While I appreciate some of the concerns raised so far, I must comment as a developer who works for various Federal Government ministies on a daily basis.
1) GOL, while it is a great idea (offering Online government services in addition to "paper" based serveics) it is currently not much more than an idea. It has some official "GOL" apps, but they ar usually nothing more than internal government web apps redone in the Common Look and Feel. So far, only CCRA has a "real" GOL service and all it is is the Change of Address. GOL has not recieved mush hype or funding in over a year, because of September 11.
2) While the "pie in the sky" view of GOL (which is a LONG way from being reality) MIGHT have the POTENTIAL to be used as a "Big Brother" type of tool, the reality is that this is not likely to ever happen. Why? Most Canadian Federal Government departments don't share data between branches within the same ministry, let alone across departments or across ministries. Changing this attitude is required if "Big Brother" is to become a reality, and if you've ever dealt with the Feds (or the provinces or the city for that matter) you know its not going to change soon. Case in point: the department in our Ministry of Health that deals with First Nations (indians to the Americans) health delivery and funding often can't get information from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, a separate ministry. The end up collecting the same data, doubling costs.
And lets give our "Silly servants" some credit. A particular project I am currently working on had it's scope changed because the civil servants in the group refused to create and application that would collect identifying data! We must now create a version of our app that collects no identifying data and still be able to track individual cases for analysis.
3) GOL could in the long term cut government costs, impove efficiency and allow our governmentto govern better - they would have an up-to-date, accurate picture of some aspect of goverment business.
My concern isn't with GOL. I think it's a wonderful idea and will not likely even be designed to allow a "Big Brother" kind of use. My concern is with the calibre of the people who will be in charge of administering the system. In my experience, most sys admins, dba's, and developes in the Feds are old, behind the times, and unaware of the very technology they are to be in charge of (most have had their jobs at various ministries since the old Mainframe days).
Another Case in Point: the other day I saw a live "demo" of CCRA's "Change of Address" application. while it does require a great deal of information to sign up for the program to prove your identity (Name SIN, stuff from your Tax returns etc) once up and running it is only protected by username and password! No certs. No PKI. No "Smart Card". Just username and password (and no self admionistration that I saw).
So don't worry about GOL. It's pretty far off and not likey to be "Big Brother"-ish because of the culture of our civil service. But that same culture means that when it is in place, it will be administered by old-school, 2nd place techies who can't get a job anywhere else (most of the "technical" people I deal with when creating apps for the governement would never be hired by my company - their incompetent. Why? Because that's all the feds can get - they don't pay enough to get the really good people in the private sector.
And I haven't mentioned the Provinces yet. To becme a REAL Big Brother, the Feds would need a great deal of cooperation from the provinces...and any Canadian can tell you that's not gonna ever happen!
Actually, If you study this field in any depth, you see the pattern is exactly opposite. Serial criminals will start out far from their home and "spiral in" as it were, because they get more comfortable with killing at will and more lazy - the need to kill outweighs the need for not getting caught.
After a few "successful" murders, the killer thinks they are invincible and can't be caught no matter what. The same reasoning can also apply to body dump sites.
Case in point: John Wayne Gacy start out picking up young boys in Chicago and ended up getting boys from his Des Plaines neighbourhood. He started out hiding the bodioes, and ended up throwing them into the river on his way to be interviewd by the police.
No matter how you try, humans are very rarely truly random. Theere is a "reason" or "trigger" for everything. Figuring out the reason is the art of Criminal Profiling.
Well I quite aware of databases, etc. and I was a darn fine procedural programmer. And I've have NEVER run into any of the so-called tree - hand indexing problems of which you "speak".
I have been using OO for about 5 years now, making some pretty sucessful business applications.
Now, what exactly does OO design of software have to do with the database, or any other datastore, anyway? Storage and management of data is completely separate from the design and operation of the software (ever heard of Model View Controller?).
Perhaps you dislike OO so much because you don't really understand it.
Whatever, we're not going to convice each other of anything here.....
Foxpro music seqwuencer? Xbase apreciation? God, no wonder you don't like Java...you don't like OOP.
Well fine, don't use it. For those of use who have done both and believe OOP is superior we will read this book and use these hints to create great software...you may continue living in the 80's
Hey but head...check your calendar...it's 2002. Some of the tripe you dish out may have been true in 1997 or 1998 but not today in the era of 1.3.1 and 1.4.1 jdk's. (Swing is quite peppy now and SWT from IBM is downright fast)
Java does well on the server simply because it is the best tool for that job. End of story. It is also much easier to maintain and upgrade than garbled PERL or old C hacks. It also provides a choice that other middleware (from MS mostly) do not offer.
Next time you decide to slag a technology, try programming in it first..
Another issue that this may create - the chopping off of hands. Think about this...in the early 90's insurance companies tried to reduce their car theft losses by encouraging the use of car alarms and passive security measures (eg, only your key will unlock the steering column). The result...lower incidence of car theft..sort of. While noone now breaks into and steals a car parked on the street, the incidence of "car jacking" or the violent theft of a running car from the owner at gun point. More often than not this results in serious physical harm or evenb death to the car owner. That almost never happened in the "old days" before car alarms.....
So this may, for access to the right kind of data, encourage the kidnapping of perwsons, the "removal" of a hand, and the making or a "hand cast" as in the article (a whole hand print is much harder to come across than a single fingerprint)to use to circumvent this "cool" mouse...
There are a group of prostitutes in Kenya that have done their "job" for years, watching their co-workers and customers die of AIDS and yet have never developed the desease or tested positive to HIV. They have clearly been exposed over and over, yet show no signs of infection.
I've desparately tried not to respond to this thread, but I feel I must.
Rick Ross may be the founder of the Java Lobby, but he does not represent all Java Developers and supporters. I find comparing Java's difficultites on the desktop to the murder of a 14-year-old girl despicable, and not worthy of any further comment.
Java has difficulties on the desktop. Not all clients, just the regular desktop (JSP, Struts, Velocity etc are great examples of serverside java making good client code in...HTML). 5 years ago, even us die-hards would cringe at a Java GUI app. But a great deal has changed in 5 years. Java has cut it's teeth on the server, to become a major force in enterprise, server-side development.
Despite what some nay-sayers have said, Swing is much better. One can write good, cross-platform GUI's with it*. Check out, JBuilder, the latest Netbeans, Together Control Centre an many more here.(AWT was bad, Swing was better. But as good as Java is, bad programmers still write bad code.)
Client dcevelopment was a bust in 1995-98. Not any more.
We now have the advantage of the Hotspot VMs, redesigned IO (both nio and Image IO). J2ME Midlets are pretty good little GUIs for limited devices. Redesign in the Java 2D and 3D libraries as well as Swing has helped too.
I think Java could NOW become a feasable platform for desktop GUI development.
Did MS purposely design it's VM to bring about the downfall of Java? The courts seem to think so. 5 years ago there was pretty much only GUI development with Java, so that's where MS attacked. It drove Java to the serverside where it flourished (Thanks MS;) ).I think Java on the desktop would have met the same fate even with no MS...MS just helped it along (shoot a dying man, your still guilty of murder).
Now revitalized, I beleive it's ready to come back to the desktop. (Does any of this sound familiar, Gnome/KDE hackers?)
Rick Ross, stop causing sh*t and let us get on with making good Java software, on both the client and the server, and leave the FUD to MS.
The way to beat MS is not (just) in court, but in rock solid software. Enough blubbering, more coding...
*Note: I've heard a great deal about it here, but in 5 years, I have never run into any portablitiy issues with Java, when written to spec)
Uhm... WiFi is WAY faster than 3G. I can set up a WiFi extension to my existing network for about $500. Can't do that with 3G (GPRS/GSM what have you).
WEP has security issues, but none that can't be overcome with some creativity (VPN perhaps?).
Let's not get into the MS vs Opensource trap here. Its a closed source vs open source, good software vs bad software issue.
This is bigger than just MS. I have worked for a Canadian Federal Agency that had all sorts of licencing/technical problems with a particular (non-MS) vendor of ASN-1 software. Their US counter-parts had the same issues. What they ended up doing was switching to a vendor that didn't refuse to give up it's source code. Now when problems occur, the developers for this particular department can fix the problem themselves or, if the problem is not serious, report it to the vendor for a fix. The got the same (if not better in a few places) functionality for a lower pricde and more technical freedom
This is why I believe open source software should be given "precedence" and not nescesarily a monopoly on government software.
Tim makes some interesting point, but his entire arguement is base on the premise that the government (any government) buys software and platforms based on technical merit alone.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Many federal departments I have done business with buy based on thier all-time favorites ("IBM") no matter the price or quality of the software, what some of the old timers in their departments are used to ("Oracle") or sometimes on which vendor bouhgt them the most drinks and strippers at the last "convention". Sometimes they buy technically inferior products at overinflated prices ("Websphere") rather than products that do a better job for less money ("JBoss" or "9iAS"). What this law should try to do is insist that software is purchased on merit and the ability to verify, if needed, the source code. Sometimes OSS will win, sometimes closed source will win, but all the "winning" software will be the best software for the job and can be verified at the source code level by independant developers (certain closed source companies will show their source code to an auditor if required to by law...or never due business with the federal government...their choice)
It happened in Reston Virginia and it is what the book The Hot Zone by Richard Preston was about.
This strain was very closely reloated to Ebola Zaire, the most deadly strain of Ebola. It killsw about 95% of those who catch it. Ebola Reston, however, does not affect humans, only monkeys (where it is 100% fatal, at least in Reston). Lucky for us (the human race) because Ebola Reston is transmitted by air! All other strains of Ebola (and it's cousin Marburg) are transmitted through "exchange" of body fluids such as blood. And, of course, in this context "exchange" means some blood spashes in your eye, gets on a cut in your hand or a patient vomits his liquified inards on you.
The monkey handlers at the facility did become "infected" with Ebola Reston as their blood shows anti-bodies to it. But no human became sick because of exposure to the Reston strain.
That's the good news.
Bad news: nobody knows where Ebola/Marburg lives in the wild. It must have a host that it does not kill but no-one knows what it is. It could be insects, rodents, plants...who knows. Also, as it is highly mutable, perhaps the next mutation will be like Reston, but worse - an airbourne strain of Ebola as deadly as the Zaire strain spread throughout the world by a 757 flying out of Kinshasa to Heathrow and from Heathrow to...well EVERYWHERE. Ebola takes about 5 days to kill. In the bush this means it can usually burn out before it can get established in a big human population. In a major city it could spread fast enough to kill a large percentage of the human population. In Kikwit, the outbreak killed 235 people in a very secluded part of the African rainforest. I shudder to think what would happen if the same virus broke out in New York or Tokyo.
Given all that, the idea that someone has made polio in a lab is frightening. After all, Ebola is very closely related to the virus that caused measles.....
You ever heard of Apache? Jakarta? IBM Alphaworks? While only recent additions to the JDK core, all kinds of opensource, free and technically superior XML parsers and tools have been available for Javafor quite a long time now. Xerces, Crimson, Axis (Wow, Webservices!!!!), Cocoon...the list goes on.
And please don't towt the virtues of.Not and complain about IBM and BEA having "costly commercial implementations" in the same breathe. MS will charge $$$$ for.Not servers and.Not Studio is $1000 USD for a single licence. Meanwhile,many Java-XML solutions are:
1. Free 2. More mature 3. Based on W3C specs 4. Free.
BTW IBM and Sun were also "major contributors" to the XML-Schema standard...your point?
Zuccotto and a few other companies have done just that...the JVM is an actual hardware chip. There were at least 5 companies doing the same at Java One
Well Sonny, when I was a Carleton student 12 years ago we protested the Gulf War...we had more people come out for a longer period than any in the G20 and nobody tear-gassed us. We dropped "body bags" (green garbage bags) off a the old DND recruiting centre on Elgin and protested on the Hill with about 25 000 others when the bombs started to fall. We didn't trash a McDonalds and no-one wore masks. Remember it? Probably not since it was PEACEFUL and nothing happened.
So I think I can spout off all I want. I was trapped in my building (WEP at O'Connor and Queen) for the entire afternoon because the police had the streets shut down chasing those "7" anachist idiots. I couldn't leave to go home, go to a client site or even go to Tim Hortons on Sparks for a coffee.
These are the same kinds of idiots who tried to hijack us back in '91. They don't care about "globalization" or "world peace" or "Kyoto"...they're Anarchists. In '91 they tried to call themselves the "Karl Marx Bicycle Club" or the "International Socialists" (sound familiar?). They do this to create Anarchy (hence the name). When a couple of these "protesters" tried to physically attack a lone guy protesting US, myself and two others fought them off and protected this guy form the other anarchist idiots (I believe our defence of someone whose opinion we did not agree with made it to Newsworld that day, I f you car to go to Carleton Journalism School and check). I guess we believed in democratic rights...
I was about 1/2 way up the WEP and there were more than 7...I counted. And as I remember it, there were way more than 7 arrests that day. Come to think of it, most of the guys/girls I saw running down Bank Street were wearing Masks, Gas Masks and scarves way before the police lobbed the gas. Did it ever occurr to you that if those "7" idiots had not violated the Criminal Code of Canada during the protest, then the cops may not have lobbed the tear gas?
You want to protest your cause? Go for it! Not only have I done it, I see it almost every day on the Hill from my office window. Civil Disobedience? Excellent. Chain yourself to a fence, lay in front of a buldozer, go limp when the cops arrest you or anything else non-violent. But when thugs start smashing the windows out of a business, throwing rocks, bottles and bricks from construction sites at the police, charging fences and barracades then your "protest" has turned into a riot because it uses violent tactics.
If you dish it out, expect to take it.
BTW. I don't think the phalanx of police acted very well during the protests last year either, but niehter did the protesters. If there were only "7" holigans in 4000 causing the problems at the MacDonalds as you say, why were they arrested by the police and not subdued by the 30 or 40 protesters who stood around and watched them (I watch CJOH too, you know)? I guess not everyone is interested in peaceful protest.
And how come the "Take the Capital" committee has outright refused to say they won't use violence or meet with the police to reasure everone involed that it will be non-violent?
Actually they do..although the summit is taking place out in Alberta, a lot of protesters, realizing that they can't get close (or those that just don 't want to go to Alberta) are going to try to "Take the Capital" here in Ottawa during the time of the summit. That means 90% of the people that are peaceful protesters will be forgotten about when the 10% that are anarchist idiots start rampaging in the streets, smashing windows and looting stores like they did last year during the G20 Summit that was held here. I tell ya, it was neat to watch masked punks running up one street below my office window and watch the phalanx of officers running up the perpendicular street to get them.
What's different from last time? Sept 11...
The RCMP is using the blocking technique on a VERY localized basis (like blocking cell phones in a moview theatre) to prevent REMOTE CONTROL detonation of explosives in Ottawa around government buildings and installations (including the US Embassy, which is three blocks form Parliament and 1 block from the Mint here in town). It has nothing to do with protesters communicating to organize. The protesters are already organized...enough to break off talks wioth the Ottawa Police anyway.
Man talk about a tempest in a teapot...the Mounties know that if cell phones are disabled, the protesters will do what they did in the 80's - use a pay phone (we still have them about every three blocks, you know)! This is solely to prevent groups like Al Queda from using large protests as a cover for terrorist activities...or a TARGET!
Man, some of you here should really do a little research before spouting off..
...the organization that created many projects and librarties that have become the de facto standards in the Web and software industry (Apache Web Server etc) WITHOUT any 'certification' is whinning that Sun won't give away free certifications to open source projects like JBoss?
This is a tempest in a teapot.
The crew at JBoss don't seem to think the lack of certification is a big deal and they are in constant contact with Sun. I don't think that is the problem. I wonder what is really bothering Apache? I wish some one would post the REAL reason and not a misinformed link to "J2EE considered harmful" - if you check some of the more java focused sites, you can see that the person who started this rant at Apache doesn't know what they are talking about when it comes to J2EE (because, I suspect, the haven't used it).
My guess is that this is causing "contraversy" here because it is a great story involving: 1) Apache, everyone's favorite Open Source organization. 2) Sun - a corporate Behemoth out to make profits, that is not as bad as but in the same league as, MS. 3) Java - a favorite target here on/. and cause of many flames. Guarranteed to generate posts - especially from the C/C++/PERL/ groupies 4) Because of 2) and 3) we also get a bunch of ".Net Vs Java" or "MS Vs Open Source" tangents generated, especially when people bring up the Mono project as an alternative to J2EE.
In other words, this story gives anybody on anyside of any of/.'s favorite issues an excuse to rant and flame, and nothing else.
There really isn't a story here. Let Apache and Sun solve their differences like adults without all this sensationalism.
Slashdot Mirror
While I appreciate some of the concerns raised so far, I must comment as a developer who works for various Federal Government ministies on a daily basis.
1) GOL, while it is a great idea (offering Online government services in addition to "paper" based serveics) it is currently not much more than an idea. It has some official "GOL" apps, but they ar usually nothing more than internal government web apps redone in the Common Look and Feel. So far, only CCRA has a "real" GOL service and all it is is the Change of Address. GOL has not recieved mush hype or funding in over a year, because of September 11.
2) While the "pie in the sky" view of GOL (which is a LONG way from being reality) MIGHT have the POTENTIAL to be used as a "Big Brother" type of tool, the reality is that this is not likely to ever happen. Why? Most Canadian Federal Government departments don't share data between branches within the same ministry, let alone across departments or across ministries. Changing this attitude is required if "Big Brother" is to become a reality, and if you've ever dealt with the Feds (or the provinces or the city for that matter) you know its not going to change soon. Case in point: the department in our Ministry of Health that deals with First Nations (indians to the Americans) health delivery and funding often can't get information from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, a separate ministry. The end up collecting the same data, doubling costs.
And lets give our "Silly servants" some credit. A particular project I am currently working on had it's scope changed because the civil servants in the group refused to create and application that would collect identifying data! We must now create a version of our app that collects no identifying data and still be able to track individual cases for analysis.
3) GOL could in the long term cut government costs, impove efficiency and allow our governmentto govern better - they would have an up-to-date, accurate picture of some aspect of goverment business.
My concern isn't with GOL. I think it's a wonderful idea and will not likely even be designed to allow a "Big Brother" kind of use. My concern is with the calibre of the people who will be in charge of administering the system. In my experience, most sys admins, dba's, and developes in the Feds are old, behind the times, and unaware of the very technology they are to be in charge of (most have had their jobs at various ministries since the old Mainframe days).
Another Case in Point: the other day I saw a live "demo" of CCRA's "Change of Address" application. while it does require a great deal of information to sign up for the program to prove your identity (Name SIN, stuff from your Tax returns etc) once up and running it is only protected by username and password! No certs. No PKI. No "Smart Card". Just username and password (and no self admionistration that I saw).
So don't worry about GOL. It's pretty far off and not likey to be "Big Brother"-ish because of the culture of our civil service. But that same culture means that when it is in place, it will be administered by old-school, 2nd place techies who can't get a job anywhere else (most of the "technical" people I deal with when creating apps for the governement would never be hired by my company - their incompetent. Why? Because that's all the feds can get - they don't pay enough to get the really good people in the private sector.
And I haven't mentioned the Provinces yet. To becme a REAL Big Brother, the Feds would need a great deal of cooperation from the provinces...and any Canadian can tell you that's not gonna ever happen!
Actually, If you study this field in any depth, you see the pattern is exactly opposite. Serial criminals will start out far from their home and "spiral in" as it were, because they get more comfortable with killing at will and more lazy - the need to kill outweighs the need for not getting caught.
After a few "successful" murders, the killer thinks they are invincible and can't be caught no matter what. The same reasoning can also apply to body dump sites.
Case in point: John Wayne Gacy start out picking up young boys in Chicago and ended up getting boys from his Des Plaines neighbourhood. He started out hiding the bodioes, and ended up throwing them into the river on his way to be interviewd by the police.
No matter how you try, humans are very rarely truly random. Theere is a "reason" or "trigger" for everything. Figuring out the reason is the art of Criminal Profiling.
Ooooo.....
Well I quite aware of databases, etc. and I was a darn fine procedural programmer. And I've have NEVER run into any of the so-called tree - hand indexing problems of which you "speak".
I have been using OO for about 5 years now, making some pretty sucessful business applications.
Now, what exactly does OO design of software have to do with the database, or any other datastore, anyway? Storage and management of data is completely separate from the design and operation of the software (ever heard of Model View Controller?).
Perhaps you dislike OO so much because you don't really understand it.
Whatever, we're not going to convice each other of anything here.....
Foxpro music seqwuencer? Xbase apreciation? God, no wonder you don't like Java...you don't like OOP.
Well fine, don't use it. For those of use who have done both and believe OOP is superior we will read this book and use these hints to create great software...you may continue living in the 80's
Hey but head...check your calendar...it's 2002. Some of the tripe you dish out may have been true in 1997 or 1998 but not today in the era of 1.3.1 and 1.4.1 jdk's. (Swing is quite peppy now and SWT from IBM is downright fast)
Java does well on the server simply because it is the best tool for that job. End of story. It is also much easier to maintain and upgrade than garbled PERL or old C hacks. It also provides a choice that other middleware (from MS mostly) do not offer.
Next time you decide to slag a technology, try programming in it first..
I can't do it through my corporate network
e .asp?eid= 9077&lid=13&email=******@*****
The IP is 216.34.211.29 and 216.34.211.89
The offender network is exodus.net.
They do not answer or act on my non-munged Spamcop reports (for weeks now)
Therefore, somebody please nuke them....
The link is as follows
http://clicks.sportadvisors.com/subscrib
See this Counterpane article from May.
Seems to me the sOme common gelatin trick would work here as well...you just need more of it.
Another issue that this may create - the chopping off of hands. Think about this...in the early 90's insurance companies tried to reduce their car theft losses by encouraging the use of car alarms and passive security measures (eg, only your key will unlock the steering column). The result...lower incidence of car theft..sort of. While noone now breaks into and steals a car parked on the street, the incidence of "car jacking" or the violent theft of a running car from the owner at gun point. More often than not this results in serious physical harm or evenb death to the car owner. That almost never happened in the "old days" before car alarms.....
So this may, for access to the right kind of data, encourage the kidnapping of perwsons, the "removal" of a hand, and the making or a "hand cast" as in the article (a whole hand print is much harder to come across than a single fingerprint)to use to circumvent this "cool" mouse...
So, be careful what you wish for....
Uhmm for JDK 1.3.x, webstart is a separate download. it just happens to be bundled with 1.4.x
Hey wait...is this a troll?
Got me!
Here, here.....
There are a group of prostitutes in Kenya that have done their "job" for years, watching their co-workers and customers die of AIDS and yet have never developed the desease or tested positive to HIV. They have clearly been exposed over and over, yet show no signs of infection.
This theory could explain it....
I've desparately tried not to respond to this thread, but I feel I must.
...HTML). 5 years ago, even us die-hards would cringe at a Java GUI app. But a great deal has changed in 5 years. Java has cut it's teeth on the server, to become a major force in enterprise, server-side development.
;) ).I think Java on the desktop would have met the same fate even with no MS...MS just helped it along (shoot a dying man, your still guilty of murder).
Rick Ross may be the founder of the Java Lobby, but he does not represent all Java Developers and supporters. I find comparing Java's difficultites on the desktop to the murder of a 14-year-old girl despicable, and not worthy of any further comment.
Java has difficulties on the desktop. Not all clients, just the regular desktop (JSP, Struts, Velocity etc are great examples of serverside java making good client code in
Despite what some nay-sayers have said, Swing is much better. One can write good, cross-platform GUI's with it*. Check out, JBuilder, the latest Netbeans, Together Control Centre an many more here.(AWT was bad, Swing was better. But as good as Java is, bad programmers still write bad code.)
Client dcevelopment was a bust in 1995-98. Not any more.
We now have the advantage of the Hotspot VMs, redesigned IO (both nio and Image IO). J2ME Midlets are pretty good little GUIs for limited devices. Redesign in the Java 2D and 3D libraries as well as Swing has helped too.
I think Java could NOW become a feasable platform for desktop GUI development.
Did MS purposely design it's VM to bring about the downfall of Java? The courts seem to think so. 5 years ago there was pretty much only GUI development with Java, so that's where MS attacked. It drove Java to the serverside where it flourished (Thanks MS
Now revitalized, I beleive it's ready to come back to the desktop. (Does any of this sound familiar, Gnome/KDE hackers?)
Rick Ross, stop causing sh*t and let us get on with making good Java software, on both the client and the server, and leave the FUD to MS.
The way to beat MS is not (just) in court, but in rock solid software. Enough blubbering, more coding...
*Note: I've heard a great deal about it here, but in 5 years, I have never run into any portablitiy issues with Java, when written to spec)
Uhm... WiFi is WAY faster than 3G. I can set up a WiFi extension to my existing network for about $500. Can't do that with 3G (GPRS/GSM what have you).
WEP has security issues, but none that can't be overcome with some creativity (VPN perhaps?).
BTW, WiFi is broadband, 3G is not.
Geez....
PS Nice Troll
Actually, If you use Windows Explorer you ARE using IE...so what might have been a general browser issue has threatened your OS.
Is that not poor security? Irresponsible?
Were it not for the EULA, it would probably be actionable in most jurisdictions...
WTF?
Not any Canadian I know.....
W.R. McDougall, seek some serious mental help.
Let's not get into the MS vs Opensource trap here. Its a closed source vs open source, good software vs bad software issue.
This is bigger than just MS. I have worked for a Canadian Federal Agency that had all sorts of licencing/technical problems with a particular (non-MS) vendor of ASN-1 software. Their US counter-parts had the same issues. What they ended up doing was switching to a vendor that didn't refuse to give up it's source code. Now when problems occur, the developers for this particular department can fix the problem themselves or, if the problem is not serious, report it to the vendor for a fix. The got the same (if not better in a few places) functionality for a lower pricde and more technical freedom
This is why I believe open source software should be given "precedence" and not nescesarily a monopoly on government software.
Tim makes some interesting point, but his entire arguement is base on the premise that the government (any government) buys software and platforms based on technical merit alone.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Many federal departments I have done business with buy based on thier all-time favorites ("IBM") no matter the price or quality of the software, what some of the old timers in their departments are used to ("Oracle") or sometimes on which vendor bouhgt them the most drinks and strippers at the last "convention". Sometimes they buy technically inferior products at overinflated prices ("Websphere") rather than products that do a better job for less money ("JBoss" or "9iAS"). What this law should try to do is insist that software is purchased on merit and the ability to verify, if needed, the source code. Sometimes OSS will win, sometimes closed source will win, but all the "winning" software will be the best software for the job and can be verified at the source code level by independant developers (certain closed source companies will show their source code to an auditor if required to by law...or never due business with the federal government...their choice)
It happened in Reston Virginia and it is what the book The Hot Zone by Richard Preston was about.
This strain was very closely reloated to Ebola Zaire, the most deadly strain of Ebola. It killsw about 95% of those who catch it. Ebola Reston, however, does not affect humans, only monkeys (where it is 100% fatal, at least in Reston). Lucky for us (the human race) because Ebola Reston is transmitted by air! All other strains of Ebola (and it's cousin Marburg) are transmitted through "exchange" of body fluids such as blood. And, of course, in this context "exchange" means some blood spashes in your eye, gets on a cut in your hand or a patient vomits his liquified inards on you.
The monkey handlers at the facility did become "infected" with Ebola Reston as their blood shows anti-bodies to it. But no human became sick because of exposure to the Reston strain.
That's the good news.
Bad news: nobody knows where Ebola/Marburg lives in the wild. It must have a host that it does not kill but no-one knows what it is. It could be insects, rodents, plants...who knows. Also, as it is highly mutable, perhaps the next mutation will be like Reston, but worse - an airbourne strain of Ebola as deadly as the Zaire strain spread throughout the world by a 757 flying out of Kinshasa to Heathrow and from Heathrow to...well EVERYWHERE. Ebola takes about 5 days to kill. In the bush this means it can usually burn out before it can get established in a big human population. In a major city it could spread fast enough to kill a large percentage of the human population. In Kikwit, the outbreak killed 235 people in a very secluded part of the African rainforest. I shudder to think what would happen if the same virus broke out in New York or Tokyo.
Given all that, the idea that someone has made polio in a lab is frightening. After all, Ebola is very closely related to the virus that caused measles.....
Remeber Laurentide? Just "Canadian" in a different bottle...they even sold at the Montreal Forum during the Canadiens games back in the '80s...
And I do agree about the Microbrewries. Upper Canada Dark is far superior (as is Rickards Red, Old Micks Red etc)..
VB in the back and Java in the Front? WTF are you smoking?
.Net. That's right it is superior....uh huh...you just go on now....;)
That's like having PERL in a web page and posting to HTML on the server...that just doesn't happen.
And if by some bizzare twist you really did do that, well, yeah go ahead, use
--daz--,
.Not and complain about IBM and BEA having "costly commercial implementations" in the same breathe. MS will charge $$$$ for .Not servers and .Not Studio is $1000 USD for a single licence. Meanwhile,many Java-XML solutions are:
You ever heard of Apache? Jakarta? IBM Alphaworks? While only recent additions to the JDK core, all kinds of opensource, free and technically superior XML parsers and tools have been available for Javafor quite a long time now. Xerces, Crimson, Axis (Wow, Webservices!!!!), Cocoon...the list goes on.
And please don't towt the virtues of
1. Free
2. More mature
3. Based on W3C specs
4. Free.
BTW IBM and Sun were also "major contributors" to the XML-Schema standard...your point?
Get over the MS marketing tripe..
Zuccotto and a few other companies have done just that...the JVM is an actual hardware chip. There were at least 5 companies doing the same at Java One
Ass wipe...there's going to be a big protest here in Ottawa too, right down the street from ME as well...And this IS the capital of Canada
Try reading a few posts first..
Well Sonny, when I was a Carleton student 12 years ago we protested the Gulf War...we had more people come out for a longer period than any in the G20 and nobody tear-gassed us. We dropped "body bags" (green garbage bags) off a the old DND recruiting centre on Elgin and protested on the Hill with about 25 000 others when the bombs started to fall. We didn't trash a McDonalds and no-one wore masks. Remember it? Probably not since it was PEACEFUL and nothing happened.
So I think I can spout off all I want. I was trapped in my building (WEP at O'Connor and Queen) for the entire afternoon because the police had the streets shut down chasing those "7" anachist idiots. I couldn't leave to go home, go to a client site or even go to Tim Hortons on Sparks for a coffee.
These are the same kinds of idiots who tried to hijack us back in '91. They don't care about "globalization" or "world peace" or "Kyoto"...they're Anarchists. In '91 they tried to call themselves the "Karl Marx Bicycle Club" or the "International Socialists" (sound familiar?). They do this to create Anarchy (hence the name). When a couple of these "protesters" tried to physically attack a lone guy protesting US, myself and two others fought them off and protected this guy form the other anarchist idiots (I believe our defence of someone whose opinion we did not agree with made it to Newsworld that day, I f you car to go to Carleton Journalism School and check). I guess we believed in democratic rights...
I was about 1/2 way up the WEP and there were more than 7...I counted. And as I remember it, there were way more than 7 arrests that day. Come to think of it, most of the guys/girls I saw running down Bank Street were wearing Masks, Gas Masks and scarves way before the police lobbed the gas. Did it ever occurr to you that if those "7" idiots had not violated the Criminal Code of Canada during the protest, then the cops may not have lobbed the tear gas?
You want to protest your cause? Go for it! Not only have I done it, I see it almost every day on the Hill from my office window. Civil Disobedience? Excellent. Chain yourself to a fence, lay in front of a buldozer, go limp when the cops arrest you or anything else non-violent. But when thugs start smashing the windows out of a business, throwing rocks, bottles and bricks from construction sites at the police, charging fences and barracades then your "protest" has turned into a riot because it uses violent tactics.
If you dish it out, expect to take it.
BTW. I don't think the phalanx of police acted very well during the protests last year either, but niehter did the protesters. If there were only "7" holigans in 4000 causing the problems at the MacDonalds as you say, why were they arrested by the police and not subdued by the 30 or 40 protesters who stood around and watched them (I watch CJOH too, you know)? I guess not everyone is interested in peaceful protest.
And how come the "Take the Capital" committee has outright refused to say they won't use violence or meet with the police to reasure everone involed that it will be non-violent?
Actually they do..although the summit is taking place out in Alberta, a lot of protesters, realizing that they can't get close (or those that just don 't want to go to Alberta) are going to try to "Take the Capital" here in Ottawa during the time of the summit. That means 90% of the people that are peaceful protesters will be forgotten about when the 10% that are anarchist idiots start rampaging in the streets, smashing windows and looting stores like they did last year during the G20 Summit that was held here. I tell ya, it was neat to watch masked punks running up one street below my office window and watch the phalanx of officers running up the perpendicular street to get them.
What's different from last time? Sept 11...
The RCMP is using the blocking technique on a VERY localized basis (like blocking cell phones in a moview theatre) to prevent REMOTE CONTROL detonation of explosives in Ottawa around government buildings and installations (including the US Embassy, which is three blocks form Parliament and 1 block from the Mint here in town). It has nothing to do with protesters communicating to organize. The protesters are already organized...enough to break off talks wioth the Ottawa Police anyway.
Man talk about a tempest in a teapot...the Mounties know that if cell phones are disabled, the protesters will do what they did in the 80's - use a pay phone (we still have them about every three blocks, you know)! This is solely to prevent groups like Al Queda from using large protests as a cover for terrorist activities...or a TARGET!
Man, some of you here should really do a little research before spouting off..
...the organization that created many projects and librarties that have become the de facto standards in the Web and software industry (Apache Web Server etc) WITHOUT any 'certification' is whinning that Sun won't give away free certifications to open source projects like JBoss?
/. and cause of many flames. Guarranteed to generate posts - especially from the C/C++/PERL/ groupies
/.'s favorite issues an excuse to rant and flame, and nothing else.
This is a tempest in a teapot.
The crew at JBoss don't seem to think the lack of certification is a big deal and they are in constant contact with Sun. I don't think that is the problem. I wonder what is really bothering Apache? I wish some one would post the REAL reason and not a misinformed link to "J2EE considered harmful" - if you check some of the more java focused sites, you can see that the person who started this rant at Apache doesn't know what they are talking about when it comes to J2EE (because, I suspect, the haven't used it).
My guess is that this is causing "contraversy" here because it is a great story involving:
1) Apache, everyone's favorite Open Source organization.
2) Sun - a corporate Behemoth out to make profits, that is not as bad as but in the same league as, MS.
3) Java - a favorite target here on
4) Because of 2) and 3) we also get a bunch of ".Net Vs Java" or "MS Vs Open Source" tangents generated, especially when people bring up the Mono project as an alternative to J2EE.
In other words, this story gives anybody on anyside of any of
There really isn't a story here. Let Apache and Sun solve their differences like adults without all this sensationalism.
Excellent and classy way to do it...
BTW kiss your sex life goodbye
Married 8 years....