>Ummmm, your friend missed lunch and went to church hungry. Bummer.
Yeah, but when you care enough about something, you don't worry about something like that.
Besides, I'm sure he stops at a Drive Thru on the way there.
You can expect a certain level of "give" from people for your religion. At some point, though, you as an individual have to make choices. I think the one he made works well for everyone involved.
>I do remember it saying that it is WRONG to make the current citizens pay for new people to become citizens and then end up competing for a place in the job market.
And we don't do this for new citizens already?
The fact that an immigrant usually comes here with a significant set of education we don't have to pay for shouldn't exclude them from furthering it.
Just like future taxes on a born Canadian child when they grow up pay for the education they used, future taxes on an immigrant Canadian pay for the education they use.
A significant part of this country's accomplishments were acheived by immigrants, and Canada wouldn't be the respected first world nation it is without immigration. It's a symbiotic relationship in which both the new immigrant and people who have been here a long time benefit.
Dude, I don't think you got the point of what I was linking to.
Just because you have a multi-million dollar salary and run a company doesn't make you intelligent, or useful. Infact, when a company fails as craptacularly as Enron, its usually the idiot CEOs who are at fault.
Not to mention in the majority of those cases, the company fell apart because of what?
Lack of communication. Yup, when you're a CEO and decide to stay locked up in your little corner of the world and only pay attention to people at the same level as you, I can assure you that your business is on the path to failure.
Perhaps if those CEOs spent some time reading slashdot, they would have found out about fuckedcompany.com before they were on it.
>I doubt they give the slightest bit of a crap what software their company uses as long as the employees are satisfied and it gets the job done within the specs.
That isn't how being a CEO works at all. Anyone who's in an Executive position is always in CYA mode. Most CEOs don't give a shit about their employees until one of them makes him look like the fool. And caring about satisfying employees? Unions existed for a reason (now they're more of an anacronism than they should be).
Same thing goes for the products and software. It's all CYA, and CEOs would run linux today if they thought they could wipe their arse with it the moment it fails. It's just that Microsoft is used to being everyone's toilet paper, and so they don't feel threatened when a CEO says "It's isn't my fault the IT department left you guys in research without email all week. They told me it was Microsoft's fault because of some Exchange error or something.". Microsoft knows as long as they make a good punching bag, they'll stay in business.
>How the hell to beer drinking/pot smoking hippies screw you broke?
It's hard to hold a steady job when you're always drunk/high... And when you're not holding a job, you're usually on the pogey. The hippie part just happens to be what (I think) one would call that section of Canadians.:)
>Who's the bigger idiot: The one who is placed in a position of making decisions for a corporation, or the one who has posted over 1600 slashdot comments?
Okay. But at the same time, could you avoid using "Thank You" in a churlish manner?
(I've been waiting to use that word for so long you have no idea how happy I was to integrate it into a sentence. A warmhearted thank you goes from me to you.)
>There is nothing wrong with welcoming immigrants, but there is definitely a lot wrong with giving anyone a free ride on the backs of hardworking Canadians, immigrants or not. That isn't promoting equality. Forcing an existing citizen to finance the training of a newcomer so the newcomer can compete for the same job is wrong.
But that's where the whole system breaks down. Being untolerant of the occasional bad immigrant could mean that you may not be part of Canada. Remember, most all Canadians are born from immigrant families, and that without immigration we'd have a 1920's level population within a couple of decades (I can find the stats if you'd like).
>We're not the melting pot, we're the mosaic. Remember highschool social studies?
Yes, I remember what the teacher told me. But it is quite contradictory to the truth. Canada integrates people into its society. Part of the integration is adapting to their culture, and having their culture adapt to ours.
I think a perfect example of this is my Pakistani friend. Church for him is on Friday. So, he adapts to the fact that Friday is usually a big workday by skipping lunch so he can be at church when it starts. Everyone wins. Our society integrates him by being tolerant, and he integrates with our society by working within our existing system.
>Or, you could do what Canada also does, provide some immigrants with all the benefits of citizenship and support of Canadian society with little of the responsibility or even the requirement to work for what they get, taking money from existing citizens through high taxes to feed those fleeing far less supportive cultures.
Again, I'll bring up my Pakistani friend. His family fled his country due to religious persecution (how much less supportive can you get), and now his dad is a tool and die worker, one of the hardest jobs to get filled in factories these days.
This country was formed on the backs of immigrants and I think if people would just look around rather than read newspaper reports they'd be amazed at just how many more good immigrants there are to bad ones.
How many immigrants do you personally know? The number should be at about 40%. Out of them, how many would you consider bad immigrants?
I think the difference between being an immigrant and a born Canada (such as myself) is that a Canadian immigrant chose to be Canadian. I just got it for free.
>The slashdot crowd doesn't attack with just words, either. We attack with skewed numbers and outright lies. We attack with exaggerated facts designed to support our ideals. Slashdot is every bit as propagandist as Microsoft is regarding Linux.
I didn't say that. I said we don't attack with money, and that Microsoft does. Money can buy support (witness US congress), words just don't buy much at all any more (witness US congress, again).
>First of all, many of the immigrants coming here to Canada are rich, filthy stinking rich and they're starting businesses left and right, hiring idiot teenagers at minimum wage to run corner stores, 42-for-1 pizza, and cheap ass apartment buildings.
That's a very narrow view, IMHO. Can I suggest you walk by a local university and/or a college in Canada?
I think you'll find a literal explosion of new immigrants taking courses. In fact, in some classes, I've seen _more_ immigrants taking courses than "homegrown" Canadians.
What the is wrong with running a corner store or pizza shop? You have a problem with students getting easy employment when they want it? You'd rather that mom-n-pop corner store run by Pakistanis be a McDonald's run by rednecks?
And running cheap ass apartment buildings is bad? I've seen numerous articles in my local newspaper about numerous people virtually starving themselves because their choice is either an $800/month apartment or social assistance. The housing situation at the "bottom end" right now is _really bad_. There is virtually none in the sorts of places where one can actually get a leg up in life.
>They piss us off because they screw us broke
So do the beer drinking/pot smoking hippies, which, unfortuantely, describes far too many Canadians (at least to the rest of the world, no thanks to SCTV).
>and pretend to not understand english/french when we try to reason with them.
You're watching too much "To Protect and Serve" there...:-) This isn't always the way things go down. Not to mention a person speaking an offcial language can be (and often are) quite beligerant as well.
>At least around my neighborhood, they're practically all racist penny-snatchers who despise the locals as if we were wild animals.
I'm sorry that's your experience. My personal experience with immigrants I've known has been (excluding my parents*):
- One is a manager at a pharmacy
- One ran a mini mart
- One is a tool and die worker
- One is a welder
- One just finished college to be an EET
- One runs a tool and die company (not related to the one above)
- And another owns a nursing home
And I never felt anything less than welcome in their company. Some offered far more hospitatlity to me than many born Canadians. One was a lawless, greedy person, but at least they tried to keep it hidden.:-)
* Most all people in Canada today are either 2nd generation or 3rd generation from an immigrant family, or, in fact, immigrated here themselves. Currently 40% of all new Canadians per year are immigrants, the other 60% being births.
>Being nice sucks in the long run.
Being nice is what got us the 30 million people that are in Canada today (that, IIRC, is subtracting the only "true" Canadians, the Canadian Aborginals). Many of our most respected inventions, such as the telephone, the gramaphone, the light bulb, and the odometer were invented by immigrant Canadians.
>Come on, this is slashdot, one of the most Microsoft-hostile communities around.
Dude, complaining and action are completely separate things, just as Ghandi has shown.
Ghandi would tell anyone why he was doing his passive resistance. I don't doubt he probably had some fresh words with the English, off the record. But complaining is proper resistance?
There goes my free speech rights...
M$ doesn't just attack with words. They attack with money. Money that buys the lies they get the media to spread about linux. Money that gives away operating systems (isn't it fun to say things like that since M$ considers IE an operating system) to crush a competing web browser. Money that buys an illegal monopoly.
There's the big difference.
I'll eat my words if you can show me a linux company that spends more to crush M$ than 1/10 th what M$ spends in illegally crushing competitors.
>How do you expect to get from them fighting you to you winning?
Simple -- by fighting someone who refuses to resist you, you admit they are so right the only way you can win is to quash them.
Everyone will see this as an admittance by Microsoft that Linux is so good even Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer are worried! And if Microsoft thinks its good, hey, it must be better than complete garbage!
>That's how we as professionals beat the immigrants.
Or you could do as Canada does and simply integrate them into your society as citizens, rather than immigrants, teach them, and make sure they do as good a job as any other citizen, for the same level of pay.
Most idiot CEOs already think free software is uninnovative and crappy.
Trying to bolster a platform that's already in place is a waste of time, and that can only serve to further the amount of free software in business, considering at this point its on a steady increase in use.
>I'm starting to think I'm really lucky to be paying 40/month for 3mb down/256k up line.
Want to consider yourself luckier?
The line of last resort for people with crappy phone companies (ie: Bell Canada) is satellite internet -- here, from, yeah, you guessed it, BCE, or "Bell Canada, division #183873873".
The other reason why they don't like outside food...
And it isn't related to price.
Movie theaters used to be (it seems less so now) very careful about the packaging, and general noise level their snacks would make when being eaten. Chip bags are noisy, pop cans go "Pssssh!" when opened, and are loud when dropped/crushed. Outside candy bags are sometimes noisy, and other fun things like this.
Yeah, that still doesn't give them the excuse to price gouge, but at least it's a reason. I do remember that during the recession the snack noise level of theaters seemed to be louder...
>"$115 for a motherboard? Don't you have anything cheaper, like, around the $75 range?"
But Tom's Hardware rated the K7S5A PC-Chips rebrand as great stuff, therefore PC-Chips must make quality products, and would never ship a special top-notch board out to a reviewer.
That's the sort of argument I would get from customers when I'd tell them to buy a nice, reliable, ASUS board for $50 more.
Fortunately, where I worked, warranties weren't always honoured without some serious arguing (no, I don't work there anymore -- it's no fun telling someone to sue us for $25 when the filing fees cost $75) so we didn't have to deal with the $399 CDN "compelete systems" blowing up in our faces.
>if you mean that the Amiga had floppies with an eject button before Apple had motorized eject floppies
Yes and no. I had always thought the Mac came out in late 1984, somewhat after their superbowl commercial, and was a rush job at that... but I can't be sure. All I remember about the Mac is what I've read. I just just a tad too young to care at the time.
But, either way, I think what I'm leading up to is that if the 3.5" drive were first used by Macs (which they may have been) Apple again was unable to drive the market (pardon the crappy pun), or the Amiga would have a motorized drive.
>...which means that to the rest of the universe, it takes forever for your component particles to disappear into the event horizon.
>Besides, in most cases, you'll be dead long before you reach the event horizon itself, since the tides you encounter will shred you into tiny bits (thus the "component particles" above).
Ok... So if I can somehow avoid these "tides" (assume Sci-Fi super technology here), I'd be able to see the entire evolution of the universe before I die... An interesting tradeoff I'm willing someone (other than myself) would be willing to make.
>Wouldn't it rather be the over-decentralization and lack of public funding for anything that is not a weapon that is to blame?
Canada, part of America, might be something you should look at.
We have the same shitty quality services as you do (telco service is a _little_ better), yet most of ours were publically funded, and we (probably) have a smaller military than the Taliban has followers. There's exceptions, I suppose. Ontario & Quebec do generate enough power to sell to you...:-)
And we have the same population to service ratio problems, too (in some [many] areas its worse, but we usually just give up on those areas).
Slashdot Mirror
>It would be pretty cool if they could build a decent screen into a pair of glasses though.
Done and done and done.
One day I'll have enough throw away money to buy a pair...
>Ummmm, your friend missed lunch and went to church hungry. Bummer.
Yeah, but when you care enough about something, you don't worry about something like that.
Besides, I'm sure he stops at a Drive Thru on the way there.
You can expect a certain level of "give" from people for your religion. At some point, though, you as an individual have to make choices. I think the one he made works well for everyone involved.
>I do remember it saying that it is WRONG to make the current citizens pay for new people to become citizens and then end up competing for a place in the job market.
And we don't do this for new citizens already?
The fact that an immigrant usually comes here with a significant set of education we don't have to pay for shouldn't exclude them from furthering it.
Just like future taxes on a born Canadian child when they grow up pay for the education they used, future taxes on an immigrant Canadian pay for the education they use.
A significant part of this country's accomplishments were acheived by immigrants, and Canada wouldn't be the respected first world nation it is without immigration. It's a symbiotic relationship in which both the new immigrant and people who have been here a long time benefit.
Thanks for the link. Quite an engaging read -- I'll make sure my friend takes a look at it.
Dude, I don't think you got the point of what I was linking to.
Just because you have a multi-million dollar salary and run a company doesn't make you intelligent, or useful. Infact, when a company fails as craptacularly as Enron, its usually the idiot CEOs who are at fault.
Not to mention in the majority of those cases, the company fell apart because of what?
Lack of communication. Yup, when you're a CEO and decide to stay locked up in your little corner of the world and only pay attention to people at the same level as you, I can assure you that your business is on the path to failure.
Perhaps if those CEOs spent some time reading slashdot, they would have found out about fuckedcompany.com before they were on it.
>I doubt they give the slightest bit of a crap what software their company uses as long as the employees are satisfied and it gets the job done within the specs.
That isn't how being a CEO works at all. Anyone who's in an Executive position is always in CYA mode. Most CEOs don't give a shit about their employees until one of them makes him look like the fool. And caring about satisfying employees? Unions existed for a reason (now they're more of an anacronism than they should be).
Same thing goes for the products and software. It's all CYA, and CEOs would run linux today if they thought they could wipe their arse with it the moment it fails. It's just that Microsoft is used to being everyone's toilet paper, and so they don't feel threatened when a CEO says "It's isn't my fault the IT department left you guys in research without email all week. They told me it was Microsoft's fault because of some Exchange error or something.". Microsoft knows as long as they make a good punching bag, they'll stay in business.
>How the hell to beer drinking/pot smoking hippies screw you broke?
:)
It's hard to hold a steady job when you're always drunk/high... And when you're not holding a job, you're usually on the pogey. The hippie part just happens to be what (I think) one would call that section of Canadians.
>Who's the bigger idiot: The one who is placed in a position of making decisions for a corporation, or the one who has posted over 1600 slashdot comments?
I don't know, why don't you tell me?
Okay. But at the same time, could you avoid using "Thank You" in a churlish manner?
(I've been waiting to use that word for so long you have no idea how happy I was to integrate it into a sentence. A warmhearted thank you goes from me to you.)
>There is nothing wrong with welcoming immigrants, but there is definitely a lot wrong with giving anyone a free ride on the backs of hardworking Canadians, immigrants or not. That isn't promoting equality. Forcing an existing citizen to finance the training of a newcomer so the newcomer can compete for the same job is wrong.
But that's where the whole system breaks down. Being untolerant of the occasional bad immigrant could mean that you may not be part of Canada. Remember, most all Canadians are born from immigrant families, and that without immigration we'd have a 1920's level population within a couple of decades (I can find the stats if you'd like).
>We're not the melting pot, we're the mosaic. Remember highschool social studies?
Yes, I remember what the teacher told me. But it is quite contradictory to the truth. Canada integrates people into its society. Part of the integration is adapting to their culture, and having their culture adapt to ours.
I think a perfect example of this is my Pakistani friend. Church for him is on Friday. So, he adapts to the fact that Friday is usually a big workday by skipping lunch so he can be at church when it starts. Everyone wins. Our society integrates him by being tolerant, and he integrates with our society by working within our existing system.
>Or, you could do what Canada also does, provide some immigrants with all the benefits of citizenship and support of Canadian society with little of the responsibility or even the requirement to work for what they get, taking money from existing citizens through high taxes to feed those fleeing far less supportive cultures.
Again, I'll bring up my Pakistani friend. His family fled his country due to religious persecution (how much less supportive can you get), and now his dad is a tool and die worker, one of the hardest jobs to get filled in factories these days.
This country was formed on the backs of immigrants and I think if people would just look around rather than read newspaper reports they'd be amazed at just how many more good immigrants there are to bad ones.
How many immigrants do you personally know? The number should be at about 40%. Out of them, how many would you consider bad immigrants?
I think the difference between being an immigrant and a born Canada (such as myself) is that a Canadian immigrant chose to be Canadian. I just got it for free.
>The slashdot crowd doesn't attack with just words, either. We attack with skewed numbers and outright lies. We attack with exaggerated facts designed to support our ideals. Slashdot is every bit as propagandist as Microsoft is regarding Linux.
I didn't say that. I said we don't attack with money, and that Microsoft does. Money can buy support (witness US congress), words just don't buy much at all any more (witness US congress, again).
>First of all, many of the immigrants coming here to Canada are rich, filthy stinking rich and they're starting businesses left and right, hiring idiot teenagers at minimum wage to run corner stores, 42-for-1 pizza, and cheap ass apartment buildings.
:-) This isn't always the way things go down. Not to mention a person speaking an offcial language can be (and often are) quite beligerant as well.
:-)
That's a very narrow view, IMHO. Can I suggest you walk by a local university and/or a college in Canada?
I think you'll find a literal explosion of new immigrants taking courses. In fact, in some classes, I've seen _more_ immigrants taking courses than "homegrown" Canadians.
What the is wrong with running a corner store or pizza shop? You have a problem with students getting easy employment when they want it? You'd rather that mom-n-pop corner store run by Pakistanis be a McDonald's run by rednecks?
And running cheap ass apartment buildings is bad? I've seen numerous articles in my local newspaper about numerous people virtually starving themselves because their choice is either an $800/month apartment or social assistance. The housing situation at the "bottom end" right now is _really bad_. There is virtually none in the sorts of places where one can actually get a leg up in life.
>They piss us off because they screw us broke
So do the beer drinking/pot smoking hippies, which, unfortuantely, describes far too many Canadians (at least to the rest of the world, no thanks to SCTV).
>and pretend to not understand english/french when we try to reason with them.
You're watching too much "To Protect and Serve" there...
>At least around my neighborhood, they're practically all racist penny-snatchers who despise the locals as if we were wild animals.
I'm sorry that's your experience. My personal experience with immigrants I've known has been (excluding my parents*):
- One is a manager at a pharmacy
- One ran a mini mart
- One is a tool and die worker
- One is a welder
- One just finished college to be an EET
- One runs a tool and die company (not related to the one above)
- And another owns a nursing home
And I never felt anything less than welcome in their company. Some offered far more hospitatlity to me than many born Canadians. One was a lawless, greedy person, but at least they tried to keep it hidden.
* Most all people in Canada today are either 2nd generation or 3rd generation from an immigrant family, or, in fact, immigrated here themselves. Currently 40% of all new Canadians per year are immigrants, the other 60% being births.
>Being nice sucks in the long run.
Being nice is what got us the 30 million people that are in Canada today (that, IIRC, is subtracting the only "true" Canadians, the Canadian Aborginals). Many of our most respected inventions, such as the telephone, the gramaphone, the light bulb, and the odometer were invented by immigrant Canadians.
>Come on, this is slashdot, one of the most Microsoft-hostile communities around.
Dude, complaining and action are completely separate things, just as Ghandi has shown.
Ghandi would tell anyone why he was doing his passive resistance. I don't doubt he probably had some fresh words with the English, off the record. But complaining is proper resistance?
There goes my free speech rights...
M$ doesn't just attack with words. They attack with money. Money that buys the lies they get the media to spread about linux. Money that gives away operating systems (isn't it fun to say things like that since M$ considers IE an operating system) to crush a competing web browser. Money that buys an illegal monopoly.
There's the big difference.
I'll eat my words if you can show me a linux company that spends more to crush M$ than 1/10 th what M$ spends in illegally crushing competitors.
>How do you expect to get from them fighting you to you winning?
Simple -- by fighting someone who refuses to resist you, you admit they are so right the only way you can win is to quash them.
Everyone will see this as an admittance by Microsoft that Linux is so good even Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer are worried! And if Microsoft thinks its good, hey, it must be better than complete garbage!
>That's how we as professionals beat the immigrants.
Or you could do as Canada does and simply integrate them into your society as citizens, rather than immigrants, teach them, and make sure they do as good a job as any other citizen, for the same level of pay.
Most idiot CEOs already think free software is uninnovative and crappy.
Trying to bolster a platform that's already in place is a waste of time, and that can only serve to further the amount of free software in business, considering at this point its on a steady increase in use.
>You can change region codes, but the limit of 5 (I think) switches before you are locked out is not under ogle's control.
Buy an old DVD player.
My 6x Pioneer only support RPC-2 if you take off the jumpers.
>I'm starting to think I'm really lucky to be paying 40/month for 3mb down/256k up line.
Want to consider yourself luckier?
The line of last resort for people with crappy phone companies (ie: Bell Canada) is satellite internet -- here, from, yeah, you guessed it, BCE, or "Bell Canada, division #183873873".
$80/CDN per gig, give or take. One way.
How did you ever end up with that UID + user # anyways?
:-)
Was it expensive?
The other reason why they don't like outside food...
And it isn't related to price.
Movie theaters used to be (it seems less so now) very careful about the packaging, and general noise level their snacks would make when being eaten. Chip bags are noisy, pop cans go "Pssssh!" when opened, and are loud when dropped/crushed. Outside candy bags are sometimes noisy, and other fun things like this.
Yeah, that still doesn't give them the excuse to price gouge, but at least it's a reason. I do remember that during the recession the snack noise level of theaters seemed to be louder...
>Please tell me you're not the guy who actually buys the extended warranty that costs 1/3 as much as the actual product.
Yup.
And it was worth every penny.
It all depends on what it is you're buying, and how much experience you have with it (I've asked about Motorola phones, and now I know they suck).
>"$115 for a motherboard? Don't you have anything cheaper, like, around the $75 range?"
But Tom's Hardware rated the K7S5A PC-Chips rebrand as great stuff, therefore PC-Chips must make quality products, and would never ship a special top-notch board out to a reviewer.
That's the sort of argument I would get from customers when I'd tell them to buy a nice, reliable, ASUS board for $50 more.
Fortunately, where I worked, warranties weren't always honoured without some serious arguing (no, I don't work there anymore -- it's no fun telling someone to sue us for $25 when the filing fees cost $75) so we didn't have to deal with the $399 CDN "compelete systems" blowing up in our faces.
>if you mean that the Amiga had floppies with an eject button before Apple had motorized eject floppies
:)
Yes and no. I had always thought the Mac came out in late 1984, somewhat after their superbowl commercial, and was a rush job at that... but I can't be sure. All I remember about the Mac is what I've read. I just just a tad too young to care at the time.
But, either way, I think what I'm leading up to is that if the 3.5" drive were first used by Macs (which they may have been) Apple again was unable to drive the market (pardon the crappy pun), or the Amiga would have a motorized drive.
Anyways, this is majorly offtopic.
>It's weird, because apple seems to be in the black, and not many other people are.
When you're as small as Apple*, it isn't all that hard to stay in business. Most especially when you control what you own with an iron fist grip.
From where I stand, Acer, A-Open, IBM, Dell, Compaq, PC-Chips and Gateway seem to be doing pretty good. PC 7 -- Apple 1
And Apple can't ever score more than 1.
* By stock value comparison. I didn't look them all up, but here's the top 3: 77.50, 60, 64.9.
And here's Apple's: 14.56.
>...which means that to the rest of the universe, it takes forever for your component particles to disappear into the event horizon.
>Besides, in most cases, you'll be dead long before you reach the event horizon itself, since the tides you encounter will shred you into tiny bits (thus the "component particles" above).
Ok... So if I can somehow avoid these "tides" (assume Sci-Fi super technology here), I'd be able to see the entire evolution of the universe before I die... An interesting tradeoff I'm willing someone (other than myself) would be willing to make.
>Wouldn't it rather be the over-decentralization and lack of public funding for anything that is not a weapon that is to blame?
:-)
Canada, part of America, might be something you should look at.
We have the same shitty quality services as you do (telco service is a _little_ better), yet most of ours were publically funded, and we (probably) have a smaller military than the Taliban has followers. There's exceptions, I suppose. Ontario & Quebec do generate enough power to sell to you...
And we have the same population to service ratio problems, too (in some [many] areas its worse, but we usually just give up on those areas).
You're just plain wrong there. Sorry.