yah this is probably gonna get -1'd as a troll or soemthing but in all seriousness. does ANYONE know to config a F**king SMC barricade router? I'm not dense, really, but this insane thing baffles me and as a result i CANNOT set up WEP or anything, so i'm a dopey wideopen loser. *sigh* i should just change my ssid to "dont_buy_smc_crap"
er, if you're that clear headed and observant when the lady is 'having/faking' her orgasm, then you, my friend, are watching a video and NOT participating in whatever it is (manipulation, coitus, uneven spin cycle) that is getting her to the orgasm.
I posted this below, but i have to reply. We can argue about the 'only thing separating you..." comment but I won't bother. But to pretend for ONE SECOND that marketing, including hype and buzz, is not important is to so fundamentally misunderstand business as to be laughable. The reason Apple has a niche - marketing, the reason Microsoft has dominance - marketing, the reason Starbucks sells you $4 coffee - marketing and on and on and on. the fact is that marketing (or communicating to an audience for the purpose of selling them something) stopped being a 'frill' about 50 years ago, and became a central pillar of capitalism. And when an employee breaks an NDA (as noted by others) it's a breach and he'll get screwed. That is has to do with marketing doesn't reduce its value, but increases it.
how relevant WE think the information is, or how worth hiding/saving/embargoing is irrelevant. There are tons of reasons that a company wants to keep info secret until they're ready for it to be released. They might (legitimately) fear that a competitor could use the info to get the jump on them. Considering how 'cool' people think Apple's stuff is this is likely. Or they may want to maximize the marketing impact of the product update/launch. This is not so insignificant really. As someone who works in marketing, I can say that an "oooh, what's next" buzz can be very helpful, and even valuable bonus when introducing product. To have some employee leak it for nothing more than first posters braggin rights is annoying and they wouldn't have a hard time making the claim that it cost them real money. And if the guy signed an NDA (VERY likely if he's working in product development) then he's screwed. I think the real story here is that they were allowed to subpeona the records of the sites he posted to. One reason why you'll never see me posting stuff that I find out at work (v. big tech/computer firm here).
you know it doesn't have to be all or nothing with this. you can have a system that uses new tech to make voting easier, and doesn't run the same risks of fraud or rigging that a purely electronic (no paper) version does.
In Toronto, Canada we have municipal elections using these nifty machines which work fine. what happens is you get your ballot, mark the X where appropriate (mayor, counsellor, school board trustee, etc.) then you return to the machine where YOU feed it into a scanner-type thingy. if the ballot is incorrectly filled out (two votes for mayor for ex.) then it's rejected and you go do it again.
that way you KNOW your vote was counted right then and there.
at the end of the night when the polls close the info is uploaded and almost immediately the numbers are released. It wouldn't be much to make the machine print out a paper receipt for the voter.
in the case of a recount, you still have the paper ballots to go to if someone doesn't trust the machines. Really folks it doesn't need to be this hard!!
Wow. this thing works man. i did a search for a corner store (we calls them variety stores up here), and put in my postal (zip) code. it returned the store accross the street.
I'd have to say that gettin' a hit 300ft from my front door constitutes some pretty good local knowledge!
Recently an executive who went from Canada to the US to work was arrested and charged under the act which makes it illegal to do business in Cuba (Helms-Burton i think??). Even though doing business with Cuba is perfectly legal and legit. in this country (Canada). So even though he broke no Canadian laws. and in fact didn't break a US law whil in the US or while working for a US company, he was charged through some dodgey reach-back clause.
I'm not saying this to slam the US or start some flame-war of politics. I'm sure with a bit of diggin i could find some equally stupid policies in my own country. Just illsutrating the point that as companies become more global in reach they must deal with international laws (the laws of different nations).
And this isn't because the Chinese gov't is bad and commie (and they are), but because they're not in favour by the admistration, ditto with the Cubans. there are FAR WORSE reginmes in the world where it's perfectly okay to do business for Canadians and Americans because they're our buddies at the moment. Haliburton and a lot of other US companies were all over Iraq when Saddam was running the joint, before he p**sed off papa Bush by invading Kuwait. The Saudi's (our pals du jour) don't even let women drive cars and haven't had anything close to an election in 30 years. and so on.
i'm rambling but my points are: 1. Google's a business, so they're going to go where they want and it's legal and they'll comply with local laws, even if we don't like the gov't they're doing biz with. 2. nothing is cut and dried, why does china get favored nation status and cuba is off limits? 3. Canadians are as bad at this crap as anyone
write a book. write a story. it's fun and not that hard. but either way kudos to you for thinking of reading to your baby. it promotes literacy later in life when we do that to our kids. well done man!
for our municipa elections here in Toronto we fill out a ballot (often with 20 or 30 candidates on it because for a couple hundred bucks any knob can get on the ballot), and what happens is you fill it out, then bring it to the 'box' which is a machine. it reads the pencil marks you've made, and if you've done it wrong it rejects it. It gives you a read out of your choices.
this does a couple of things. one, it confirms your choice. (no more florida issues). and two, it automatically counts the vote. when the polls close, the total is uploaded to the central 'counting' station, and within minutes they have totals. the only timme we get into recounts is when the margin is so close that it triggers one.. in which case they manually count them.
seems to work. paper & technolgy together . just a thought but there's no reason to get all weird about improving the voting system.
one other thing i'd say is that having ONE voting system accross the entire system is not a bad idea. votind districts don't control it, the cheif electoral officer (municipal, provincial, or federal depending on the election) decides what system to use. that way if it's buggered up, it's buggered for everyone.
now if we could only get rid of first past the post we'd be laughing.
But think about it in terms of copyright. If i write a novel and am selling it, and say you photocopy that novel, then no, you're not doing anything illegal (personal use and all that), but if you start selling that and make money, you ARE stealing from me, because you're taking money that should have been paid to me.
how is it different in terms of technological or other intellectual property situations. if a person doesn't have the right to protect and profit from the fruit of their own labor then WTF! and yah it happens to be Big Bad Corporations(TM) who are pusing this, but to be fair (and I HATE to be fair) it is the BBC(TM)'s who actually produce the lion's share of 'stuff' which is protectable. In this case good IP law, (like good copyright law) also helps the shmoe who's writing in his unheated garret, or coding in his parent's basement.
yah free stuff is good, and there's a case to be made from the rightness and goodness of said free stuff. But if i write a book, or invent a widget, i wanna be the only one who makes a buck off of it and not have some knob tell me that that i should give it away.
Should I really? and are you gonna pay my student loans off which i incurred while studying my chosen field? or my rent while i wrote/coded/invented? or my groceries? no you're not, I am and i deserve the right to recoup and perhaps profit from it.
Don't know where you are in the US, but if you're in a city with a large asian population you may try what we do here in Toronto. At a local Chinese mall you can have your phone from someplace else 'adjusted' to work on whichever network you want. So if provider A has a lock on a certain brand or model, but you're on provider B, they can change the 'frequency'. likewise with phones from HK , japan, europe etc.
my use of ' quotes means i have no clue what they do or how, or how much it pisses off the providers, but i know they can do this.
Friends have bought phones that are not offered in the US or Canada, and they work just fine, others have brought back phones from China and they aslo work fine.
yup doctor's should be and are paid well-ish here. they could be paid more, i'm sure they'd like to be paid more. bu they don't do too badly from what i can see. they bill the insurance company. same as in the US. onlly difference is that there are less insurance companies.
one thing they want to introduce here is a 'bill' so people can see how much they are really getting. so you'd get a bill, understand how much you're paying (through your taxes) keeps the patient aware and makes the Dr. honest (because we see what he's telling the insurance company he did and we can compare it to what he really did)
apparently it was considered. but they're pulling out a minute amount of water considering the size of the lake. I think when ALL of Toronto and most of Western New York is cooled this way we'll have a problem, but right now it's like saying we're pulling out an eydropper full of water from a bucket and wondering if it has an effect on the temperature.
plus it gets Darn cold here during the winter and that's gotta reset everything right?
Canadians (I'm one) don't wait three years for minor surgeries. yes there are waits. and YES there are problems with our healthcare system - of that we have no illusion. but let's get a few things straight.
1. we spend (are you ready for this?) LESS by a huge margin, than the US on healthcare (per capita). one reason is that we have 10 insurance systems (one for each province) not the hundreds (if not thousands) of carriers in the US. and of course each hospital has billing, collections etc etc. we don't. we've centralised it.
2. All our residents and citizens are covered. anyone, anywhere in this country can go to a hospital and get care. no bull. and the same care our rich and famous get, i get.
3. this actually ain't socialism. it's good economic practice. There is a term (which i forget) but the meaning is that it makes good policy sense to have a particular thing administered at teh lowest level that makes sense. so for example, (in government) cities take care of garbage collection, States take care of highways and the feds handle, say, the military.
Why? because for the feds to do garbage collection, or for the city to have an army is just daft and will create more problems than it solves. healthcare is actually something that can be handled Better and MORE EFFICENTLY by a government created agency. because one of the basic principals of insurance is that the more people over whom you amortize the risks, the safer and more effective your insurance.
blah blah blah
All to say really that before y'all cast aspersions on this crazy canuck commie idea of 'free' health insurance, check yer facts. yes our system has broken bits. but beleive me, waiting nearly a year for, say, arthroscopic surgery on your knee to fix a running injury (um, let's just say it was a 'friend' i know) at truly one of the best hospitals in the world, by a guy who was among those who invented/perfected the procedure was fine by me. considering it was NOT a life threatening injury, and IT COST ME NOTHING!!!
>Not only is it much better for our environment, but we also get rid of the dependence on foreign imports
a smidge off topic here. but the whole thing of america's dependance on foreigh oil thing is a bit of a red herring. See folks, the thing is your (america's) single largest supplier of foreign oil is.... wait for it....... CANADA. yup . by a huge margin to as it happens. we just sit up here hoping like heck that GWB doesn't figure that one out and decide we've got WMDs
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yah this is probably gonna get -1'd as a troll or soemthing but in all seriousness. does ANYONE know to config a F**king SMC barricade router? I'm not dense, really, but this insane thing baffles me and as a result i CANNOT set up WEP or anything, so i'm a dopey wideopen loser. *sigh* i should just change my ssid to "dont_buy_smc_crap"
er, if you're that clear headed and observant when the lady is 'having/faking' her orgasm, then you, my friend, are watching a video and NOT participating in whatever it is (manipulation, coitus, uneven spin cycle) that is getting her to the orgasm.
I posted this below, but i have to reply. We can argue about the 'only thing separating you..." comment but I won't bother. But to pretend for ONE SECOND that marketing, including hype and buzz, is not important is to so fundamentally misunderstand business as to be laughable. The reason Apple has a niche - marketing, the reason Microsoft has dominance - marketing, the reason Starbucks sells you $4 coffee - marketing and on and on and on. the fact is that marketing (or communicating to an audience for the purpose of selling them something) stopped being a 'frill' about 50 years ago, and became a central pillar of capitalism. And when an employee breaks an NDA (as noted by others) it's a breach and he'll get screwed. That is has to do with marketing doesn't reduce its value, but increases it.
how relevant WE think the information is, or how worth hiding/saving/embargoing is irrelevant. There are tons of reasons that a company wants to keep info secret until they're ready for it to be released. They might (legitimately) fear that a competitor could use the info to get the jump on them. Considering how 'cool' people think Apple's stuff is this is likely. Or they may want to maximize the marketing impact of the product update/launch. This is not so insignificant really. As someone who works in marketing, I can say that an "oooh, what's next" buzz can be very helpful, and even valuable bonus when introducing product. To have some employee leak it for nothing more than first posters braggin rights is annoying and they wouldn't have a hard time making the claim that it cost them real money. And if the guy signed an NDA (VERY likely if he's working in product development) then he's screwed. I think the real story here is that they were allowed to subpeona the records of the sites he posted to. One reason why you'll never see me posting stuff that I find out at work (v. big tech/computer firm here).
In Toronto, Canada we have municipal elections using these nifty machines which work fine. what happens is you get your ballot, mark the X where appropriate (mayor, counsellor, school board trustee, etc.) then you return to the machine where YOU feed it into a scanner-type thingy. if the ballot is incorrectly filled out (two votes for mayor for ex.) then it's rejected and you go do it again.
that way you KNOW your vote was counted right then and there.
at the end of the night when the polls close the info is uploaded and almost immediately the numbers are released. It wouldn't be much to make the machine print out a paper receipt for the voter.
in the case of a recount, you still have the paper ballots to go to if someone doesn't trust the machines. Really folks it doesn't need to be this hard!!
Actually it DOES come after three. Not immediately after 3, I'll give you that.
I'd have to say that gettin' a hit 300ft from my front door constitutes some pretty good local knowledge!
I'm not saying this to slam the US or start some flame-war of politics. I'm sure with a bit of diggin i could find some equally stupid policies in my own country. Just illsutrating the point that as companies become more global in reach they must deal with international laws (the laws of different nations).
And this isn't because the Chinese gov't is bad and commie (and they are), but because they're not in favour by the admistration, ditto with the Cubans. there are FAR WORSE reginmes in the world where it's perfectly okay to do business for Canadians and Americans because they're our buddies at the moment. Haliburton and a lot of other US companies were all over Iraq when Saddam was running the joint, before he p**sed off papa Bush by invading Kuwait. The Saudi's (our pals du jour) don't even let women drive cars and haven't had anything close to an election in 30 years. and so on.
i'm rambling but my points are: 1. Google's a business, so they're going to go where they want and it's legal and they'll comply with local laws, even if we don't like the gov't they're doing biz with. 2. nothing is cut and dried, why does china get favored nation status and cuba is off limits? 3. Canadians are as bad at this crap as anyone
write a book. write a story. it's fun and not that hard. but either way kudos to you for thinking of reading to your baby. it promotes literacy later in life when we do that to our kids. well done man!
this does a couple of things. one, it confirms your choice. (no more florida issues). and two, it automatically counts the vote. when the polls close, the total is uploaded to the central 'counting' station, and within minutes they have totals. the only timme we get into recounts is when the margin is so close that it triggers one.. in which case they manually count them.
seems to work. paper & technolgy together . just a thought but there's no reason to get all weird about improving the voting system.
one other thing i'd say is that having ONE voting system accross the entire system is not a bad idea. votind districts don't control it, the cheif electoral officer (municipal, provincial, or federal depending on the election) decides what system to use. that way if it's buggered up, it's buggered for everyone.
now if we could only get rid of first past the post we'd be laughing.
how is it different in terms of technological or other intellectual property situations. if a person doesn't have the right to protect and profit from the fruit of their own labor then WTF! and yah it happens to be Big Bad Corporations(TM) who are pusing this, but to be fair (and I HATE to be fair) it is the BBC(TM)'s who actually produce the lion's share of 'stuff' which is protectable. In this case good IP law, (like good copyright law) also helps the shmoe who's writing in his unheated garret, or coding in his parent's basement.
yah free stuff is good, and there's a case to be made from the rightness and goodness of said free stuff. But if i write a book, or invent a widget, i wanna be the only one who makes a buck off of it and not have some knob tell me that that i should give it away.
Should I really? and are you gonna pay my student loans off which i incurred while studying my chosen field? or my rent while i wrote/coded/invented? or my groceries? no you're not, I am and i deserve the right to recoup and perhaps profit from it.
my use of ' quotes means i have no clue what they do or how, or how much it pisses off the providers, but i know they can do this.
Friends have bought phones that are not offered in the US or Canada, and they work just fine, others have brought back phones from China and they aslo work fine.
one thing they want to introduce here is a 'bill' so people can see how much they are really getting. so you'd get a bill, understand how much you're paying (through your taxes) keeps the patient aware and makes the Dr. honest (because we see what he's telling the insurance company he did and we can compare it to what he really did)
plus it gets Darn cold here during the winter and that's gotta reset everything right?
Canadians (I'm one) don't wait three years for minor surgeries. yes there are waits. and YES there are problems with our healthcare system - of that we have no illusion. but let's get a few things straight.
1. we spend (are you ready for this?) LESS by a huge margin, than the US on healthcare (per capita). one reason is that we have 10 insurance systems (one for each province) not the hundreds (if not thousands) of carriers in the US. and of course each hospital has billing, collections etc etc. we don't. we've centralised it.
2. All our residents and citizens are covered. anyone, anywhere in this country can go to a hospital and get care. no bull. and the same care our rich and famous get, i get.
3. this actually ain't socialism. it's good economic practice. There is a term (which i forget) but the meaning is that it makes good policy sense to have a particular thing administered at teh lowest level that makes sense. so for example, (in government) cities take care of garbage collection, States take care of highways and the feds handle, say, the military.
Why? because for the feds to do garbage collection, or for the city to have an army is just daft and will create more problems than it solves. healthcare is actually something that can be handled Better and MORE EFFICENTLY by a government created agency. because one of the basic principals of insurance is that the more people over whom you amortize the risks, the safer and more effective your insurance.
blah blah blah
All to say really that before y'all cast aspersions on this crazy canuck commie idea of 'free' health insurance, check yer facts. yes our system has broken bits. but beleive me, waiting nearly a year for, say, arthroscopic surgery on your knee to fix a running injury (um, let's just say it was a 'friend' i know) at truly one of the best hospitals in the world, by a guy who was among those who invented/perfected the procedure was fine by me. considering it was NOT a life threatening injury, and IT COST ME NOTHING!!!
happy election!!
>Not only is it much better for our environment, but we also get rid of the dependence on foreign imports a smidge off topic here. but the whole thing of america's dependance on foreigh oil thing is a bit of a red herring. See folks, the thing is your (america's) single largest supplier of foreign oil is.... wait for it....... CANADA. yup . by a huge margin to as it happens. we just sit up here hoping like heck that GWB doesn't figure that one out and decide we've got WMDs