Well, in his most recent address to the American public our Prime Minister expressed his interest in making India and China our major trading partners.
There's this thing where the Americans violated the Free Trade Agreement that is supposed to be so good for us, we respect it enough that we allow them to sell gasoline with known cancer-causing octane-boosting additives that were outlawed in Canada, and even paid them damages for the time they were unable to go to market, yet the US don't respect it at all. The've stolen from us to the tune of billions of dollars during this softwood lumber fiasco.
We DON'T benefit from being next to the richest nation on earth. We suffer from it. Another example? The recent Mad Cow fiasco. The US cut us off from their market much longer than was necessary at the prompting of US lobby groups working for the US beef industry. The end result? We built our own meat processing plants rather than shipping it across the border, increased our jobs, wealth, infrastructure and profits. This is the good that happens to a sector when they are cut off from the US market.
Oh, and since you don't appear to know your own history, the West India Company went into India, flooded the market with cheap goods and cheap prices at a loss until the manufacturing in India went under, and put them in a vicious cycle of economic dependency that was only broken when Ghandi and his buddies took the power back. This wasn't just a co-incidence or an incidental tactic, it was the West India Company's mandate that they do this to further the British Empire. This is what the US has done and continues to do to Canada. You won't find any shortage of Canadians who think that we need the US and that our relationship with them is good for us, but that's partly because most of them don't understand the bigger picture, and partly because we're already in the hole and digging out hurts.
I'm Canadian too. I think the US is a sinking ship and we would all be best served by attempting to dissociate from them before they drag us with them to the bottom. They're our worst enemy. They basically did to us what Britian did to India during the height of their empire, used aggressive economics to destroy our manufacturing base then pushed through free trade to keep us in a dependant role selling them raw materials and relying on their manufacturing infrastructure.
The Americans are our enemies. We should be attempting to crawl out from underneath them and establish our own power, not spreading our cheeks wider. Anti-American enough for you?
Not trolling, the Itanium architecture relies heavily on a quality compiler to properly handle optimizing the order of execution at compile time to see good performance. Historically, they haven't been very good. If that's changed, it must be a new development and I'm not aware of it. If you are, go ahead and cite a source, because it sure looks like you're astroturfing to me.
You're not a capitalist espousing perspectives like that. Capitalists don't consider it to be wealth unless it can be controlled and used to control others.
If you live in Britian, drop this article around the office, then start dressing like someone from the matrix and talking in tech jargon. Your boss will fear you, and you'll be able to get away with murder!
Say, if Americans were going to build the world's biggest telescope, the title would not read "Americans Plan to Build World's Biggest Telescope", it would read "World's Biggest Telescope to be Built".
Yeah, but that's just because Americans don't tell the difference between "world" and "U.S.". I guess the story should be titled: "Rest-of-the-World Plans to Build World's Biggest Telescope". But I guess it still wouldn't make sense!:-)
Yeah, especially since it's on a Canadian newspapers website...
While the rest of your comment is spot on, it's not actually going to be placed in Canada. They're testing possible sites in Hawaii, Mexico and Chile.
It's a Canadian project with international support. The fact that the U.S. Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics among others are supporting this is because these Canadians have come up with something way beyond the state of the art and demonstrated to the satisfaction of the worlds most knowledgable that they will indeed be able to pull it off.
In my opinion, this makes the spiteful little jabs that are sprouting up in this discussion are very easy to dismiss.
So, the real question is: Why is it fair that I pay a much larger portion of my wages than someone making less than me?
I'm not going to say it is or isn't fair, but there is a case to be made for the fact that when you're making such a dramatic amount more than your fellows, it's not because you were doing such a dramatic amount more work, it's because you managed to get a setup going where you're being paid for other peoples work, and you're getting a higher return on the infrastructure than others because you've got all your underlings using it to make you money. As in, I'm only using and relying on the infrastructure for my own use, but Bill Gates is using and relying on the infrastructure for the many thousands of people who work daily to earn him his money. It's not as cut and dried as that in most peoples cases, but the fundamental principle is the same. You pay more because, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter fair or not, if control over the wealth is concentrated in a few hands, those few hands are going to have to feed the machine that gives them that wealth whatever it needs or they won't continue to have it.
acheco took exception to Hamel's remarks and first asked if she believed these groups were in fact "wholly owned subsidiaries of Microsoft," before asking if she believed they had been "bought" by the software giant.
"Those are your words, not mine senator," Hamel replied to both questions.
Yes, but thats clearly what you wanted to imply isn't Linda?
I believe the correct phrase to use here would be "Yes, but that's clearly what the facts you've presented here imply, isn't it Linda?
I love how you depict the whole thing as being about ideologies. You know how some people buy cell phones on contract, then later when they are dissatisfied with the service they are screwed, while other people buy cell phones and pay as you go plans so they are free to change providers should the need arise? This is the same thing. The CIO doesn't think tying the future of government documents to a single convicted monopolists patent protected format is a wise idea, and that is his determination to make.
There is no practical difficulty preventing Microsoft from stepping up to the plate and giving them what meets their needs, they're simply refusing to do so. It would be like if I went to a dealership to buy a truck for pulling stumps out of my yard and after failing to lease me a sportscar they went to all my family and friends telling them about how stupid I was for insisting on a truck and attempting to force me to lease a sportscar.
Technical issues aside, financial issues aside, who in their right mind would want to deal with a company that treats their customers that way? They've clearly demonstrated that if you get involved with them and you don't bend when they rattle their zipper, they'll attack you personally and publicly in an effort to have you replaced with someone more pliable. As in, it's not just dangerous for your company to deal with them, it's dangerous for your career as well.
It's pretty callous to say that Soviet style Communism is a type of freedom because individuals are not compelled to act against thier will by threats of deprivation! Starving to death is not a threat of deprivation???? Did you just forget that five million people were starved to death for political reasons? Get a history book!
Yes. Exactly. A communist economy, which by its fundamental nature is structured to, if not share equally, at least ensure that the factories, farms etc, the means of production, are used to meet the basic needs of all its citizens. However, it was subverted by the totalitarian political structure and millions starved.
Now they're a capitalist democracy. Except that during this wonderful changeover, the "directors" of the various industries didn't step down, nor did they get replaced, they just became the wealthy directors of the now privately held corporations. No less power than before, and no less secure in their power than before, except now they don't even need to maintain a facade that they are interested in administering these resources in a socially responsible fashion. And the people continued to starve. They went to the streets with their life savings unable to afford bread. In one case, it was political power that was used to crush them, in the other, it was economic power. In both cases the people were crushed, and in both cases it was the same group at the top doing the crushing.
Oh, and democracy is about ensuring that the people at the top are leaders and not rulers. It's about trust. It's imperfect, highly flawed, just the best we've managed to put together so far. Despite the democracy, we still have rulers that we do not trust, and a structure that does not allow for their timely removal if they demonstrate themselves to be untrustworthy. It could be a whole lot more fluid, a whole lot more transparent, a whole lot easier to participate in, a whole lot better.
The article says it is a worm, but it describes the propagation of a virus. In which respect is the journalist wrong? After reading the article, I would initially be inclined to dismiss the use of the term "worm" as being used sensationally, but the article gives details about the researchers "honeypot" machine being infected, which would lead one to think it happened without human interaction. Then it proceeds to talk about IM virus transmission vectors in a generic sense, but never actually indicates that it's talking about this one in particular. So... um, does anyone know how the thing actually propagates?
Oh, and if you're reading this Joris Evers, you might want to give your editor shit. That article was terrible, and (s)he should have told you.
Remember that anything RedHat pushes into the Linux Kernel will automatically become available for ALL OTHER LINUX DISTROS. So please forgive my ignorance, but where is the "badness" in that aim?
Because if you're not using it, it shouldn't be there? I can see why Red Hat would want it in the kernal, they sell enterprise server software, but with linux being used for everything from appliances to cell phones to PVRs to workstations to servers, seems to me there are LOTS of places where it would be undesirable.
Why pay for info that I can get from my computer for free?
Simple. Because you can read it while you're waiting for or sitting on the bus. I wouldn't be suprised to discover public transit to be the number one motivation behind newspaper sales.
Both systems give freedom with the one hand and take it away with the other. The difference is only which hand is doing which.
In soviet-style communism, the means of wealth production are commonly held and commonly shared. This is freedom, it protects the individual from being compelled to act against their will via threats of deprivation. However, that freedom is taken away by their totalitarian, non-representative political system where the laws, and thus control over common resources, are subject to the whim of the leader.
In american-style democracy, the political system is (somewhat) representative and transparent, and the population (via process) gets to be involved in the lawmaking and have certain freedoms. However, that freedom is then taken away by their capitalistic economy, which is structured to consolidate control over the means of production and communication into the hands of the few, keep it there, and place the rest of society in a position where they must obey or die of starvation and exposure. Contemplate the term "artifical scarcity" for a moment.
They both suck. They're both political-economic structures based around the few maintaining control over the masses without accountability. It was inevitable that they would have to be enemies and that they would have to heavily propagandise their population towards a blind negative reaction. If people ever actually stopped to think about it, they might realize that by pairing a communal economic structure with a democratic political structure they could finally stop being slaves living in fear. Dangerous stuff if you're the Master.
Until, of course, all of the lazy freeloaders that we just became at that point want there to *keep* being plenty.
This is exactly what I mean. So caught up in the propaganda of the "ism" that it's inconceivable that people might actually choose to do something useful with their lives without the carrot of shiny stuff and the stick of deprivation.
Rewarding the productive with preferred access to scarce resources is one thing, but unless we want a future where people are controlled by deprivation at the direction of those that hold economic control despite there being plenty for everyone, and for no better reason than to maintain that control, SOMEBODY is going to have to come up with a BETTER way of doing things and force those at the reigns to accept it.
Mod parent insightful. Cost is a way to deal with scarcity. If there is no scarcity, there is plenty. If there is plenty, there is no reason it shouldn't all be free. The point of driving efficiency and productivity up ought to be plenty for everyone, should it not? So why is this guy a troll?
I swear some people are so wrapped up in their "isms" that they care more about the "sacred word of ism" than they do about the results. Small minds.
If you read the article or read some of the other threads here, you'd see reference to the fact that Steve's "reality distortion field" quickly wears off when he stops talking.
When a bullshit artist stops talking, there's less bullshit? Wow man, that's deep.
I'd consider demonstrations that the "magic" of myth was actually science given the "chinese whispers" treatment to be a very worthwhile goal. There are a great many people who place their faith in literal interpretations of these sorts of things, and discussions with such people usually turn into a bunch of people on one side believing blindly while those on the other side really have nothing concrete to back up their argument that "it didn't/couldn't have happen/ed".
Projects like this allow us to say to such people "Of course it happened just like the bible. This is how it happened." That is a big gain for humanity as far as I'm concerned.
It's also kind of nice to be able to look at our ancestors as rational, intelligent humans that we don't yet understand, rather than primitives who believe whatever fanciful story is put before them by the guy with the bone in his hair. Gives humanity a little more dignity.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, in his most recent address to the American public our Prime Minister expressed his interest in making India and China our major trading partners.
There's this thing where the Americans violated the Free Trade Agreement that is supposed to be so good for us, we respect it enough that we allow them to sell gasoline with known cancer-causing octane-boosting additives that were outlawed in Canada, and even paid them damages for the time they were unable to go to market, yet the US don't respect it at all. The've stolen from us to the tune of billions of dollars during this softwood lumber fiasco.
We DON'T benefit from being next to the richest nation on earth. We suffer from it. Another example? The recent Mad Cow fiasco. The US cut us off from their market much longer than was necessary at the prompting of US lobby groups working for the US beef industry. The end result? We built our own meat processing plants rather than shipping it across the border, increased our jobs, wealth, infrastructure and profits. This is the good that happens to a sector when they are cut off from the US market.
Oh, and since you don't appear to know your own history, the West India Company went into India, flooded the market with cheap goods and cheap prices at a loss until the manufacturing in India went under, and put them in a vicious cycle of economic dependency that was only broken when Ghandi and his buddies took the power back. This wasn't just a co-incidence or an incidental tactic, it was the West India Company's mandate that they do this to further the British Empire. This is what the US has done and continues to do to Canada. You won't find any shortage of Canadians who think that we need the US and that our relationship with them is good for us, but that's partly because most of them don't understand the bigger picture, and partly because we're already in the hole and digging out hurts.
I'm Canadian too. I think the US is a sinking ship and we would all be best served by attempting to dissociate from them before they drag us with them to the bottom. They're our worst enemy. They basically did to us what Britian did to India during the height of their empire, used aggressive economics to destroy our manufacturing base then pushed through free trade to keep us in a dependant role selling them raw materials and relying on their manufacturing infrastructure.
The Americans are our enemies. We should be attempting to crawl out from underneath them and establish our own power, not spreading our cheeks wider. Anti-American enough for you?
Not trolling, the Itanium architecture relies heavily on a quality compiler to properly handle optimizing the order of execution at compile time to see good performance. Historically, they haven't been very good. If that's changed, it must be a new development and I'm not aware of it. If you are, go ahead and cite a source, because it sure looks like you're astroturfing to me.
If you could afford to hire someone to write a proper compiler for them, I'm sure they'd be great. Shame there isn't already one on the market....
You're not a capitalist espousing perspectives like that. Capitalists don't consider it to be wealth unless it can be controlled and used to control others.
If you live in Britian, drop this article around the office, then start dressing like someone from the matrix and talking in tech jargon. Your boss will fear you, and you'll be able to get away with murder!
It might be technically correct, but it does make you sound like a bit of a redneck if you say it aloud. Try it. Say "Hey Mom, I got the fishes."
Dude... the plural of fish is fish. Unless you're three, in which case I suppose it might be fishies...
Say, if Americans were going to build the world's biggest telescope, the title would not read "Americans Plan to Build World's Biggest Telescope", it would read "World's Biggest Telescope to be Built".
:-)
Yeah, but that's just because Americans don't tell the difference between "world" and "U.S.". I guess the story should be titled: "Rest-of-the-World Plans to Build World's Biggest Telescope". But I guess it still wouldn't make sense!
Yeah, especially since it's on a Canadian newspapers website...
While the rest of your comment is spot on, it's not actually going to be placed in Canada. They're testing possible sites in Hawaii, Mexico and Chile.
It's a Canadian project with international support. The fact that the U.S. Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics among others are supporting this is because these Canadians have come up with something way beyond the state of the art and demonstrated to the satisfaction of the worlds most knowledgable that they will indeed be able to pull it off.
In my opinion, this makes the spiteful little jabs that are sprouting up in this discussion are very easy to dismiss.
So, the real question is: Why is it fair that I pay a much larger portion of my wages than someone making less than me?
I'm not going to say it is or isn't fair, but there is a case to be made for the fact that when you're making such a dramatic amount more than your fellows, it's not because you were doing such a dramatic amount more work, it's because you managed to get a setup going where you're being paid for other peoples work, and you're getting a higher return on the infrastructure than others because you've got all your underlings using it to make you money. As in, I'm only using and relying on the infrastructure for my own use, but Bill Gates is using and relying on the infrastructure for the many thousands of people who work daily to earn him his money. It's not as cut and dried as that in most peoples cases, but the fundamental principle is the same. You pay more because, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter fair or not, if control over the wealth is concentrated in a few hands, those few hands are going to have to feed the machine that gives them that wealth whatever it needs or they won't continue to have it.
I am calm. I talk like this all the time.
acheco took exception to Hamel's remarks and first asked if she believed these groups were in fact "wholly owned subsidiaries of Microsoft," before asking if she believed they had been "bought" by the software giant.
"Those are your words, not mine senator," Hamel replied to both questions.
Yes, but thats clearly what you wanted to imply isn't Linda?
I believe the correct phrase to use here would be "Yes, but that's clearly what the facts you've presented here imply, isn't it Linda?
I love how you depict the whole thing as being about ideologies. You know how some people buy cell phones on contract, then later when they are dissatisfied with the service they are screwed, while other people buy cell phones and pay as you go plans so they are free to change providers should the need arise? This is the same thing. The CIO doesn't think tying the future of government documents to a single convicted monopolists patent protected format is a wise idea, and that is his determination to make.
There is no practical difficulty preventing Microsoft from stepping up to the plate and giving them what meets their needs, they're simply refusing to do so. It would be like if I went to a dealership to buy a truck for pulling stumps out of my yard and after failing to lease me a sportscar they went to all my family and friends telling them about how stupid I was for insisting on a truck and attempting to force me to lease a sportscar.
Technical issues aside, financial issues aside, who in their right mind would want to deal with a company that treats their customers that way? They've clearly demonstrated that if you get involved with them and you don't bend when they rattle their zipper, they'll attack you personally and publicly in an effort to have you replaced with someone more pliable. As in, it's not just dangerous for your company to deal with them, it's dangerous for your career as well.
It's pretty callous to say that Soviet style Communism is a type of freedom because individuals are not compelled to act against thier will by threats of deprivation! Starving to death is not a threat of deprivation???? Did you just forget that five million people were starved to death for political reasons? Get a history book!
Yes. Exactly. A communist economy, which by its fundamental nature is structured to, if not share equally, at least ensure that the factories, farms etc, the means of production, are used to meet the basic needs of all its citizens. However, it was subverted by the totalitarian political structure and millions starved.
Now they're a capitalist democracy. Except that during this wonderful changeover, the "directors" of the various industries didn't step down, nor did they get replaced, they just became the wealthy directors of the now privately held corporations. No less power than before, and no less secure in their power than before, except now they don't even need to maintain a facade that they are interested in administering these resources in a socially responsible fashion. And the people continued to starve. They went to the streets with their life savings unable to afford bread. In one case, it was political power that was used to crush them, in the other, it was economic power. In both cases the people were crushed, and in both cases it was the same group at the top doing the crushing.
Oh, and democracy is about ensuring that the people at the top are leaders and not rulers. It's about trust. It's imperfect, highly flawed, just the best we've managed to put together so far. Despite the democracy, we still have rulers that we do not trust, and a structure that does not allow for their timely removal if they demonstrate themselves to be untrustworthy. It could be a whole lot more fluid, a whole lot more transparent, a whole lot easier to participate in, a whole lot better.
The article says it is a worm, but it describes the propagation of a virus. In which respect is the journalist wrong? After reading the article, I would initially be inclined to dismiss the use of the term "worm" as being used sensationally, but the article gives details about the researchers "honeypot" machine being infected, which would lead one to think it happened without human interaction. Then it proceeds to talk about IM virus transmission vectors in a generic sense, but never actually indicates that it's talking about this one in particular. So... um, does anyone know how the thing actually propagates?
Oh, and if you're reading this Joris Evers, you might want to give your editor shit. That article was terrible, and (s)he should have told you.
Remember that anything RedHat pushes into the Linux Kernel will automatically become available for ALL OTHER LINUX DISTROS. So please forgive my ignorance, but where is the "badness" in that aim?
Because if you're not using it, it shouldn't be there? I can see why Red Hat would want it in the kernal, they sell enterprise server software, but with linux being used for everything from appliances to cell phones to PVRs to workstations to servers, seems to me there are LOTS of places where it would be undesirable.
Why pay for info that I can get from my computer for free?
Simple. Because you can read it while you're waiting for or sitting on the bus. I wouldn't be suprised to discover public transit to be the number one motivation behind newspaper sales.
Both systems give freedom with the one hand and take it away with the other. The difference is only which hand is doing which.
In soviet-style communism, the means of wealth production are commonly held and commonly shared. This is freedom, it protects the individual from being compelled to act against their will via threats of deprivation. However, that freedom is taken away by their totalitarian, non-representative political system where the laws, and thus control over common resources, are subject to the whim of the leader.
In american-style democracy, the political system is (somewhat) representative and transparent, and the population (via process) gets to be involved in the lawmaking and have certain freedoms. However, that freedom is then taken away by their capitalistic economy, which is structured to consolidate control over the means of production and communication into the hands of the few, keep it there, and place the rest of society in a position where they must obey or die of starvation and exposure. Contemplate the term "artifical scarcity" for a moment.
They both suck. They're both political-economic structures based around the few maintaining control over the masses without accountability. It was inevitable that they would have to be enemies and that they would have to heavily propagandise their population towards a blind negative reaction. If people ever actually stopped to think about it, they might realize that by pairing a communal economic structure with a democratic political structure they could finally stop being slaves living in fear. Dangerous stuff if you're the Master.
Until, of course, all of the lazy freeloaders that we just became at that point want there to *keep* being plenty.
This is exactly what I mean. So caught up in the propaganda of the "ism" that it's inconceivable that people might actually choose to do something useful with their lives without the carrot of shiny stuff and the stick of deprivation.
Rewarding the productive with preferred access to scarce resources is one thing, but unless we want a future where people are controlled by deprivation at the direction of those that hold economic control despite there being plenty for everyone, and for no better reason than to maintain that control, SOMEBODY is going to have to come up with a BETTER way of doing things and force those at the reigns to accept it.
Mod parent insightful. Cost is a way to deal with scarcity. If there is no scarcity, there is plenty. If there is plenty, there is no reason it shouldn't all be free. The point of driving efficiency and productivity up ought to be plenty for everyone, should it not? So why is this guy a troll?
I swear some people are so wrapped up in their "isms" that they care more about the "sacred word of ism" than they do about the results. Small minds.
If you read the article or read some of the other threads here, you'd see reference to the fact that Steve's "reality distortion field" quickly wears off when he stops talking.
When a bullshit artist stops talking, there's less bullshit? Wow man, that's deep.
I stand corrected.
Oops... am I allowed to say that here? I'm not going to get my slashdot account revoked for saying that am I?
I stand corrected.
I'd consider demonstrations that the "magic" of myth was actually science given the "chinese whispers" treatment to be a very worthwhile goal. There are a great many people who place their faith in literal interpretations of these sorts of things, and discussions with such people usually turn into a bunch of people on one side believing blindly while those on the other side really have nothing concrete to back up their argument that "it didn't/couldn't have happen/ed".
Projects like this allow us to say to such people "Of course it happened just like the bible. This is how it happened." That is a big gain for humanity as far as I'm concerned.
It's also kind of nice to be able to look at our ancestors as rational, intelligent humans that we don't yet understand, rather than primitives who believe whatever fanciful story is put before them by the guy with the bone in his hair. Gives humanity a little more dignity.
It wasn't made in the US, you dumbass.
And yeah, we fucking hate you.