Just please don't judge Canada by my word; I am a very patriotic Canadian and I have no delusions of objectivity when discussing it.
On flip side, Canadians still remember, and appreciate our British heritage, are still proud members of the Commonwealth (hell, I remember singing "God save the Queen" in school during assembly every Friday); if that means anything to you.
> Well, it's our view that if you give a right to
> a federal government, you will never, ever get
> it back if it turned out to be a bad idea.
Bingo! That is the American viewpoint right there! You summed it up dead on! These are my rights, and you can take them from me by prying my dead fingers off them. That is more American than apple pie and the Star Spangled Banner put together.
While the above viewpoint is highly commendable, Americans carry it to the extreme. I would go so far as to say that it blinds Americans from doing the good overall. For example, how many Americans believe that the government should be poking it's nose in Microsoft's alleged monopoly? Microsoft's press gang can cry "Big Brother should say out of our business, they are interfering with our right to do business" and people agree with it. Why? Because: Americans hear, "Big Brother...interfering with our right".
In Canada, you wouldn't have that (assuming we had useful anti-monopoly laws), Canadians would hear that and laugh (like we do now, anyways). Of course government should protect us from Microsoft, we would say. Government is Doing Their Job. I don't remember ever hearing the words Big Brother applied to the Canadian government.
The funny joke of it is that the government gave *you* that random right, via the Constitution, and now they "will never, ever get it back if it turned out to be a bad idea". Like government, like voter. But what happens when the voter having that right is a bad idea?
Your response to my fourth point backs up my original point about American individualism: "better public education doesn't help me, so I won't pay for it; it's MY money".
Don't know any better to agree with your responses to my fifth point.
Being that I have lived in both Canada and the USA, I have a number of observations about the differences between the two in cultural, tax, and governmental attitudes.
1) Americans are generally more individualitic; that is, they put more view on themselves as an individual than as a group of individuals. I am not saying that Americans are selfish or self-centered, it's just that the view events around them with a "how-does-this-effect-me?" attitude. Canadians, as a general rule, are more willing to take a more communal (sp?) approach to events; that is, with a "how-does-this-effect-*us*" mentality. Canadians are more willing to pay higher taxes, and have less personal rights, if it means a stronger country for *everyone*.
2) Americans view government as, at best, a necessary evil. This country has founded on the principle of overthrowing the yoke of tyranny, and because of that, have skewed most of the original laws toward personal freedoms. The American federal government has very little true control over Americans; most of the laws obeyed by Americans are state and county laws, so the federal government cannot get too powerful. The problem, now, is because of 230-odd years of this has prevented most Americans from understanding that the federal government sometimes *needs* have that power, and when the federal government tries to acquire that power, the masses riot. Then, the government, worried about its power base, starts enacting tougher laws, which makes the already individualistic and government-distrusting people push back harder, which makes the government enact tougher laws, which...etc. Vicious circle. This circle will not be broken until American people understand that some powers are best left at a federal level, and until the American federal government understand which powers should be absorbed, and which should just left be.
One note about this: Americans like weak government. During the second debate, Al Gore claimed to be part of a government that cut hundreds of thousands of government jobs to streamline the federal government. This was met with agreement; to Americans, this was a Good Thing. In Canada, had a politician claimed that, he would have dragged to the Arctic cirlce and left to die. The Canadian federal government is the single largest employer in Canada; and a lot of people count on the government for their jobs.
Most Canadians trust their government, and for the most part, the Canadian government does little to abuse that trust. While, in written laws, Canadians have less official rights, they have more personal freedom.
One word of advice I was given by Canadians who lived in the States: "Remember: be polite to police, as in 'Yes, sir, officer, sir. Thank you for pistol whipping me, sir.'" In Canada, if a peace officer pulled me over onto the side of a road, I would feel comfortable, and act naturally. In the States, I wouldn't.
3) Taxes. Americans have less infrastructure, and as such, pay less taxes. Period. Don't let anyone tell you different, because they are wrong. Canadians pay about half of their income on taxes; they have higher income, alcohol, fuel, and sales taxes then Americans.
4) Education. Measured by UN studies (which I have no links for), Canadians generally have a higher level of literacy and a better education from playschool to undergraduate studies than Americans. Americans have one of the world's best post-graduate ratings, however. As well, most Americans are geographically illiterate. Between their individualism and the fact they are a super power, Americans do not need to know much of the rest of their country (admittedly, 50 states is way too many) or of the world around them.
5) Internationally, Americans are considered ignorant, rude, bossy, and vain. The quote "I love to travel abroad, except for all the foreigners there" is considered internationally as the summation of the average American tourist. Militarily, Americans are bullies, not heroes. Americans in Beirut are the prime example of how NOT to peace keep. And generally, America sticks its nose in international affairs when and only when America's interests are in jeopardy.
Contrast with Canadians, who are considered internationally as polite and friendly; whose peace keepers are known as peace keepers, and who care about international affairs. The UN was created largely by the efforts of a Canadian.
What about neglecting copyright, you forgot that one. I mean, Napster and downloading the lastest 0-day k-rad movie and newest crackz and serialz?
And distro/holy wars (or, was that under Slashdot?), how can you forgot that, you Macintrash user! And flame wars, where pre-adoloscence punks offer witless exchanges of trite phrases (oh, Slashdot again, sorry).
And reading User Friendly, Player vs Player, Dilbert, Sluggy Freelance, Red Meat, Herd Thinners, Nukees, and Calvin and Hobbes?
But it's *still* a *mere* refinement. I mean, we *technically* had QoS in IPv4 (um, you mean, like, we were supposed to use it? OOPS! Sorry!). And 128 bit versus 32 bit is just a magnitude increase, nothing more.
And, offhand, you forgot to mention the extra security for IPv6.
It's still improvements and refinements; nothing more.
The sun *does* affect the tides, though; neap and whatever is anti-neap tides happen when the Moon and the Sun are in alignment and at right angles. respectively.
I will agree with your last point; better just use a nice shallow raft...
Need infantry to hold land. Space/air borne militias are good for softening up land-based defenses, but ultimately, you will need infantry if you want to secure the land and keep it.
Continuing on with the point above (which wasn't mine to begin with), I am posting as DoomHaven. So, what's that to you? A name - that's it. You have no idea who DoomHaven *really* is; whether that's me beside you, smiling that knowing smile, or if its a person you will never seen in your life. I am posting anonymously, even though you see my "nom de nette" on the posting, because, quite bluntly, you will probably never know who DoomHaven is.
However:
The crew at Slashdot can track my IP. They could track it down to my provider, who could pop out a name and an address, which could mean that one night, I could get a knock at my door, and hear, "Open up DoomHaven, we know you are in there!"
However:
Taking the "nom de nette" as DoomHaven allows me a pretty big margin of anonymity). 99% of the people/crew of Slashdot only know me as "DoomHaven", and not as "K--------- G--------". The odds of someone tracking me down are remote; they are well within my acceptable levels of anonymity. Besides which, it has been my experience that even if person X finds my real address, they will never be able to find my address because of the idiots here who have done the street signs:)
The question now becomes: how much anonymity is necessary? Is it necessary for (to use an above poster's example) people who are reporting police brutality to be anonymous at the IP level? For rape counselling?
What about places that require accountability, like when using a credit card to buy online? Should they refuse business with people who have anonymous IP addresses?
And what about criminals/crackers, should they be allowed anonymous IP addresses? How will the IP addresses be allocated?
I have serious doubts that any use of anonymous IP couldn't be done with something else.
No, more resources should be spent on space exploration; so that when a natural disaster/calamity of extinction level status strikes the earth we have a backup copy somewhere else.
By your argument, you should only have one server for a site; just a really expensive one to handle everything. One power surge/script kiddy/cracker/etc later, you have lost everything.
Despite you, the human species is valuable enough to me to warrant an off-site backup.
Actually, I thought I was right for a different reason; so will I can't honestly state, "See! Right here, I was right" without looking (more) ignorant, you raised a good point.
Oh, I agree; however, you can't sucessfully defend a general statement with specific examples; you need a general proof.
Whatever, but I am getting to see that my point might be undefendable as well; and that the reason the OS crumbles under a buggy application was because it itself has bugs. I can't state that Solaris is perfect.
Oh well, at least DoomHaven stirred up some conversation and learned something. That's all he can do.
Of course not, I run them as "avatar"; it's a world of difference...
It's a joke; laugh.
Seriously, as root, I run applications as root. Some packages have to been installed as root. Some binaries (sorry, I didn't mean to limit all the binaries I run as "applications", my bad) have to be run as root. I run my WinME with root privileges.
Blah, children don't get another definition; statistically, how many school children know the difference amongst a meteor, a meteoroid, and a meteorite, MUCH less a planet, a planetesimal, and a planetoid! It's all a bunch of ISM to them!
Switched to surfing pr0n at home rather than work:)
Boss seems happier, now, too. Damn Netscape was interfering with my Boss's propriety wetware! Damn buggy interface!
Seriously, all I know that it's time to switch, haven't actually switched. Thinking Mosaic (what I first used on Solaris). Maybe stick with Lynx; graphics are overrated.
In theory, you are correct; that the implementation of the OS should be stable enough to overcome the errors of an application. In practice, that's just an obtuse statement - to me, that's like saying a car should never crash as a result of some bug in the human operator. In both cases, the vehicle/OS has allocated resources to the operator/application, and operator/application has glitched and removed both the OS and the application.
If I write a program that "accidentally" sends an unwanted low-level format command, as root, to your OS, are you telling me that the OS should recover? That the OS has a problem because it has the capability to do this?
In most cases, yes, I agree with you; OSes should recover from application errors. But always, for all cases, no. And for OSes that can give more and more power (resources, command options, security privileges) to the application, my disagreement increases proportionally.
Netscape is the only application I have ever seen that was developed out-of-house that crashed *a* Solaris, much less than a fully patched 2.5.1 Solaris. It was the first and only time I have had to give the Sun the Two-Finger Salute (Stop-A).
When Netscape kills a Solaris, you know it's time to switch.
Re:Yes [OFF-TOPIC - WARNING - DO *NOT* MODERATE]
on
Netscape 6 Vs. 4.7x
·
· Score: 1
Don't click the link; a bunch of windows with Furbies start, and I am not making this up, hopping around your screen. As well, two respawn for every one killed. The reason the link is a troll is simple: it *is* a troll.
On the flip side, if killing furbies give you a thrill, click. Otherwise, leave it alone.
This obvious answer to your question is about Slashdot never falling victim to the slashdot effect is that the Slashdot server(s) is (are) superior to the other servers that are getting slashdotted. As well, I would imagine that Slashdot's connection/bandwidth is pretty impressive.
Slashdot Mirror
Just please don't judge Canada by my word; I am a very patriotic Canadian and I have no delusions of objectivity when discussing it.
On flip side, Canadians still remember, and appreciate our British heritage, are still proud members of the Commonwealth (hell, I remember singing "God save the Queen" in school during assembly every Friday); if that means anything to you.
> Well, it's our view that if you give a right to
> a federal government, you will never, ever get
> it back if it turned out to be a bad idea.
Bingo! That is the American viewpoint right there! You summed it up dead on! These are my rights, and you can take them from me by prying my dead fingers off them. That is more American than apple pie and the Star Spangled Banner put together.
While the above viewpoint is highly commendable, Americans carry it to the extreme. I would go so far as to say that it blinds Americans from doing the good overall. For example, how many Americans believe that the government should be poking it's nose in Microsoft's alleged monopoly? Microsoft's press gang can cry "Big Brother should say out of our business, they are interfering with our right to do business" and people agree with it. Why? Because: Americans hear, "Big Brother...interfering with our right".
In Canada, you wouldn't have that (assuming we had useful anti-monopoly laws), Canadians would hear that and laugh (like we do now, anyways). Of course government should protect us from Microsoft, we would say. Government is Doing Their Job. I don't remember ever hearing the words Big Brother applied to the Canadian government.
The funny joke of it is that the government gave *you* that random right, via the Constitution, and now they "will never, ever get it back if it turned out to be a bad idea". Like government, like voter. But what happens when the voter having that right is a bad idea?
Your response to my fourth point backs up my original point about American individualism: "better public education doesn't help me, so I won't pay for it; it's MY money".
Don't know any better to agree with your responses to my fifth point.
I concede your point. Of course, we are talking about the province of Alberta, the Texas of Canada, so none of my points really apply there :)
Being that I have lived in both Canada and the USA, I have a number of observations about the differences between the two in cultural, tax, and governmental attitudes.
1) Americans are generally more individualitic; that is, they put more view on themselves as an individual than as a group of individuals. I am not saying that Americans are selfish or self-centered, it's just that the view events around them with a "how-does-this-effect-me?" attitude. Canadians, as a general rule, are more willing to take a more communal (sp?) approach to events; that is, with a "how-does-this-effect-*us*" mentality. Canadians are more willing to pay higher taxes, and have less personal rights, if it means a stronger country for *everyone*.
2) Americans view government as, at best, a necessary evil. This country has founded on the principle of overthrowing the yoke of tyranny, and because of that, have skewed most of the original laws toward personal freedoms. The American federal government has very little true control over Americans; most of the laws obeyed by Americans are state and county laws, so the federal government cannot get too powerful. The problem, now, is because of 230-odd years of this has prevented most Americans from understanding that the federal government sometimes *needs* have that power, and when the federal government tries to acquire that power, the masses riot. Then, the government, worried about its power base, starts enacting tougher laws, which makes the already individualistic and government-distrusting people push back harder, which makes the government enact tougher laws, which...etc. Vicious circle. This circle will not be broken until American people understand that some powers are best left at a federal level, and until the American federal government understand which powers should be absorbed, and which should just left be.
One note about this: Americans like weak government. During the second debate, Al Gore claimed to be part of a government that cut hundreds of thousands of government jobs to streamline the federal government. This was met with agreement; to Americans, this was a Good Thing. In Canada, had a politician claimed that, he would have dragged to the Arctic cirlce and left to die. The Canadian federal government is the single largest employer in Canada; and a lot of people count on the government for their jobs.
Most Canadians trust their government, and for the most part, the Canadian government does little to abuse that trust. While, in written laws, Canadians have less official rights, they have more personal freedom.
One word of advice I was given by Canadians who lived in the States: "Remember: be polite to police, as in 'Yes, sir, officer, sir. Thank you for pistol whipping me, sir.'" In Canada, if a peace officer pulled me over onto the side of a road, I would feel comfortable, and act naturally. In the States, I wouldn't.
3) Taxes. Americans have less infrastructure, and as such, pay less taxes. Period. Don't let anyone tell you different, because they are wrong. Canadians pay about half of their income on taxes; they have higher income, alcohol, fuel, and sales taxes then Americans.
4) Education. Measured by UN studies (which I have no links for), Canadians generally have a higher level of literacy and a better education from playschool to undergraduate studies than Americans. Americans have one of the world's best post-graduate ratings, however. As well, most Americans are geographically illiterate. Between their individualism and the fact they are a super power, Americans do not need to know much of the rest of their country (admittedly, 50 states is way too many) or of the world around them.
5) Internationally, Americans are considered ignorant, rude, bossy, and vain. The quote "I love to travel abroad, except for all the foreigners there" is considered internationally as the summation of the average American tourist. Militarily, Americans are bullies, not heroes. Americans in Beirut are the prime example of how NOT to peace keep. And generally, America sticks its nose in international affairs when and only when America's interests are in jeopardy.
Contrast with Canadians, who are considered internationally as polite and friendly; whose peace keepers are known as peace keepers, and who care about international affairs. The UN was created largely by the efforts of a Canadian.
It was "447" (not 437) years of computation time, but only on "traditional computers". Of course, now define "traditional computers".
I mean, to me, a "traditional computer" is the C64, so I am really not talking about a lot of speed...
What about neglecting copyright, you forgot that one. I mean, Napster and downloading the lastest 0-day k-rad movie and newest crackz and serialz?
And distro/holy wars (or, was that under Slashdot?), how can you forgot that, you Macintrash user! And flame wars, where pre-adoloscence punks offer witless exchanges of trite phrases (oh, Slashdot again, sorry).
And reading User Friendly, Player vs Player, Dilbert, Sluggy Freelance, Red Meat, Herd Thinners, Nukees, and Calvin and Hobbes?
But it's *still* a *mere* refinement. I mean, we *technically* had QoS in IPv4 (um, you mean, like, we were supposed to use it? OOPS! Sorry!). And 128 bit versus 32 bit is just a magnitude increase, nothing more.
And, offhand, you forgot to mention the extra security for IPv6.
It's still improvements and refinements; nothing more.
But having sex in zero-g? Hell, even *I* would take a little hard vacuum for that...
The sun *does* affect the tides, though; neap and whatever is anti-neap tides happen when the Moon and the Sun are in alignment and at right angles. respectively.
I will agree with your last point; better just use a nice shallow raft...
Um, having a hard time visualizing that; gotta link?
Why are they squished?
You mean, like Europa and Titan, moons of gas giants in our own solar system that are capable of supporting life?
And you mean "tides" as opposed to "tidal wasves(sp?)", correct? Tidal forces on a moon of a gas giant would be very impressive, to say the least.
Need infantry to hold land. Space/air borne militias are good for softening up land-based defenses, but ultimately, you will need infantry if you want to secure the land and keep it.
Continuing on with the point above (which wasn't mine to begin with), I am posting as DoomHaven. So, what's that to you? A name - that's it. You have no idea who DoomHaven *really* is; whether that's me beside you, smiling that knowing smile, or if its a person you will never seen in your life. I am posting anonymously, even though you see my "nom de nette" on the posting, because, quite bluntly, you will probably never know who DoomHaven is.
:)
However:
The crew at Slashdot can track my IP. They could track it down to my provider, who could pop out a name and an address, which could mean that one night, I could get a knock at my door, and hear, "Open up DoomHaven, we know you are in there!"
However:
Taking the "nom de nette" as DoomHaven allows me a pretty big margin of anonymity). 99% of the people/crew of Slashdot only know me as "DoomHaven", and not as "K--------- G--------". The odds of someone tracking me down are remote; they are well within my acceptable levels of anonymity. Besides which, it has been my experience that even if person X finds my real address, they will never be able to find my address because of the idiots here who have done the street signs
The question now becomes: how much anonymity is necessary? Is it necessary for (to use an above poster's example) people who are reporting police brutality to be anonymous at the IP level? For rape counselling?
What about places that require accountability, like when using a credit card to buy online? Should they refuse business with people who have anonymous IP addresses?
And what about criminals/crackers, should they be allowed anonymous IP addresses? How will the IP addresses be allocated?
I have serious doubts that any use of anonymous IP couldn't be done with something else.
No, more resources should be spent on space exploration; so that when a natural disaster/calamity of extinction level status strikes the earth we have a backup copy somewhere else.
By your argument, you should only have one server for a site; just a really expensive one to handle everything. One power surge/script kiddy/cracker/etc later, you have lost everything.
Despite you, the human species is valuable enough to me to warrant an off-site backup.
Now that is purely clever!!!!!! Thank you; you just brightened my day!
Actually, I thought I was right for a different reason; so will I can't honestly state, "See! Right here, I was right" without looking (more) ignorant, you raised a good point.
Oh, I agree; however, you can't sucessfully defend a general statement with specific examples; you need a general proof.
Whatever, but I am getting to see that my point might be undefendable as well; and that the reason the OS crumbles under a buggy application was because it itself has bugs. I can't state that Solaris is perfect.
Oh well, at least DoomHaven stirred up some conversation and learned something. That's all he can do.
Of course not, I run them as "avatar"; it's a world of difference...
It's a joke; laugh.
Seriously, as root, I run applications as root. Some packages have to been installed as root. Some binaries (sorry, I didn't mean to limit all the binaries I run as "applications", my bad) have to be run as root. I run my WinME with root privileges.
Blah, children don't get another definition; statistically, how many school children know the difference amongst a meteor, a meteoroid, and a meteorite, MUCH less a planet, a planetesimal, and a planetoid! It's all a bunch of ISM to them!
Unfortunately, that is similar to the view taken by government, "What if terrorists use encryption..." yada yada.
The question then becomes: *who* do you want to have more power over you - gov't or coporations?
> Switch to what, by the way?
:)
Switched to surfing pr0n at home rather than work
Boss seems happier, now, too. Damn Netscape was interfering with my Boss's propriety wetware! Damn buggy interface!
Seriously, all I know that it's time to switch, haven't actually switched. Thinking Mosaic (what I first used on Solaris). Maybe stick with Lynx; graphics are overrated.
In theory, you are correct; that the implementation of the OS should be stable enough to overcome the errors of an application. In practice, that's just an obtuse statement - to me, that's like saying a car should never crash as a result of some bug in the human operator. In both cases, the vehicle/OS has allocated resources to the operator/application, and operator/application has glitched and removed both the OS and the application.
If I write a program that "accidentally" sends an unwanted low-level format command, as root, to your OS, are you telling me that the OS should recover? That the OS has a problem because it has the capability to do this?
In most cases, yes, I agree with you; OSes should recover from application errors. But always, for all cases, no. And for OSes that can give more and more power (resources, command options, security privileges) to the application, my disagreement increases proportionally.
Netscape is the only application I have ever seen that was developed out-of-house that crashed *a* Solaris, much less than a fully patched 2.5.1 Solaris. It was the first and only time I have had to give the Sun the Two-Finger Salute (Stop-A).
When Netscape kills a Solaris, you know it's time to switch.
Don't click the link; a bunch of windows with Furbies start, and I am not making this up, hopping around your screen. As well, two respawn for every one killed. The reason the link is a troll is simple: it *is* a troll.
On the flip side, if killing furbies give you a thrill, click. Otherwise, leave it alone.
> If the slashdot effect really exists
It does, according to this and this.
This obvious answer to your question is about Slashdot never falling victim to the slashdot effect is that the Slashdot server(s) is (are) superior to the other servers that are getting slashdotted. As well, I would imagine that Slashdot's connection/bandwidth is pretty impressive.