand a very strong risk of losing everything for which it ostensibly stands, and that they should take care of it -- liberty is a fragile thing, purchased at a high price, literally a dying shame if it be lost anew.
Er, no. I have an Athlon XP1600+ processor in my PC. "1600+"... not 1600 Mhz, or anything to indicate it's a clock speed.
That's the most informative post I've seen. Thanks!
Yes. This figured into my cabinet design. I had a B&O Beosystem 5500 that I wanted to "show off" in a nice living room (yeah, I could get same audio quality for 1/2 the price, but better quality would cost much more, and I was willing to spend the $$$ for "the look" at the time). So, I helped design a custom cabinet for it which served to hold CDs and cassettes, misc cables, and had a shelf for an amp.
Imagine an trapezoid, make of Oak, with a drawer in the middle, the top of which can support an amp, the drawer holding up to 90 cassettes. This is the base of the unit.
The top is made of a much squatter, and a bit wider inverted trapezoid, which accomodates two side-by side drawers, each capable of holding 120 CDs (which seamed like a lot at the time). The top is open, designed to accept two granite slab inlays, shock mounted with rubber to the oak. This helps prevent room vibration picked up by the stiff oak from being transferred to the turntable (yes, I still have one) -- think impedance mismatch (oak to rubber to stone to component feet).
The equipment sits on top of the polished and beveled granite slabs (getting granite beveled costs a relative fortune!).
Without the granite inlays, the cabinet is unstable: unloaded, you can't open both drawers without it almost tipping: oak is a dense hardwood, heavy, and pulling both drawers out creates a trememdous torque. If one drawer was empty and the other full of CDs, a not unusual circumstance, opening one drawer would be sufficient to tip the whole cabinet over.
The granite inlays add about 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of mass about the centre of gravity. That, and the added mass of the B&O 5500 components, prevents such a catastrophe, even if both drawers are opened. So, the inlays serve a triple purpose: asthetics, sound dampening, and stability.
If anyone wonders why I chose granite over, say, marble, it was for the simple reason that marble is a softer stone, more porous, and easily stained, i.e. less practical in this application, and of no additional asthetic value (there are some gorgeous granites out there, Blue Pearl being one of them -- I opted for Jiuperana).
However, there is more than just front cover and backside art worth keeping: liner notes, sometimes attached to the front art, but not always.
Also, I've found the binder-style CD storage systems to be flimsy, and have had fears of hundreds of CDs falling out. How do you deal with these issues?
Finally, front-cover art, at least, and all extra content ideally, should be available in machine-readable format. But that is a bit of a dream, and scanning gets to be a bitch after a while.
It's a good idea, but doesn't work for DVDs, which have different front and back-cover sizes. You are right about the bulk of CD cases.
The events of 9/11/2001 slowed LC applications trememdously, and the telecom bust resulted in my being layed off in Sept, 2002. Rapid request for a change of status to visitor (B2 visa) was approved by the INS, which let me put my home on the market, look for work in Canada (you can't legally look for employment in the U.S. on a B2 visa), and sell my home in Texas, while remaining in the U.S. until early January, 2003. The timing was such that I would not be a U.S. tax resident in 2003, and returned to being a Canadian tax resident on January 11, 2003, when I returned permanently (I had been flying back and forth in early January to settle affairs -- A Canadian selling a house in Texas to an out of state buyer in California using a mortgage lender who refuses POA for document signatures is an tortuous process, indeed).
I am now in Canada, working for ATI im Markham, Ontario, and have purchased a home in Whitby, Ontario.
Given the circumstances, it strikes me as deceitful to sign that petition. However, in previous cases, where I supported a movement in the U.S., I encouraged like-minded American citizens to support the petition, and will do that in this case. Given your reply, I will also encourage lawful permanent residents in the U.S. in the same way.
I still retain strong supportive feelings toward the U.S., particularly the principles on which the nation was founded. While animosity between Canadians and Americans over the U.S. action in Iraq is not surprising, it should be remembered that not everyone holds to what the media presents as "national popular opinion", or agrees with government policy and position. Besides, my three year old son is an American, so I have a very much vested interest in American affairs.
Seriously, though, we should be applauding the small labels that don't inundate with unavoidable crap at the start of a DVD: either via thank-you letters or other means of feedback.
Re.: "Bob the Builder" and "Baby Bethooven". Yeah, my 3yo likes these two (when will Bob and Wendy get it on? Kiddie Porn, n.: a porographic derived work of an animated motion picture, the original of which was geared toward children viewers.). The "Baby *" series are actually excellent videos, BTW, but geared for younger children -- having grown up with them, he sometimes likes them when he need to relax.
No. I am not a U.S. citizen (though I lived there for over five years and my son is a U.S. citizen) and while I very much support this petition, would consider it deceitful to sign it as a non-citizen.
I don't give Disney more money than an occasional rental. Why don't you introduce them to Don Bluth movies, DreamWorks movies, and the like?
You didn't pay attention :-) Wives and kids do their own thing. IOW, I've tried to expose them to other forms of entertainment. Having seen my daughter go through the "Barney" stage, I will consider it no small victory if I can be spared my son from going through it (which would probably do him good as well).
Of course, this is easily effected by not allowing DRM in consumer gear, so that, sure, little Johnny can make and edit a DVD of his summer vacation for Grandma (and not care where copies wind up), but adult John can't make and distribute an independent feature film with the same protections the media cartel gets.
Oh, I feel your pain.
As owner of several hundred CDs (for which I had a custom solid oak and granite cabinet custom-made to hold them and sport the playback equipment back in the day...), and a growing collection of DVDs, not to mention all the kids' videos (does anyone else hate Disney cases (yeah, yeah, don't feed the copyright monster, but wives and kids do their own thing)), I feel the storage blues as well.
I've archived almost all the CD audio to hard disk (losslessly), and plan to do the same with the DVDs. The video tapes are a bit of a toss up, though, as a movie mecomes dated, I'd probably be willing to pay the rights-holder a modest amount to provide a copy to me on more "modern" media, if I surrender the original (fat chance that will happen, when they can sell the DVD for more than the VHS cassette -- except I'm not likely to buy the former if I already have the latter, unless the price is commensurate with a "convenience factor" rather than a "license fee").
You know, I don't really have a problem with the concept of DRM, but rather with the most-likely uses and implementations. If DRM provided for (a) traditional fair uses and (b) was required to be field-upgradable to permit newly recognized fair-uses, I could live with it.
As it stands, I use DeCSS for the legitimate traditional fair use of serving a working copy of movies from a hard disk to a remote display device. I'd be happy to keep the video stream encrypted on my LAN and only decrypted by the end device, as long as I get to have any display device I own be capable of displaying the video I've licensed from and storage medium I own on any server I own over any network I own. In other words, protect yourself from unfair uses of your content, yes, but stay the fuck out of MY hardware except to the extent necessary -- at the end of the stream, however many such ends I may have.
That's one of the more insightful comments I've seen in a long time.
Personally, I run a Linux kernel, and have worked with both Linux (continue to do so) and FreeBSD professionally, but I always found the idea of a monolithic kernel, you know, somewhat inelegant.
Notions like the Hurd, for example, therefore, are appealing, in an academic sense, but suffer from the chicken and egg problem of "I've got to have something working NOW for my existing application needs and don't have time to contribute to the next great thing". Sigh, would that I were back in school and had time to spare on kernel work. But, not 10 but 20 years have past me by as I run on the employment treadmill, with little time for such projects (though, if there were a Linux-derived O/S cross-development environment for the Hurd, that might be interesting to play with).
So, good luck to Plan9 and other post-modern kernels and operating systems.
I did.
And, I purchased far better health insurance than I could get in Canada.
Get this: I don't give a flying fuck about those who can't afford health insurance. I do give a damn when my hard-earned money is stolen to the point where I can't get adequate health care.
Canada's healthcare system is third-rate, befitting of the third-world slumhole that it is. Yes, I hate it that much, and will leave as soon as possible, no doubt pleasing both you and I.
I'm no expert, but I've read that Kuru and CJD are different prion-borne diseases.
By butcher, I didn't mean the dude at the supermarket. When I buy beef, I generally know the name of the cow from which it came, how it lived, how it died, and how it was handled after it's death.
Yes, no wonder. Of course, on this side of the border, as usual, there was the typical "Americans blowing things out of proportion" flap again, but, IMHO, quite justified. [Having lived in the U.S. for over five years, and liking it, it is fascinating to see the different spins both governments put on issues. Do note: not all Canadians agree with (a) their government, (b) popular opinion here. Some of us, like me, hate the government of Canada greatly. Like all socialist regimes, I consider it, and all who support it, murderous bastards. Note to Americans: Nationalized health care lets the state chose who lives and dies. By cutting off or back on service to the elderly, you can "save" social security, for example. It is no wonder 25% of all cardiac patients die in Canada before getting to see a specialist. Convenient. But, that is a rant for another day.]
Given the nature of BSE and CJD, U.S. paranoia was well-justified, though, it does look at this point that a single cow was infected.
Canada, unlike the U.K. has not changed its cattle feeding practices the same way, in response to this disease. The U.K. banned the feeding of offal (basically, the left over stuff when animals are slaughtered), back to cattle -- a major factor in the spread of BSE.
Canada merely banned the feeding of bovine offal back to cattle. So, you have bovine offal fed to pigs and chickens, and their offal fed back to cattle. Some have theorized that this offers a vector for BSE to reinfect cattle herds, though, as speculation, this has been ridiculed. But, because of the difference in Canadian and U.K. feeding practices, and government ignorance of this speculative threat, there is now quite a scandal about it.
Mmmmm, steak tartare. Mmmmm.
Scrape filet mignon fine, with a sharp blade, add a raw egg (you can skip this, but the scraping leaves the fat on the back of the blade, and some find the resulting meat a bit dry -- the danger of raw eggs is duly noted), some fresh ground black pepper, shallots (just a hint), and smear thickly on freshly baked Cuban bread, like 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.
Mmmmm.
Of course, you'd damn well better trust your butcher. Beef is one of the few meats that are generally safe to eat raw: about the only thing it hosts is penicillin. However, if fouled from the contents of the entrails (E. Coli), or comes from a cow infected with Mad Cow disease (transmitted via the spinal cord and brain), it can be dangerous. In the simple case of surface fouling, of meat from an otherwise disease-free cow, a quick searing will do the trick. This is why rare steaks (from a reputable source) are perfectly safe to eat, but rare hamburger is not.
Now, in the case of steak tartar, the meat has to be free of contamination from the start, and shredded with clean knives, hence the need to trust your butcher.
You're right. Of course, at the time I was probably staring at Xev and not paying attention to dialog.