Here in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, Cogeco@Home have some issues with validating legitimate users.
It appears that normal @Home practice is to have a specific host name mapped to an IP address, meaning that their DHCP servers don't provide IPs to unknown hosts. Cogeco employees have told me that this system is not being used in our area with the upshot that if you've got the right filters for your cable line you are untraceably connected.
This is second hand information(I pay for my @home service), so caveat emptor. But I'll bet that those free cable modems would be pretty handy in these parts:) Maybe we're the ones buying them on eBay...
Yes, the BSODs I've seen are mainly ATI.DLL related.
I guess the problem is that ATI's shoddy work shouldn't be in a position to be crashing the machines. That would be a design decision if I'm not mistaken..
I've had good experiences with NT4.0 AND Windows 2000, as well as bad. I have a 2000 Server running on crappy (think i586) hardware and it doesn't complain in the slightest. The uptime has been better than I expected. In a previous life I also had good experience with an NT 4 Server that ran pretty much 24/7 with occasional prophylactic reboots. But even in those successful cases, occasionally restoring from backup has been much more than a theoretical exercise.
But for every success story I've had, there have been the headaches. The installations that just wouldn't go right, or the machines that just don't seem to want to play nice with the operating systems. It's surprising to me that a commercial-grade product like Windows 2000 is so damned touchy.
The primary point here is that the INSTALLATIONS are not very much fun. Linux installations, on the other hand, have been pretty good to me. Certainly it's anecdotal evidence and mileage varies, but that's how I have seen it.
Win2k isn't all that much better. It's an order of magnitude more stable and scalable than NT but installation is still a major pain, and despite what the M$ flacks will tell you there are still blue screens galore.
I don't think that an install of NT 4.0 or 2000 is too much easier than a Linux installation.
Relatedly, I wonder which HCL is more complete. Windows 2000 is pretty short on support for network cards and modems...
Some anecdotal experiences...
Voodoo 3 support is quite nice. My wife's desktop (Mandrake 7.2) works great with her Voodoo3 card, 3D support out of the box. Also I have found my first-generation GeForce 256 to be well-supported (using Red Hat 7 or Mandrake 7.2)
I have had numerous difficulties with the Voodoo Banshee, however. It's a great little card (I picked up several cheap recently and use them in my servers, kids' machine, etc.) but it is not overly well-supported. I have difficulties getting anything beyond 256 colour X with Slackware or Debian + Banshee (although this could be my fault - I haven't dug too deep as 256 colour X is "good enough" for the boxes using Banshee). Red Hat 6.2 was a dream with the Banshee (as it seems to be for X configuration in general) although 3D support had to be added post-installation. Mandrake 7.2 had problems with the Voodoo -- 2D worked fine but 3D was hit-and-miss (some applications like Tux Racer worked fine out of the box on the Voodoo 3 box but not with the Banshee).
You're giving me a major '80s flashback. What a great flick that was. Alex Cox, if I remember correctly. I was too callow to really appreciate that dialogue, back then. I remember the soundtrack, too -- I burned out a couple of cassette tapes (Pre-MP3 piracy scheme, kids) with repeated listenings.
I bought Civ during final exams back in the early '90s when I was a University student. I had just written a particularly challenging exam (probably Basketweaving 202 or something similar - my major subject was a somewhat embarrasing one) and bought Civ as a reward, figuring that I would play for a day or so then get back into studying.
Oops. I started the following term on academic probation, but it was worth it. I don't remember much from the courses I took back then but I sure remember Napoleon et al's grimace of shame in the endgame animation..
Nit picking aside, that was one of the most entertaining (& frustrating!) sequences in the history of PC Gaming. Getting that damned fish into your ear felt like a real accomplishment.
Hitchhiker's Guide was a GREAT text adventure, probably the best I ever played. What I liked was that, although maddening, it was all so perversely logical once you figured out the puzzle. The whole tea/no tea thing was another great moment.
Has anyone ever played Starship Titanic or Bureaucracy(?). Those were two Douglas Adams-authored PC games I never got a chance to play at the time.
You still see Starship Titanic in bargain bins at the local Staples - is it worth my milk money?
It's part of the standard install on the NT 4 machine I'm writing this on. I don't have a 9x box handy to check, but I'll bet it's there too.
I guess NT isn't technically EARLY 90's but it's gone as of Windows 2000 (At least the only machine I had handy to check - Windows 2000 Server). I'd imagine it's probably there somewhere in Win95, yes.
Make sure there's a compiler(s) on that machine too.
This strikes a nerve with me. I fondly remember the BASIC interpreter that came with my Apple ][ back in the day. Why isn't a basic programming language of some kind considered standard equipment anymore, at least in the Win world?? Even as recently as the early '90s QuickBasic was there if you knew enough to look for it.
I think this is a great disservice to children and adolescents. Back in the good old days, you were confronted with a BASIC interpreter every time you turned on your PC. Almost every kid who had a computer back then could bang out at least a few lines of code. There may be free or low-cost compilers etc. out there now but it is not quite the same as it once was.
IIRC the 800XL in that Czech hospital has a built-in BASIC as well.
Some of the comments to this article have been interesting. As usual, I glean more useful data from the random babblings of slashdot users than from the corporate hype. There seems to be some skepticism that the Amiga people can actually pull this off. Up until now, I envisioned the new Amiga OS as kind of an ass-backwards X-Box, allowing people to boot their PC with an Amiga game in the CD-ROM and use the PC as a console, basically.
When I thought that that was the plan, I thought it was an idea with great potential. Now it appears that Amiga is planning to provide an emulation layer for existing operating systems. How is this going to help? Will Amiga be using DirectX on M$ machines and X11 on *nix machines? What good is that?
I think I've reached terminal confusion. Maybe if the Amiga people would provide more facts and less marketing babble I would be less confused.
It's always possible that the problem is on my end, though...
Your point is well taken, but I would expect that a reasonable person (such as yourself) who keeps an open mind and decides on one thing or the other based on many factors, retains an open mind after the decision has been made and is also willing to see things in terms other than black and white.
For instance, you make an important distinction when you talk about purchasing a C-64 over an Apple ][ because it is superior in ways that matter to you. Acknowledging implicitly that the C-64 had shortcomings in areas where the Apple product shone, albiet areas not important to you. I would suspect that you would be able to maintain a reasonable level of discourse when you discussed the differences.
For an example of the kind of "oops now I have to protect my investment" advocacy I am talking about, check out www.planetdaikatana.com or www.dndmovie.com. These folks are desperately trying to convince themselves that their investment was a wise one. Not unlike your average TRS-80 owner back in the '80s.
It seems to me that advocacy happens when people feel that they must protect an investment, whether of time, money, or emotion.
Example 1. It's 1986 You just spent $900.00 kitting yourself out with a Commodore 64, 1541 Disc Drive, RGB Monitor, etc. etc. You are bragging about your new purchase around the watercooler, when some smartass begins to enumerate a thousand reasons that the Apple ][ outclasses the C-64. In order to "protect your investment" (i.e. continue to feel good about the $900.00 you just blew), you become a Commodore advocate.
Example 2. You have spent 5 years of your professional career working with Microsoft products exclusively. As a Microsoft professional, you now have a substantial investment of time into the operating systems and software Microsoft produces. Whenever you can, you will be pimping M$ to the max because it helps keep your investment's value high.
I think this also becomes apparent on a bigger scale, for example in the election fiasco you yankees just went through. Did anyone at any time who had any influence at all break party lines and say that they other side had a more convincing or righteous argument? Of course not, every step of the way, be it lawyers, judges, members of congress, election supervisors, whatever - every person's behaviour was dictated 100% by party politics. This is similar to the type of "advocacy" that the article's author was talking about, I think.
My solution (at least in terms of operating systems and programming) is to try to cover as many bases as possible and keep an open mind.
IANAMCSE, but you can run 2000 servers in mixed mode, which supposedly allows them to integrate with NT 4.0. In my limited experience (a single subnet with 1 Win2K DC and 1 NT 4.0 member server) it was reasonably OK, but my application was far from critical. Not sure about what would happen if you tried to integrate an NT 4.0 domain controller. I know that it didn't like my Samba "domain controller", but that could just have been lack of knowledge on my part.
Of course public money doesn't disappear. It's not as though the government BURIES the stuff. Just because they can't account for it doesn't mean it's not gettings spent. How many unproductive savings accounts do you the the guvment has?
I certainly don't think that the USA has a monopoly on violence, but the level of violence currently experienced is unparalleled in developed nations.
Certainly every country has incidents in it's past to be ashamed of, especially empire-building countries, like Britain in the past or the USA more recently. Aboriginal people in particular have had a pretty raw deal. None of this is LESS true of the US than any other country.
Canada has had self-government for over a century.
I am most certainly not "really young". It may surprise you to discover that I am and have been a business owner here in Canada. I've been living, and thriving, in the "real world" for quite some time, thanks.
I don't like the cameras on the 400-series highways, either. Those are the product of Ontario's Conservative government.
I wonder if anyone else is bothering to read this thread at this point or if it's just us girls?
I thought IP addresses were, in general, distributed geographically anyway.
I get that, say, Ford Motor Company might have Class A 11.0.0.0 (or something) and their machines are all over the place, but aren't ISPs assigned IP addresses geographically?
Or am I nuts?
They'll have to really push the MSCEs to recertify. That won't be cheap for a lot of organizations who are going to have to pay for training. And the change between NT4 domains and AD is not a trivial one..
The new OS seems to be coming at a lightning pace. This might be fine for home users in the 9x train, since they'll likely not bother with a new OS unless they are buying a new machine. However, is the corporate world really going to buy into a new iteration of Windows so quickly?
My unscientific survey of local businesses (places that friends work) seems to indicate that the corporate world is just now starting to stick it's toe into the Win2K product. One multinational I know of that is headquartered locally (and not in any way backwards, IT-wise) is just now setting up scripts for a rollout of 2000 professional, and even that is only for limited release. Admittedly, I don't live in a high tech hotbed, but I don't think this quick turnaround is going to sell very well.
Boy. We've sure gotten away from the original topic haven't we? I got a little carried away up the thread. I don't hate the USA. However I think as a foreign observer I can see the hypocrisy a little clearer.
I am very serious about your country's violent birth having long term effect. It's just a theory, sure, but it seems to me that it's had long term effect on national attitudes.
Listen, the British Empire was not 100% clean, certainly. However, even in 1776 it WAS a limited monarchy. The USA was birthed in violence, without doubt. It was pure good luck that kept the American Revolutionaries from the path of Jacobinism. George Washington was a brilliant moderate. If it weren't for that lucky break, it's not unlikely that the American Experiment would have ended with the kind of bloodbath that the French Revolution did.
Public money doesn't disappear. It goes back to the private sector.
Our currency is going down in value because of NAFTA and our lower interest rates. If we raised interest rates, it would improve our currency's value vs. the dollar at the expense of economic growth. No thanks. However, I'd like to see our damned debt paid off so that we don't have to be beholden to foreign currency speculators anymore. Looks like another decade or so will turn the trick on that one, barring economic catastrophe.
The 15% includes both provincial and federal sales tax. I agree that high sales tax is bad, because it unfairly penalizes the poor. Our "tax freedom day" came sometime in June this year, so I guess something close to 50% of our income is taxed. It's not, however, "taken by the government". It's redistributed by the people's elected representatives. Remember, that tax money doesn't disappear from the economy. An active participant in our economy will have many opportunities to dip into that revenue stream, directly or indirectly.
Also, interestingly enough, the argument you make about demoralization of the poor through social programs appears to be wrong, at least in Canada. I always had a hard time with this argument because it DOES hang together and appear consistent. However, some new research has showed that there is a constant turnover among people living below the poverty line in Canada, and that most people spend only a short part of their lives under the poverty line. Interesting, isn't it? I doubt that a study of American poor would have the same results. It appears, although causation is of course not proven, that the social safety net we have here in Canada actually works and keeps people from being permanently marginalized.
It's unfortunate that your Canadian relatives appear to be a poor example. I can assure you that I personally have never recieved a dime of government assistance (although I'm glad it's there "just in case") aside from good roads, a safe environent, a fine education system and free medical care.
So everyone who is homeless is a drug addict or crazy? Interesting, but I would doubt that.
You may indeed pay less for your health care, but that is based on an actuarial table that indicates you are a low risk. By definition a non-profit enterprise like Ontario Health Insurance Plan has a lower absolute cost, since there is no profit-taking (aside from the pharmaceutical companies, of course, but we'll leave them out of it). A high risk individual I am sure would have a much higher insurance cost, or possibly not be able to GET insurance. What if, god forbid of course, you were HIV positive or had a congenital birth defect? Good luck getting insurance from the soulless US insurance companies.
The whole argument about needing guns to overthrow the government is ridiculous. The only major risk for the USA in terms of a change in government would be a military takeover, which I think is pretty much unlikely (your military is pretty subservient to the civil arm, which is a Good Thing). In the case of a military takeover your.38 special or 12-gauge bird gun are going to be pretty useless.
Switzerland and New Zealand may have low crime rates along with an armed population but there are two key differences from the US. They have a much lighter density of population, and they do not have a society that is, at bottom, based on violence. Sorry to say that but unfortunately that is how the USA was created, by violent resistance to the legal government. Your revolution was a bloody conflict brought about by land speculators and profiteers who balked at paying their legal government taxes to support a military that was protecting them. OUR revolution was basically a bar fight. The result, 200 years down the line, appears to be pretty much the same in terms of democracy. We were fortunate enough to be able to use the model of parliamentary democracy in framing our government system, whereas you had to come up with an experimental system that clearly doesn't work as well. We have the Queen on our money and you have a centuries-old legacy of violence.
Maybe 1776 was a bad idea no?
Oh, and one more thing. Despite what you may have been taught in school, we won the war of 1812. We burned Washington, while some Francis Scott Key dude watched OUR bombs bursting in air, and OUR rockets' red glare. SCOREBOARD!!
Heck, my firewall is a 486, and it definitely doesn't have X installed.
However the P-60 is currently running Slackware and it is running X. I use it to test out different junk, including X. I don't expect great performance or 1337 games of tuxracer but I do want it to function.
I never said I fear the poor. I fear anyone who I have systematically excluded from the benefits of society. AFAIK that's exactly no one.
Yes, I would oppose that "school choice" bill. You obviously have a badly broken education system. Your response (predictably) is to create a parallel, private system from which the privileged can partake in an unequal manner.
I wouldn't set up barriers to keep anyone from leaving Canada. I was merely pointing out the hypocrisy of Canadian doctors who take advantage of subsidized public education, student loans, etc. to become educated to a great extent at the Canadian people's expense and then leave because the money's better somewhere else.
I have no objection to a Canadian paying his way through a U.S. medical school and practicing medicine anywhere he damn well pleases. I just think it's unfair to take advantage of the socialist system when it is to your benefit and then run away when it's not.
If I offered to pay for half or more of your education, on the condition that you used your newfound skills to my benefit (as well as your own personal enrichment), how exactly would such a deal be unfair?
A lot of your vitriol seems to be based on some supposed lack of freedom that Canadians have. Explain to me how exactly we are one iota less free (as in speech) than you by any measure that matters (ownership of the tools of violence notwithstanding). We are, as a community, significantly more economically free than you are, since our social structure is much less rigidly stratified than yours, regardless of the "self-made man" myths you use to perpetuate your unfair economic system.
I was also disappointed to see you modded down. You were no more inflammatory or biased than I was, albiet I have the advantage of being right.:)
We have a constitution, also. I never said anything about enshrining social programs in the supreme law of the land. Social programs are a little more elastic than a constitutionally-enshrined law. As times change we can alter our social programs to existing conditions, as does the U.S.
Our health care system does have some flaws, yes. I happen to think that, despite it's flaws, it's far superior to a system that excludes great chunks of the population. Emergency-room service is a problem. However, we have to decide as a nation how to allocate our resources. Currently there is a little bit of "conservatism" creeping into Canadian politics. I'd blame these right-wing policies for creating an underfunded health-care environment.
My sales tax is 15%, not 22%.
It's never been a problem for me not to be able to own a weapon. My father always had (and still has) a gun rack with some beautiful rifles in it for hunting. However, I can't remember the last time there was a violent crime committed with a weapon in my town (Windsor, Ontario), unless it was by an American from Detroit who happened across the border with his constitutionally-guaranteed handgun in his pocket. All I have to do is look across the Detroit River to see what happens when you have unrestrained capitalism, rampant poverty, and Wild-West style gun laws. Doesn't look very attractive.
Socialism isn't a "slippery slope", at least not in the Canadian experience. Funding for social programs expands and contracts according to the will of the electorate. We've reexamined welfare, health care, education, etc. numerous times in my memory. We just have some basic values of inclusion and universality that you would do well to really think about before you just have a programmed, knee jerk reaction.
Look, to my mind American conservatives are being duped, unless you are one of the primary benificiaries of the system (ie. a billionaire). Your political leaders trot out this crappy old FUD about freedom and self-determination and self-reliance, meanwhile millions of your fellow citizens lead lives of hopelessness that are "nasty,brutish and short". If you make a hundred grand a year and think you're a natural benificiary of the system, you're kidding yourself.
As long as you bring good ol' American greenbacks with you, you can take shelter in my brand-new "George W. Bush Refugee Centre" (formerly known as "The Toolshed"). $10.00 US per night, dig your own latrine please.
hmm. 10.00 USD per day probably equals my salary in Canadian Pesos.
That's right - 1/4 of our doctors go for the big bucks and move south of the border to service the proportion of the US population who can afford decent medical care.
There ARE remedies to this problem, they just require political will. Doctors who draw on Canadian resources to get their medical degree at a fraction of it's actual cost should be contractually obligated to provide medical care in Canada for a period of time.
Socialism isn't slavery, it's a rational distribution of national assets. Although the talented and lucky in the U.S. may outperform their Canadian counterparts, at least we don't need to look over our shoulders and make sure the institutionalized underclass isn't ready to revolt yet. Freedom in terms of political rights (eg speech) are distinct from economic rights (eg markets). It appears to me that when these rights are in conflict in a pathologically capitalist state like the USA, it's the economic rights which win out.
By the way, anyone want to hire me to work in the US using a TN Visa?;)
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Aren't the ATI drivers certified by M$? They come on the CD...
Here in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, Cogeco@Home have some issues with validating legitimate users.
:) Maybe we're the ones buying them on eBay...
It appears that normal @Home practice is to have a specific host name mapped to an IP address, meaning that their DHCP servers don't provide IPs to unknown hosts. Cogeco employees have told me that this system is not being used in our area with the upshot that if you've got the right filters for your cable line you are untraceably connected.
This is second hand information(I pay for my @home service), so caveat emptor. But I'll bet that those free cable modems would be pretty handy in these parts
Yes, the BSODs I've seen are mainly ATI.DLL related.
I guess the problem is that ATI's shoddy work shouldn't be in a position to be crashing the machines. That would be a design decision if I'm not mistaken..
I've had good experiences with NT4.0 AND Windows 2000, as well as bad. I have a 2000 Server running on crappy (think i586) hardware and it doesn't complain in the slightest. The uptime has been better than I expected. In a previous life I also had good experience with an NT 4 Server that ran pretty much 24/7 with occasional prophylactic reboots. But even in those successful cases, occasionally restoring from backup has been much more than a theoretical exercise.
But for every success story I've had, there have been the headaches. The installations that just wouldn't go right, or the machines that just don't seem to want to play nice with the operating systems. It's surprising to me that a commercial-grade product like Windows 2000 is so damned touchy.
The primary point here is that the INSTALLATIONS are not very much fun. Linux installations, on the other hand, have been pretty good to me. Certainly it's anecdotal evidence and mileage varies, but that's how I have seen it.
Win2k isn't all that much better. It's an order of magnitude more stable and scalable than NT but installation is still a major pain, and despite what the M$ flacks will tell you there are still blue screens galore.
I don't think that an install of NT 4.0 or 2000 is too much easier than a Linux installation.
Relatedly, I wonder which HCL is more complete. Windows 2000 is pretty short on support for network cards and modems...
Some anecdotal experiences... Voodoo 3 support is quite nice. My wife's desktop (Mandrake 7.2) works great with her Voodoo3 card, 3D support out of the box. Also I have found my first-generation GeForce 256 to be well-supported (using Red Hat 7 or Mandrake 7.2) I have had numerous difficulties with the Voodoo Banshee, however. It's a great little card (I picked up several cheap recently and use them in my servers, kids' machine, etc.) but it is not overly well-supported. I have difficulties getting anything beyond 256 colour X with Slackware or Debian + Banshee (although this could be my fault - I haven't dug too deep as 256 colour X is "good enough" for the boxes using Banshee). Red Hat 6.2 was a dream with the Banshee (as it seems to be for X configuration in general) although 3D support had to be added post-installation. Mandrake 7.2 had problems with the Voodoo -- 2D worked fine but 3D was hit-and-miss (some applications like Tux Racer worked fine out of the box on the Voodoo 3 box but not with the Banshee).
You're giving me a major '80s flashback. What a great flick that was. Alex Cox, if I remember correctly. I was too callow to really appreciate that dialogue, back then. I remember the soundtrack, too -- I burned out a couple of cassette tapes (Pre-MP3 piracy scheme, kids) with repeated listenings.
Glad to see that Civ is being well represented.
My personal Civ-story goes like this;
I bought Civ during final exams back in the early '90s when I was a University student. I had just written a particularly challenging exam (probably Basketweaving 202 or something similar - my major subject was a somewhat embarrasing one) and bought Civ as a reward, figuring that I would play for a day or so then get back into studying.
Oops. I started the following term on academic probation, but it was worth it. I don't remember much from the courses I took back then but I sure remember Napoleon et al's grimace of shame in the endgame animation..
It was a Vogon Ship you were on.
Nit picking aside, that was one of the most entertaining (& frustrating!) sequences in the history of PC Gaming. Getting that damned fish into your ear felt like a real accomplishment.
Hitchhiker's Guide was a GREAT text adventure, probably the best I ever played. What I liked was that, although maddening, it was all so perversely logical once you figured out the puzzle. The whole tea/no tea thing was another great moment.
Has anyone ever played Starship Titanic or Bureaucracy(?). Those were two Douglas Adams-authored PC games I never got a chance to play at the time.
You still see Starship Titanic in bargain bins at the local Staples - is it worth my milk money?
It's part of the standard install on the NT 4 machine I'm writing this on. I don't have a 9x box handy to check, but I'll bet it's there too.
I guess NT isn't technically EARLY 90's but it's gone as of Windows 2000 (At least the only machine I had handy to check - Windows 2000 Server). I'd imagine it's probably there somewhere in Win95, yes.
Make sure there's a compiler(s) on that machine too.
This strikes a nerve with me. I fondly remember the BASIC interpreter that came with my Apple ][ back in the day. Why isn't a basic programming language of some kind considered standard equipment anymore, at least in the Win world?? Even as recently as the early '90s QuickBasic was there if you knew enough to look for it.
I think this is a great disservice to children and adolescents. Back in the good old days, you were confronted with a BASIC interpreter every time you turned on your PC. Almost every kid who had a computer back then could bang out at least a few lines of code. There may be free or low-cost compilers etc. out there now but it is not quite the same as it once was.
IIRC the 800XL in that Czech hospital has a built-in BASIC as well.
Some of the comments to this article have been interesting. As usual, I glean more useful data from the random babblings of slashdot users than from the corporate hype. There seems to be some skepticism that the Amiga people can actually pull this off. Up until now, I envisioned the new Amiga OS as kind of an ass-backwards X-Box, allowing people to boot their PC with an Amiga game in the CD-ROM and use the PC as a console, basically.
When I thought that that was the plan, I thought it was an idea with great potential. Now it appears that Amiga is planning to provide an emulation layer for existing operating systems. How is this going to help? Will Amiga be using DirectX on M$ machines and X11 on *nix machines? What good is that?
I think I've reached terminal confusion. Maybe if the Amiga people would provide more facts and less marketing babble I would be less confused.
It's always possible that the problem is on my end, though...
Your point is well taken, but I would expect that a reasonable person (such as yourself) who keeps an open mind and decides on one thing or the other based on many factors, retains an open mind after the decision has been made and is also willing to see things in terms other than black and white.
For instance, you make an important distinction when you talk about purchasing a C-64 over an Apple ][ because it is superior in ways that matter to you. Acknowledging implicitly that the C-64 had shortcomings in areas where the Apple product shone, albiet areas not important to you. I would suspect that you would be able to maintain a reasonable level of discourse when you discussed the differences.
For an example of the kind of "oops now I have to protect my investment" advocacy I am talking about, check out www.planetdaikatana.com or www.dndmovie.com. These folks are desperately trying to convince themselves that their investment was a wise one. Not unlike your average TRS-80 owner back in the '80s.
It seems to me that advocacy happens when people feel that they must protect an investment, whether of time, money, or emotion.
Example 1. It's 1986 You just spent $900.00 kitting yourself out with a Commodore 64, 1541 Disc Drive, RGB Monitor, etc. etc. You are bragging about your new purchase around the watercooler, when some smartass begins to enumerate a thousand reasons that the Apple ][ outclasses the C-64. In order to "protect your investment" (i.e. continue to feel good about the $900.00 you just blew), you become a Commodore advocate.
Example 2. You have spent 5 years of your professional career working with Microsoft products exclusively. As a Microsoft professional, you now have a substantial investment of time into the operating systems and software Microsoft produces. Whenever you can, you will be pimping M$ to the max because it helps keep your investment's value high.
I think this also becomes apparent on a bigger scale, for example in the election fiasco you yankees just went through. Did anyone at any time who had any influence at all break party lines and say that they other side had a more convincing or righteous argument? Of course not, every step of the way, be it lawyers, judges, members of congress, election supervisors, whatever - every person's behaviour was dictated 100% by party politics. This is similar to the type of "advocacy" that the article's author was talking about, I think.
My solution (at least in terms of operating systems and programming) is to try to cover as many bases as possible and keep an open mind.
IANAMCSE, but you can run 2000 servers in mixed mode, which supposedly allows them to integrate with NT 4.0. In my limited experience (a single subnet with 1 Win2K DC and 1 NT 4.0 member server) it was reasonably OK, but my application was far from critical. Not sure about what would happen if you tried to integrate an NT 4.0 domain controller. I know that it didn't like my Samba "domain controller", but that could just have been lack of knowledge on my part.
Of course public money doesn't disappear. It's not as though the government BURIES the stuff. Just because they can't account for it doesn't mean it's not gettings spent. How many unproductive savings accounts do you the the guvment has?
I certainly don't think that the USA has a monopoly on violence, but the level of violence currently experienced is unparalleled in developed nations.
Certainly every country has incidents in it's past to be ashamed of, especially empire-building countries, like Britain in the past or the USA more recently. Aboriginal people in particular have had a pretty raw deal. None of this is LESS true of the US than any other country.
Canada has had self-government for over a century.
I am most certainly not "really young". It may surprise you to discover that I am and have been a business owner here in Canada. I've been living, and thriving, in the "real world" for quite some time, thanks.
I don't like the cameras on the 400-series highways, either. Those are the product of Ontario's Conservative government.
I wonder if anyone else is bothering to read this thread at this point or if it's just us girls?
I thought IP addresses were, in general, distributed geographically anyway. I get that, say, Ford Motor Company might have Class A 11.0.0.0 (or something) and their machines are all over the place, but aren't ISPs assigned IP addresses geographically? Or am I nuts?
They'll have to really push the MSCEs to recertify. That won't be cheap for a lot of organizations who are going to have to pay for training. And the change between NT4 domains and AD is not a trivial one..
The new OS seems to be coming at a lightning pace. This might be fine for home users in the 9x train, since they'll likely not bother with a new OS unless they are buying a new machine. However, is the corporate world really going to buy into a new iteration of Windows so quickly? My unscientific survey of local businesses (places that friends work) seems to indicate that the corporate world is just now starting to stick it's toe into the Win2K product. One multinational I know of that is headquartered locally (and not in any way backwards, IT-wise) is just now setting up scripts for a rollout of 2000 professional, and even that is only for limited release. Admittedly, I don't live in a high tech hotbed, but I don't think this quick turnaround is going to sell very well.
Boy. We've sure gotten away from the original topic haven't we? I got a little carried away up the thread. I don't hate the USA. However I think as a foreign observer I can see the hypocrisy a little clearer.
I am very serious about your country's violent birth having long term effect. It's just a theory, sure, but it seems to me that it's had long term effect on national attitudes.
Listen, the British Empire was not 100% clean, certainly. However, even in 1776 it WAS a limited monarchy. The USA was birthed in violence, without doubt. It was pure good luck that kept the American Revolutionaries from the path of Jacobinism. George Washington was a brilliant moderate. If it weren't for that lucky break, it's not unlikely that the American Experiment would have ended with the kind of bloodbath that the French Revolution did.
Public money doesn't disappear. It goes back to the private sector.
Our currency is going down in value because of NAFTA and our lower interest rates. If we raised interest rates, it would improve our currency's value vs. the dollar at the expense of economic growth. No thanks. However, I'd like to see our damned debt paid off so that we don't have to be beholden to foreign currency speculators anymore. Looks like another decade or so will turn the trick on that one, barring economic catastrophe.
The 15% includes both provincial and federal sales tax. I agree that high sales tax is bad, because it unfairly penalizes the poor. Our "tax freedom day" came sometime in June this year, so I guess something close to 50% of our income is taxed. It's not, however, "taken by the government". It's redistributed by the people's elected representatives. Remember, that tax money doesn't disappear from the economy. An active participant in our economy will have many opportunities to dip into that revenue stream, directly or indirectly.
.38 special or 12-gauge bird gun are going to be pretty useless.
Also, interestingly enough, the argument you make about demoralization of the poor through social programs appears to be wrong, at least in Canada. I always had a hard time with this argument because it DOES hang together and appear consistent. However, some new research has showed that there is a constant turnover among people living below the poverty line in Canada, and that most people spend only a short part of their lives under the poverty line. Interesting, isn't it? I doubt that a study of American poor would have the same results. It appears, although causation is of course not proven, that the social safety net we have here in Canada actually works and keeps people from being permanently marginalized.
It's unfortunate that your Canadian relatives appear to be a poor example. I can assure you that I personally have never recieved a dime of government assistance (although I'm glad it's there "just in case") aside from good roads, a safe environent, a fine education system and free medical care.
So everyone who is homeless is a drug addict or crazy? Interesting, but I would doubt that.
You may indeed pay less for your health care, but that is based on an actuarial table that indicates you are a low risk. By definition a non-profit enterprise like Ontario Health Insurance Plan has a lower absolute cost, since there is no profit-taking (aside from the pharmaceutical companies, of course, but we'll leave them out of it). A high risk individual I am sure would have a much higher insurance cost, or possibly not be able to GET insurance. What if, god forbid of course, you were HIV positive or had a congenital birth defect? Good luck getting insurance from the soulless US insurance companies.
The whole argument about needing guns to overthrow the government is ridiculous. The only major risk for the USA in terms of a change in government would be a military takeover, which I think is pretty much unlikely (your military is pretty subservient to the civil arm, which is a Good Thing). In the case of a military takeover your
Switzerland and New Zealand may have low crime rates along with an armed population but there are two key differences from the US. They have a much lighter density of population, and they do not have a society that is, at bottom, based on violence. Sorry to say that but unfortunately that is how the USA was created, by violent resistance to the legal government. Your revolution was a bloody conflict brought about by land speculators and profiteers who balked at paying their legal government taxes to support a military that was protecting them. OUR revolution was basically a bar fight. The result, 200 years down the line, appears to be pretty much the same in terms of democracy. We were fortunate enough to be able to use the model of parliamentary democracy in framing our government system, whereas you had to come up with an experimental system that clearly doesn't work as well. We have the Queen on our money and you have a centuries-old legacy of violence.
Maybe 1776 was a bad idea no?
Oh, and one more thing. Despite what you may have been taught in school, we won the war of 1812. We burned Washington, while some Francis Scott Key dude watched OUR bombs bursting in air, and OUR rockets' red glare. SCOREBOARD!!
Heck, my firewall is a 486, and it definitely doesn't have X installed.
However the P-60 is currently running Slackware and it is running X. I use it to test out different junk, including X. I don't expect great performance or 1337 games of tuxracer but I do want it to function.
I never said I fear the poor. I fear anyone who I have systematically excluded from the benefits of society. AFAIK that's exactly no one.
:)
Yes, I would oppose that "school choice" bill. You obviously have a badly broken education system. Your response (predictably) is to create a parallel, private system from which the privileged can partake in an unequal manner.
I wouldn't set up barriers to keep anyone from leaving Canada. I was merely pointing out the hypocrisy of Canadian doctors who take advantage of subsidized public education, student loans, etc. to become educated to a great extent at the Canadian people's expense and then leave because the money's better somewhere else.
I have no objection to a Canadian paying his way through a U.S. medical school and practicing medicine anywhere he damn well pleases. I just think it's unfair to take advantage of the socialist system when it is to your benefit and then run away when it's not.
If I offered to pay for half or more of your education, on the condition that you used your newfound skills to my benefit (as well as your own personal enrichment), how exactly would such a deal be unfair?
A lot of your vitriol seems to be based on some supposed lack of freedom that Canadians have. Explain to me how exactly we are one iota less free (as in speech) than you by any measure that matters (ownership of the tools of violence notwithstanding). We are, as a community, significantly more economically free than you are, since our social structure is much less rigidly stratified than yours, regardless of the "self-made man" myths you use to perpetuate your unfair economic system.
I was also disappointed to see you modded down. You were no more inflammatory or biased than I was, albiet I have the advantage of being right.
We have a constitution, also. I never said anything about enshrining social programs in the supreme law of the land. Social programs are a little more elastic than a constitutionally-enshrined law. As times change we can alter our social programs to existing conditions, as does the U.S.
Our health care system does have some flaws, yes. I happen to think that, despite it's flaws, it's far superior to a system that excludes great chunks of the population. Emergency-room service is a problem. However, we have to decide as a nation how to allocate our resources. Currently there is a little bit of "conservatism" creeping into Canadian politics. I'd blame these right-wing policies for creating an underfunded health-care environment.
My sales tax is 15%, not 22%.
It's never been a problem for me not to be able to own a weapon. My father always had (and still has) a gun rack with some beautiful rifles in it for hunting. However, I can't remember the last time there was a violent crime committed with a weapon in my town (Windsor, Ontario), unless it was by an American from Detroit who happened across the border with his constitutionally-guaranteed handgun in his pocket. All I have to do is look across the Detroit River to see what happens when you have unrestrained capitalism, rampant poverty, and Wild-West style gun laws. Doesn't look very attractive.
Socialism isn't a "slippery slope", at least not in the Canadian experience. Funding for social programs expands and contracts according to the will of the electorate. We've reexamined welfare, health care, education, etc. numerous times in my memory. We just have some basic values of inclusion and universality that you would do well to really think about before you just have a programmed, knee jerk reaction.
Look, to my mind American conservatives are being duped, unless you are one of the primary benificiaries of the system (ie. a billionaire). Your political leaders trot out this crappy old FUD about freedom and self-determination and self-reliance, meanwhile millions of your fellow citizens lead lives of hopelessness that are "nasty,brutish and short". If you make a hundred grand a year and think you're a natural benificiary of the system, you're kidding yourself.
As long as you bring good ol' American greenbacks with you, you can take shelter in my brand-new "George W. Bush Refugee Centre" (formerly known as "The Toolshed"). $10.00 US per night, dig your own latrine please.
hmm. 10.00 USD per day probably equals my salary in Canadian Pesos.
That's right - 1/4 of our doctors go for the big bucks and move south of the border to service the proportion of the US population who can afford decent medical care.
;)
There ARE remedies to this problem, they just require political will. Doctors who draw on Canadian resources to get their medical degree at a fraction of it's actual cost should be contractually obligated to provide medical care in Canada for a period of time.
Socialism isn't slavery, it's a rational distribution of national assets. Although the talented and lucky in the U.S. may outperform their Canadian counterparts, at least we don't need to look over our shoulders and make sure the institutionalized underclass isn't ready to revolt yet. Freedom in terms of political rights (eg speech) are distinct from economic rights (eg markets). It appears to me that when these rights are in conflict in a pathologically capitalist state like the USA, it's the economic rights which win out.
By the way, anyone want to hire me to work in the US using a TN Visa?