Most likely they don't really know anything about you
I needed to show my passport, driver's license, and a letter I'd just gotten from some credit card company rejecting my unemployed ass before I got one, and I have to show my driver's license every time I rent.
I had an idea recently regarding how to implement a national identification card. It wouldn't, in and of itself, prevent people getting on planes and killing everyone, but it would be a very good thing, and here's why.
The card is a smartcard card, with embedded microchip. On the chip is encoded your photograph, unencrypted, and your address, phone number, and a uniquely identifiable number (NOT your social security/social insurance), which are encrypted according to a key based on your fingerprint. Thus, anyone can get your picture from the card merely by putting it into an appropriate card reader, but access to your address, citizen ID number (CID), and so on requires your thumb(index finger,middle finger)print to be accessed.
This allows people to confirm that you are (or look like) who your card says you are without your fingerprint.
When you go into a Blockbuster to get a membership (blockbuster is a bad example because it's international, but bear with me), they take your information, assign you a membership number, and give you a plastic card with a barcode on it. With this national ID card, you would (at the final point in your membership sign-up) insert the card into a card reader that they have, scan in your thumbprint to authenticate, and they would then create your information in the database. The difference, though, is that they would not have to ask you for proof of address, and you would not have to dictate your address or phone number. Also, they would not have to assign you a member number, as your CID could be used (or merely stored and referenced) as your member number in the database.
Privacy whiners could note that Blockbuster does not, with this ID card, know anything more or less than they did before.
The key to this system is that you do not have a centralized database controlled by the government that stores your credit card information, video rental information, and air miles. You do not have all relevant information stored on the card so that anyone can pull it off the card, and the information, if your card is lost, is irretrievable, though it is easy to locate the owner in a crowd or a restaurant, since the picture is printed and stored on the card.
Every store needs their own database, as they do now, so the government can no easier 'track you' than they can now. The government's database would be easily integrated amongst itself (CSIS/RCMP/local police/Immigration Canada could share/cross-access databases), and make working together easier.
Thus, while not a safety measure in and of itself, this card would not stop anything, security officials at airports could integrate their check-in scanners with all of the above agencies (or their local counterparts, for Americans, Britons, etc), and any national red flags would be raised, and the person would be told that there was a problem with their card, and could they please wait a moment.
The card would be free to any citizen/landed immigrant, and a minimal charge ($5? $10? Cost of fabrication) would be asked of any non-citizen resident (students, foreign nationals, diplomats). Anyone not posessing a card would be ineligable for most services at most institutions.
(Worried about 'manditory ID'? Try getting a bank account without a driver's license, or a passport without a birth certificate, or even a Blockbuster card without at least an addressed letter)
The idea certainly isn't perfeclty thought out, but I think it's pretty well laid out. I wish Canada WOULD do something like this, because as a non-driving individual who gets little mail and doesn't posess a credit card, the only ID I have is a two-year old learner's license from a different province, and a Social Insurance Card that has only my name and a number on it.
They probably don't want Stallman harping at them to call it 'Apple GNU/MacOS X' or something.
If you want wget, throw the ports collection onto your OS X box and install it. I've never seen an operating system that actually comes with wget, so Apple's moves here aren't putting them below-par.
First of all, no system is ever 100% efficient. You would lose energy, even if all the machine did was change the water back and forth, and eventually you'd have to plug it in.
Secondly, you actually want this system to put energy out, meaning that the total energy in the system would drop, and thus you would run the system out of energy even faster and have to put more in.
Nice idea, but not one that would work, unfortunately.
This way we get rid of the mid eastern funds of doing terrorists attacks and make the U.S. self sufficiant and able to use our own oil for the rest of our needs and not be dependant on other nations for anything.
Invest in the U.S.A. and running them out of their money.
That's something a lot of people forget--that Roddenberry set out to write a "Wagon Train to the Stars," a sort of Western set in deep space.
No, Roddenberry pitched it as a 'Wagon Train to the Stars' so that the network execs at NBC would even consider putting any money into it. The resulting series showed a melange between what he wanted, what the NBC execs thought the people wanted, and a low budget.
ST:TNG shows better what Roddenberry wanted, I think, though he did very well with TOS (I like that a lot of the stories made political points or had morals), and DS9/VOY showed exactly why he was the one with the vision, and not Berman and the rest.
I especially like hearkening back to the old TOS rough-and-tumble attitudes.
While I liked Voyager/DS9/tacyons/wormholes/quantum fissures/whatever, I have to sincerely agree with you here. Enterprise really seems to have that honest, down-home, relaxed feel to it (I'll refrain from mentioning 'American' anywhere since I'm a Canuck and still appreciate what I'm sure many regard as an 'American' feeling to the show).
Which brings up another interesting point I've thought of. Patriotism. In the show, it's Humans against the universe, a coming-of-age sort of atmosphere, which I really like. It seems to me like the producers were trying to give it an 'American' feel, with 'down-home country boys' (which makes that British leutenant seem out of place), and, instead of spouting my usual anti-American rhetoric, I actually quite enjoyed it; perhaps some of that enjoyment was because of, and not despite, the flag-waving feel.
I suppose taking those 'American' values and applying them to the whole species kind of helps me identify with the show, and thus with what I usually criticize as an annoying American trait - and really, isn't that what Star Trek was about? Bringing us together, and taking down borders?
Bravo to the producers, for finally pulling off what they haven't done before without Roddenberry there: making the point he always wanted to make.
The type of government that provides services" to its people is called socialism.
As a Canadian, I'm curious as to the problem. Government-provided services are cheaper (shared cost and less profiteering), less discriminatory (if you pay taxes, you get service), often more reliable (the government is not going to go bankrupt), and so on. If you prefer your way, however...
and believe that if you do not like the way that private companies are acting, then you should work to change them.
How would you suggest? Buying 50%-plus-one shares and then passing a motion at the next shareholders' meeting? You can't vote for companies, you know, and in a lot of cases in the US, you don't even have your choice of companies. I don't see how you can work to change them.
Have everyone write letters saying you are willing to pay higher connection fees, and they will throw them in the trash. If they wanted your money, they'd build the network and charge you higher connection fees anyway, and screw you and whatever you want.
A question you must ask yourself is 'Is this really an area where I feel comfortable having a group of ill-informed non-experts wasting my money?' Remember, decisions are not made by techs, decisions are made by PHBs and marketing. If they're already making money hand over fist, why should they spend millions on getting service to you and then taking years to make those millions back?
Companies don't care about you, only their bottom line. The government (at least, most 'socialist' governments) doesn't care about the bottom line, as long as it takes care of its citizens.
Verizon isn't impossible to change. Build the network and sell it to them for a few hundred bucks, and they'll give you service over it, sure. Personally, I'll just go with regulation, because it gets proven results.
Oops, forgot to mention something that will probably make my post less inflammatory...
Shaw dynamically assigns a static IP to your computer.
That is to say, when you try to get an IP via DHCP, it gives you the same one as it did last time, and it'll give you the same one next time. However, if something should need to change (like when they took us off Rogers's crappy network and put us onto their FibreLink, and every single aspect of our network changed), it changes.
The G4 worked fine (DHCP), but my statically set up Linux box choked on me. That, however, is the only time I've ever ended up with a different IP (other than moving to another city). Other than that, the last two years have been 100% stable.
As a gov't service they can't discriminate. Which is great for us Linux users--no more crappy DHCP/VPN-disabled junk. But pretty sucky for the administrators who have to have configs available for everything from Win98 to VMS to OS2 to BeOS.
I don't see what you're talking about. Are you saying that DHCP is a bad thing?
Shaw runs DHCP on its cable network, and I've discovered two things about it. First, it's the easiest possible thing to set up on a computer. Give the computer a name and reboot (windows) or don't (MacOS). Linux users get kind of slapped around if they don't have pump or dhcpd and don't have a distro CD (this screwed me SO badly when they changed their network around), but if you know that you have to get it, you can get it.
Provide TCP/IP service over Ethernet (10baseT) configured by DHCP and any modern OS should run perfectly fine on it without configuration nightmares. Any OS that doesn't support and can't have support hacked into it for DHCP is 'unsupported', and is left as an excercise to the user.
This might be the only way to get broadband out there faster. The way it is today, service providers are stuck in a corner. They know the demand is out there for broadband. People DO want it, for the most part. They also know that broadband (DSL, for example), has certain requirements like distance which can hinder performance.
Actually, I think this problem might be a mix of greed and apathy. Canada's second-biggest telco, Telus, isn't run by the government (this is made obvious by the fact that they know what they're doing), and they provide ADSL to communities all over BC and Alberta - even 3000 person bergs in the middle of the rainforest - and whomsoever they don't cover, Shaw does.
Then again, anyone in Canada not covered by one of the two main broadband methods (Cogeco/Shaw/Rogers cable internet, or Telco DSL lines) is covered by StarChoice's internet access.
It's not a matter of need or cost, it's a matter of competition. If Telus doesn't give decent service, then people will go with cable internet and cellphones. If Shaw doesn't give damned good service, people will switch to StarChoice and Shaw won't get a penny.
In the US, if you don't like your phone company, tough. If you don't like your cable company, tough. There is no competition, and these companies can charge whatever they want for whatever reasons they want. AT&T was broken up so it wouldn't be a monopoly. It's not. Now you have a ton of little monopolies.
Telus, Shaw, StarChoice, and so on, all are regulated. If people have a legitimate complaint about these services and it doesn't get fixed, they are in deep trouble, and this accountability has gotten them in the habit of providing quality service, and has made them realize that spending money can make them money. Perhaps your companies should realize this as well.
I'm much more willing to risk that than to risk the hospital giving me treatments that I'm allergic to or drugs that react badly with other medication I'm taking.
I'm not saying we should implicitly trust the government. There are very few people I implicitly trust, and Jean Chretien is not one of them, nor is anyone else in the public service.
However, I am saying we should not implicitly distrust the government just because it is the government. Canada does not share the same me-centric, screw-you attitude that I see too often in the US, and I think our government reflects this.
I distrust corporations gathering information, because their entire purpose is to make as much money as possible, through any means necessary, and I know for a fact that they don't care one way or the other how I feel (lawsuit fodder not withstanding). The government, on the other hand, is made up of two kinds of people: the kind who want to serve their country and their fellow Canadians, and the kind who want a job with insanely great benefits packages. The first aren't the type to make a quick buck by violating everything they stand for (and if they really need the money and sell my information to feed their kids, I'll forgive them that easily), and the second type would be pretty stupid to risk losing a government job just for a few quick bucks.
No, this is the abuse of monopoly power in the radio markets to control the content of what we are exposed to. It's corporate censorship, not government censorship.
That's not right at all. As a corporation, they are allowed to play or not play whatever they want. They could play the same Brittney Spears song 24 hours a day if they wanted to, it's their choice.
They don't have to play any of those songs, and you don't have to listen. That's how capitalism works.
They're probably just doing this so they don't get sued by profiteers who suffered 'emotional trauma' after hearing one of these songs on the radio; a wise move, considering how happy the US courts are to hand out large sums of money to idiots who like to spill coffee on themselves.
I think you fail to make a very important distinction here. The Canadian government knows about us, sure. They track our income, our movements, our spending, and so forth. Does this mean we have no freedoms? Of course not.
People always seem to equate one with the other. One cannot have freedoms unless no one else knows about them. That seems rather silly to me. I don't care if the government knows where I go to school, where I work, where I like to have lunch. If they didn't have it in a database and they needed it, they could send a 'covert (female) agent' to chat me up on the bus, and I'd probably tell her whatever she wanted to know anyway. I can't cheat on my taxes, I can't murder someone with a (legal).357 without ever being suspected because no one knew I had it, sure. Can I smoke marijuana at home? Absolutely. Can I pay for sex? Sure. Hell, there are even legal ways to get that accomplished. Can I cheat on my wife? You bet.
We have freedoms and then some. The government knows about us as much as it needs to to accomplish what it needs to do. If I get fired, they know enough to help me out until I can find a new job, by paying me what my old wage was. If I get sick, they know enough to find my doctor and get me the medical treatment I need without giving me drugs I'm allergic to.
The government keeps track of us, sure, but they manage every aspect of our lives, from public transportation to food safety to representing my interests around the world. If you can't trust them with a little statistical data, who can you trust? This is my criticism of American governments - so many Americans I talk to are proud of their country, their politics, their government, yet if you asked them, they'd express the same sentiments you do - the government wants to control our lives, or something.
Personally, I trust them, and I know they're accountable for what they do. Until they give me a reason to distrust them, then I won't. How could I?
Watching and listening to the speeches in the House of Parliament today, I was very much relieved. Positions by the major leaders included (these are not quotes):
Jean Cretien: We will not curtail freedoms in this country in order to stop terrorism. Airport inconveniances, sure, but he very strongly said that we could not benefit from a reaction out of fear and hate, and that while a responce was deserved, we would not let anyone force us into an action that was not well thought out.
Stockwell Day: This action must be resolved, and it will be resolved (quoting Sir Winston Churchill) through 'blood, toil, sweat, and tears', but we will not give up our way of life, because when terror is allowed to flourish, the terrorists have won.
Alexa McDonough: Terrorists thrive on martyrs, and we must provide a measured, thought-out, and diplomatic action to counter this threat of terrorism.
Joe Who?: We must seriously reconsider things in this country, and not hold anything over if it needs to be changed - including funding for areas of government, laws, and so forth.
All in all, some quite rousing speeches (considering who was giving them), and definitely a lot that made me feel proud to be Canadian. What Ottawa's responce will actually be, we will have to wait and see.
Go down to your local Mac store (not an electronics store that sells macs, but a genuine Apple retailer, like Macstation), and try out the computers. I was in the Macstation in Maple Ridge playing Oni (insanely smooth), fooling with iTunes and some other software (didn't know how to make OS X boot though). My stepdad got them to let him install a game (which he brought in) onto one of the iMac DVs there to test out a joystick to see if he liked it.
In general these stores are usually fairly small, and while the salespeople are salespeople, they're still people. You should be able to try out a significant amount of software that they have pre-installed (the macs may not come with this software, but people always install new software to help 'sell' the computers), and maybe even install some new software.
Bravo, well said. Historically, the best way to reduce the birth rate in a country is to modernize it - modern health care, medicine, education, and so on.
If a country is properly fed, clothed, educated, and taken care of, the birth rate will shoot through the roof, as suddenly the amount of births is overcompensating for the bad conditions, which have been eliminated. After a very short time, the birth rate drops to far lower than it was before, and equilibrium is maintained.
If we could do this for third world countries, I think the general standard of living would rise, as the countries would be able to become self-sufficient, and maybe start paying back the huge debts with ludicrous interest that the US (and other countries) are charging them.
Call me an idealist, but I think it's a good idea.
I have organs which sense depth - they're called my eyes and my brain.
Good for you. I have organs which are supposed to do that, but they're broken, so I have little depth perception.
However, your posession of that trait which I do not have does not mean you can see in 3D, it merely means you are aware of 3D - you can judge depth.
Perhaps my distinction is needlessly metaphysical or philosophical, but the distinction is there for those who choose to see it (pun intended, derogation not).
I prefer 'help others' socialism to 'to hell with others' capitalism.
If it was up to you, Americans would have to give up half their paychecks to be redistributed around the world.
Of course not. But if it were up to me, 5% of people wouldn't control 95% of the wealth, and if it were up to me, less people would die from things that could be prevented if more people just gave a damn once in a while.
are we actually dealing with a radical sucide cult here?... Are we actually up against a group that preaches taking their lives, along with others, is a path to paradise?
No, we're not.
In the mentioned cults that I know anything of, the idea is, you kill yourself, but you don't really die, you go to another place, or something. Closer to God, who cares.
With these suicide bombers, it's true they are fighting for their religion against people that they think are impure or however you wish to call it (I don't feel like being politically correct). The difference is, they are not killing themselves to kill themselves. For that matter, they are not killing themselves; they are killing other people, and if they die in the process, then that is the way it must be.
Consider the Crusades. Hundreds, thousands, of Christian soldiers go off to spread the word of God. Anyone who didn't convert gets whacked. They go, they fight battles. Some die. They knew that they might die, but are they a suicide cult? No, they're fighting the good fight, and some may die, but that's the way it is.
In this case, the other side (the Islamic militant fundimentalist right-wing conservative nutcase whackjob...) has a few differences in its definition of warfare.
First, they do not restrict themselves to military targets. This is the first rule of civilized warfare. Secondly, they conduct all of their warfare behind enemy lines, in 'clandestine operations'. All of their 'soldiers' are 'operatives', they are all infiltrators, they all wish to get past the 'front line' defence and then attack from within, as happened on Tuesday.
Finally, they engage in suicide attacks for two reasons. First, if they know they are going to die, it makes it easier. You can prepare yourself for it, you know it's going to happen, you can make your peace with Allah, or however it is they make their peace (I'm totally ignorant of Islam at this moment).
Most importantly, though, and I have discussed this with Israelis who understand this all too well, a suicide bomber is almost impossible to stop.
Imagine someone who has strapped themselves with explosives and wishes to get into a mall to set himself off. If he gets into the mall, he kills lots of people, and himself. If he gets stopped by police/security/mall guards/door guards and is going to be caught, he sets himself off and kills a couple of people and himself. He has nothing to lose, so even one death is a victory.
To summarize, they do not kill themselves to kill themselves, they kill themselves because they know, as do the Palestinians and Israelis, that through killing themselves, they can not only kill more of the enemy more reliably, but they can also strike terror further into the hearts of their enemy - because you never know - none of us can know, anymore - when you'll be standing beside someone at the marketplace and they'll turn to you, look into your eyes for the last time anyone ever will, and then fill your sight with flames for the last second of your life.
This is why they kill themselves. No other reason.
Certainly the current state of affairs is supportive of nuke use
Unless you ask any country in the world other than the US. No country would support using nuclear weapons unless there was no other option, and there is always another option.
isolated target with limited collateral (fallout) damage
Except to the other countries in the area that would be infuriated and would be up in arms against the US.
Remember, Afghanistan shares a border with China, and the US is going to be lucky if China doesn't outright oppose military action in a retaliatory form - the way things are looking, it seems like China is just going to look the other way and not say anything about it, but if anyone high-up in the US started talking seriously about using nuclear weapons, you'd better believe that they would be against it, as would Russia, as would India, as would Pakistan, all of whom also have nuclear weapons, as would Iran, which may have, and Saudi Arabia, a US ally that probably has nuclear capabilities if nothing else.
Basically, you would be throwing away every friend you have in the world. The Bush administration has pissed on the world with the Kyoto Accords, with missile defence treaties, with orbital weapons treaties, and on, and on. The WTC attack has united the world along the same cause as the US, but don't think for a moment that nuclear weapons wouldn't be severely opposed by the rest of the world. The world would cry out, and the US would look pretty bad in everyone's eyes... And isn't that exactly what the terrorists want?
Because, as powerful as the US is, we can't save the world. We can't just dump money on every country. What about all the poor african countries? What about all the poor South American countries?
A sad attitude, considering that the world is easily rich enough to feed everyone in it. We are rich enough to help each other, to balance out at an equilibrium well above a reasonable standard of life, if we wanted to.
A side rant - it amuses me that in a group of people that so enjoy the 'share and enjoy' socialist ideals of Open Source, there are still so many people that don't advocate for helping their fellow man (except in extreme cases like the WTC disaster). Most people would rather live and let starve, it seems. Sad...
Technically s/he's right - we don't see the world in full 3D - full 3D would require some organ or whatever to actually sense depth, instead of percieve it - like being psychic and KNOWING how far away something is, and what is behind what, instead of relying on percieved depth (which is wildly innaccurate).
Our judging of depth can be totally off sometimes. If we saw in true 3D, we wouldn't have that problem.
What the poster is asking is how he should have gone about taking a machine that totally did not fit within the specifications of the network that IT set up, inserting it onto a network that uses a technology he does not understand, and using an operating system whose Token-Ring driver are sub-par.
Basically, 'What should I have done that would have prevented this from happening?'.
The answer to this, I can't help but think, is to go and talk to IT/the network admin/God, and tell them 'My manager gave me permission to connect this laptop to the network, what do I need to know before I do?' They would know more about the system than his manager, likely, and at the very least, more than he did, and would be able to track down problems easier later on if they couldn't prevent them entirely.
His post is not FUD, nor is it driver help, nor is it networking help, nor is it technical help at all. You would be well adviced to read what he is saying, and avoid flooding your kneejerk reactions onto slashdot without prior thought.
p.s. what kind of editor runs this ?
The same kind of editors that have been running this site for years and built it up from nothing to become one of the most popular techie/open-source websites on the internet. If you don't like how they're doing it, don't read, but please, don't complain about it. No one's forcing it upon you.
Slashdot Mirror
Most likely they don't really know anything about you
I needed to show my passport, driver's license, and a letter I'd just gotten from some credit card company rejecting my unemployed ass before I got one, and I have to show my driver's license every time I rent.
--Dan
I had an idea recently regarding how to implement a national identification card. It wouldn't, in and of itself, prevent people getting on planes and killing everyone, but it would be a very good thing, and here's why.
The card is a smartcard card, with embedded microchip. On the chip is encoded your photograph, unencrypted, and your address, phone number, and a uniquely identifiable number (NOT your social security/social insurance), which are encrypted according to a key based on your fingerprint. Thus, anyone can get your picture from the card merely by putting it into an appropriate card reader, but access to your address, citizen ID number (CID), and so on requires your thumb(index finger,middle finger)print to be accessed.
This allows people to confirm that you are (or look like) who your card says you are without your fingerprint.
When you go into a Blockbuster to get a membership (blockbuster is a bad example because it's international, but bear with me), they take your information, assign you a membership number, and give you a plastic card with a barcode on it. With this national ID card, you would (at the final point in your membership sign-up) insert the card into a card reader that they have, scan in your thumbprint to authenticate, and they would then create your information in the database. The difference, though, is that they would not have to ask you for proof of address, and you would not have to dictate your address or phone number. Also, they would not have to assign you a member number, as your CID could be used (or merely stored and referenced) as your member number in the database.
Privacy whiners could note that Blockbuster does not, with this ID card, know anything more or less than they did before.
The key to this system is that you do not have a centralized database controlled by the government that stores your credit card information, video rental information, and air miles. You do not have all relevant information stored on the card so that anyone can pull it off the card, and the information, if your card is lost, is irretrievable, though it is easy to locate the owner in a crowd or a restaurant, since the picture is printed and stored on the card.
Every store needs their own database, as they do now, so the government can no easier 'track you' than they can now. The government's database would be easily integrated amongst itself (CSIS/RCMP/local police/Immigration Canada could share/cross-access databases), and make working together easier.
Thus, while not a safety measure in and of itself, this card would not stop anything, security officials at airports could integrate their check-in scanners with all of the above agencies (or their local counterparts, for Americans, Britons, etc), and any national red flags would be raised, and the person would be told that there was a problem with their card, and could they please wait a moment.
The card would be free to any citizen/landed immigrant, and a minimal charge ($5? $10? Cost of fabrication) would be asked of any non-citizen resident (students, foreign nationals, diplomats). Anyone not posessing a card would be ineligable for most services at most institutions.
(Worried about 'manditory ID'? Try getting a bank account without a driver's license, or a passport without a birth certificate, or even a Blockbuster card without at least an addressed letter)
The idea certainly isn't perfeclty thought out, but I think it's pretty well laid out. I wish Canada WOULD do something like this, because as a non-driving individual who gets little mail and doesn't posess a credit card, the only ID I have is a two-year old learner's license from a different province, and a Social Insurance Card that has only my name and a number on it.
--Dan
Is the plan to ultimately remove everything GNU?
They probably don't want Stallman harping at them to call it 'Apple GNU/MacOS X' or something.
If you want wget, throw the ports collection onto your OS X box and install it. I've never seen an operating system that actually comes with wget, so Apple's moves here aren't putting them below-par.
Just an inconveniance, is all.
--Dan
First of all, no system is ever 100% efficient. You would lose energy, even if all the machine did was change the water back and forth, and eventually you'd have to plug it in.
Secondly, you actually want this system to put energy out, meaning that the total energy in the system would drop, and thus you would run the system out of energy even faster and have to put more in.
Nice idea, but not one that would work, unfortunately.
--Dan
This way we get rid of the mid eastern funds of doing terrorists attacks and make the U.S. self sufficiant and able to use our own oil for the rest of our needs and not be dependant on other nations for anything.
Invest in the U.S.A. and running them out of their money.
Except that Ballard is Canadian.
--Dan
That's something a lot of people forget--that Roddenberry set out to write a "Wagon Train to the Stars," a sort of Western set in deep space.
No, Roddenberry pitched it as a 'Wagon Train to the Stars' so that the network execs at NBC would even consider putting any money into it. The resulting series showed a melange between what he wanted, what the NBC execs thought the people wanted, and a low budget.
ST:TNG shows better what Roddenberry wanted, I think, though he did very well with TOS (I like that a lot of the stories made political points or had morals), and DS9/VOY showed exactly why he was the one with the vision, and not Berman and the rest.
I especially like hearkening back to the old TOS rough-and-tumble attitudes.
While I liked Voyager/DS9/tacyons/wormholes/quantum fissures/whatever, I have to sincerely agree with you here. Enterprise really seems to have that honest, down-home, relaxed feel to it (I'll refrain from mentioning 'American' anywhere since I'm a Canuck and still appreciate what I'm sure many regard as an 'American' feeling to the show).
Which brings up another interesting point I've thought of. Patriotism. In the show, it's Humans against the universe, a coming-of-age sort of atmosphere, which I really like. It seems to me like the producers were trying to give it an 'American' feel, with 'down-home country boys' (which makes that British leutenant seem out of place), and, instead of spouting my usual anti-American rhetoric, I actually quite enjoyed it; perhaps some of that enjoyment was because of, and not despite, the flag-waving feel.
I suppose taking those 'American' values and applying them to the whole species kind of helps me identify with the show, and thus with what I usually criticize as an annoying American trait - and really, isn't that what Star Trek was about? Bringing us together, and taking down borders?
Bravo to the producers, for finally pulling off what they haven't done before without Roddenberry there: making the point he always wanted to make.
--Dan
Just go the Canada route and start minting coins.
I can't wait until I can buy a nice Jaguar XK8 convertable with nothing but a little pocket change. It's coming soon, I tell you!
--Dan
Should those institutions stop functioning (like during a nuclear war for example), cash would be the only means of payment.
Should those institutions stop functioning, cash would be worth the paper it's printed on, since there would be nothing to back it up.
Theoretically, I suppose, it might actually end up worth -more- if the banks stopped functioning permanantly, since ther would be less of it.
Who knows.
--Dan
The type of government that provides services" to its people is called socialism.
As a Canadian, I'm curious as to the problem. Government-provided services are cheaper (shared cost and less profiteering), less discriminatory (if you pay taxes, you get service), often more reliable (the government is not going to go bankrupt), and so on. If you prefer your way, however...
and believe that if you do not like the way that private companies are acting, then you should work to change them.
How would you suggest? Buying 50%-plus-one shares and then passing a motion at the next shareholders' meeting? You can't vote for companies, you know, and in a lot of cases in the US, you don't even have your choice of companies. I don't see how you can work to change them.
Have everyone write letters saying you are willing to pay higher connection fees, and they will throw them in the trash. If they wanted your money, they'd build the network and charge you higher connection fees anyway, and screw you and whatever you want.
A question you must ask yourself is 'Is this really an area where I feel comfortable having a group of ill-informed non-experts wasting my money?' Remember, decisions are not made by techs, decisions are made by PHBs and marketing. If they're already making money hand over fist, why should they spend millions on getting service to you and then taking years to make those millions back?
Companies don't care about you, only their bottom line. The government (at least, most 'socialist' governments) doesn't care about the bottom line, as long as it takes care of its citizens.
Verizon isn't impossible to change. Build the network and sell it to them for a few hundred bucks, and they'll give you service over it, sure. Personally, I'll just go with regulation, because it gets proven results.
--Dan
Oops, forgot to mention something that will probably make my post less inflammatory...
Shaw dynamically assigns a static IP to your computer.
That is to say, when you try to get an IP via DHCP, it gives you the same one as it did last time, and it'll give you the same one next time. However, if something should need to change (like when they took us off Rogers's crappy network and put us onto their FibreLink, and every single aspect of our network changed), it changes.
The G4 worked fine (DHCP), but my statically set up Linux box choked on me. That, however, is the only time I've ever ended up with a different IP (other than moving to another city). Other than that, the last two years have been 100% stable.
--Dan
As a gov't service they can't discriminate. Which is great for us Linux users--no more crappy DHCP/VPN-disabled junk. But pretty sucky for the administrators who have to have configs available for everything from Win98 to VMS to OS2 to BeOS.
I don't see what you're talking about. Are you saying that DHCP is a bad thing?
Shaw runs DHCP on its cable network, and I've discovered two things about it. First, it's the easiest possible thing to set up on a computer. Give the computer a name and reboot (windows) or don't (MacOS). Linux users get kind of slapped around if they don't have pump or dhcpd and don't have a distro CD (this screwed me SO badly when they changed their network around), but if you know that you have to get it, you can get it.
Provide TCP/IP service over Ethernet (10baseT) configured by DHCP and any modern OS should run perfectly fine on it without configuration nightmares. Any OS that doesn't support and can't have support hacked into it for DHCP is 'unsupported', and is left as an excercise to the user.
Sounds simple to me.
--Dan
This might be the only way to get broadband out there faster. The way it is today, service providers are stuck in a corner. They know the demand is out there for broadband. People DO want it, for the most part. They also know that broadband (DSL, for example), has certain requirements like distance which can hinder performance.
Actually, I think this problem might be a mix of greed and apathy. Canada's second-biggest telco, Telus, isn't run by the government (this is made obvious by the fact that they know what they're doing), and they provide ADSL to communities all over BC and Alberta - even 3000 person bergs in the middle of the rainforest - and whomsoever they don't cover, Shaw does.
Then again, anyone in Canada not covered by one of the two main broadband methods (Cogeco/Shaw/Rogers cable internet, or Telco DSL lines) is covered by StarChoice's internet access.
It's not a matter of need or cost, it's a matter of competition. If Telus doesn't give decent service, then people will go with cable internet and cellphones. If Shaw doesn't give damned good service, people will switch to StarChoice and Shaw won't get a penny.
In the US, if you don't like your phone company, tough. If you don't like your cable company, tough. There is no competition, and these companies can charge whatever they want for whatever reasons they want. AT&T was broken up so it wouldn't be a monopoly. It's not. Now you have a ton of little monopolies.
Telus, Shaw, StarChoice, and so on, all are regulated. If people have a legitimate complaint about these services and it doesn't get fixed, they are in deep trouble, and this accountability has gotten them in the habit of providing quality service, and has made them realize that spending money can make them money. Perhaps your companies should realize this as well.
--Dan
Take medical records. What if they were leaked?
I'm much more willing to risk that than to risk the hospital giving me treatments that I'm allergic to or drugs that react badly with other medication I'm taking.
I'm not saying we should implicitly trust the government. There are very few people I implicitly trust, and Jean Chretien is not one of them, nor is anyone else in the public service.
However, I am saying we should not implicitly distrust the government just because it is the government. Canada does not share the same me-centric, screw-you attitude that I see too often in the US, and I think our government reflects this.
I distrust corporations gathering information, because their entire purpose is to make as much money as possible, through any means necessary, and I know for a fact that they don't care one way or the other how I feel (lawsuit fodder not withstanding). The government, on the other hand, is made up of two kinds of people: the kind who want to serve their country and their fellow Canadians, and the kind who want a job with insanely great benefits packages. The first aren't the type to make a quick buck by violating everything they stand for (and if they really need the money and sell my information to feed their kids, I'll forgive them that easily), and the second type would be pretty stupid to risk losing a government job just for a few quick bucks.
--Dan
No, this is the abuse of monopoly power in the radio markets to control the content of what we are exposed to. It's corporate censorship, not government censorship.
That's not right at all. As a corporation, they are allowed to play or not play whatever they want. They could play the same Brittney Spears song 24 hours a day if they wanted to, it's their choice.
They don't have to play any of those songs, and you don't have to listen. That's how capitalism works.
They're probably just doing this so they don't get sued by profiteers who suffered 'emotional trauma' after hearing one of these songs on the radio; a wise move, considering how happy the US courts are to hand out large sums of money to idiots who like to spill coffee on themselves.
--Dan
I think you fail to make a very important distinction here. The Canadian government knows about us, sure. They track our income, our movements, our spending, and so forth. Does this mean we have no freedoms? Of course not.
.357 without ever being suspected because no one knew I had it, sure. Can I smoke marijuana at home? Absolutely. Can I pay for sex? Sure. Hell, there are even legal ways to get that accomplished. Can I cheat on my wife? You bet.
People always seem to equate one with the other. One cannot have freedoms unless no one else knows about them. That seems rather silly to me. I don't care if the government knows where I go to school, where I work, where I like to have lunch. If they didn't have it in a database and they needed it, they could send a 'covert (female) agent' to chat me up on the bus, and I'd probably tell her whatever she wanted to know anyway. I can't cheat on my taxes, I can't murder someone with a (legal)
We have freedoms and then some. The government knows about us as much as it needs to to accomplish what it needs to do. If I get fired, they know enough to help me out until I can find a new job, by paying me what my old wage was. If I get sick, they know enough to find my doctor and get me the medical treatment I need without giving me drugs I'm allergic to.
The government keeps track of us, sure, but they manage every aspect of our lives, from public transportation to food safety to representing my interests around the world. If you can't trust them with a little statistical data, who can you trust? This is my criticism of American governments - so many Americans I talk to are proud of their country, their politics, their government, yet if you asked them, they'd express the same sentiments you do - the government wants to control our lives, or something.
Personally, I trust them, and I know they're accountable for what they do. Until they give me a reason to distrust them, then I won't. How could I?
--Dan
Watching and listening to the speeches in the House of Parliament today, I was very much relieved. Positions by the major leaders included (these are not quotes):
Jean Cretien: We will not curtail freedoms in this country in order to stop terrorism. Airport inconveniances, sure, but he very strongly said that we could not benefit from a reaction out of fear and hate, and that while a responce was deserved, we would not let anyone force us into an action that was not well thought out.
Stockwell Day: This action must be resolved, and it will be resolved (quoting Sir Winston Churchill) through 'blood, toil, sweat, and tears', but we will not give up our way of life, because when terror is allowed to flourish, the terrorists have won.
Alexa McDonough: Terrorists thrive on martyrs, and we must provide a measured, thought-out, and diplomatic action to counter this threat of terrorism.
Joe Who?: We must seriously reconsider things in this country, and not hold anything over if it needs to be changed - including funding for areas of government, laws, and so forth.
All in all, some quite rousing speeches (considering who was giving them), and definitely a lot that made me feel proud to be Canadian. What Ottawa's responce will actually be, we will have to wait and see.
--Dan
Go down to your local Mac store (not an electronics store that sells macs, but a genuine Apple retailer, like Macstation), and try out the computers. I was in the Macstation in Maple Ridge playing Oni (insanely smooth), fooling with iTunes and some other software (didn't know how to make OS X boot though). My stepdad got them to let him install a game (which he brought in) onto one of the iMac DVs there to test out a joystick to see if he liked it.
In general these stores are usually fairly small, and while the salespeople are salespeople, they're still people. You should be able to try out a significant amount of software that they have pre-installed (the macs may not come with this software, but people always install new software to help 'sell' the computers), and maybe even install some new software.
Try it, it worked for us.
--Dan
Bravo, well said. Historically, the best way to reduce the birth rate in a country is to modernize it - modern health care, medicine, education, and so on.
If a country is properly fed, clothed, educated, and taken care of, the birth rate will shoot through the roof, as suddenly the amount of births is overcompensating for the bad conditions, which have been eliminated. After a very short time, the birth rate drops to far lower than it was before, and equilibrium is maintained.
If we could do this for third world countries, I think the general standard of living would rise, as the countries would be able to become self-sufficient, and maybe start paying back the huge debts with ludicrous interest that the US (and other countries) are charging them.
Call me an idealist, but I think it's a good idea.
--Dan
I have organs which sense depth - they're called my eyes and my brain.
Good for you. I have organs which are supposed to do that, but they're broken, so I have little depth perception.
However, your posession of that trait which I do not have does not mean you can see in 3D, it merely means you are aware of 3D - you can judge depth.
Perhaps my distinction is needlessly metaphysical or philosophical, but the distinction is there for those who choose to see it (pun intended, derogation not).
--Dan
Socialist is the key word here.
I prefer 'help others' socialism to 'to hell with others' capitalism.
If it was up to you, Americans would have to give up half their paychecks to be redistributed around the world.
Of course not. But if it were up to me, 5% of people wouldn't control 95% of the wealth, and if it were up to me, less people would die from things that could be prevented if more people just gave a damn once in a while.
Is that so foolish? I think not.
are we actually dealing with a radical sucide cult here? ... Are we actually up against a group that preaches taking their lives, along with others, is a path to paradise?
No, we're not.
In the mentioned cults that I know anything of, the idea is, you kill yourself, but you don't really die, you go to another place, or something. Closer to God, who cares.
With these suicide bombers, it's true they are fighting for their religion against people that they think are impure or however you wish to call it (I don't feel like being politically correct). The difference is, they are not killing themselves to kill themselves. For that matter, they are not killing themselves; they are killing other people, and if they die in the process, then that is the way it must be.
Consider the Crusades. Hundreds, thousands, of Christian soldiers go off to spread the word of God. Anyone who didn't convert gets whacked. They go, they fight battles. Some die. They knew that they might die, but are they a suicide cult? No, they're fighting the good fight, and some may die, but that's the way it is.
In this case, the other side (the Islamic militant fundimentalist right-wing conservative nutcase whackjob...) has a few differences in its definition of warfare.
First, they do not restrict themselves to military targets. This is the first rule of civilized warfare. Secondly, they conduct all of their warfare behind enemy lines, in 'clandestine operations'. All of their 'soldiers' are 'operatives', they are all infiltrators, they all wish to get past the 'front line' defence and then attack from within, as happened on Tuesday.
Finally, they engage in suicide attacks for two reasons. First, if they know they are going to die, it makes it easier. You can prepare yourself for it, you know it's going to happen, you can make your peace with Allah, or however it is they make their peace (I'm totally ignorant of Islam at this moment).
Most importantly, though, and I have discussed this with Israelis who understand this all too well, a suicide bomber is almost impossible to stop.
Imagine someone who has strapped themselves with explosives and wishes to get into a mall to set himself off. If he gets into the mall, he kills lots of people, and himself. If he gets stopped by police/security/mall guards/door guards and is going to be caught, he sets himself off and kills a couple of people and himself. He has nothing to lose, so even one death is a victory.
To summarize, they do not kill themselves to kill themselves, they kill themselves because they know, as do the Palestinians and Israelis, that through killing themselves, they can not only kill more of the enemy more reliably, but they can also strike terror further into the hearts of their enemy - because you never know - none of us can know, anymore - when you'll be standing beside someone at the marketplace and they'll turn to you, look into your eyes for the last time anyone ever will, and then fill your sight with flames for the last second of your life.
This is why they kill themselves. No other reason.
--Dan
Certainly the current state of affairs is supportive of nuke use
Unless you ask any country in the world other than the US. No country would support using nuclear weapons unless there was no other option, and there is always another option.
isolated target with limited collateral (fallout) damage
Except to the other countries in the area that would be infuriated and would be up in arms against the US.
Remember, Afghanistan shares a border with China, and the US is going to be lucky if China doesn't outright oppose military action in a retaliatory form - the way things are looking, it seems like China is just going to look the other way and not say anything about it, but if anyone high-up in the US started talking seriously about using nuclear weapons, you'd better believe that they would be against it, as would Russia, as would India, as would Pakistan, all of whom also have nuclear weapons, as would Iran, which may have, and Saudi Arabia, a US ally that probably has nuclear capabilities if nothing else.
Basically, you would be throwing away every friend you have in the world. The Bush administration has pissed on the world with the Kyoto Accords, with missile defence treaties, with orbital weapons treaties, and on, and on. The WTC attack has united the world along the same cause as the US, but don't think for a moment that nuclear weapons wouldn't be severely opposed by the rest of the world. The world would cry out, and the US would look pretty bad in everyone's eyes... And isn't that exactly what the terrorists want?
--Dan
Because, as powerful as the US is, we can't save the world. We can't just dump money on every country. What about all the poor african countries? What about all the poor South American countries?
A sad attitude, considering that the world is easily rich enough to feed everyone in it. We are rich enough to help each other, to balance out at an equilibrium well above a reasonable standard of life, if we wanted to.
A side rant - it amuses me that in a group of people that so enjoy the 'share and enjoy' socialist ideals of Open Source, there are still so many people that don't advocate for helping their fellow man (except in extreme cases like the WTC disaster). Most people would rather live and let starve, it seems. Sad...
--Dan
Technically s/he's right - we don't see the world in full 3D - full 3D would require some organ or whatever to actually sense depth, instead of percieve it - like being psychic and KNOWING how far away something is, and what is behind what, instead of relying on percieved depth (which is wildly innaccurate).
Our judging of depth can be totally off sometimes. If we saw in true 3D, we wouldn't have that problem.
--Dan
FUD? Pardon?
What the poster is asking is how he should have gone about taking a machine that totally did not fit within the specifications of the network that IT set up, inserting it onto a network that uses a technology he does not understand, and using an operating system whose Token-Ring driver are sub-par.
Basically, 'What should I have done that would have prevented this from happening?'.
The answer to this, I can't help but think, is to go and talk to IT/the network admin/God, and tell them 'My manager gave me permission to connect this laptop to the network, what do I need to know before I do?' They would know more about the system than his manager, likely, and at the very least, more than he did, and would be able to track down problems easier later on if they couldn't prevent them entirely.
His post is not FUD, nor is it driver help, nor is it networking help, nor is it technical help at all. You would be well adviced to read what he is saying, and avoid flooding your kneejerk reactions onto slashdot without prior thought.
p.s. what kind of editor runs this ?
The same kind of editors that have been running this site for years and built it up from nothing to become one of the most popular techie/open-source websites on the internet. If you don't like how they're doing it, don't read, but please, don't complain about it. No one's forcing it upon you.
--Dan