To add to your excellent link, may I also add a link to a recent study published by the national academies of sciences in the US that indicates nearly 18,000 people die in the USA every year becuase they lack adequate medical insurance. Canada may have some problems with its socialized medical system, but it is nowhere near as bad as the US system.
FWIW, the CN Tower is not the worlds tallest structure, it is the worlds tallest free standing structure. There are towers that are taller, but they are held up by cables.
And you can put your order in today! Sure it looks geeky, but just imagine the look on the faces of every ricer, porsche, ferrari and viper driver as you leave them behind at the stoplight! More info here.
We should fund research into cloning of other animals before we attempt it with people.
Why should it be ethical to do this to animals, but not humans? If we clone humans with altered (or nonexistent) higher nervous systems why shouldn't we be allowed to experiment on them?
How is using an animal like a great ape morally any different from making and using a brainless human? The only difference is the genetic information, which is 98+% the same anyway.
The Canadian company who built this new robotic arm is using a space-hardened 386/387 system with all custom software, including the operating system.
There is no mention what OS the thinkpad in the picture is running. For all we know that might be the "server" they are talking about...
http://www.mdrobotics.ca/rws.htm
I think it was a Varley short story that I recall where the world is run by a single massive conscious AI that takes care of all of our information needs and is SO GOOD at being a "user interface" that most people treat it as their best friend. Anyway, the thing eventually becomes depressed and by subtlely manipulating people makes them kill themselves. Cool story. Read it like 10 years ago so I don't recall exactly what it was...
I once met a professor of compsci at the university of waterloo who wrote some Java software for doing this kind of thing. We discussed using his software to analyze a very large software system I was working on at the time (IBM DB2 UDB). He has a web page with some code. Although they appear dated, you may also want to check out his student reports on the architecture of Linux (done using his tool, I would imagine).
Edward De Bono's 3 SPOT game. Here is a quote from the game description:
"The object is to score 12 points provided that the other player scores at least 6 points - if the other player scores less than six points then the player reaching 12 points is the loser! Whereas in most games the person scoring the highest number of points is the winner in the 3 Spot game the 'winner' can be the 'loser'.
Actually Vancouver has about 5 months of rain and mild temperatures in the winter, and then 7 months of glorious, sunny, days! Right now, Toronto is sitting at a dozen or so degrees below zero and three feet of snow, but on new years day I went down to the beach here in Van without a jacket and soaked up some sunshine... ;
Who moderated that post up? The postal service is fantastic in Canada. I have never had a letter take more than a couple of days. Those PO boxes are not there because Canada Post takes a long time to deliver mail, there are being used to buy goods from the US for which one MUST supply a US address, and probably to avoid paying duty or taxes.
The mandatory car insurance thing is somewhat true, but I drive a little easier knowing everyone around me is INSURED, at least.
As for health care, there is an article from the July/August Washington Monthly titled "Canada's Burning", that very nicely clears up the (mostly American) mythology about Canada's nationalized health care system. Unfortunately the article is no longer freely available online, but here is a choice quote:
Like Pearlstein and Brooke, Amos forgot to place American and Canadian
performance in a comparative context. She failed to tell her audience (or did
not know) that Canada insured 100 percent of its citizens for $2,250 per
person in 1998 while the United States expended $4,270 per person insuring
only 84 percent of our citizens. This oversight was convenient. One would
look rather foolish asserting that Canada's medical care costs half what ours
does and insures everyone, but is, nonetheless, "inefficient."
I once met a girl who had a condition known as "synaesthesia". It's the kind of condition geeks dream about and design computers to simulate (ie: the visualization plugins on xmms and winamp...)
ROTFLMAO! You'd expect more from someone on/. You might as well claim Linux is a communist plot too, bud!
For a succinct and well written debunking of the usual American anti-health-care propoganda, please refer to this excellent article in the Washington Monthly. A quick quote to get you interested:
Like Pearlstein and Brooke, Amos forgot to place American and Canadian performance in a comparative context. She failed to tell her audience (or did not know) that Canada insured 100 percent of its citizens for $2,250 per person in l998 while the United States expended $4,270 per person insuring only 84 percent of our citizens. This oversight was convenient. One would look rather foolish asserting that Canada's medical care costs half what ours does and insures everyone, but is, nonetheless, "inefficient."
Anyone want to join my CTWM republic? I am taking memberships now. The price schedule is as follows:
"Right to code" Membership: $1,000,000 US
Gold Membership: $100,000 US
Silver Membership: $50,000 US
Bronze Membership: $10,000 US
Regular Membership: $10 Canadian
Unfashionable Membership: free
Sure it sounds like a lot of money, but hey as we all know CTWM is the one true desktop. Those bloated KDE and GNOME products simply don't match the power and speed of a well configured CTWM! So join IBM, Microsoft and Apple in supporting the CTWM REPUBLIC!(*).
(*) this particular sentence is a lie, the rest is true...mostly... what is definitely true is that I personally prefer CTWM to all those other inferior desktop systems
Re:How does AFS compare with Coda?
on
IBM Releases AFS
·
· Score: 1
Here is what I know of the two after being an AFS user and once looking into CODA for my home lan:
- AFS is relatively bug free and stable, while CODA is still an alpha/beta quality product that has plenty of disclaimers about losing data.
- AFS is well documented and somewhat easy to use, while I personally had a tough time figuring out anything whatsoever about CODA.
-AFS supports multiple "cells", while last I checked CODA supported one.
- I think AFS is generally targetted at large installations (for example nearly all of IBM uses it) while CODA is intended for smaller ones.
- CODA supports "disconnected operation", while AFS dies even if you just have a temporary network glitch.
If any of this is now inaccurate, please feel free to correct me, or mod me down to flamebait.
"Well, once again my friend, we find that science is a two-headed beast. One head is nice, it gives us aspirin and other modern conveniences,...but the other head of science is bad! Oh beware the other head of science, Arthur, it bites!" - The Tick
I love how people find evil in every action IBM ever does. *sigh* I suppose the same thing will happen in 20 years when Microsoft is "just another company".
Ayway, if IBM could gain a monopoly in services for an Open Source software industry, that would be quite the feat! And if the source is open, why the hell would it "run best" on AIX only? Have you ever actually USED the product? If anything, it currently "runs best" on NT.
IBM is still a company,and it still needs to make money. If IBM doesn't encourage people to buy more IBM hardware, what possible reason could IBM have to release any software ever?
I, for one, don't use either system. They are both bloated and ugly peices of software. The notion of "icons" and a "desktop" is a poor abstraction of computing carried over by the GNOME and KDE groups in some strange effort to mimmic Windows on top of Linux (a poor fit).
The ideal desktop for me is a minimalist window manager with a built in pager (a small one) with an easy to configure applications bar that pops up when you click the mouse in the root menu.
Now, don't get me wrong, I use and enjoy KDE and GNOME apps because they are useful, it is just the desktop metaphor that I have a serious problem with. Too much clutter, too much wasted window area on useless icons and launch bars and the like.
Currently, my preferred wm is CTWM. Small, fast, useful and fantastic looking. The only thing wrong with it is the need to edit a text file and restart it simply to add a new program to the menus. Maybe one day I'll fix that myself...
Frankly I think the quality of movies would improve dramatically if the movie studios didn't have a lot of money to spend on them. Special effects be damned, what is the point if there is no plot?
If someone tried to ban a particular KIND of car (say for being a moronic fashion statement, like "look at me, I pretend to be tough, everyone else can suck my tailpipe" kind of car... cough... SUVs... cough) or some other arbitrary reason, then I'd say that would be impeding free speech.
Slashdot Mirror
To add to your excellent link, may I also add a link to a recent study published by the national academies of sciences in the US that indicates nearly 18,000 people die in the USA every year becuase they lack adequate medical insurance. Canada may have some problems with its socialized medical system, but it is nowhere near as bad as the US system.
FWIW, the CN Tower is not the worlds tallest structure, it is the worlds tallest free standing structure. There are towers that are taller, but they are held up by cables.
And you can put your order in today! Sure it looks geeky, but just imagine the look on the faces of every ricer, porsche, ferrari and viper driver as you leave them behind at the stoplight! More info here.
Why should it be ethical to do this to animals, but not humans? If we clone humans with altered (or nonexistent) higher nervous systems why shouldn't we be allowed to experiment on them?
How is using an animal like a great ape morally any different from making and using a brainless human? The only difference is the genetic information, which is 98+% the same anyway.
There is no mention what OS the thinkpad in the picture is running. For all we know that might be the "server" they are talking about... http://www.mdrobotics.ca/rws.htm
The web site runs linux, though... :)
I think it was a Varley short story that I recall where the world is run by a single massive conscious AI that takes care of all of our information needs and is SO GOOD at being a "user interface" that most people treat it as their best friend. Anyway, the thing eventually becomes depressed and by subtlely manipulating people makes them kill themselves. Cool story. Read it like 10 years ago so I don't recall exactly what it was...
I once met a professor of compsci at the university of waterloo who wrote some Java software for doing this kind of thing. We discussed using his software to analyze a very large software system I was working on at the time (IBM DB2 UDB). He has a web page with some code. Although they appear dated, you may also want to check out his student reports on the architecture of Linux (done using his tool, I would imagine).
Stories like this make me damn proud I took engineering rather than some pansy artsci stuff.
"The object is to score 12 points provided that the other player scores at least 6 points - if the other player scores less than six points then the player reaching 12 points is the loser! Whereas in most games the person scoring the highest number of points is the winner in the 3 Spot game the 'winner' can be the 'loser'.
Actually Vancouver has about 5 months of rain and mild temperatures in the winter, and then 7 months of glorious, sunny, days! Right now, Toronto is sitting at a dozen or so degrees below zero and three feet of snow, but on new years day I went down to the beach here in Van without a jacket and soaked up some sunshine... ;
The mandatory car insurance thing is somewhat true, but I drive a little easier knowing everyone around me is INSURED, at least.
As for health care, there is an article from the July/August Washington Monthly titled "Canada's Burning", that very nicely clears up the (mostly American) mythology about Canada's nationalized health care system. Unfortunately the article is no longer freely available online, but here is a choice quote:
Like Pearlstein and Brooke, Amos forgot to place American and Canadian performance in a comparative context. She failed to tell her audience (or did not know) that Canada insured 100 percent of its citizens for $2,250 per person in 1998 while the United States expended $4,270 per person insuring only 84 percent of our citizens. This oversight was convenient. One would look rather foolish asserting that Canada's medical care costs half what ours does and insures everyone, but is, nonetheless, "inefficient."
...still gotta be Sopwith.
Heh heh, it's funny because it's true.
I once met a girl who had a condition known as "synaesthesia". It's the kind of condition geeks dream about and design computers to simulate (ie: the visualization plugins on xmms and winamp...)
ROTFLMAO! You'd expect more from someone on /. You might as well claim Linux is a communist plot too, bud!
For a succinct and well written debunking of the usual American anti-health-care propoganda, please refer to this excellent article in the Washington Monthly. A quick quote to get you interested:
Like Pearlstein and Brooke, Amos forgot to place American and Canadian performance in a comparative context. She failed to tell her audience (or did not know) that Canada insured 100 percent of its citizens for $2,250 per person in l998 while the United States expended $4,270 per person insuring only 84 percent of our citizens. This oversight was convenient. One would look rather foolish asserting that Canada's medical care costs half what ours does and insures everyone, but is, nonetheless, "inefficient."
- "Right to code" Membership: $1,000,000 US
- Gold Membership: $100,000 US
- Silver Membership: $50,000 US
- Bronze Membership: $10,000 US
- Regular Membership: $10 Canadian
- Unfashionable Membership: free
Sure it sounds like a lot of money, but hey as we all know CTWM is the one true desktop . Those bloated KDE and GNOME products simply don't match the power and speed of a well configured CTWM! So join IBM, Microsoft and Apple in supporting the CTWM REPUBLIC!(*).(*) this particular sentence is a lie, the rest is true...mostly... what is definitely true is that I personally prefer CTWM to all those other inferior desktop systems
- AFS is relatively bug free and stable, while CODA is still an alpha/beta quality product that has plenty of disclaimers about losing data.
- AFS is well documented and somewhat easy to use, while I personally had a tough time figuring out anything whatsoever about CODA.
-AFS supports multiple "cells", while last I checked CODA supported one.
- I think AFS is generally targetted at large installations (for example nearly all of IBM uses it) while CODA is intended for smaller ones.
- CODA supports "disconnected operation", while AFS dies even if you just have a temporary network glitch.
If any of this is now inaccurate, please feel free to correct me, or mod me down to flamebait.
"Well, once again my friend, we find that science is a two-headed beast. One head is nice, it gives us aspirin and other modern conveniences,...but the other head of science is bad! Oh beware the other head of science, Arthur, it bites!" - The Tick
Ayway, if IBM could gain a monopoly in services for an Open Source software industry, that would be quite the feat! And if the source is open, why the hell would it "run best" on AIX only? Have you ever actually USED the product? If anything, it currently "runs best" on NT.
IBM is still a company,and it still needs to make money. If IBM doesn't encourage people to buy more IBM hardware, what possible reason could IBM have to release any software ever?
Have you tried WxWindows??
I, for one, don't use either system. They are both bloated and ugly peices of software. The notion of "icons" and a "desktop" is a poor abstraction of computing carried over by the GNOME and KDE groups in some strange effort to mimmic Windows on top of Linux (a poor fit).
The ideal desktop for me is a minimalist window manager with a built in pager (a small one) with an easy to configure applications bar that pops up when you click the mouse in the root menu.
Now, don't get me wrong, I use and enjoy KDE and GNOME apps because they are useful, it is just the desktop metaphor that I have a serious problem with. Too much clutter, too much wasted window area on useless icons and launch bars and the like.
Currently, my preferred wm is CTWM. Small, fast, useful and fantastic looking. The only thing wrong with it is the need to edit a text file and restart it simply to add a new program to the menus. Maybe one day I'll fix that myself...
Frankly I think the quality of movies would improve dramatically if the movie studios didn't have a lot of money to spend on them. Special effects be damned, what is the point if there is no plot?
ESC:wq
Or how about "Mighty Blue Justice"? Very fitting in every way, and envisioning Microsoft as 1Ton is amusing.