Also, the link is about 2 years old - it claims Steve Jobs as a tech loser too... when in fact Apple is now #2 in the world in market cap (after Exxon). How quickly things can change...
For years I spent all my time travelling to the US where I did more than my share of encouraging negative stereotypes of Canada: "yes, *of course* I ride dogsleds to my work igloo in July".
As Vancouverites, we really need to start putting the DTES on our tourism and recruiting ads otherwise I'll never be able to have a shoebox condo of my very own. It's getting bad enough trying to dodge those Paris Hilton wannabees (complete with small dog incapable of walking on its own) on my seawall walk to work.
Another surprising finding was that few of the phishing scams utilized open URL redirectors. This is a known technique whereby phishers identify redirection functionality at a popular website (e.g. Google) and use that functionality to redirect the victim to the targeted phishing site in order to minimize suspicion. Combing through the blacklist did however reveal the following redirection attack using Google AdWords:
http://www.google.com/pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=x&adurl= http://www.spidynamics.com
SPI Dynamics is a web application security software development company - not a phisher at all. Perhaps that example was used by them as a proof-of-concept and Google wasn't a big fan of that vulnerability being known?
When I was young, my mother bought me a set of World Book encyclopedias. Each year, they would mail me a Year in Review (General news) and Science Year update which would have a set of stickers (the lick-em, stick-em kind) that would indicate which book and which page the new article was on, and you would add that sticker to your original encyclopedia entry. That way you would be able to know where and when the original entry had been updated.
Personally, I think it's a darned clever little idea. Even in this day and age, I still prefer my dead tree versions of things. I think any reference book should offer addendums and errata. Joe Clark has a good example of how this can be done with Building Accessible Websites.
Journalists aren't even journalism anymore either. They aren't about reporting the news, they're about giving equal time to opposing viewpoints, even if one is completely wrong and not worth acknowledgement.
Gore is a liar because he said he exaggerates somewhat and said he invented the internet, and Bush is a liar because he has a severe and debilitating aversion to truth. But both are 'valid' viewpoints given to equal time, even if one has far greater reprecussions. Another great example is the 'reporting' on the Evolution vs. Creationism argument.
'Journalists' no more serve a function anymore than Google News reprinting press releases. Commentary has replaced fact-checking and persistence and integrity in the media.
At a computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."
In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating:
If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason at all, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally, executing a manoeuver such as a left-turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, and you would have to reinstall the engine.
4. When your car died on the freeway for no reason, you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought 'Car95' or 'CarNT', and then added more seats.
6. Apple would make a car powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would run on only five per cent of the roads.
7. Oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single 'general car default' warning light.
8. New seats would force every-one to have the same size butt.
9. The airbag would say 'Are you sure?' before going off.
10. Occasionally, for no reason, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed the radio antenna.
11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of road maps from Rand-McNally (a subsidiary of GM), even though they neither need them nor want them. Trying to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 per cent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
12. Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
13. You would press the 'start' button to shut off the engine.
This may be a nutty idea (as I'm still hungover this morning), but let's say you coded a form to accept a click input, then submitted to a second page which then did the second 'click' via JavaScript or some other silly method, would that violate the patent? Technically it's a two-click method, but would appear as a one-click method to the user.
Have they patented the process, or have they patented the 'look and feel' - which cannot be patented (to the best of my knowledge)?
What they really need is a Republican strategist to come up with talking points:
-Linux is a flip-flopper (is it command line or GUI? Could they make up their minds already?!)
-Eclipse sounds French. VisualStudio is a good, strong American sounding name.
-Linux starts with the same letters as liberal.
-These damned hippies always want a free ride (and they keep talking about 'free as in beer' - are they alcoholics?).
Of course, we at Faux News are only reporting on what other people are saying about the leftist-pinko-commie operating system. We're totally fair and balanced on the issue of non-patriotic, foreign-made, non-capitalist operating systems.
I read somewhere that only 5% of the general public has a basic understanding of the concepts behind major everyday items such as a television or a refrigerator. Unfortunately I can't find the source of that figure (but paraphrasing Homer Simpson - "87% of all figures are made up anyways")
However, this underscores an important weakness in our society. When a TV or fridge was simply a consumer item, it was less important to know how it works. Now that large parts of our economy (finance, software, inventory, logistics), society (arts and culture) and democracy itself is largely controlled by computers this knowledge gap become increasingly important. People looking to control these sectors can increasingly rely on the general populace to not understand the issues involved. Just look at the bills passed regarding the use of technology (DMCA, HAVA, etc.) and you'll see that basic weakness exploited.
I think the cost of living is nearly 40% less as well - and as others have pointed out already, we get a fair bit in return for our tax dollar. With the exception of a few really interesting US cities - I would much prefer to live anywhere in Canada over any US city (and I've been to at least a dozen states for work, so I know what I'm talking about).
As a point of interest, my company tranferred me to London, England for 2 years. Overnight my salary more than doubled, but my costs more than tripled. I've since moved back and despite the large paycut from returning to a Canadian salary, it works out better for me in the end due to cost of living differences.
Mercer human resources has a chartoutlining cost-of-living differences in the world. Ottawa - my current home - is almost exactly 40% cheaper than New York. Canada's most expensive city (Toronto) is only slightly higher than the US's lowest city (Pittsburgh).
When I saw a spray-painted logo of Napster.co.uk on the sidewalk outside my office this morning.
Is it just me, or is this an especially despicable form of advertising? Marketers must love it... not having to pay for ad space, while at the same time making it more noticeable because the one place we can expect not to see ads is under our feet...lovely.
I don't feel bad about it at all, just trying to make a point that just because we all speak English doesn't mean there aren't some serious cultural differences between the countries.
And I completely agree with your post as well. I've spent a fair bit of time hiking in New England (the White Mountains, Adirondacks, etc.) and found that most people there went to Canada about as often as I went to the States. There certainly is a lot of kinship and shared values between upper New England and Eastern/Central Canada.
I don't feel bad because if everyone else knew how nice it was, we wouldn't have the peace and quiet that makes it unique.
We need to go to war against Canada or England so we can make better use of our human capital.
Uh huh. Even there you'll have some difficulties, because you won't be able to talk about the loss of the Jets, Nordiques and Stubbies. Or discuss the greatness of Gretzky, Lafleur, Rick Mercer, Peter Gzowski (may he rest in peace), the NFB, and the Tragically Hip.
All most Americans know about Canada is Shania Twain and Celine Dion. And we have snow. And live in Igloos.:-)
And even after two years living in England, I only know a fraction of British culture. I can talk about Blackadder and The Office, but know almost nothing about the Ealing comedies or Tommy Cooper for example. And my accent is a dead giveaway; even if I did pick up a proper UK accent, there's class and regionalization to factor in as well. After all, how much success did the Abwehr have against the UK in the war?
My point is that a proper human intelligence organization takes a very long time to build up, unless people jump to your side for ideological reasons, you'll have years of ingrained history to deal with.
...and this American brought Bud. The group of Canadians and Brits know a little something about beer and managed to convert him to Sleeman Honey Brown. It's a far cry from my cherished dark ales and bitters, but you know... baby steps, right?
Anyway, as it happens at parties, his Bud was left in my fridge. I couldn't *give* it away, and I certainly wasn't going to drink it myself. I tossed it after a while.
So if Anheuser-Busch wants to know where that case of Bud ended up, they can find it unopened in some landfill I imagine.
After all, everything from your son's shoplifting to the destruction of the towers at the World Trade Center could have been prevented if we had less of an ability to do things in secret.
And conversely, those pesky 'founding fathers' and their dreams of a free country could have been prevented if they had less of an ability to do things in secret.
It amazes me to see how quickly people will abandon the very values and principles that America was founded on in order to gain a little extra security. It's here that I would trot out the old 'those who would sacrific freedom for security' yada-yada-yada... but why bother - most of you are so far down the slippry slope already.
I thought this was a joke by the moderator, but if you look at the Addendum they republish 'Wildcards' based on an original idea by John Petersen, The Arlington Institute. This includes Rise of an American Dictator in 2000 (where 2000 is the earliest possible occurence).
Seems my connection is just fine. In fact, if someone hadn't told that there was 'widespread disruption to Internet services in the UK' I would not have noticed.
Perhaps it's only an issue for certain networks/ISPs?
I know what in trademark cases, companies have to enforce their trademark or risk losing it (i.e. xerox, kleenex, rollerblade) - but is there any similar clause in the DMCA which dictates that corporations must send cease-and-desists instead of taking these suggestions seriously? That seems to be the standard method companies employ in these circumstances, and I was wondering if it was a legitimate legal issue, or lawyers just being, well, lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, the link is about 2 years old - it claims Steve Jobs as a tech loser too... when in fact Apple is now #2 in the world in market cap (after Exxon). How quickly things can change...
I concur.
For years I spent all my time travelling to the US where I did more than my share of encouraging negative stereotypes of Canada: "yes, *of course* I ride dogsleds to my work igloo in July".
As Vancouverites, we really need to start putting the DTES on our tourism and recruiting ads otherwise I'll never be able to have a shoebox condo of my very own. It's getting bad enough trying to dodge those Paris Hilton wannabees (complete with small dog incapable of walking on its own) on my seawall walk to work.
When I was young, my mother bought me a set of World Book encyclopedias. Each year, they would mail me a Year in Review (General news) and Science Year update which would have a set of stickers (the lick-em, stick-em kind) that would indicate which book and which page the new article was on, and you would add that sticker to your original encyclopedia entry. That way you would be able to know where and when the original entry had been updated.
Personally, I think it's a darned clever little idea. Even in this day and age, I still prefer my dead tree versions of things. I think any reference book should offer addendums and errata. Joe Clark has a good example of how this can be done with Building Accessible Websites.
Journalists aren't even journalism anymore either. They aren't about reporting the news, they're about giving equal time to opposing viewpoints, even if one is completely wrong and not worth acknowledgement.
Gore is a liar because he said he exaggerates somewhat and said he invented the internet, and Bush is a liar because he has a severe and debilitating aversion to truth. But both are 'valid' viewpoints given to equal time, even if one has far greater reprecussions. Another great example is the 'reporting' on the Evolution vs. Creationism argument.
'Journalists' no more serve a function anymore than Google News reprinting press releases. Commentary has replaced fact-checking and persistence and integrity in the media.
I wish I knew the author of this:
At a computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."
In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating:
If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason at all, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally, executing a manoeuver such as a left-turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, and you would have to reinstall the engine.
4. When your car died on the freeway for no reason, you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought 'Car95' or 'CarNT', and then added more seats.
6. Apple would make a car powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would run on only five per cent of the roads.
7. Oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single 'general car default' warning light.
8. New seats would force every-one to have the same size butt.
9. The airbag would say 'Are you sure?' before going off.
10. Occasionally, for no reason, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed the radio antenna.
11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of road maps from Rand-McNally (a subsidiary of GM), even though they neither need them nor want them. Trying to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 per cent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
12. Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
13. You would press the 'start' button to shut off the engine.
This may be a nutty idea (as I'm still hungover this morning), but let's say you coded a form to accept a click input, then submitted to a second page which then did the second 'click' via JavaScript or some other silly method, would that violate the patent? Technically it's a two-click method, but would appear as a one-click method to the user.
Have they patented the process, or have they patented the 'look and feel' - which cannot be patented (to the best of my knowledge)?
... looking for 'Haddi Ou-ard Quani-di'
What they really need is a Republican strategist to come up with talking points:
-Linux is a flip-flopper (is it command line or GUI? Could they make up their minds already?!)
-Eclipse sounds French. VisualStudio is a good, strong American sounding name.
-Linux starts with the same letters as liberal.
-These damned hippies always want a free ride (and they keep talking about 'free as in beer' - are they alcoholics?).
Of course, we at Faux News are only reporting on what other people are saying about the leftist-pinko-commie operating system. We're totally fair and balanced on the issue of non-patriotic, foreign-made, non-capitalist operating systems.
I read somewhere that only 5% of the general public has a basic understanding of the concepts behind major everyday items such as a television or a refrigerator. Unfortunately I can't find the source of that figure (but paraphrasing Homer Simpson - "87% of all figures are made up anyways")
However, this underscores an important weakness in our society. When a TV or fridge was simply a consumer item, it was less important to know how it works. Now that large parts of our economy (finance, software, inventory, logistics), society (arts and culture) and democracy itself is largely controlled by computers this knowledge gap become increasingly important. People looking to control these sectors can increasingly rely on the general populace to not understand the issues involved. Just look at the bills passed regarding the use of technology (DMCA, HAVA, etc.) and you'll see that basic weakness exploited.
As a point of interest, my company tranferred me to London, England for 2 years. Overnight my salary more than doubled, but my costs more than tripled. I've since moved back and despite the large paycut from returning to a Canadian salary, it works out better for me in the end due to cost of living differences.
Mercer human resources has a chartoutlining cost-of-living differences in the world. Ottawa - my current home - is almost exactly 40% cheaper than New York. Canada's most expensive city (Toronto) is only slightly higher than the US's lowest city (Pittsburgh).
When I saw a spray-painted logo of Napster.co.uk on the sidewalk outside my office this morning.
Is it just me, or is this an especially despicable form of advertising? Marketers must love it... not having to pay for ad space, while at the same time making it more noticeable because the one place we can expect not to see ads is under our feet...lovely.
Can I get a boost?
No.
I don't feel bad about it at all, just trying to make a point that just because we all speak English doesn't mean there aren't some serious cultural differences between the countries.
And I completely agree with your post as well. I've spent a fair bit of time hiking in New England (the White Mountains, Adirondacks, etc.) and found that most people there went to Canada about as often as I went to the States. There certainly is a lot of kinship and shared values between upper New England and Eastern/Central Canada.
I don't feel bad because if everyone else knew how nice it was, we wouldn't have the peace and quiet that makes it unique.
We need to go to war against Canada or England so we can make better use of our human capital.
:-)
Uh huh. Even there you'll have some difficulties, because you won't be able to talk about the loss of the Jets, Nordiques and Stubbies. Or discuss the greatness of Gretzky, Lafleur, Rick Mercer, Peter Gzowski (may he rest in peace), the NFB, and the Tragically Hip.
All most Americans know about Canada is Shania Twain and Celine Dion. And we have snow. And live in Igloos.
And even after two years living in England, I only know a fraction of British culture. I can talk about Blackadder and The Office, but know almost nothing about the Ealing comedies or Tommy Cooper for example. And my accent is a dead giveaway; even if I did pick up a proper UK accent, there's class and regionalization to factor in as well. After all, how much success did the Abwehr have against the UK in the war?
My point is that a proper human intelligence organization takes a very long time to build up, unless people jump to your side for ideological reasons, you'll have years of ingrained history to deal with.
You're being so 'Type A' about your leisure time. It's leisure time... the whole point is to relax, not to 'squeeze in more'.
...and this American brought Bud. The group of Canadians and Brits know a little something about beer and managed to convert him to Sleeman Honey Brown. It's a far cry from my cherished dark ales and bitters, but you know... baby steps, right?
Anyway, as it happens at parties, his Bud was left in my fridge. I couldn't *give* it away, and I certainly wasn't going to drink it myself. I tossed it after a while.
So if Anheuser-Busch wants to know where that case of Bud ended up, they can find it unopened in some landfill I imagine.
And conversely, those pesky 'founding fathers' and their dreams of a free country could have been prevented if they had less of an ability to do things in secret.
It amazes me to see how quickly people will abandon the very values and principles that America was founded on in order to gain a little extra security. It's here that I would trot out the old 'those who would sacrific freedom for security' yada-yada-yada... but why bother - most of you are so far down the slippry slope already.
They've got this amazing technology in Europe that allows such disctractions. They call it public transportation.
Likely the US patent office does...
I thought this was a joke by the moderator, but if you look at the Addendum they republish 'Wildcards' based on an original idea by John Petersen, The Arlington Institute. This includes Rise of an American Dictator in 2000 (where 2000 is the earliest possible occurence).
Seems my connection is just fine. In fact, if someone hadn't told that there was 'widespread disruption to Internet services in the UK' I would not have noticed.
Perhaps it's only an issue for certain networks/ISPs?
Passive Agressive/Co-dependent
I know what in trademark cases, companies have to enforce their trademark or risk losing it (i.e. xerox, kleenex, rollerblade) - but is there any similar clause in the DMCA which dictates that corporations must send cease-and-desists instead of taking these suggestions seriously? That seems to be the standard method companies employ in these circumstances, and I was wondering if it was a legitimate legal issue, or lawyers just being, well, lawyers.
I know a South Korean that might disagree with you.