Sigh. I wish it were that simple. Back in Canada, I am paid in Canadian dollars, i.e. what those of us Canadians who have lived and worked in the good old U.S. of A. call "dollarettos". So, the exchange washes out.
Unfortunately, (a) salaries tend to be 30% lower, and (b) income taxes a lot higher, so that CA$100 is a much larger chunk of take home pay than the US$80 was.
When I lived in Allen, TX (a suburb of Dallas), I used Internet America for DSL service. While pricy (at US$81.18 a month), $15 of this covered a dedicated dry pair 'cause I was too far from the C/O for a shared POTS/DSL line: Internet America was cool about trying to provide DSL outside the "usual" range as long as I was willing to pay if it worked. Fair enough.
But, back to the topic at hand: running one's own mail server (and, in my case, sinking one's own email). They let me do this, as a matter of course: it was a standard part of their AUP that I could run whatever server I wanted as long as it wasn't "abusive". In this context, this meant no open relay (well, duhhh!), and, of course, no high-traffic web sites. I had ssh, and smtp open.
I had no trouble with originating my own email -- of course, I had a static IP address out of the ISP's repertoire (no, they didn't charge extra for it -- these guys were cool: when I expressed concern that they'd go PPPoE, they mentioned, "our techs looked at it, saw it was disgusting, and rejected it". Naturally, I responded, "sign me up!").
Back in Canada, I find I can't get a static IP from any cable provider (surprise, surprise), and a static IP from the only decent DSL provider will run me around CA$100 a month. Of course, at that price, I can sink (and, within reason, serve), whatever I want.
I'm afraid you'll have to go with a business service.
Actually, it's simpler than that: it is primarily western, North American culture, that is obsessed with thinness. There are cultures which consider what we, in North America, would consider obese, as quite attractive.
Leave it to me to be silly, and get a serious response. Sigh.
Celluloid, surely? Cellulite doesn't often figure in pr0n.
I dunno... there are some siiiick puppies out there.
Or, more kindly, different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
Think about it: there's some genetic basis for obesety. That would disappear if, er, to put it bluntly, fat people didn't get fucked.
Re:OOP is frequently the wrong answer
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The Post-OOP Paradigm
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Sometimes I see things where all classes inherit from an "object" class, which inherits from a "structure" class, which inherits from a "somebytes" class et cetera ad inifitum
That's not necessarily a bad thing: it may be indicative of an attempt to generate automatic serializers/deserialiers for objects by providing sufficient compile-time type meta-information.
Unfortunately, the resulting code gets littered with the helper classes and remnants of the hierarchy you describe. A traditional (or non-traditional) IDL representation with a pre-processing step that generates class declarations and marshelling code (or tables) tends to be a bit cleaner, though then you run into the issue of having to program in "yet another language".
"The low number of genes [means] that there is no genetic basis for race."
Totally not true. Of course race has a genetic basis. It is inherited, after all. Black people have black children. It just means that the number of genes necessary to determine race is smaller than we thought.
There are studies (none of which I have a reference to at hand, sadly, so you'll have to take this as a hypothesis and do the research for my lazy ass this morning), that suggest race is an evolutionary adaptation to climate. Genetically determined, of course, but that's just uncle Darwin paying a visit.
The correlation has been used to shoot down bigoted assertions that there is a correlation between race and inteligence, though sadly, one corelation is not, by itself, evidence of the lack of another, so we still have to rely in the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" to quash that ugly hypothesis.
I once hacked up a wire-wrapped 6809-based embedded system with an associate, had a monitor ported to it just burned into EPROM.
We were hooking up a 'scope to see if, of all basic things, some address decoding PALs were working, and powered it up, and...
...got a monitor prompt. It was rather freaky, as we certainly weren't expecting it to be glitch free.
(It wasn't quite -- DRAM refresh circuitry was hosed, and it would die about 20 seconds after boot, but still. Though, I vaguely remember us hand-assembling a 60Hz interupt-drivern software refresh a la 8088 IBM PC, and keying it in via the keyboard, before the RAM got amnesia). DRAM tends to stay far longer than specs would suggest, at least in those days.
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code.
rebutted by:
At that point, I quit reading... As someone who's seen tons of spaghetti code in my life-time, it's generally because people don't understand OOP. Well written OOP, with inheritance, interfaces, etc. nearly eliminates the possibility of spaghetti code.
O.K., spaghetti design, then.
Do you think the lack of gotos all over the place magically makes something no longer spaghetti code? Me thinks not, having seen a lot of crufty C++ in my day.
The problem, and I think the original poster was alluding to this, is that C++, with it's separation of interface from implementation, facilitates the replacement of one implementation with another. "Spaghetti code" in this case is, what I call, the "proxy implementation": the original code had a problem, so you wrap an instance of a "hack class" holding a reference on the object with the original implementation, and exposing an identical interface. Tee hee hee. C++ makes this particularly easy to do, with facilities intended for specialization (inheritence and polymorphism). It's still a hack, a patch on the original implementation instead of a reimplementation to correct the defect. As far as hacks go, its a pretty good one, though, like all hacks, it begs for eventual refactoring.
Seeing a Foo implemented as a SpecialFoo implemented as a BugFix73Foo with, finally, the original Foo backend implementation proxied away sure evokes thoughts of spaghetti code in my mind: a maze of declaration header files that one has to wander through to peel away the layers of proxied patches. Not a single goto in sight of course, but fairly called spaghetti code, none the less.
This does not mean that C++ is a bad language, only, like all languages, it can be badly abused.
It wasn't intended in a derogatory fashion. In fact, the Allen girls I knew used to take it as a compliment -- a strong woman who could hold her own against the boys. Antonym: prissie.
O.K. I see where you're coming from. Though in the 18 months I lived there, I hadn't heard it used in that fashion.
This Canadian lived in Texas for almost two years... little town called Allen, just north of Dallas.
So anyway, first time I need an oil change for my car, a neighbour sends me to a particular place. Well, I pull up and a couple of what could be best described as "dawgs" come running up to the car, followed by the skinniest woman I ever saw, with long straight, plain hair.
Next, two fellows who look like they fell straight out of a ZZ-top video tumbled out the door of the establishment and asked me my business. I explained I needed an oil change, and asked "how much?" "Cash or charge?" was the response "... 'cause we don't take charge". all the while looking me up and down.
Well, when it came time to pay (cash), and I pulled out my money, my NRA membership card fell. Seing this, one of the "ZZ-top" fellows mentioned, "Son, you gonna fit in here juuuuust fine!"
For better or worse, here is a nation that undertook the globally unpopular use of force to eradicate a beligerent regime from the face of the earth. No doubt the motive was self-interest, but the global positive side effect of this can not go unnoticed. While the rest of the world (read "U.N.") remained paralized over the agony of even a single drop of innocent blood being spilled, the security of the world was, in some small measure improved. For better or worse.
Now the cries of utter hypocricy of a nation that also exercizes its might in the world, in a manner that might be labeled beligerent, would have a voice, save not for the actions of it's citizens that keep its government's overreach in check, lest it too be absolutely corrupted by apparent absolute power.
Take note: American citizens undertake risk and fight to constrain the seductive power-mad leanings of its unavoidably corrupted rulers. And not radical militia units: librarians, of all people, armed only with card catalogues, a belief in their Constitution and Bill of Rights, and, above all, principle. Perhaps if people of other nations undertook similar responsibilities, they would not suffer collateral damage when the stench, fear, and oppression of their regimes, elected or not, drifts over the global landscape, and drives others to act in their stead -- never a desirable circumstance, regardless of how supposedly necessary.
America may have bred a large brutish beast, but at least it strives to keep that beast on a leash. While the leash may stretch and strain, so long as that spirit does not die, it shall not break. Take heart that that same spirit lives in the hearts and minds of others around the world, regardless of whatever citizenship was figuratively slapped on their buttocks at the time of their birth -- for it is in our interest as well that it not die.
FWIW, I was regretably born with the stigma of Canadian citizenship. This does not mean that I share the beliefs, opinions, or policies of my government, or the apparent majority of my birth country's population. It should be obvious that these views are in no way meant to represent those of my employer or anyone other than myself.
Re:Open Source and DRM are fundamentally incompati
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Open Source DRM
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For example, if what you said was true, how would I take a cd to Kinkos to burn a copy on their CD burner, which at present I have every right to do there if I have a right to do it at all.
Er, the same way you do now? A perfect copy of encrypted material is perfectly fine. Have you never photocopied something in a foreign language for a friend?
Your foolish, shortsighted proposal would have the effect of forever fixing the state of fair use without a single care as to whether or not it was actually a good idea. For how can public demand ever be measured for something if it is quite impossible to get there?
Think of the way that demand had to be cultivated for a myriad of products and services, from xerox machines to tupperware. There was no articulable preexisting demand at all.
You presume that the only way a fair use can be argued, defended, and, in general, identified, is if it can be exercized apriori of determination of its legal status. While convenient to demonstrate its practicality, I don't see that as necessary to imagine it.
Let those that can envision new fair uses argue their legitimacy as fair, and if they win, obtain judgements against users of DRM systems that do not respect them. This turns the whole burden around and makes DRM quite inconvenient on the copyright holder. This does not mean that it may not be a justifiable inconvenience: the trick is to constrain restriction periods to a suffciently short interval that no new fair use unduely constrained is likely to appear. This does mean copyright terms being severely reduced, of course, lest the copyright holders want to continuously play fair use catch up.
The alternative is to completely eliminate copyright as allowing any but severly defined (i.e. codifiable) fair uses, because it is incompatible with any kind of DRM, as it stands today. I can see that happening, with severe constraints on DRM-imposed restrictions.
The problem is that copyright, at present, is no longer practical to enforce without DRM that eliminates all fair uses. Something has to give, and I don't think that intellectual property law (vis. copyrights, patents, trademarks, and they are all very different), will just go away.
DRM is fundementally incompatable with the goals of the copyright system. We cannot forbid it, but we certainly can utterly fail to reward those who would engage in it, and generally discourage it at every turn. (e.g. not permitting DRM to be a deductable business expense for tax purposes, etc.)
Yes, economic boycott of DRM is a distinct possibility. But, to be a success, the public at large would have to reject the notion of copyright as a right. I don't think the average person is aware enough of the issues to take a vocal stance.
I do think that the public at large values fair uses such as time-shifting, space-shifting, etc. and has little care for other ones (parody, criticism, and new uses). Defending those is better than losing all of them, and doesn't require taking an extreme position. Furthermore, once the notion of common fair use is entrenched in the public psyche, support can be garnered to regain less common ones.
Yes, I am proposing a tactical retreat from the "oppose any and all DRM", because I don't think that argument will carry the day.
Well, imagine if the government said that anything you write has to include the phrase 'God bless America' in it? That would be totally unacceptable, because they are forcing you to say something that you do not want to say.
Likewise, if the government said that everything you write has to include a DRM system, they are ALSO mandating speech, which is a hugely bad thing to do. Particularly if you're trying to write about how awful DRM is.
Oh! I would never endorse a system that mandated DRM: content creators should be as free to exercise their right (or not) as they wish. You're arging, in effect, that if someone tried to do a copyleft aroun
Re:Open Source and DRM are fundamentally incompati
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Open Source DRM
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All quite valid, but ultimately, I don't really see the point anymore - if you're going to trust people a bit, you might as well trust them fully.
Unfortunately, a small minority of people are used to justify laws that make life miserable for all the rest of us. You can't trust people unknown to you. Do you?
The point is that I can see legitimate value in special-purpose computing devices in one's posession that one does not control. Think electric meter.... do you control yours? One of those forms of legitimate value is providing some kind of rights control to copyright holders in exchange for quicker, cheaper access for consumers. Just because that isn't the deal the **AA wants (having their cake and eating it too), doesn't mean it shouldn't be the line in the sand we draw. Basically, "You want DRM? This kind of DRM or none at all."
As for 'no extracts for 3 months' - what about reviews? Special licenses for reviewers? Nice, the RIAA gets to decide who's allowed to review an album...
I picked three months as an arbitrary figure. In practice one of several conditions would exist, (a) professional reviewers would have equipment that permitted extracts regardless of encoded restrictions, and clearly not controlled by content producers; (b) restriction periods would not be anywhere near three months on a CD release... a week perhaps? Let the die hards buy it unreviewed or even unheard -- there is some music I purchase that way based on band reputation; (c) An extract is not necessary for a review.
Other positive applications of such devices, which necessarily imply a public key trust hierarchy, are relatively secure communications as a matter of course. Yes, the keys are escrowed, so it isn't "secure" in the sense we'd consider it, but it is a far cry from a completely public internet, which I can't see as a bad thing. There's no stopping anyone from layering greater security over it.
Re:Open Source and DRM are fundamentally incompati
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Open Source DRM
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· Score: 1
Of course, limited extracts can be combined to make a whole. I was mostly concerned with the ability to time and space shift and make backups. However, others criticized my ideas based on other fair uses, and rightly point out that, since fair use can't be codified, there will always be some fair use that is unduly restricted (I have legal solutions to this, but the problem is acknowledged). I'd be happy if that unfortunate circumstance applied to a very small minority of fair uses.
As to the "parallel small extract loophole", a combination of fair pricing, difficulty in coordinating extraction, and ease of identifying blatent large-scale violators, should make this less of a problem than it might theoretically be. If "piracy" were the theoretical problem with unencrypted media that it could be, no more than one CD would ever be sold, and that copy illegaly duplicated and redistributed. Of course, that never happens. Sorry, if tha **AAs want any DRM, fair use has to be a priority and they can't have something completely bulletproof.
I can, however, imagine relases that might lock out some fair uses, legitimately, for short durations after release, espescially problematic ones. I'm thinking weeks, or at most, months here, before extracts are allowed, for example. Before one cries, "lack of fair use!" the response , "You didn't need to make an extract the day before release, you can wait 3 months" is offered. For most entertainment media, this is probably reasonable, though for news (which expires quickly), delays on the order of minutes to a few hours, at most a day, might be in order.
Re:Open Source and DRM are fundamentally incompati
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Open Source DRM
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· Score: 1
Time and space shifting are no problem with this: a proper key escrow system can distribute "your" keys to all the equipment you own. By itself such an escrow mechanism does little to impede privacy since it (a) simply protects content available to the masses and not private in nature and (b) is not correlated with people encrypting for you with the public key (though I can see how that might happen if it is not carefully designed).
Entire extracts, bit-perfect, extracts for parody? While fair use, I find it unlikely that this would be done with a lengthy work in a manner that would require perfect extracts. I'm sure you can find fair use examples that are prevented with such DRM (since fair use can't yet be codified), but such uses probably comprise a small percentage of the fair use specturm -- time and space shifting, archival backups, and minor extracts are the big issues, IMHO.
If the "industry" screams for DRM, I'd rather provide somewhat palatable DRM as a fait acompli, rather than having clearly more draconian forms shoved doen my throat which make any fair use impossible.
I can furthermore see plenty of legitimate uses for providing computing resources under the control of selected others, besides hoisting **AA's profits (just clearly not all my computing resources. Rather than a blanket data freeway to my computer, I think of it as a digital "right of way", clearly defined and limited.
Sounds like a content-based restriction on free speech to me. Maybe even viewpoint discrimination.
Sorry, I don't understand how you reach this conclusion. The notion that I have is that if DRM is entrenched in a device, and a fair use is discovered that it prevents, the onus is on the owner of the keys restricting the fair use to make it possible (or, to make the restriction requiring the keys short enough so the problem "goes away" reasonably quickly).
Re:Open Source and DRM are fundamentally incompati
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Open Source DRM
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· Score: 1
1) Fair use cannot be properly codified.
One can, however, approximate its codification quite well: once limited plain text extracts can exist, and complete unlimited archival encrypted copies, what else is required? All other requirements become legal ones, and not hindered by restrictive technology. We can use the "genie out of the bottle" to our advantage here, and still severly limit the bane of copyright holders: blanket, widely distributed outright copies.
2) While I like copyrights being of minimal duration to achieve maximal public benefit, how could DRM possibly be aware of changes in the law?
Simple: the law can require that DRM software permit this, and open DRM software can be inspected to ensure that it does. It's the keys that remain secret. Of course, that does not prevent unscrupulously restrictive hardware or firmware, but then the "smoking gun" of non-complience with the law becomes quite obvious.
And of course, particular material may be determined not to be copyrighted, or may have copyrights suspended or revoked only after judicial intervention. Copyright holders cannot be relied upon to be honest; their interests are in asserting copyrights no matter what.
The corresponding judicial order would include release of any corresponding keys, or, more likely a small key set that puts an unencrypted version into the public domain.
While an inconvenience to someone who only has the encrypted version, presumably they obtained such a version in the belief that the restrictsions were valid and to find they are not is a bonus.
It does raise the issue of lost keys, however. I would argue that, with such a system, copyright should only be enforcable on material with plain text versions in government escrow.
3) Fair use is applicable no matter what technology one wishes to employ. I can time shift and space shift with a VCR if I want to.
You could certainly do this with encrypted content.
Restrictive technology should simply never exist.
I'm afraid that, as it becomes possible for code to enforce law, it will be used for that purpose. Such code can be overly enforcive, or finely tuned to the intent of the law. Open DRM implementations allow the latter (and may be a bit more lax than the law permits, relying on non-code legal enforcement for the difference). Closed ones do not.
Our 18 month old destroyed the ribbons on a pair of Carver loudspeakers (over 15 years old) with his tiny fingers.
I suppose I should have expected this, but the speakers were safe around his less-curious sister (7 years his elder).
Once they get mobile, they can and most likely will destroy anything they can out of sheer curiosity.
While you're locking up valuable/fragile stuff that you don't want broken (the $100 VCR is prolly worth taking a chance with), don't forget general baby/child proofing of the home. There's plenty of sites on advice about this. You won't let the kid out of your sight, of course, but it is better to be safe than (very, very) sorry.
Re:Open Source and DRM are fundamentally incompati
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Open Source DRM
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· Score: 1
That is total nonsense. What is a fair use is a fair use. The author can HATE that use, but it doesn't matter. It is STILL a fair use that the user can undertake.
Not quite: the only popular system that consumers should accept should permit such fair use. I maintain that it is possible to build such a system, and still have it forbid other, "less fair" uses.
The only difficulty is not technical, but the fact that legal fair use is a shifting definition, changing with the times, and thus difficult to codify. However, short copyright intevals, and the means (and legal requirement on DRM device manufacturers) to provide upgrades that permit new fair uses, an alleviate this problem: it is not mathematically impossible to solve.
The key is multifacetted: 1) fair use needs to have a codified definition that encompasses as much of legal fair use as possible and the flexibility to accept more; 2) copyright needs to be short enough that eventually any restrictive system opens up; 3) restrictive processing that the consumer does not control should NOT be part of a general computing platform, but rather integrated into audio and video "end devices" (TVs, displays, and speakers).
Re:Open Source and DRM are fundamentally incompati
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Open Source DRM
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Ah, but you can have open source DRM, and Fair Use rights too, if you bend the definition of what constitutes software and what constitutes data.
First, while software released under a free license, like the GPL, has to be redistributed under specified terms, the data such software processes does not (in general -- there are a few exceptions where output of a GPL program contains GPL code, thus restricting redistribution of compilation of that code without the rest of the source -- which usually comprises the input to the initial GPL program in the first place -- think parser generator). This is the entire basis for openssl and similar code: you can keep the keys secret.
Thus, if the keys involved are kept secret on a secure processor, and that processor only runs code signed with other secure keys, said code can be completely open!
Of course, you lose control over what this processor does (since it can't execute arbitrary code), but you can examine the code that it does execute. Furthermore, such a processor could also execute unsigned code, but not provide access to the keys it protects. If the processor is limited to decoding encrypted entertainment data, the fact that one does not have control over it is no worse than not having control over a remote server to which one connects over the internet -- it's not like your whole general purpose computer is locked up (and the biggest problem with TCPA -- it locks the whole machine, not just some remote part, and encourages laws making the possession of unlockable machines illegal).
This does raise the whole issue of key management and distribution, of course, but fair use creation of archival copies of encrypted content, and storage in different forms now becomes possible: you just need a decryptor at the end. No one ever complained about needing speakers to listen to music or a TV to watch, er, TV.
The problem of "fair" DRM then reduces to one of establishing a trust hierarchy that producers of decryptors, copyright content producers, and consumers can all accept. I argue that problem is solvable, at least in the mathematical sense. The question is: "Is it economically viable?"
I think the answer is yes, particularly with a U.S. government push to "secure the internet".
I don't suppose you could provide some references to validate that belief? Otherwise it is just FUD.
Google on "Canada" and "brain drain". You'll get both points of view. A caveat: many Canadians have left for the U.S. and got "burned" because they did not research cost of living properly: lots of unscrupulous head hunters there simply translated C$ to A$ and had people accept really bad lowball offers. Do your homework.
Where to begin... From what I observed, it appeared as though the UN inspectors were doing their job, and there were no traces of these mythincal weapons of mass destruction that GWB was constantly going on about.
I think GWB wanted to gain support on the basis of finding something, instead of ressurrect a decade-old dispute that was never settled. Still, the beligerance of Iraq attacking and invading it's neighbours deserves to be countered. Weapons inspections do not do this. Making a big deal of such inspections was a U.S. foreign policy mistake, but it appears clear that they wanted to rekindle an old battle with fresh support. That effort backfired. However, this does not change the legitimacy of holding Saddam Hussein accountable for his past deeds. Should there be a statute of limitations on state aggression? The U.N. would appear to think so, but the U.S. (and I) don't.
It is a third world nation crippled by sanctions that harm the average citizen yet do nothing to inconvenience the elites.
So, a little war and collateral death wouldn't make things much worse in the short term, but hold out the prospect for improvement in the long term.
These sanctions probably caused more harm than a swift and early war to topple the aggressive regime would. Such sanctions, BTW, were, of course a concession to the U.N. to retain post-Gulf War support. A U.S. mistake, IMHO: had they rolled on into Baghdad then, with a decimated Iraqi military, civillian deaths would not be what they are today. Of course such a move would have been unpopular then too. The "popular" and "supported" actions that transpired likely harmed Iraqis a great deal, yet, we condemn the U.N. and not the U.S. Indirect death by proxy is a common U.N. weakness.
I suspect that there are many people on this planet who would identfy GWB as a beligerant leader of a rogue nation.
Perhaps. Had he not maintained American interests in Saudi Arabia, perhaps Osama binLaden would not have attacked the U.S. And yes, the fact that certain "American interests" may increase risk of hostilities against Americans is a notion that appears lost on the administration and population in the U.S. (i.e. are these "interests" worth the risks?). However, you do not see the U.S. lobbing missiles at its neighbours or formally making threatening statements without a defensive posture. Arrogant and nosy might be a better way of describing U.S. action on the world scene, but not beligerent.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of brutality out there and we in the West set a rather poor example. However, the lessons of 9/11 have not been learned. All the terrorists needed to destroy the world trade center and attack the pentagon were some box-cutters. To paraphrase Thomas Hobbes: the weakest of men can kill the strongest of men - even the strong must sleep.
Yes, pissing people off is generally not good policy. I never claimed U.S. foreign policy wasn't clumsy and naive. However, its use of force against a forceful, aggressive foe against a backdrop of U.N. paralysis ("Oh, think of the poor civilians!") is not unreasonable. It may not be popular, but contrary to other bumbling moves, it is one of the few that is justifiable since it counters outright (albeit dated) aggression with retaliatory force.
You seem to be arguing that the ends will justify the means, and that might==right, and I think that you will eventually learn that those simplistic notions are inadequate when applied to as complex a system as the world we live in.
That number represents approximately.001% of the population of Canada is statistically zero and insignificant. Of course, no Americans would ever immigrate to Canada to off-set that number either, right?
First, it is not statistically insignificant as an absolute number, but rather as a relative fraction. You can not say those people do not exist, merely that they have no democratic effect on the government of Canada. Interestingly, though, as it is the best and brightest that tend to leave, their economic impact is non-trivial.
Second, Americans wanting to immigrate to Canada are welcome to. I wish it were easy for us to simply switch places, one for one.
Well, I wish you all the best in your future.
And I, you, as long as your future does not involve living from my taxes.
Foreign policy is a means to get other countries to act in a way that is in your best interests, not necessarily their own. I agree that there is absolutely nothing noble about the war against Iraq.
I never claimed it was noble. But, I do think it was necessary, and the failure to avert it must be shared by nations other than the U.S. who proposed no other alternative to remove the threat of a provably beligerent leader of a rogue nation.
What about the innocents he murdered when he was a trusted ally of the US during the 1980's? Who do you think sold him the biological and chemical weapons that he used against the Kurds and Iran?
Who cares? They could, they did. People kill oneanother. That's one of the things we do. Power corrupts, and the U.S. is certainly powerful. In the context of that bleak truth, foreign policy mistakes will be painful and costly, and cleaning them up will be messy.
Wringing our hands at the U.S. when this happens, and taking a "holier than thou" stance, pretending to take the higher moral grounds of abstaining from violence is sheer hypcricy, since the U.S.'s error was only criticized after it blew up in their face. Obviously, the rest of the world would have been quite happy to have Saddam Hussein as a peaceful puppet ruler to counter the "evil" Iran of the post-revolutionary 1980s.
You can't be pleased when the U.S.'s "attrocities" serve your needs and then appalled when they blow up in their face.
Some might say that those who made the mess in the first place should be responsible for cleaining it up!
Well, yes, and their doing just that, no? Before the condemnations fly, who argued against the folly when the mess was created in the first place, and offered a better means of cleaning it up? No one (well, no nation, oficially), on both counts.
I suppose it is human nature to criticize when someone fucks up, and the bigger the fuckup, the greater the criticism. But progress is made through experience, as ugly and costly in human lives as that may be, and the powerful will subdue the weak. We treat other humans as we treat beasts raised for food and burden, when we can.
In this circumstance, the U.N. has demonstrated it's socialist impotence by (a) not censuring the U.S. when it placed the puppet regime in place, and (b) not offering a better means of removing it. It is a failed, irrelevant, organization, much like its League of Nations predecessor. What a waste of time, effort, and money.
Canada, mirror and puppet of this borg-like collective, also remains paralized and frozen in the status quo.
Sixth best standard of living in the world? Like I said, "third world backwater". Number one or nothing, regardless of what it takes.
As painful and harsh a driving force as that may be, it is honestly human. Peace on earth will be achieved when the strong eliminate the weak, and all exist as equals: a cold-war like stalemate, if you will.
The sad and infuriating fact is that we are mired in pseudo-allegience to the nations in which we were born, and not the nations who's ideals and principles we echo. Clearly my views are unCanadian, and I make no attempt to hide that fact.
Slashdot Mirror
Sigh. I wish it were that simple. Back in Canada, I am paid in Canadian dollars, i.e. what those of us Canadians who have lived and worked in the good old U.S. of A. call "dollarettos". So, the exchange washes out.
Unfortunately, (a) salaries tend to be 30% lower, and (b) income taxes a lot higher, so that CA$100 is a much larger chunk of take home pay than the US$80 was.
But, back to the topic at hand: running one's own mail server (and, in my case, sinking one's own email). They let me do this, as a matter of course: it was a standard part of their AUP that I could run whatever server I wanted as long as it wasn't "abusive". In this context, this meant no open relay (well, duhhh!), and, of course, no high-traffic web sites. I had ssh, and smtp open.
I had no trouble with originating my own email -- of course, I had a static IP address out of the ISP's repertoire (no, they didn't charge extra for it -- these guys were cool: when I expressed concern that they'd go PPPoE, they mentioned, "our techs looked at it, saw it was disgusting, and rejected it". Naturally, I responded, "sign me up!").
Back in Canada, I find I can't get a static IP from any cable provider (surprise, surprise), and a static IP from the only decent DSL provider will run me around CA$100 a month. Of course, at that price, I can sink (and, within reason, serve), whatever I want.
I'm afraid you'll have to go with a business service.
Leave it to me to be silly, and get a serious response. Sigh.
Or, more kindly, different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
Think about it: there's some genetic basis for obesety. That would disappear if, er, to put it bluntly, fat people didn't get fucked.
That's not necessarily a bad thing: it may be indicative of an attempt to generate automatic serializers/deserialiers for objects by providing sufficient compile-time type meta-information.
Unfortunately, the resulting code gets littered with the helper classes and remnants of the hierarchy you describe. A traditional (or non-traditional) IDL representation with a pre-processing step that generates class declarations and marshelling code (or tables) tends to be a bit cleaner, though then you run into the issue of having to program in "yet another language".
Totally not true. Of course race has a genetic basis. It is inherited, after all. Black people have black children. It just means that the number of genes necessary to determine race is smaller than we thought.
There are studies (none of which I have a reference to at hand, sadly, so you'll have to take this as a hypothesis and do the research for my lazy ass this morning), that suggest race is an evolutionary adaptation to climate. Genetically determined, of course, but that's just uncle Darwin paying a visit.
The correlation has been used to shoot down bigoted assertions that there is a correlation between race and inteligence, though sadly, one corelation is not, by itself, evidence of the lack of another, so we still have to rely in the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" to quash that ugly hypothesis.
I once hacked up a wire-wrapped 6809-based embedded system with an associate, had a monitor ported to it just burned into EPROM.
We were hooking up a 'scope to see if, of all basic things, some address decoding PALs were working, and powered it up, and...
(It wasn't quite -- DRAM refresh circuitry was hosed, and it would die about 20 seconds after boot, but still. Though, I vaguely remember us hand-assembling a 60Hz interupt-drivern software refresh a la 8088 IBM PC, and keying it in via the keyboard, before the RAM got amnesia). DRAM tends to stay far longer than specs would suggest, at least in those days.
rebutted by:
At that point, I quit reading... As someone who's seen tons of spaghetti code in my life-time, it's generally because people don't understand OOP. Well written OOP, with inheritance, interfaces, etc. nearly eliminates the possibility of spaghetti code.
O.K., spaghetti design, then.
Do you think the lack of gotos all over the place magically makes something no longer spaghetti code? Me thinks not, having seen a lot of crufty C++ in my day.
The problem, and I think the original poster was alluding to this, is that C++, with it's separation of interface from implementation, facilitates the replacement of one implementation with another. "Spaghetti code" in this case is, what I call, the "proxy implementation": the original code had a problem, so you wrap an instance of a "hack class" holding a reference on the object with the original implementation, and exposing an identical interface. Tee hee hee. C++ makes this particularly easy to do, with facilities intended for specialization (inheritence and polymorphism). It's still a hack, a patch on the original implementation instead of a reimplementation to correct the defect. As far as hacks go, its a pretty good one, though, like all hacks, it begs for eventual refactoring.
Seeing a Foo implemented as a SpecialFoo implemented as a BugFix73Foo with, finally, the original Foo backend implementation proxied away sure evokes thoughts of spaghetti code in my mind: a maze of declaration header files that one has to wander through to peel away the layers of proxied patches. Not a single goto in sight of course, but fairly called spaghetti code, none the less.
This does not mean that C++ is a bad language, only, like all languages, it can be badly abused.
Indeed.
Death by collateral damage is far, far, better a fate, than death by status quo.
Too bad we can't charge and prosecute all the peaceniks for "contributory rape".
It wasn't intended in a derogatory fashion. In fact, the Allen girls I knew used to take it as a compliment -- a strong woman who could hold her own against the boys. Antonym: prissie.
O.K. I see where you're coming from. Though in the 18 months I lived there, I hadn't heard it used in that fashion.
Please don't refer to her as a "bitch" -- the folks there were quite friendly and helpful.
So anyway, first time I need an oil change for my car, a neighbour sends me to a particular place. Well, I pull up and a couple of what could be best described as "dawgs" come running up to the car, followed by the skinniest woman I ever saw, with long straight, plain hair.
Next, two fellows who look like they fell straight out of a ZZ-top video tumbled out the door of the establishment and asked me my business. I explained I needed an oil change, and asked "how much?" "Cash or charge?" was the response "... 'cause we don't take charge". all the while looking me up and down.
Well, when it came time to pay (cash), and I pulled out my money, my NRA membership card fell. Seing this, one of the "ZZ-top" fellows mentioned, "Son, you gonna fit in here juuuuust fine!"
He was right.
Though, I was really expecteding to be modded down as off-topic, troll. I am as shocked as you are.
Oh, wait. I said WAI......
For better or worse, here is a nation that undertook the globally unpopular use of force to eradicate a beligerent regime from the face of the earth. No doubt the motive was self-interest, but the global positive side effect of this can not go unnoticed. While the rest of the world (read "U.N.") remained paralized over the agony of even a single drop of innocent blood being spilled, the security of the world was, in some small measure improved. For better or worse.
Now the cries of utter hypocricy of a nation that also exercizes its might in the world, in a manner that might be labeled beligerent, would have a voice, save not for the actions of it's citizens that keep its government's overreach in check, lest it too be absolutely corrupted by apparent absolute power.
Take note: American citizens undertake risk and fight to constrain the seductive power-mad leanings of its unavoidably corrupted rulers. And not radical militia units: librarians, of all people, armed only with card catalogues, a belief in their Constitution and Bill of Rights, and, above all, principle. Perhaps if people of other nations undertook similar responsibilities, they would not suffer collateral damage when the stench, fear, and oppression of their regimes, elected or not, drifts over the global landscape, and drives others to act in their stead -- never a desirable circumstance, regardless of how supposedly necessary.
America may have bred a large brutish beast, but at least it strives to keep that beast on a leash. While the leash may stretch and strain, so long as that spirit does not die, it shall not break. Take heart that that same spirit lives in the hearts and minds of others around the world, regardless of whatever citizenship was figuratively slapped on their buttocks at the time of their birth -- for it is in our interest as well that it not die.
FWIW, I was regretably born with the stigma of Canadian citizenship. This does not mean that I share the beliefs, opinions, or policies of my government, or the apparent majority of my birth country's population. It should be obvious that these views are in no way meant to represent those of my employer or anyone other than myself.
Er, the same way you do now? A perfect copy of encrypted material is perfectly fine. Have you never photocopied something in a foreign language for a friend?
Your foolish, shortsighted proposal would have the effect of forever fixing the state of fair use without a single care as to whether or not it was actually a good idea. For how can public demand ever be measured for something if it is quite impossible to get there?
Think of the way that demand had to be cultivated for a myriad of products and services, from xerox machines to tupperware. There was no articulable preexisting demand at all.
You presume that the only way a fair use can be argued, defended, and, in general, identified, is if it can be exercized apriori of determination of its legal status. While convenient to demonstrate its practicality, I don't see that as necessary to imagine it.
Let those that can envision new fair uses argue their legitimacy as fair, and if they win, obtain judgements against users of DRM systems that do not respect them. This turns the whole burden around and makes DRM quite inconvenient on the copyright holder. This does not mean that it may not be a justifiable inconvenience: the trick is to constrain restriction periods to a suffciently short interval that no new fair use unduely constrained is likely to appear. This does mean copyright terms being severely reduced, of course, lest the copyright holders want to continuously play fair use catch up.
The alternative is to completely eliminate copyright as allowing any but severly defined (i.e. codifiable) fair uses, because it is incompatible with any kind of DRM, as it stands today. I can see that happening, with severe constraints on DRM-imposed restrictions.
The problem is that copyright, at present, is no longer practical to enforce without DRM that eliminates all fair uses. Something has to give, and I don't think that intellectual property law (vis. copyrights, patents, trademarks, and they are all very different), will just go away.
DRM is fundementally incompatable with the goals of the copyright system. We cannot forbid it, but we certainly can utterly fail to reward those who would engage in it, and generally discourage it at every turn. (e.g. not permitting DRM to be a deductable business expense for tax purposes, etc.)
Yes, economic boycott of DRM is a distinct possibility. But, to be a success, the public at large would have to reject the notion of copyright as a right. I don't think the average person is aware enough of the issues to take a vocal stance.
I do think that the public at large values fair uses such as time-shifting, space-shifting, etc. and has little care for other ones (parody, criticism, and new uses). Defending those is better than losing all of them, and doesn't require taking an extreme position. Furthermore, once the notion of common fair use is entrenched in the public psyche, support can be garnered to regain less common ones.
Yes, I am proposing a tactical retreat from the "oppose any and all DRM", because I don't think that argument will carry the day.
Well, imagine if the government said that anything you write has to include the phrase 'God bless America' in it? That would be totally unacceptable, because they are forcing you to say something that you do not want to say.
Likewise, if the government said that everything you write has to include a DRM system, they are ALSO mandating speech, which is a hugely bad thing to do. Particularly if you're trying to write about how awful DRM is.
Oh! I would never endorse a system that mandated DRM: content creators should be as free to exercise their right (or not) as they wish. You're arging, in effect, that if someone tried to do a copyleft aroun
Unfortunately, a small minority of people are used to justify laws that make life miserable for all the rest of us. You can't trust people unknown to you. Do you?
The point is that I can see legitimate value in special-purpose computing devices in one's posession that one does not control. Think electric meter.... do you control yours? One of those forms of legitimate value is providing some kind of rights control to copyright holders in exchange for quicker, cheaper access for consumers. Just because that isn't the deal the **AA wants (having their cake and eating it too), doesn't mean it shouldn't be the line in the sand we draw. Basically, "You want DRM? This kind of DRM or none at all."
As for 'no extracts for 3 months' - what about reviews? Special licenses for reviewers? Nice, the RIAA gets to decide who's allowed to review an album...
I picked three months as an arbitrary figure. In practice one of several conditions would exist, (a) professional reviewers would have equipment that permitted extracts regardless of encoded restrictions, and clearly not controlled by content producers; (b) restriction periods would not be anywhere near three months on a CD release... a week perhaps? Let the die hards buy it unreviewed or even unheard -- there is some music I purchase that way based on band reputation; (c) An extract is not necessary for a review.
Other positive applications of such devices, which necessarily imply a public key trust hierarchy, are relatively secure communications as a matter of course. Yes, the keys are escrowed, so it isn't "secure" in the sense we'd consider it, but it is a far cry from a completely public internet, which I can't see as a bad thing. There's no stopping anyone from layering greater security over it.
As to the "parallel small extract loophole", a combination of fair pricing, difficulty in coordinating extraction, and ease of identifying blatent large-scale violators, should make this less of a problem than it might theoretically be. If "piracy" were the theoretical problem with unencrypted media that it could be, no more than one CD would ever be sold, and that copy illegaly duplicated and redistributed. Of course, that never happens. Sorry, if tha **AAs want any DRM, fair use has to be a priority and they can't have something completely bulletproof.
I can, however, imagine relases that might lock out some fair uses, legitimately, for short durations after release, espescially problematic ones. I'm thinking weeks, or at most, months here, before extracts are allowed, for example. Before one cries, "lack of fair use!" the response , "You didn't need to make an extract the day before release, you can wait 3 months" is offered. For most entertainment media, this is probably reasonable, though for news (which expires quickly), delays on the order of minutes to a few hours, at most a day, might be in order.
Entire extracts, bit-perfect, extracts for parody? While fair use, I find it unlikely that this would be done with a lengthy work in a manner that would require perfect extracts. I'm sure you can find fair use examples that are prevented with such DRM (since fair use can't yet be codified), but such uses probably comprise a small percentage of the fair use specturm -- time and space shifting, archival backups, and minor extracts are the big issues, IMHO.
If the "industry" screams for DRM, I'd rather provide somewhat palatable DRM as a fait acompli, rather than having clearly more draconian forms shoved doen my throat which make any fair use impossible.
I can furthermore see plenty of legitimate uses for providing computing resources under the control of selected others, besides hoisting **AA's profits (just clearly not all my computing resources. Rather than a blanket data freeway to my computer, I think of it as a digital "right of way", clearly defined and limited.
Sounds like a content-based restriction on free speech to me. Maybe even viewpoint discrimination.
Sorry, I don't understand how you reach this conclusion. The notion that I have is that if DRM is entrenched in a device, and a fair use is discovered that it prevents, the onus is on the owner of the keys restricting the fair use to make it possible (or, to make the restriction requiring the keys short enough so the problem "goes away" reasonably quickly).
One can, however, approximate its codification quite well: once limited plain text extracts can exist, and complete unlimited archival encrypted copies, what else is required? All other requirements become legal ones, and not hindered by restrictive technology. We can use the "genie out of the bottle" to our advantage here, and still severly limit the bane of copyright holders: blanket, widely distributed outright copies.
2) While I like copyrights being of minimal duration to achieve maximal public benefit, how could DRM possibly be aware of changes in the law?
Simple: the law can require that DRM software permit this, and open DRM software can be inspected to ensure that it does. It's the keys that remain secret. Of course, that does not prevent unscrupulously restrictive hardware or firmware, but then the "smoking gun" of non-complience with the law becomes quite obvious.
And of course, particular material may be determined not to be copyrighted, or may have copyrights suspended or revoked only after judicial intervention. Copyright holders cannot be relied upon to be honest; their interests are in asserting copyrights no matter what.
The corresponding judicial order would include release of any corresponding keys, or, more likely a small key set that puts an unencrypted version into the public domain.
While an inconvenience to someone who only has the encrypted version, presumably they obtained such a version in the belief that the restrictsions were valid and to find they are not is a bonus.
It does raise the issue of lost keys, however. I would argue that, with such a system, copyright should only be enforcable on material with plain text versions in government escrow.
3) Fair use is applicable no matter what technology one wishes to employ. I can time shift and space shift with a VCR if I want to.
You could certainly do this with encrypted content.
Restrictive technology should simply never exist.
I'm afraid that, as it becomes possible for code to enforce law, it will be used for that purpose. Such code can be overly enforcive, or finely tuned to the intent of the law. Open DRM implementations allow the latter (and may be a bit more lax than the law permits, relying on non-code legal enforcement for the difference). Closed ones do not.
I suppose I should have expected this, but the speakers were safe around his less-curious sister (7 years his elder).
Once they get mobile, they can and most likely will destroy anything they can out of sheer curiosity.
While you're locking up valuable/fragile stuff that you don't want broken (the $100 VCR is prolly worth taking a chance with), don't forget general baby/child proofing of the home. There's plenty of sites on advice about this. You won't let the kid out of your sight, of course, but it is better to be safe than (very, very) sorry.
Not quite: the only popular system that consumers should accept should permit such fair use. I maintain that it is possible to build such a system, and still have it forbid other, "less fair" uses.
The only difficulty is not technical, but the fact that legal fair use is a shifting definition, changing with the times, and thus difficult to codify. However, short copyright intevals, and the means (and legal requirement on DRM device manufacturers) to provide upgrades that permit new fair uses, an alleviate this problem: it is not mathematically impossible to solve.
The key is multifacetted: 1) fair use needs to have a codified definition that encompasses as much of legal fair use as possible and the flexibility to accept more; 2) copyright needs to be short enough that eventually any restrictive system opens up; 3) restrictive processing that the consumer does not control should NOT be part of a general computing platform, but rather integrated into audio and video "end devices" (TVs, displays, and speakers).
First, while software released under a free license, like the GPL, has to be redistributed under specified terms, the data such software processes does not (in general -- there are a few exceptions where output of a GPL program contains GPL code, thus restricting redistribution of compilation of that code without the rest of the source -- which usually comprises the input to the initial GPL program in the first place -- think parser generator). This is the entire basis for openssl and similar code: you can keep the keys secret.
Thus, if the keys involved are kept secret on a secure processor, and that processor only runs code signed with other secure keys, said code can be completely open!
Of course, you lose control over what this processor does (since it can't execute arbitrary code), but you can examine the code that it does execute. Furthermore, such a processor could also execute unsigned code, but not provide access to the keys it protects. If the processor is limited to decoding encrypted entertainment data, the fact that one does not have control over it is no worse than not having control over a remote server to which one connects over the internet -- it's not like your whole general purpose computer is locked up (and the biggest problem with TCPA -- it locks the whole machine, not just some remote part, and encourages laws making the possession of unlockable machines illegal).
This does raise the whole issue of key management and distribution, of course, but fair use creation of archival copies of encrypted content, and storage in different forms now becomes possible: you just need a decryptor at the end. No one ever complained about needing speakers to listen to music or a TV to watch, er, TV.
The problem of "fair" DRM then reduces to one of establishing a trust hierarchy that producers of decryptors, copyright content producers, and consumers can all accept. I argue that problem is solvable, at least in the mathematical sense. The question is: "Is it economically viable?"
I think the answer is yes, particularly with a U.S. government push to "secure the internet".
Google on "Canada" and "brain drain". You'll get both points of view. A caveat: many Canadians have left for the U.S. and got "burned" because they did not research cost of living properly: lots of unscrupulous head hunters there simply translated C$ to A$ and had people accept really bad lowball offers. Do your homework.
Where to begin... From what I observed, it appeared as though the UN inspectors were doing their job, and there were no traces of these mythincal weapons of mass destruction that GWB was constantly going on about.
I think GWB wanted to gain support on the basis of finding something, instead of ressurrect a decade-old dispute that was never settled. Still, the beligerance of Iraq attacking and invading it's neighbours deserves to be countered. Weapons inspections do not do this. Making a big deal of such inspections was a U.S. foreign policy mistake, but it appears clear that they wanted to rekindle an old battle with fresh support. That effort backfired. However, this does not change the legitimacy of holding Saddam Hussein accountable for his past deeds. Should there be a statute of limitations on state aggression? The U.N. would appear to think so, but the U.S. (and I) don't.
It is a third world nation crippled by sanctions that harm the average citizen yet do nothing to inconvenience the elites.
So, a little war and collateral death wouldn't make things much worse in the short term, but hold out the prospect for improvement in the long term.
These sanctions probably caused more harm than a swift and early war to topple the aggressive regime would. Such sanctions, BTW, were, of course a concession to the U.N. to retain post-Gulf War support. A U.S. mistake, IMHO: had they rolled on into Baghdad then, with a decimated Iraqi military, civillian deaths would not be what they are today. Of course such a move would have been unpopular then too. The "popular" and "supported" actions that transpired likely harmed Iraqis a great deal, yet, we condemn the U.N. and not the U.S. Indirect death by proxy is a common U.N. weakness.
I suspect that there are many people on this planet who would identfy GWB as a beligerant leader of a rogue nation.
Perhaps. Had he not maintained American interests in Saudi Arabia, perhaps Osama binLaden would not have attacked the U.S. And yes, the fact that certain "American interests" may increase risk of hostilities against Americans is a notion that appears lost on the administration and population in the U.S. (i.e. are these "interests" worth the risks?). However, you do not see the U.S. lobbing missiles at its neighbours or formally making threatening statements without a defensive posture. Arrogant and nosy might be a better way of describing U.S. action on the world scene, but not beligerent.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of brutality out there and we in the West set a rather poor example. However, the lessons of 9/11 have not been learned. All the terrorists needed to destroy the world trade center and attack the pentagon were some box-cutters. To paraphrase Thomas Hobbes: the weakest of men can kill the strongest of men - even the strong must sleep.
Yes, pissing people off is generally not good policy. I never claimed U.S. foreign policy wasn't clumsy and naive. However, its use of force against a forceful, aggressive foe against a backdrop of U.N. paralysis ("Oh, think of the poor civilians!") is not unreasonable. It may not be popular, but contrary to other bumbling moves, it is one of the few that is justifiable since it counters outright (albeit dated) aggression with retaliatory force.
You seem to be arguing that the ends will justify the means, and that might==right, and I think that you will eventually learn that those simplistic notions are inadequate when applied to as complex a system as the world we live in.
First, it is not statistically insignificant as an absolute number, but rather as a relative fraction. You can not say those people do not exist, merely that they have no democratic effect on the government of Canada. Interestingly, though, as it is the best and brightest that tend to leave, their economic impact is non-trivial.
Second, Americans wanting to immigrate to Canada are welcome to. I wish it were easy for us to simply switch places, one for one.
Well, I wish you all the best in your future.
And I, you, as long as your future does not involve living from my taxes.
Foreign policy is a means to get other countries to act in a way that is in your best interests, not necessarily their own. I agree that there is absolutely nothing noble about the war against Iraq.
I never claimed it was noble. But, I do think it was necessary, and the failure to avert it must be shared by nations other than the U.S. who proposed no other alternative to remove the threat of a provably beligerent leader of a rogue nation.
What about the innocents he murdered when he was a trusted ally of the US during the 1980's? Who do you think sold him the biological and chemical weapons that he used against the Kurds and Iran?
Who cares? They could, they did. People kill oneanother. That's one of the things we do. Power corrupts, and the U.S. is certainly powerful. In the context of that bleak truth, foreign policy mistakes will be painful and costly, and cleaning them up will be messy.
Wringing our hands at the U.S. when this happens, and taking a "holier than thou" stance, pretending to take the higher moral grounds of abstaining from violence is sheer hypcricy, since the U.S.'s error was only criticized after it blew up in their face. Obviously, the rest of the world would have been quite happy to have Saddam Hussein as a peaceful puppet ruler to counter the "evil" Iran of the post-revolutionary 1980s.
You can't be pleased when the U.S.'s "attrocities" serve your needs and then appalled when they blow up in their face.
Some might say that those who made the mess in the first place should be responsible for cleaining it up!
Well, yes, and their doing just that, no? Before the condemnations fly, who argued against the folly when the mess was created in the first place, and offered a better means of cleaning it up? No one (well, no nation, oficially), on both counts.
I suppose it is human nature to criticize when someone fucks up, and the bigger the fuckup, the greater the criticism. But progress is made through experience, as ugly and costly in human lives as that may be, and the powerful will subdue the weak. We treat other humans as we treat beasts raised for food and burden, when we can.
In this circumstance, the U.N. has demonstrated it's socialist impotence by (a) not censuring the U.S. when it placed the puppet regime in place, and (b) not offering a better means of removing it. It is a failed, irrelevant, organization, much like its League of Nations predecessor. What a waste of time, effort, and money.
Canada, mirror and puppet of this borg-like collective, also remains paralized and frozen in the status quo.
Sixth best standard of living in the world? Like I said, "third world backwater". Number one or nothing, regardless of what it takes.
As painful and harsh a driving force as that may be, it is honestly human. Peace on earth will be achieved when the strong eliminate the weak, and all exist as equals: a cold-war like stalemate, if you will.
The sad and infuriating fact is that we are mired in pseudo-allegience to the nations in which we were born, and not the nations who's ideals and principles we echo. Clearly my views are unCanadian, and I make no attempt to hide that fact.