The only thing I disagree with is government owned and operated companies.
I think a lot of them are good things - Air Canada was, the CBC (usually) is, Petro-Canada is. The issues you are speaking of are really only relevant (at least directly) to BC - and in that sense, I agree wholeheartedly.
ICBC should not have the right to impose a levy, neither should Telus, or any other company for that matter.
Telus doesn't. ICBC does, but I don't care, because really, it's all the same entity. People who are paying $1500 can pay another $100 a year, but a lot of people who take the bus take it because it's all they can afford, and raising fares might make all the difference in the world. I know when I was a student, if they'd raised the price of a bus pass by $5, I'd not have been able to get one, which would've meant no school for me. That's the principle behind the quasi-socialist Robin Hood philosophies in Canadian government.
The government should stick to the business of governing and stay out of everything else. That is how they keep pulling shit like the fast-ferry fiasco.
No no no, you have it wrong. "The government should stick to the business of governing and stay out of everything else if they don't know what the fuck they're doing." In BC under the NDP, this was the case. People from Saskatchewan will tell you, though, that things are much better there (or at least they were when I was there). The government there actually managed for the people, instead of mismanaging for them.
Don't confuse the NDP ruining the economy of the best and most beautiful province in the country with government being bad, I implore you. There is a difference, though it's hard to see right now.
Out of curiousity, where in BC do you live? (If you choose to reply, you can e-mail me instead of posting) I'm just curious..;>
Not to nitpick, and I don't necessarily agree with forcing abortions, but if you had a country with a billion people in it that was smaller than the US, Canada, or a half-dozen other countries, you'd want to control population rates too.
Not only that, but just last year, China forced down a US plane over international waters, KIDNAPPED airmen, and tried to ransom them.
Well, there is debate as to whether it was intentional or not. Me, I don't know either way. That being said though, the plane did land on Chinese soil and were taken away. Sure, they had little other choice, but if they're in China, they're in China.
Contrast that to the US, who has, several times, executed foreign nationals without even letting them speak with a consular representative, and whose population and many poilitical figures have mostly decided that the Al-Quaeda members that were attacking the US's values do not deserve those values, which clearly sends the message that 'American freedoms are for Americans only'. If the US really believed in equality for all before the law, there wouldn't even be a debate. I'm surprised they're even considering a trial, it'll be a kangaroo court anyway.
Our own government (my province anyways) allows companies the right to a monopoly in areas like Home/Auto Insurance, Transportation, local Telco etc...
It sounds somewhat like you're from British Columbia, though I know next to nothing about the laws in most other provinces.
Our telcos are a monopoly, sure, but they're regulated monopolies. If you have a problem with Telus, Sasktel, Bell Canada, Groupe Telecom, or anyone else, call the CRTC. They have very strict guidelines about what services (and quality of service) telcos MUST provide, if they're going to provide any at all.
Even for services that aren't regulated (DSL for example) and thus that the CRTC has no authority over, a call to the CRTC wait can get Telus fixing a 'two week' problem overnight.
Compare that to, for example, Northwest Bell. A friend of mine in Seattle had two phone lines, one for voice, one for data. They called NW Bell to take off 'features' like call waiting, caller ID, etc. off of the data line, and NW Bell obligingly disconnected their voice line instead. Imagine my surprise when this (extremely vocal) friend of mine said that this had happened six months prior and that she had called NW Bell several times. That sort of thing in Canada will often, with a little nudging, get you the problem reversed, and a credit on your next bill (or a free month of service).
and even worse, grants those companies the right to levy citizens, even if those citizens don't use the service provided by the company (eg. Bus tax on Auto-Insurance).
Good. Take the bus more. I'm sick and tired of people who drive their SUVs two blocks just beacuse they're too lazy to walk or too 'important' to take the bus.
Living in Abbotsford, which is pretty much the westernmost city along the Trans-Canada from where you can't public-transit to Vancouver during the day, I'm considering getting a car, but I intend to move to New West or further in. Once I do, I will have no need for a car, let alone for fuel taxes. I'll save a ton of money, help the environment, and get more excercise. I approve of the government encouraging more people to do likewise.
I've always said that our governemt could not get away with, or even propose, the things they do here in any other country. The people wouldn't stand for it.
Oh please, stop being so petty. You speak as though Canada is the most fascist country on the planet, which irks me so. You'll never again be able to go to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan (I hope), but I'd like to see you go there and tell the starving, impoverished, repressed people about how the government is taxing you too much.
In a lot of countries, the people wouldn't even consider 'not standing for' anything the government did. Sitting around and bitching will result in your relatives trying to sell your stuff to feed themselves, since you won't be needing it anymore.
The things of this sort wouldn't go over well in the US because of hundreds of years of 'government is bad' indoctrination. Most other countries trust their governments. Sales taxes in Sweden are between 23-25%. Do people complain? Hell no, they get free education - university education no less.
What I want to know, is what Americans do when their government does something that obviously by the replies to this post, the people don't agree with. Do you guys just sit by and bitch about it like us Canadians?
I've found that in a lot of cases, the American public remains ignorant of anything that doesn't directly affect them. Most of the American people will never know about trade embargos, just like they don't know about the 38% tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber. Why? Because the networks are pro-US, and hell, why shouldn't they be, it's their country. And this stuff isn't exciting. Not like night-vision shots of explosions or exploding towers or anything of that sort.
I've come to accept that nothing I do or say will change the vast scheme of the big-business take over in the world. I'm not rich enough to have a voice. I've written letters, petitioned my local office, even protested, nothing changes.
Big-business take-over? In Canada? Maybe a little in BC (we're certainly headed that way), but not nearly as much as you seem to imply. Most of the 'big business' in Canada is (or was, until recently) government-owned. Telus (formerly AGT/EdTel), Sasktel, Petro-Canada, Air Canada, the CBC. Is this what you're fighting against?
If you ask me, we should be fighting against deregulation (look at what happened to the airlines after we deregulated, we're lucky to have any), not corporations. Let businesses flourish, but let's keep with our Canadian philosophy and write laws to make sure they're working in the interests of the people first, not the shareholders.
So I ask in this case of the world's self-proclaimed big-brother pushing around yet another perfectly content country. What are American Citizens going to do about it?
Support their country, since the vast majority will know next to nothing about the issue. The few that do and do protest will be ignored, since they likely don't contribute enough to the campaign coffers to matter anyway.
While I can't speak for kernel development, which is easily beyond any programming skill I've ever had, I can say a few comments about other things you cite examples of.
Apache was written in C, either because the programmers were UNIX programmers who are hardcore into C and refuse to use C++, because they had C source to work from, because there were no good C++ compilers out there, or any combination or lack of the above. Same with X-window implementations.
These both would be nice if implemented properly in C++, because the object-orientation features of C++ make a lot of things clearer and easier, and in a lot of cases, mind-numbingly less complex.
The GNU tools (I assume you're referring to things like wget, fileutils, binutils, and so on) are, 99% of the time, pointless to write in C++, because you wouldn't use object-orientation on such a small/limited scale (wget deals with one file at a time, why bother objectifying?).
I do, however, point you to other large projects that DO use C++ - KDE, Mozilla, AtheOS, just to name a few.
Large projects that deal with objects - buttons, windows, controls, lists, etc. - are great when implemented in C++ (if done properly), because it makes the code easier to deal with, less complex, more reusable, and on and on.
C++ isn't for everything, but for something like a graphical user interface, it would sure be nice.
It does, in fact, have VBR capability, though for some reason, all the encoders I've tried default to encoding between 192 and 256 kbps (VBR). This is great, except that the original file I was encoding from was a 128 kbit MP3, which means that the file gained 50-100% more size, and, at BEST, stayed sounding exactly the same.
Seems kind of silly.
I'm trying out the dbPowerAMP mentioned a few posts up, and it's pretty nice, as far as ease-of-use and so on goes. Slow as wang, but that's probably because it's using RC2 (I think).
I used to use PNGs on my site, until I found that they wouldn't properly display colour - or rather, they WOULD.
PNGs have tons of neato features, like gamma settings and so on. When used properly, it can ensure that the colour you see on your monitor is exactly the same as the colour displayed on another monitor - the image is adjusted so that the output remains the same, even on different hardware.
This is a problem when you consider the following:
PNG transparency support is not properly supported in a lot of still-popular browsers, so if you want images to blend in properly with the background, you must actually have a background colour
HTML cannot be colour-corrected in the ways that PNGs are, which causes background colours of web pages to change from machine to machine - sometimes subtly, sometimes not.
The GIMP does not have (that I could find) an option to disable this feature of PNG images when saving as PNG. I haven't checked to see if Photoshop does, but even if it does, that leaves a few options
Either I can use a closed-source app (Photoshop) on a closed-source OS (MacOS or Windows) and maybe have my graphics work out, I can use an open-sourced app (GIMP) on an open- or closed-source OS and have my site look like wang to anyone who isn't using the same hardware and software that I'm using, or I can make GIFs on any OS with any software and have my site look the way I want it to.
The choice, for me, is a simple one.
--Dan
Re:Issues with the euro in day-to-day life
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 2
I can't speak for the poster, but in Canada, every theatre I've ever been to (and I've been to a lot) has matinees until about 5 PM every day, as well as a 'matinee day' - a two-for-one day, a day where all prices are matinee prices, or something of that sort.
It's an architecture designed fairly recently (within the last 6 (?) years). It's RISC, it's fast, and it's an open standard - anyone can make a 'PowerPC' chip if they want to. Apple's motherboards support PCI, AGP, USB, FireWire, IDE, and (I think) SCSI. I don't see why other people couldn't do likewise.
Hell, Apple's PPC motherboards have in-ROM emulation software to emulate a 68k processor. That's rad.
The only real thing keeping Apple's computers from becoming dominant (since the hardware and the OS (X) are easily superior to the alternatives in many ways) is the dominance of Windows and 86-based boxes, which everyone agrees is only there because they're there already.
I have to second this motion. Shaw Cablesystems, based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, provides first-rate services to their customers, from coast to coast.
After Shaw moved into my city (replacing the @home infrastructure rogers was using with their own), my average speeds jumped from 39 KBps to around 120 KBps, with bursts to 600 KBps.
There are no rate limits. There are no transfer limits. The first-level technician I talked to knew what a firewall was and could give me a few names of good ones - but knew that Macs are pretty much screwed in that department. He suggested I go to tucows though. In short, he knew what he was talking about (more than most level 1 techs).
People who are saying 'broadband isn't feasible' really mean 'broadband companies who think it's a good idea to buy online greeting card companies that make no profit for $780 million USD and then sell them for $24 million USD'.
Excite was stuck in the 'portal' days. They didn't realize that 'profit margins' were more important than 'eyes' (i.e. ad revenue and portals channeling people into services). Sadly, this was blatant stupidity, since the portal days were over three years ago, even before the tech boom.
Oh well. I can still stream MP3s and file-share, so I'm happy. I can still get 390 kbps from my webserver and DCC to friends at 52 kbps, so I can't complain.
I'll leave the comments about your employer's religion and the ethics of imposing their morals on other people alone in this post...
He never said anything about religion dude, just ethics, and it is unethical to knowingly allow someone to illegaly transfer intelectual property via file-sharing. It would probably have been overlooked though, if it hadn't been for the bandwidth.
It seems like your company believes the Internet *is* port 80. If that's so, well - quite frankly, broadband is pretty pointless.
It seems like you believe that broadband makes you immune to laws and TOS agreements. Just because you CAN transfer 1.2 gigs of MP3s in a day doesn't mean you have a right to. If it is not unethical to you, then it is, at the very least, illegal, period. If you don't like that, lobby your congressman.
Web browsing can be done on a cheap 56K link.
Yes, but it's slow as hell. Most pages nowadays are designed with flash, java, huge images - frankly, they make sites that could be 56k-compatible, but don't bother with the effort because they don't feel they have to.
High-bandwidth applications ARE the killer app for broadband. If you don't like people actually using more than what a 56K user will use, you're defeating the entire object of broadband.
They stopped very few uses of their service. VPNs are the only near-legitimate use, file-sharing is blatantly illegal, running servers is likely against the TOS which people agreed to in the first place, and the rest is all good stuff.
Other legitimate uses that are probably not affected: FTP downloads, streaming media (realplayer, QT, Windows Media, mp3.com MPEG streams, shoutcast MPEG streams, downloading large files (PDF datasheets on chip designs, etc), game demos, OS upgrades, and on and on and on.
Frankly, I find people that bitch about these things to be pathetic. Half the people bitch because their ISP enforces their terms of service (running servers), and the other half bitch because their ISP upholds the law (file sharing). It's pathetic. Buy your own bandwidth, try running your own ISP the way you want an ISP run, and it'll run into the ground in a few months if you ever actually get it off the ground.
Come on people, grow up. Broadband isn't in the constitution, file sharing is not an essential service, and you just sound like a baby for complaining that your ISP is trying to stay afloat.
Actually, Final Fantasy is called "Final Fantasy" because Square was almost bankrupt, and it was going to be the last game they ever put out - except that it became hugely popular, put them back in the black, and started a new era in RPGs.
On the other hand, your explanation is much more poetic.
I still don't get this hype about "video-on-cell-phone". Now correct me if I'm wrong but standalone "videophones" were "to be the future", they never catched on. Why would it be different for cell-phones even if you have the bandwith?
First, ever seen Earth: Final Conflict? The Globals they use are quite cool, and have a lot of functions other than just video chat, though it IS nice to see the person you're talking to.
Other applications that spring to mind are calling home and looking at live feeds from your home security cameras, or interpreting the body language of people you're talking to.
You could use it to show someone where you are (example use is construction sites, to shoe how done is done), or what you're talking about ('no no honey, THIS kind of margerine). Theoretically, you could use them as wireless webcams or videocameras, and take inventory of an area - documenting fire damage, for example, theft, or just before/after shots of your yard during a landscaping project.
There are lots of applications that I can think of now, and probably more that could be thought of by people after the technology is commonplace.
That's assuming, though, that Apple isn't just knocking a huge amount off the purchase price (another poster said $300 per iBook).
The great thing for Apple is that it can afford to lose money now, if that means gains in the long run, so I wouldn't be surprised to see them doing something like that. I think $300 is a little low, but I wouldn't mind.
Sure, they're trying to take over the market, but I'd rather a company take over the market by selling decent hardware to schools, instead of screwing customers and 'buying' a billion dollars of its own software for schools.
I don't know, the big trailers work fine for me. Maybe it's you?
Also, don't be such a pansy and hide behind AC. You posted with your original username, and then replied as an AC. It's transparent AND stupid, not to mention cowardly. Stand up for what you say, or don't say it.
Well, it started around then anyway. I think it's impacted more lives in better ways than id Software or Linux have.
Quicktime on the other hand, was the pioneer of digital video. Without digital video, we wouldn't have DVDs, digital cable, streaming media (not good media anyway), or people digitally filming movies in Australia and sending the recording to California to have special effects added.
I'd rather have the fall of communism, but QuickTime has (indirectly) affected more people in more ways than Linux or id have.
Yes, but CD and audio players were not revolutionary back then. Digital video was.
Media player back then was not multimedia, it was media. It played audio. It played CDs, WAV files, and probably MIDI files (win3.1's version did for sure), but that is not multimedia any more than plain text is.
WHY SHOULD I PAY AU$120 TO SEE A HIGH-RES STARWARS TRAILER I CAN'T EVEN SAVE TO MY DRIVE!?!?!?
You shouldn't, nor do you have to. The shareware version of Quicktime plays the star wars trailers fine. Perhaps you should get a clue, then get Quicktime, then actually try it.
While your post does have some salient points, I'm inclined to disagree.
In Canada, we've had cable modems for a long time, few years, and in most areas of the country (only the remote/low population areas are still out of the loop).
Our companies, Shaw, Rogers, and Cogeco, all used to use @Home to provide their cable service. Problem is, @Home's service sucked ass. Downtimes. Router outages. Server failures. Mismanagement.
Case in point, I had sentry21@home.com, but had two sentry21 accounts on two different servers (when I moved from one city to another, they fucked up). I ended up having to check both accounts because I wasn't sure if they'd ever get their heads out of their asses. As it is, I haven't lived in Abbotsford for well over a year, and my e-mail is still stored there. Go figure.
Shaw saw this coming, and began building their own network. Shaw Fibrelink now covers everywhere in the country that Shaw services or serviced. It is one of the biggest, fastest data networks in the country. I get upwards of 500 KB/s on decent computers (G4), and very low latencies. My routes are awesome, the techs are smart, and it's generally very sweet.
Shaw is also making money hand over fist. They are -not- losing money just because people are sucking down pr0n MPEGs and DivX like leeches (and Canada has the highest adoption of broadband in the country).
Cogeco saw the same thing, and started building their network. Rogers was slower on the mark, and is now playing catch-up, but is still in the game.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to imply that Canada is better than the US, or to brag about our infrastructure. Make your own judgements if you wish.
My point is that my cable company, Shaw, is a cable company. Now that being a cable company involves providing internet access, they are an ISP as well, but that is all they are.
Rogers has several branches, none of which make money, and they're pretty stupid to keep them, but some (like cellphones) will pay off in the long run and are worth subsidizing.
Cogeco... Well, let's ignore them. No one likes Cogeco.
Excite@Home? Spent $780 million on a zero-profit online greeting card company. Why? Because they're a dot-com. They didn't know what they were, and they mistakenly thought that they were a portal. That's why Excite bought @Home in the first place, back when people cared about portal sites. They were just too stupid to see reality: no one cares about clicks or eyeballs, they care about goods and services.
It is not the bandwidth that is the killer. @Home peers. They peered at the BCIX, which gave me 7 millisecond pings over 5 hops to ftp.ca.debian.org back when Stormix was still around. They peer elsewhere.
The killer was stupidity and greed. They wasted money because they forgot that it had value. They wasted money because they had dollar signs in their eyes and couldn't see anything else, no matter how bad things looked.
Our (Canada's) cable companies are doing great, because they jumped ship. Yours (the US's; I assume you are American, most/. readers are), the ones that are faltering, are faltering because they didn't realize they were dealing with economic morons. Some did realize this, and got their own projects underway.
AT&T won't be (too) adversely affected. That's why they're offering low bids for the cable infrastructure. If they get the bid, they get a huge, fast network. If they don't, they lose nothing.
Me, I'm going to continue raping my bandwidth for all it's worth. 5 megabits (clocked, not marketed) and 2 static (in practice, not theory) IPs for $50 CDN/month? Screw DSL.
Look at it this way. At Superstore here (I live in Canada, these are $CAD), I have two options:
1) X-Box for $614
2) Gamecube, any two games I choose (of the three), extra controller, adapters, etc. etc. etc. for $402
With that $212, I can throw on an extra $40, go down to A&B sound, and get a demo-model DVD player (last time I was there, they had a Toshiba with DTS decoder built in, etc., $450 player for $249), and then I don't have to deal with the pain of buying a remote for my X-Box and setting it up.
Besides, anyone willing to drop $600 on a gaming console in this economic crunch probably already -has- a DVD player. The only reason to get this one is so that they don't have to switch TV inputs as much.
I don't believe short loading times are somehow inherent to GC, I think it's all about the developer.
Yes and no. Let's remember the Playstation, and the horrid load times on some games. Then let's remember scene changes in Final Fantasy IX. You'd change screens, and the game would load up a pre-rendered image five screens high by three screens wide, and you wouldn't notice any load times. Why? The FF Developers fade out/in, and the software starts loading the next image while the fade-out starts (I believe).
But then let's look at Q3 for PS2. It's not worth playing. You get a couple of boring maps and a few neat ones, but you have to wait up to 4 minutes just for the title screen to come up, and a good three minutes every time you want to load a map. It's pathetic.
I'd wager that 1) Nintendo has the benefit of faster DVD seek/read mechanisms because they had a year of technology behind them, and 2) That we will see games with high and low load times
Still, it seems to me that most games on Nintendo systems emphasize quality over quantity. Let's see if Nintendo is as finicky about its licensees this time around.
See: just crap programs, or repeats. Hardly anything worth investing thousands of pounds into.
Well excuse me, but I happen to like my crap programs and repeats.
Haven't you heard of things such as hobbies?
I have several hobbies, but when one comes home from work (or in my case, is working at home), one does not necessarily feel like going kickboxing or learning a new language. Television, music, and books are the three easiest, lowest-energy ways to relax, and I can listen to music and read books whenever I want. WHy can't I watch TV whenever I want?
Yeha, it's a luxury that I don't need, but so's my computer, so's my stereo, so are my books. Doesn't mean I'm not going to give up on literature.
Slashdot Mirror
The only thing I disagree with is government owned and operated companies.
;>
I think a lot of them are good things - Air Canada was, the CBC (usually) is, Petro-Canada is. The issues you are speaking of are really only relevant (at least directly) to BC - and in that sense, I agree wholeheartedly.
ICBC should not have the right to impose a levy, neither should Telus, or any other company for that matter.
Telus doesn't. ICBC does, but I don't care, because really, it's all the same entity. People who are paying $1500 can pay another $100 a year, but a lot of people who take the bus take it because it's all they can afford, and raising fares might make all the difference in the world. I know when I was a student, if they'd raised the price of a bus pass by $5, I'd not have been able to get one, which would've meant no school for me. That's the principle behind the quasi-socialist Robin Hood philosophies in Canadian government.
The government should stick to the business of governing and stay out of everything else. That is how they keep pulling shit like the fast-ferry fiasco.
No no no, you have it wrong. "The government should stick to the business of governing and stay out of everything else if they don't know what the fuck they're doing." In BC under the NDP, this was the case. People from Saskatchewan will tell you, though, that things are much better there (or at least they were when I was there). The government there actually managed for the people, instead of mismanaging for them.
Don't confuse the NDP ruining the economy of the best and most beautiful province in the country with government being bad, I implore you. There is a difference, though it's hard to see right now.
Out of curiousity, where in BC do you live? (If you choose to reply, you can e-mail me instead of posting) I'm just curious..
--Dan
Not to nitpick, and I don't necessarily agree with forcing abortions, but if you had a country with a billion people in it that was smaller than the US, Canada, or a half-dozen other countries, you'd want to control population rates too.
Not only that, but just last year, China forced down a US plane over international waters, KIDNAPPED airmen, and tried to ransom them.
Well, there is debate as to whether it was intentional or not. Me, I don't know either way. That being said though, the plane did land on Chinese soil and were taken away. Sure, they had little other choice, but if they're in China, they're in China.
Contrast that to the US, who has, several times, executed foreign nationals without even letting them speak with a consular representative, and whose population and many poilitical figures have mostly decided that the Al-Quaeda members that were attacking the US's values do not deserve those values, which clearly sends the message that 'American freedoms are for Americans only'. If the US really believed in equality for all before the law, there wouldn't even be a debate. I'm surprised they're even considering a trial, it'll be a kangaroo court anyway.
--Dan
Our own government (my province anyways) allows companies the right to a monopoly in areas like Home/Auto Insurance, Transportation, local Telco etc...
It sounds somewhat like you're from British Columbia, though I know next to nothing about the laws in most other provinces.
Our telcos are a monopoly, sure, but they're regulated monopolies. If you have a problem with Telus, Sasktel, Bell Canada, Groupe Telecom, or anyone else, call the CRTC. They have very strict guidelines about what services (and quality of service) telcos MUST provide, if they're going to provide any at all.
Even for services that aren't regulated (DSL for example) and thus that the CRTC has no authority over, a call to the CRTC wait can get Telus fixing a 'two week' problem overnight.
Compare that to, for example, Northwest Bell. A friend of mine in Seattle had two phone lines, one for voice, one for data. They called NW Bell to take off 'features' like call waiting, caller ID, etc. off of the data line, and NW Bell obligingly disconnected their voice line instead. Imagine my surprise when this (extremely vocal) friend of mine said that this had happened six months prior and that she had called NW Bell several times. That sort of thing in Canada will often, with a little nudging, get you the problem reversed, and a credit on your next bill (or a free month of service).
and even worse, grants those companies the right to levy citizens, even if those citizens don't use the service provided by the company (eg. Bus tax on Auto-Insurance).
Good. Take the bus more. I'm sick and tired of people who drive their SUVs two blocks just beacuse they're too lazy to walk or too 'important' to take the bus.
Living in Abbotsford, which is pretty much the westernmost city along the Trans-Canada from where you can't public-transit to Vancouver during the day, I'm considering getting a car, but I intend to move to New West or further in. Once I do, I will have no need for a car, let alone for fuel taxes. I'll save a ton of money, help the environment, and get more excercise. I approve of the government encouraging more people to do likewise.
I've always said that our governemt could not get away with, or even propose, the things they do here in any other country. The people wouldn't stand for it.
Oh please, stop being so petty. You speak as though Canada is the most fascist country on the planet, which irks me so. You'll never again be able to go to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan (I hope), but I'd like to see you go there and tell the starving, impoverished, repressed people about how the government is taxing you too much.
In a lot of countries, the people wouldn't even consider 'not standing for' anything the government did. Sitting around and bitching will result in your relatives trying to sell your stuff to feed themselves, since you won't be needing it anymore.
The things of this sort wouldn't go over well in the US because of hundreds of years of 'government is bad' indoctrination. Most other countries trust their governments. Sales taxes in Sweden are between 23-25%. Do people complain? Hell no, they get free education - university education no less.
What I want to know, is what Americans do when their government does something that obviously by the replies to this post, the people don't agree with. Do you guys just sit by and bitch about it like us Canadians?
I've found that in a lot of cases, the American public remains ignorant of anything that doesn't directly affect them. Most of the American people will never know about trade embargos, just like they don't know about the 38% tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber. Why? Because the networks are pro-US, and hell, why shouldn't they be, it's their country. And this stuff isn't exciting. Not like night-vision shots of explosions or exploding towers or anything of that sort.
I've come to accept that nothing I do or say will change the vast scheme of the big-business take over in the world. I'm not rich enough to have a voice. I've written letters, petitioned my local office, even protested, nothing changes.
Big-business take-over? In Canada? Maybe a little in BC (we're certainly headed that way), but not nearly as much as you seem to imply. Most of the 'big business' in Canada is (or was, until recently) government-owned. Telus (formerly AGT/EdTel), Sasktel, Petro-Canada, Air Canada, the CBC. Is this what you're fighting against?
If you ask me, we should be fighting against deregulation (look at what happened to the airlines after we deregulated, we're lucky to have any), not corporations. Let businesses flourish, but let's keep with our Canadian philosophy and write laws to make sure they're working in the interests of the people first, not the shareholders.
So I ask in this case of the world's self-proclaimed big-brother pushing around yet another perfectly content country. What are American Citizens going to do about it?
Support their country, since the vast majority will know next to nothing about the issue. The few that do and do protest will be ignored, since they likely don't contribute enough to the campaign coffers to matter anyway.
Call me a cynic, but I just call it how I see it.
--Dan
While I can't speak for kernel development, which is easily beyond any programming skill I've ever had, I can say a few comments about other things you cite examples of.
Apache was written in C, either because the programmers were UNIX programmers who are hardcore into C and refuse to use C++, because they had C source to work from, because there were no good C++ compilers out there, or any combination or lack of the above. Same with X-window implementations.
These both would be nice if implemented properly in C++, because the object-orientation features of C++ make a lot of things clearer and easier, and in a lot of cases, mind-numbingly less complex.
The GNU tools (I assume you're referring to things like wget, fileutils, binutils, and so on) are, 99% of the time, pointless to write in C++, because you wouldn't use object-orientation on such a small/limited scale (wget deals with one file at a time, why bother objectifying?).
I do, however, point you to other large projects that DO use C++ - KDE, Mozilla, AtheOS, just to name a few.
Large projects that deal with objects - buttons, windows, controls, lists, etc. - are great when implemented in C++ (if done properly), because it makes the code easier to deal with, less complex, more reusable, and on and on.
C++ isn't for everything, but for something like a graphical user interface, it would sure be nice.
--Dan
It does, in fact, have VBR capability, though for some reason, all the encoders I've tried default to encoding between 192 and 256 kbps (VBR). This is great, except that the original file I was encoding from was a 128 kbit MP3, which means that the file gained 50-100% more size, and, at BEST, stayed sounding exactly the same.
Seems kind of silly.
I'm trying out the dbPowerAMP mentioned a few posts up, and it's pretty nice, as far as ease-of-use and so on goes. Slow as wang, but that's probably because it's using RC2 (I think).
--Dan
PNGs have tons of neato features, like gamma settings and so on. When used properly, it can ensure that the colour you see on your monitor is exactly the same as the colour displayed on another monitor - the image is adjusted so that the output remains the same, even on different hardware.
This is a problem when you consider the following:
Either I can use a closed-source app (Photoshop) on a closed-source OS (MacOS or Windows) and maybe have my graphics work out, I can use an open-sourced app (GIMP) on an open- or closed-source OS and have my site look like wang to anyone who isn't using the same hardware and software that I'm using, or I can make GIFs on any OS with any software and have my site look the way I want it to.
The choice, for me, is a simple one.
--Dan
I can't speak for the poster, but in Canada, every theatre I've ever been to (and I've been to a lot) has matinees until about 5 PM every day, as well as a 'matinee day' - a two-for-one day, a day where all prices are matinee prices, or something of that sort.
Perhaps this is to what s/he was referring.
--Dan
PowerPC.
It's an architecture designed fairly recently (within the last 6 (?) years). It's RISC, it's fast, and it's an open standard - anyone can make a 'PowerPC' chip if they want to. Apple's motherboards support PCI, AGP, USB, FireWire, IDE, and (I think) SCSI. I don't see why other people couldn't do likewise.
Hell, Apple's PPC motherboards have in-ROM emulation software to emulate a 68k processor. That's rad.
The only real thing keeping Apple's computers from becoming dominant (since the hardware and the OS (X) are easily superior to the alternatives in many ways) is the dominance of Windows and 86-based boxes, which everyone agrees is only there because they're there already.
This is my take on the situation, anyway.
--Dan
I have to second this motion. Shaw Cablesystems, based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, provides first-rate services to their customers, from coast to coast.
After Shaw moved into my city (replacing the @home infrastructure rogers was using with their own), my average speeds jumped from 39 KBps to around 120 KBps, with bursts to 600 KBps.
There are no rate limits. There are no transfer limits. The first-level technician I talked to knew what a firewall was and could give me a few names of good ones - but knew that Macs are pretty much screwed in that department. He suggested I go to tucows though. In short, he knew what he was talking about (more than most level 1 techs).
People who are saying 'broadband isn't feasible' really mean 'broadband companies who think it's a good idea to buy online greeting card companies that make no profit for $780 million USD and then sell them for $24 million USD'.
Excite was stuck in the 'portal' days. They didn't realize that 'profit margins' were more important than 'eyes' (i.e. ad revenue and portals channeling people into services). Sadly, this was blatant stupidity, since the portal days were over three years ago, even before the tech boom.
Oh well. I can still stream MP3s and file-share, so I'm happy. I can still get 390 kbps from my webserver and DCC to friends at 52 kbps, so I can't complain.
--Dan
I'll leave the comments about your employer's religion and the ethics of imposing their morals on other people alone in this post...
He never said anything about religion dude, just ethics, and it is unethical to knowingly allow someone to illegaly transfer intelectual property via file-sharing. It would probably have been overlooked though, if it hadn't been for the bandwidth.
It seems like your company believes the Internet *is* port 80. If that's so, well - quite frankly, broadband is pretty pointless.
It seems like you believe that broadband makes you immune to laws and TOS agreements. Just because you CAN transfer 1.2 gigs of MP3s in a day doesn't mean you have a right to. If it is not unethical to you, then it is, at the very least, illegal, period. If you don't like that, lobby your congressman.
Web browsing can be done on a cheap 56K link.
Yes, but it's slow as hell. Most pages nowadays are designed with flash, java, huge images - frankly, they make sites that could be 56k-compatible, but don't bother with the effort because they don't feel they have to.
High-bandwidth applications ARE the killer app for broadband. If you don't like people actually using more than what a 56K user will use, you're defeating the entire object of broadband.
They stopped very few uses of their service. VPNs are the only near-legitimate use, file-sharing is blatantly illegal, running servers is likely against the TOS which people agreed to in the first place, and the rest is all good stuff.
Other legitimate uses that are probably not affected: FTP downloads, streaming media (realplayer, QT, Windows Media, mp3.com MPEG streams, shoutcast MPEG streams, downloading large files (PDF datasheets on chip designs, etc), game demos, OS upgrades, and on and on and on.
Frankly, I find people that bitch about these things to be pathetic. Half the people bitch because their ISP enforces their terms of service (running servers), and the other half bitch because their ISP upholds the law (file sharing). It's pathetic. Buy your own bandwidth, try running your own ISP the way you want an ISP run, and it'll run into the ground in a few months if you ever actually get it off the ground.
Come on people, grow up. Broadband isn't in the constitution, file sharing is not an essential service, and you just sound like a baby for complaining that your ISP is trying to stay afloat.
--Dan
Assuming it's 10%, that makes it 10 times more than linux's 1%.
Linux didn't have 1%, it had 0.24%, which gives Macs (at 10%) 42 times more than Linux, compared to Windows' mere 10 times over MacOS.
I'd reply to the point of your post, but I couldn't find it.
--Dan
They never expected it to have any sequels - if FF hadn't rocked so much, it would have been Square's last game.
--Dan
Actually, Final Fantasy is called "Final Fantasy" because Square was almost bankrupt, and it was going to be the last game they ever put out - except that it became hugely popular, put them back in the black, and started a new era in RPGs.
On the other hand, your explanation is much more poetic.
--Dan
I still don't get this hype about "video-on-cell-phone". Now correct me if I'm wrong but standalone "videophones" were "to be the future", they never catched on. Why would it be different for cell-phones even if you have the bandwith?
First, ever seen Earth: Final Conflict? The Globals they use are quite cool, and have a lot of functions other than just video chat, though it IS nice to see the person you're talking to.
Other applications that spring to mind are calling home and looking at live feeds from your home security cameras, or interpreting the body language of people you're talking to.
You could use it to show someone where you are (example use is construction sites, to shoe how done is done), or what you're talking about ('no no honey, THIS kind of margerine). Theoretically, you could use them as wireless webcams or videocameras, and take inventory of an area - documenting fire damage, for example, theft, or just before/after shots of your yard during a landscaping project.
There are lots of applications that I can think of now, and probably more that could be thought of by people after the technology is commonplace.
Me, I find the idea sort of exciting.
--Dan
Don't forget educational discounts.
That's assuming, though, that Apple isn't just knocking a huge amount off the purchase price (another poster said $300 per iBook).
The great thing for Apple is that it can afford to lose money now, if that means gains in the long run, so I wouldn't be surprised to see them doing something like that. I think $300 is a little low, but I wouldn't mind.
Sure, they're trying to take over the market, but I'd rather a company take over the market by selling decent hardware to schools, instead of screwing customers and 'buying' a billion dollars of its own software for schools.
--Dan
I don't know, the big trailers work fine for me. Maybe it's you?
Also, don't be such a pansy and hide behind AC. You posted with your original username, and then replied as an AC. It's transparent AND stupid, not to mention cowardly. Stand up for what you say, or don't say it.
--Dan
The fall of Russian Communism?
Well, it started around then anyway. I think it's impacted more lives in better ways than id Software or Linux have.
Quicktime on the other hand, was the pioneer of digital video. Without digital video, we wouldn't have DVDs, digital cable, streaming media (not good media anyway), or people digitally filming movies in Australia and sending the recording to California to have special effects added.
I'd rather have the fall of communism, but QuickTime has (indirectly) affected more people in more ways than Linux or id have.
--Dan
Yes, but CD and audio players were not revolutionary back then. Digital video was.
Media player back then was not multimedia, it was media. It played audio. It played CDs, WAV files, and probably MIDI files (win3.1's version did for sure), but that is not multimedia any more than plain text is.
--Dan
WHY SHOULD I PAY AU$120 TO SEE A HIGH-RES STARWARS TRAILER I CAN'T EVEN SAVE TO MY DRIVE!?!?!?
You shouldn't, nor do you have to. The shareware version of Quicktime plays the star wars trailers fine. Perhaps you should get a clue, then get Quicktime, then actually try it.
--Dan
The cable companies run the physical network and @Home provides DNS servers and e-mail.
No, the cable companies provide the last mile. DNS servers, news, e-mail, etc. as well as network are handled by the @Home.
That being said, you're right that a lot of the incompetance was on the part of the cable companies, but that happened in the last mile.
Trust me, if Rogers had to manage a network bigger than a breadbox, I never would have gotten any packets from anyone but loopback.
--Dan
While your post does have some salient points, I'm inclined to disagree.
/. readers are), the ones that are faltering, are faltering because they didn't realize they were dealing with economic morons. Some did realize this, and got their own projects underway.
In Canada, we've had cable modems for a long time, few years, and in most areas of the country (only the remote/low population areas are still out of the loop).
Our companies, Shaw, Rogers, and Cogeco, all used to use @Home to provide their cable service. Problem is, @Home's service sucked ass. Downtimes. Router outages. Server failures. Mismanagement.
Case in point, I had sentry21@home.com, but had two sentry21 accounts on two different servers (when I moved from one city to another, they fucked up). I ended up having to check both accounts because I wasn't sure if they'd ever get their heads out of their asses. As it is, I haven't lived in Abbotsford for well over a year, and my e-mail is still stored there. Go figure.
Shaw saw this coming, and began building their own network. Shaw Fibrelink now covers everywhere in the country that Shaw services or serviced. It is one of the biggest, fastest data networks in the country. I get upwards of 500 KB/s on decent computers (G4), and very low latencies. My routes are awesome, the techs are smart, and it's generally very sweet.
Shaw is also making money hand over fist. They are -not- losing money just because people are sucking down pr0n MPEGs and DivX like leeches (and Canada has the highest adoption of broadband in the country).
Cogeco saw the same thing, and started building their network. Rogers was slower on the mark, and is now playing catch-up, but is still in the game.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to imply that Canada is better than the US, or to brag about our infrastructure. Make your own judgements if you wish.
My point is that my cable company, Shaw, is a cable company. Now that being a cable company involves providing internet access, they are an ISP as well, but that is all they are.
Rogers has several branches, none of which make money, and they're pretty stupid to keep them, but some (like cellphones) will pay off in the long run and are worth subsidizing.
Cogeco... Well, let's ignore them. No one likes Cogeco.
Excite@Home? Spent $780 million on a zero-profit online greeting card company. Why? Because they're a dot-com. They didn't know what they were, and they mistakenly thought that they were a portal. That's why Excite bought @Home in the first place, back when people cared about portal sites. They were just too stupid to see reality: no one cares about clicks or eyeballs, they care about goods and services.
It is not the bandwidth that is the killer. @Home peers. They peered at the BCIX, which gave me 7 millisecond pings over 5 hops to ftp.ca.debian.org back when Stormix was still around. They peer elsewhere.
The killer was stupidity and greed. They wasted money because they forgot that it had value. They wasted money because they had dollar signs in their eyes and couldn't see anything else, no matter how bad things looked.
Our (Canada's) cable companies are doing great, because they jumped ship. Yours (the US's; I assume you are American, most
AT&T won't be (too) adversely affected. That's why they're offering low bids for the cable infrastructure. If they get the bid, they get a huge, fast network. If they don't, they lose nothing.
Me, I'm going to continue raping my bandwidth for all it's worth. 5 megabits (clocked, not marketed) and 2 static (in practice, not theory) IPs for $50 CDN/month? Screw DSL.
--Dan
Lack of DVD support? I disagree.
Look at it this way. At Superstore here (I live in Canada, these are $CAD), I have two options:
1) X-Box for $614
2) Gamecube, any two games I choose (of the three), extra controller, adapters, etc. etc. etc. for $402
With that $212, I can throw on an extra $40, go down to A&B sound, and get a demo-model DVD player (last time I was there, they had a Toshiba with DTS decoder built in, etc., $450 player for $249), and then I don't have to deal with the pain of buying a remote for my X-Box and setting it up.
Besides, anyone willing to drop $600 on a gaming console in this economic crunch probably already -has- a DVD player. The only reason to get this one is so that they don't have to switch TV inputs as much.
--Dan
I don't believe short loading times are somehow inherent to GC, I think it's all about the developer.
Yes and no. Let's remember the Playstation, and the horrid load times on some games. Then let's remember scene changes in Final Fantasy IX. You'd change screens, and the game would load up a pre-rendered image five screens high by three screens wide, and you wouldn't notice any load times. Why? The FF Developers fade out/in, and the software starts loading the next image while the fade-out starts (I believe).
But then let's look at Q3 for PS2. It's not worth playing. You get a couple of boring maps and a few neat ones, but you have to wait up to 4 minutes just for the title screen to come up, and a good three minutes every time you want to load a map. It's pathetic.
I'd wager that 1) Nintendo has the benefit of faster DVD seek/read mechanisms because they had a year of technology behind them, and 2) That we will see games with high and low load times
Still, it seems to me that most games on Nintendo systems emphasize quality over quantity. Let's see if Nintendo is as finicky about its licensees this time around.
--Dan
See: just crap programs, or repeats. Hardly anything worth investing
thousands of pounds into.
Well excuse me, but I happen to like my crap programs and repeats.
Haven't you heard of things such as hobbies?
I have several hobbies, but when one comes home from work (or in my case, is working at home), one does not necessarily feel like going kickboxing or learning a new language. Television, music, and books are the three easiest, lowest-energy ways to relax, and I can listen to music and read books whenever I want. WHy can't I watch TV whenever I want?
Yeha, it's a luxury that I don't need, but so's my computer, so's my stereo, so are my books. Doesn't mean I'm not going to give up on literature.
--Dan
Uhg... Shoot me now, I hate aptitude.
dselect was great because it was fair - everyone hated it.
Oh well, aptitude isn't that bad I guess.
--Dan