So besides the OCR image filter, maybe we need filtering applied to some *other* analysis of the contents of the images. I mean, lots of big blocks of color? Lots of short little thin lines spread around randomly? etc etc. Maybe we could even feed the output of that into the bayseyan filter. Just need to figure out what types of image analysis output could be put into a bayseyan filter.
> "Stroustrup isn't holding a gun to that coder's head, for God's sake."
No, he's handing the loaded gun to the guy that wrote the code before me, and to the other team-members I have to work with on the product.
What's that? You work all by yourself in a tiny white box? You're going to work in that box by yourself forever? You never ever have to look at anyone else's code? No one else in the world will ever have to look at your code? (Especially not a junior coder?)
Yeah right. There's an age old engineering principle - if your code is so fancy that only a blooming genius will understand it...
But we've already seen that it does not come down to a choice between lethal and non-lethal force!!! Yes that's what they said when it started out, but since it's got "no long term effects" - who cares!! Use it all you want!!!!
Tasers are now used *much* more readily and at the drop of a hat than your "alternative to lethal force" would lead one to believe it was going to be used. It's used now SIMPLY TO CAUSE PAIN. Since when is causing pain okay just because the pain stops the moment the device is turned off? Just because there are no physical scars makes you think it's okay to make me feel like I'm being burned alive? WHEN THE FUCK did it become okay to punish someone with gross levels physical pain BEFORE convicting them, just because they weren't immediately complying with your orders as quickly as you'd like!??!?? Just to save you four or five minutes of wrestling with an unarmed person? Yeah sure if you think you're in immediate danger, sure. But that's not what's happening!!!
NO IT WON'T BE USED instead of bullets. It WILL be used just to get their way whenever they want something done. "Do this OR ELSE". Where have you heard that recently?
Ethnic cleansing is where you go in and murder anyone who doesn't move out, and the rest leave because they don't want to be murdered.
If Quebec separates from Canada by mutual agreement, like Czechoslovakia separated, anyone that moves as a result of that does not count as "ethnic cleansing".
So saying that "so and so should form separate governments" does not mean "tacit approval of ethnic cleansing". Not unless we say "so and so should separate and people should be forced to move". If someone else threatens to murder people, well *they're* supporting ethnic cleansing, not us. And guess what, they're going to run around threatening and murdering people whether we suggest separate countries or not.
What's with all this stupid bullshit making stuff up just because of some popularist word!! JHC. The words you use don't always mean what you think they mean. FFS use your noodle.
What's your suggestion? Do you want to send in 500,000 international police/troops? Or do you just want to "get out" and pretend the problem doesn't exist any more?
> It may be hard for you to understand, but some people oppose the war, and did so from before the start, because it was a bad idea, poorly implemented.
I don't know of anyone who opposed the war because they thought it was "poorly implemented". I don't know anyone who would have changed their mind and supported the war if Shinseki had gotten his 400,000 troops.
I know tons and tons of people who opposed the war because they can't stand the idea of being involved in a choosing which 10,000 people are going to die, 5,000 civilians and 5,000 evil people right now because we invade, or 10,000 nameless "disappeared civilians" per year inside a foreign country that we don't control. Actually it's not that they can't choose, they won't. In fact they much prefer the latter. Then it's not "their fault". They "have nothing to do with it".**
They also don't like risk. Not even the slightest risk of "even worse" happening to take a chance that we'll make things "a hundred times better".
My take - yeah it's gone nuts over there. But it's not because "the US lost", it's flat out simply because the Iraqi people themselves have a) decided to go genocidal on one another, and b) decided not to take up arms and stop the people who are doing A. Uhhhh, well, it's also because c) Shinseki didn't get his 400,000 troops (but remember, all 400,000 would have had to stay in country for all of the past 3 years).
Pull out? That's going to make it even more likely of flat out open genocide. Are the Europeans and everyone else going to do anything effective when that happens? Are they going to send in the new 50,000 person quick reaction force that's been put together just to stop the next Rwanda? I betcha not. I betcha they stand by and let a quarter million Iraqi's die in a genocide.
It was worth a try. All we had to do to get rid of a dictator that kills 10,000 people a year and was responsible for 3 million deaths in an earlier war with a neighbour was invade and hand control back to the citizens themselves. It still sounds perfectly reasonable. It makes me sick to my stomach to say it, but leaving in a vicious dictator that murders 10,000 people a year and was responsible for 3 million deaths in an earlier war with a neighbour, yeah, it might be better in the short to medium term than removing him from power and letting the people themselves run the country. At least if the people themselves are all religous zealots with absolutely no history of properly ruling themselves or no concept of standing up and fighting for right and wrong. (I'm sure they have a concept of right and wrong, there's just no-one willing to stand up for it -- and so the most trusted fair force in Iraq is still the American Army.)
Just like Communism was worth a try. Someone had to try it to find out it was a bad bad idea. Otherwise who would believe that egalitarian ideas like "create a state where we share the wealth equally among all citizens" would have such an evil downside. Heck even with the example of Russia and North Korea and "The great leap forward", China is still giving it a go.
(**) Personally I think the rest of us in the world are 100% responsible for what bad things happen to people on the other side of the world. North Korea. We're responsible. We have an obligation to figure out how best to minimize the bad evil things that are happening to them. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) they're so insanely indoctrinated that invading them is totally not an option. Well, not unless they go nuts and nuke Seoul and kill 500,000 people all at once, then all hell will break out.
I guess I can cancel my planned vacation to Denmark. I mean I was planning on going there to support them wrt the whole Mohammed free speech issue... but if they're going to do this... screw them!
. That sounds like a good "other side of the story". Thanks.
However I'm still very very unhappy that Tasers are being used in lieu of even laying hands on another person. As far as I'm concerned Tasers are supposed to be on notch below drawing a gun, along the exact same level of force as hitting a person repeatedly with a nightstick.
Was the situation at a point where the Police would be completely justified in hitting him repeatedly with a nightstick?!??
If not, why was a taser used? Why was it used repeatedly!???
If not, then it was clearly excessive force. Note that this excessive force causes excruciating pain. Pain is usually reserved for punishment and extreme cases (aka nightsticks).
Both tasers and repeated blows from a nightstick have been clearly shown (despite the protestations of the manufacturer and Police) to be semi-lethal weapons - instigating the death of people who might not have otherwise died. (Nightsticks when people are hit in the head too hard too many times, tasers when unseen or obviously seen (drug use) medical conditions are present).
The growing excessive force use of Tasers, especially considering the level of pain they inflict, especially considering the "greater than lottery odds" of instigating death, especially considering just how carelessly some Police are using it (as if it was a water balloon) is of extremely high concern to many of us.
If Polcie departments don't wise up and start properly training their people... well I don't know. They'll just continue to loose respect in the eyes of the public. Which from what I hear is the exact opposite of what they want and what they need to operate effectively.
That and they'll get sued a hell of a lot more, and loose, because tons of people like me will be more than happy to sit on Juries.
I'm not one of the conspiracy theorist types, but I'm very annoyed and frustrated by all the "off the record" "un-named" police sources and "random supposed eye-witnesses" who give the papers the "big scoop" about how they found explosives making material and everything else -- where-as the police officially can't comment and refuse to confirm or deny what the papers "have heard from sources", so the papers run with the stories as if they were fact, and no-one notices 2 months latter when it finally comes out quietly that none of those "un-named" police sources were right, in fact they were 100% wrong.
Let's look at another great example of this.
"Anonymous un-named police sources" and "random supposed eye-witnesses" reported that an individual was confronted by the Police, that he ran from them, that he was wearing a big baggy jacket and had a backpack full of heavy stuff.
Months and months latter after much nail-pulling in forcing the Police to submit to an independent review -- oh guess what, the police NEVER confronted him, he was NOT running from them, he was NOT wearing a baggy jacket, and he WAS NOT carrying a backpack or a track bag.
FUCK this shit. I'm blaming the media for reporting this garbage that they get from "sources", and I'm blaming the Police and authorities for not confirming or denying news reports which convenient play into their best interests.
If I LIE to my bosses, I get my ass fired. We need to start firing people when after the fact we discover they have been lying to us.
> and who made a desperate run for it the moment the police tried to ask him to identify himself
This is FACTUALLY INCORRECT. The Police flat out lied to the media about this. And I quote:
However, the leaked documents, which include statements from officers involved in the operation and photographs of the scene, show that he behaved like any other commuter, used his travel pass to enter the station, even picking up a newspaper on his way. He was not challenged by police, and appears to have been unaware of being followed until after he entered the train. Photographic stills show he was only wearing a light denim jacket. It appears that he only ran in order to reach a train that was about to leave the platform. (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brazilian_shot_by_pol ice_on_London_Underground_was_not_acting_suspiciou sly)
The officers followed Menezes for 5 minutes as he walked (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Mene zes)
Three surveillance officers, codenamed Hotel 1, Hotel 3 and Hotel 9, followed Menezes onto the train.(ibid)
When the firearms officers arrived on the platform, Hotel 3 moved to the door, blocked it from closing with their left foot, and shouted 'He's here!' to identify the suspect's location.(ibid)
WHY did they wait until he was inside the station to confront him!?!??!?? WHY was he allowed toride on two busses before he got to the train??? ESPECIALLY if he "had a bomb"??? WHY did they HAVE to wait for fireams officers??? Especially if it meant he was going to have time to get on the train????
Furthermore their "identification" of the suspect was grotesquely negligent. There has to be consequences for a mistake this grave. You can't just say "oops sorry" and go on your way.
The interference and prevention of the IPCC investigation is also deeply damaging. There's a reason for having oversight. Suspending oversight just because "it's terrorism" is horribly wrong and stupid. Are you telling me you can't trust the IPCC?? They're not as trustworthy as anyone else involved in the investigations?
The decision not to prosecute individuals was made on the grounds of insufficent evidence
How the hell do you have insufficient evidence in an investigation of a police act???!?!? You're telling me officiers refused to testify? Their notes were burned? What?!???
The fact that there haven't been consequences for the people involved is totally pathetic. It was after the fallout from this incident that I lost all respect for British authorities. If their system is so screwed up to allow mistakes like this without repercussions, and if their most senior people think that there's nothing wrong and that nothing needs to be changed, and in fact react negatively to criticism.
The following seems like a much more sensible conclusion:
The three people killed had no explosives or detonators on them, although a timed car bomb was found later. They had been under surveillance for some time prior to the incident. The European Court of Human Rights held, by majority, that there was an opportunity to stop them at an earlier stage without having to shoot them and accordingly their right to life had been infringed.(IBID)
Remember, Europeans don't have a death penalty. AT ALL. If you object to a death penalty, how can you possibly accept the grotesque incompentent error made above?
Accidents and unfortunate circumstances are one thing. The above wasn't an accidental unfortunate circumstance. It was incompetence. People should be fired for incompetence.
Furthermore giving a soldier or a police officer orders to shoot to death someone when that person shouldn't be shot to death is NOT an excuse for carrying out the order. Orders from above has never been an acceptable reason for the deaths of innocents. Everyone in the military should know that, and it should be doubly apparent to everyone else.
The airliner cited is a 707, the largest airliner of the day, and only slightly smaller than the 757s that did strike.
And the study was of the plane striking the building, it made absolutely ZERO study on the effects of the fuel load burning inside the building along with the building conttents, and it did not forsee the heat insulating coatings around the steel being ripped off by the impact.
Wrong. The steel in question was rated ASTM E119.
And if you google for the name of the idiot that wrote that e-mail, he was FIRED by UL for LYING about everything he said in the e-mail!!!
Note this choice quote - "UL vehemently denied last week that it ever certified the materials."
FROM THIS MOMENT ON you are not ever allowed to quote this stupid e-mail ever again. The guy was so incompetent that UL FIRED HIM outright. Do you hear me!! You're not ever allowed to quote this stupid fucking e-mail EVER AGAIN.
During the Madrid skyscraper fire
Yes, a DIFFERENT BUILDING with a different contruction and a different fire. That fire was a fire of the building's contents, not jet fuel. Nor was that building's steel members stripped of their heat resistent coatings by a jetliner impact. NOR where there a FULL 20 floors of building above the floors that were burning. NO SUPPRISE HERE.
yet, it collapsed sudddenly and completely into its own footprint,
AND WHY IS THIS SUPPRISING??? What in the world could possible make anything that big not fall down suddenly once it's failure starts? What in the world could possibly make anything that big fall down not in a largely down fashion?
List your candidates
Pools of fuel that have vaporized in an area not yet connected to the fire, that suddenly catch fire.
Aerosols of dust. (grain elevator explosions)
Air in sealed spaces being heated until the sealed spaces break open.
etc etc etc.
If the jets were nothing more than escaping air, how is it that they were filled with dust and smoke, despite the inconvenient fact that there was no damage whatsoever on those lower floors?
Take one upper floor of 10,000 tons of concrete, smack it down on the floor below it (FULL of furniture and crawl spaces and sheetrock, have you ever cut sheetrock? It's basically dust in solid form - and it's used to create all internal "rooms" in skyscrapers), and of course you're going to get a TON of dust.
And what the fuck are you doing talking about pyroclastic flows? Those are TOTALLY different things produced by erupting VOLCANOES - compared to a little bit of fucking dust from the WTC. Where the HELL do you get the idea that the air was turned into a pyroclastic mixture?
Your link to the idiot talking about "estimating energy required to form the dust clouds" is just COMPLETE bullshit!!! Dust doesn't need heat to spread. It's fucking dust. And if the entire building fell down, that means there's enough energy going around to raise an entire building as tall as it originally stood, more than enough needed to raise a little dust cloud.
either to expand the gases thermodynamically, or to vaporize moisture
NO GASSES NEEDED TO BE EXPANDED THERMODYNAMICALLY, it's a dry dust cloud. NO MOISTURE NEEDED TO BE VAPORIZED, dust clouds from falling concrete crushing sheetrock into dust clouds aren't made of water like cloud clouds up in the blue sky.
What kind of idiots look at the WTC dust clouds and start calculating how much heat it would take to vaporize water to form a cloud of the same size??? What kind of fucking morons are you guys!
I agree with everyone else, YOU ARE A FUCKING MORON.
What cave have you been hiding in the past few weeks?
And you know, you have this neat thing called the "intarweb" at your fingertips, it's really good for finding out about things you don't know about. If only you knew how to use it. (me I'm making that big reverse L on my forehead right now, and it's pointed at you).
Explain to me how the fuck prisons work any better if they're "secret"?
Explain to me again why you need to be tried and convicted in our triple-party judicial system in public by a jury of citizens with guaranteed access to legal representation, the right to cross-examine your accusers and see and challenge the evidence against you - all under the laws of the land, BUT why "your enemies" need to be tortured and tried in secret without knowing the evidence against them without access to a lawer and held indefinitely based on the arbitrary whim of who again?
> As can be seen by the Reichstag fire, it works nicely to bypass the governmental safeguards
Shit... you know... I'm no longer so comfortable living here in Canada - right next door to the future totalitarian USA. Cause you know they're going to invade their neighbours someday for a made up reason if they keep going the way they are.
And I'm a decidedly middle of the road non-paranoid kinda guy, support healthcare, supported the war in Iraq (because Sadaam is a nasty person), etc etc.
This isn't a good sign America, when you're neighbours suddenly start getting worried they're living beside a potentially-future nazi state.
I'm with you on the survivability of the M1 tanks and their crews, however 120mm depleted uranium slugs are completely different beasts. There are numerous examples of Bradley's getting hit by *multiple* 120mm M1 rounds in the first gulf war, and everyone or almost everyone getting out alive. The DU slugs form a thin pencil jet of molten stuff - if you're not directly in it's path inside the vehicle, you'll survive with burns.
So I wouldn't make that statment that "because it can survive this, it can survive IED's". They're entirely different beasts.
That being said, it doesn't take much to take a tank out of a battle and put it's crew outside the vehicle vulnerable to a second attack or even small arms fire. Throw the track off, the tank has to sit tight and wait for help/battle to die, or they get out to fix it and you can hit them again.
There are three different things here that we're all probably on agreement on in specific, but some of us don't care about situation one while others do.
- Can the tank and it's crew continue to fight
- Does the tank or it's surviving crew have to withdraw from battle
- How severe are the injuries
- How many crewmen die
Personally, I only care about the latter two. The former two would be important if we ever got involved in a BIG war, one where we have to kill 10 enemy tanks to each of our own lost to win (aka China).
> they have IEDs that nothing we have can defeat
You can always build one of something that we can't defeat. So that statement by itself is *useless*.
Can they build enough of them to make us quit or walk away, or not fight to begin with. Right now the answer is no. In 95 percent of engagements, the tank crews walk away unharmed. We don't care about the tanks themselves. They can't even build enough big enough IEDs to kill enough up-armoured Humvee crew members to make us quit after 3-4 years straight of this.
I don't care if once this year they managed to build a 1 TON truck bomb that can force a tank crew to abandon it's tank. Talk to me when they're detonating 10 of those a week.
We have no power over the wrongdoings of other people. The only wrong we always have the power and obligation to set right is that which we do ourselves
So we should disband all our local police forces? I mean if we don't have the obligation to set right the wrongs of a tyrranical dictator whose actions have killed millions, then what right do I have to have power over the wrongs of my neighbours?
That's what I was doing for the past few years. It was so convenient to just go grab another external case and HDD. I ended up with a stack of 7 such external drives.
FOR GOD sakes do not buy the following external enclosures:
The fans get dusty and die on you (no warning sound or light) and/or the power supplies begin mis-behaving or going out of spec. I've had 5 of the 7 I bought KILL DRIVES as they quietly failed in some strange way. The drives don't just stop on their own, they start throwing tons of errors into the Windows Event Log and then a couple months latter start failing to access files.
The shop I bought them from slowly over the years is no longer carrying that line - way way too many customers reporting failures. The guy at the shop for some reason thinks it's a chipset problem, not PSU or capacitor issue.
We've got a couple of the all-metal (no fan) Brick-PSU types at work, seem to be okay so far, and the shop owner notes no big complains from customers yet (although he hasn't carried/sold them long enough yet to be certain - he's leery as they are actually made by the same company as the ME-320).
> but I can have trouble understanding what someone is saying if the enviroment is noisy, whereas other people around me have no problems. Its wierd because I can hear the sound of the voices no problem, but my brain sometimes just can't work out the words.
I've had this problem for a few years now too - seems to have gotten slowly worse over the past couple years - I'm sure my friends are sick and tired of me asking "what"? Sometimes they don't repeat themselves any more. I'm also not so pleased that one guy insists on quietly saying whatever it is he has to say - I can barely ever hear him. He's a nice guy, maybe I should explain that I think I've got a touch of hearing loss and if he's talking in a bar or over other people's voices or 16 feet away, could he please speak a *touch* louder. It's interesting how it's always just a *tiny* bit that makes a difference. It must be his voice too - the pitch and tone of it and how loudly he talks compared to most people.
Anyways - your description of "hear the sound of the voices no problem, but brain just can't work out the words" strikes me very strongly as what I experience. And I can't figure out how other people can hear what they are saying...
It's only been in the past 3 months that I've started having persistent tinnitus. I've seen my doctor and am having an audiology test set up. So I guess I'll finally find out just wtf is going on... Maybe. Hearing related things aren't as definitive to figure out as other things. Could be any one of 20 things, none of which are easy to conclude... That kind of annoys me.
The thing that pisses me off royally is that I have NOT listened to loud music! I've almost never attended loud concerts. The times I have been to a loud concert, I would use earplugs or something. I've been to maybe one or two loud clubs a year - compared to other co-workers who go 20 times a year. I've listened to a lot of music through headphones but I *never* listened as loudly as others I pass in the street whose music I can hear clearly. When I hold my buds/earphones 6 inches away from my face, I can barely hear it, a foot in front of me the buds are silent.
I am the last person I would have expected to have had hearing loss or tinnitus based on my "loud sound exposure" levels.
I've wondered about the infrasound as I'm on the top 30th floor of a building and my windows/walls vibrate maddly around 3-15 Hz due to the machine room above (thick concrete, so I can't hear any of it). But extensive research on the internet does not show any link between infrasound and hearing loss. The first thing that excessive infrasound exposure causes is nausea and other physical symptoms, none of which I've had.
> By using this unstable molecule, the dye will break down as soon as it > is agitated, as it is protected by the soap molecules. By all accounts > it would probably break down into water and oxygen, and a bit of methane.
Break down into what? Absolutely no-one has indicated exactly what that means, except the original source of the story which talks about a string turning into a ring - doesn't sound like it's "dissolving into air and water".
By all accounts? Whose accounts? The fact that everyone says "it breaks down"? They're repeating simple language used in an unqualified way once before.
I'm not saying there's anything to worry about - I agree the dye chemist and the toy companies will test this to death - but your conclusion sounds completely specious.
> It is equally easy for me to put on a nice sharp-looking shirt a > pair of slacks as it is to put a crummy t-shirt and pair of worn > jeans.
Who the hell am I impressing when I sit in my FUCKING cube writing code? My co-workers? What the fuck does how "snazzy" I dress have anything to do with how well I do my job? Or what I'm worth?
Who the fuck are you to decide what's "sharp" and what's "crummy" anyways?
Why is it critical that I wear things that cost twice as much and wear out in 1/3rd the time?
Now if I'm scheduled to go do a demo on the 60th floor of the bank downtown - yeah, I'll wear a suit. But I piss on the people who are so caught up in "fashion" and shit that they have to always "look sharp" and shit.
This doesn't mean I'm wearing dirty clothes or even ugly clothes. I've got some sense. But I PITY the dumb bastards that have to wear such uncomfortable heavy multi-layered clothes while walking to work on an unbearably hot humid summer day.
> An apartment building that has a pool and sun-roof on top
Man you wouldn't BELIEVE how many buildings do not have ANY outdoor space on them. A *spectacular* view and no, you have to stay indoors. Balconies don't cut it, they are the first things to start looking shabby and you can't see the sky, only half of it - and you're surrounded by other balconies. Besides if I'm at work, why can't I go relax at lunch on the top of the building and enjoy the air and the view? Noooo, we're forced to go down to the crowded street level where there's a concrete plaza whose benches have all been removed to prevent people from "lounging about".
I tell ya one thing that would keep me in the big city for the rest of my life. A spacious affordable tower-condo/apartment. Really spacious. An apartment building that has a pool and sun-roof on top. Fast elevators. Fast subway.
So why the fuck haven't engineers figured out how to mass manufacture concrete and buildings anyways? Why does a 700 square foot 1-small-bedroom apartment cost $250,000 CDN? For $300,000 I want to see 1500-2000 square feet. It's only concrete. What the hell is the problem? None of the rest of the overhead goes up. And I think a TON of the rest of the overhead is fixed - advertising, legal/planning with the city/boards, building the basement/foundation (man it takes them a while to do that).
I wonder if it isn't silly stupid zoning rules. I know they want to prevent too many people from living in a given land footprint - for good reasons too - because otherwise it would require too much infrastructure and clog the roads, etc etc. But I wonder if they haven't worded the restrictions wrong. I wonder if the restrictions are by "floorspace" instead of "occupants". That would just FUCKING suck.
Man, I gotta write some provincial politicians, boards, building companies, and my city councillor/mayor about these things. Get the zoning plans reviewed to see if they are effectively forcing companies to artificially restrict the sizes of apartments - worried that if they build 1500 square foot aparmtents that 6 people will live in them...
I live in an apartment in the heart of the 5th biggest city in North America. I walk to work. I've made choices in my life that allow me to do this.
I wish I could buy an affordable house *and* walk to work. But the only affordable houses are 1 - 1.5 hours commute from here. Which sucks the big one. Who the hell wants to spend 2-3 hours a day commuting. But tons and tons of people do so, because they want a) a house, and b) a job they like.
But what forces companies to have their headquarters in the core of big-ass cities where they are "hard" to get to? Okay it's a natural progression from the olden days when cities weren't that dense, and you'd want to be near other businesses. But that was before telephones, before VOIP and $40 web-phones and modern systems. Right now most companies need to be in expensive centrally located cities like they need a hole in their head. My company's people spend 99% of their time dealing with people THOUSANDS of miles away. We sell our product WORLDWIDE, if sales reps or SE's want to see the customer, they have to get on airplanes.
The company could *easily* move the location 50 miles north, to a place where tons of us employees could get a nice affordable house within a 15 mile radius and only have a 20 minute commute to work. I think lots of companies could do this.
Funny thing is the provincial body that oversees development (reviews and hears objections to city zoning plans/rules) has been given the mission of "intensifying" the cities. I betcha that is FOR business, not at all in the interests of the general citizenry. Apartments in central Vancouver are getting as small as 300 square feet. That's not living space. That's a dog cage. That's not acceptable. I do not want to live my life in an apartment.
Yes yes you're worried about "urban sprawl". First of all as soon as the rest of the world gets itself worked up to 1st world status - the birth rates should level out to the point where sprawl will stop - because there won't be "more and more" people. And in any case the only reason people don't like "sprawl" is because it creates choked roads, because people can't buy a house close to work, because work is in the core of an ultra expensive city core. See where I'm going? That leads me to the only other reason people "don't like sprawl" - becuase the sprawl is concentrated around single areas, so you end up with 200 miles of concrete. If the sprawl was broken up with places of work distributed around - same land area, a house for everyone instead of apartments - just not all together, no one would care.
Take a look at a map of a place like Ontario. The sprawl is concentrated to within 40 miles of Lake Ontario. Northern Ontario is EMPTY. Okay it's a bit colder there. But it's no further north than a lot of the rest of Canada, and still further south than places like Sweden and Norway.
So - how the hell do we convince companies to start spreading out their sites a bit better? So we can all live in houses in nice little 50-250,000 person cities surrounded by countryside?
I guess the only real method we have of doing that - is to move. We go there and maybe the jobs will follow? Okay maybe you'll have to take a pay cut and get a job in a slightly different industry - but at least you'll be able to afford a house.
Either that or start talking about it with everyone that will listen, and maybe someday an exec will follow through.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmmm.
So besides the OCR image filter, maybe we need filtering applied to some *other* analysis of the contents of the images. I mean, lots of big blocks of color? Lots of short little thin lines spread around randomly? etc etc. Maybe we could even feed the output of that into the bayseyan filter. Just need to figure out what types of image analysis output could be put into a bayseyan filter.
> "Stroustrup isn't holding a gun to that coder's head, for God's sake."
No, he's handing the loaded gun to the guy that wrote the code before me, and to the other team-members I have to work with on the product.
What's that? You work all by yourself in a tiny white box? You're going to work in that box by yourself forever? You never ever have to look at anyone else's code? No one else in the world will ever have to look at your code? (Especially not a junior coder?)
Yeah right. There's an age old engineering principle - if your code is so fancy that only a blooming genius will understand it...
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But we've already seen that it does not come down to a choice between lethal and non-lethal force!!! Yes that's what they said when it started out, but since it's got "no long term effects" - who cares!! Use it all you want!!!!
Tasers are now used *much* more readily and at the drop of a hat than your "alternative to lethal force" would lead one to believe it was going to be used. It's used now SIMPLY TO CAUSE PAIN. Since when is causing pain okay just because the pain stops the moment the device is turned off? Just because there are no physical scars makes you think it's okay to make me feel like I'm being burned alive? WHEN THE FUCK did it become okay to punish someone with gross levels physical pain BEFORE convicting them, just because they weren't immediately complying with your orders as quickly as you'd like!??!?? Just to save you four or five minutes of wrestling with an unarmed person? Yeah sure if you think you're in immediate danger, sure. But that's not what's happening!!!
NO IT WON'T BE USED instead of bullets. It WILL be used just to get their way whenever they want something done. "Do this OR ELSE". Where have you heard that recently?
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Ethnic cleansing is where you go in and murder anyone who doesn't move out, and the rest leave because they don't want to be murdered.
If Quebec separates from Canada by mutual agreement, like Czechoslovakia separated, anyone that moves as a result of that does not count as "ethnic cleansing".
So saying that "so and so should form separate governments" does not mean "tacit approval of ethnic cleansing". Not unless we say "so and so should separate and people should be forced to move". If someone else threatens to murder people, well *they're* supporting ethnic cleansing, not us. And guess what, they're going to run around threatening and murdering people whether we suggest separate countries or not.
What's with all this stupid bullshit making stuff up just because of some popularist word!! JHC. The words you use don't always mean what you think they mean. FFS use your noodle.
What's your suggestion? Do you want to send in 500,000 international police/troops? Or do you just want to "get out" and pretend the problem doesn't exist any more?
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> It may be hard for you to understand, but some people oppose the war, and did so from before the start, because it was a bad idea, poorly implemented.
I don't know of anyone who opposed the war because they thought it was "poorly implemented". I don't know anyone who would have changed their mind and supported the war if Shinseki had gotten his 400,000 troops.
I know tons and tons of people who opposed the war because they can't stand the idea of being involved in a choosing which 10,000 people are going to die, 5,000 civilians and 5,000 evil people right now because we invade, or 10,000 nameless "disappeared civilians" per year inside a foreign country that we don't control. Actually it's not that they can't choose, they won't. In fact they much prefer the latter. Then it's not "their fault". They "have nothing to do with it".**
They also don't like risk. Not even the slightest risk of "even worse" happening to take a chance that we'll make things "a hundred times better".
My take - yeah it's gone nuts over there. But it's not because "the US lost", it's flat out simply because the Iraqi people themselves have a) decided to go genocidal on one another, and b) decided not to take up arms and stop the people who are doing A. Uhhhh, well, it's also because c) Shinseki didn't get his 400,000 troops (but remember, all 400,000 would have had to stay in country for all of the past 3 years).
Pull out? That's going to make it even more likely of flat out open genocide. Are the Europeans and everyone else going to do anything effective when that happens? Are they going to send in the new 50,000 person quick reaction force that's been put together just to stop the next Rwanda? I betcha not. I betcha they stand by and let a quarter million Iraqi's die in a genocide.
It was worth a try. All we had to do to get rid of a dictator that kills 10,000 people a year and was responsible for 3 million deaths in an earlier war with a neighbour was invade and hand control back to the citizens themselves. It still sounds perfectly reasonable. It makes me sick to my stomach to say it, but leaving in a vicious dictator that murders 10,000 people a year and was responsible for 3 million deaths in an earlier war with a neighbour, yeah, it might be better in the short to medium term than removing him from power and letting the people themselves run the country. At least if the people themselves are all religous zealots with absolutely no history of properly ruling themselves or no concept of standing up and fighting for right and wrong. (I'm sure they have a concept of right and wrong, there's just no-one willing to stand up for it -- and so the most trusted fair force in Iraq is still the American Army.)
Just like Communism was worth a try. Someone had to try it to find out it was a bad bad idea. Otherwise who would believe that egalitarian ideas like "create a state where we share the wealth equally among all citizens" would have such an evil downside. Heck even with the example of Russia and North Korea and "The great leap forward", China is still giving it a go.
(**) Personally I think the rest of us in the world are 100% responsible for what bad things happen to people on the other side of the world. North Korea. We're responsible. We have an obligation to figure out how best to minimize the bad evil things that are happening to them. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) they're so insanely indoctrinated that invading them is totally not an option. Well, not unless they go nuts and nuke Seoul and kill 500,000 people all at once, then all hell will break out.
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Whew...
... but if they're going to do this ... screw them!
I guess I can cancel my planned vacation to Denmark. I mean I was planning on going there to support them wrt the whole Mohammed free speech issue
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... well I don't know. They'll just continue to loose respect in the eyes of the public. Which from what I hear is the exact opposite of what they want and what they need to operate effectively.
That sounds like a good "other side of the story". Thanks.
However I'm still very very unhappy that Tasers are being used in lieu of even laying hands on another person. As far as I'm concerned Tasers are supposed to be on notch below drawing a gun, along the exact same level of force as hitting a person repeatedly with a nightstick.
Was the situation at a point where the Police would be completely justified in hitting him repeatedly with a nightstick?!??
If not, why was a taser used? Why was it used repeatedly!???
If not, then it was clearly excessive force. Note that this excessive force causes excruciating pain. Pain is usually reserved for punishment and extreme cases (aka nightsticks).
Both tasers and repeated blows from a nightstick have been clearly shown (despite the protestations of the manufacturer and Police) to be semi-lethal weapons - instigating the death of people who might not have otherwise died. (Nightsticks when people are hit in the head too hard too many times, tasers when unseen or obviously seen (drug use) medical conditions are present).
The growing excessive force use of Tasers, especially considering the level of pain they inflict, especially considering the "greater than lottery odds" of instigating death, especially considering just how carelessly some Police are using it (as if it was a water balloon) is of extremely high concern to many of us.
If Polcie departments don't wise up and start properly training their people
That and they'll get sued a hell of a lot more, and loose, because tons of people like me will be more than happy to sit on Juries.
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We should ALL cheat. All of us should use the very very best cheats.
Then he'd be nothing but a whiny baby again.
I'm not one of the conspiracy theorist types, but I'm very annoyed and frustrated by all the "off the record" "un-named" police sources and "random supposed eye-witnesses" who give the papers the "big scoop" about how they found explosives making material and everything else -- where-as the police officially can't comment and refuse to confirm or deny what the papers "have heard from sources", so the papers run with the stories as if they were fact, and no-one notices 2 months latter when it finally comes out quietly that none of those "un-named" police sources were right, in fact they were 100% wrong.
Let's look at another great example of this.
"Anonymous un-named police sources" and "random supposed eye-witnesses" reported that an individual was confronted by the Police, that he ran from them, that he was wearing a big baggy jacket and had a backpack full of heavy stuff.
Months and months latter after much nail-pulling in forcing the Police to submit to an independent review -- oh guess what, the police NEVER confronted him, he was NOT running from them, he was NOT wearing a baggy jacket, and he WAS NOT carrying a backpack or a track bag.
FUCK this shit. I'm blaming the media for reporting this garbage that they get from "sources", and I'm blaming the Police and authorities for not confirming or denying news reports which convenient play into their best interests.
If I LIE to my bosses, I get my ass fired. We need to start firing people when after the fact we discover they have been lying to us.
> and who made a desperate run for it the moment the police tried to ask him to identify himself
This is FACTUALLY INCORRECT. The Police flat out lied to the media about this. And I quote:
However, the leaked documents, which include statements from officers involved in the operation and photographs of the scene, show that he behaved like any other commuter, used his travel pass to enter the station, even picking up a newspaper on his way. He was not challenged by police, and appears to have been unaware of being followed until after he entered the train. Photographic stills show he was only wearing a light denim jacket. It appears that he only ran in order to reach a train that was about to leave the platform. (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Brazilian_shot_by_pol ice_on_London_Underground_was_not_acting_suspiciou sly)
The officers followed Menezes for 5 minutes as he walked (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Mene zes)
Three surveillance officers, codenamed Hotel 1, Hotel 3 and Hotel 9, followed Menezes onto the train.(ibid)
When the firearms officers arrived on the platform, Hotel 3 moved to the door, blocked it from closing with their left foot, and shouted 'He's here!' to identify the suspect's location.(ibid)
WHY did they wait until he was inside the station to confront him!?!??!?? WHY was he allowed toride on two busses before he got to the train??? ESPECIALLY if he "had a bomb"??? WHY did they HAVE to wait for fireams officers??? Especially if it meant he was going to have time to get on the train????
Furthermore their "identification" of the suspect was grotesquely negligent. There has to be consequences for a mistake this grave. You can't just say "oops sorry" and go on your way.
The interference and prevention of the IPCC investigation is also deeply damaging. There's a reason for having oversight. Suspending oversight just because "it's terrorism" is horribly wrong and stupid. Are you telling me you can't trust the IPCC?? They're not as trustworthy as anyone else involved in the investigations?
The decision not to prosecute individuals was made on the grounds of insufficent evidence
How the hell do you have insufficient evidence in an investigation of a police act???!?!? You're telling me officiers refused to testify? Their notes were burned? What?!???
The fact that there haven't been consequences for the people involved is totally pathetic. It was after the fallout from this incident that I lost all respect for British authorities. If their system is so screwed up to allow mistakes like this without repercussions, and if their most senior people think that there's nothing wrong and that nothing needs to be changed, and in fact react negatively to criticism.
The following seems like a much more sensible conclusion:
The three people killed had no explosives or detonators on them, although a timed car bomb was found later. They had been under surveillance for some time prior to the incident. The European Court of Human Rights held, by majority, that there was an opportunity to stop them at an earlier stage without having to shoot them and accordingly their right to life had been infringed.(IBID)
Remember, Europeans don't have a death penalty. AT ALL. If you object to a death penalty, how can you possibly accept the grotesque incompentent error made above?
Accidents and unfortunate circumstances are one thing. The above wasn't an accidental unfortunate circumstance. It was incompetence. People should be fired for incompetence.
Furthermore giving a soldier or a police officer orders to shoot to death someone when that person shouldn't be shot to death is NOT an excuse for carrying out the order. Orders from above has never been an acceptable reason for the deaths of innocents. Everyone in the military should know that, and it should be doubly apparent to everyone else.
The airliner cited is a 707, the largest airliner of the day, and only slightly smaller than the 757s that did strike.
2 2nov04.htm
And the study was of the plane striking the building, it made absolutely ZERO study on the effects of the fuel load burning inside the building along with the building conttents, and it did not forsee the heat insulating coatings around the steel being ripped off by the impact.
Wrong. The steel in question was rated ASTM E119.
And if you google for the name of the idiot that wrote that e-mail, he was FIRED by UL for LYING about everything he said in the e-mail!!!
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Kevin-R-Ryan
Note this choice quote - "UL vehemently denied last week that it ever certified the materials."
FROM THIS MOMENT ON you are not ever allowed to quote this stupid e-mail ever again. The guy was so incompetent that UL FIRED HIM outright. Do you hear me!! You're not ever allowed to quote this stupid fucking e-mail EVER AGAIN.
During the Madrid skyscraper fire
Yes, a DIFFERENT BUILDING with a different contruction and a different fire. That fire was a fire of the building's contents, not jet fuel. Nor was that building's steel members stripped of their heat resistent coatings by a jetliner impact. NOR where there a FULL 20 floors of building above the floors that were burning. NO SUPPRISE HERE.
yet, it collapsed sudddenly and completely into its own footprint,
AND WHY IS THIS SUPPRISING??? What in the world could possible make anything that big not fall down suddenly once it's failure starts? What in the world could possibly make anything that big fall down not in a largely down fashion?
List your candidates
Pools of fuel that have vaporized in an area not yet connected to the fire, that suddenly catch fire.
Aerosols of dust. (grain elevator explosions)
Air in sealed spaces being heated until the sealed spaces break open.
etc etc etc.
If the jets were nothing more than escaping air, how is it that they were filled with dust and smoke, despite the inconvenient fact that there was no damage whatsoever on those lower floors?
Take one upper floor of 10,000 tons of concrete, smack it down on the floor below it (FULL of furniture and crawl spaces and sheetrock, have you ever cut sheetrock? It's basically dust in solid form - and it's used to create all internal "rooms" in skyscrapers), and of course you're going to get a TON of dust.
And what the fuck are you doing talking about pyroclastic flows? Those are TOTALLY different things produced by erupting VOLCANOES - compared to a little bit of fucking dust from the WTC. Where the HELL do you get the idea that the air was turned into a pyroclastic mixture?
Your link to the idiot talking about "estimating energy required to form the dust clouds" is just COMPLETE bullshit!!! Dust doesn't need heat to spread. It's fucking dust. And if the entire building fell down, that means there's enough energy going around to raise an entire building as tall as it originally stood, more than enough needed to raise a little dust cloud.
either to expand the gases thermodynamically, or to vaporize moisture
NO GASSES NEEDED TO BE EXPANDED THERMODYNAMICALLY, it's a dry dust cloud. NO MOISTURE NEEDED TO BE VAPORIZED, dust clouds from falling concrete crushing sheetrock into dust clouds aren't made of water like cloud clouds up in the blue sky.
What kind of idiots look at the WTC dust clouds and start calculating how much heat it would take to vaporize water to form a cloud of the same size??? What kind of fucking morons are you guys!
I agree with everyone else, YOU ARE A FUCKING MORON.
What cave have you been hiding in the past few weeks?
And you know, you have this neat thing called the "intarweb" at your fingertips, it's really good for finding out about things you don't know about. If only you knew how to use it. (me I'm making that big reverse L on my forehead right now, and it's pointed at you).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_security
ffs
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Yeah no shit.
Dear sir:
Explain to me how the fuck prisons work any better if they're "secret"?
Explain to me again why you need to be tried and convicted in our triple-party judicial system in public by a jury of citizens with guaranteed access to legal representation, the right to cross-examine your accusers and see and challenge the evidence against you - all under the laws of the land, BUT why "your enemies" need to be tortured and tried in secret without knowing the evidence against them without access to a lawer and held indefinitely based on the arbitrary whim of who again?
WHERE THE FUCK AM I????
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> As can be seen by the Reichstag fire, it works nicely to bypass the governmental safeguards
Shit... you know... I'm no longer so comfortable living here in Canada - right next door to the future totalitarian USA. Cause you know they're going to invade their neighbours someday for a made up reason if they keep going the way they are.
And I'm a decidedly middle of the road non-paranoid kinda guy, support healthcare, supported the war in Iraq (because Sadaam is a nasty person), etc etc.
This isn't a good sign America, when you're neighbours suddenly start getting worried they're living beside a potentially-future nazi state.
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I'm with you on the survivability of the M1 tanks and their crews, however 120mm depleted uranium slugs are completely different beasts. There are numerous examples of Bradley's getting hit by *multiple* 120mm M1 rounds in the first gulf war, and everyone or almost everyone getting out alive. The DU slugs form a thin pencil jet of molten stuff - if you're not directly in it's path inside the vehicle, you'll survive with burns.
i /du_ii_tabh.htm
http://www.deploymentlink.osd.mil/du_library/du_i
So I wouldn't make that statment that "because it can survive this, it can survive IED's". They're entirely different beasts.
That being said, it doesn't take much to take a tank out of a battle and put it's crew outside the vehicle vulnerable to a second attack or even small arms fire. Throw the track off, the tank has to sit tight and wait for help/battle to die, or they get out to fix it and you can hit them again.
There are three different things here that we're all probably on agreement on in specific, but some of us don't care about situation one while others do.
- Can the tank and it's crew continue to fight
- Does the tank or it's surviving crew have to withdraw from battle
- How severe are the injuries
- How many crewmen die
Personally, I only care about the latter two. The former two would be important if we ever got involved in a BIG war, one where we have to kill 10 enemy tanks to each of our own lost to win (aka China).
> they have IEDs that nothing we have can defeat
You can always build one of something that we can't defeat. So that statement by itself is *useless*.
Can they build enough of them to make us quit or walk away, or not fight to begin with. Right now the answer is no. In 95 percent of engagements, the tank crews walk away unharmed. We don't care about the tanks themselves. They can't even build enough big enough IEDs to kill enough up-armoured Humvee crew members to make us quit after 3-4 years straight of this.
I don't care if once this year they managed to build a 1 TON truck bomb that can force a tank crew to abandon it's tank. Talk to me when they're detonating 10 of those a week.
We have no power over the wrongdoings of other people. The only wrong we always have the power and obligation to set right is that which we do ourselves
So we should disband all our local police forces? I mean if we don't have the obligation to set right the wrongs of a tyrranical dictator whose actions have killed millions, then what right do I have to have power over the wrongs of my neighbours?
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They need a new party named "The Land of the Free".
Or maybe two of them. One for the left leaning, one for the right leaning.
It's either that or a nice little civil war. With nukes.
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That's what I was doing for the past few years. It was so convenient to just go grab another external case and HDD. I ended up with a stack of 7 such external drives.
FOR GOD sakes do not buy the following external enclosures:
ME-320 USB2/FireWire External Enclosure
The fans get dusty and die on you (no warning sound or light) and/or the power supplies begin mis-behaving or going out of spec. I've had 5 of the 7 I bought KILL DRIVES as they quietly failed in some strange way. The drives don't just stop on their own, they start throwing tons of errors into the Windows Event Log and then a couple months latter start failing to access files.
The shop I bought them from slowly over the years is no longer carrying that line - way way too many customers reporting failures. The guy at the shop for some reason thinks it's a chipset problem, not PSU or capacitor issue.
We've got a couple of the all-metal (no fan) Brick-PSU types at work, seem to be okay so far, and the shop owner notes no big complains from customers yet (although he hasn't carried/sold them long enough yet to be certain - he's leery as they are actually made by the same company as the ME-320).
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> but I can have trouble understanding what someone is saying if the enviroment is noisy, whereas other people around me have no problems. Its wierd because I can hear the sound of the voices no problem, but my brain sometimes just can't work out the words.
I've had this problem for a few years now too - seems to have gotten slowly worse over the past couple years - I'm sure my friends are sick and tired of me asking "what"? Sometimes they don't repeat themselves any more. I'm also not so pleased that one guy insists on quietly saying whatever it is he has to say - I can barely ever hear him. He's a nice guy, maybe I should explain that I think I've got a touch of hearing loss and if he's talking in a bar or over other people's voices or 16 feet away, could he please speak a *touch* louder. It's interesting how it's always just a *tiny* bit that makes a difference. It must be his voice too - the pitch and tone of it and how loudly he talks compared to most people.
Anyways - your description of "hear the sound of the voices no problem, but brain just can't work out the words" strikes me very strongly as what I experience. And I can't figure out how other people can hear what they are saying...
It's only been in the past 3 months that I've started having persistent tinnitus. I've seen my doctor and am having an audiology test set up. So I guess I'll finally find out just wtf is going on... Maybe. Hearing related things aren't as definitive to figure out as other things. Could be any one of 20 things, none of which are easy to conclude... That kind of annoys me.
The thing that pisses me off royally is that I have NOT listened to loud music! I've almost never attended loud concerts. The times I have been to a loud concert, I would use earplugs or something. I've been to maybe one or two loud clubs a year - compared to other co-workers who go 20 times a year. I've listened to a lot of music through headphones but I *never* listened as loudly as others I pass in the street whose music I can hear clearly. When I hold my buds/earphones 6 inches away from my face, I can barely hear it, a foot in front of me the buds are silent.
I am the last person I would have expected to have had hearing loss or tinnitus based on my "loud sound exposure" levels.
I've wondered about the infrasound as I'm on the top 30th floor of a building and my windows/walls vibrate maddly around 3-15 Hz due to the machine room above (thick concrete, so I can't hear any of it). But extensive research on the internet does not show any link between infrasound and hearing loss. The first thing that excessive infrasound exposure causes is nausea and other physical symptoms, none of which I've had.
> By using this unstable molecule, the dye will break down as soon as it
> is agitated, as it is protected by the soap molecules. By all accounts
> it would probably break down into water and oxygen, and a bit of methane.
Break down into what? Absolutely no-one has indicated exactly what that means, except the original source of the story which talks about a string turning into a ring - doesn't sound like it's "dissolving into air and water".
By all accounts? Whose accounts? The fact that everyone says "it breaks down"? They're repeating simple language used in an unqualified way once before.
I'm not saying there's anything to worry about - I agree the dye chemist and the toy companies will test this to death - but your conclusion sounds completely specious.
> It is equally easy for me to put on a nice sharp-looking shirt a
> pair of slacks as it is to put a crummy t-shirt and pair of worn
> jeans.
Who the hell am I impressing when I sit in my FUCKING cube writing code? My co-workers? What the fuck does how "snazzy" I dress have anything to do with how well I do my job? Or what I'm worth?
Who the fuck are you to decide what's "sharp" and what's "crummy" anyways?
Why is it critical that I wear things that cost twice as much and wear out in 1/3rd the time?
Now if I'm scheduled to go do a demo on the 60th floor of the bank downtown - yeah, I'll wear a suit. But I piss on the people who are so caught up in "fashion" and shit that they have to always "look sharp" and shit.
This doesn't mean I'm wearing dirty clothes or even ugly clothes. I've got some sense. But I PITY the dumb bastards that have to wear such uncomfortable heavy multi-layered clothes while walking to work on an unbearably hot humid summer day.
Fuck you buddy.
> An apartment building that has a pool and sun-roof on top
Man you wouldn't BELIEVE how many buildings do not have ANY outdoor space on them. A *spectacular* view and no, you have to stay indoors. Balconies don't cut it, they are the first things to start looking shabby and you can't see the sky, only half of it - and you're surrounded by other balconies. Besides if I'm at work, why can't I go relax at lunch on the top of the building and enjoy the air and the view? Noooo, we're forced to go down to the crowded street level where there's a concrete plaza whose benches have all been removed to prevent people from "lounging about".
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I tell ya one thing that would keep me in the big city for the rest of my life. A spacious affordable tower-condo/apartment. Really spacious. An apartment building that has a pool and sun-roof on top. Fast elevators. Fast subway.
So why the fuck haven't engineers figured out how to mass manufacture concrete and buildings anyways? Why does a 700 square foot 1-small-bedroom apartment cost $250,000 CDN? For $300,000 I want to see 1500-2000 square feet. It's only concrete. What the hell is the problem? None of the rest of the overhead goes up. And I think a TON of the rest of the overhead is fixed - advertising, legal/planning with the city/boards, building the basement/foundation (man it takes them a while to do that).
I wonder if it isn't silly stupid zoning rules. I know they want to prevent too many people from living in a given land footprint - for good reasons too - because otherwise it would require too much infrastructure and clog the roads, etc etc. But I wonder if they haven't worded the restrictions wrong. I wonder if the restrictions are by "floorspace" instead of "occupants". That would just FUCKING suck.
Man, I gotta write some provincial politicians, boards, building companies, and my city councillor/mayor about these things. Get the zoning plans reviewed to see if they are effectively forcing companies to artificially restrict the sizes of apartments - worried that if they build 1500 square foot aparmtents that 6 people will live in them...
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I live in an apartment in the heart of the 5th biggest city in North America. I walk to work. I've made choices in my life that allow me to do this.
I wish I could buy an affordable house *and* walk to work. But the only affordable houses are 1 - 1.5 hours commute from here. Which sucks the big one. Who the hell wants to spend 2-3 hours a day commuting. But tons and tons of people do so, because they want a) a house, and b) a job they like.
But what forces companies to have their headquarters in the core of big-ass cities where they are "hard" to get to? Okay it's a natural progression from the olden days when cities weren't that dense, and you'd want to be near other businesses. But that was before telephones, before VOIP and $40 web-phones and modern systems. Right now most companies need to be in expensive centrally located cities like they need a hole in their head. My company's people spend 99% of their time dealing with people THOUSANDS of miles away. We sell our product WORLDWIDE, if sales reps or SE's want to see the customer, they have to get on airplanes.
The company could *easily* move the location 50 miles north, to a place where tons of us employees could get a nice affordable house within a 15 mile radius and only have a 20 minute commute to work. I think lots of companies could do this.
Funny thing is the provincial body that oversees development (reviews and hears objections to city zoning plans/rules) has been given the mission of "intensifying" the cities. I betcha that is FOR business, not at all in the interests of the general citizenry. Apartments in central Vancouver are getting as small as 300 square feet. That's not living space. That's a dog cage. That's not acceptable. I do not want to live my life in an apartment.
Yes yes you're worried about "urban sprawl". First of all as soon as the rest of the world gets itself worked up to 1st world status - the birth rates should level out to the point where sprawl will stop - because there won't be "more and more" people. And in any case the only reason people don't like "sprawl" is because it creates choked roads, because people can't buy a house close to work, because work is in the core of an ultra expensive city core. See where I'm going? That leads me to the only other reason people "don't like sprawl" - becuase the sprawl is concentrated around single areas, so you end up with 200 miles of concrete. If the sprawl was broken up with places of work distributed around - same land area, a house for everyone instead of apartments - just not all together, no one would care.
Take a look at a map of a place like Ontario. The sprawl is concentrated to within 40 miles of Lake Ontario. Northern Ontario is EMPTY. Okay it's a bit colder there. But it's no further north than a lot of the rest of Canada, and still further south than places like Sweden and Norway.
So - how the hell do we convince companies to start spreading out their sites a bit better? So we can all live in houses in nice little 50-250,000 person cities surrounded by countryside?
I guess the only real method we have of doing that - is to move. We go there and maybe the jobs will follow? Okay maybe you'll have to take a pay cut and get a job in a slightly different industry - but at least you'll be able to afford a house.
Either that or start talking about it with everyone that will listen, and maybe someday an exec will follow through.
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