When engineers screw up, people can die. When a writer writes a shitty column, people just make fun of him.
The guy couldn't even perform a simple titration. How hard is it? You just slowly let the liquid drip until you see the slightest hint of pink. If he couldn't even follow the instructions for such a simple experiment, he had no business being an engineer.
But wait, people say, "Is an engineer ever going to have to perform a titration on the job? Why should we care about stuff like that?" Well no, you probably won't be many engineers performing titrations and all the other bullshit you do in freshman chem, but if you don't have the attention to detail required to do it right, you're either going to kill people or lose your company a lot of money.
Yes, there are definitely problems with engineering education. Yes, we need to find a way to get professors to be a bit more interested in their students. Yes, we need professors who are capable of communicating (although my five years of experience at Georgia Tech have shown that it really isn't as bad as he says). Yes, the language barrier with foreign TAs and professors can be frustrating (but that's going to be a reality in the workforce too).
But his solution is to make it easier. "Inflate the grades!" he says. Everyone in engineering knows that the good schools don't inflate their grades, so they understand the achievement that a 3.0 GPA represents. So sure, we need to do a better job of teaching. But that doesn't mean we should make it easy enough to let morons like this guy slip through.
In Canada, a college is usually what an American would call a "community college", so its primary focus is instruction with a vocational focus. University means just what it means in the US, a higher-education institution that has a strong focus on research (and obviously the extent of that focus varies from place to place). The term college is sometimes also used to refer to the units of a university, such as St. Mike's College at the University of Toronto or St. Paul's College at the University of Manitoba, so you have to get some of the meaning from the context. Without context, the first meaning is usually understood.
The easiest way to see the difference is that if you tell a Canadian "I'm going to college", he'll probably look at you a second and then either think to himself or say, "Oh, you mean university".
A lot of people seem to be confused about how this is going to work, which isn't surprising because the article didn't go a very good job of explaining it. I signed up with SiteKey at BoA a few weeks ago, and the concept is actually decent. It's got some problems, but it's a fairly simple solution that will make the simplest phishing scams a lot harder and/or more traceable.
Here's how it works:
You start logging in with your account ID, but not your password
If you haven't logged in from this machine before (based on cookies), one of three personal questions is asked, and you have to give the correct answer before moving on to the next step).
If you've logged in from this machine before or you answered the question correctly, an image you selected previously is displayed to you, along with a message you created. You then enter your password and are logged in.
The three personal questions are chosen by the bank. There's actually three sets of possible questions, and each set has different questions. You choose one question from each set, and none of them are dumb things like "what's your password?" or "what's your CCV code?". Some of them are pretty easy to find out, but most phishers don't have time to figure it out.
This does make phishing a lot more difficult. Now, to phish, you have to be set up to ask the user for his account ID, send it to the bank to get the correct challenge question, ask the victim the question, supply the answer to the bank, get the image and message and then finally get the password. That's a lot tougher than a screen that asks for user names and passwords and then displays a login error and redirects to the bank website. It's also more traceable, because you have to interact with the bank website, meaning that they have a bit more to go on to track you down. Finally, the user will be tipped off that something's going wrong, because they know they shouldn't be asked those questions from their home computer. That's why the "personal questions" are so important. It stops the phisher from completely automating things and just taking the account number and grabbing the image and message from the bank's website, because they won't have the cookie needed to get the proper image. Obviously there are holes in the scheme and phishing will still possible, but this is a simple solution that raises the bar a lot.
I'm writing a Mono program that's imaginatively called gflashcards (screenshot). The webpage is pretty junky and the program isn't al that great right now, but I've been putting a lot of work into both and there'll probably be cool new versions of them in around a week.</plug>
If you want something a bit more complete right this instant, check out granule
This is exactly the way it works in Canada. We pay a levee on all blank media which is handed over to the music industry, but it's completely legal for us to make copies of music for personal use. Personal use includes a hell of a lot of things, including making copies of CDs for friends. I"m not sure, but it may even include making copies available online for all our friends.
The using the old rail lines thing in Atlanta has actually been suggested. The Belt Line is basically a proposal to use old railways to link together urban areas that look like they'll be redeveloped into residential areas within the near future. There's also plans for bike and pedestrian paths along the light rail lines. It's still pretty far off in the future, if it even happens at all, but it looks like a cool idea that might actually work.
A lot of companies have a very important need for this, other than just the desire to "snoop" on their employees. For example, many firms such as brokerage houses are required to monitor and keep records of their employees' interactions with clients. The article alludes to these groups slightly, without going into much detail. These companies would like to be able to use instant messanging to communicate with clients, but right now regulations stop them from using AIM, unless they somehow develop their own monitoring software. It's companies like these that AOL is really targeting with this product. Of course, a lot of these companies are also demanding that all the IM providers adopt and open/interoperable standard, which AOL isn't quite as willing to do.
Whoa, whoa whoa. Let's take a look at what you just said there.
Olin won't require its students to take a separate chemistry class, since most engineers don't end up using it anyway. It'll be combined with Materials Science, which is useful.
I thought part of the point of Olin was to provide a broader curriculum, and additionally, to focus more on why things work and stuff like that than just plug and chug with formulas. And now you're saying, you won't have a separate chemistry class because it isn't useful to engineers? Wouldn't you think that a Chemistry class that focuses on theory instead of a materials science class that seems to focus more on applications be more suited to that goal?
It almost sounds like you're talking about more of a community college kind of experience, where you go and learn how to do something, but not why you're doing it in the first place. That's not what engineering is supposed to be about (at least in my opinion). At the good engineering schools across the country, the curriculum tends to focus very rigorously on theory. You're expected to learn complicated concepts in math, physics, chemistry, and computer science. Once you've proven a good knowledge of those subjects, you start learning how to apply them in engineering. The result is that you learn all the latest applications of math and science, but also how we arrived at those applications, and hopefully how to come up with your own applications. With a good grounding in theory, and experience with translating that theory into applications, you have a much better chance of having a durable degree--one that won't be obsolete as soon as new technology is developed.
Yes, it's hard. Yes, people will smash their heads against the wall trying to cram in all that knowledge. Yes. many people will take a long time to graduate, or drop out of engineering. But that's the way it should be. Not everyone is cut out to be an engineer. Engineering schools and faculties would be doing a disservice to the profession and the world if they graduated anyone who wasn't up to the task.
As a matter of fact, in Canada we use a paper-based voting system, and we also know the results of the election within a few hours of the polls closing. The counting happens so quickly that we have laws making it illegal to report the results from polls in the east of the country to the more western parts where, because of the time zones, people are still voting.
Our system is really incredibly simple and secure. You're given a paper ballot with the names of the candidates and the party they represent. Each name has a circle beside it. You put an X in the circle representing the candidate of your choice, and the ballot is placed in the ballot box. When the poll closes, the votes are counted by election officials. Everything's carefully sealed up and delivered to the riding's returning officer, so that it's available if a recount is needed. The whole process is supervised in each precinct by scrutineers representing each candidate/party (if the candidate/party chooses to have scrutineers).
The system is simple enough for anyone to use, it's fast, and it's almost impossible to abuse it. There were problems with a secession referendum in Quebec where lots of "Non" ballots were being rejected for spurious reasons, but that's the only abuse I've ever heard of.
Centimetre is spelled centimetre in most of the English-speaking world, just like centre, theatre, and litre. It's just U.S. based english that has things like meter instead of metre, and color instead of colour. When you start getting into things like foetus versus fetus, I know the British tend to stick to their guns, while Canadians at least are more likely to go with fetus. I don't know what they go in Australia, New Zealand, India, or other former parts of the British Empire. And, BTW the last letter of the alphabet is Zed.
And over here I have a bridge to sell you...
on
The Almighty Buck
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Does David Brooks' claim that the USA is different from other empires and will never go through a decadent phase remind anyone else of the end of the business cycle supposedly heralded by the dotcom boom? I think one of the greatest problem any society has to face is complacency: once you get too many people at the top saying "yeah, we're great, we've created the perfect never-ending utopia" they stop responding to outside pressures, stagnate, and start to decline. I don't know if that's happened in the US yet, but I'd definitely rather that our national leaders were all a bunch of pessimists. First, they're probably more likely to be right; and second, if they're wrong, the consequences aren't as bad as they would be if they were incorrectly optimistic.
It's incredible bullshit like this that got us into the situation we're in today. Every single time you withhold your vote, you're not telling the people in Washington you're pissed off at them, you're telling them you don't care, so they should continue on doing what they're doing.
The solution is to exercise your rights as a member of a free and democratic society. This includes the right to free speech. Instead of whining to the choir in a forum like Slashdot, go out into the world and talk to normal people about, people who don't know how our government has been bought out by corporate interests. Exercise your right to inform yourself.
Go out and read some of Nader's books, like _Crashing the Party_ about how the Republicrats and their corporate masters did everything possible to keep him out of the 2000 election. If you aren't a progressive, find some right-wing activist you like and read what he/she has to say. You've got to move beyond songs (however moving they may be) and get facts to back up your arguments, so you can be more persuasive to your friends.
The next step is to actually vote. Yes, there is a possibility (I personally believe it's a very very small one), that if a third party starts to gain power, its leaders will be killed or otherwise muzzled by plutocrats who currently run our country. I can tell you though, if that does happen, there will be outrage! There will be violence and revolution, and things will happen. The United States wasn't formed by people sitting around and whining that King George was a tyrant, but that there was nothing to do so they'd just wait around until housewives (housewives?) got fed up with things. They petitioned. They wrote articles. They tried to pass the laws that needed passing in their assemblies. They contined to escalate their protests until they clearly had no choice other than armed revolution. When they saw they had no choice, they did what had to be done. Do I think revolution is necessary? No. I think if people actually got their minds together and voted against corporate ownership of our government, no one would be silly enough to use force to stop the rightfully elected government from taking power. Why? Because a government that cares about the people might be bad for business, but the possibility of armed revolution would be a heck of a lot worse.
So, you've informed yourself on the issues. You went out and talked to all your friends, and after years of grass-roots activism, someone reasonable gets elected. What's to stop them from turning into an other corporate-owned carbon-copy of the Republicans? You are! Continue your activism. Continue to watch your government to make sure they act in your interests. Continue to talk to your friends to make sure they watch the government too. If they go bad, repeat the process until you find someone who will work for you.
It's called democracy. People power. The people have the power in our system of government, but it works only if they actually exercise that power. They've got to stay informed, watch their government, and exercise their right to speak against and vote against their government if necessary. If also helps if they go out and work in their community. People are less likely to be apathetic about our political system if they see that it encourages people to get involved and do something themselves to make the world a better place. Democracy isn't about electing a government every once in a while and then sitting around and ignoring them. It also isn't about people rebelling against authority. It's about people realizing that they are the authority. It's about people exercising their power every day of their lives, not just not election day. It's not easy, but few things that are worthwhile are easy.
This isn't as great as it sounds, because you have to "sandwich" it in their plastic adapter to get your CD player to read the disk. Since no one has any of their adapters sitting around the house, anyone who wanted to mail one of thess flexCDs out (which is supposed to be one of their main applications) would also have to send out the rigid plastic pieces, reducing the weight and flexibility advantages. If it ever catches on and people start keeping plastic adapters around the house, that might become unnecessary, but I can see this tanking because people can't figure out why their CD player/drive doesn't like this flexible piece of plastic.
Actually, unlike the the U.S. Social Security system, the Canadian Pension Plan enjoys statutory protections from raiding by the government. It is not possible for politicians to divert the funds to other purposes, so any money that goes in will end up getting paid out as benefits. Add to that the recent CPP rate increases, and you can be pretty sure that the CPP will be around for a while (the Globe and Mail had an article on this a while ago, but their website only has 7 days of freely searchable archives).
Re:Real Programmers...
on
VIM 6.0 is Out
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I know it's a bit offtopic, but lowercase numbers actually do exist. Most professionally printed books will use them, because they look better in passages of text than uppercase numbers (the ones you normally use). You cna recognize lowercase numbers by the 1 that looks like a small I, and, and the 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9 that have descenders (go below the baseline like g's q's).
I rather doubt this is the patent. First of all, the date filed is Februart 23, 1996. If something this miraculous had been invented four years ago, it should already be in production by now. Secondly, the patent quite clearly states that it applies to monochrome CRTs. I doubt anyone would be getting excited about a monochrome TV.
The patent talks about correcting spot astigmatism and spot elongation along the diagonals of the CRT. I'm not sure, but it seems to me that the spots they're talking about are pixels--nothing about making the tube shorter, just making the pixels less distorted.
Ever heard of a little Canadian company called Nortel networks? Ever wonder why their stock price went from around $100 to $8.52 (today's closing price)? It's because they sold a shitload of optical networking equipment, and now no one is interested in buying any more. According to the Globe and Mail, the telecomm companies have tons of unused capacity. I can't find the specific article, but I remember something like 1/3 utilization, perhaps even lower. Companies the world over, especially Nortel, are praying for anything that will make customers start to suck up bandwidth, so that the telecomms will start to buy equipment again.
A few responses to this. First the standard, yes it does just move to pollution elsewhere, but it moves it to places where the generation is much more efficient, and where it's more economically viable to control the pollution. Second, there are "environmentally friendly" energy sources such as fuel cells, hydroelectric dams, solar, and wind. Some even include nuclear power in this category, and I'm one of them. With very stringent enforcement of safety standards, and preferably public-sector utilities, I believe nuclear power can be a fairly safe and clean alternative to fossil fuels. The risk posed by the nuclear waste is fairly low in comparison to the health problems caused by particulate matter, acid rain, and ground-level ozone.
Fianlly, as a Canadian I can say that it is not simply Americans who pollute Canada. Ontario, our most industrialized province, has rather lax pollution standards, and various American states are starting to complain. Of course, Ontario complains about American pollution too so no one really knows what is going on.
As I've already pointed out in a response to another comment, Transmeta aren't the ones who are saying they're going to announce a relationship, it's AMD. If you'd simply read the article before posting, you'd be less likely to make such silly, groundless remarks.
IMO, this story is very close to a hoax. Sort of similar to the crap the candidates pull shortly before election time. Fact is AMD will want nothing to do with Transmeta, except for maybe to bury them. This seems awful of base to me, looks like a Transmeta PR campaign to raise some badly needed cash.
Those Transmeta PR guys are pretty damn slick! Not only do they get ZDNet to write a completely false article about a possible partnership with AMD, but also manage to con AMD's CEO talking about the non-existant deal. If you'd actually read the article, you might have seen this quote:
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD - news) and Transmeta Corp. are about to announce a relationship.
The chip makers are expected to soon announce the scope of cooperation, according to AMD chairman and CEO Jerry Sanders. However, Sanders remained mum on the details.
Slashdot Mirror
When engineers screw up, people can die. When a writer writes a shitty column, people just make fun of him.
The guy couldn't even perform a simple titration. How hard is it? You just slowly let the liquid drip until you see the slightest hint of pink. If he couldn't even follow the instructions for such a simple experiment, he had no business being an engineer.
But wait, people say, "Is an engineer ever going to have to perform a titration on the job? Why should we care about stuff like that?" Well no, you probably won't be many engineers performing titrations and all the other bullshit you do in freshman chem, but if you don't have the attention to detail required to do it right, you're either going to kill people or lose your company a lot of money.
Yes, there are definitely problems with engineering education. Yes, we need to find a way to get professors to be a bit more interested in their students. Yes, we need professors who are capable of communicating (although my five years of experience at Georgia Tech have shown that it really isn't as bad as he says). Yes, the language barrier with foreign TAs and professors can be frustrating (but that's going to be a reality in the workforce too).
But his solution is to make it easier. "Inflate the grades!" he says. Everyone in engineering knows that the good schools don't inflate their grades, so they understand the achievement that a 3.0 GPA represents. So sure, we need to do a better job of teaching. But that doesn't mean we should make it easy enough to let morons like this guy slip through.
In Canada, a college is usually what an American would call a "community college", so its primary focus is instruction with a vocational focus. University means just what it means in the US, a higher-education institution that has a strong focus on research (and obviously the extent of that focus varies from place to place). The term college is sometimes also used to refer to the units of a university, such as St. Mike's College at the University of Toronto or St. Paul's College at the University of Manitoba, so you have to get some of the meaning from the context. Without context, the first meaning is usually understood.
The easiest way to see the difference is that if you tell a Canadian "I'm going to college", he'll probably look at you a second and then either think to himself or say, "Oh, you mean university".
A lot of people seem to be confused about how this is going to work, which isn't surprising because the article didn't go a very good job of explaining it. I signed up with SiteKey at BoA a few weeks ago, and the concept is actually decent. It's got some problems, but it's a fairly simple solution that will make the simplest phishing scams a lot harder and/or more traceable.
Here's how it works:
The three personal questions are chosen by the bank. There's actually three sets of possible questions, and each set has different questions. You choose one question from each set, and none of them are dumb things like "what's your password?" or "what's your CCV code?". Some of them are pretty easy to find out, but most phishers don't have time to figure it out.
This does make phishing a lot more difficult. Now, to phish, you have to be set up to ask the user for his account ID, send it to the bank to get the correct challenge question, ask the victim the question, supply the answer to the bank, get the image and message and then finally get the password. That's a lot tougher than a screen that asks for user names and passwords and then displays a login error and redirects to the bank website. It's also more traceable, because you have to interact with the bank website, meaning that they have a bit more to go on to track you down. Finally, the user will be tipped off that something's going wrong, because they know they shouldn't be asked those questions from their home computer. That's why the "personal questions" are so important. It stops the phisher from completely automating things and just taking the account number and grabbing the image and message from the bank's website, because they won't have the cookie needed to get the proper image. Obviously there are holes in the scheme and phishing will still possible, but this is a simple solution that raises the bar a lot.
I'm writing a Mono program that's imaginatively called gflashcards (screenshot). The webpage is pretty junky and the program isn't al that great right now, but I've been putting a lot of work into both and there'll probably be cool new versions of them in around a week.</plug>
If you want something a bit more complete right this instant, check out granule
But that's the thing about makefiles. If you type make clean, it should make toothpick and then make clean.
This is exactly the way it works in Canada. We pay a levee on all blank media which is handed over to the music industry, but it's completely legal for us to make copies of music for personal use. Personal use includes a hell of a lot of things, including making copies of CDs for friends. I"m not sure, but it may even include making copies available online for all our friends.
http://nique.net/issues/fall2002/2002-09-27/15.htm l
A lot of companies have a very important need for this, other than just the desire to "snoop" on their employees. For example, many firms such as brokerage houses are required to monitor and keep records of their employees' interactions with clients. The article alludes to these groups slightly, without going into much detail. These companies would like to be able to use instant messanging to communicate with clients, but right now regulations stop them from using AIM, unless they somehow develop their own monitoring software. It's companies like these that AOL is really targeting with this product. Of course, a lot of these companies are also demanding that all the IM providers adopt and open/interoperable standard, which AOL isn't quite as willing to do.
Ummm... I think Backslashdot was slashdotted.
I thought part of the point of Olin was to provide a broader curriculum, and additionally, to focus more on why things work and stuff like that than just plug and chug with formulas. And now you're saying, you won't have a separate chemistry class because it isn't useful to engineers? Wouldn't you think that a Chemistry class that focuses on theory instead of a materials science class that seems to focus more on applications be more suited to that goal?
It almost sounds like you're talking about more of a community college kind of experience, where you go and learn how to do something, but not why you're doing it in the first place. That's not what engineering is supposed to be about (at least in my opinion). At the good engineering schools across the country, the curriculum tends to focus very rigorously on theory. You're expected to learn complicated concepts in math, physics, chemistry, and computer science. Once you've proven a good knowledge of those subjects, you start learning how to apply them in engineering. The result is that you learn all the latest applications of math and science, but also how we arrived at those applications, and hopefully how to come up with your own applications. With a good grounding in theory, and experience with translating that theory into applications, you have a much better chance of having a durable degree--one that won't be obsolete as soon as new technology is developed.
Yes, it's hard. Yes, people will smash their heads against the wall trying to cram in all that knowledge. Yes. many people will take a long time to graduate, or drop out of engineering. But that's the way it should be. Not everyone is cut out to be an engineer. Engineering schools and faculties would be doing a disservice to the profession and the world if they graduated anyone who wasn't up to the task.
Our system is really incredibly simple and secure. You're given a paper ballot with the names of the candidates and the party they represent. Each name has a circle beside it. You put an X in the circle representing the candidate of your choice, and the ballot is placed in the ballot box. When the poll closes, the votes are counted by election officials. Everything's carefully sealed up and delivered to the riding's returning officer, so that it's available if a recount is needed. The whole process is supervised in each precinct by scrutineers representing each candidate/party (if the candidate/party chooses to have scrutineers).
The system is simple enough for anyone to use, it's fast, and it's almost impossible to abuse it. There were problems with a secession referendum in Quebec where lots of "Non" ballots were being rejected for spurious reasons, but that's the only abuse I've ever heard of.
Centimetre is spelled centimetre in most of the English-speaking world, just like centre, theatre, and litre. It's just U.S. based english that has things like meter instead of metre, and color instead of colour. When you start getting into things like foetus versus fetus, I know the British tend to stick to their guns, while Canadians at least are more likely to go with fetus. I don't know what they go in Australia, New Zealand, India, or other former parts of the British Empire. And, BTW the last letter of the alphabet is Zed.
Does David Brooks' claim that the USA is different from other empires and will never go through a decadent phase remind anyone else of the end of the business cycle supposedly heralded by the dotcom boom? I think one of the greatest problem any society has to face is complacency: once you get too many people at the top saying "yeah, we're great, we've created the perfect never-ending utopia" they stop responding to outside pressures, stagnate, and start to decline. I don't know if that's happened in the US yet, but I'd definitely rather that our national leaders were all a bunch of pessimists. First, they're probably more likely to be right; and second, if they're wrong, the consequences aren't as bad as they would be if they were incorrectly optimistic.
The solution is to exercise your rights as a member of a free and democratic society. This includes the right to free speech. Instead of whining to the choir in a forum like Slashdot, go out into the world and talk to normal people about, people who don't know how our government has been bought out by corporate interests. Exercise your right to inform yourself.
Go out and read some of Nader's books, like _Crashing the Party_ about how the Republicrats and their corporate masters did everything possible to keep him out of the 2000 election. If you aren't a progressive, find some right-wing activist you like and read what he/she has to say. You've got to move beyond songs (however moving they may be) and get facts to back up your arguments, so you can be more persuasive to your friends.
The next step is to actually vote. Yes, there is a possibility (I personally believe it's a very very small one), that if a third party starts to gain power, its leaders will be killed or otherwise muzzled by plutocrats who currently run our country. I can tell you though, if that does happen, there will be outrage! There will be violence and revolution, and things will happen. The United States wasn't formed by people sitting around and whining that King George was a tyrant, but that there was nothing to do so they'd just wait around until housewives (housewives?) got fed up with things. They petitioned. They wrote articles. They tried to pass the laws that needed passing in their assemblies. They contined to escalate their protests until they clearly had no choice other than armed revolution. When they saw they had no choice, they did what had to be done. Do I think revolution is necessary? No. I think if people actually got their minds together and voted against corporate ownership of our government, no one would be silly enough to use force to stop the rightfully elected government from taking power. Why? Because a government that cares about the people might be bad for business, but the possibility of armed revolution would be a heck of a lot worse.
So, you've informed yourself on the issues. You went out and talked to all your friends, and after years of grass-roots activism, someone reasonable gets elected. What's to stop them from turning into an other corporate-owned carbon-copy of the Republicans? You are! Continue your activism. Continue to watch your government to make sure they act in your interests. Continue to talk to your friends to make sure they watch the government too. If they go bad, repeat the process until you find someone who will work for you.
It's called democracy. People power. The people have the power in our system of government, but it works only if they actually exercise that power. They've got to stay informed, watch their government, and exercise their right to speak against and vote against their government if necessary. If also helps if they go out and work in their community. People are less likely to be apathetic about our political system if they see that it encourages people to get involved and do something themselves to make the world a better place. Democracy isn't about electing a government every once in a while and then sitting around and ignoring them. It also isn't about people rebelling against authority. It's about people realizing that they are the authority. It's about people exercising their power every day of their lives, not just not election day. It's not easy, but few things that are worthwhile are easy.
They did a demo at my school (GATech), where they claimed to have developed snow and ice tires.
So when's someone going to make an automaton that whacks people every time they build a website with a background that makes it totally unreadable?
This isn't as great as it sounds, because you have to "sandwich" it in their plastic adapter to get your CD player to read the disk. Since no one has any of their adapters sitting around the house, anyone who wanted to mail one of thess flexCDs out (which is supposed to be one of their main applications) would also have to send out the rigid plastic pieces, reducing the weight and flexibility advantages. If it ever catches on and people start keeping plastic adapters around the house, that might become unnecessary, but I can see this tanking because people can't figure out why their CD player/drive doesn't like this flexible piece of plastic.
Actually, unlike the the U.S. Social Security system, the Canadian Pension Plan enjoys statutory protections from raiding by the government. It is not possible for politicians to divert the funds to other purposes, so any money that goes in will end up getting paid out as benefits. Add to that the recent CPP rate increases, and you can be pretty sure that the CPP will be around for a while (the Globe and Mail had an article on this a while ago, but their website only has 7 days of freely searchable archives).
I know it's a bit offtopic, but lowercase numbers actually do exist. Most professionally printed books will use them, because they look better in passages of text than uppercase numbers (the ones you normally use). You cna recognize lowercase numbers by the 1 that looks like a small I, and, and the 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9 that have descenders (go below the baseline like g's q's).
I rather doubt this is the patent. First of all, the date filed is Februart 23, 1996. If something this miraculous had been invented four years ago, it should already be in production by now. Secondly, the patent quite clearly states that it applies to monochrome CRTs. I doubt anyone would be getting excited about a monochrome TV.
The patent talks about correcting spot astigmatism and spot elongation along the diagonals of the CRT. I'm not sure, but it seems to me that the spots they're talking about are pixels--nothing about making the tube shorter, just making the pixels less distorted.
Ever heard of a little Canadian company called Nortel networks? Ever wonder why their stock price went from around $100 to $8.52 (today's closing price)? It's because they sold a shitload of optical networking equipment, and now no one is interested in buying any more. According to the Globe and Mail, the telecomm companies have tons of unused capacity. I can't find the specific article, but I remember something like 1/3 utilization, perhaps even lower. Companies the world over, especially Nortel, are praying for anything that will make customers start to suck up bandwidth, so that the telecomms will start to buy equipment again.
Fianlly, as a Canadian I can say that it is not simply Americans who pollute Canada. Ontario, our most industrialized province, has rather lax pollution standards, and various American states are starting to complain. Of course, Ontario complains about American pollution too so no one really knows what is going on.
As I've already pointed out in a response to another comment, Transmeta aren't the ones who are saying they're going to announce a relationship, it's AMD. If you'd simply read the article before posting, you'd be less likely to make such silly, groundless remarks.
Those Transmeta PR guys are pretty damn slick! Not only do they get ZDNet to write a completely false article about a possible partnership with AMD, but also manage to con AMD's CEO talking about the non-existant deal. If you'd actually read the article, you might have seen this quote:
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD - news) and Transmeta Corp. are about to announce a relationship.
The chip makers are expected to soon announce the scope of cooperation, according to AMD chairman and CEO Jerry Sanders. However, Sanders remained mum on the details.
Do you realize the irony of this comment?