And what is the population density in the areas where they are installing this $20/house fiber optic? Do they need to trench through miles of yards to get the lines there? And how much time and resources do they have to exert fighting the local dictators in each and every state/county before they can even begin? A straight "it costs $x vs $y" comparison without looking at all the factors is useless.
So, according to your theory, high-density cities like New York should have broadband on a par with Japan.
Of course, this overlooks the fact tht in Japan, just as in New York, it's MORE expensive to trench in a high-density area than in the exurbs, where you can just quickly string the cable along existing utility poles.
I agree with you 100% that GM and Chrysler need to go under, for the overall good of the economy in the long term. Keeping them alive is like preventing all forest fires - eventually, you get so much deadwood that, instead of a more-or-less controlled burn and renewal, you get catastrophic disasters (is there any other kind of disaster?:-)
Government intrusion, in the case of the language of packages, helps overcome a different problem - that of manufacturers or distributors who are pressured too much to look at this quarters' profits, instead of long-term growth. Now they actually *have* to do something that will help them in the long term, as it grows their market.
Besides, the majority of the population of Quebec speaks, reads, and writes french... what's so bad about including the extra language(s)? It's just a question of a new wrapper on the dvd case, a new instruction booklet, and some i18n work, much of which is probably already done, seeing as french is used in about 50 countries world-wide).
... and if the i18n stuff isn't done, all they have to do is the wrapper and the booklet - and that's been the case for years. So there really isn't much to see here. Tempest in a teapot - or should I say a storm in some poutine?
Canada has had bilingual labeling for decades. As Prime Minister Trudeau said at the time when someone complained about french on a box of cornflakes, "If you don't like it, turn the bloody box around!"
On a related note, Quebec does allow for importing of unilingual-labeled products in the event of an unforseeable shortage. This happened circa 1991 when the Hells Angels increased cocaine sales to the point where Preparation H was temporarily in short supply (coke-heads use it to "reduce swelling of sensitive tissues" - in the nose).
700 things wrong in the first few minutes of the TMI accident, causing the one audible alarm to ring continuously until it was shut off as useless. The one visual alarm blinked for days, indicating nothing useful. And the print queue was quickly flooded with 700 error reports followed by thousands of updates and corrections, making it almost instantly hours behind. The operators had to guess at what the problem was."
So the problem with Three Mile Island (TMI) was Too Much Information (TMI). But I didn't read the article, as that would have been TMI.
The scientist in me likes the ideas of NICE. If an operation neither extends life nor increases quality of life, then what's the point in the operation?
[_] Money, you ignorant clod!:-)
[_] Placebo effect (the doctor's doing something for you so at least you feel like you're being treated)
[_] Soylent green. We keep the donors live nowadays so we can harvest more...
[_] Remember how to somebody with a hammer, everything looks like a nail? To a srgeon, "If in doubt, cut it out!"
[_] I have the CowboyNeal Health Plan... I plan to save on medical expenses by dropping dead from an overdose of pizza.
Dr. Claudio de la Rocha, a chest surgeon who does all lung cancer operations in Timmins, has taken a stand. "Nobody goes under the knife without having quit smoking," he says, tapping his desk with a forefinger.
It's not known how many doctors reject tobacco users. A Winnipeg family physician, Dr. Frederick Ross, made headlines last year when he gave his patients three months to stop smoking or find another doctor.
And surgeons in Melbourne, Australia, have refused to give smokers heart or lung transplants, or life-saving bypass surgery, citing medical and moral grounds.
De la Rocha says that about one in five smokers coming to him are denied surgery; they're unwilling, or unable, to give up tobacco.
Some are outraged by the very suggestion that they butt out. De la Rocha says angry patients have answered him with a one-finger salute and slammed his door so hard, the diplomas on his wall rattled.
"I've had people where I thought, `My God, is this guy going to jump across the desk?'"
Others quietly leave his office, promising to try quitting, and they don't come back.
De la Rocha requires smokers to abandon their habit three to six weeks before a procedure, and he cites sound medical reasons for that.
Studies show that smokers don't do as well as non-smokers on the operating table. Tobacco users are prone to risky complications, such as lung infections and blood clots, resulting in heart attack or stroke.
Smokers also consume valuable health-care resources, de la Rocha says. If society is going to spend thousands of dollars to treat them, it's only fair to ask that they "take the first step" and quit their risky habit.
And there's worry that bad outcomes, aggravated by smoking, could tarnish a surgeon's reputation, de la Rocha says. In the United States, there's extensive monitoring of surgeons' performance, with "report cards" separating the profession's stars from its screw-ups. A trend toward increased accountability is building here, too, making smokers less desirable to have as patients.
Performance report cards "are coming down the pipe," de la Rocha says, elaborating on why he has rejected smokers. "If my reputation is on the line, it stands to reason I would take that step."
According to the Ontario Medical Association, he is well within his rights.
The stop-smoking ultimatum "could be a reasonable thing to say," says Dr. Ted Boadway, executive director of health policy for the OMA and a family physician for 13 years. "You have to look at the risks involved, and every surgeon has to make a decision."
Boadway says he isn't aware of other Ontario doctors refusing to treat smokers, but he has personally dropped patients because they were addicted to drugs or alcohol.
Their problems were "insoluble as long as they continued their behaviour," he says. "You put a huge amount of effort into these folks. And every doctor has their breaking point."
Doctors are free to drop smokers from their patient list as long as they steer them toward appropriate care from some other source, says Dr. Graeme Cunningham, head of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.
Doctors ending their relationship with a patient need to give the departing person "a menu of choices," he says. This could be as simple as a list of other doctors expert in treating a patient's particular disease, or hospitals where help is available.
There's no requirement to actually find another doctor for a patient who is sent away, and no policy on whether smokers should be denied treatment because of their addiction.
You're either part of the problem, or part of the solution.
Yes, but back in the late 80's I dealt with some German source code. 14 syllable variable names are ridiculous;-} (OK, they're ridiculous when people write them in English too)
Are 14-syllable function names any better? Was java a plot from "the boys in brazil?" Enquiring minds want to know (no, really, we don't:-).
I do pour (i=0 vers i=10,++i) { Imprimer "Je parle francais" } You insensible mangeur d'hamburger!;-)
It's "mangeur d'hot-dog" you insensitive clod!
For the record, it literally translates as "hot-dog eater", and could be interpreted as meaning someone is low-class (they prefer hotdogs to real food) - though it also has a secondary meaning - a cocksucker. Maybe it's the latter usage that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau meant when referring to Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa? There certainly was no love lost between them.
For the record, there's no demand for programming in french. Back in the bad old days of interpreted BASIC, I wrote a program to replace the tokens in-memory so that people could program in french, and programs written in english would "automagically" have all the keywords in french. The french thought it was a cute trick, but with no practical use.
and wasn't there a push in Quebec a few years ago to try to make Chinese restaurants use French signs?
Since the Office de la langue francais didn't have any inspectors who can read "Chinese" (like there's just one language that all asians speak...:-), the restaurants said that their signs were in french, using "Chinese letters."
They bought it.
I would have told them "Phoc Hiu", but that's because they're stupid enough to believe they can control the language of web sites, when telecommunications is a federal-only jurisdiction.
I have no problem with doing i18n - I just, like most sane people, don't like being told I *have* to do it by some pinhead...
1. I know more than one person who has had a bad experience visiting Quebec.
And I'm sure your momma burned the cookies at least once - does that suddenly make you claim that ALL cookies are evil? Lots of people have had bad experiences visiting every country, province or state, or city. Irrelevant. Totally irrelevant. Anecdotal evidence isn't data.
1a. One such person had a negative view of ALL CANADIANS because of it.
Gee, maybe the rest of the world should have a negative view of all Americans because of George Bush. Or all Japanese because of Sony DRM. Or all Germans because of Hitler. Or all Italians because of the Pope's retarded comments on condoms.
If they generalize all Canadians because of it, they have a bigger problem...
2. I myself have had bad experiences with french people (being someone who does not frequently have problems with people)
And you haven't had bad experiences with non-frech people? The part of your sentence in parenthesis says otherwise. So, why do you cut others slack, but not the french? Sounds like it's not just "your friend" who has problems with stereotyping people.
3. They show no interest in being helpful, negotiable, or useful in any sort of political undertaking.
Really? Despite the fact that for the majority of its' existence, the Prime Minister of Canada has been a French-Canadian? Are you test-driving Steve Job's RDF?
4. They continue to take from the rest of Canada and give little in return.
[citation needed] BTW, why not take a few shots at the Atlantic Provinces while you're at it... or is it only Quebec that you bash because "they're french."
5. Restriction the rights of non-french-people in "their" province.
Check your history. Manitoba and Ontario did the same thing to their french minority. BC did the same thing to their asian minority. There's ignorance everywhere... but, unlike *certain* other provinces, at no time did Quebec say that the english can't have their own government-funded schools.
All they're asking is that stuff that's sold be available in both languages if possible. Something that any manufacturer, looking out for their own best interests, would want to do anyway, right? This just helps overcome a certain amount of corporate inertia (companies don't necessarily act in their own best long-term financial interest - just look at GM and Chrysler - so sometimes they need a bit of prodding).
And for all the non-canadians looking in... not all market regulation is "evil." How many other countries haven't had to bail out a single bank? For the record, we've had 2 small bank failures in the last 80 years - and none during the Great Depression. And for most of that time, the Prime Minister was french...
And for the record, no, I'm not french. I'm 100% english... but my daughters are both, and that's about as "relevant" as skin colour or anything else; in other words, not at all. This whole thing is not an "english vs. french" thing, despite some old farts wanting to make it look like that. They need to move on. This is not the 20th century any more.
The third world could be carpet bombed with condoms and it wouldn't stop them from having babies. It's not a lack of condoms that is causing this problem.
Racist, ethnocentric, ignorant, and totally moronic comments like that... sure you're not running for Pope? Access to birth control and birth control information, social acceptance of birth control as being both a right and a duty... you sure you want to claim that "those people can't learn that." They might not be as ignorant as your average Jebus-lander.
You take 1 thing the Pope says and ignore the 99 other things that come with it (ex. abstinence before marriage). Those 99 other things are more effective at reducing births and the spread of AIDS then condom use could ever approach.
Abstinence is unrealistic, abnormal, and doesn't work. Ask Gran'ma Sarah Palin.
Or didn't you get the memo that the Bush states have a higher teen pregnancy rate?
Oh. and it's not just AIDS - there's a whole bunch of diseases out there... or are you going to say that married couples where one partner if infected with an uncurable but controllable STD should practice abstinence rather than have access to, and use, a condom?
How is it irrational to point out that contraception will, over time, reduce the population by a few billion? We already have less-than-zero "growth" in much of the world (the "post-christian" countries). Or do you think it's okay to encourage people to have many children, to discourage them from practicing safe sex, and to indoctrinate them into believing that anyone who does so should be treated as a social outcast?
Just like Hitler, Herr Fuhrer Pope Ratzinger has an agenda to push that is NOT in the best interests of the people he's foisting it on - or of the rest of the planet. Also, contrary to what both another poster and the Pope claimed, condoms, wehn used properly, have a 97% per annum success rate. That's pretty close to the pill's 98% success rate - and the pill doesn't prevent STDs.
Preventing a few billion from being born into poverty by effective contraception, and getting the planet to get below ZPG isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, being a Nazi. What the Pope did was. It's end effect is more people, more disease, and more poverty.
So help fight global warming by popping a cool one.
Umm...no! By your own logic, it's only undrunk beer that helps. How about filling your basement with unopened beer and selling the carbon credits?
Alcohol causes the capillaries to dilate, allowing heat to dissipate easier. There's less CO2 released from drinking the beer than from producing the energy to air-condition the house, so save energy - have a few beers. (like you NEED a reason to drink nowadays?)
Let me guess... you're American, and you drink Bud Lite?
No and no.
Though I admit I *did* try a Budweiser once, a LONG time ago. One mouthful. Fortunately, we were outside at the time, so I didn't have to curb my instinctive reaction to spit it out. I thought there was something wrong with it, but apparently it's *supposed* to taste like that... I guess if you can get used to the taste of "New Coke", you can drink almost anything.
ou seems to be unaware what hops are. They are plants, thus their carbon is temporarily fixed from the atmosphere, you are right there. But they do not constitute the main ingredient, which is water and malted grain (barley or sometimes wheat).
Please re-read my post:-) I've highlighted the relevant part:
It's not like the CO2 being released by the yeast came from fossil fuels... it came from hops and grains
Hops were in the news a few years ago because their price skyrocketed, forcing beer prices up. Though it's reported that, when President Bush was informed of this in an economic report, he said "Beer prices going up? Let them drink champaign."
If he had really wanted to put two seconds' thought into it, he would have gotten something for her dogs... either the corgis or the labs. She's absolutely nuts over her corgis (same as every dog lover:-)
After all, would ANY government allow one of their top people to accept an electronic gift without it being checked to make sure it's not bugged? That would be a serious security lapse.
Surely it shouldn't be a cool one - as it is likely that would have required some kind of refrigeration to reach that perfect temperature. So we should all drink tasty ale at room temperature.
Warm beer? You scoundrel! Looks like piss, tastes like piss.
Now, which uses less energy - chilling down the beer, and you grab a cold one to cool off, or chilling down the whole house instead?
Slashdot Mirror
Don't you have telephone poles in America?
Q: Who was Alexander Graham Bell Kowalski?
A: The first telephone poll !
So, according to your theory, high-density cities like New York should have broadband on a par with Japan.
Of course, this overlooks the fact tht in Japan, just as in New York, it's MORE expensive to trench in a high-density area than in the exurbs, where you can just quickly string the cable along existing utility poles.
I agree with you 100% that GM and Chrysler need to go under, for the overall good of the economy in the long term. Keeping them alive is like preventing all forest fires - eventually, you get so much deadwood that, instead of a more-or-less controlled burn and renewal, you get catastrophic disasters (is there any other kind of disaster? :-)
Government intrusion, in the case of the language of packages, helps overcome a different problem - that of manufacturers or distributors who are pressured too much to look at this quarters' profits, instead of long-term growth. Now they actually *have* to do something that will help them in the long term, as it grows their market.
Besides, the majority of the population of Quebec speaks, reads, and writes french ... what's so bad about including the extra language(s)? It's just a question of a new wrapper on the dvd case, a new instruction booklet, and some i18n work, much of which is probably already done, seeing as french is used in about 50 countries world-wide).
Canada has had bilingual labeling for decades. As Prime Minister Trudeau said at the time when someone complained about french on a box of cornflakes, "If you don't like it, turn the bloody box around!"
On a related note, Quebec does allow for importing of unilingual-labeled products in the event of an unforseeable shortage. This happened circa 1991 when the Hells Angels increased cocaine sales to the point where Preparation H was temporarily in short supply (coke-heads use it to "reduce swelling of sensitive tissues" - in the nose).
So the problem with Three Mile Island (TMI) was Too Much Information (TMI). But I didn't read the article, as that would have been TMI.
[_] Money, you ignorant clod! :-)
...
... I plan to save on medical expenses by dropping dead from an overdose of pizza.
[_] Placebo effect (the doctor's doing something for you so at least you feel like you're being treated)
[_] Soylent green. We keep the donors live nowadays so we can harvest more
[_] Remember how to somebody with a hammer, everything looks like a nail? To a srgeon, "If in doubt, cut it out!"
[_] I have the CowboyNeal Health Plan
Why not stop treating heart and lung cancer patients if they're unwilling to stop smoking?
You're either part of the problem, or part of the solution.
I could never understand their holding "pure laine" as being so special ... after all ...
Q: Where do you get virgin wool?
A: Ugly sheep.
U = 1! I h8 U mk I uz ++ abc! U = I msg.. CA! CA!
fxd 4 U!
Are 14-syllable function names any better? Was java a plot from "the boys in brazil?" Enquiring minds want to know (no, really, we don't :-).
It's "mangeur d'hot-dog" you insensitive clod!
For the record, it literally translates as "hot-dog eater", and could be interpreted as meaning someone is low-class (they prefer hotdogs to real food) - though it also has a secondary meaning - a cocksucker. Maybe it's the latter usage that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau meant when referring to Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa? There certainly was no love lost between them.
For the record, there's no demand for programming in french. Back in the bad old days of interpreted BASIC, I wrote a program to replace the tokens in-memory so that people could program in french, and programs written in english would "automagically" have all the keywords in french. The french thought it was a cute trick, but with no practical use.
Since the Office de la langue francais didn't have any inspectors who can read "Chinese" (like there's just one language that all asians speak ... :-), the restaurants said that their signs were in french, using "Chinese letters."
They bought it.
I would have told them "Phoc Hiu", but that's because they're stupid enough to believe they can control the language of web sites, when telecommunications is a federal-only jurisdiction.
I have no problem with doing i18n - I just, like most sane people, don't like being told I *have* to do it by some pinhead ...
And I'm sure your momma burned the cookies at least once - does that suddenly make you claim that ALL cookies are evil? Lots of people have had bad experiences visiting every country, province or state, or city. Irrelevant. Totally irrelevant. Anecdotal evidence isn't data.
Gee, maybe the rest of the world should have a negative view of all Americans because of George Bush. Or all Japanese because of Sony DRM. Or all Germans because of Hitler. Or all Italians because of the Pope's retarded comments on condoms.
If they generalize all Canadians because of it, they have a bigger problem ...
And you haven't had bad experiences with non-frech people? The part of your sentence in parenthesis says otherwise. So, why do you cut others slack, but not the french? Sounds like it's not just "your friend" who has problems with stereotyping people.
Really? Despite the fact that for the majority of its' existence, the Prime Minister of Canada has been a French-Canadian? Are you test-driving Steve Job's RDF?
[citation needed] BTW, why not take a few shots at the Atlantic Provinces while you're at it ... or is it only Quebec that you bash because "they're french."
Check your history. Manitoba and Ontario did the same thing to their french minority. BC did the same thing to their asian minority. There's ignorance everywhere ... but, unlike *certain* other provinces, at no time did Quebec say that the english can't have their own government-funded schools.
All they're asking is that stuff that's sold be available in both languages if possible. Something that any manufacturer, looking out for their own best interests, would want to do anyway, right? This just helps overcome a certain amount of corporate inertia (companies don't necessarily act in their own best long-term financial interest - just look at GM and Chrysler - so sometimes they need a bit of prodding).
And for all the non-canadians looking in ... not all market regulation is "evil." How many other countries haven't had to bail out a single bank? For the record, we've had 2 small bank failures in the last 80 years - and none during the Great Depression. And for most of that time, the Prime Minister was french ...
And for the record, no, I'm not french. I'm 100% english ... but my daughters are both, and that's about as "relevant" as skin colour or anything else; in other words, not at all. This whole thing is not an "english vs. french" thing, despite some old farts wanting to make it look like that. They need to move on. This is not the 20th century any more.
Racist, ethnocentric, ignorant, and totally moronic comments like that ... sure you're not running for Pope? Access to birth control and birth control information, social acceptance of birth control as being both a right and a duty ... you sure you want to claim that "those people can't learn that." They might not be as ignorant as your average Jebus-lander.
Abstinence is unrealistic, abnormal, and doesn't work. Ask Gran'ma Sarah Palin.
Or didn't you get the memo that the Bush states have a higher teen pregnancy rate?
Oh. and it's not just AIDS - there's a whole bunch of diseases out there ... or are you going to say that married couples where one partner if infected with an uncurable but controllable STD should practice abstinence rather than have access to, and use, a condom?
Just like Hitler, Herr Fuhrer Pope Ratzinger has an agenda to push that is NOT in the best interests of the people he's foisting it on - or of the rest of the planet. Also, contrary to what both another poster and the Pope claimed, condoms, wehn used properly, have a 97% per annum success rate. That's pretty close to the pill's 98% success rate - and the pill doesn't prevent STDs.
When used as directed, condoms have an annual failure rate of 3%, and they're just as effective at preventing the transmission of HIV. Of course, this could just be propaganda from Columbia University - how DARE they disagree with Herr Fuhrer Pope Ratzinger?
Preventing a few billion from being born into poverty by effective contraception, and getting the planet to get below ZPG isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, being a Nazi. What the Pope did was. It's end effect is more people, more disease, and more poverty.
Alcohol causes the capillaries to dilate, allowing heat to dissipate easier. There's less CO2 released from drinking the beer than from producing the energy to air-condition the house, so save energy - have a few beers. (like you NEED a reason to drink nowadays?)
No and no.
Though I admit I *did* try a Budweiser once, a LONG time ago. One mouthful. Fortunately, we were outside at the time, so I didn't have to curb my instinctive reaction to spit it out. I thought there was something wrong with it, but apparently it's *supposed* to taste like that ... I guess if you can get used to the taste of "New Coke", you can drink almost anything.
I have no mouth and I must scream! you ignorant clod :-
Please re-read my post :-) I've highlighted the relevant part:
Hops were in the news a few years ago because their price skyrocketed, forcing beer prices up. Though it's reported that, when President Bush was informed of this in an economic report, he said "Beer prices going up? Let them drink champaign."
People still pay extra for players that enforce regions, and give that "Operation Not Permitted" crap when you want to skip through the menus?\
I was surprised the first time I saw that ... glad I'm boycotting Sony.
If he had really wanted to put two seconds' thought into it, he would have gotten something for her dogs ... either the corgis or the labs. She's absolutely nuts over her corgis (same as every dog lover :-)
After all, would ANY government allow one of their top people to accept an electronic gift without it being checked to make sure it's not bugged? That would be a serious security lapse.
Warm beer? You scoundrel! Looks like piss, tastes like piss.
Now, which uses less energy - chilling down the beer, and you grab a cold one to cool off, or chilling down the whole house instead?