Writing to/. about how upsetting this levy would be is well and fine, but the best way to be heard is to follow one of the available avenues.
Objections to the levy have been invited, as long as they follow a specific format:
"Objections must briefly state the reasons therefor, and must in-dicate the name, address, telephone number, facsimile number and electronic mail address of the objector. The objection must also contain the following declarations:
I intend to participate actively to the process leading to the certification of the private copying tariff. Consequently, this constitutes my formal objection to the proposed statement filed by CPCC.
I have read the information set out in the Board's notice published in the Canada Gazette on March 9, 2002 with CPCCs proposed statement. I understand the duties that I undertake as an objector and intend to abide by them.
If you're not the letter-writing type, you can take the time to appear at one of the Consultation Meetings on Digital Copyright that are being scheduled by Industry Canada. Meetings are still scheduled for Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, and one was held in Halifax on March 8th. Although this proposed levy isn't on the agenda, other items such as the DCMA and the internet based retransmission are, and there's also a spot on the agenda for "Other Items."
Better yet, keep your eyes and ears open for the results of the pre-hearing meeting on May 23rd, at which point a timetable and agenda for a formal hearing will be scheduled.
I'm attending the Toronto Consultation Meeting, and I urge others in the scheduled areas to visit the website and sign up to attend as well.
cheers, mike
(I would appreciate it, not for the karma but for the passing of information, if this were modded up)
Basic function in HTML (the required info)
Extended function in Flash (the gadgets)
Ridiculous function left out (twist Sugar Ray's face into a fractal!)
"There's no such thing as good Flash. There's no such thing as bad Flash. Flash in the hands of a bad designer is a very dangerous thing. Flash in the hands of a good designer is no danger to anyone, except the blind guys."
Accessibility arguments aside (as I assume that eventually the folks at Macromedia will start to deal with methods for making Flash accessible to screen readers), the major arguments against using Flash really have more to do with the page designers than with the technology.
The problem as I see it is that there are hundreds of ITI-like schools that teach "web design" by doing little else than going over the basics of HTML, then jumping into how to combine JavaScript, DHTML and Flash into the ULTIMATE WEB PAGE!!! which will get you noticed and earn you millions. No attention is paid to the more important aspects of web design, such as: usability, accessibility, size restrictions(remember the "no page over 50k!" design guideline of olden days?), proper layout of information and function, etc, etc. On top of this, the art of code optimization is lost on a lot of these developers, so they do little in the way of making judicious use of Flash -- they basically use it everywhere, for things which HTML could easily do for them.
In the hands of a good designer, Flash can be used to create really innovative navigation methods that reduce the time required for users to accomplish their tasks. The example reservation form linked from the article is a pretty nice way of dealing with online hotel reservations (there are a few things that I found wierd - like how it selected a range of dates).
Overall, however, I see no need for Flash to replace HTML entirely. The design should always be:
Basic function in HTML,
Extended function in Flash,
Ridiculous function left out.
I'll reply to this one instead of all of them... I didn't say "absence" nor did I say "none". I just said that we're lacking in world class cities.
For everyone's reference: I consider Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and grudgingly "Toronto" to be "world class" cities, in the sense that there's reason for other people in the world to know about them and visit them. If you define a world class city as one which is a cultural centre and on stage with cities like New York and Paris, I'd say only Montreal rates.
There are loads of places in Canada that are worth visiting: Ottawa, Victoria, Banff, Drumheller, Charlottetown, Cape Breton, Tufino, Yellowknife... however, they don't rate as "world class". I'm not being unpatriotic, just honest and blunt.
BTW No, and we don't pronounce it "a-boot" Who started that myth?
Actually... uhh.. we do. I used to do voice over work when I was a kid, and the line on which I had to do the most takes was one where my character said "No doubt about it." Eventually, I had to exaggerate to "No dowwt abowwt it" to get it sounding American.
We don't sound like actors making fun of us, but we certainly pronounce words like "about", "roof", "doubt" very differently. We tend to put an "out" sound where Americans expect an "owt" sound.
you can boast that you're a citizen of the nation with the greatest male and female hockey players
other nations don't have a seething hatred for you (justified or not)
better beer
funny comedians
really good music
an abundance of gorgeous people are our best kept secret
it's harder to get shot "by accident" here.
Disadvantages
get paid less as a skilled worker;
almost 1/2 your paycheck goes to income tax, employment insurance, and the Canada Pension Plan (which will by dry in 10-20 years)
only one airline, and man does it suck
yeah, ok - it's a little colder
the healthcare system is spiralling downwards due to funding shortages passed onto the provinces from a sneaky federal government that wants to report a "surplus"
lack of world class cities and attractions
One thing that I find ironic is that it was only a few years ago that Nortel was threatening to leave Canada because of its taxation rates which hurt corporations trying to compete against those in the USA.
What's left out of the ZDNet article is ...
on
HTTP's Days Numbered
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
... the fact that Web Services don't rely on HTTP whatsoever. Sure, loading the client UI that goes and talks to these Web Services relies on HTTP, as well it should, as it's all go-fetch-me-a-web-page stuff.
However, the web based UI could easily be implimented such that the actual communication between web services is done through any IP based protocol. Right now HTTP is the one that jumps to most developers minds, but by no means is it the one that's expected to be used for longer-running services. Personally, I would expect that the web based UI would interact with some running process that would dispatch and receive Web Service data through a message queueing system that provides some form of transactional validity and security. If it's a really long-running service, then this intermediary process could exist much like a state machine, and the web UI could get status updates by hitting that state machine and getting the appropriate response (ie: "Still waiting to hear back from Microsoft's UDDI server!" or "Still waiting for that order to go through!")
That's a really good idea, actually. Sort of like a design patterns book, but instead of focusing on exposing the myriad of patterns, focus on some common, real-world applications of the technology (ie: connecting to a JDBC DB to support website personalization) and go through ways of [b]using[/b] the technologies to realize the goal.
Assuming that Gauss came up with a method to do this, and you're not mistakenly referring to Euler, then zoombah - you're smarter than me. Take a friggin' bow.
Assuming that you, like many others, failed to read the question and just found the summation of natural numbers between 1 and 1000000, then take another look at the wording and go back to the drawing board, Spanky.
2) with euler's method (well, one of euler's methods [n*(n+1)/2])
This would give you the summation of all natural numbers between 1 and 1000000. The question, however, is to find the summation of all decimal digits appearing in the sequence.
For example, 324 would contribute a total of 9 to the total sum.
So, the sum of 0..10 = 46
the sum of 0..100 = 901
the sum of 0..10^n = (n * 10^(n-1) * 45) + 1
In our case, we're looking for 0..10^6, so
= (6 * 100000 * 45) + 1
= 27000000 + 1
= 27000001
As I said, a little more complex, but not impossible to figure out if you take out pencil and paper and think about it.
To verify, simply create a brute force algorithm that loops from 1 to 1000000, where the loop code either uses mod and div to isolate the value of each digit of a number, or some funky string-integer transformations.
However, I still believe they should have made cracking the code at least a little more challenging.
Gleefully agreed. I'm guessing that they were afraid of turning people off or intimidating them. However, the very least they could have done was put a simple cipher behind the base-4 encoding scheme. I mean, the ol' ROT-13 would have even been a fun way to throw an "old skule" kink in the plans.:)
The scholarship, in fact, does not go to the first person with a correct solution. Anyone who meets the contest regs (ie: student, 16-19 years of age, not residing in Quebec) and submits a correct answer is entered into a draw for one of three scholarships.
I'm about middle of my course of 400 CompScis, and it took me all of five minutes to 'crack' the code, and solve the puzzle. Any kid who's done GCSE Computation (aged 14-16) should be able to work it out in less than half an hour.
Well of course it's easy for a university student, and of course it's totally possible to complete for a high school student. Doesn't make much sense to post a puzzle for admission to a CS program that nobody can solve, does it?
At the end of the day, Lethbridge was trying to attract self-motivated students. The students who actually take the time to decode the message (very easy) and then solve the problem (a little more difficult, especially if you try to come up with a formula instead of just brute-forcing it) are the ones that they want. Not neccessarily because they have the capability to come up with the correct solution, but because they've got the moxy and the motivation to actually give it a "college try", as it were.
Your flamebait comment about the implications of Canadian University degrees will go ignored, but noted.
If anyone's interested in the real story, they should go to this story in the National Post.
Amongst other things, it talks about how the code is the first part of the challenge. The coded message leads to a math problem (which is actually kind of fun and has a rather elegant solution). Solve the math problem, and you get into school with the chance to win a scholarship.
Having gone to the site and gone through the decode and solve phases, I can happily report that the "code" isn't really a code at all. As the site hints, it's basically "coded" by being written in base-4. The challenge is really in the math problem, which requires applicants to find the summation of all decimal digits in the sequence of natural numbers from one to one million. While this isn't impossible, it does require some thought and intelligence. I thought it was a great idea for students who liked math and computer science (the problem can also be solved with a simple brute force algorithm) but weren't neccessarily that stellar students nor interested in lengthy University applications.
Heck - I spent an hour coming up with a solution and then verifying it with a quick little Java program. It was fun! Give it a shot!
(As a Troll-y sidenote, I'd like to mention with some degree of bitterness that I submitted this story, except when I did it, I got the facts right. Apparently this warrants a rejection, and irrelevant whining about the DMCA warrants approval. Do you ever wonder why/. gets a bad reputation from time to time?)
You make a good point - without proper knowledge management software, or even metadata that helps sort the video into broad stroke categories (ie: "world news", "financial news", "sitcom"), search results would be marred with irrelevancy.
Any overclockers care to enlighten me regarding the reasoning behind overclocking?
The early rationale for overclocking was simply to allow your chip to work as it was supposed to. Tom's Hardware was one of many sites that insited that the cores of several of the early Pentium chips were actually identical - all cast from the same die. The difference, said Tom, was that the "faster" chips had passed certain tolerance tests. So really, at that point, overclocking was used to "unlock" the full potential of your CPU.
Oh, I should mention that I work for IBM (not in hardware, though) yadda yadda opinions are mine not IBMs yadda yadda. I should also mention that another reason IBM's not doing so hot in desktop PCs is... have you seen the prices they charge for their desktops? Egads!
IBM is, for some ungodly reason, stuck on manufacturing the UGLIEST desktop computers that the world has ever seen!!
I remember back in '96 when I saw my first "swanky" IBM Aptiva. I almost chuckled at the non-standard case, the wierd drop-down-from-the-monitor drive bay, and those odd holes in the side of the case. Although it wasn't a success, you certainly can't accuse them of not trying to be stylish, and doing so way ahead of most competitors.
Now, IBM already seems to have ditched its not-so-well-received Aptiva line of computers. They have two "desktop" lines: the Intellistation (primarily intended for office use) and the NetVista (for home or small office use).
The Intellistation (successor to the PC300GL line) is what you expect a workstation to look like. A box with stuff in it. Pretty standard, as the comment above says, pretty ugly, but not really intended for anything other than work. My only gripe with them is that the graphics system seems to be sub-par, but then again, this thing isn't meant to really be a graphics demon.
The NetVista line warrants a bit more attention, especially the X series. IBM is experimenting again, in my opinion with great success, trying to change the paradigm of what a desktop PC looks like. The X Series models are totally upgradable (I slapped an extra 512MB of RAM into mine) and very pretty. They take the best of the ThinkPad line and put it into desktop form. The drop-down bay makes a reappearance, and the thing has USB ports all over it. I've found it to be an excellent little home system. Again, my major gripes with them (owning an X40 myself) are the graphics system (the newer models come with a Rage 128, which trumps my SiS 330) and an oddly non-standard keyboard. Also, the lack of serial and parallel ports on it is a little annoying - I'm not totally USB yet.
Hate to disappoint you there, fella, but that there's a "fake trailer" that was released about a year ago by "Director". I'm sure if you search the/. archives you'll find tell of such a thing.
hint: freeze the frame on the massive Jedi battle - what? - they're wearing kilts!? Jedi don't wear kilts...
Although it's admittedly stupid, I find that using simple-to-remember passwords is far more effective than coming up with a "cryptic" one for each and every site on the 'Net that requires user registration. A quick mental count tells me that I have registered with over 30 web based services that require a password and login. I don't want to use the same password (see below) and remembering not only 30 passwords but which one I used on which site is absurd.
I've come up with several cryptics which I use for sites that require high security - for a lot of these free web "services" that only require login to verify identity and get at bookmarks, I tend to use simple passwords that I can remember in order to not have to continually recall which password I used where.
Also, I'm always worried about what happens if someone hacks these most likely not-so-secure sites and downloads a pwd file. At that point they'd have my most common username and password, and I'd be ripe for the picking.
Slashdot Mirror
Objections to the levy have been invited, as long as they follow a specific format:
You can send these objections via email to majeau.claude@cb-cda.gc.ca
If you're not the letter-writing type, you can take the time to appear at one of the Consultation Meetings on Digital Copyright that are being scheduled by Industry Canada. Meetings are still scheduled for Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, and one was held in Halifax on March 8th. Although this proposed levy isn't on the agenda, other items such as the DCMA and the internet based retransmission are, and there's also a spot on the agenda for "Other Items."
Better yet, keep your eyes and ears open for the results of the pre-hearing meeting on May 23rd, at which point a timetable and agenda for a formal hearing will be scheduled.
I'm attending the Toronto Consultation Meeting, and I urge others in the scheduled areas to visit the website and sign up to attend as well.
cheers,
mike
(I would appreciate it, not for the karma but for the passing of information, if this were modded up)
Right ... as I said:
Basic function in HTML (the required info)
Extended function in Flash (the gadgets)
Ridiculous function left out (twist Sugar Ray's face into a fractal!)
To paraphrase Charlton Heston:
"There's no such thing as good Flash. There's no such thing as bad Flash. Flash in the hands of a bad designer is a very dangerous thing. Flash in the hands of a good designer is no danger to anyone, except the blind guys."
Accessibility arguments aside (as I assume that eventually the folks at Macromedia will start to deal with methods for making Flash accessible to screen readers), the major arguments against using Flash really have more to do with the page designers than with the technology.
The problem as I see it is that there are hundreds of ITI-like schools that teach "web design" by doing little else than going over the basics of HTML, then jumping into how to combine JavaScript, DHTML and Flash into the ULTIMATE WEB PAGE!!! which will get you noticed and earn you millions. No attention is paid to the more important aspects of web design, such as: usability, accessibility, size restrictions(remember the "no page over 50k!" design guideline of olden days?), proper layout of information and function, etc, etc. On top of this, the art of code optimization is lost on a lot of these developers, so they do little in the way of making judicious use of Flash -- they basically use it everywhere, for things which HTML could easily do for them.
In the hands of a good designer, Flash can be used to create really innovative navigation methods that reduce the time required for users to accomplish their tasks. The example reservation form linked from the article is a pretty nice way of dealing with online hotel reservations (there are a few things that I found wierd - like how it selected a range of dates).
Overall, however, I see no need for Flash to replace HTML entirely. The design should always be:
Basic function in HTML,
Extended function in Flash,
Ridiculous function left out.
I'll reply to this one instead of all of them ... I didn't say "absence" nor did I say "none". I just said that we're lacking in world class cities.
... however, they don't rate as "world class". I'm not being unpatriotic, just honest and blunt.
For everyone's reference: I consider Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and grudgingly "Toronto" to be "world class" cities, in the sense that there's reason for other people in the world to know about them and visit them. If you define a world class city as one which is a cultural centre and on stage with cities like New York and Paris, I'd say only Montreal rates.
There are loads of places in Canada that are worth visiting: Ottawa, Victoria, Banff, Drumheller, Charlottetown, Cape Breton, Tufino, Yellowknife
BTW No, and we don't pronounce it "a-boot" Who started that myth?
... uhh .. we do. I used to do voice over work when I was a kid, and the line on which I had to do the most takes was one where my character said "No doubt about it." Eventually, I had to exaggerate to "No dowwt abowwt it" to get it sounding American.
Actually
We don't sound like actors making fun of us, but we certainly pronounce words like "about", "roof", "doubt" very differently. We tend to put an "out" sound where Americans expect an "owt" sound.
:)
Disadvantages
One thing that I find ironic is that it was only a few years ago that Nortel was threatening to leave Canada because of its taxation rates which hurt corporations trying to compete against those in the USA.
... the fact that Web Services don't rely on HTTP whatsoever. Sure, loading the client UI that goes and talks to these Web Services relies on HTTP, as well it should, as it's all go-fetch-me-a-web-page stuff.
However, the web based UI could easily be implimented such that the actual communication between web services is done through any IP based protocol. Right now HTTP is the one that jumps to most developers minds, but by no means is it the one that's expected to be used for longer-running services. Personally, I would expect that the web based UI would interact with some running process that would dispatch and receive Web Service data through a message queueing system that provides some form of transactional validity and security. If it's a really long-running service, then this intermediary process could exist much like a state machine, and the web UI could get status updates by hitting that state machine and getting the appropriate response (ie: "Still waiting to hear back from Microsoft's UDDI server!" or "Still waiting for that order to go through!")
That's a really good idea, actually. Sort of like a design patterns book, but instead of focusing on exposing the myriad of patterns, focus on some common, real-world applications of the technology (ie: connecting to a JDBC DB to support website personalization) and go through ways of [b]using[/b] the technologies to realize the goal.
Assuming that Gauss came up with a method to do this, and you're not mistakenly referring to Euler, then zoombah - you're smarter than me. Take a friggin' bow.
Assuming that you, like many others, failed to read the question and just found the summation of natural numbers between 1 and 1000000, then take another look at the wording and go back to the drawing board, Spanky.
2) with euler's method (well, one of euler's methods [n*(n+1)/2])
This would give you the summation of all natural numbers between 1 and 1000000. The question, however, is to find the summation of all decimal digits appearing in the sequence.
For example, 324 would contribute a total of 9 to the total sum.
So, the sum of 0..10 = 46
the sum of 0..100 = 901
the sum of 0..10^n = (n * 10^(n-1) * 45) + 1
In our case, we're looking for 0..10^6, so
= (6 * 100000 * 45) + 1
= 27000000 + 1
= 27000001
As I said, a little more complex, but not impossible to figure out if you take out pencil and paper and think about it.
To verify, simply create a brute force algorithm that loops from 1 to 1000000, where the loop code either uses mod and div to isolate the value of each digit of a number, or some funky string-integer transformations.
However, I still believe they should have made cracking the code at least a little more challenging.
:)
Gleefully agreed. I'm guessing that they were afraid of turning people off or intimidating them. However, the very least they could have done was put a simple cipher behind the base-4 encoding scheme. I mean, the ol' ROT-13 would have even been a fun way to throw an "old skule" kink in the plans.
The scholarship, in fact, does not go to the first person with a correct solution. Anyone who meets the contest regs (ie: student, 16-19 years of age, not residing in Quebec) and submits a correct answer is entered into a draw for one of three scholarships.
I'm about middle of my course of 400 CompScis, and it took me all of five minutes to 'crack' the code, and solve the puzzle. Any kid who's done GCSE Computation (aged 14-16) should be able to work it out in less than half an hour.
Well of course it's easy for a university student, and of course it's totally possible to complete for a high school student. Doesn't make much sense to post a puzzle for admission to a CS program that nobody can solve, does it?
At the end of the day, Lethbridge was trying to attract self-motivated students. The students who actually take the time to decode the message (very easy) and then solve the problem (a little more difficult, especially if you try to come up with a formula instead of just brute-forcing it) are the ones that they want. Not neccessarily because they have the capability to come up with the correct solution, but because they've got the moxy and the motivation to actually give it a "college try", as it were.
Your flamebait comment about the implications of Canadian University degrees will go ignored, but noted.
If anyone's interested in the real story, they should go to this story in the National Post.
/. gets a bad reputation from time to time?)
Amongst other things, it talks about how the code is the first part of the challenge. The coded message leads to a math problem (which is actually kind of fun and has a rather elegant solution). Solve the math problem, and you get into school with the chance to win a scholarship.
Having gone to the site and gone through the decode and solve phases, I can happily report that the "code" isn't really a code at all. As the site hints, it's basically "coded" by being written in base-4. The challenge is really in the math problem, which requires applicants to find the summation of all decimal digits in the sequence of natural numbers from one to one million. While this isn't impossible, it does require some thought and intelligence. I thought it was a great idea for students who liked math and computer science (the problem can also be solved with a simple brute force algorithm) but weren't neccessarily that stellar students nor interested in lengthy University applications.
Heck - I spent an hour coming up with a solution and then verifying it with a quick little Java program. It was fun! Give it a shot!
(As a Troll-y sidenote, I'd like to mention with some degree of bitterness that I submitted this story, except when I did it, I got the facts right. Apparently this warrants a rejection, and irrelevant whining about the DMCA warrants approval. Do you ever wonder why
You make a good point - without proper knowledge management software, or even metadata that helps sort the video into broad stroke categories (ie: "world news", "financial news", "sitcom"), search results would be marred with irrelevancy.
Any overclockers care to enlighten me regarding the reasoning behind overclocking?
The early rationale for overclocking was simply to allow your chip to work as it was supposed to. Tom's Hardware was one of many sites that insited that the cores of several of the early Pentium chips were actually identical - all cast from the same die. The difference, said Tom, was that the "faster" chips had passed certain tolerance tests. So really, at that point, overclocking was used to "unlock" the full potential of your CPU.
Oops - sorry about that. I was mixing and meshing without double checking. Thanks for the corrections.
Oh, I should mention that I work for IBM (not in hardware, though) yadda yadda opinions are mine not IBMs yadda yadda. I should also mention that another reason IBM's not doing so hot in desktop PCs is ... have you seen the prices they charge for their desktops? Egads!
Someone above wrote ...
IBM is, for some ungodly reason, stuck on manufacturing the UGLIEST desktop computers that the world has ever seen!!
I remember back in '96 when I saw my first "swanky" IBM Aptiva. I almost chuckled at the non-standard case, the wierd drop-down-from-the-monitor drive bay, and those odd holes in the side of the case. Although it wasn't a success, you certainly can't accuse them of not trying to be stylish, and doing so way ahead of most competitors.
Now, IBM already seems to have ditched its not-so-well-received Aptiva line of computers. They have two "desktop" lines: the Intellistation (primarily intended for office use) and the NetVista (for home or small office use).
The Intellistation (successor to the PC300GL line) is what you expect a workstation to look like. A box with stuff in it. Pretty standard, as the comment above says, pretty ugly, but not really intended for anything other than work. My only gripe with them is that the graphics system seems to be sub-par, but then again, this thing isn't meant to really be a graphics demon.
The NetVista line warrants a bit more attention, especially the X series. IBM is experimenting again, in my opinion with great success, trying to change the paradigm of what a desktop PC looks like. The X Series models are totally upgradable (I slapped an extra 512MB of RAM into mine) and very pretty. They take the best of the ThinkPad line and put it into desktop form. The drop-down bay makes a reappearance, and the thing has USB ports all over it. I've found it to be an excellent little home system. Again, my major gripes with them (owning an X40 myself) are the graphics system (the newer models come with a Rage 128, which trumps my SiS 330) and an oddly non-standard keyboard. Also, the lack of serial and parallel ports on it is a little annoying - I'm not totally USB yet.
Hate to disappoint you there, fella, but that there's a "fake trailer" that was released about a year ago by "Director". I'm sure if you search the /. archives you'll find tell of such a thing.
...
hint: freeze the frame on the massive Jedi battle - what? - they're wearing kilts!? Jedi don't wear kilts
theirs - possessive pronoun for "belonging to them"
there's - contraction for "there is"
their's - not really a word
mike (http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif)
Although it's admittedly stupid, I find that using simple-to-remember passwords is far more effective than coming up with a "cryptic" one for each and every site on the 'Net that requires user registration. A quick mental count tells me that I have registered with over 30 web based services that require a password and login. I don't want to use the same password (see below) and remembering not only 30 passwords but which one I used on which site is absurd.
I've come up with several cryptics which I use for sites that require high security - for a lot of these free web "services" that only require login to verify identity and get at bookmarks, I tend to use simple passwords that I can remember in order to not have to continually recall which password I used where.
Also, I'm always worried about what happens if someone hacks these most likely not-so-secure sites and downloads a pwd file. At that point they'd have my most common username and password, and I'd be ripe for the picking.
feelafel