Umm... I suppose it's too much to hope for that you, you know, read the article or something (because, afterall, this is Slashdot) so I'm going to enlighten you. The bill (and you can go read it if you like - just google C-59) has... well... nothing to do with the levy on recordable media. It has to do with using a camcorder in a movie cinema to record a movie. Something which the levy has never, ever applied to anyways (the monies generated by the levy goes to support the starving execs in the Canadian music industry).
Now I know its all fashionable and what not to bash Harper because he's in bed with the Americans and he's evil and he's right wing and he keeps a dragon in his shed (we've seen it - honest!) but at least attempt to make a modicum of sense when you're doing your bashing.
Actually, as much as our (recently rudely ousted from power after more than a decade of self-indulgent rule) Liberal friends would like us to believe that Stephen Harper and the Tories are only interested in making Canada into a USA North (and that he keeps a dragon in his shed - really, we've seen it), it is a Liberal (Marlene Jennings of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Lachine) who is trying to bring our laws in line with our neighbours to the south (link). And criticizing the Tories for not doing anything about it yet.
I guess Stephen Harper really is the evil mastermind the left-wingers make him out to be. Imagine - getting your opponents to implement *your* hidden agenda. Sheer genius!
Are chickens (or any birds) that closely related to us? Depends on your perspective. Obviously birds are going to be further from us genetically than other mammals. Likewise with other non-mammalian vetebrates.
But they are vertebrates, and we do share some common genetic structure. Whereas these alien viruses use alien beings as hosts, and thus are attuned to alien genetic structure, which would in all likelyhood be so completely alien to human genetic structure that compared to them, chickens and humans are practically twins.
Like I said, trees have more in common with us than whatever hosts these viruses developed on. Or at least that's my take on it.
...and I'm by now means an expert in biology, but wouldn't a virus that infects human being pretty much have to evolve and develop in the presence of human beings. I mean sure - some viruses jump from animals to humans, but we're talking creatures whose gentic structure is what? Something that has a 25-30% difference in it's gene structure.
When was that last time you caught Dutch Elm Disease? A tree has more in common genetically with us than whatever hosts these virii developed on. What are the odds that a new one drops in and just happens to be a mutation or two away from being able to infect mankind?
...come to think of it, I've never used them period. But my folks bought one type (I can't remember if it was ultrasonic or EMP) and my aunt bought the other (to compare and then buy a second of whichever worked the best) to get rid of earwigs and they made zero difference.
Your best bet for getting rid of mice is sealing up your house. Short of that, I'm with a lot of the other people above - get a cat. No, they don't kill the mice outright, but they tend to think of mice as the feline equivalent of superballs (those ultra bouncy rubber thingies), which tends to wind up kill the rodents from massive heart failure.
If a cat's not feasable try and find out exactly where they're coming in and load that 'area' with poison and traps.
It's important to get them BEFORE they nest - otherwise you'll wind up with a brood of mice that'll never leave.
Depending on who you ask in this thread, until June 1993 or the end of 1994. But there is nor argument that it is still supposed to be supported by Billy and his gang.
Now, if the random car company makes a car that sometimes ejects you from the passenger side for no real reason, then they have to call the automobile back and either fix it or provide you with a new car. So shouldn't Bill have to call back all copies of Win NT 4.0 and either fix it or send them a nice shiny new server?
That was the point. We're not pummelling Baghdad. We're pummelling military targets within Baghdad so as to convince the Iraqi's that (a) we mean business and (b) to give up because Saddam is lying and has no real means of stopping us.
Ah... But the war is an expense on the taxpayers whereas the profits go to oil companies.
Then wouldn't it make more sense to simply give what is being spent on the war to the oil companies in the form of tax breaks?
I mean really - there'd be less public outcry, there'd be less instability on the stock market (which costs these oil companies) and the oil prices are artifically inflated anyways.
Like I said - the war is not about oil. It's a wonderful bonus to the war, but Bush has other motivations, be they altruistic or not.
Re:The only thing war has ever done is...
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Try being a Muslim in today's America.
I won't bother with the other points. They're bigger jokes than this. Because while I'm sure that the Muslim's in "today's American" suffer an amount of suspiscion due to the fact that certain sects of their religion have declared holy war on American, I have yet to hear of one American Muslim being thrown into a gas chamber or shot dead in the streets, or forced to live in Ghetto's.
Hell, the simple fact that you can make such a statement against the government suggests that - guess what - you, and everyone else (including Muslims) live in a far superior situation to the Iraqi's (who are killed for speaking of Saddam Hussien without a preceeding epithet that sounds something like "The Almight Ruler, Most Holy Servant of Allah, The Sword of the Almighty, long may he reign).
But yeah, sure. American Muslims suffer so much and the Americans are such bad people because they mistreat their populace....
There is little doubt that American companies will make a killing controlling the Iraqi oil supply and 'rebuilding' Iraq. But trust me, the profits do not mitigate the financial losses that the US will suffer trying to pursue this war. And while they are American Tax Dollars, those dollars are dollars that could be much more easily used to to line the pockets of a defence contractor directly.
People have been making a big deal about how much money Bush and his corporate friends are making, but I assure you that it's costing him quite a bit. Which in the end hurts him.
If you want to see an example of Bush's forigen policy, check Afghanistan (another costly operation, but no oil there).
You'd have better luck convincing me that Bush is motivated by a strong sense of revenge than by oil. The oil and rebuilding is just gravy for him.
Re:The only thing war has ever done is...
on
Strike on Iraq
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Allow me to quote the person I was talking to:
And the reason the Nazi's needed to be defeated was the fact that they attacked and invaded other countries, just as the US is now doing
Thus implying a connection between the Nazi's and the USA. Now I said:
Nazi Germany was ruled with an iron fist...Kinda like Iraq.
Why? Because lots of people are out and about spouting half truths and that bothers me. I don't have a problem with people having a few opposite mine, but I do have a problem with them using comparisons that are about as valid as calling a television a computer because there are some common features between them.
Which is what you are saying - you just seem to have missed that fact. Like I said - no statement on justification or not, just a simple statement.
Anyways - drifting slowly away from the topic, unless the discussion has shifted to one that focuses on the propoganda spouted by both pro and anti war spokespeople.
Cheers!
Re:The only thing war has ever done is...
on
Strike on Iraq
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· Score: 1
If you're going to reply to my comments angrily, at least read them before you jump to your conclusions.
I didn't make a comment on justified or unjustified (as far as I'm concerned it's justified, but that's another kettle of fish). I simply said that as long as people are going to make a comment like "George Bush is being like Nazi Germany" someone needs to say "Yeah, well so is Saddam." Which is pretty much what you're saying - except your seizing the chance to jump on a more or less pro-Bush comment and try and make your anti-Bush statement look more potent by 'disproving' me.
Yeah, I agree. CNN and FOX are big propoganda machines for the US. But don't kid yourself. Bush and each and every one of his advisors would have to be complete and total morons to go into Iraq just to get oil. That's just counter-propoganda spouted by the anti-war crowd trying to make Bush appear to be greedy.
If you take the cost of buying all the crude Iraq produces and then subtract the extra costs the US or US based companies would have to spend getting the oil back to the US, and then compare it to the cost of conquering Iraq - buying the oil is cheaper. They say forty cruise missiles have been launched already today. They cost a couple million each to build. That's 80 million for a couple minutes action. Not to mention the cost of fueling the armour, feeding the troops, getting them to Iraq...
Re:The only thing war has ever done is...
on
Strike on Iraq
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· Score: 1
Well, you know, as long as we're drawing loose historical parellels all over the place...
Nazi Germany was ruled with an iron fist, killed all opposition to the ruling party, had a thing against jews, were agressive towards their neighbours, were supposed to disarm under a Peace Treaty they signed and (ultimatly did not)...
Kinda like Iraq.
But you know...
Re:News Restricted to Canada on Yahoo!
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That's funny... I didn't have a problem accessing anything on the yahoo website - I'm on a high speed residential connection in Eastern Canada and can see no reason why I could access it and you could not unless there was a problem perhaps with your local server...
...you're kinda vague about what exactly most of the bugs are in.
Assuming that everyone is working on a different branch of the program that you're building (Coder (or group of coders) X is responsible for writing a nice new algorithm, Coder (or group of coders) Y is responsible for writing a GUI for it, Coder (or group of coders) Z is responsible for the making it run on a network) then the most important issue is to make sure everything works right together. Comment lots (and in a standard format - i.e. If you're using an OOP language, make sure every object has an accurate description of what it does, and what'll make it break), and communicate lots, so that everyone knows exactly where everyone else is going.
After that, make sure every coder (or coder group) runs their code through white box, black box and whatever other testing methods whose names are locked away in the back of my memory. Beta test every 'module', before you even start to think about throwing them together.
Also, someone mentioned above that the health of the coders was important. He's/She's/They're right. Offer lots of free snacks (or at least free perked coffee), give them a couple cots to lie down on if they get tired, give them an hour a day to do some kind of physical activity (yes, make them excercise) and refuse to let them work more than 50 hours a week (even that's extreme). You'll find their productivity increases, and when productivity goes up, mistakes go way down.
A lot of people complain about how buggy software is. And I will stipulate that yes:
(a) Most software produced has scads of inital 'bugs' oozing out of every oriface you can think of.
(b) It's partially due to the fact projects are rushed and coders tend to be careless (My favorite phrase: "Oops... I was supposed to put a semi-colon there")
But I think that if you check it out, alot of these so called bugs are due to people misusing their computers (or someone else misusing their computers). What percent of all bugs that need to be patched are "security holes" that are exposed by people who enjoy trying to break into someone elses system?
A lot of people come out and say that we wouldn't tolerate so many problems in our cars/airplanes/nuclear reactors. Tell me, when was the last time that having ones tires slashed was blamed on the guy that made the car? Or how about car bombs? Are they a defect? How about the guy who gets drunk and drives the car? People die in these cases, but the problems are caused by the end user, not by the programmer.
Programmers are partially at fault. Big business and the drive to survive everyone else is at fault. But lets not forget that most problems start with the nut behind the keyboard.
AllTheWeb: First Hit: Search Engine Watch (www.searchenginewatch.com) First Search Engine: Search Engine Colossus (3) (www.searchenginecolossus.com) Hits Google at 22 Hits AllTheWeb at >50
Google: First Hit: Google First Search Engine: Google (1) Hits Google at 1 Hits AllTheWeb at 16
I've always considered programming be be at least in part an art form anyways. I mean really, an nicely implimented algorithim is just as beautiful (in a weird, geeky kind of way) as a Van Gogh.
So how could you actually blame someone if their program didn't work? I mean if you buy a painting and it just doesn't fit in with the colour scheme of your house, do you sue the artist? If the piece doesn't go up in value like you wanted it to do you take the painter to court?
Of course not. That'd be silly. And while programming isn't completely analogous, there's a common thread there. The software doesn't work right with your hardware. Too bad - if it says in the manual that it might not work with "XXX" 32 MB Video Card and it blows your monitor then it's your own damn fault for not returning it before you peeled the shrink wrap off the CD (assuming the manual is packaged and is not included as an adobe document on the CD). If there's a bug in the program? Fine - if you bought the piece of software you have reasonable grounds to expect a bug patch quickly, but if you got the program for free?
It's really not worth going on any further about how illogical this law would be. All it would do is give more power to the ignorant masses who buy a $4000 computer to play minesweeper and use Excel.
What we need is a way of educating people how to use and understand their computers. Not a way for them to blame their ignorance on someone else.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... I suppose it's too much to hope for that you, you know, read the article or something (because, afterall, this is Slashdot) so I'm going to enlighten you. The bill (and you can go read it if you like - just google C-59) has... well... nothing to do with the levy on recordable media. It has to do with using a camcorder in a movie cinema to record a movie. Something which the levy has never, ever applied to anyways (the monies generated by the levy goes to support the starving execs in the Canadian music industry).
Now I know its all fashionable and what not to bash Harper because he's in bed with the Americans and he's evil and he's right wing and he keeps a dragon in his shed (we've seen it - honest!) but at least attempt to make a modicum of sense when you're doing your bashing.
Actually, as much as our (recently rudely ousted from power after more than a decade of self-indulgent rule) Liberal friends would like us to believe that Stephen Harper and the Tories are only interested in making Canada into a USA North (and that he keeps a dragon in his shed - really, we've seen it), it is a Liberal (Marlene Jennings of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Lachine) who is trying to bring our laws in line with our neighbours to the south (link). And criticizing the Tories for not doing anything about it yet.
I guess Stephen Harper really is the evil mastermind the left-wingers make him out to be. Imagine - getting your opponents to implement *your* hidden agenda. Sheer genius!
Are chickens (or any birds) that closely related to us? Depends on your perspective. Obviously birds are going to be further from us genetically than other mammals. Likewise with other non-mammalian vetebrates.
But they are vertebrates, and we do share some common genetic structure. Whereas these alien viruses use alien beings as hosts, and thus are attuned to alien genetic structure, which would in all likelyhood be so completely alien to human genetic structure that compared to them, chickens and humans are practically twins.
Like I said, trees have more in common with us than whatever hosts these viruses developed on. Or at least that's my take on it.
Andrew L
...and I'm by now means an expert in biology, but wouldn't a virus that infects human being pretty much have to evolve and develop in the presence of human beings. I mean sure - some viruses jump from animals to humans, but we're talking creatures whose gentic structure is what? Something that has a 25-30% difference in it's gene structure.
When was that last time you caught Dutch Elm Disease? A tree has more in common genetically with us than whatever hosts these virii developed on. What are the odds that a new one drops in and just happens to be a mutation or two away from being able to infect mankind?
Just my $0.02
...come to think of it, I've never used them period. But my folks bought one type (I can't remember if it was ultrasonic or EMP) and my aunt bought the other (to compare and then buy a second of whichever worked the best) to get rid of earwigs and they made zero difference.
Your best bet for getting rid of mice is sealing up your house. Short of that, I'm with a lot of the other people above - get a cat. No, they don't kill the mice outright, but they tend to think of mice as the feline equivalent of superballs (those ultra bouncy rubber thingies), which tends to wind up kill the rodents from massive heart failure.
If a cat's not feasable try and find out exactly where they're coming in and load that 'area' with poison and traps.
It's important to get them BEFORE they nest - otherwise you'll wind up with a brood of mice that'll never leave.
But NT 4.0 is technically still supported right?
Depending on who you ask in this thread, until June 1993 or the end of 1994. But there is nor argument that it is still supposed to be supported by Billy and his gang.
Now, if the random car company makes a car that sometimes ejects you from the passenger side for no real reason, then they have to call the automobile back and either fix it or provide you with a new car. So shouldn't Bill have to call back all copies of Win NT 4.0 and either fix it or send them a nice shiny new server?
Just curious...
That was the point. We're not pummelling Baghdad. We're pummelling military targets within Baghdad so as to convince the Iraqi's that (a) we mean business and (b) to give up because Saddam is lying and has no real means of stopping us.
When somebody says militant islamic terrorist, they do not nesscessairly mean "every muslim in the world."
Just the ones that have declared jihad on America, blow up our boats, fly planes into our buildings etc. And we are just another infidel to them...
That's why the lights are still on, right?
They're pummelling the hell out of a section of Baghdad. Think like breaking someones pinky with repeated blows from a sledgehammer.
Hurts like hell, but as long as you can compensate for your pinky when you type away on your keyboard, you're still nearly fully functional.
Ah... But the war is an expense on the taxpayers whereas the profits go to oil companies.
Then wouldn't it make more sense to simply give what is being spent on the war to the oil companies in the form of tax breaks?
I mean really - there'd be less public outcry, there'd be less instability on the stock market (which costs these oil companies) and the oil prices are artifically inflated anyways.
Like I said - the war is not about oil. It's a wonderful bonus to the war, but Bush has other motivations, be they altruistic or not.
Try being a Muslim in today's America.
I won't bother with the other points. They're bigger jokes than this. Because while I'm sure that the Muslim's in "today's American" suffer an amount of suspiscion due to the fact that certain sects of their religion have declared holy war on American, I have yet to hear of one American Muslim being thrown into a gas chamber or shot dead in the streets, or forced to live in Ghetto's.
Hell, the simple fact that you can make such a statement against the government suggests that - guess what - you, and everyone else (including Muslims) live in a far superior situation to the Iraqi's (who are killed for speaking of Saddam Hussien without a preceeding epithet that sounds something like "The Almight Ruler, Most Holy Servant of Allah, The Sword of the Almighty, long may he reign).
But yeah, sure. American Muslims suffer so much and the Americans are such bad people because they mistreat their populace....
There is little doubt that American companies will make a killing controlling the Iraqi oil supply and 'rebuilding' Iraq. But trust me, the profits do not mitigate the financial losses that the US will suffer trying to pursue this war. And while they are American Tax Dollars, those dollars are dollars that could be much more easily used to to line the pockets of a defence contractor directly.
People have been making a big deal about how much money Bush and his corporate friends are making, but I assure you that it's costing him quite a bit. Which in the end hurts him.
If you want to see an example of Bush's forigen policy, check Afghanistan (another costly operation, but no oil there).
You'd have better luck convincing me that Bush is motivated by a strong sense of revenge than by oil. The oil and rebuilding is just gravy for him.
Allow me to quote the person I was talking to:
And the reason the Nazi's needed to be defeated was the fact that they attacked and invaded other countries, just as the US is now doing
Thus implying a connection between the Nazi's and the USA. Now I said:
Nazi Germany was ruled with an iron fist...Kinda like Iraq.
Why? Because lots of people are out and about spouting half truths and that bothers me. I don't have a problem with people having a few opposite mine, but I do have a problem with them using comparisons that are about as valid as calling a television a computer because there are some common features between them.
Which is what you are saying - you just seem to have missed that fact. Like I said - no statement on justification or not, just a simple statement.
Anyways - drifting slowly away from the topic, unless the discussion has shifted to one that focuses on the propoganda spouted by both pro and anti war spokespeople.
Cheers!
If you're going to reply to my comments angrily, at least read them before you jump to your conclusions.
I didn't make a comment on justified or unjustified (as far as I'm concerned it's justified, but that's another kettle of fish). I simply said that as long as people are going to make a comment like "George Bush is being like Nazi Germany" someone needs to say "Yeah, well so is Saddam." Which is pretty much what you're saying - except your seizing the chance to jump on a more or less pro-Bush comment and try and make your anti-Bush statement look more potent by 'disproving' me.
Mmmhmmm....
Yeah, I agree. CNN and FOX are big propoganda machines for the US. But don't kid yourself. Bush and each and every one of his advisors would have to be complete and total morons to go into Iraq just to get oil. That's just counter-propoganda spouted by the anti-war crowd trying to make Bush appear to be greedy.
If you take the cost of buying all the crude Iraq produces and then subtract the extra costs the US or US based companies would have to spend getting the oil back to the US, and then compare it to the cost of conquering Iraq - buying the oil is cheaper. They say forty cruise missiles have been launched already today. They cost a couple million each to build. That's 80 million for a couple minutes action. Not to mention the cost of fueling the armour, feeding the troops, getting them to Iraq...
Well, you know, as long as we're drawing loose historical parellels all over the place...
Nazi Germany was ruled with an iron fist, killed all opposition to the ruling party, had a thing against jews, were agressive towards their neighbours, were supposed to disarm under a Peace Treaty they signed and (ultimatly did not)...
Kinda like Iraq.
But you know...
That's funny... I didn't have a problem accessing anything on the yahoo website - I'm on a high speed residential connection in Eastern Canada and can see no reason why I could access it and you could not unless there was a problem perhaps with your local server...
Didn't that MIR space station thing stay up a lot longer than everyone thought it would?
Other long lived technologies? How about the simple pencil? Simplistic and unbelievably effective.
...you're kinda vague about what exactly most of the bugs are in.
Assuming that everyone is working on a different branch of the program that you're building (Coder (or group of coders) X is responsible for writing a nice new algorithm, Coder (or group of coders) Y is responsible for writing a GUI for it, Coder (or group of coders) Z is responsible for the making it run on a network) then the most important issue is to make sure everything works right together. Comment lots (and in a standard format - i.e. If you're using an OOP language, make sure every object has an accurate description of what it does, and what'll make it break), and communicate lots, so that everyone knows exactly where everyone else is going.
After that, make sure every coder (or coder group) runs their code through white box, black box and whatever other testing methods whose names are locked away in the back of my memory. Beta test every 'module', before you even start to think about throwing them together.
Also, someone mentioned above that the health of the coders was important. He's/She's/They're right. Offer lots of free snacks (or at least free perked coffee), give them a couple cots to lie down on if they get tired, give them an hour a day to do some kind of physical activity (yes, make them excercise) and refuse to let them work more than 50 hours a week (even that's extreme). You'll find their productivity increases, and when productivity goes up, mistakes go way down.
A lot of people complain about how buggy software is. And I will stipulate that yes:
(a) Most software produced has scads of inital 'bugs' oozing out of every oriface you can think of.
(b) It's partially due to the fact projects are rushed and coders tend to be careless (My favorite phrase: "Oops... I was supposed to put a semi-colon there")
But I think that if you check it out, alot of these so called bugs are due to people misusing their computers (or someone else misusing their computers). What percent of all bugs that need to be patched are "security holes" that are exposed by people who enjoy trying to break into someone elses system?
A lot of people come out and say that we wouldn't tolerate so many problems in our cars/airplanes/nuclear reactors. Tell me, when was the last time that having ones tires slashed was blamed on the guy that made the car? Or how about car bombs? Are they a defect? How about the guy who gets drunk and drives the car? People die in these cases, but the problems are caused by the end user, not by the programmer.
Programmers are partially at fault. Big business and the drive to survive everyone else is at fault. But lets not forget that most problems start with the nut behind the keyboard.
Search for "search engine" in both:
AllTheWeb:
First Hit: Search Engine Watch (www.searchenginewatch.com)
First Search Engine: Search Engine Colossus (3) (www.searchenginecolossus.com)
Hits Google at 22
Hits AllTheWeb at >50
Google:
First Hit: Google
First Search Engine: Google (1)
Hits Google at 1
Hits AllTheWeb at 16
I've always considered programming be be at least in part an art form anyways. I mean really, an nicely implimented algorithim is just as beautiful (in a weird, geeky kind of way) as a Van Gogh.
So how could you actually blame someone if their program didn't work? I mean if you buy a painting and it just doesn't fit in with the colour scheme of your house, do you sue the artist? If the piece doesn't go up in value like you wanted it to do you take the painter to court?
Of course not. That'd be silly. And while programming isn't completely analogous, there's a common thread there. The software doesn't work right with your hardware. Too bad - if it says in the manual that it might not work with "XXX" 32 MB Video Card and it blows your monitor then it's your own damn fault for not returning it before you peeled the shrink wrap off the CD (assuming the manual is packaged and is not included as an adobe document on the CD). If there's a bug in the program? Fine - if you bought the piece of software you have reasonable grounds to expect a bug patch quickly, but if you got the program for free?
It's really not worth going on any further about how illogical this law would be. All it would do is give more power to the ignorant masses who buy a $4000 computer to play minesweeper and use Excel.
What we need is a way of educating people how to use and understand their computers. Not a way for them to blame their ignorance on someone else.