The best part of the whole thing is he couldn't even be bothered to put together his own site layout and graphics, he ripped it from Groklaw. Here's his site for comparison.
Do people really buy a shuttle to fit it with a 3GHZ CPU?
Yep -- I'm a developer of high-end CAD software and I often have to lug a machine to trade shows. The shuttle is about as ideal as they come for this sort of thing, once you stick in a decent graphics card and a heap of memory.
From an Apple marketing campaign for Mac OS X that never saw the light of day. The UNIX OS at the core of Mac OS X is named Darwin, and mammals are the most evolved animals on the planet. At least... that's the rumour that was going around at the time.
I'm not sure if this is what the original poster was talking about, but he could be referring to the Windows Native API.
How was this "secret" API call discovered since people don't have the source code to SQL Server?
There are several very simple possibilities that anyone could figure out with the tools that ship with Windows itself. One way is dumpbin. dumpbin.exe can be used to dump a list of functions exported from a DLL. Another way is depends.exe, which list all functions called by a given binary, so you could confirm that sql server calls function X exported from DLL Y. Just because a function is not listed in a header doesn't mean it isn't exported from the DLL and usable.
Then why are you so quick to want to sacrifice Canadian culture (yes, they used to have one before all this multiculturalism stuff got started) and American culture for the noble goal of multiculturalism.
Because, at least in the Canada I grew up in, the fact that so many immigrant groups make up Canadian society is an integral part of our culture. Some of the biggest cultural events of the year here in Victoria are co-sponsored by Heritage Canada and the Inter-Cultural Association: FolkFest, Luminara, Summer at Centennial Square, etc. I would argue that if growing up and living in the midst of a society where a huge majority bring their languages and cultures with them, I would have far less interest in travel, global and local politics, and cuisine, than if I hadn't.
I never said we should encourage division based on what one's ancestors did. But you cannot argue that people are all different, and that many people share common traits -- that's reality. Events like FolkFest are positive manifestations of showing off and sharing that with everyone else for a few days. It's not a "we're better than you" thing, it's a "hey check out these cool things we do/food we make/language we speak" thing. Having different cultural groups within a country that maintain some of their old-country culture is great so long as one understands that when you come here you may have to sacrifice a few things if your culture starts treading on others.
When you say that Canada had a culture before all this multi-culturalism stuff got started, which culture are you referring to? The wide assortment of amerindian nations before Europeans arrived? The British? The French? The Spanish? They were all here in various capacities. The Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans who arrived en mass in the 1800s to farm? The Chinese who were brought in the 1800s for the railway? Which unified culture are you talking about here, because I can't think of a single point in our history where we've had one unified culture. If we have, I'd like to know about it, 'cause it doesn't appear to be in any of those Pierre Burton history texts sitting on my shelf.
The moment you accept that "The beliefs of majority of Germans circa 1940 were evil by the standards that we would use today" you accept that all cultures are in fact not equal
First of all, I don't accept that. I accept that a relatively small number of Germans formed a socialist, but very nationalist party, which was brought to power by a German population that was possibly reacting to what they saw as oppressive restrictions imposed on their country by the Versailles Treaty of 1919. The leader of this party was incredibly charismatic, which obviously worked in his favour. The guy also happened to be, a sociopath/psychopath. He and many of the high-ranking officers around him were ready to do anything for power, including the extermination of large chunks of the population that they considered a hindrance to them. And you're right, we would call them evil today. But I won't say most Germans were; a huge proportion of the ones in power, and a few who weren't certainly were though. And one might argue that to murder is a crucial part of any culture during a war. I can't think of many cultures that espoused murder during non-war times. The Aztecs, Olmecs, and Toltecs come to mind as cultures that were very violent even during peacetime, particularly the Toltecs, and all practiced human sacrifice to a certain degree, so I suppose that would be considered a crucial part of their culture.
The Nazis under Hitler were certainly expansionist, just like the British were, just like the French were, just like the Spaniards and the Portugese were. Territorial expansionism means war. War means murder. And yeah, expansionist cultures are trouble. In the end they start pissing people off and either learn their lesson or get stomped out. That's balance.
Regardless of anyone's opinion of the current administration, or of US foreign-policy in general, the thousands who died in the attacks on the World Trade Centre did not deserve the events of September 11th. I realize you are arguing that the nation deserved it, not the people in the buildings, but I disagree there too. The foreign policy of a nation is unfortunately far too often at odds with the will of its people. The US is in a unique position of being the world's only real economic, military, and political superpower, without another nation (or truly united collection of nations) to keep it in check.
It's practically a lose-lose situation. Because of its position, people expect a lot of (often contradictory) things from the US. Refuse to interfere militarily (eg. last year in Liberia for a bit) you lose, interfere militarily (Vietnam) you lose. I agree that US foreign policy needs work -- but nobody deserves an event like September 11th. I'll add that the Iraqis did not deserve the war in Iraq while I'm at it, though the Iraqis didn't deserve to have Saddam Hussein inflicted on the either.
It feels so so fine; I was posting a sarcastic (troll) reply to a comment that quite possibly deserved it. When you make a blanket generalization, back it up with a reason. Or were you being ironic? Perhaps I'm the one who's been trolled here.
So go for it. Back up your statement that diversity is the opposite of excellence, because as it stands, it does sound very KKK-ish. Would America be a better place if it were 100% 30-year-old white males? It'd certainly be less diverse... would that make it more "excellent"? Would the world be more "excellent" if it consisted only of black 50-something-year olds? I doubt it... but I do want to hear you argue it.
And yes I realize that my original post did make several blanket statements without explicit justification -- I will state here, for the record, that the implicit justification is that tolerance of other cultures is good.:)
I have given it much thought. I've lived and worked in enough countries: Canada, The United States, Mexico, Japan. I've travelled to more than 20 countries. I speak English and French fluently, Spanish and Japanese converstationally, enough Slovak and Ukrainian to get by and even the Yucatec dialect of Maya.
I believe that diversity in language and culture is a good thing. First of all, travelling to other countries and learning other languages exposes to ideas that might contradict conventional wisdom in our own culture. Language and culture are often intimitely tied together, such that even learning a languages challeges some of our preconceived ways of thinking.
I am not a "bloody Quebecker" (I'm from BC) but I've visited Quebec quite a few times, and loved it every time I was there. Are there cultural differences? Yes. Are there linguistic differences? Yes. Are there cultural differences in the legal system? Yes. Are there political differences? Ben oui! And vive la différence man! Plus Quebecoise girls are intrinsically hot.
Actually I do believe that all cultures are equal in the sense that it makes no sense to rank cultures. When you say culture A is "better" than culture B, what metric are you applying? The Nazis were a political group, though you might make the (sketchy) argument that followers of a particular brand of politics constitute a culture. They happened to be a political party that used its military machinery to quash other groups. In doing so, they pissed off a lot of other cultures who stomped them out. To make an analogy, if someone were to try to murder me, I'd fight back. It doesn't mean they're less of a person than I am, but my guess is more people are likely to side against a murderer than with them. So it goes.
Political correctness is one thing. Tolerance and cultural sensitivity is another. I stand by my statement: Multi-culturalism is ok.
The fact that Americans "are simply wanting [sic] people to speak *English*" is the problem. Having a bunch of different cultures "running around" in one country isn't multiculturalism; having a diverse set of cultures co-existing in a climate of mutual respect and operating under the assumption that it's OK to speak different languages, have different religions, or eat different foods, on the other hand, is.
To use your own argument against you, a good amount of the world's communication may happen in English... but a greater amount is happening in Portugese, or this wouldn't even be an issue. Orkut may be an American company, but I don't see anywhere on their site that you are required, or even encouraged, to write in English.
And what's wrong with that? By expecting them to speak English, or excluding them from "English-only" communities, you'd be doing exactly the same thing.
If we're going to get serious about properly resurrecting the olympics remember that the Greeks did their Olympic naked. Now do YOU want to see a bunch of naked math nerds competing?
I didn't think so.
Re:if math should be considered a sport
on
Is Math A Sport?
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· Score: 1
Just don't compile with Incredibuild, then edit and compile changes with Visual Studio, or you're screwed. But yeah, some people at work are reporting their 45 minute build time is down to about 12 minutes, I believe we have 20 people using it. I'm not a fan of its interface or the problems it has with #pragma once, but those using it seem to be mostly happy.
Wake us up when they're ready to give something back.
This is your wake up call. Click the links on the left under the title Open Source Projects. All of Apple's modifications to KHTML, etc. are in there, along with the kernel, compilers, and everything else. Next time, expending your energy on a rant based on incorrect assumptions, try a Google search; it only takes 10 seconds, 8.3 if you merge Apple's changes into your KHTML.
Excellent points. I'm actually using the default Mail.app client that comes with OS X. I'm relatively pleased with it, and it does allow you to set up multiple SMTP servers per account -- you set them up once, then just select from a drop-down list after that. It's not that painful to do, but it's in the preferences, rather than on the email message. While composing you have a choice of which "account" to send from, but they're listed as outgoing email addresses (associated with accounts defined in the preferences).
Kmail sounds like it has an elegant solution to this problem. Thanks for pointing it out; perhaps if Apple gets enough requests for something like this on their Feedback page, they'll implement it in Mail.
It's nice to see KDE apps offering this kind of flexibility. From a usability perspective, flexibility is one area that Apple/Microsoft could stand to learn quite a bit from the open source development community... and ideally contribute something back (like the gcc and KHTML patches) I would hope.
Which is a problem with the.Mac service not Telus.
It is a problem with both Telus and.Mac. Both of them should provide an authenticated means of connecting to their SMTP servers ideally on ports other than 25. But who's to say Telus (and other ISPs) won't block those ports too? Apple does provide (and, in fact, require) authentication -- however it uses port 25. Telus provides no means of authenticated connection off network. In this regard, Apple is ahead of Telus.
And if you didn't see the writing on the wall about port 25 blocking, then you haven't been paying close attention the last 2-3 years.
Great point, I'll remember to use such an argument next time someone complains about the erosion of civil liberties in the US due to legislation such as the Patriot Act.
Easier just to switch to an ISP that provides a means of connecting to whatever ports on whatever servers I like.
I'm in the exact same boat. I use a laptop. I am on Telus' network during mornings and evenings, and during those times, access to port 25 is limited to one maching: smtp.telus.net. I *pay* for.Mac email (and webdav, and homepage) service, and they are denying me access to that service.
As soon as I leave home, and arrive at work, I connect my laptop to the local network there and, because they are not on Telus' network, I can no longer access smtp.telus.net. As a result, I have to edit my email application's SMTP settings twice a day simply to send email. This is NOT a solution. They provide no way to access smtp.telus.net from outside their network, even via authenticated connections. It's ridiculous.
I've contacted the other big ISP around here (though in the interests of being balanced, I'll leave it to you to do your own research) and they don't have this limitation. I'll be switching away from telus as soon as I get connected with my new ISP. I would suggest that other Telus customers complain (I did, and they sent me three essentially form mail responses amounting to "too bad") and hope they come up with a workable solution. If not, do what I'm doing and deny them your money.
Their customer service has been rated among the worst in BC, and my experiences confirm this. What a pain.
Not sure if they were referring to this, but Telus also just started blocking access to port 25 on all servers except smtp.telus.net. For laptop users, this is insanely annoying since Telus doesn't provide authenticated access to smtp.telus.net from outside its own network!
As of the 22nd, every user moving on and off the Telus network has to switch their SMTP settings every time they switch locations.
Amazingly, you're speaking and writing English. So use the logically correct spelling, or change the way you pronounce it to match how you spell it. You fucking idiot.
I, for won, am exited tu help yu re-rite Inglish literachure, in yore new language. "The Nites Of The Round Tabel" iz so much better than chainjing the pronunsiashun tu "the kuh-nig-hets of the raund tahbluh"
How 'bout we all just calm down and realise that no matter how much you rant about one retarded system being better than another retarded system, English simply has fucked up spelling and that's that?
If you truly do feel passionately that meter is better than metre, then please "use your fucking brain" and start spelling table in a way that's consistent with label (as English and Americans alike pronounce it).
On the topic of units of measurement, please feel free to explain why this "pint" unit is still spelled like mint, hint, dint, lint, tint, vint, glint and any other word ending in 'int'. Yes indeed, the Americans have certainly got this spelling thing all worked out once and for all. Pity the rest of us haven't picked up the fantastic system work they've done.
The age at which they learned English varies from early childhood to adolescence, but one thing they have in common is that their vocabulary in either language is not as good as a native speaker's.
Apparently you've never been to Montreal. I'm not a Montrealer, but I do speak both official languages essentially flawlessly -- or as flawlessly as a "native" speaker could be expected to speak. Although I grew up in western Canada, which is primarily anglophone, I've spoken both English and French my entire life, and to this day, I turn my radio dial to both English and French stations, watch both English and French TV, and read novels and websites in both languages.
A number of people in this country worried about the same old-wives tale you've just inferred -- that programmes like French Immersion would cause students' English to suffer. In fact, the opposite turns out the be the case; French Immersion students have tended to do better in their English courses than non-French Immersion students.
Of course, an interesting point is that English and French share some common linguistic history, hence an understanding of French can be very helpful in understanding the etymology of English words and so on. I wonder if the same stats would hold true for students who were bilingual in English-Japanese, for example. That said, I'll admit that I actually spent this afternoon talking to a Japanese guy who immigrated to Canada at age 18 and spoke English fluently enough that I had thought he'd been born here until he told me where he was from.
While I was able to go from zero Spanish to fluent conversational Spanish in about a year of living in Mexico (mostly due to its common roots with French), it has taken six years of study for me to attain the same level of confidence with my Japanese. I also speak a little Slovak. I have less trouble with Slovak than Japanese, but certainly more than with the Romance languages.
I would argue that if a bilingual (or trilingual) speaker does not have an average vocabulary in each language he speaks, it is not through some inate limitation of the human mind, but due solely to his environment. Very few of us live in an environment where we *need* to be bilingual, and hence we tend to favour one language over the others. In cities such as Montreal, where you essentially have a 50/50 split of anglophones and francophones, you'll find a great many people who are fluent in both languages at a level where you'd be hard pressed to determine which language was their "native" language.
Slashdot Mirror
The best part of the whole thing is he couldn't even be bothered to put together his own site layout and graphics, he ripped it from Groklaw. Here's his site for comparison.
Do people really buy a shuttle to fit it with a 3GHZ CPU?
Yep -- I'm a developer of high-end CAD software and I often have to lug a machine to trade shows. The shuttle is about as ideal as they come for this sort of thing, once you stick in a decent graphics card and a heap of memory.
From a laundromat. Painfully, painfully slow.
From an Apple marketing campaign for Mac OS X that never saw the light of day. The UNIX OS at the core of Mac OS X is named Darwin, and mammals are the most evolved animals on the planet. At least... that's the rumour that was going around at the time.
I'm not sure if this is what the original poster was talking about, but he could be referring to the Windows Native API.
How was this "secret" API call discovered since people don't have the source code to SQL Server?
There are several very simple possibilities that anyone could figure out with the tools that ship with Windows itself. One way is dumpbin. dumpbin.exe can be used to dump a list of functions exported from a DLL. Another way is depends.exe, which list all functions called by a given binary, so you could confirm that sql server calls function X exported from DLL Y. Just because a function is not listed in a header doesn't mean it isn't exported from the DLL and usable.
Anyway, hope that answers some of your questions.
Then why are you so quick to want to sacrifice Canadian culture (yes, they used to have one before all this multiculturalism stuff got started) and American culture for the noble goal of multiculturalism.
Because, at least in the Canada I grew up in, the fact that so many immigrant groups make up Canadian society is an integral part of our culture. Some of the biggest cultural events of the year here in Victoria are co-sponsored by Heritage Canada and the Inter-Cultural Association: FolkFest, Luminara, Summer at Centennial Square, etc. I would argue that if growing up and living in the midst of a society where a huge majority bring their languages and cultures with them, I would have far less interest in travel, global and local politics, and cuisine, than if I hadn't.
I never said we should encourage division based on what one's ancestors did. But you cannot argue that people are all different, and that many people share common traits -- that's reality. Events like FolkFest are positive manifestations of showing off and sharing that with everyone else for a few days. It's not a "we're better than you" thing, it's a "hey check out these cool things we do/food we make/language we speak" thing. Having different cultural groups within a country that maintain some of their old-country culture is great so long as one understands that when you come here you may have to sacrifice a few things if your culture starts treading on others.
When you say that Canada had a culture before all this multi-culturalism stuff got started, which culture are you referring to? The wide assortment of amerindian nations before Europeans arrived? The British? The French? The Spanish? They were all here in various capacities. The Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans who arrived en mass in the 1800s to farm? The Chinese who were brought in the 1800s for the railway? Which unified culture are you talking about here, because I can't think of a single point in our history where we've had one unified culture. If we have, I'd like to know about it, 'cause it doesn't appear to be in any of those Pierre Burton history texts sitting on my shelf.
The moment you accept that "The beliefs of majority of Germans circa 1940 were evil by the standards that we would use today" you accept that all cultures are in fact not equal
First of all, I don't accept that. I accept that a relatively small number of Germans formed a socialist, but very nationalist party, which was brought to power by a German population that was possibly reacting to what they saw as oppressive restrictions imposed on their country by the Versailles Treaty of 1919. The leader of this party was incredibly charismatic, which obviously worked in his favour. The guy also happened to be, a sociopath/psychopath. He and many of the high-ranking officers around him were ready to do anything for power, including the extermination of large chunks of the population that they considered a hindrance to them. And you're right, we would call them evil today. But I won't say most Germans were; a huge proportion of the ones in power, and a few who weren't certainly were though. And one might argue that to murder is a crucial part of any culture during a war. I can't think of many cultures that espoused murder during non-war times. The Aztecs, Olmecs, and Toltecs come to mind as cultures that were very violent even during peacetime, particularly the Toltecs, and all practiced human sacrifice to a certain degree, so I suppose that would be considered a crucial part of their culture.
The Nazis under Hitler were certainly expansionist, just like the British were, just like the French were, just like the Spaniards and the Portugese were. Territorial expansionism means war. War means murder. And yeah, expansionist cultures are trouble. In the end they start pissing people off and either learn their lesson or get stomped out. That's balance.
Wouldn't fighting back be intolerant
The US deserved September 11th.
Regardless of anyone's opinion of the current administration, or of US foreign-policy in general, the thousands who died in the attacks on the World Trade Centre did not deserve the events of September 11th. I realize you are arguing that the nation deserved it, not the people in the buildings, but I disagree there too. The foreign policy of a nation is unfortunately far too often at odds with the will of its people. The US is in a unique position of being the world's only real economic, military, and political superpower, without another nation (or truly united collection of nations) to keep it in check.
It's practically a lose-lose situation. Because of its position, people expect a lot of (often contradictory) things from the US. Refuse to interfere militarily (eg. last year in Liberia for a bit) you lose, interfere militarily (Vietnam) you lose. I agree that US foreign policy needs work -- but nobody deserves an event like September 11th. I'll add that the Iraqis did not deserve the war in Iraq while I'm at it, though the Iraqis didn't deserve to have Saddam Hussein inflicted on the either.
How's that feel?
:)
It feels so so fine; I was posting a sarcastic (troll) reply to a comment that quite possibly deserved it. When you make a blanket generalization, back it up with a reason. Or were you being ironic? Perhaps I'm the one who's been trolled here.
So go for it. Back up your statement that diversity is the opposite of excellence, because as it stands, it does sound very KKK-ish. Would America be a better place if it were 100% 30-year-old white males? It'd certainly be less diverse... would that make it more "excellent"? Would the world be more "excellent" if it consisted only of black 50-something-year olds? I doubt it... but I do want to hear you argue it.
And yes I realize that my original post did make several blanket statements without explicit justification -- I will state here, for the record, that the implicit justification is that tolerance of other cultures is good.
t without giving it much thought.
I have given it much thought. I've lived and worked in enough countries: Canada, The United States, Mexico, Japan. I've travelled to more than 20 countries. I speak English and French fluently, Spanish and Japanese converstationally, enough Slovak and Ukrainian to get by and even the Yucatec dialect of Maya.
I believe that diversity in language and culture is a good thing. First of all, travelling to other countries and learning other languages exposes to ideas that might contradict conventional wisdom in our own culture. Language and culture are often intimitely tied together, such that even learning a languages challeges some of our preconceived ways of thinking.
I am not a "bloody Quebecker" (I'm from BC) but I've visited Quebec quite a few times, and loved it every time I was there. Are there cultural differences? Yes. Are there linguistic differences? Yes. Are there cultural differences in the legal system? Yes. Are there political differences? Ben oui! And vive la différence man! Plus Quebecoise girls are intrinsically hot.
Actually I do believe that all cultures are equal in the sense that it makes no sense to rank cultures. When you say culture A is "better" than culture B, what metric are you applying? The Nazis were a political group, though you might make the (sketchy) argument that followers of a particular brand of politics constitute a culture. They happened to be a political party that used its military machinery to quash other groups. In doing so, they pissed off a lot of other cultures who stomped them out. To make an analogy, if someone were to try to murder me, I'd fight back. It doesn't mean they're less of a person than I am, but my guess is more people are likely to side against a murderer than with them. So it goes.
Political correctness is one thing. Tolerance and cultural sensitivity is another. I stand by my statement: Multi-culturalism is ok.
Wow, I didn't realise that members of the KKK were smart enough to figure out this intarweb thing.
Apparently you completely missed the point.
The fact that Americans "are simply wanting [sic] people to speak *English*" is the problem. Having a bunch of different cultures "running around" in one country isn't multiculturalism; having a diverse set of cultures co-existing in a climate of mutual respect and operating under the assumption that it's OK to speak different languages, have different religions, or eat different foods, on the other hand, is.
To use your own argument against you, a good amount of the world's communication may happen in English... but a greater amount is happening in Portugese, or this wouldn't even be an issue. Orkut may be an American company, but I don't see anywhere on their site that you are required, or even encouraged, to write in English.
The world-wide-web is global. Get used to it.
And what's wrong with that? By expecting them to speak English, or excluding them from "English-only" communities, you'd be doing exactly the same thing.
America is not the centre of the world. Diversity is ok. Multi-culturalism is ok.
If we're going to get serious about properly resurrecting the olympics remember that the Greeks did their Olympic naked. Now do YOU want to see a bunch of naked math nerds competing?
I didn't think so.
Err... wait... are you saying it isn't?
Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, is the world's richest man.
Just don't compile with Incredibuild, then edit and compile changes with Visual Studio, or you're screwed. But yeah, some people at work are reporting their 45 minute build time is down to about 12 minutes, I believe we have 20 people using it. I'm not a fan of its interface or the problems it has with #pragma once, but those using it seem to be mostly happy.
Wake us up when they're ready to give something back.
This is your wake up call. Click the links on the left under the title Open Source Projects. All of Apple's modifications to KHTML, etc. are in there, along with the kernel, compilers, and everything else. Next time, expending your energy on a rant based on incorrect assumptions, try a Google search; it only takes 10 seconds, 8.3 if you merge Apple's changes into your KHTML.
Riiiight, exactly, because we all know there we no Britons, Canadians, or anyone else there... I keep forgetting it was the US who saved the day.
One thing though, next time, please try showing up on time when there's a world war.
Excellent points. I'm actually using the default Mail.app client that comes with OS X. I'm relatively pleased with it, and it does allow you to set up multiple SMTP servers per account -- you set them up once, then just select from a drop-down list after that. It's not that painful to do, but it's in the preferences, rather than on the email message. While composing you have a choice of which "account" to send from, but they're listed as outgoing email addresses (associated with accounts defined in the preferences).
Kmail sounds like it has an elegant solution to this problem. Thanks for pointing it out; perhaps if Apple gets enough requests for something like this on their Feedback page, they'll implement it in Mail.
It's nice to see KDE apps offering this kind of flexibility. From a usability perspective, flexibility is one area that Apple/Microsoft could stand to learn quite a bit from the open source development community... and ideally contribute something back (like the gcc and KHTML patches) I would hope.
Which is a problem with the .Mac service not Telus.
.Mac. Both of them should provide an authenticated means of connecting to their SMTP servers ideally on ports other than 25. But who's to say Telus (and other ISPs) won't block those ports too? Apple does provide (and, in fact, require) authentication -- however it uses port 25. Telus provides no means of authenticated connection off network. In this regard, Apple is ahead of Telus.
It is a problem with both Telus and
And if you didn't see the writing on the wall about port 25 blocking, then you haven't been paying close attention the last 2-3 years.
Great point, I'll remember to use such an argument next time someone complains about the erosion of civil liberties in the US due to legislation such as the Patriot Act.
Easier just to switch to an ISP that provides a means of connecting to whatever ports on whatever servers I like.
I'm in the exact same boat. I use a laptop. I am on Telus' network during mornings and evenings, and during those times, access to port 25 is limited to one maching: smtp.telus.net. I *pay* for .Mac email (and webdav, and homepage) service, and they are denying me access to that service.
As soon as I leave home, and arrive at work, I connect my laptop to the local network there and, because they are not on Telus' network, I can no longer access smtp.telus.net. As a result, I have to edit my email application's SMTP settings twice a day simply to send email. This is NOT a solution. They provide no way to access smtp.telus.net from outside their network, even via authenticated connections. It's ridiculous.
I've contacted the other big ISP around here (though in the interests of being balanced, I'll leave it to you to do your own research) and they don't have this limitation. I'll be switching away from telus as soon as I get connected with my new ISP. I would suggest that other Telus customers complain (I did, and they sent me three essentially form mail responses amounting to "too bad") and hope they come up with a workable solution. If not, do what I'm doing and deny them your money.
Their customer service has been rated among the worst in BC, and my experiences confirm this. What a pain.
Not sure if they were referring to this, but Telus also just started blocking access to port 25 on all servers except smtp.telus.net. For laptop users, this is insanely annoying since Telus doesn't provide authenticated access to smtp.telus.net from outside its own network!
As of the 22nd, every user moving on and off the Telus network has to switch their SMTP settings every time they switch locations.
Amazingly, you're speaking and writing English. So use the logically correct spelling, or change the way you pronounce it to match how you spell it. You fucking idiot.
I, for won, am exited tu help yu re-rite Inglish literachure, in yore new language. "The Nites Of The Round Tabel" iz so much better than chainjing the pronunsiashun tu "the kuh-nig-hets of the raund tahbluh"
How 'bout we all just calm down and realise that no matter how much you rant about one retarded system being better than another retarded system, English simply has fucked up spelling and that's that?
If you truly do feel passionately that meter is better than metre, then please "use your fucking brain" and start spelling table in a way that's consistent with label (as English and Americans alike pronounce it).
On the topic of units of measurement, please feel free to explain why this "pint" unit is still spelled like mint, hint, dint, lint, tint, vint, glint and any other word ending in 'int'. Yes indeed, the Americans have certainly got this spelling thing all worked out once and for all. Pity the rest of us haven't picked up the fantastic system work they've done.
The age at which they learned English varies from early childhood to adolescence, but one thing they have in common is that their vocabulary in either language is not as good as a native speaker's.
Apparently you've never been to Montreal. I'm not a Montrealer, but I do speak both official languages essentially flawlessly -- or as flawlessly as a "native" speaker could be expected to speak. Although I grew up in western Canada, which is primarily anglophone, I've spoken both English and French my entire life, and to this day, I turn my radio dial to both English and French stations, watch both English and French TV, and read novels and websites in both languages.
A number of people in this country worried about the same old-wives tale you've just inferred -- that programmes like French Immersion would cause students' English to suffer. In fact, the opposite turns out the be the case; French Immersion students have tended to do better in their English courses than non-French Immersion students.
Of course, an interesting point is that English and French share some common linguistic history, hence an understanding of French can be very helpful in understanding the etymology of English words and so on. I wonder if the same stats would hold true for students who were bilingual in English-Japanese, for example. That said, I'll admit that I actually spent this afternoon talking to a Japanese guy who immigrated to Canada at age 18 and spoke English fluently enough that I had thought he'd been born here until he told me where he was from.
While I was able to go from zero Spanish to fluent conversational Spanish in about a year of living in Mexico (mostly due to its common roots with French), it has taken six years of study for me to attain the same level of confidence with my Japanese. I also speak a little Slovak. I have less trouble with Slovak than Japanese, but certainly more than with the Romance languages.
I would argue that if a bilingual (or trilingual) speaker does not have an average vocabulary in each language he speaks, it is not through some inate limitation of the human mind, but due solely to his environment. Very few of us live in an environment where we *need* to be bilingual, and hence we tend to favour one language over the others. In cities such as Montreal, where you essentially have a 50/50 split of anglophones and francophones, you'll find a great many people who are fluent in both languages at a level where you'd be hard pressed to determine which language was their "native" language.