I grew up in the Prairies as well... definitely know about the extremes. The weather is generally shit year-round as you say - I was talking strictly about sunshine. SAD never seemed to be much of a problem there for people... even on winter days where it was -30C or lower, it was usually brilliantly sunny out.
You know what I meant, don't be deliberately obtuse. Edmonton has a million people... most people would agree that that's a "city". The only place further north that comes close to being a major city would be Anchorage at 350k, but that's obviously much further north and off the beaten path, as it were.
Of course, there's tons of cities further north if you stick to the general Canadian definition of > 10k people (varies by province). Most of the world wouldn't agree.
If the submitter has been living in the UK for any length of time, I don't think SAD is a problem.
And as far as Canada goes... might want to recheck your globe.
Edmonton, Alberta would be the northernmost city in North America, and it's at the same latitude as Liverpool. So that right there tells you that most of Canada gets at least as much sunlight as the UK. The Canadian Prairies (Alberta/Saskatchewan/Manitoba) get more sunny days than California, even (Los Angeles = 186 days/year, Calgary 333 days/year).
So picture this not uncommon scenario: you speed up over the limit to pass, for some reason or another you need to pass more than one vehicle, and you go to re-enter your original lane just before oncoming traffic reaches you. No biggie.
Now imagine what would happen if the engine suddenly decided to decelerate before you could re-enter your lane, and you're stuck travelling parallel to the vehicle next to you with oncoming traffic coming up fast and...
Well, that's the end of that politician's pet experiment.
If it sounds good then who cares? I know from a talent perspective that they're shit, and they recycle songs, but I still find myself humming the lyrics way after I'm done listening. At least a few of their songs are catchy - just listen to what you enjoy, and don't analyze the shit out of it.
I must disagree with you. We're not "deliberately destroying" our environment, we are producing the resources we have available to us, in as environmentally conscious a way as we can. I have worked in the oilsands in northern Alberta, and even the largest surface mining projects up there are only a couple of square kilometres in size.
The company that I worked for is very aware of the impact surface mining has on the environment, and has worked hard at improving other techniques such as Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) that have a much smaller impact on the environment (not much more than conventional oil production), and SAGD has been found to have an even higher efficiency throughout most of the oilsands, and I believe it will be one of the most used technologies going forward.
Any way you look at it, resource production of any kind will damage the environment. The point is how government regulations and companies deal with it, and I think Alberta and the oil companies involved are doing at least an acceptable job of managing those responsibilities.
So by that logic, why don't we tack on another 3% tax on the ISPs to be paid to Google, since the ISPs have more demand/usage from people who need a easy way to find stuff online?
And why not another 3% tax, to be distributed based on total page views to all businesses who can demonstrate they "add value" online?
A blanket tax for music was stupid when they put it on blank media, and it's stupid when they're lobbying for it for ISPs.
If you can't figure out how to make money without passing onerous legislation, then you're doing it wrong.
If Americans want public education with any degree of quality, their teachers should have a legislated performance standards body that would require work on the teachers part to: 1) get their degree in the first place, and 2) keep their job in the long-term.
Just like we have a regulated body for engineers, nurses, and doctors because they have the power to kill people, so too should we have standards for teachers since they have the power to fuck up our children.
I'm a recent University graduate, and more than a few of my friends have gotten through an education degree with thinking akin to "I have no idea what I want to do with my life, but I think I'd like to teach, and Education is an easy degree to get." And then they inevitably get hired to do a shitty, apathetic job of teaching for the rest of their lives.
The critical point you're missing though is that the majority of those who pirate the game wouldn't have bought it in the first place. A 90% piracy rate doesn't mean a 90% loss of potential revenue... I would suspect it would be closer to a 20% loss in revenue at the most.
This goes for most games and software, not just World of Goo.
Remember though - the Conservatives won the popular vote for a reason.
I've always considered myself small "l" liberal, but I've voted Conservative in the last two elections. Our Conservative party here in Canada is much more left-leaning than "conservative" parties in the rest of the world (including the Republicans), and since they first became the Conservative party they have become even more liberal in order to pick up centrist votes.
Understanding or caring isn't the issue - most of the people I've discussed this with do care. What *is* the issue is that this, in the big scheme of things, is not enough to sway the vote. Not even for a techie like myself.
The economy, healthcare, NAFTA... etc. etc. - all of these are more important, and that's why I voted Conservative, as well as most of the people I know.
IMO, their stance on the DMCA is just plain wrong. But I agree with most of the rest of their platform, and for now at least none of the other parties are anywhere close to where the majority of Canadians stand on the major issues - as evidenced by the election results.
He is a very sincere and genuine leader who I would really love to lead our country.
It's too bad though that his party's platform is so far out in left field that it scares me. Some good ideas in there, such as their technology platform in general. But their protectionist policies would pretty much destroy our economy, including lending support (using my tax dollars) to unsustainable and uneconomical jobs for Canadian autoworkers, ending the North American Free Trade Agreement, and generally throwing money at various industries in exchange for union votes in the next election.
Speaking as a Canadian, we don't have unlimited plans here. We have plans that are *labelled* as unlimited, with, at least for me, very generous bandwidth limits (250GB/month or so). But I've still gotten the odd call from the ISP (currently Shaw) telling me to cut it out.
Unlimited plans don't make any sense. My grandma should be able to get internet for $10/month without subsidizing my downloads, and I should be paying $40/month or so (as in, not a substantial increase) for a generous limit of between 250-500GB/month.
Almost nothing else we buy is unlimited - why should bandwidth be? Can you imagine the abuse that would happen if your water bill was unlimited usage?
The first four stages of Spore were great, good fun. The Space stage on the other hand... Terraforming a planet is much harder than it needs to be, considering you need to rinse and repeat the process over and over again, and the damned "ecological collapse" that seemed to happen every 10 minutes or so on one of my planets just made the game annoying.
It's a little bit of common sense coupled with some insight into the working conditions overseas from a documentary or two.
It's a fact that if they weren't working in these factory cities, they would be subsistence farming and making no money. No one is forcing them to work in the factories - there's obviously a benefit to it.
And Apple isn't paying them "slave wages". They're paying the market rate for unskilled Chinese labour. Nothing wrong with that at all - as China's economy develops and the standard of living increases, Apple and others will be forced to pay more and/or move to another country with a lower standard of living.
Interac Email Money Transfers (IEMTs) have been available from the major banks in Canada for at least the last 6 years. They're very convenient when paying your rent, etc. - giving money to people you know in real life, for relatively large sums.
PayPal is designed for online retailers who need to process one-time or recurring monthly payments without getting a merchant account. In other words, it's geared towards businesses - it has features like recurring payments, storing your credit card number for future use, etc. IEMTs are totally different, and designed for personal use. PayPal fees are also much less than the interac fee for most small transactions that happen online anyway - anything less than $25.
In short, IEMTs have almost nothing in common with PayPal or other online payment systems.
...Which proves a point that most atheists like to make - that your morality and ethics are innate, and not given to us by some religious book. The book is in effect telling us what our minds already know, and we ignore the parts of the book that don't agree with out conscience.
Actually, believe it or not there are parts of Canada that are further south than parts of California, even. I know it blew my mind when I checked it out on Google Earth.
For people who play professionally, or even amateurs who play often over several years, the chance aspect of the game disappears as the card distribution converges, and skill is all that is left to decide the winnings.
Over a career playing poker, there's just about the same chance/skill ratio as there is in chess.
I was hoping this wouldn't have to be said, but playing Poker isn't gambling if you play it properly. The house takes a small cut from each hand which reduces your winnings by a proportionally small amount, but otherwise it's like anything else requiring skill - over time, the best player will always win more money, and the worst player (skill-wise) will lose the most money.
Kottke Daring Fireball Joel on Software Waxy.org Ctrl+Alt+Del xkcd.com Dilbert CBC Top Stories Signal vs. Noise Rail Spikes The Big Picture (boston.com - highly recommended!)
"Solvable" in this context means that that particular configuration is one of those possible configurations you can end up with on a physical Rubik's cube. Since we're dealing with a computer simulation, the complete set of configurations would include many "unsolvable" ones - those which are the computer equivalent of the illegal moves that the parent suggests - removing a corner and rotating it, etc.
Good point, and I guess I should have elaborated when I said "bandwidth is a commodity". As a commodity, they can price it however they want, but the only way that really makes sense is to price per unit (GB, etc.) used, like every other commodity I can think of on this planet.
Either way, the point is that it's the telco and Cableco's job to fix this, rather than putting out this dangerous fluff. Admit the problem, and fix it.
I have no problem paying for the higher usage - paying double for double the bandwidth, lower latency, etc. each month is the way it should be.
But as has been stated many times before, that means that my grandma signed up for cable internet should be paying peanuts each month for the little usage she has.
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I grew up in the Prairies as well... definitely know about the extremes. The weather is generally shit year-round as you say - I was talking strictly about sunshine. SAD never seemed to be much of a problem there for people... even on winter days where it was -30C or lower, it was usually brilliantly sunny out.
You know what I meant, don't be deliberately obtuse. Edmonton has a million people... most people would agree that that's a "city". The only place further north that comes close to being a major city would be Anchorage at 350k, but that's obviously much further north and off the beaten path, as it were.
Of course, there's tons of cities further north if you stick to the general Canadian definition of > 10k people (varies by province). Most of the world wouldn't agree.
If the submitter has been living in the UK for any length of time, I don't think SAD is a problem.
And as far as Canada goes... might want to recheck your globe.
Edmonton, Alberta would be the northernmost city in North America, and it's at the same latitude as Liverpool. So that right there tells you that most of Canada gets at least as much sunlight as the UK. The Canadian Prairies (Alberta/Saskatchewan/Manitoba) get more sunny days than California, even (Los Angeles = 186 days/year, Calgary 333 days/year).
So picture this not uncommon scenario: you speed up over the limit to pass, for some reason or another you need to pass more than one vehicle, and you go to re-enter your original lane just before oncoming traffic reaches you. No biggie.
Now imagine what would happen if the engine suddenly decided to decelerate before you could re-enter your lane, and you're stuck travelling parallel to the vehicle next to you with oncoming traffic coming up fast and...
Well, that's the end of that politician's pet experiment.
If it sounds good then who cares? I know from a talent perspective that they're shit, and they recycle songs, but I still find myself humming the lyrics way after I'm done listening. At least a few of their songs are catchy - just listen to what you enjoy, and don't analyze the shit out of it.
I must disagree with you. We're not "deliberately destroying" our environment, we are producing the resources we have available to us, in as environmentally conscious a way as we can. I have worked in the oilsands in northern Alberta, and even the largest surface mining projects up there are only a couple of square kilometres in size.
The company that I worked for is very aware of the impact surface mining has on the environment, and has worked hard at improving other techniques such as Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) that have a much smaller impact on the environment (not much more than conventional oil production), and SAGD has been found to have an even higher efficiency throughout most of the oilsands, and I believe it will be one of the most used technologies going forward.
Any way you look at it, resource production of any kind will damage the environment. The point is how government regulations and companies deal with it, and I think Alberta and the oil companies involved are doing at least an acceptable job of managing those responsibilities.
So by that logic, why don't we tack on another 3% tax on the ISPs to be paid to Google, since the ISPs have more demand/usage from people who need a easy way to find stuff online?
And why not another 3% tax, to be distributed based on total page views to all businesses who can demonstrate they "add value" online?
A blanket tax for music was stupid when they put it on blank media, and it's stupid when they're lobbying for it for ISPs.
If you can't figure out how to make money without passing onerous legislation, then you're doing it wrong.
If Americans want public education with any degree of quality, their teachers should have a legislated performance standards body that would require work on the teachers part to: 1) get their degree in the first place, and 2) keep their job in the long-term.
Just like we have a regulated body for engineers, nurses, and doctors because they have the power to kill people, so too should we have standards for teachers since they have the power to fuck up our children.
I'm a recent University graduate, and more than a few of my friends have gotten through an education degree with thinking akin to "I have no idea what I want to do with my life, but I think I'd like to teach, and Education is an easy degree to get." And then they inevitably get hired to do a shitty, apathetic job of teaching for the rest of their lives.
The critical point you're missing though is that the majority of those who pirate the game wouldn't have bought it in the first place. A 90% piracy rate doesn't mean a 90% loss of potential revenue... I would suspect it would be closer to a 20% loss in revenue at the most.
This goes for most games and software, not just World of Goo.
Remember though - the Conservatives won the popular vote for a reason.
I've always considered myself small "l" liberal, but I've voted Conservative in the last two elections. Our Conservative party here in Canada is much more left-leaning than "conservative" parties in the rest of the world (including the Republicans), and since they first became the Conservative party they have become even more liberal in order to pick up centrist votes.
Understanding or caring isn't the issue - most of the people I've discussed this with do care. What *is* the issue is that this, in the big scheme of things, is not enough to sway the vote. Not even for a techie like myself.
The economy, healthcare, NAFTA... etc. etc. - all of these are more important, and that's why I voted Conservative, as well as most of the people I know.
IMO, their stance on the DMCA is just plain wrong. But I agree with most of the rest of their platform, and for now at least none of the other parties are anywhere close to where the majority of Canadians stand on the major issues - as evidenced by the election results.
I just hope Jim Prentice will see the light.
He is a very sincere and genuine leader who I would really love to lead our country.
It's too bad though that his party's platform is so far out in left field that it scares me. Some good ideas in there, such as their technology platform in general. But their protectionist policies would pretty much destroy our economy, including lending support (using my tax dollars) to unsustainable and uneconomical jobs for Canadian autoworkers, ending the North American Free Trade Agreement, and generally throwing money at various industries in exchange for union votes in the next election.
Speaking as a Canadian, we don't have unlimited plans here. We have plans that are *labelled* as unlimited, with, at least for me, very generous bandwidth limits (250GB/month or so). But I've still gotten the odd call from the ISP (currently Shaw) telling me to cut it out.
Unlimited plans don't make any sense. My grandma should be able to get internet for $10/month without subsidizing my downloads, and I should be paying $40/month or so (as in, not a substantial increase) for a generous limit of between 250-500GB/month.
Almost nothing else we buy is unlimited - why should bandwidth be? Can you imagine the abuse that would happen if your water bill was unlimited usage?
I'm sure they did it for our benefit. Collecting 30 days of interest on hundreds of thousands of dollars probably doesn't factor into it at all.
The first four stages of Spore were great, good fun. The Space stage on the other hand... Terraforming a planet is much harder than it needs to be, considering you need to rinse and repeat the process over and over again, and the damned "ecological collapse" that seemed to happen every 10 minutes or so on one of my planets just made the game annoying.
It's a little bit of common sense coupled with some insight into the working conditions overseas from a documentary or two.
It's a fact that if they weren't working in these factory cities, they would be subsistence farming and making no money. No one is forcing them to work in the factories - there's obviously a benefit to it.
And Apple isn't paying them "slave wages". They're paying the market rate for unskilled Chinese labour. Nothing wrong with that at all - as China's economy develops and the standard of living increases, Apple and others will be forced to pay more and/or move to another country with a lower standard of living.
Interac Email Money Transfers (IEMTs) have been available from the major banks in Canada for at least the last 6 years. They're very convenient when paying your rent, etc. - giving money to people you know in real life, for relatively large sums.
PayPal is designed for online retailers who need to process one-time or recurring monthly payments without getting a merchant account. In other words, it's geared towards businesses - it has features like recurring payments, storing your credit card number for future use, etc. IEMTs are totally different, and designed for personal use. PayPal fees are also much less than the interac fee for most small transactions that happen online anyway - anything less than $25.
In short, IEMTs have almost nothing in common with PayPal or other online payment systems.
Our phone company here gives out both books, and has for years. Number -> Name and Name -> Number. This is would be rural Alberta, FYI.
...Which proves a point that most atheists like to make - that your morality and ethics are innate, and not given to us by some religious book. The book is in effect telling us what our minds already know, and we ignore the parts of the book that don't agree with out conscience.
Actually, believe it or not there are parts of Canada that are further south than parts of California, even. I know it blew my mind when I checked it out on Google Earth.
For people who play professionally, or even amateurs who play often over several years, the chance aspect of the game disappears as the card distribution converges, and skill is all that is left to decide the winnings.
Over a career playing poker, there's just about the same chance/skill ratio as there is in chess.
I was hoping this wouldn't have to be said, but playing Poker isn't gambling if you play it properly. The house takes a small cut from each hand which reduces your winnings by a proportionally small amount, but otherwise it's like anything else requiring skill - over time, the best player will always win more money, and the worst player (skill-wise) will lose the most money.
Kottke
Daring Fireball
Joel on Software
Waxy.org
Ctrl+Alt+Del
xkcd.com
Dilbert
CBC Top Stories
Signal vs. Noise
Rail Spikes
The Big Picture (boston.com - highly recommended!)
"Solvable" in this context means that that particular configuration is one of those possible configurations you can end up with on a physical Rubik's cube. Since we're dealing with a computer simulation, the complete set of configurations would include many "unsolvable" ones - those which are the computer equivalent of the illegal moves that the parent suggests - removing a corner and rotating it, etc.
Good point, and I guess I should have elaborated when I said "bandwidth is a commodity". As a commodity, they can price it however they want, but the only way that really makes sense is to price per unit (GB, etc.) used, like every other commodity I can think of on this planet.
Either way, the point is that it's the telco and Cableco's job to fix this, rather than putting out this dangerous fluff. Admit the problem, and fix it.
I have no problem paying for the higher usage - paying double for double the bandwidth, lower latency, etc. each month is the way it should be.
But as has been stated many times before, that means that my grandma signed up for cable internet should be paying peanuts each month for the little usage she has.