Servers, P2P programs, messaging programs,... email (Outlook?), web browser (IE? Even Firefox had one not too long ago, didn't it?), or pretty much any software that reads data from an untrusted source.
By the way - that includes things like word processors. A malicious attacker overflowing the buffer of Word via some viral Word doc spread via email - NX bit can help here, too. By "untrusted source" - that means pretty much any program.
IMO, this is still unacceptable. And it's not just software that gets you to sign away your rights prior to using a product/service. "Just sign here, and here..." I'd love to see some court strike these down as legally "stupid." I mean, if the salescritter's job is to generate sales, and s/he's pushing you to sign something without giving you a real, honest chance of reading it/comprehending it, should that really be legally enforceable? I'd like to see a few things...
Plain language agreements. (Might put more than a couple lawyers out of work...)
Failing that, there should be room on the agreement for the consumer to write his/her understanding of the agreement, based on what the salescritter says, which would be legally binding - thus ensuring that the consumer understands their rights, and ensuring that they are communicated effectively.
When I posted that, I thought to myself, "Given/., I give it a 50-50 chance to be modded up insightful." Never did I imagine that I'd both be right.:-)
If not replenished? What - are we expecting humanity to do this? It's a natural course of events that not even the most extreme environmentalists could possibly blame on humanity...
Of course, TFA states it in a much less drastic manner, talking about a natural process to replenish, which, of course, would be fascinating to learn about - and could be useful in figuring out natural processes for replenishing other things, whether ozone, or other phenomena (hard to predict without the knowledge we would gain!)
Some companies actually have stock "on hand" to sell as options. That is, if they "print" 50,000,000 shares, they keep back enough shares to "sell" in options, with expired options going back to the corporate-owned pool.
Then, if you were a regular investor owning, say, 50,000 shares, you would own 0.01% of the company. The fact that the company owns maybe 1% of itself means that you own 0.01% of that as well. So, until your duly elected officers (board of directors) sell these shares to its employees in a shareholder-approved stock option offering (well, a bit more complicated than that), your shareholder vote is worth more.
But that's not really that different from your electoral vote in government: people who show up to the polls dilute your vote. If everyone stayed home, your vote is suddenly "worth" more. And all those other damned voters keep creating more voters at a whim. (Well, it takes 18 years to mature into a voter, but that's a minor detail;-})
In no way would I want to sound like I want to absolve parents of, well, parenting their kids. I think the goverment is too involved in restricting parents from parenting already (too easy in some places for a kid to complain to the authorities and be removed from the parents who, gasp, grounded them).
That said, I don't see how this is any different from legislation that prevents the sale of alcohol to minors. It forces parents (even the ones who don't want to parent their kids) into being present during a purchase such as this. If you don't have time to spend getting your kids the violent games you think they should have, then make time. They're your kids. If you can't, because you and your spouse are both working 50-100 hours per week just to pay the bills and put food on the table, maybe you should have thought about that before you had kids. And you probably can't really afford $50+ per game anyway.
Now, I can understand that some people don't believe there is a link between violence in video games, movies, TV shows, whatever, and violent/criminal behaviour. That's fine - I don't agree with them, but we could have that debate, too. That's not the debate we're having here at all.
Built in? Yes, only a Win16 subsystem. I suppose I used the wrong term - there was a 3rd-party free (open source?) win32 conversion program, which the fog of time keeps me from remembering the name. It was deathly slow, at least on my PII-233, and still being worked on. I imagine it has since died with OS/2.
(disclaimer for the OS/2 zealots which may be lurking: my PII-233 still runs OS/2 today. At least, until I manage to port all my functionality from it to Linux... And I have a PIII-800 sitting here with OS/2 on it, not even plugged in, just so I can do some OS/2 support at my day job. So I understand that "OS/2 is dead" doesn't mean it doesn't run anymore. So back off. I may never have been an OS/2 zealot, but I still am an OS/2 bigot,. lamenting OS/2's loss in the OS wars.)
Scanning: I downloaded the Japanese epson drivers that Epson recommends, compiled, installed, and couldn't get it to work. But then xsane itself worked fine, so I left well enough alone;-)
Printing: I suppose we've noticed a bit of off-centered-ness (those pinko commie bastards - the whole picture is slanted to the left!) (Actually, I don't recall which way it is off center - I just couldn't resist.) But it hasn't really bothered us too much so far.
I got my employer to pay for VMWare, and so I'm running Notes under XP under VMWare under Linux. It works just as well there as anywhere else, except a bit slower.
I'm running RHELAS3U3 as my desktop - again, employer-paid-for. (Well, "paid" is a strong word - we're a RH partner, and got a bunch of free licenses to help us develop our product to work with RHEL. I figure that since I do 95+% of my linux development from my home desktop, it qualifies as a development machine.)
Yeah, getting stuff to be cross-platform worked so well for OS/2 (win32 subsystem) and Mac (getting MS to port all the MS software to Mac)... OS/2 is dead, and Apple pretty much had to reinvent the Mac for MacOSX, and, even then, needed a MS-based infusion of $$$.
To be honest, I remain unconvinced that getting FOSS running on Windows is either good or bad for MS. OOo specifically is good (since MSOffice is one of the two largest money grabs MS has, with Windows being the other). The rest? I'm kinda thinking it's good for MS in the same way that MS has always tried to entice developers to develop for Windows - it helps to add value to the Windows platform: "Look, you can run all these free programs, and when you decide you want commercial quality, you can run all these other programs, too!"
MS's marketing machine will find a way to spin this to the positive - why keep giving them ammunition?
Which is why, when I went out to purchase a scanner just recently, I made sure it was already compatable with Linux. (FYI - Epson CX5400)
Priorities. I can do everything I want with computers without Windows. Well, except that my employer insists on using Lotus Notes...
Email? Check. Webbrowsing? Check. Office productivity? Check. Printing, scanning? Check. Palm synchronisation? Check. Downloading from my digital camera? Check. Great games? Check. No, not Linux there - that's a PS2. Those things are cheaper than Windows and don't crash nearly as often;-) Multi-tasking is awesome, too - my email, webbrowsing, etc., all work great even when I'm playing a fast-paced full-screen game on my PS2...;-)
I think you're missing some of what I said - I never meant to imply that I would recommend writing the XML parser - only that parsing data is such a small part of a conversion process as to be almost immaterial, as long as that data format is documented. The larger part of the effort is semantic parsing - figuring out all the hierarchy, relationships between files, and figuring out how that applies to the new software's data format.
Validation is almost completely unrequired - it's a nice-to-have, that's it. It's not like (many) humans go in and edit this stuff.
XML itself I'm unsold on (is this not obvious yet?). However, I'm not sold on it being a bad thing, either - more ambivalent than anything. It's way more important that the format is documented than anything else. After all, we can come up with some pretty unreadable XML format, too - with 1 or 2 letter tag names, 1 or 2 letter attribute names, and values for attributes that are completely non-intuitive (think: internal look-up, e.g., fr="c" means that the table cell is 3 columns wide, while fr="b" means that the cell is hidden). But, if all of this is well-documented, even unreadable XML can be semantically parsed and used.
I have to agree with the GP post... it's not the format, it's the documentation of the format that matters.
Let's say that OOo were to disappear one day, replaced with another suite from somewhere else. If that new suite also documented its format, it would be simple, if not completely trivial, to write a convert program to convert from OOo to the new suite. Nothing here is fundamentally different just because OOo uses XML.
The only difference between XML and other formats is that with XML you may not need to write a parser. But that's not an incredibly difficult piece to write once. (Writing a generic XML parser is a bit more difficult.) Even if both suites used XML, but used different schema because they look at data completely differently, the difficult part would be the semantic conversion (from layouts based on, say, paragraphs to pages or something).
I do understand that there are a number of people saying "why bother?" My answer:
This is an "ask" story in a "News for Nerds" site. Um, what could be more nerdy than a roll-your-own barscan kitchen inventory running on Linux? (translation: calm down.)
I would find some use for it if it were able to take hand-written lists and combine them with the barcode list (multiple sources, merged from a palm pilot or something). This means that for non-agribusiness foodstuffs (produce, possibly meat), as we run out/low, we can just write it in the list. But for other items, I need to be able to specify where it is - we have a reasonable supply of most non-perishables in the kitchen, but for larger bulk (whether it's a flat of 20 cans of soup, or it's rolls of paper towels), we store that in the basement. So it'd be nice to say where something is stored so we can easily see where all of our soup is, and how much (total) we have. Maybe I'm just being lazy (hey, that's a virtue in my programming language!). Or just plain geeky.
Whatever it is - it's fun. I run a linux webserver on my home machine - somewhat overkill. But I use it because it's fun. Same with email, etc. - so please don't crap all over someone else's geekiness. One man's garbage (waste of time) is another man's treasure (fun way to entertain themselves).
I can kind of see your point - you're saying that it is better that a kid has the ability to break the rules without actually being limited to following the rules. That kind of makes sense.
So the follow up question is... exactly as the original question, except that rather than limiting, just tallying and reporting?
Note that part of a parent's job is to socialise their child(ren) as to how the world works. Since it was originally pointed out how some WiFi hotspots already do this, then that's how the world works, and the kids need to learn this. Also, an employer may have net access - but may monitor their employee's net usage. Regardless of whether this crowd agrees with the employer in doing so or not, it's still the way the world works, and you'll need to learn how to work within it or you'll be out of a job. (Much better to leave employment on your own terms when you have a new job than to be fired and be without paycheck for a while...)
To be honest, since moving away from Toronto two years ago, the number of unsolicited calls have dropped significantly. I like the idea, it's just as strong of a motivator for me to worry about where I currently live.
That said, I can completely understand your point - calling me during regular supper hour is just plain annoying. (Having supper at 8 or 9PM is more understandable interruption.) And, as it's your money, you can choose your basis for supporting/not supporting causes completely as you see fit.
Ok, so I realise that at least 70% of the/. users will figure this out... so this is in part for the other 30%, and in part because I'm just being stupid. Using a bit of cut&paste with the tr command, I un-rot13'd this:
$ echo "Ab, V qba'g guvax pelcgbtencul jvyy rire pngpu ba" | tr n-za-mN-ZA-M a-zA-Z No, I don't think cryptography will ever catch on
Stupid me... I thought that tr was telling me something - took a second glance to realise that it was the un-rot13'd message...
On the other hand, Japan would likely be one of the first countries to sign up as a US ally!
Re:Just use BSD or Linux or OS X, forget about win
on
Bugzilla on Windows?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I politely disagree.
All issues of whether bugzilla is really the right choice or not aside, this is precisely how Linux started making inroads in other corporations. Some tech guy needed a quick and easy way to do some sort of server where that server was way more trivial to implement on Linux than on Windows. So they quietly put Linux on that box, set up the server, and said to everyone, "Point your Internet Explorer to...", and was hailed a hero. Rare would be the person who would even think that the server wasn't Windows, or that would even care, as long as the solution worked.
Thus, I'd recommend that, in the future, when your manager says, "Solve this problem," and solving that problem is easier on Linux than on Windows, just do what your manager asks: solve the problem. Once it has been working for a few months, and you have a few Linux solutions, you can let them know how you solved their problem, and they may want to take a closer look. Or maybe not.
NanoGator, Issue9mm... you're both right. You both value different things. To 9mm, you didn't value your freedom as much, so taking away your freedom without taking away things to do that you enjoyed wasn't effective. NG, you value your freedom more, so even being able to play Doom in your room was no compensation for missing out on what your friends were doing.
The ideal justice system would react similarly: it would merely take away specific things that each offender values as punishment. To those who value freedom, lock-up. To those who value computers/consoles, a ban from being anywhere near one (and some way to enforce that).
Back to the real world, though. Since just figuring out what each offender values would be a vast use of resource, and enforcing anything other than lock-up and cash fines would be nearly impossible (how many restraining orders actually work? Imagine being ordered not to go near drugs for a drug addict!), I realise that I'm dreaming. Lockup and fines are about all we have left. We're not rehabilitating. We're punishing, and not always all that effectively, either.
You had a point... until you contradicted yourself.
Try this: Canadian government does not subsidise prescriptions, period. The closest we come is the government negotiating the prices for drugs, but that cost is still borne by the consumer.
Indepedantly from that, some people have subsidised health plans which cover their prescriptions, or at least parts of their prescriptions. Some of these are subsidised by their employer (called "benefits"), others are covered by the government (certain assured-income benefits come with health care). Others have no prescription coverage - they can see their doctor all they want, but have to pay out-of-pocket for the full (negotiated) price of the drugs they need. You see, up here in the one-health-care-scheme-fits-everyone true north, strong and free, we have more tiers of health care than you can shake a stick at. Just don't tell Prime Minister Paul Martin. He'll have a heart attack, and be sent to some US hospital at Canadian taxpayers' expense.
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Servers, P2P programs, messaging programs, ... email (Outlook?), web browser (IE? Even Firefox had one not too long ago, didn't it?), or pretty much any software that reads data from an untrusted source.
By the way - that includes things like word processors. A malicious attacker overflowing the buffer of Word via some viral Word doc spread via email - NX bit can help here, too. By "untrusted source" - that means pretty much any program.
IMO, this is still unacceptable. And it's not just software that gets you to sign away your rights prior to using a product/service. "Just sign here, and here..." I'd love to see some court strike these down as legally "stupid." I mean, if the salescritter's job is to generate sales, and s/he's pushing you to sign something without giving you a real, honest chance of reading it/comprehending it, should that really be legally enforceable? I'd like to see a few things ...
- Plain language agreements. (Might put more than a couple lawyers out of work
...) - Failing that, there should be room on the agreement for the consumer to write his/her understanding of the agreement, based on what the salescritter says, which would be legally binding - thus ensuring that the consumer understands their rights, and ensuring that they are communicated effectively.
Yeah, right... sigh...- Roasted chestnuts on an open fire: Doing that tonight. Family tradition - once or twice every Christmas season. No, we're not British.
- One horse open sleigh: In the 80's, when I was a pre-teen. Church event, I think. We had a blast. Hot chocolate served all around afterwards.
And your point?When I posted that, I thought to myself, "Given /., I give it a 50-50 chance to be modded up insightful." Never did I imagine that I'd both be right. :-)
Anyone got a torrent?
If not replenished? What - are we expecting humanity to do this? It's a natural course of events that not even the most extreme environmentalists could possibly blame on humanity...
Of course, TFA states it in a much less drastic manner, talking about a natural process to replenish, which, of course, would be fascinating to learn about - and could be useful in figuring out natural processes for replenishing other things, whether ozone, or other phenomena (hard to predict without the knowledge we would gain!)
Maybe.
Some companies actually have stock "on hand" to sell as options. That is, if they "print" 50,000,000 shares, they keep back enough shares to "sell" in options, with expired options going back to the corporate-owned pool.
Then, if you were a regular investor owning, say, 50,000 shares, you would own 0.01% of the company. The fact that the company owns maybe 1% of itself means that you own 0.01% of that as well. So, until your duly elected officers (board of directors) sell these shares to its employees in a shareholder-approved stock option offering (well, a bit more complicated than that), your shareholder vote is worth more.
But that's not really that different from your electoral vote in government: people who show up to the polls dilute your vote. If everyone stayed home, your vote is suddenly "worth" more. And all those other damned voters keep creating more voters at a whim. (Well, it takes 18 years to mature into a voter, but that's a minor detail ;-})
In no way would I want to sound like I want to absolve parents of, well, parenting their kids. I think the goverment is too involved in restricting parents from parenting already (too easy in some places for a kid to complain to the authorities and be removed from the parents who, gasp, grounded them).
That said, I don't see how this is any different from legislation that prevents the sale of alcohol to minors. It forces parents (even the ones who don't want to parent their kids) into being present during a purchase such as this. If you don't have time to spend getting your kids the violent games you think they should have, then make time. They're your kids. If you can't, because you and your spouse are both working 50-100 hours per week just to pay the bills and put food on the table, maybe you should have thought about that before you had kids. And you probably can't really afford $50+ per game anyway.
Now, I can understand that some people don't believe there is a link between violence in video games, movies, TV shows, whatever, and violent/criminal behaviour. That's fine - I don't agree with them, but we could have that debate, too. That's not the debate we're having here at all.
Um, because it's what most Windows users spend most of their time with? :-)
Built in? Yes, only a Win16 subsystem. I suppose I used the wrong term - there was a 3rd-party free (open source?) win32 conversion program, which the fog of time keeps me from remembering the name. It was deathly slow, at least on my PII-233, and still being worked on. I imagine it has since died with OS/2.
(disclaimer for the OS/2 zealots which may be lurking: my PII-233 still runs OS/2 today. At least, until I manage to port all my functionality from it to Linux... And I have a PIII-800 sitting here with OS/2 on it, not even plugged in, just so I can do some OS/2 support at my day job. So I understand that "OS/2 is dead" doesn't mean it doesn't run anymore. So back off. I may never have been an OS/2 zealot, but I still am an OS/2 bigot,. lamenting OS/2's loss in the OS wars.)
Scanning: I downloaded the Japanese epson drivers that Epson recommends, compiled, installed, and couldn't get it to work. But then xsane itself worked fine, so I left well enough alone ;-)
Printing: I suppose we've noticed a bit of off-centered-ness (those pinko commie bastards - the whole picture is slanted to the left!) (Actually, I don't recall which way it is off center - I just couldn't resist.) But it hasn't really bothered us too much so far.
I got my employer to pay for VMWare, and so I'm running Notes under XP under VMWare under Linux. It works just as well there as anywhere else, except a bit slower.
I'm running RHELAS3U3 as my desktop - again, employer-paid-for. (Well, "paid" is a strong word - we're a RH partner, and got a bunch of free licenses to help us develop our product to work with RHEL. I figure that since I do 95+% of my linux development from my home desktop, it qualifies as a development machine.)
Yeah, getting stuff to be cross-platform worked so well for OS/2 (win32 subsystem) and Mac (getting MS to port all the MS software to Mac) ... OS/2 is dead, and Apple pretty much had to reinvent the Mac for MacOSX, and, even then, needed a MS-based infusion of $$$.
To be honest, I remain unconvinced that getting FOSS running on Windows is either good or bad for MS. OOo specifically is good (since MSOffice is one of the two largest money grabs MS has, with Windows being the other). The rest? I'm kinda thinking it's good for MS in the same way that MS has always tried to entice developers to develop for Windows - it helps to add value to the Windows platform: "Look, you can run all these free programs, and when you decide you want commercial quality, you can run all these other programs, too!"
MS's marketing machine will find a way to spin this to the positive - why keep giving them ammunition?
Which is why, when I went out to purchase a scanner just recently, I made sure it was already compatable with Linux. (FYI - Epson CX5400)
Priorities. I can do everything I want with computers without Windows. Well, except that my employer insists on using Lotus Notes...
Email? Check. Webbrowsing? Check. Office productivity? Check. Printing, scanning? Check. Palm synchronisation? Check. Downloading from my digital camera? Check. Great games? Check. No, not Linux there - that's a PS2. Those things are cheaper than Windows and don't crash nearly as often ;-) Multi-tasking is awesome, too - my email, webbrowsing, etc., all work great even when I'm playing a fast-paced full-screen game on my PS2... ;-)
I think you're missing some of what I said - I never meant to imply that I would recommend writing the XML parser - only that parsing data is such a small part of a conversion process as to be almost immaterial, as long as that data format is documented. The larger part of the effort is semantic parsing - figuring out all the hierarchy, relationships between files, and figuring out how that applies to the new software's data format.
Validation is almost completely unrequired - it's a nice-to-have, that's it. It's not like (many) humans go in and edit this stuff.
XML itself I'm unsold on (is this not obvious yet?). However, I'm not sold on it being a bad thing, either - more ambivalent than anything. It's way more important that the format is documented than anything else. After all, we can come up with some pretty unreadable XML format, too - with 1 or 2 letter tag names, 1 or 2 letter attribute names, and values for attributes that are completely non-intuitive (think: internal look-up, e.g., fr="c" means that the table cell is 3 columns wide, while fr="b" means that the cell is hidden). But, if all of this is well-documented, even unreadable XML can be semantically parsed and used.
I have to agree with the GP post ... it's not the format, it's the documentation of the format that matters.
Let's say that OOo were to disappear one day, replaced with another suite from somewhere else. If that new suite also documented its format, it would be simple, if not completely trivial, to write a convert program to convert from OOo to the new suite. Nothing here is fundamentally different just because OOo uses XML.
The only difference between XML and other formats is that with XML you may not need to write a parser. But that's not an incredibly difficult piece to write once. (Writing a generic XML parser is a bit more difficult.) Even if both suites used XML, but used different schema because they look at data completely differently, the difficult part would be the semantic conversion (from layouts based on, say, paragraphs to pages or something).
I do understand that there are a number of people saying "why bother?" My answer:
- This is an "ask" story in a "News for Nerds" site. Um, what could be more nerdy than a roll-your-own barscan kitchen inventory running on Linux? (translation: calm down.)
- I would find some use for it if it were able to take hand-written lists and combine them with the barcode list (multiple sources, merged from a palm pilot or something). This means that for non-agribusiness foodstuffs (produce, possibly meat), as we run out/low, we can just write it in the list. But for other items, I need to be able to specify where it is - we have a reasonable supply of most non-perishables in the kitchen, but for larger bulk (whether it's a flat of 20 cans of soup, or it's rolls of paper towels), we store that in the basement. So it'd be nice to say where something is stored so we can easily see where all of our soup is, and how much (total) we have. Maybe I'm just being lazy (hey, that's a virtue in my programming language!). Or just plain geeky.
Whatever it is - it's fun. I run a linux webserver on my home machine - somewhat overkill. But I use it because it's fun. Same with email, etc. - so please don't crap all over someone else's geekiness. One man's garbage (waste of time) is another man's treasure (fun way to entertain themselves).I can kind of see your point - you're saying that it is better that a kid has the ability to break the rules without actually being limited to following the rules. That kind of makes sense.
So the follow up question is ... exactly as the original question, except that rather than limiting, just tallying and reporting?
Note that part of a parent's job is to socialise their child(ren) as to how the world works. Since it was originally pointed out how some WiFi hotspots already do this, then that's how the world works, and the kids need to learn this. Also, an employer may have net access - but may monitor their employee's net usage. Regardless of whether this crowd agrees with the employer in doing so or not, it's still the way the world works, and you'll need to learn how to work within it or you'll be out of a job. (Much better to leave employment on your own terms when you have a new job than to be fired and be without paycheck for a while...)
To be honest, since moving away from Toronto two years ago, the number of unsolicited calls have dropped significantly. I like the idea, it's just as strong of a motivator for me to worry about where I currently live.
That said, I can completely understand your point - calling me during regular supper hour is just plain annoying. (Having supper at 8 or 9PM is more understandable interruption.) And, as it's your money, you can choose your basis for supporting/not supporting causes completely as you see fit.
Ok, so I realise that at least 70% of the /. users will figure this out... so this is in part for the other 30%, and in part because I'm just being stupid. Using a bit of cut&paste with the tr command, I un-rot13'd this:
Stupid me ... I thought that tr was telling me something - took a second glance to realise that it was the un-rot13'd message...
Pick one:
On the other hand, Japan would likely be one of the first countries to sign up as a US ally!
I politely disagree.
All issues of whether bugzilla is really the right choice or not aside, this is precisely how Linux started making inroads in other corporations. Some tech guy needed a quick and easy way to do some sort of server where that server was way more trivial to implement on Linux than on Windows. So they quietly put Linux on that box, set up the server, and said to everyone, "Point your Internet Explorer to...", and was hailed a hero. Rare would be the person who would even think that the server wasn't Windows, or that would even care, as long as the solution worked.
Thus, I'd recommend that, in the future, when your manager says, "Solve this problem," and solving that problem is easier on Linux than on Windows, just do what your manager asks: solve the problem. Once it has been working for a few months, and you have a few Linux solutions, you can let them know how you solved their problem, and they may want to take a closer look. Or maybe not.
NanoGator, Issue9mm ... you're both right. You both value different things. To 9mm, you didn't value your freedom as much, so taking away your freedom without taking away things to do that you enjoyed wasn't effective. NG, you value your freedom more, so even being able to play Doom in your room was no compensation for missing out on what your friends were doing.
The ideal justice system would react similarly: it would merely take away specific things that each offender values as punishment. To those who value freedom, lock-up. To those who value computers/consoles, a ban from being anywhere near one (and some way to enforce that).
Back to the real world, though. Since just figuring out what each offender values would be a vast use of resource, and enforcing anything other than lock-up and cash fines would be nearly impossible (how many restraining orders actually work? Imagine being ordered not to go near drugs for a drug addict!), I realise that I'm dreaming. Lockup and fines are about all we have left. We're not rehabilitating. We're punishing, and not always all that effectively, either.
Same reason that a magician waves a wand around, I guess. To distract the audience from the boringly simple trick that is being performed ;-)
You had a point ... until you contradicted yourself.
Try this: Canadian government does not subsidise prescriptions, period. The closest we come is the government negotiating the prices for drugs, but that cost is still borne by the consumer.
Indepedantly from that, some people have subsidised health plans which cover their prescriptions, or at least parts of their prescriptions. Some of these are subsidised by their employer (called "benefits"), others are covered by the government (certain assured-income benefits come with health care). Others have no prescription coverage - they can see their doctor all they want, but have to pay out-of-pocket for the full (negotiated) price of the drugs they need. You see, up here in the one-health-care-scheme-fits-everyone true north, strong and free, we have more tiers of health care than you can shake a stick at. Just don't tell Prime Minister Paul Martin. He'll have a heart attack, and be sent to some US hospital at Canadian taxpayers' expense.