"of excellent quality"? Are we reading the same documents? I have been playing with Linux for 6 months no and I've been a professional programmer for 2 years. I would hardly call myself a "newbie" to computers and IT. I' may, in many ways still be a "newbie" to linux but that won't last long. I really want to learn how my Linux box works (RH5.2 if you must know). My problem is the LDP docs are often out of date and irrelevant. When I was trying to configure my machine I spent days -DAYS not hours - trying to get my X server working properly, trying to get my printer to work and trying to get my modem to dial out to my ISP without being logged in as root or SU -ing. It took three months to do the latter and the problem was only solved when I stumbled across an alsmost unrelated post on Deja informin me that my serial port should be given world read access. Only then did it work. Now don't get me wrong, I like learning...and this whole experience has taught me a lot about Linux. But I learned all of it inspite of the LDP not because of it. The most useful info was on Linuxnewbie.com or on the news groups and certainly not in the HOW TO's. I'm a geek and a programmer and I love this stuff. If its this difficult for me to find out how to do something which on other unnamed OSes are automatic, how do you think the ordiary Joe or Joesephine will feel. They will say Linux is to hard and the "Documentation" doesn't help or work...and they will stick with that other unnamed OS. Is that what we want? Should it really be this difficult and time consuming to learn? The LDP needs to find a way to keep up to date and write better material in a way that's easy to find and understand. How? I wish I knew...staying the way it is will only hurt the Linux movement.
You seem to forget though that even though personal computers have been around for 25 years, they have only been in wide use and easily affordable for about 5-7 years. When I was in University in the 80's, only engineers used computers for anything. All other Word Processing and such was done on typewriters and adding machines. This was back in the days when a computer that you needed to load WP5.1 on disk by 5 1/4 inch disk cost over $4000. Don't forget that although the cost of PC hasn't really changed much (for a good one anyway), most people now make way more money (so in a sense, as a percentage of income, they are cheaper). Sub $1000 PC that almost any one can own have only been out for about 2 years. The internet has been around since 1969, why don't more people know how to use it? Because it wasn't generally available and viable for the average person until 1993 or so. Since then internet use has jumped from 3 million to over 100 milion. Maybe we as software designers should get our belly laughs out of the silly user then figure out a way to make our programs more user friendly FOR THE AVERAGE PERSON (ie not us) so people won't have to ask these question... they will just be able to use the software. If we don't, we are gonna be reading a lot more stuff like that site and wondering why... BTW for those pea brains out there who like to say " Make it so easy idiots could use it and only idiots will use it", I say " make it difficult to use and NOBODY will use it (translation - you will be out of a job and poor)". There are more people in the world than techno-snobs engineers and computer scientists.
The idea of using a giant magnetic field as a solar sail is fascinating. I'm wondering what other uses such a large magnetic field (20 KM) could be used for. It seems to be modeled on the earth's own magnetic field...could it then be used to protect passengers and instruments from radiation/cosmic rays in space as well as for propulsion.Might it also be used as a "deflector shield" to protect against collisions with small, interplanetary debris (dust, small meterorites etc). Perhaps a combination of technologies could make quite a fast craft - M2P2 + ion drive (DS1) or nuclear drive (Cassini) could create a decent means of travelling within the solar system. Interseting, no? If anyone who really knows about this stuff cares to comment, I'd love to hear aninformed opinion on this....
Members of the Canadian Standards Association were there? Gee I thought all they did was tell me whether my toaster or hockey helmet was safe to use. Considering its in the same sentence as the NSA, I believe you probably mean CSIS, the Canadian Security and Intellegence Service. Considering the nature of the conference, perhaps the Communications Security Establishment (the Canadian version of MI6 - I'm not sure of the name but its something like that), a really secret (their HQ is down by the Airport near Hunt Club Rd) wing of the Canadian (ahem) intellegence system. If I remember my days at Carleton and the people they were trying to recruit back then, whoever you thought was CSIS/CSE/NSA probably was a marketting guy from Corel...the real spooks wouldn't need to be in the room in person to get the poop....
God, Canada post must be slow...I still ait got mine yet up here in TO. Anyone else get there's yet? I ordered mine in May and I've had my free NT version for 2 months....
He's not dumb at all. He saw the ad, saw the number of points, so NO disclaimer that this was a joke so he called them on it. I don't believe he really thought he'd get the jet but thought that he'd sue, and a big corporation like Pepsi would simply settle out of court for way more than the $700k he raised. And why would he not think this? This is the same legal system where a 69 year old idiot can scald herself with hot coffee and then successfully sue MacDonalds for millions because they didn't tell her the coffee was hot! (DUH!) How many other frivoulous court cases like this happen in the American private law system? This guy looked at what's been happening in the last 20 years and decided this was a good way to get cash out of a big corporation, because the US legal system seems to have taken any personal responsibility out of the law. Any pin-head can do something stupid (like putting the cruise control on in their RV and then LEAVE the driver's seat to go make breakfast - while the RV is driving down the highway!- they got in an accident, sued the RV company and won because it was the RV company's fault for not explaining that cruise control is not auto-pilot!) and successfully sue a company because they didn't warn them about the obvious. After all, its not my fault I didn't understand...I'm not responsible for my actions. Big companies are. They should make sure I can't hurt myself. If the US had it so that the loser pays ALL legal fees(for BOTH the pliantiff and defendant), as they do here in Canada, there would be a lot less of these stupid laws suits.(Not to say that we don't have dumb lawsuit, we just have a lot less - you aren't likely to sue unless you think you have a really good chance of winning - how many US lawyers would counsel their clients NOT to file suit because they won't win? This happens all the time here).
Think of all the valueable court resources wasted on this kind of BS when cases like the Love Canal, Karen Silkwood, the Pinto and Tobacco suits need more attention and end up draggin on for years.
This guy should not only get nothing, I'd like to see him charged with fraud - defrauding his "investors" and attempting to extort the money from Pepsi. I commend Pepsi for standing up and not settling out of court, though I suspect the whole "truth in Advertising " thing may come back to haunt them.
Stuff like this is a perfect example of what happens when greed, fear and stupidity take the place of common sense in the courts and society.
Is it just me or does trying to read a story about the cost losing/having too many passwords which requires me to register with yet another password seem a bit ironic?
Good Idea. Not that simple. My sister has worked in the US as a nurse for over 5 years. She has been married to an American citizen for 2 1/2 years and the have a 2 year-old boy (Don't ask). Now, this is not a marriage of convenience - they are genuinely in love with each other and in fact are pregnant with baby #2. But my sister has been waiting 2 years to get a green card so she doesn't have to keep coming to Canada to renew her visa (she doesn't want to become a citizen). She is especially worried with all the INS horror stories she has heard. She's afraid to come back for a visit before her GC is issued in case they don't let her back in (entirely possible, despite being married to a US citizen having one of his children and bearing the other). Therefore I have never met my nephew and my parents have never seen their grandchild.
My sister is still waiting with no end in sight.
Doesn't seem so easy now, does it?
Aren't we supposed to be your fiends and biggest trading partner? Doesn't that "world longest unguarded border" we share mean anything?
Maybe my sister should become a mexican serial killer...they seem to have no problems at the border. (I know, I know. I keep bring this up , but its just so damned ironic).
...OH! I get it! People from Denmark aren't the problem because people from Denmark are White/European! The "problem" are all those mud-coloured people companies bring in (since you can look around and "see" the problem). Forget about the fact that places like India (or China), despite being 3rd world economically, have educational systems on par with Canada/Britain and the US, have English as a second language and thus can create workers who are just as technically educated and savy as those born in North America. Too bad they are so dark and smell like curry and talk funny. I guess guys from Denmark would talk funny too, but they are of a more desireable hue and texture.
Now that the sarcasm is over my little klansmen, I think people like YOU are "the problem".
Obviously, you find something wrong with foreign workers. They can't speak English that well? True, but next time you get pissed at that, ask your self how you would feel if the person having trouble speaking or understanding English were a tall blond, guy from Denmark, or Germany or France instead of being from India, China, Thailand etc.
I'm willing to bet you wouldn't feel the same...
How can a Country which produced Martin Luther King, Jr. produce morons like you two?
Yes I agree. That company of which you speak will hire you for a Canadian branch office, pay you $38000 per year (Cdn and that's the low end of the IT pay spectrum in Canada). They then "loan" you to their American branch offices (Detroit, Denver, Boston etc) for and unlimited amount of time and still pay you your Canadian wages, as if you were living in Toronto!(BTW that comes out to $25080 USD per year as of this morning). Their lawyers will get you a TN-1 or BN-1 (for "training") which you will work under. They also try to say if you quit before 2 years you owe them the cost of your training (between $4000 and $9000 USD, depending on how long you were in training). Now, maybe I'm out of line, but doesn't that sound like wage slavery or indebtured servitude to you? Isn't this the same way Asian sex slaves are brought into North America? They do this to Canadian citizens and others all the time. Also, I'd like to remind many of you who have been posting why most HB-1 workers are coming to the US - because they are needed. There are thousands of unfilled IT positions out there, in both the US and Canada. HB-1 workers aren't taking your jobs, they are filling jobs that would otherwise go vacant. American companies have more IT positions than there are qualified people to fill them. Without HB-1 workers, the US economy would suffer. Given that, whay should these needed people be exploited? I thought the US was the land of the Free? "Give me your tired, huddled masses yearning to be free"?!?. Most HB-1 folks are very highly skilled professionals who will do good work. Unfortunately, in such a market, unscrupulous "Agencies" will recruit anyone under the HB-1, pay them crap or deliver inferior workers just to pocket the finders fee. These agencies always get their money but workers get screwed by the bad rep the HB-1 gets and companies loose out because they don't get the workers the so desparately need.
Remember, its the companies who want an increase in the HB-1 quotas, no the workers...
Point well taken Jeff. I agree with you about the military spending. My point was actually a little sarcastic - up here spending on the military is a big joke becasue most people in Canada think the Canadian Armed Forced are UNDERFUNDED (as apposed to the US military). It's not unusual for privates in the Reg forces to have to go to food banks between pays. My brother went through basic training back in 91 and although the "training" was excellent, Canada has crappy equipment. My brother learned to drive tanks in WWII era Shermans and old British MarkIV from the 60's - in 1991. We didn't get the M-16 until 1989 (we used to have the Belgian FN before). I think it funny that all the US conservatives who want Free trade and free movement of capital, are the once who scream foul when it comes to free movement of labour.
BTW, how does geographic convenience explain Sweeden, Denmark, Norway etc all which have a political system closer to ours (parliamentary democracy)and similar spending patterns on health, welfare, defense.
As for the rest of my post, I don't think it has to do with political superiority of the Canadian system (my god, our senate is APPOINTED by the Prime Minister!), but rather in the subtle differences in attitudes between our two countries. Whereas the American attitude is "if the Government runs it, It's communism (or socialism or what have you", we don't seem to mind as long as its fair and works pretty good. We have socialized medical care because we insist that we have it. One sure way to loose your job as a politician up here is to F*&k with our healthcare system. It may not be the greatest, but it has been along time since anyone bled to death in the ER waiting for service. NO ONE is refused medical treatment based on their economic status and NO ONE is given special treatment because of the same. As I said I'd like to see the US spend less on the military and more on socialized medicine. We can take care of ourselves, if we need to. Remember, 50 years ago Canada had the fourth largest Navy in the world. Does that mean we were protecting you? Was it convenient for the US to be next to such a naval superpower? We have had the ability to make nuclear weapons since 1946 but have chosen not to - not because we are YOUR nieghbours, but because we morally decided not to. We made the worlds most advanced fighter plane of its time in 1959 (the Avro Arrow) but scrapped the project because we decided to spend the money on more important things. Considering any missle defense your contry thought up would shoot down Russian nukes over my head doesn't make living next door so appealing. If the US is fool enough to spend trillions on defense to the detriment of its own people, don't slag my country for taking atvantage of it.
BTW, we would probably act the same even if you did slash you defense budget...its all about choice.
From another Canadian: 1) Toronto has a Consulate as well (remember the Serb-Canadian molotov cocktail incident). 2) TN-1 is for 6 months not 1 year - my sister (a nurse) and many co-workers from our Toronto Branch can attest to this. 3) You have obviously never actually done this...I know of people who are never allowed back into the US because, when trying to cross at PIA in Toronto (a MAJOR border crossing), with the "letter" AND formal Visa in hand, were accused by US Immagration of trying to smuggle contraband into the US - clothes with a Made in CUBA label! They were his personal belongings. As I stated in a previous post, Mexican serial killers seem to get less hassles at the border. 4)You may pay less taxes down there but remember, you get what you pay for. My baby was born one month ago and it cost $0. When I drive to work, I rarely hit a pot hole (been to Detroit, Boston or any other major US city recently?). I can walk downtown in Toronto at 3 am pickled to the gills and still be fairly safe - I'm fairly certain I won't be gunned down, even in TO! And I was able to graduate 5 years of University with only a $26000 Cdn student loan - I beleive that won't even pay for ONE year down south. All in all I'm pretty happy with my tax rate - I know where the money goes(NOT the Military!). So if that makes me a Socialist - Viva la Revolucion! I'm a damned communist! (OK, not really just the NDP).
If you like it down there, feel free to stay...more work for me here at home.
As a Canadian, not only do we have the option of the HB-1, but we also have the TN-1, available under the NAFTA agreement. Niether is really very good. I have close friends who make way less than their American counterparts (but still slightly more than in Canada) and can't flex their muscle - they'll get deported. I've had friends with Visas in their hands, given to them by their legal departments of the US companies they work for, told that they can't enter the US now or ever becasue they : a) Told them they were "programmers" instead of "computer systems analysts" b) had "Made in China" or "Made in Cuba" labels on the clothes they were bringing across.
I even know a woman who lived and worked in Boston for 3 years who dutifully returned to Canada every 6 months to have her Visa renewed. Never had a problem until 1 year ago when, for no reason (none that they told her) they refused to renew here Visa and she was immediately deported (she had to arrange for friends to send her stuff back to Toronto). Now we work for a very large consulting firm with 42 offices accross North America (starts with a k and rhymes with 'cleane') and this kind of thing happens all the time. I find it ironic that Mexican serial killers seem to have an easier time at the US border than highly skilled Canadian workers, who are being actively recruited. At a time when American companies are screaming for qualified workers, the INS seems just as determined to keep us out. And its not like we need to learn English, or any new concepts in programming. Hell we are often mistaken for Americans anyway (fortunately or unfortunately). We read all the same trade journals.
In addition to the problems at the border, some companies take advantage in very kiniving ways. For instance, my company will hire you for the Toronto branch at $38000 Cdn (low even for Canadian IT) then "loan" you to Detroit or Dallas or Santa Clara and still pay pay the same salary in Canadian funds! Now tha's exploitation if I've ever heard of it.
PS For all you racist pin heads out there, the best skilled IT workers are from India, BTW.
Since the Prospector was going to crash in the moon ANYWAY, I'd say it was money well spent - exactly $0. Get your fact straight before posting you ignorant ludite. I'd rather spend $1 million on space than $1 on bailing out failed savings and loans (remember that a coupla years ago). For News for Nerds, a lot of ani-technological right wing pin-heads seem to post here.
Wow, that guy sounds dangerous. Maybe I'm just "Stock trader profiling" here, but maybe E*Trade was right to deny him...after all he could have lost millions, gone berserk and killed 13 people. I hope stock trading firms and markets all around the US and Canada keep an eye out for these strange brokers who lose money. Many of them wear Armani suits so anyone wearing those should be watched by the people in charge - perhaps sent home and forced to change into the proper attire so they conform with the traders who are "winners". Parents should watch out that their stock trading (grown) children don't start exhibiting some of these traits...and if they do seek treatment right away.
I hope we don't have copy-cats....
The preceeding was a big bowl of sarcasm with a pinch of irony added for flavour. You can bet we WON'T have this reaction when one of the establishment acts just like the kids at Columbine did...
As for the RedHat IPO question...make up your mind. Do we want to have ANYONE buy and sell stocks/IPO shares or only those who know what they are doing or who can afford to be fleeced? 60 minutes did a big story about 2 month ago about "Day trading" which seemed to indicate that all of this should be done through an experienced broker. So this guy will angrily complain that E*Trade won't let him in for the RedHat IPO but if they did, he'd complain that they fleeced and inexperienced trader if RedHat bombs. Doesn't look to me like E*Trade can win.
Well, that only applies to an organization which "quotes" the anon person as a source of information. And usually (at least from my days a Carleton University School of Journalism) no anonymous source information will be printed without corroboration (sp?)from at least 2 other sources (eg, someone official confirming the "facts" of some other physical evidence that support the anonymous source). Only the Enquirer or Globe over look this fundemental tenent of journalism. None of this applies to Yahoo because their forum was not a "news" source but a discussion board - unedited and uncontrolled, really, by Yahoo. But I don't see the big problem - in every common law country in the world, truth is a defense in defamation and libel suits. So if these ananymous posters are telling the truth, they will probably be aquitted. If they are not, they deserve everything they get.
Should Yahoo have given up the names? Not much they can do in the face of a subpeona. As for the advice of using usenet, its hard to do that if you surf from behind a firewall with no news server.
As you can see by my spelling, I'm now a programmer not a journalist (I switched after 2 years).
While Katz's "plan" is a little bit of an over reaction and a tad flaky to boot, his heart is in the right place. I beleive, from what I read yesterday, that the question is not whether there should be an age restriction, but what that restriction should be. It seems to me to very arbitrary down in the USA. I just checked the Toronto Star and here in Ontario, South Park is rated AA - Adult Accompanyment. That means that kids under 14 must come to the movie accompanied by an adult...and adult is ANYONE over the age of 18. I guess this is quite similar to your PG-13. Up here this is a complete non-issue, but we also shou South Park on our Comedy Network uncensoired at 9:00 pm every Thrusday night. So does that mean Canadian kids can handle this more? that Canadian parents or government don't care about kids as much as you down there? Perhaps because we are such a large, sparsley populated country, we have all grown up knowing how important communications is to a community and that restricting communications is not always a good thing. Maybe we just get the jokes and the whole point about South Park a little better (we have lots of really funny commedians too). Lets face it, South Park, American Pie and Something About Mary should not be R-rated films...they are just not worthy of that disticntion (all were rated AA up here). I think the greater issue that needs to be addressed is how a few religous/right-wing Zealots can have such an influence on the MPAA that it would rate these films R or NC-17 and that they could influence theatre owners/corporations to enforce these ridiculous rules. Last year when I went to see Private Ryan (rated R up here) a few kids snuck in. Before the film they were laughing a giggling - it was obvious they though they were going to see something like The Longest Day (or anything by John Wayne). % minutes into the film they were quite, attentive and pensive. I think they learned something, something valuable by seeing that film. If they hadn't seen it, they may still think war is the cool fun stuff the Duke does. I'm glad they snuck in.
A 10 year old may not be able to handl or understand some of these films, but lets give kids, sespecially teenagers some credit...they are alot more astute than we realize. They may just "get it" and laugh about this whole situation - real life is imatating South Park!
So any of you teenagers who live in border towns want to see any of these films, come on up to Canada...not only will you see the movie, you'll see it at a discount - $9.50 Cdn is about $6.37 US.
BTW, the rating system up here is just not that strictly enforced, especially if a parent is standing right there saying its ok. None of this would have happened a the local Cineplex Odeon.
Bill young is the Chair of the House appropriations committee. All of you Americand let him know what you think here:
Congressman Bill Young U.S. House of Representatives 2407 Rayburn Building Washington, DC 20515 (202) 225-5961 Congressman Bill Young Suite 1480 360 Central Avenue St. Petersburg, FL 33701 (727) 893-3191 Congressman Bill Young Suite 606 801 West Bay Drive Largo, FL, 33770 (727) 581-0980
Ironically, while screaming about the need to cut the budget of NASA, he also approved this (from his own website):
"Congressman Young announced relief for the Defense Department included in H.R. 1141, A bill Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for 1999.
"This $15 billion bill is all about helping people," said Chairman Young. "American farmers, American troops, storm victims here in the U.S. and in Central America, and Balkan refugees will all immediately benefit from passage of this essential aid package. Despite our differences over the Administration's Balkan policy, this bill sends a strong message to our troops in the field that the Congress supports them.
"It also takes an important first step toward reversing the dangerous 10-year draw down of our nation's defenses by providing additional funding for readiness, recruitment, munitions, and force protection. And, $1.8 billion for military pay raises and retirement benefits will go a long way toward addressing critical retention and recruitment problems. We have worked hard to keep this bill as clean and tight as possible, as well as provided offsets for $2 billion of the costs. Press Release)
Watch this site for more updates on America's Defense Readiness"
I guess if his son David were an astronaut or NASA scientist, NASA may have gotten this cash (he's a fighter pilot stationed in Saudi Arabia, BTW). As a Canadian, I can't do much (although I did write Bill C. and ask him to veto this bill), so it's up to you Americans to let him know what you think. His e-mail address was not posted anywhere so if anyone out there has it, post it and lets have everyone let him know how stupid this is by every means of communication.
I've spent the last 2 hours off and on purusing the articles here and I've found the same old pro-censorship arguments coming from the right-wing,(mostly) Christian Fundementalists -
1. We must protect our children from this immoral and unethical world of ours since chaos will riegn if too many 14 year olds see South Park 2. This is all because we don't beleive in God/have prayer in school/let single mothers work. 3. The government/theatre owners/snot-nosed teenage ticket sellers have the LEGAL and MORAL right to ask for id, refuse entry to "minors" and tell parents that they must stay with their children.
Now I've been hanging out at/. for a while and I recognize a few of the sigs and nicks associated with those comments. The irony? My point?
If these children need to be "protected" from the South Park movie, how come the don't need to be protected the easy availablity of guns and other weapons in schools?
If a 14 year old shoots his/her classmates, why are they then suddenly "mature" enough to face the death penalty? If they are mature enough to know, in the criminal legal sense, that murder is wrong, why aren't they mature enough to decide wether to see a film or not? Considering we want to treat them as adults when they do something wrong, why can't they vote? If I could be held responsible enought at age 14 to lose my life for my action, I sure as hell should be mature enough to participate in the creation of the laws that affect it. Kids are mature enough to make life and death decisions when it suits the needs of certain groups in society in one instance, and kids need protection from all sorts of influences and aren't mature enough to undertand the contents of a satirical movie when that stance suits them.
Well, like it or not you can't have it both ways - if children are not mature enough to make "important" decisions for themselves (or by proxy through their parents), they are not mature enough to be held as responsible for criminal actions.
I find it ironic that many of the people posting here saying that children need to be protected are also the ones who said school shooters (at Columbine and elsewhere) should get the death penalty or knew exactly what they were doing.
Well, which is it?
Funny how some people only take a particular "moral" stance when holding, beleiving and enforcing that stance gives them the advantage....
Sorry for rambling. BTW when my 21 day old daughter is old enough to see films, my wife and I will decide (with her) what films they will be, not a government censorship board, not some group of religious kooks and not a teenaged ticket taker. And if that makes me a bad parent, I guess I'm a bad parent.
Hey man, if I had to sit an look at Mrs. Cowpland all day (and night), I'd probably mumble nothing but gibberish too. If you have'nt seen her, you should. Go to the Ottawa Citizen and do a serch on Cowpland...I will guarrantee lots of pictures of the lovely Mrs. in slinky, barely existant clothes.
If I were married to her, I wouldn't care about much else.
You have forgotten Nortel Networks (formerly Bell Northern Research, Nothern Telecom and just Nortel). They are huge up here AND now down there, since they bought out Bay Networks. So add one of the worlds biggest and best networking and telecomunications companies to the conspiracy and the world may have a highly networked, graphically excellent (ATI), highly supported free (as in speech) Linux based OS/hardware platform.
Yes, soon you will be ours! And then we'll give you socialized medicare whether you want it or not!
If you want to feel bad for Betty, feel bad that its the 30th aniversary of Apollo 11. Mercury, despite the hatch incident, and Gemini were Gus Grissoms greatest achievements. He died in the fire of Apollo 1 remember. I figure watching all the coverage of the Apollo program (when you can break away from the JFK Jr. stuff) would bring back worse memories for her.
DJerman has some sound advice for you to try. I absolutely beleive you about your problems but I'm talking Oracle 8.05 or 8.15 i enterprise, not 7.3.4. We need to compare apples to apples here. I am fully aware of the issues surrounding NT and Oracle or NT and anything, my point was that the original poster was absolutely lying in his diatribe against Oracle on NT. If you have a good, true agruement, there is no need to make stuff up. Linux advocacy will go nowhere if intellectual honesty is the first casualty of war.
This reminds me of the whole NT vs Linux Mindcraft benchmarks (which we can agree was a true excersise in FUD). What it really boiled down to was that for the most part, both OS were good with in the normal operating parameters for most users - Linux was able to come out ahead in the c't (?) tests because it is more stable in the long term and the price can't be beat. Well the same applies to the Oracle 8i stuff above.
This certianly has raised some interesting ethical issues. Should humans use their knowledge of cloning to reverse the damage done to the environment/ecosystem by them? Part of me says yes! go for it! we need to make amends for the damage we have done...but another part questions whether this is really nescessary.
Many posters here have argued we should use this technology to reverse our "interference" with the natural order and evolution. But this is premised on the idea that human interference is "outside" of the natural world and the forces of evolution. I would rather point out that, even in the heart of the most concrete of our urban jungles we are still and intergal part of the environment. Human activities in this sense are the agents of change and evolution, not the opposite. Any study of anthropology will show that this is nothing new. Mastadons and Mammoths are extinct, in large part, to being hunted by stone age humans about 12 - 15 thousand years ago. Should we then clone these animals and bring them back? After all we did cause their extinction too. Evolution is an ongoing process which is very simple - adapt to changes in the environment or die out. Humans may be the agents of change for the environment, but evolution determines if animals will die out because of it. Mammoths could not reproduce fast enough to avoid being hunted to extinction. Panda's seem to be going in the same direction. In the face of a drastically changing environment, they were and are being selected out. What casues the change is truly irrelevant...hunting, global warming or a 6 mile wide asteroid hitting the Gulf of Mexico...surviving and adapting in the face of that change is evolution at work. Cockroaches, and various forms of bacteria have thrived and evolved quite quickly due to these same, "man-made" changes. Are they as life forms any less deserving of the attempt to survive and evolve as a passenger pigeon or dodo? Think about that next time you take anti-biotics or use a roach motel.
That is not to say we shouldn't be more careful in the way we act. Humans as one of the most powerful agents of evolutionary change on the planet (I think a six mile wide asteroid is the only one that might be more powerful) also have a reponsibility to do as little damage as they can. But to think we will do no damage is absurd. Every animal and plant on the plant will do damage in some way or another. We as the human animals just happen to have the intellegence to control how much we do.
So given all this, should we clone? IMHO only if we can find a case were a species went extinct or eveloved into another species and then re-evolved back to close to its original form could cloning be warranted (and barely) I would find cloning to be the short-circiuting of evolution, not the cure for it.
PS. The evolution of whales come close to my criteria above but not quite.
...lets hear from someone who has actually USED and DEVELOPED Oracle 8.15 under NT.
Firstly, Oracle has become the industry standard RDMS simply because, as a backend database/application server, it is escellent, regardless of whether it runs on NT or a *nix box. Most DBA's will do their administration tasks from the SQLPlus 3.3 or 8.0 command prompt anyway, not from the various GUI tools provided. Our DBA rarely used the Schema mangaer or Enterprise manager - he and every other Oracle DBA I've worked with, have ALWAYS used the command prompt. Even us developers used it - in the 9 months I worked on my last project, I never saw any kind of GUI manager - I don't even know what it looks like. As for performance, true, NT is slightly (duh!) behind * nix but Oracle runs equally well under both - a credit to their engineers. We had very few problems and when we did, it was generally NT having the problem, not Oracle (unless you count Designer or Developer 2000 - don't get me started on those sh*tty products). But in the big picture, the problems were rare, even under NT. Thus for most applications, it doesn't really matter - use the OS your used to with Oracle (unless its a mission critical system that has to up and working 24 - 7 then I'd stick to *nix. Most apps aren't this important).
Oracle 8i runs just fine on my NT partition on a PII 350 with 64 megs of ram and 1.5 gigs of hard-drive space - so put the crack pipe down before you spout about terabyte/petabyte databases. Oracle is designed to be scalable - You can use it for a 500 meg database or a 5 terabyte database, as long as the hardware can handle it (my last project was used on a PII 450 box and took up about 1 gig in total storage space).
I'm still waiting for my Oracle 8i for Linux CD to arrive (I too ordered it 3-4 months ago). My NT CD arrived in April. BTW, both of these are the "real deal" - fully functional, non-time limited versions of the Oracle 8.15 database (and not Personal Oracle either - just Oracle 8i ENTERPRISE Edition!). Cost $0 (CDN). I can only use it for personal, non commercial use. If I need to distibute a product based on it, then I buy the licence (or rather, my client does). Sounds fine to me.
I fully agree with you that this news is very good as it will encourage a whole new segment of the IT world to try their thing on Linux - it will make developing and/or porting robust, enterprise level apps to Linux easier, which will increase the user base. Nothing but good can come of this.
But lets not take this news as another mindless opportunity to spread anti-NT FUD, especially from someone who obviously does not now or has never used Oracle under anything, let alone NT. Oracle is a good product which will do fine without you spreading bald-faced lies on it behalf. You making yourself look like a fool.
Moderators -4 Insightful? WTF? Try again...this guy hasn't got a clue enought to be even 2 Interesting
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"of excellent quality"? Are we reading the same documents? I have been playing with Linux for 6 months no and I've been a professional programmer for 2 years. I would hardly call myself a "newbie" to computers and IT. I' may, in many ways still be a "newbie" to linux but that won't last long. I really want to learn how my Linux box works (RH5.2 if you must know). My problem is the LDP docs are often out of date and irrelevant. When I was trying to configure my machine I spent days -DAYS not hours - trying to get my X server working properly, trying to get my printer to work and trying to get my modem to dial out to my ISP without being logged in as root or SU -ing. It took three months to do the latter and the problem was only solved when I stumbled across an alsmost unrelated post on Deja informin me that my serial port should be given world read access. Only then did it work. Now don't get me wrong, I like learning...and this whole experience has taught me a lot about Linux. But I learned all of it inspite of the LDP not because of it. The most useful info was on Linuxnewbie.com or on the news groups and certainly not in the HOW TO's. I'm a geek and a programmer and I love this stuff. If its this difficult for me to find out how to do something which on other unnamed OSes are automatic, how do you think the ordiary Joe or Joesephine will feel. They will say Linux is to hard and the "Documentation" doesn't help or work...and they will stick with that other unnamed OS. Is that what we want? Should it really be this difficult and time consuming to learn? The LDP needs to find a way to keep up to date and write better material in a way that's easy to find and understand. How? I wish I knew...staying the way it is will only hurt the Linux movement.
You seem to forget though that even though personal computers have been around for 25 years, they have only been in wide use and easily affordable for about 5-7 years. When I was in University in the 80's, only engineers used computers for anything. All other Word Processing and such was done on typewriters and adding machines. This was back in the days when a computer that you needed to load WP5.1 on disk by 5 1/4 inch disk cost over $4000. Don't forget that although the cost of PC hasn't really changed much (for a good one anyway), most people now make way more money (so in a sense, as a percentage of income, they are cheaper). Sub $1000 PC that almost any one can own have only been out for about 2 years. The internet has been around since 1969, why don't more people know how to use it? Because it wasn't generally available and viable for the average person until 1993 or so. Since then internet use has jumped from 3 million to over 100 milion. Maybe we as software designers should get our belly laughs out of the silly user then figure out a way to make our programs more user friendly FOR THE AVERAGE PERSON (ie not us) so people won't have to ask these question... they will just be able to use the software. If we don't, we are gonna be reading a lot more stuff like that site and wondering why... BTW for those pea brains out there who like to say " Make it so easy idiots could use it and only idiots will use it", I say " make it difficult to use and NOBODY will use it (translation - you will be out of a job and poor)". There are more people in the world than techno-snobs engineers and computer scientists.
The idea of using a giant magnetic field as a solar sail is fascinating. I'm wondering what other uses such a large magnetic field (20 KM) could be used for. It seems to be modeled on the earth's own magnetic field...could it then be used to protect passengers and instruments from radiation/cosmic rays in space as well as for propulsion.Might it also be used as a "deflector shield" to protect against collisions with small, interplanetary debris (dust, small meterorites etc). Perhaps a combination of technologies could make quite a fast craft - M2P2 + ion drive (DS1) or nuclear drive (Cassini) could create a decent means of travelling within the solar system. Interseting, no? If anyone who really knows about this stuff cares to comment, I'd love to hear aninformed opinion on this....
Members of the Canadian Standards Association were there? Gee I thought all they did was tell me whether my toaster or hockey helmet was safe to use. Considering its in the same sentence as the NSA, I believe you probably mean CSIS, the Canadian Security and Intellegence Service. Considering the nature of the conference, perhaps the Communications Security Establishment (the Canadian version of MI6 - I'm not sure of the name but its something like that), a really secret (their HQ is down by the Airport near Hunt Club Rd) wing of the Canadian (ahem) intellegence system. If I remember my days at Carleton and the people they were trying to recruit back then, whoever you thought was CSIS/CSE/NSA probably was a marketting guy from Corel...the real spooks wouldn't need to be in the room in person to get the poop....
God, Canada post must be slow...I still ait got mine yet up here in TO.
Anyone else get there's yet? I ordered mine in May and I've had my free NT version for 2 months....
He's not dumb at all. He saw the ad, saw the number of points, so NO disclaimer that this was a joke so he called them on it. I don't believe he really thought he'd get the jet but thought that he'd sue, and a big corporation like Pepsi would simply settle out of court for way more than the $700k he raised. And why would he not think this? This is the same legal system where a 69 year old idiot can scald herself with hot coffee and then successfully sue MacDonalds for millions because they didn't tell her the coffee was hot! (DUH!)
How many other frivoulous court cases like this happen in the American private law system?
This guy looked at what's been happening in the last 20 years and decided this was a good way to get cash out of a big corporation, because the US legal system seems to have taken any personal responsibility out of the law. Any pin-head can do something stupid (like putting the cruise control on in their RV and then LEAVE the driver's seat to go make breakfast - while the RV is driving down the highway!- they got in an accident, sued the RV company and won because it was the RV company's fault for not explaining that cruise control is not auto-pilot!) and successfully sue a company because they didn't warn them about the obvious. After all, its not my fault I didn't understand...I'm not responsible for my actions. Big companies are. They should make sure I can't hurt myself.
If the US had it so that the loser pays ALL legal fees(for BOTH the pliantiff and defendant), as they do here in Canada, there would be a lot less of these stupid laws suits.(Not to say that we don't have dumb lawsuit, we just have a lot less - you aren't likely to sue unless you think you have a really good chance of winning - how many US lawyers would counsel their clients NOT to file suit because they won't win? This happens all the time here).
Think of all the valueable court resources wasted on this kind of BS when cases like the Love Canal, Karen Silkwood, the Pinto and Tobacco suits need more attention and end up draggin on for years.
This guy should not only get nothing, I'd like to see him charged with fraud - defrauding his "investors" and attempting to extort the money from Pepsi. I commend Pepsi for standing up and not settling out of court, though I suspect the whole "truth in Advertising " thing may come back to haunt them.
Stuff like this is a perfect example of what happens when greed, fear and stupidity take the place of common sense in the courts and society.
Is it just me or does trying to read a story about the cost losing/having too many passwords which requires me to register with yet another password seem a bit ironic?
The NYT is just not that interesting....
Good Idea. Not that simple.
My sister has worked in the US as a nurse for over 5 years. She has been married to an American citizen for 2 1/2 years and the have a 2 year-old boy (Don't ask). Now, this is not a marriage of convenience - they are genuinely in love with each other and in fact are pregnant with baby #2. But my sister has been waiting 2 years to get a green card so she doesn't have to keep coming to Canada to renew her visa (she doesn't want to become a citizen). She is especially worried with all the INS horror stories she has heard. She's afraid to come back for a visit before her GC is issued in case they don't let her back in (entirely possible, despite being married to a US citizen having one of his children and bearing the other). Therefore I have never met my nephew and my parents have never seen their grandchild.
My sister is still waiting with no end in sight.
Doesn't seem so easy now, does it?
Aren't we supposed to be your fiends and biggest trading partner? Doesn't that "world longest unguarded border" we share mean anything?
Maybe my sister should become a mexican serial killer...they seem to have no problems at the border.
(I know, I know. I keep bring this up , but its just so damned ironic).
...OH! I get it! People from Denmark aren't the problem because people from Denmark are White/European! The "problem" are all those mud-coloured people companies bring in (since you can look around and "see" the problem). Forget about the fact that places like India (or China), despite being 3rd world economically, have educational systems on par with Canada/Britain and the US, have English as a second language and thus can create workers who are just as technically educated and savy as those born in North America. Too bad they are so dark and smell like curry and talk funny. I guess guys from Denmark would talk funny too, but they are of a more desireable hue and texture.
Now that the sarcasm is over my little klansmen, I think people like YOU are "the problem".
Obviously, you find something wrong with foreign workers. They can't speak English that well? True, but next time you get pissed at that, ask your self how you would feel if the person having trouble speaking or understanding English were a tall blond, guy from Denmark, or Germany or France instead of being from India, China, Thailand etc.
I'm willing to bet you wouldn't feel the same...
How can a Country which produced Martin Luther King, Jr. produce morons like you two?
Yes I agree. That company of which you speak will hire you for a Canadian branch office, pay you $38000 per year (Cdn and that's the low end of the IT pay spectrum in Canada). They then "loan" you to their American branch offices (Detroit, Denver, Boston etc) for and unlimited amount of time and still pay you your Canadian wages, as if you were living in Toronto!(BTW that comes out to $25080 USD per year as of this morning). Their lawyers will get you a TN-1 or BN-1 (for "training") which you will work under. They also try to say if you quit before 2 years you owe them the cost of your training (between $4000 and $9000 USD, depending on how long you were in training). Now, maybe I'm out of line, but doesn't that sound like wage slavery or indebtured servitude to you? Isn't this the same way Asian sex slaves are brought into North America?
They do this to Canadian citizens and others all the time.
Also, I'd like to remind many of you who have been posting why most HB-1 workers are coming to the US - because they are needed. There are thousands of unfilled IT positions out there, in both the US and Canada. HB-1 workers aren't taking your jobs, they are filling jobs that would otherwise go vacant. American companies have more IT positions than there are qualified people to fill them. Without HB-1 workers, the US economy would suffer.
Given that, whay should these needed people be exploited? I thought the US was the land of the Free? "Give me your tired, huddled masses yearning to be free"?!?.
Most HB-1 folks are very highly skilled professionals who will do good work. Unfortunately, in such a market, unscrupulous "Agencies" will recruit anyone under the HB-1, pay them crap or deliver inferior workers just to pocket the finders fee. These agencies always get their money but workers get screwed by the bad rep the HB-1 gets and companies loose out because they don't get the workers the so desparately need.
Remember, its the companies who want an increase in the HB-1 quotas, no the workers...
Point well taken Jeff. I agree with you about the military spending. My point was actually a little sarcastic - up here spending on the military is a big joke becasue most people in Canada think the Canadian Armed Forced are UNDERFUNDED (as apposed to the US military). It's not unusual for privates in the Reg forces to have to go to food banks between pays. My brother went through basic training back in 91 and although the "training" was excellent, Canada has crappy equipment. My brother learned to drive tanks in WWII era Shermans and old British MarkIV from the 60's - in 1991. We didn't get the M-16 until 1989 (we used to have the Belgian FN before).
I think it funny that all the US conservatives who want Free trade and free movement of capital, are the once who scream foul when it comes to free movement of labour.
BTW, how does geographic convenience explain Sweeden, Denmark, Norway etc all which have a political system closer to ours (parliamentary democracy)and similar spending patterns on health, welfare, defense.
As for the rest of my post, I don't think it has to do with political superiority of the Canadian system (my god, our senate is APPOINTED by the Prime Minister!), but rather in the subtle differences in attitudes between our two countries. Whereas the American attitude is "if the Government runs it, It's communism (or socialism or what have you", we don't seem to mind as long as its fair and works pretty good. We have socialized medical care because we insist that we have it. One sure way to loose your job as a politician up here is to F*&k with our healthcare system. It may not be the greatest, but it has been along time since anyone bled to death in the ER waiting for service. NO ONE is refused medical treatment based on their economic status and NO ONE is given special treatment because of the same.
As I said I'd like to see the US spend less on the military and more on socialized medicine. We can take care of ourselves, if we need to. Remember, 50 years ago Canada had the fourth largest Navy in the world. Does that mean we were protecting you? Was it convenient for the US to be next to such a naval superpower? We have had the ability to make nuclear weapons since 1946 but have chosen not to - not because we are YOUR nieghbours, but because we morally decided not to. We made the worlds most advanced fighter plane of its time in 1959 (the Avro Arrow) but scrapped the project because we decided to spend the money on more important things. Considering any missle defense your contry thought up would shoot down Russian nukes over my head doesn't make living next door so appealing. If the US is fool enough to spend trillions on defense to the detriment of its own people, don't slag my country for taking atvantage of it.
BTW, we would probably act the same even if you did slash you defense budget...its all about choice.
From another Canadian:
1) Toronto has a Consulate as well (remember the Serb-Canadian molotov cocktail incident).
2) TN-1 is for 6 months not 1 year - my sister (a nurse) and many co-workers from our Toronto Branch can attest to this.
3) You have obviously never actually done this...I know of people who are never allowed back into the US because, when trying to cross at PIA in Toronto (a MAJOR border crossing), with the "letter" AND formal Visa in hand, were accused by US Immagration of trying to smuggle contraband into the US - clothes with a Made in CUBA label! They were his personal belongings. As I stated in a previous post, Mexican serial killers seem to get less hassles at the border.
4)You may pay less taxes down there but remember, you get what you pay for. My baby was born one month ago and it cost $0. When I drive to work, I rarely hit a pot hole (been to Detroit, Boston or any other major US city recently?). I can walk downtown in Toronto at 3 am pickled to the gills and still be fairly safe - I'm fairly certain I won't be gunned down, even in TO! And I was able to graduate 5 years of University with only a $26000 Cdn student loan - I beleive that won't even pay for ONE year down south. All in all I'm pretty happy with my tax rate - I know where the money goes(NOT the Military!). So if that makes me a Socialist - Viva la Revolucion! I'm a damned communist! (OK, not really just the NDP).
If you like it down there, feel free to stay...more work for me here at home.
As a Canadian, not only do we have the option of the HB-1, but we also have the TN-1, available under the NAFTA agreement. Niether is really very good. I have close friends who make way less than their American counterparts (but still slightly more than in Canada) and can't flex their muscle - they'll get deported. I've had friends with Visas in their hands, given to them by their legal departments of the US companies they work for, told that they can't enter the US now or ever becasue they :
a) Told them they were "programmers" instead of "computer systems analysts"
b) had "Made in China" or "Made in Cuba" labels on the clothes they were bringing across.
I even know a woman who lived and worked in Boston for 3 years who dutifully returned to Canada every 6 months to have her Visa renewed. Never had a problem until 1 year ago when, for no reason (none that they told her) they refused to renew here Visa and she was immediately deported (she had to arrange for friends to send her stuff back to Toronto).
Now we work for a very large consulting firm with 42 offices accross North America (starts with a k and rhymes with 'cleane') and this kind of thing happens all the time. I find it ironic that Mexican serial killers seem to have an easier time at the US border than highly skilled Canadian workers, who are being actively recruited. At a time when American companies are screaming for qualified workers, the INS seems just as determined to keep us out.
And its not like we need to learn English, or any new concepts in programming. Hell we are often mistaken for Americans anyway (fortunately or unfortunately). We read all the same trade journals.
In addition to the problems at the border, some companies take advantage in very kiniving ways. For instance, my company will hire you for the Toronto branch at $38000 Cdn (low even for Canadian IT) then "loan" you to Detroit or Dallas or Santa Clara and still pay pay the same salary in Canadian funds! Now tha's exploitation if I've ever heard of it.
PS For all you racist pin heads out there, the best skilled IT workers are from India, BTW.
Since the Prospector was going to crash in the moon ANYWAY, I'd say it was money well spent - exactly $0. Get your fact straight before posting you ignorant ludite. I'd rather spend $1 million on space than $1 on bailing out failed savings and loans (remember that a coupla years ago). For News for Nerds, a lot of ani-technological right wing pin-heads seem to post here.
Wow, that guy sounds dangerous. Maybe I'm just "Stock trader profiling" here, but maybe E*Trade was right to deny him...after all he could have lost millions, gone berserk and killed 13 people. I hope stock trading firms and markets all around the US and Canada keep an eye out for these strange brokers who lose money. Many of them wear Armani suits so anyone wearing those should be watched by the people in charge - perhaps sent home and forced to change into the proper attire so they conform with the traders who are "winners". Parents should watch out that their stock trading (grown) children don't start exhibiting some of these traits...and if they do seek treatment right away.
I hope we don't have copy-cats....
The preceeding was a big bowl of sarcasm with a pinch of irony added for flavour. You can bet we WON'T have this reaction when one of the establishment acts just like the kids at Columbine did...
As for the RedHat IPO question...make up your mind. Do we want to have ANYONE buy and sell stocks/IPO shares or only those who know what they are doing or who can afford to be fleeced? 60 minutes did a big story about 2 month ago about "Day trading" which seemed to indicate that all of this should be done through an experienced broker. So this guy will angrily complain that E*Trade won't let him in for the RedHat IPO but if they did, he'd complain that they fleeced and inexperienced trader if RedHat bombs. Doesn't look to me like E*Trade can win.
Well, that only applies to an organization which "quotes" the anon person as a source of information. And usually (at least from my days a Carleton University School of Journalism) no anonymous source information will be printed without corroboration (sp?)from at least 2 other sources (eg, someone official confirming the "facts" of some other physical evidence that support the anonymous source). Only the Enquirer or Globe over look this fundemental tenent of journalism.
None of this applies to Yahoo because their forum was not a "news" source but a discussion board - unedited and uncontrolled, really, by Yahoo.
But I don't see the big problem - in every common law country in the world, truth is a defense in defamation and libel suits. So if these ananymous posters are telling the truth, they will probably be aquitted. If they are not, they deserve everything they get.
Should Yahoo have given up the names? Not much they can do in the face of a subpeona. As for the advice of using usenet, its hard to do that if you surf from behind a firewall with no news server.
As you can see by my spelling, I'm now a programmer not a journalist (I switched after 2 years).
While Katz's "plan" is a little bit of an over reaction and a tad flaky to boot, his heart is in the right place. I beleive, from what I read yesterday, that the question is not whether there should be an age restriction, but what that restriction should be. It seems to me to very arbitrary down in the USA. I just checked the Toronto Star and here in Ontario, South Park is rated AA - Adult Accompanyment. That means that kids under 14 must come to the movie accompanied by an adult...and adult is ANYONE over the age of 18. I guess this is quite similar to your PG-13. Up here this is a complete non-issue, but we also shou South Park on our Comedy Network uncensoired at 9:00 pm every Thrusday night. So does that mean Canadian kids can handle this more? that Canadian parents or government don't care about kids as much as you down there? Perhaps because we are such a large, sparsley populated country, we have all grown up knowing how important communications is to a community and that restricting communications is not always a good thing. Maybe we just get the jokes and the whole point about South Park a little better (we have lots of really funny commedians too). Lets face it, South Park, American Pie and Something About Mary should not be R-rated films...they are just not worthy of that disticntion (all were rated AA up here).
I think the greater issue that needs to be addressed is how a few religous/right-wing Zealots can have such an influence on the MPAA that it would rate these films R or NC-17 and that they could influence theatre owners/corporations to enforce these ridiculous rules.
Last year when I went to see Private Ryan (rated R up here) a few kids snuck in. Before the film they were laughing a giggling - it was obvious they though they were going to see something like The Longest Day (or anything by John Wayne). % minutes into the film they were quite, attentive and pensive. I think they learned something, something valuable by seeing that film. If they hadn't seen it, they may still think war is the cool fun stuff the Duke does. I'm glad they snuck in.
A 10 year old may not be able to handl or understand some of these films, but lets give kids, sespecially teenagers some credit...they are alot more astute than we realize. They may just "get it" and laugh about this whole situation - real life is imatating South Park!
So any of you teenagers who live in border towns want to see any of these films, come on up to Canada...not only will you see the movie, you'll see it at a discount - $9.50 Cdn is about $6.37 US.
BTW, the rating system up here is just not that strictly enforced, especially if a parent is standing right there saying its ok. None of this would have happened a the local Cineplex Odeon.
Tempest in a Teapot.
Bill young is the Chair of the House appropriations committee. All of you Americand let him know what you think here:
Congressman Bill Young
U.S. House of Representatives
2407 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5961
Congressman Bill Young
Suite 1480
360 Central Avenue
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
(727) 893-3191
Congressman Bill Young
Suite 606
801 West Bay Drive
Largo, FL, 33770
(727) 581-0980
Ironically, while screaming about the need to cut the budget of NASA, he also approved this (from his own website):
"Congressman Young announced relief for the Defense Department included in H.R. 1141, A bill Making Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for 1999.
"This $15 billion bill is all about helping people," said Chairman Young. "American farmers, American troops, storm victims here in the U.S. and in Central America, and Balkan refugees will all immediately benefit from passage of this
essential aid package. Despite our differences over the Administration's Balkan policy, this bill sends a strong message to our
troops in the field that the Congress supports them.
"It also takes an important first step toward reversing the dangerous 10-year draw down of our nation's defenses by providing
additional funding for readiness, recruitment, munitions, and force protection. And, $1.8 billion for military pay raises and
retirement benefits will go a long way toward addressing critical retention and recruitment problems. We have worked hard to
keep this bill as clean and tight as possible, as well as provided offsets for $2 billion of the costs. Press Release)
Watch this site for more updates on America's Defense Readiness"
I guess if his son David were an astronaut or NASA scientist, NASA may have gotten this cash (he's a fighter pilot stationed in Saudi Arabia, BTW).
As a Canadian, I can't do much (although I did write Bill C. and ask him to veto this bill), so it's up to you Americans to let him know what you think. His e-mail address was not posted anywhere so if anyone out there has it, post it and lets have everyone let him know how stupid this is by every means of communication.
Don't let the Republicans get away with this.
I've spent the last 2 hours off and on purusing the articles here and I've found the same old pro-censorship arguments coming from the right-wing,(mostly) Christian Fundementalists -
/. for a while and I recognize a few of the sigs and nicks associated with those comments. The irony? My point?
1. We must protect our children from this immoral and unethical world of ours since chaos will riegn if too many 14 year olds see South Park
2. This is all because we don't beleive in God/have prayer in school/let single mothers work.
3. The government/theatre owners/snot-nosed teenage ticket sellers have the LEGAL and MORAL right to ask for id, refuse entry to "minors" and tell parents that they must stay with their children.
Now I've been hanging out at
If these children need to be "protected" from the South Park movie, how come the don't need to be protected the easy availablity of guns and other weapons in schools?
If a 14 year old shoots his/her classmates, why are they then suddenly "mature" enough to face the death penalty? If they are mature enough to know, in the criminal legal sense, that murder is wrong, why aren't they mature enough to decide wether to see a film or not? Considering we want to treat them as adults when they do something wrong, why can't they vote? If I could be held responsible enought at age 14 to lose my life for my action, I sure as hell should be mature enough to participate in the creation of the laws that affect it. Kids are mature enough to make life and death decisions when it suits the needs of certain groups in society in one instance, and kids need protection from all sorts of influences and aren't mature enough to undertand the contents of a satirical movie when that stance suits them.
Well, like it or not you can't have it both ways - if children are not mature enough to make "important" decisions for themselves (or by proxy through their parents), they are not mature enough to be held as responsible for criminal actions.
I find it ironic that many of the people posting here saying that children need to be protected are also the ones who said school shooters (at Columbine and elsewhere) should get the death penalty or knew exactly what they were doing.
Well, which is it?
Funny how some people only take a particular "moral" stance when holding, beleiving and enforcing that stance gives them the advantage....
Sorry for rambling. BTW when my 21 day old daughter is old enough to see films, my wife and I will decide (with her) what films they will be, not a government censorship board, not some group of religious kooks and not a teenaged ticket taker. And if that makes me a bad parent, I guess I'm a bad parent.
Hey man, if I had to sit an look at Mrs. Cowpland all day (and night), I'd probably mumble nothing but gibberish too. If you have'nt seen her, you should. Go to the Ottawa Citizen and do a serch on Cowpland...I will guarrantee lots of pictures of the lovely Mrs. in slinky, barely existant clothes.
If I were married to her, I wouldn't care about much else.
You have forgotten Nortel Networks (formerly Bell Northern Research, Nothern Telecom and just Nortel). They are huge up here AND now down there, since they bought out Bay Networks. So add one of the worlds biggest and best networking and telecomunications companies to the conspiracy and the world may have a highly networked, graphically excellent (ATI), highly supported free (as in speech) Linux based OS/hardware platform.
Yes, soon you will be ours! And then we'll give you socialized medicare whether you want it or not!
All part of the master plan, eh?
(It started with Molsons and ends...?)
HaHaHaHaHaHa!!!! (Manical Laughter, eh)
"Sait porte l'epee..."
If you want to feel bad for Betty, feel bad that its the 30th aniversary of Apollo 11. Mercury, despite the hatch incident, and Gemini were Gus Grissoms greatest achievements. He died in the fire of Apollo 1 remember. I figure watching all the coverage of the Apollo program (when you can break away from the JFK Jr. stuff) would bring back worse memories for her.
DJerman has some sound advice for you to try. I absolutely beleive you about your problems but I'm talking Oracle 8.05 or 8.15 i enterprise, not 7.3.4. We need to compare apples to apples here. I am fully aware of the issues surrounding NT and Oracle or NT and anything, my point was that the original poster was absolutely lying in his diatribe against Oracle on NT. If you have a good, true agruement, there is no need to make stuff up. Linux advocacy will go nowhere if intellectual honesty is the first casualty of war.
This reminds me of the whole NT vs Linux Mindcraft benchmarks (which we can agree was a true excersise in FUD). What it really boiled down to was that for the most part, both OS were good with in the normal operating parameters for most users - Linux was able to come out ahead in the c't (?) tests because it is more stable in the long term and the price can't be beat. Well the same applies to the Oracle 8i stuff above.
This certianly has raised some interesting ethical issues. Should humans use their knowledge of cloning to reverse the damage done to the environment/ecosystem by them? Part of me says yes! go for it! we need to make amends for the damage we have done...but another part questions whether this is really nescessary.
Many posters here have argued we should use this technology to reverse our "interference" with the natural order and evolution. But this is premised on the idea that human interference is "outside" of the natural world and the forces of evolution. I would rather point out that, even in the heart of the most concrete of our urban jungles we are still and intergal part of the environment. Human activities in this sense are the agents of change and evolution, not the opposite. Any study of anthropology will show that this is nothing new. Mastadons and Mammoths are extinct, in large part, to being hunted by stone age humans about 12 - 15 thousand years ago. Should we then clone these animals and bring them back? After all we did cause their extinction too. Evolution is an ongoing process which is very simple - adapt to changes in the environment or die out. Humans may be the agents of change for the environment, but evolution determines if animals will die out because of it. Mammoths could not reproduce fast enough to avoid being hunted to extinction. Panda's seem to be going in the same direction. In the face of a drastically changing environment, they were and are being selected out. What casues the change is truly irrelevant...hunting, global warming or a 6 mile wide asteroid hitting the Gulf of Mexico...surviving and adapting in the face of that change is evolution at work. Cockroaches, and various forms of bacteria have thrived and evolved quite quickly due to these same, "man-made" changes. Are they as life forms any less deserving of the attempt to survive and evolve as a passenger pigeon or dodo? Think about that next time you take anti-biotics or use a roach motel.
That is not to say we shouldn't be more careful in the way we act. Humans as one of the most powerful agents of evolutionary change on the planet (I think a six mile wide asteroid is the only one that might be more powerful) also have a reponsibility to do as little damage as they can. But to think we will do no damage is absurd. Every animal and plant on the plant will do damage in some way or another. We as the human animals just happen to have the intellegence to control how much we do.
So given all this, should we clone? IMHO only if we can find a case were a species went extinct or eveloved into another species and then re-evolved back to close to its original form could cloning be warranted (and barely) I would find cloning to be the short-circiuting of evolution, not the cure for it.
PS. The evolution of whales come close to my criteria above but not quite.
...lets hear from someone who has actually USED and DEVELOPED Oracle 8.15 under NT.
Firstly, Oracle has become the industry standard RDMS simply because, as a backend database/application server, it is escellent, regardless of whether it runs on NT or a *nix box.
Most DBA's will do their administration tasks from the SQLPlus 3.3 or 8.0 command prompt anyway, not from the various GUI tools provided. Our DBA rarely used the Schema mangaer or Enterprise manager - he and every other Oracle DBA I've worked with, have ALWAYS used the command prompt. Even us developers used it - in the 9 months I worked on my last project, I never saw any kind of GUI manager - I don't even know what it looks like.
As for performance, true, NT is slightly (duh!) behind * nix but Oracle runs equally well under both - a credit to their engineers. We had very few problems and when we did, it was generally NT having the problem, not Oracle (unless you count Designer or Developer 2000 - don't get me started on those sh*tty products). But in the big picture, the problems were rare, even under NT. Thus for most applications, it doesn't really matter - use the OS your used to with Oracle (unless its a mission critical system that has to up and working 24 - 7 then I'd stick to *nix. Most apps aren't this important).
Oracle 8i runs just fine on my NT partition on a PII 350 with 64 megs of ram and 1.5 gigs of hard-drive space - so put the crack pipe down before you spout about terabyte/petabyte databases. Oracle is designed to be scalable - You can use it for a 500 meg database or a 5 terabyte database, as long as the hardware can handle it (my last project was used on a PII 450 box and took up about 1 gig in total storage space).
I'm still waiting for my Oracle 8i for Linux CD to arrive (I too ordered it 3-4 months ago). My NT CD arrived in April. BTW, both of these are the "real deal" - fully functional, non-time limited versions of the Oracle 8.15 database (and not Personal Oracle either - just Oracle 8i ENTERPRISE Edition!). Cost $0 (CDN). I can only use it for personal, non commercial use. If I need to distibute a product based on it, then I buy the licence (or rather, my client does). Sounds fine to me.
I fully agree with you that this news is very good as it will encourage a whole new segment of the IT world to try their thing on Linux - it will make developing and/or porting robust, enterprise level apps to Linux easier, which will increase the user base. Nothing but good can come of this.
But lets not take this news as another mindless opportunity to spread anti-NT FUD, especially from someone who obviously does not now or has never used Oracle under anything, let alone NT. Oracle is a good product which will do fine without you spreading bald-faced lies on it behalf. You making yourself look like a fool.
Moderators -4 Insightful? WTF? Try again...this guy hasn't got a clue enought to be even 2 Interesting