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User: Sj0

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  1. Re:This is not new. on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    What's your trade?

  2. Re:long overdue on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    These idiots are invariably young Americans of the left-liberal persuasion.

    This statement reminds me of those college kids in Borat. If you didn't bother listening to their views, you'd assume they're left-liberal, right?

    The left/right liberal/conservative false dichotomy is dangerous.

  3. Re:Meetings aren't for that... on Meetings Make You Dumber · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I follow the idea that consensus so we can get to resolutely getting the job done is more important than having the best solution.

    Something like this happened a while ago: I was in a meeting with a planner and another engineer, and we were discussing the best way to convert a control loop with a VFD (AC Motor Controller) over to DeltaV. I thought the best solution would be to use the infastructure that existed and had a start/stop station attached to the existing VFD. Then we'd program the VFD to ignore the start/stop inputs for its own control, but then have an RS-232 to modbus plus converter grab the inputs and write to the outputs through the delta-V, allowing us to have a start/stop implemented in the DCS without running a new set of wires(We'd have a seperate E-Stop wired in, obviously). There were quite a few doubts as to whether we could make it work, and we already did it another way elsewhere in the mill, so I decided to agree with the others, because it was more important that we had a solution than it be the best one.

  4. Re:It has always been this way going to the States on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    I think both countries have a serious problem where people don't really know what the laws are anyway. Kids ought to be given a copy of the current legislation, and part of any amendment ought to be sending a copy of that amendment to every household in the country, to be pasted into the family lawbook. Otherwise, you'll get situations like now where nobody knows the law, and if nobody knows the law, how can they be the people who choose who makes the laws? How can they follow the laws?

  5. Re:Does it include accusations and non-convictions on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    Actually, our police are competent, and manage to stop terrorism the way you used to stop terrorism -- by being police and investigating possibly dangerous people and situations. It's the yanks who love running around killing innocent people in wars, thus showing that their leadership has never read Sun Tzu, and thus never had to understand the concept of winning the victory before trying to win battles.

  6. Re:How dare we! on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    I'm happy to see that I'm not the only person on earth who understands the concept of duty. As long as we've got debt, we cannot be overtaxed if we're paying back those debts. If you want to talk about 'the children' while ignoring that financial analysts are predicting the economic collapse of the US within out lifetime due to the reckless and irresponsible budget deficits.

    Frankly, I'm Canadian, and I'm quite young, but I'm a professional in my field. I pay fairly high taxes, about 1200/mo. I don't resent the fact that I'm paying back debt, I'm proud to be part of a nation whose leadership is responsible enough to keep a balanced budget. I resent the idea that if we keep paying back the debt at the rate we have been, about 100 billion per decade, my kids are going to be the ones paying back the irresponsible spending of my parents and grandparents. What we need is more people to realize that government money isn't free money. I want to live in a country where my children won't be burdened by the weight of my parents. I greatly resent the people who complain now about 'over-taxation', because they're mostly people who got to live through the massive budget deficits of the 80s, and thus lived off the backs of me and my kids.

  7. Re:Poetic Justice on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    I'm thinking that the question of whether the US goes to war with Iran will be scrutinized very closely. I'm curious to see if the lesson that the Democrats SHOULD have learned, that a party ought to rule the country instead ignoring the country and trying to rule the world.

  8. Re:Canada is just giving it back. on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    Don't do the crime if you can't handle the consequences. I can't afford a speeding ticket, so I don't speed. I can't afford a criminal conviction, so I don't commit crimes which could cause me to be convicted of a criminal offence.

    It's not as if we're talking about youth here. Young offenders under 18 are exempt from this rule. If you're over 18 and decide to steal from a store, You're goddamned right you're an unscrupulous person. Stealing is wrong. If you don't like it, go get laughed out of your congressman's office. Don't complain to us.

  9. Re:Opinion from an Immigration Officer on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    gc.ca is the government of Canada website. I'm pretty sure they're citizens. I mean, outsourcing to India is pretty bad, but I don't think it's that bad yet.

  10. Re:Actually it depends on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    You know, I'd love to accept the characterizations of Canadians as wonderful and Americans as a truism, but the truth is, politicians and regular people are two different sets of people. Some people voted for Bush -- twice. I paid money for premium gasoline to stick in 25 year old truck -- twice. It doesn't mean I'd pay for the more expensive gasoline a third time, and it doesn't say anything about me that I did so. Similarly, it doesn't mean those people would vote for Bush a third time, nor that they're a certain kind of person for doing so.

    Really, the only thing that says anything about a person is who that person is -- what sort of person he or she is. A good friend of mine is a gay American studying theatre in Canada. I could make all sorts of stereotypes and such, and they'd all be wrong. It's a sorting trick our minds use to try to understand an infinitely complex world, nothing more.

  11. Re:Exactly. This isn't really about data mining. on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    The charter of rights and freedoms would specifically disallow such a law, thankfully.

    Pseudo-conservatives like Bush want to shit on the charter. Please don't join him in this rhetoric. People ought not to be discriminated against due to political affiliation.

  12. Re:Exactly. This isn't really about data mining. on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    Arar isn't very brown looking, if it's the guy I'm thinking of. My lineage is Irish/Prussian/French, and I'd have issues discerning him from me on the basis of skin colour.

  13. Re:Exactly. This isn't really about data mining. on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    Actually, the rhetoric coming from the US does specifically target Canada.

  14. Re:Exactly. This isn't really about data mining. on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    Canadians aren't fucking morons, that's why. Canada is the United States' largest trading partner, and the United States has no respect for the rule of law, so every time we don't play their paranoid little games, they decide "Oops! Look! We just accidentally put an illegal tariff on one of your products! Oh my! I hope we don't put unparalleled border controls in place to restrict trade further!"

    The American Government also doesn't care about their economy, as shown by their routine 500 billion dollar budget defects. Crippling US domestic oil supply by fucking with the border only plays into their irresponsible hands.

  15. Re:Exactly. This isn't really about data mining. on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    Arar wasn't the only one who was deported by the US in that way. There have been quite a few similar stories in the news in recent years.

  16. Re:crossing the US, Canadian border on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    That's probably because Canadian authorities are reasonably competent and seem to catch terrorists while they're getting ready to do something, rather than act all suprised and demand new laws they can also ignore.

  17. Re:Canada is just giving it back. on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    What are you talking about? This is the program doing exactly what it's designed to do: Stop ex-convicts at the border. The fact that you guys didn't think out your new "Oh my god! Canada is a threat! We've got to clamp down on the border!!" paranoid ostensible security is nobody's fault but your own.

  18. Re:Funny on Canadian Border Tightens Due to Info Sharing · · Score: 1

    The Americans have only themselves to blame. It's their paranoid new border controls that are to blame for this. Now the controls are doing exactly what they're designed to do, and as usual, short-sighted Americans are likely to run out and blame everyone but themselves for the problem.

  19. Re:Stop bullying IN the school first! on States Seek Laws to Curb Online Bullying · · Score: 1

    It was social pressure that compelled you not to ask if you could leave.

    It's never social pressure. Trust me, there were many times back in school where they had some stupid gathering for something I couldn't care about, and basically, no matter what we were doing, not going would lead to being punished by the school.

    If that were the situation, and that I'd be punished in any scenario, either by being forced to be a cog in their ridiculous machine or by actually being punished, I'd use the opportunity to laugh. I'd laugh and laugh and laugh until my knees gave way and I was pounding the ground. I'd laugh and point and make it obvious to all who attended that this pathetic piece of human trash was not a hero, and if they tried anything even remotely similar, they'd be jeered and pointed at and laughed at, and given no respect, even in the afterlife.

    I might be punished, but at least I'd be punished with a conscience cleaner than a vacuum.

  20. Meetings aren't for that... on Meetings Make You Dumber · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The primary purpose of meetings is to achieve consensus or to efficiently communicate information to the people who need it, not to be creative. The rest of your time on the job is the time to think of ways to effectively solve a problem. A meeting is for taking those ideas and throwing them out there, and seeing whose idea sticks.

    Honestly, if a group of supposedly well-educated people couldn't think of a solution to a problem on their own, multiplying their inability won't magically make 0+0+0=1

  21. Re:Stop bullying IN the school first! on States Seek Laws to Curb Online Bullying · · Score: 1

    Don't bother stopping bullying. The people like us, the people who will run the world, we need to be shown the alternative, that unless we fight for victory instead of fighting battles we'll end up like those people.

    The tragedy in the end isn't one for those who are picked on. It's for those who bully, because they are at the prime of their life, and they'll never have the same power or freedome ever again.

  22. Re:And this time it will be the same. on States Seek Laws to Curb Online Bullying · · Score: 1

    When I was younger, I was bullied by other kids. These things happen. At the time I thought the world was unfair, that I hadn't done anything to provoke them. I thought I could never find a way to live.

    Years later, I finally realized that those people, who I hated so much at the time, were just like me. I learned to 'play the crowd' and become a more social human being. Suddenly, life wasn't so hard any more. Equality meant that even when they exerted their will upon me, I still needed to allow myself to relinquish my own will and accept their greater power.

    On the other hand, Teachers and administrators don't have equality with students. They've got all sorts of interesting legal rights and responsibilities that are engraved into law. For example, when an administrator or teacher is accused of a crime, they're entitled to an impartial jury of their peers. When a student is accused of breaking the rules, their accuser is often judge, jury, and executioner. Often, a child will be treated differently based on who their parents are instead of the person they are, for example.

    I don't demand protection against my peers. In a world where a group of people I've got no prior relationship with are given utter control over me, I do demand protection from them, and I demand that all children be allowed to learn the lessons of justice and democracy early on, instead of living under the totalitarian and arbitrary regime.

    College was beautiful to me, actually. There are rules, and there are consequences for breaking the rules, but there is no need to rule over the students.

  23. Re:The killer stat on January Game Sales Explode, Wii Dominates · · Score: 1

    How often do you buy a new TV set? Mine is from 1999, and I don't intend to replace it until it dies.

    But hey, act superior to the 'luddite' realists. Don't worry, your VideoCD player is totally future proof!

  24. Re:It's a question of misplaced priorities. on IT Departments Fear Growing Expertise of Users · · Score: 1

    Yes!!! Then....The secretary can steal her own password! MWAHAHAHAHAHA! It's so genius my head would explode if I even began to know what I was talking about!

  25. Re:Vista just makes good use of.. on 4 GB May Be Vista's RAM Sweet Spot · · Score: 1

    In the past, I've written some really smart and really cool optimizations that take everything into account and were really awesome. In the end, they were totally awesome, amazingly intelligent, and as ornate and intricate as a music box, and my code ran faster without it.

    It would be one thing if a modern PC was always on the threshold of the memory limits requiring actual code to be swapped out, but what seems to happen instead is things associated with what you're running get swapped out to make room for more cache, and all the dicking around with the hard drive results in a slower user experience than if it never even tried to swap things out until the system was actually low on memory.

    Personally, I've got a gig of memory, and I don't use any applications that need anywhere near a gig of memory. At work, I've got 512MB of memory, and the only time I use it all up is when I do something crazy like open up an entire directory of CAD files. Despite that, I've got to sit around and wait at times for the operating system to finish throwing executable data that's part of something I actually use into swap to paradoxically make more room for cache so something that I might run can be loaded into memory.