OH I think there is a market for a dirt-cheap PC, people would buy one (or maybe 20) of them and find uses for them readily enough. No, the problem is simply that the manufacturers have no desire to make the PC or the parts for it because the profit-margin would be so small for the materials used that it wouldn't be worth it from their perspective.
Up until recently, you could get a pretty functional PC up here in Canada for around $1000. Back in 1988 it was $2000, and now its probably $600, but the principle (despite the slowly sliding average price) is pretty much the same, each generation of computer seems to come out with new innovations that allow the sellers to mark the price up slightly even though the component costs have gone down. In essence I don't think any one wants to *sell* a cheap PC, but its undoubtedly possible to make one. The only constant in the equation seems to be the price of MS Operating Systems:(
Look at the $100 laptop they are touting for the 3rd world. Sure, its pretty basic, but do you honestly think that there wouldn't be people who would be perfectly happy with a basic machine that lets them view webpages and check their email and cost that little? I think they would sell like hotcakes, but the manufacturers would make ~$2.00 profit per sale and thus have no interest.
While I personally prefer a skills based system, I can see that class and level based game design offers some directly advantageous things to the developers of a game: Its far easier to determine what capabilities a character may have in a given situation, and by controlling those abilities via character level, far easier to determine a challenge rating.
Class also offers the player a clear definition of their role in a group - and thus the ability to choose that role. Essentially they all boil down to the D&D Classics: Tank, Damage Dealer, Healer, Magic User, Thief. The names may change but they are essentially the same. I suppose you can add Ranged/Melee as subsets of damage dealing classes.
I actually think thats the reason that AD&D is so popular. Its easy to define your role, the way you *want* to play, with relatively little real decisions required, and every other player knows easily what to expect of you. Its easier for the GM to manage the game session in a PnP game for the same reason that its easier on the developers to manage encounters.
I loved the SWG 250pt character generation system. I think its the pinnacle of MMORPG gaming design for flexibility, variety and configurability. Its a shame that they tossed it in favour of WOW's pathetic class based system - and made a far worse one that WOWs while they were at it. I can concede though that it was probably a pain to develop for. I think their essential mistake was to toss the 250pt system in favour of a linear system, but reducing the classes was probably a smart move - much as I miss TKM, Doctor and Creature Handler.
Now sadly SOE's approach to SWG character design seems to be that everyone can solo, so no one has a clear role, everyone can heal, so no one needs to be support. As a result, grouping is not a part of the game at all any more.
Why do so many Mac users insist on this fantasy that Windows users really hate Windows and would switch to the Mac OS in a flash if only they had a chance to touch it's brushed chrome goodness? The fact is, your dislike of Windows has little bearing on wether others like it. Heck, you can even hate Windows with passion usually reserved for suicide bombers and it still would have very little influance on whether the general population would like it.
Need, coersion and ignorance are not the only reasons people use Windows. Most Windows users actually like their OS and would not want to switch. This could, in fact, be a good chunk of the reason why the vast majority of Windows users, even the ones who've seen that really cool "Dock," have not switched.
Well, I have to disagree. I have used Windows for years - mostly because I play games. I would switch to the Mac OS or any other OS in a milisecond if I could play my games on it. I can't say there is a single feature of Windows that would keep me using it. I have spent countless hours just fixing buggered up installations, reinstalling Windows because its been too long and its filled up with bloated crap I can't identify to remove, reinstalling because it just suddenly stopped working for no apparent reason, fixing other people's installations because they were screwing around and accidentally hit the "fuck up this installation" button somehow etc. You shouldn't have to fight your Operating System just to continue using it. You shouldn't have a shitty browser shoved up your ass by the Marketing Department at Microsoft. You shouldn't have them continuing their monopolistic practices (I guess the DOJ had the best judge that money could buy or something). Any loyalty MS might ever have gotten from me they have lost through their own shoddy software and business practices.
I use Windows because I play PC games and thats the only reason. Its the tie to gaming that has made Windows so successful in my case and in the case of most of my friends. I can do almost any other thing I care to under Linux or OS/X but I can't play games when the developers of those games can't be bothered to develop them for any other platform. Sure there are emulation means I could use, some run under Wine etc, but my system isn't beefy enough to do that adequately and I don't have the cash to afford it. Hell I can't even afford a 40Gb drive at the moment.
Windows sucks, but I have little or no choice in running it as long as the game developers are willing to continue to be Microsoft's bitch and only develop for Windows.
What utter horseshit. So you think you can broadly define all contractors as underhanded thieves who will deliberately mis-design a website in order to bilk their customers of more money? I think that is remarkably stupid and unfair.
Yes, they may not do adequate testing for all browsers, there are many Microsoft-only shops out there that can't seem to see beyond the MS Horizon at all, and don't adequately explore other technologies. Yes, the client may not know enough to request cross-browser testing, or may have decided against that portion of the design process for budgetary reasons etc. To paint all web design contractors as brigands is however beyond stupid.
The core problem is of course that Microsoft deliberately develops software that is not compatible with established standards in order to distort those standards by means of exploiting their de facto control over the market. As a result developers have to perform extra testing just to make sure their design is compatible with the real standards from W3C, and also to make sure their site desplays on the BuiltInPieceOfShitBrowser IE that Microsoft has deliberately failed to bother improving lo these many years. In a reasonable world, MS would have been forced by the courts to uncouple IE from their OS so that users could have a real choice as to their browser software, but I guess when you have 38 Billion in the banks you are beyond the courts - as we can see from the results of the DOJ investigation:(
Data retention and maintaining of backups is very expensive. There is no real industry standard but in some cases - say in the health care industry - there are legal requirements for how long data must be retained. Usually, if you formulate a logical data retention policy and apply it consistently then you are safe if you get hauled into court. If you can show that you had good reasons for your policies and that you followed them strictly, then the fact that you got rid of data after a period of time is entirely defensible. Its when you have policies and you fail to apply them consistently, or when you don't have policies that you seem to get into trouble in the courts. Just saying keep the email for 30/60/90 days is not a policy generally speaking.
The problem is that not all emails are of value, so you can't generally just delete them based on how much time has passed. Each email needs to be examined and sorted according to its importance, or you keep all of it according to the length of time you need to preserve the most important stuff. I am sure that few companies do this adequately, and its a big issue in the corporate world at the moment. The Sarbanes-Oxley act has caused a massive stir in business circles, and while email is the big focus point for many people at the moment, things like Instant Messaging and even Blogs are becoming relevant too. If I send you an email and we agree to do business in that email exchange, that exchange is now a legal record - and may even constitute a contract (IANAL so thats not something I can comment on). In many cases that may be the only record of us reaching an agreement to do business. As such its a business record and needs to be preserved for the same period of time as say a written contract I would expect.
Having a logical data retention policy and following it consistently is the most important defense a company or organization can raise in court from what I have seen. That way when you are called to court you can say: "Why can't you produce this email? Well, because its more than 5 years old and we have a policy of deleting all emails after a period of 5 years. As you can see we have followed that policy for the past 8 years consistently. Preserving that email as backup tapes for longer than that period has proven to be prohibitively expensive, and so we formulated this policy as a business decision and have continued to follow it for this entire period". The courts do not expect you to keep everything because thats unreasonable (and searching it would be extremely costly and time consuming as well), but they do expect you to formulate a plan and stick to it. Most companies that get in trouble seem to have formulated a plan and not followed it (or applied it unevenly), or to have suddenly decided to apply it when a lawsuit looked likely (which is seen as covering up evidence by a court in many cases).
As well you need an effective Hold Order system - so that if you get taken to court for some reason, you can immediately inform all personnel that *nothing* gets deleted while the lawsuit is ongoing. All records are retained, no email is deleted etc, so that it can all be produced upon demand. This ought to include things like IM traffic logs etc.
Now as for the legislation to mandate retaining data for a fixed minimum period, well thats probably not that unreasonable. There are laws which prevent that data being turned over for unreasonable reasons, and they *ought* to be enough. I am sure a lot of this legislation is driven by a desire to prevent problems like Enron from occuring again.
I am not a lawyer but I have read a lot about data retention as part of a project I have been working on. Its a dark and murky world and few organizations seem to be spending the amount of time and effort that is required to safeguard their butts should they be required to produce their records in court at some future point.
If you really need to know, then try to send someone to this conference:
IANAL, but surely the burden of determining which code SCO claims has been illegally lifted lies solely upon SCO. This would normally happen in the Discovery phase of a case I believe, and the cost would borne by SCO since they brought the accusation to court. If they are unwilling or unable to determine which code has been compromised, then surely the judge can simply dismiss the case? If I accuse you of harming me in some way but I am unable to produce any evidence to support it, then I don't have a case. Normally the accuser can request that the defendant produce relevant evidence, and in a manner such that it is reviewable electronically (not too difficult with computer code I would expect), but the cost of searching that evidence is not borne by the defendant, just the cost of producing it for review.
Granted its a lot of code, but thats not IBMs problem, its up to SCO to ask for a list of the relevant information, then select those items they want the code produced for, and do a review themselves. At that point I would expect the court to demand that the evidence be brought before the court in human readable format or toss the case out the window - and probably penalize SCO for wasting the court's time and making malicious accusations while remaining unwilling or unable to produce any evidence to support that the case was brought in good faith.
I really don't understand what possible reason has kept this case in court so far.
There is a big difference between effective and attractive, and being one does not necessarily mean a website is the other. Slashdot works well, but in my opinion is the ugliest site I visit on a regular basis. It is also one of the most effective and functional sites, and that is why I visit it.
I think there is probably a sort of "geek-chic" element to slashdot as well: Its ugly because its a website for the geek IT crowd, and is deliberately not-fancified as an indication its not intended for the chic design and layout audience out there. Perhaps I am wrong in this, as its pure supposition, but its always seemed that way to me.
Could slashdot be improved by better layout, stylesheets, changes to design etc? Possibly, but again its quite possible that such elements would increase the server load on delivering pages and slow the website down - which would be a hit against its functionality, and the site maintainers have evidently chosen functionality over appearance.
Yes, well there are a lot of people out there who like World of Warcraft. For many its their first MMORPG and so they have little to compare it to, for others who have played multiple MMORPGs its simply the latest, but they are attracted to it because its easy to play and has almost no negative penalties associated with failure. WoW is very successful IMHO because its MMORPGs on Easy Mode, like having a God cheat in Doom used to be. There are almost no negative penalties associated with dying, its relatively easy in almost all cases from my experience, and anyone can play it without having to learn much in the process.
Since it is so monumentally popular, everything gets compared to it, and sadly I expect most developers will start making their games more like it. Since I view WoW as the single biggest disapointment in gaming I have ever experienced, and the second worst purchase I ever made game-wise (after Planetside which was far worse), I view this potential "findlandization" of the game industry with some trepedation. In my opinion, if WOW has it, its best left out of any future games, if it doesn't have it, its probably a good feature to include.
Personally, if the developers of future games are looking for a great model to base their design on, they should look at City of Heroes/City of Villains, which has it all and then some. Its not perfect by any stretch but it does more things right than any other title I can think of.
Collision Detection is what you are describing, and its precisely this that is one of the major elements keeping me playing City of Heroes/City of Villains. The combat in COx is enhanced tremendously by collision detection, and I am now spoiled. Any future MMO I play will need to include this feature or I will not want to play it. Lack of CD is one of the many things that turned me off of World of Warcraft - one of the most disappointing game titles I have ever tried to be honest (after all the hype I expected a good game and instead got an MMORPG in Easy Mode).
If you liked this aspect of DDO but decided the game isn't for you, I urge you to give COx a try, there is a free trial I think. At any rate, its the best MMO on the market at the moment IMHO.
One approach used on a site I helped develop (although admittedly under Java, it would would work for PHP just as effectively), was to store the data for the pages in xml files which were easily edited, validated using a desktop editor such as Oxygen. Once the data was updated and uploaded to the correct location, we had an admin interface which allowed the administrator to republish the entire website as static pages. I have done the same thing from a database in the past of course, but using XML allowed us to use the validating powers of XML to double check the data entered by those who were less computer savvy. From the handful of XML files we could republish the data on multiple webpages in a variety of formats quite easily and effectively. Display was controlled via XSLT and all the code did was translate the XML/XSLT and publish the results as the static pages.
Naturally this would not work for a dynamically changing website, but it was quite effective for one that promoted an annual conference and which only had to be updated once a year. As a final benefit, it made backing up the previous years site as an archive remarkably simple since we only needed to copy the static pages off to a new location. Since all links were relative, last years conference is easily accessed as required.
While doing the same thing with a database interface is obviously quite possible and frequently used, I found that using the XML documents to store the data was very useful in finding inconsistencies that often plagued the database style of entering the information using a DTD and validation.
which is exactly what City of Heroes chose to do. When you reach level 50 (the maximum level) on at least one character, you unlock the ability to make a new Archetype of character called a Kheldian. They are available in 2 flavours, and offer challenging gameplay through both regular missions and special unique Kheldian origin missions.
Really, I think the problem is that people expect a game followed by an "Endgame". The *GAME* is the process of getting to 50, not what you do when you get there. If you don't like the proces of leveling up and developing a character, then don't play the game. I am constantly hearing of people who start a game, find a way to powerlevel through to the end of the game then whine that there is no content and that they are bored. Of course they are fucking bored, they bypassed 95% of the game to get to the end. Its like renting a DvD, fast forwarding to the last 5 mins and then complaining that it was a boring movie and didn't make sense.
I think designers need to start designing games that are enjoyable to play as a process, as a journey, and fuck the people who think the game starts when they get to the end:)
Gaelic is an example of a VSO language, which I think are rarer than SVO or SOV languages although its been a long time since I did any linguistics really. Gaelic is IMHO the most beautiful human language I have heard, although it also has the worst spelling of any language I have read, so perhaps there is a balance...
Well, allow me to recommend City of Heroes/City of Villains. This is a Superhero/Villain based game available in two flavors (although they can be installed Symbiotically so you can play both with just one subscription). You do have to pay $15/mo for it, but it meets all your other requirements I think. Its easy to solo, fun to play, can be quite challenging, and most importantly *almost* every type of character can solo more or less (some way better than others mind you), and you can easily jump on, do a mission for 20mins then quit, and feel like you accomplished something. As well, its very newbie friendly - particularly if you find a suitable guild to play with - as characters of every level can effectively play with characters at other levels via the Sidekick/Lackeying system that allows characters to temporarily assume a higher level when partnered with someone - if you did choose to group with people. The game is primarily focused on doing missions, and so combat oriented for much of its content, but it has some great storylines to follow, and the combat system is far superior to most other games IMHO. City of Villains is the newer of the two games, and thus the more evolved. City of Heroes will catch up with future expansions I expect.
For free games, you might be ok with GuildWars. Its a fantasy based combat game with some adventure/roleplaying elements. It is primarily PvP (player versus player oriented) and I personally didn't like it, but it doesn't have any monthly fees and you only need to buy the original boxed edition to play it. As the name suggests though, it may well be group PvP oriented and might not be as welcoming to a casual player. I tried it in beta and disliked it for various reasons, but your mileage may vary.
You might also consider EVE Online, a Science Fiction far future game of space exploration and economics. You essentially play a ship in this game rather than a character and that is disconcerting to some people. Its a very PvP oriented game but has some appeal to casual players and alone of all the MMORPG games I have seen has an experience system that is very friendly to casual players (essentially you pick a skill to learn and your character learns it at a fixed rate regardless of whether or not you are online. This gives an advantage to those who are subscribed longer, rather than those who play more hours regularly). I am not sure how well you can just jump on and play for 20 mins or so though. I understand it has long travel times for your ship. It is also a payed subscription game. It is very popular at the moment but as it has a high learning curve might not be a great one to pick up as your first MMO unless you are into highly complex game systems.
But the reality is otherwise. SOE has the worst track record of communicating with their customers, worse even that Verant (the original developer for Everquest). Verant at least never communicated at all, whereas SOE prefers to lie outright to their customers in order to suck a few more dollars from their wallets.
As for Smedley's vaunted threads - no one was able to find any posts by him beyond the first one he made introducing himself. Unless he has been posting under some Alias - probably to try to make positive statements - I see no evidence to support his claim to have started any threads at all.
The original SWG was an extremely ambitious project. I am not at all suprised it encountered constant problems, and I can buy the notion that balancing 34 professions was proving difficult and a programming nightmare. A reduction in total professions might have been in order and certainly some were made redundant by the recent Combat Upgrade they did a few months ago - but this is carrying things to far in the other direction. I think a lot more people would have been more accepting of the NGE if a few things had happened:
* If SOE had bothered to mention they were working on this for the past year. Instead it was kept completely secret and thrust on us out of the blue, after only 2 weeks of laughable beta testing during which nothing was changed despite thousands of player messages suggesting improvements and changes. * If SOE had mentioned prior to selling the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion, based in part on content for professions like Creature Handler, that they would be deleting that profession from the game 2 days after the expansion came out. Instead they sold it to us blithely, padding their bank account and no doubt making the quarterly sales figures more acceptable to the board of directors, THEN announced a revamp of the game that renders much of that expansion pointless or irrelevant. The result: they are forced to offer refunds after many players threaten a lawsuit against them. I imagine the folks in the Corporate Weasel Department^H^H^H Legal Department told them there were sufficient grounds for a problem that they had their hand forced. * If SOE had seemingly had the slightest clue in designing the New Game Enhancement (or as it has been referred to by players on the boards the "Negative Game Experience"). The new UI is completely counter-intuitive, inconsistent, and utterly inelegant. Its an incomplete rewrite of an otherwise well evolved interface for no more apparent reason than some programming or marketing dweeb thought cramming a new system down their customer's throats without any options to retain and use the old system was a good idea. Its completly unfriendly to disabled players, many of whom are now unable to play something they paid for an enjoyed previously (as a key feature of the new system the mouse-friendly interface has been replaced with an almost mandatory keyboard-mouse combination being required). * If SOE had paid any attention to the plight of those players who played Crafters/Entertainers in the old system. Under the NGE everyone is given a respec but its geared to your "combat level". For a crafter that is CL1. Thus any former combat oriented character can easily respec to any of the new combat classes and be whatever combat level they were prior to the NGE, OR they can respec to a full Trader (the new crafting class) or Entertainer with all abilities. By contrast, a former Crafter or Entertainer profession character can respec to the Trader or Entertainer class and be a Master (ie top) level character in those classes, but if they choose combat they are reduced to CL1 and lose all of their experience. If they then return to Trader in a subsequent respec they lose all of their gained experience. This was reported in "beta" and queried repeatedly so it is apparently working as intended. Many crafters are appalled at this obvious bias and lack of concern for their situation. * The new classes offer new special items of kit that in some cases are requi
I live up in Canada, and while I don't know anything about South Central LA - having never been there - if you want a high concentration of a single ethnic group (as I suspect you are implying), then Surrey in British Columbia might qualify. It has a very high Ethnic Sikh/East Indian population much as neighbouring Richmond has a high Ethnic Chinese population.
ALthough there is increased violence in Surrey, mostly gang and drug related violence and its more violent that most other Canadian communities I can think of, it does seem to be on a much lower scale than in the US.
I think its simply that you people in the US *like* to shoot each other more than we do:)
Personally I can only think of one of my friends who owns a firearm, although many are quite comforable firing one I have no doubt. The typical Canadian household doesn't have a firearm of any sort in it I would expect.
What are the odds the US will try to sieze control of the Lagrange points, lets see:
* It will cost a ton of money - a lot of which will go to Bush supporters/Republican business interests/Military Industrial Complex. Check. * Its militaristic and helps establish the American Empire's control over the rest of the world in some way by at least preventing some other country with billions upon billions in spare cash from exploiting first. Check.
I'd say pretty decent. There is no way in hell that we are going to prevent space from becoming filled with the same political and military problems we have here on Earth, and I am sorry to say the US will lead the way in making sure thats the case, don't worry:)
I am sure glad I don't live south of the border these days, I hope you guys can hang onto your freedom, because from my point of view its looking like you are gonna need a second revolution soon:)
* We spell things correctly up here, so its "-our" instead of "-or", as in "labour", "armour", etc. * Up here, "Liberal" is a political party, not an insult (although at the moment the Liberal Party is under fire and people might take it as an insult):) * We have a decent healtcare system available to everyone, and although you might wait for some proceedures at least you can afford them, rather than going broke if you get seriously ill * Very few people up here own handguns, or guns at all for that matter, even the criminals (although that is changing because they are slipping across the border from the US where you can seemingly get them in coin-ops):)
Very funny, although of course at this time, England had its back against the wall, Germany controlled all of Europe pretty much, and was readying its forces to *invade* England. If Germany had won the Battle of Britain in the air, that invasion would no doubt have been a possibility. Only the channel and the Royal Navy really stood in the way.
Canada and the other dominions were helping Great Britain, but the US wasn't involved in the war at that point I believe, so the industrial might of the US wasn't a factor. Fighting in Germany was a long ways, a major buildup and an invasion or two away still:)
Why oh why is/. the only messageboard out there that doesn't allow you to edit or delete your post?
Here we are in the bastion of OSS and cutting edge computer useage and the website interface is miles behind the competition. I often think that/. succeeds in spite of itself, not because of its design...
IANAL, but I would hazard a guess that your company might be in deep shit if they ever go to court and in the discovery phase are required to produce emails older than 30 days, unless you are maintaining some form of back up. These days, *everything* can seemingly be construed as discoverable evidence - meaning even Instant Messaging traffic should be recorded and backed up if it concerns business operations.
Now, I am sure your legal dept knows what its doing, but I am very suprised to hear that you nuke it all after 30 days. In a couple of cases, discovery costs have been huge because of improper storage and availability. For instance in Simon Property Group L.P. v. mySimon, Inc. I believe a company was required to turn over multiple computers so they could be examined for deleted files, since deleted documents are still considered evidence. If a court case demanded company-wide analysis of all your desktop computers and relevant servers for deleted emails it could prove quite costly, and I am sure the other party would have pretty good legal support for asking the court to put the bulk of the restoration costs on your company.
Its often the case that the legal folks and the IT folks don't talk the same language, and given the level of litigation that goes on these days I think its becoming more important to bridge that gap, if only in self defense.:)
IANAL, but I would hazard a guess that your company might be in deep shit if they ever go to court and in the discovery phase are required to produce emails older than 30 days, unless you are maintaining some form of back up. These days, *everything* can seemingly be construed as discoverable evidence - meaning even Instant Messaging traffic should be recorded and backed up if it concerns business operations.
Now, I am sure your legal dept knows what its doing, but I am very suprised to hear that you nuke it all after 30 days. In a couple of cases, discovery costs have been huge because of improper storage and availability. For instance in Simon Property Group L.P. v. mySimon, Inc. I believe a company was required to turn over multiple computers so they could be examined for deleted files, since deleted documents are still considered evidence. If a court case demanded company-wide analysis of all your desktop computers and relevant servers for deleted emails it could prove quite costly, and I am sure the other party would have pretty good legal support for asking the court to put the bulk of the restoration costs on your company.
Its often the case that the legal folks and the IT folks don't talk the same language, and given the level of litigation that goes on these days I think its becoming more important to bridge that gap, if only in self defense.:)
NVidia no doubt chose "Forceware" because some marketing asswipe was allowed to try to generate a new term to be associated with NVidia. Marketing has no morals and is more than willing to twist language, reality or do anything to get attention and sell a product. Frequently this involves outright lying to consumers, but we accept it for some stupid reason.
I have worked in a couple of companies and watched many marketers and sales people *deliberately* lie to try to sell a product to customers. They know they are doing it, and they couldn't give a damn. The worst I can recall was a collaborative effort to sell a software product that hadn't had a single line of code developed yet, with the understanding that they would collect the money first, then announce delays until it was released, developing it using the money they had collected from sales (I didn't work for them mind you, and wouldn't have accepted a job if offered).
Shakespeare had it wrong slightly, the first thing we do is kill all the marketers, THEN the lawyers.
I wouldn't worry too much, if I remember correctly you folks have more *women* in the US Air Force, than we have people (male or female) in our entire Armed Forces. The Liberals have been steadily eroding the Canadian Forces to their currently too small size for decades.
What remains is very well trained, but too small to carry out its commitments I think.
And to think that after WWII, Canada had the 4th largest Navy in the world. Now our navy is laughably small.
I recall when I was working Tech Support for a company, hearing a Sales dweeb asking one of the programmers "Do you remember that utility program you mentioned to me? I hope its available because I just sold it to a customer."
The utility program mentioned supported one of our products and was for inhouse use only. It had been whipped up quickly in the devs spare time, had no documentation, no time spent on QA, was not an official product of the company, and had a completely unfriendly UI because the dev had developed it piecemeal for his own use. Needless to say once it had been *sold* to a customer as a feature that attracted their interest enough to purchase our product, it became an official product and was quickly rewritten to be more presentable, but that developer told me he would *never* mention anything to a sales guy again because they couldn't be trusted.
I have seen sales people sell a product based on a feature that they assured the customer the product offered, then once the phone call was done and the sale completed, checked with Tech Support to see if it actually did offer the feature they sold it based on.
Re:Don't forget.. no selective service either!
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Note that in British Columbia, the cost of treatment is covered by Medical Services, its only in ALberta (which has a more Conservative government that favors allowing private companies to do health care - and thus has a shittier Health Care system to justify it) that they aren't covered.
Now, this is also talking First Nations Health Care, and therefore may be subject to a different set of regulations.
In General, if you need health care assistance in Canada, you get it. Not always *fast*, and not without its problems and failures for sure, but at least you don't have your life ruined like people in the US regularly seem to do.
My wife had some friends down there in the US that she met years ago. They lived in Phoenix. Only he had medical coverage because he was working, they couldn't afford to cover her as well because it was another $500 a month or something stupid like that. At any rate, they figured if she fell ill they would be financially ruined. Up here, she might end up on a waiting list or have other problems, but she wouldn't end up with a $100k hospital bill.
You couldn't pay me enough to live in the US to be honest. I like visiting there and I like Americans generally, but there is no way I would ever become a US citizen. I prefer the slightly socialized system up here far more than the "your on yer own, sink or swim" feel I get from the US. The US has many good things going for it, don't mistake me, but I prefer my own country particularly in instances like this.
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OH I think there is a market for a dirt-cheap PC, people would buy one (or maybe 20) of them and find uses for them readily enough. No, the problem is simply that the manufacturers have no desire to make the PC or the parts for it because the profit-margin would be so small for the materials used that it wouldn't be worth it from their perspective.
:(
Up until recently, you could get a pretty functional PC up here in Canada for around $1000. Back in 1988 it was $2000, and now its probably $600, but the principle (despite the slowly sliding average price) is pretty much the same, each generation of computer seems to come out with new innovations that allow the sellers to mark the price up slightly even though the component costs have gone down. In essence I don't think any one wants to *sell* a cheap PC, but its undoubtedly possible to make one. The only constant in the equation seems to be the price of MS Operating Systems
Look at the $100 laptop they are touting for the 3rd world. Sure, its pretty basic, but do you honestly think that there wouldn't be people who would be perfectly happy with a basic machine that lets them view webpages and check their email and cost that little? I think they would sell like hotcakes, but the manufacturers would make ~$2.00 profit per sale and thus have no interest.
While I personally prefer a skills based system, I can see that class and level based game design offers some directly advantageous things to the developers of a game: Its far easier to determine what capabilities a character may have in a given situation, and by controlling those abilities via character level, far easier to determine a challenge rating.
Class also offers the player a clear definition of their role in a group - and thus the ability to choose that role. Essentially they all boil down to the D&D Classics: Tank, Damage Dealer, Healer, Magic User, Thief. The names may change but they are essentially the same. I suppose you can add Ranged/Melee as subsets of damage dealing classes.
I actually think thats the reason that AD&D is so popular. Its easy to define your role, the way you *want* to play, with relatively little real decisions required, and every other player knows easily what to expect of you. Its easier for the GM to manage the game session in a PnP game for the same reason that its easier on the developers to manage encounters.
I loved the SWG 250pt character generation system. I think its the pinnacle of MMORPG gaming design for flexibility, variety and configurability. Its a shame that they tossed it in favour of WOW's pathetic class based system - and made a far worse one that WOWs while they were at it. I can concede though that it was probably a pain to develop for. I think their essential mistake was to toss the 250pt system in favour of a linear system, but reducing the classes was probably a smart move - much as I miss TKM, Doctor and Creature Handler.
Now sadly SOE's approach to SWG character design seems to be that everyone can solo, so no one has a clear role, everyone can heal, so no one needs to be support. As a result, grouping is not a part of the game at all any more.
Why do so many Mac users insist on this fantasy that Windows users really hate Windows and would switch to the Mac OS in a flash if only they had a chance to touch it's brushed chrome goodness? The fact is, your dislike of Windows has little bearing on wether others like it. Heck, you can even hate Windows with passion usually reserved for suicide bombers and it still would have very little influance on whether the general population would like it. Need, coersion and ignorance are not the only reasons people use Windows. Most Windows users actually like their OS and would not want to switch. This could, in fact, be a good chunk of the reason why the vast majority of Windows users, even the ones who've seen that really cool "Dock," have not switched.
Well, I have to disagree. I have used Windows for years - mostly because I play games. I would switch to the Mac OS or any other OS in a milisecond if I could play my games on it. I can't say there is a single feature of Windows that would keep me using it. I have spent countless hours just fixing buggered up installations, reinstalling Windows because its been too long and its filled up with bloated crap I can't identify to remove, reinstalling because it just suddenly stopped working for no apparent reason, fixing other people's installations because they were screwing around and accidentally hit the "fuck up this installation" button somehow etc. You shouldn't have to fight your Operating System just to continue using it. You shouldn't have a shitty browser shoved up your ass by the Marketing Department at Microsoft. You shouldn't have them continuing their monopolistic practices (I guess the DOJ had the best judge that money could buy or something). Any loyalty MS might ever have gotten from me they have lost through their own shoddy software and business practices.
I use Windows because I play PC games and thats the only reason. Its the tie to gaming that has made Windows so successful in my case and in the case of most of my friends. I can do almost any other thing I care to under Linux or OS/X but I can't play games when the developers of those games can't be bothered to develop them for any other platform. Sure there are emulation means I could use, some run under Wine etc, but my system isn't beefy enough to do that adequately and I don't have the cash to afford it. Hell I can't even afford a 40Gb drive at the moment.
Windows sucks, but I have little or no choice in running it as long as the game developers are willing to continue to be Microsoft's bitch and only develop for Windows.
What utter horseshit. So you think you can broadly define all contractors as underhanded thieves who will deliberately mis-design a website in order to bilk their customers of more money? I think that is remarkably stupid and unfair.
:(
Yes, they may not do adequate testing for all browsers, there are many Microsoft-only shops out there that can't seem to see beyond the MS Horizon at all, and don't adequately explore other technologies. Yes, the client may not know enough to request cross-browser testing, or may have decided against that portion of the design process for budgetary reasons etc. To paint all web design contractors as brigands is however beyond stupid.
The core problem is of course that Microsoft deliberately develops software that is not compatible with established standards in order to distort those standards by means of exploiting their de facto control over the market. As a result developers have to perform extra testing just to make sure their design is compatible with the real standards from W3C, and also to make sure their site desplays on the BuiltInPieceOfShitBrowser IE that Microsoft has deliberately failed to bother improving lo these many years. In a reasonable world, MS would have been forced by the courts to uncouple IE from their OS so that users could have a real choice as to their browser software, but I guess when you have 38 Billion in the banks you are beyond the courts - as we can see from the results of the DOJ investigation
Data retention and maintaining of backups is very expensive. There is no real industry standard but in some cases - say in the health care industry - there are legal requirements for how long data must be retained. Usually, if you formulate a logical data retention policy and apply it consistently then you are safe if you get hauled into court. If you can show that you had good reasons for your policies and that you followed them strictly, then the fact that you got rid of data after a period of time is entirely defensible. Its when you have policies and you fail to apply them consistently, or when you don't have policies that you seem to get into trouble in the courts. Just saying keep the email for 30/60/90 days is not a policy generally speaking.
The problem is that not all emails are of value, so you can't generally just delete them based on how much time has passed. Each email needs to be examined and sorted according to its importance, or you keep all of it according to the length of time you need to preserve the most important stuff. I am sure that few companies do this adequately, and its a big issue in the corporate world at the moment. The Sarbanes-Oxley act has caused a massive stir in business circles, and while email is the big focus point for many people at the moment, things like Instant Messaging and even Blogs are becoming relevant too. If I send you an email and we agree to do business in that email exchange, that exchange is now a legal record - and may even constitute a contract (IANAL so thats not something I can comment on). In many cases that may be the only record of us reaching an agreement to do business. As such its a business record and needs to be preserved for the same period of time as say a written contract I would expect.
Having a logical data retention policy and following it consistently is the most important defense a company or organization can raise in court from what I have seen. That way when you are called to court you can say: "Why can't you produce this email? Well, because its more than 5 years old and we have a policy of deleting all emails after a period of 5 years. As you can see we have followed that policy for the past 8 years consistently. Preserving that email as backup tapes for longer than that period has proven to be prohibitively expensive, and so we formulated this policy as a business decision and have continued to follow it for this entire period". The courts do not expect you to keep everything because thats unreasonable (and searching it would be extremely costly and time consuming as well), but they do expect you to formulate a plan and stick to it. Most companies that get in trouble seem to have formulated a plan and not followed it (or applied it unevenly), or to have suddenly decided to apply it when a lawsuit looked likely (which is seen as covering up evidence by a court in many cases).
As well you need an effective Hold Order system - so that if you get taken to court for some reason, you can immediately inform all personnel that *nothing* gets deleted while the lawsuit is ongoing. All records are retained, no email is deleted etc, so that it can all be produced upon demand. This ought to include things like IM traffic logs etc.
Now as for the legislation to mandate retaining data for a fixed minimum period, well thats probably not that unreasonable. There are laws which prevent that data being turned over for unreasonable reasons, and they *ought* to be enough. I am sure a lot of this legislation is driven by a desire to prevent problems like Enron from occuring again.
I am not a lawyer but I have read a lot about data retention as part of a project I have been working on. Its a dark and murky world and few organizations seem to be spending the amount of time and effort that is required to safeguard their butts should they be required to produce their records in court at some future point.
If you really need to know, then try to send someone to this conference:
IANAL, but surely the burden of determining which code SCO claims has been illegally lifted lies solely upon SCO. This would normally happen in the Discovery phase of a case I believe, and the cost would borne by SCO since they brought the accusation to court. If they are unwilling or unable to determine which code has been compromised, then surely the judge can simply dismiss the case? If I accuse you of harming me in some way but I am unable to produce any evidence to support it, then I don't have a case. Normally the accuser can request that the defendant produce relevant evidence, and in a manner such that it is reviewable electronically (not too difficult with computer code I would expect), but the cost of searching that evidence is not borne by the defendant, just the cost of producing it for review.
Granted its a lot of code, but thats not IBMs problem, its up to SCO to ask for a list of the relevant information, then select those items they want the code produced for, and do a review themselves. At that point I would expect the court to demand that the evidence be brought before the court in human readable format or toss the case out the window - and probably penalize SCO for wasting the court's time and making malicious accusations while remaining unwilling or unable to produce any evidence to support that the case was brought in good faith.
I really don't understand what possible reason has kept this case in court so far.
There is a big difference between effective and attractive, and being one does not necessarily mean a website is the other. Slashdot works well, but in my opinion is the ugliest site I visit on a regular basis. It is also one of the most effective and functional sites, and that is why I visit it.
I think there is probably a sort of "geek-chic" element to slashdot as well: Its ugly because its a website for the geek IT crowd, and is deliberately not-fancified as an indication its not intended for the chic design and layout audience out there. Perhaps I am wrong in this, as its pure supposition, but its always seemed that way to me.
Could slashdot be improved by better layout, stylesheets, changes to design etc? Possibly, but again its quite possible that such elements would increase the server load on delivering pages and slow the website down - which would be a hit against its functionality, and the site maintainers have evidently chosen functionality over appearance.
Yes, well there are a lot of people out there who like World of Warcraft. For many its their first MMORPG and so they have little to compare it to, for others who have played multiple MMORPGs its simply the latest, but they are attracted to it because its easy to play and has almost no negative penalties associated with failure. WoW is very successful IMHO because its MMORPGs on Easy Mode, like having a God cheat in Doom used to be. There are almost no negative penalties associated with dying, its relatively easy in almost all cases from my experience, and anyone can play it without having to learn much in the process.
Since it is so monumentally popular, everything gets compared to it, and sadly I expect most developers will start making their games more like it. Since I view WoW as the single biggest disapointment in gaming I have ever experienced, and the second worst purchase I ever made game-wise (after Planetside which was far worse), I view this potential "findlandization" of the game industry with some trepedation. In my opinion, if WOW has it, its best left out of any future games, if it doesn't have it, its probably a good feature to include.
Personally, if the developers of future games are looking for a great model to base their design on, they should look at City of Heroes/City of Villains, which has it all and then some. Its not perfect by any stretch but it does more things right than any other title I can think of.
Collision Detection is what you are describing, and its precisely this that is one of the major elements keeping me playing City of Heroes/City of Villains. The combat in COx is enhanced tremendously by collision detection, and I am now spoiled. Any future MMO I play will need to include this feature or I will not want to play it. Lack of CD is one of the many things that turned me off of World of Warcraft - one of the most disappointing game titles I have ever tried to be honest (after all the hype I expected a good game and instead got an MMORPG in Easy Mode).
If you liked this aspect of DDO but decided the game isn't for you, I urge you to give COx a try, there is a free trial I think. At any rate, its the best MMO on the market at the moment IMHO.
One approach used on a site I helped develop (although admittedly under Java, it would would work for PHP just as effectively), was to store the data for the pages in xml files which were easily edited, validated using a desktop editor such as Oxygen. Once the data was updated and uploaded to the correct location, we had an admin interface which allowed the administrator to republish the entire website as static pages. I have done the same thing from a database in the past of course, but using XML allowed us to use the validating powers of XML to double check the data entered by those who were less computer savvy. From the handful of XML files we could republish the data on multiple webpages in a variety of formats quite easily and effectively. Display was controlled via XSLT and all the code did was translate the XML/XSLT and publish the results as the static pages.
Naturally this would not work for a dynamically changing website, but it was quite effective for one that promoted an annual conference and which only had to be updated once a year. As a final benefit, it made backing up the previous years site as an archive remarkably simple since we only needed to copy the static pages off to a new location. Since all links were relative, last years conference is easily accessed as required.
While doing the same thing with a database interface is obviously quite possible and frequently used, I found that using the XML documents to store the data was very useful in finding inconsistencies that often plagued the database style of entering the information using a DTD and validation.
which is exactly what City of Heroes chose to do. When you reach level 50 (the maximum level) on at least one character, you unlock the ability to make a new Archetype of character called a Kheldian. They are available in 2 flavours, and offer challenging gameplay through both regular missions and special unique Kheldian origin missions.
:)
Really, I think the problem is that people expect a game followed by an "Endgame". The *GAME* is the process of getting to 50, not what you do when you get there. If you don't like the proces of leveling up and developing a character, then don't play the game. I am constantly hearing of people who start a game, find a way to powerlevel through to the end of the game then whine that there is no content and that they are bored. Of course they are fucking bored, they bypassed 95% of the game to get to the end. Its like renting a DvD, fast forwarding to the last 5 mins and then complaining that it was a boring movie and didn't make sense.
I think designers need to start designing games that are enjoyable to play as a process, as a journey, and fuck the people who think the game starts when they get to the end
Gaelic is an example of a VSO language, which I think are rarer than SVO or SOV languages although its been a long time since I did any linguistics really. Gaelic is IMHO the most beautiful human language I have heard, although it also has the worst spelling of any language I have read, so perhaps there is a balance...
Well, allow me to recommend City of Heroes/City of Villains. This is a Superhero/Villain based game available in two flavors (although they can be installed Symbiotically so you can play both with just one subscription). You do have to pay $15/mo for it, but it meets all your other requirements I think. Its easy to solo, fun to play, can be quite challenging, and most importantly *almost* every type of character can solo more or less (some way better than others mind you), and you can easily jump on, do a mission for 20mins then quit, and feel like you accomplished something. As well, its very newbie friendly - particularly if you find a suitable guild to play with - as characters of every level can effectively play with characters at other levels via the Sidekick/Lackeying system that allows characters to temporarily assume a higher level when partnered with someone - if you did choose to group with people. The game is primarily focused on doing missions, and so combat oriented for much of its content, but it has some great storylines to follow, and the combat system is far superior to most other games IMHO. City of Villains is the newer of the two games, and thus the more evolved. City of Heroes will catch up with future expansions I expect.
For free games, you might be ok with GuildWars. Its a fantasy based combat game with some adventure/roleplaying elements. It is primarily PvP (player versus player oriented) and I personally didn't like it, but it doesn't have any monthly fees and you only need to buy the original boxed edition to play it. As the name suggests though, it may well be group PvP oriented and might not be as welcoming to a casual player. I tried it in beta and disliked it for various reasons, but your mileage may vary.
You might also consider EVE Online, a Science Fiction far future game of space exploration and economics. You essentially play a ship in this game rather than a character and that is disconcerting to some people. Its a very PvP oriented game but has some appeal to casual players and alone of all the MMORPG games I have seen has an experience system that is very friendly to casual players (essentially you pick a skill to learn and your character learns it at a fixed rate regardless of whether or not you are online. This gives an advantage to those who are subscribed longer, rather than those who play more hours regularly). I am not sure how well you can just jump on and play for 20 mins or so though. I understand it has long travel times for your ship. It is also a payed subscription game. It is very popular at the moment but as it has a high learning curve might not be a great one to pick up as your first MMO unless you are into highly complex game systems.Links:
City of Heroes
City of Villains
Guild Wars
EVE Online
Hope that helps :)
But the reality is otherwise. SOE has the worst track record of communicating with their customers, worse even that Verant (the original developer for Everquest). Verant at least never communicated at all, whereas SOE prefers to lie outright to their customers in order to suck a few more dollars from their wallets.
As for Smedley's vaunted threads - no one was able to find any posts by him beyond the first one he made introducing himself. Unless he has been posting under some Alias - probably to try to make positive statements - I see no evidence to support his claim to have started any threads at all.
The original SWG was an extremely ambitious project. I am not at all suprised it encountered constant problems, and I can buy the notion that balancing 34 professions was proving difficult and a programming nightmare. A reduction in total professions might have been in order and certainly some were made redundant by the recent Combat Upgrade they did a few months ago - but this is carrying things to far in the other direction. I think a lot more people would have been more accepting of the NGE if a few things had happened:
* If SOE had bothered to mention they were working on this for the past year. Instead it was kept completely secret and thrust on us out of the blue, after only 2 weeks of laughable beta testing during which nothing was changed despite thousands of player messages suggesting improvements and changes.
* If SOE had mentioned prior to selling the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion, based in part on content for professions like Creature Handler, that they would be deleting that profession from the game 2 days after the expansion came out. Instead they sold it to us blithely, padding their bank account and no doubt making the quarterly sales figures more acceptable to the board of directors, THEN announced a revamp of the game that renders much of that expansion pointless or irrelevant. The result: they are forced to offer refunds after many players threaten a lawsuit against them. I imagine the folks in the Corporate Weasel Department^H^H^H Legal Department told them there were sufficient grounds for a problem that they had their hand forced.
* If SOE had seemingly had the slightest clue in designing the New Game Enhancement (or as it has been referred to by players on the boards the "Negative Game Experience"). The new UI is completely counter-intuitive, inconsistent, and utterly inelegant. Its an incomplete rewrite of an otherwise well evolved interface for no more apparent reason than some programming or marketing dweeb thought cramming a new system down their customer's throats without any options to retain and use the old system was a good idea. Its completly unfriendly to disabled players, many of whom are now unable to play something they paid for an enjoyed previously (as a key feature of the new system the mouse-friendly interface has been replaced with an almost mandatory keyboard-mouse combination being required).
* If SOE had paid any attention to the plight of those players who played Crafters/Entertainers in the old system. Under the NGE everyone is given a respec but its geared to your "combat level". For a crafter that is CL1. Thus any former combat oriented character can easily respec to any of the new combat classes and be whatever combat level they were prior to the NGE, OR they can respec to a full Trader (the new crafting class) or Entertainer with all abilities. By contrast, a former Crafter or Entertainer profession character can respec to the Trader or Entertainer class and be a Master (ie top) level character in those classes, but if they choose combat they are reduced to CL1 and lose all of their experience. If they then return to Trader in a subsequent respec they lose all of their gained experience. This was reported in "beta" and queried repeatedly so it is apparently working as intended. Many crafters are appalled at this obvious bias and lack of concern for their situation.
* The new classes offer new special items of kit that in some cases are requi
I live up in Canada, and while I don't know anything about South Central LA - having never been there - if you want a high concentration of a single ethnic group (as I suspect you are implying), then Surrey in British Columbia might qualify. It has a very high Ethnic Sikh/East Indian population much as neighbouring Richmond has a high Ethnic Chinese population.
:)
ALthough there is increased violence in Surrey, mostly gang and drug related violence and its more violent that most other Canadian communities I can think of, it does seem to be on a much lower scale than in the US.
I think its simply that you people in the US *like* to shoot each other more than we do
Personally I can only think of one of my friends who owns a firearm, although many are quite comforable firing one I have no doubt. The typical Canadian household doesn't have a firearm of any sort in it I would expect.
What are the odds the US will try to sieze control of the Lagrange points, lets see:
:)
:)
* It will cost a ton of money - a lot of which will go to Bush supporters/Republican business interests/Military Industrial Complex. Check.
* Its militaristic and helps establish the American Empire's control over the rest of the world in some way by at least preventing some other country with billions upon billions in spare cash from exploiting first. Check.
I'd say pretty decent. There is no way in hell that we are going to prevent space from becoming filled with the same political and military problems we have here on Earth, and I am sorry to say the US will lead the way in making sure thats the case, don't worry
I am sure glad I don't live south of the border these days, I hope you guys can hang onto your freedom, because from my point of view its looking like you are gonna need a second revolution soon
No, most Canadians speak English. Just remember:
:) :)
* We spell things correctly up here, so its "-our" instead of "-or", as in "labour", "armour", etc.
* Up here, "Liberal" is a political party, not an insult (although at the moment the Liberal Party is under fire and people might take it as an insult)
* We have a decent healtcare system available to everyone, and although you might wait for some proceedures at least you can afford them, rather than going broke if you get seriously ill
* Very few people up here own handguns, or guns at all for that matter, even the criminals (although that is changing because they are slipping across the border from the US where you can seemingly get them in coin-ops)
Very funny, although of course at this time, England had its back against the wall, Germany controlled all of Europe pretty much, and was readying its forces to *invade* England. If Germany had won the Battle of Britain in the air, that invasion would no doubt have been a possibility. Only the channel and the Royal Navy really stood in the way.
:)
Canada and the other dominions were helping Great Britain, but the US wasn't involved in the war at that point I believe, so the industrial might of the US wasn't a factor. Fighting in Germany was a long ways, a major buildup and an invasion or two away still
Sorry, managed a double post there accidentally.
/. the only messageboard out there that doesn't allow you to edit or delete your post?
/. succeeds in spite of itself, not because of its design...
Why oh why is
Here we are in the bastion of OSS and cutting edge computer useage and the website interface is miles behind the competition. I often think that
IANAL, but I would hazard a guess that your company might be in deep shit if they ever go to court and in the discovery phase are required to produce emails older than 30 days, unless you are maintaining some form of back up. These days, *everything* can seemingly be construed as discoverable evidence - meaning even Instant Messaging traffic should be recorded and backed up if it concerns business operations.
Now, I am sure your legal dept knows what its doing, but I am very suprised to hear that you nuke it all after 30 days. In a couple of cases, discovery costs have been huge because of improper storage and availability. For instance in Simon Property Group L.P. v. mySimon, Inc. I believe a company was required to turn over multiple computers so they could be examined for deleted files, since deleted documents are still considered evidence. If a court case demanded company-wide analysis of all your desktop computers and relevant servers for deleted emails it could prove quite costly, and I am sure the other party would have pretty good legal support for asking the court to put the bulk of the restoration costs on your company.
Its often the case that the legal folks and the IT folks don't talk the same language, and given the level of litigation that goes on these days I think its becoming more important to bridge that gap, if only in self defense. :)
IANAL, but I would hazard a guess that your company might be in deep shit if they ever go to court and in the discovery phase are required to produce emails older than 30 days, unless you are maintaining some form of back up. These days, *everything* can seemingly be construed as discoverable evidence - meaning even Instant Messaging traffic should be recorded and backed up if it concerns business operations.
Now, I am sure your legal dept knows what its doing, but I am very suprised to hear that you nuke it all after 30 days. In a couple of cases, discovery costs have been huge because of improper storage and availability. For instance in Simon Property Group L.P. v. mySimon, Inc. I believe a company was required to turn over multiple computers so they could be examined for deleted files, since deleted documents are still considered evidence. If a court case demanded company-wide analysis of all your desktop computers and relevant servers for deleted emails it could prove quite costly, and I am sure the other party would have pretty good legal support for asking the court to put the bulk of the restoration costs on your company.
Its often the case that the legal folks and the IT folks don't talk the same language, and given the level of litigation that goes on these days I think its becoming more important to bridge that gap, if only in self defense. :)
NVidia no doubt chose "Forceware" because some marketing asswipe was allowed to try to generate a new term to be associated with NVidia. Marketing has no morals and is more than willing to twist language, reality or do anything to get attention and sell a product. Frequently this involves outright lying to consumers, but we accept it for some stupid reason.
I have worked in a couple of companies and watched many marketers and sales people *deliberately* lie to try to sell a product to customers. They know they are doing it, and they couldn't give a damn. The worst I can recall was a collaborative effort to sell a software product that hadn't had a single line of code developed yet, with the understanding that they would collect the money first, then announce delays until it was released, developing it using the money they had collected from sales (I didn't work for them mind you, and wouldn't have accepted a job if offered).
Shakespeare had it wrong slightly, the first thing we do is kill all the marketers, THEN the lawyers.
I wouldn't worry too much, if I remember correctly you folks have more *women* in the US Air Force, than we have people (male or female) in our entire Armed Forces. The Liberals have been steadily eroding the Canadian Forces to their currently too small size for decades.
What remains is very well trained, but too small to carry out its commitments I think.
And to think that after WWII, Canada had the 4th largest Navy in the world. Now our navy is laughably small.
I recall when I was working Tech Support for a company, hearing a Sales dweeb asking one of the programmers "Do you remember that utility program you mentioned to me? I hope its available because I just sold it to a customer."
The utility program mentioned supported one of our products and was for inhouse use only. It had been whipped up quickly in the devs spare time, had no documentation, no time spent on QA, was not an official product of the company, and had a completely unfriendly UI because the dev had developed it piecemeal for his own use. Needless to say once it had been *sold* to a customer as a feature that attracted their interest enough to purchase our product, it became an official product and was quickly rewritten to be more presentable, but that developer told me he would *never* mention anything to a sales guy again because they couldn't be trusted.
I have seen sales people sell a product based on a feature that they assured the customer the product offered, then once the phone call was done and the sale completed, checked with Tech Support to see if it actually did offer the feature they sold it based on.
Note that in British Columbia, the cost of treatment is covered by Medical Services, its only in ALberta (which has a more Conservative government that favors allowing private companies to do health care - and thus has a shittier Health Care system to justify it) that they aren't covered.
Now, this is also talking First Nations Health Care, and therefore may be subject to a different set of regulations.
In General, if you need health care assistance in Canada, you get it. Not always *fast*, and not without its problems and failures for sure, but at least you don't have your life ruined like people in the US regularly seem to do.
My wife had some friends down there in the US that she met years ago. They lived in Phoenix. Only he had medical coverage because he was working, they couldn't afford to cover her as well because it was another $500 a month or something stupid like that. At any rate, they figured if she fell ill they would be financially ruined. Up here, she might end up on a waiting list or have other problems, but she wouldn't end up with a $100k hospital bill.
You couldn't pay me enough to live in the US to be honest. I like visiting there and I like Americans generally, but there is no way I would ever become a US citizen. I prefer the slightly socialized system up here far more than the "your on yer own, sink or swim" feel I get from the US. The US has many good things going for it, don't mistake me, but I prefer my own country particularly in instances like this.