Wasn't there an article here in the last couple of weeks pointing out that the Vista EULA wouldn't allow benchmarking? Or am I imagining things in my dotage?
Here are current prices in Toronto from Robbers, the local cable monopoly: (all prices in Cdn$=.9 US$)
Extreme: 6 Mbps down/800 k up for $51.95/month (+ $3 modem rental, or buy modem for $99)
Express: 5 Mbps down/384 k up for $43.95/month (+ modem as above)
Lite: 1 Mpbs down/128 k up for $31.95/month (+ modem as above)
UltraLite: 128k down/64 k up for $21.95/month (+ modem as above)
All come with a 60 GB activity limit per month (additional use at $1.25/Gig)
So the 43.95 Cdn = $39.55 US for the Express service seems very close to what you are paying for roughly the same
service. (As if I ever see 5 Mbps down; I'm thrilled when it tops 200k..)
On the other hand Canada is 6th and has a very low density with probably a larger rural population than the states
Not so, my friend. Canada is large, yes, but 90% of its population lives within 100 miles of the US border. Seat of the pants population density for that skinny country: 33 million *.9 divided by 3900 mile long border * 100 miles = 76 people per sq mile. For the US (lower 48): 300 million divided by 3.5 million sq mi = 85 people per sq mile.
And, BTW, I thought George W. Bush was the "decider".
Well, in Canada, the province of New Brunswick (nestled up there on top of Maine, eh?) started a project to install broadband to every home a decade ago, and completed it earlier this year, with over 90% of homes having access to broadband service. The result? Only Newfoundland has a lower per capita GDP of roughly $24k Cdn, while New Brunswick's $26k is tied with fellow Maritime provinces PEI and Nova Scotia. Every other provincial or territorial jurisdiction in Canada (including the sparsely populated northern territories) has a GDP of at least $30k Cdn.
So the claim that access to broadband means higher incomes is at best "not proven".
To me, the only 'benefit' of e-voting is the speed of counting after the polls close, which seems pretty small compared to the problems that have surfaced. That said, I wonder what you think of this possible solution:
After the voter makes his selection on the e-voting machine, the machine then prints out a piece of paper with the voter's choice on it. The voter reviews it, makes sure it's correct, and then exits the booth and deposits the paper ballot in an old-fashioned ballot box. When the polls close, we have an instant count but if the result is challenged, we have the old-fashioned system to do a recount. Note that "hanging chads" and other such nonsense wouldn't apply, as the machine would print the voter's choice - no question of "unclear marks" or "multiple selections", or other problems that exist with manual ballots today. It seems to me this would satisfy both camps, without requiring a massive rewrite of the software, and minimal physical changes. (These machines must have a port somewhere that a printer could be connected to.) Any thoughts?
Seriously - who is "surprised" by this? Rampant piracy, especially in Asia, has MS worried. Of course they are going to do everything they can to make it harder to pirate their software.
I don't like the idea of Defender deciding on its own what software it likes and doesn't like. I'll be sticking with XP for a long time.
Did you RTFA? Massport appealed to the FCC to shut down Continental, saying that the competing WiFi could compromise both ATC and other 'public safety' communication systems (note: the FAA has nothing to do with these other systems). It wasn't a case of the FCC sticking their nose in; Massport was trying to use the FCC to achieve their monopoly aim.
And the issue of whether a property owner can dictate that you must use their WiFi system is not the slam-dunk you think it is. If you rent an apartment, your landlord has certain rights on how you can use it (e.g. you can't run a restaurant in it) but can't tell you you have to buy mobile phones from him. To use your Starbucks example, you can't go into Starbucks and order a pizza from Dominos, but Starbucks also cannot tell you you can only read magazines purchased from them.
Our head of IT sent out a note to all staff saying DON'T download Internet Exploder 7. He wants to make sure 1)
it's compatible with all our existing apps, and 2) it doesn't have huge exploitable weaknesses that MS missed.
I asked him about FF, and he said they've upgraded individual users to FF when IE6 had problems, but some apps
don't work with it. Nothing, it seems, is perfect.
I've occasionally heard Americans disparage the "Star Spangled Banner", but I think its beauty and wisdom are contained in the last line: "Does that star spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?". Keys, wittingly or not, poses a three part question - is your flag still there (the easy part), but also he asks what type of America it's waving over.
Are you still the home of the brave, and the land of the free? Or have you been cowed into accepting a police state? In many ways, America has been the greatest nation in history. Are you going to give up that status now because of a single incident?
Wikipedia is just going to make this problem worse. I hope that scientists with PhDs know better than to use wikipedia for research, but then, your average 7 year old kid in elementary school might end up as a PhD or M.D. one day, do your really want the surgeon who might operate on YOU someday, to have learned his basic science from possibly-vandalized articles in wikipedia?
What a remarkably vapid comment. This kid who "learned his basic science" on Wikipedia, if he's going to become a surgeon, is going to be tested repeatedly by other 'moderators' - teachers, professors, other physicians - before he'll be allowed to touch anyone. If he's been misled by anything on Wiki, it will be knocked out of him long before he graduates.
But, that said, I'm an electrical engineer. When I've tried to teach my two daughters about science, I often turn to Wiki, and I've yet to find any technical article that conflicts with what I learned in traditional school. If the OP wants to point out any specific scientific article that is plainly wrong, I'll concede his point; I'm pretty sure I won't have to.
Now on political and sociological issues, I'll admit that there is plenty of bias in Wikipedia, and when I start to read articles with many normative terms, I take them with a grain of salt. But seriously, if you start reading monographs on these subjects, don't you expect to find the author's bias creeping in as well? The truly disinterested expert is very rare indeed.
As an example of what I think is Wiki's disinterested view, I invite you to read the article on "Operation Husky" - the WWII invasion of Sicily. For most Americans (and Canadians, for that matter), this was a complete victory for the Allied forces, with the biggest contest the one between Patton and Montgomery to see who could get to Messina first, thanks to the hagiophraphy starring George C. Scott. In the Wiki article, they note that despite overwhelming Allied air and sea superiority, the Germans were able to evacuate more than 100,000 men and that this was really a major failure for the Allies. I've read plenty of popular histories of WWII, and few of them take this view. So I do think Wiki contributes another view, and one that incorporates multiple points of view better than many books.
I'm in complete agreement with anyone who thinks you can't sole-source your research on Wiki for most things, just as I would wonder about any serious scholar who cited only a single work in his bibliography. Being a good scholar, just like being a good reporter, means checking your facts against more than one source. But to suggest that the fact-based (science, math, etc.) articles on Wiki are going to permanently impair one's ability to perform surgery is ludicrous.
I agree that the number may well be accurate. At least one major ISP, Rogers, has installed software that seeks out P2P connections, and throttles them. My (cough) friends (cough) tell me that P2P downloads start up OK, but after a couple of minutes, the bit rate falls off to a trickle. A Rogers spokesperson said that "email, http, IM" were the priority services for their internet customers, and that "movies and video" were at the bottom. My friends that use Rogers tell me that P2P doesn't do very much for them.
Besides, beyond Canadian Bacon, there hasn't really been any real effort to add us to the Axis of Evil.
Obviously, you missed the South Park movie.
But on a serious note, as a Canadian who has lived and worked in the US, I have to say: I think America is a great country, and Americans are great people, but I would rather live in Canada. It's not as crowded, violent, insular, or dangerous as the US, even if economic opportunity is slightly more limited. Pop culture is much the same, with the added benefit that Canadians can actually see the puck on a TV screen, and understand curling.
Part of it is a "Broken Windows" phenomenon. In May, I visited my company's HQ in New Jersey. Wandering around the streets, I noticed that the boulevards were full of unmown grass and weeds, and that vacant lots were common and decrepit. And I've seen that in Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, NYC, Chicago, Orlando, etc., as well. I think that leads to a perception of "if it's not mine, who gives a f***?". On the other hand, in Toronto, the streets are neat and clean, and I think that leads to a perception of "we have a nice place here, let's keep it that way".
In the words of G.H.W. Bush, we are a "kinder, gentler America". Yes, not as rich. Yes, not as important. Yes, militarily impotent. But I think there is less day-to-day strife in our society, and I think we live richer lives on balance. YMMV.
Customs can scrutinize & confiscate almost anything that isn't a diplomat or under diplomatic seal.
"Twas ever thus." About 20 years ago, a colleague and I drove from Toronto to Chicago to demo our new software for potential clients there. Our product was installed on a Compaq luggable (it weighed about 25 lbs!) which, at the time, was manufactured in Texas. The border guard wanted to know why we were bringing the computer back into the US. "Are you gonna sell it? We can't have you taking bidness away from US companies." Worse, our product was Unix-based (SCO - so shoot me..), so no MS-DOS command line, and no Lotus 1-2-3 to show them, which apparently were the only OS/application they had ever heard of. We spent almost an hour convincing this moron, and his supervisor, that we weren't interested in selling it, that it did have legitimate business software on it, and that we were going to take it back with us. After making us fill out three or four forms, we were finally permitted to enter. But I'll never forget the last words from the border guard:
"You better make damn sure this machine leaves the United States, boy!"
The problem is not with the teachers and kids; the problem is with the school boards. I was on the parent council at my daughter's school for the last two years, and these people are complete morons with your money. The teachers all wanted another portable DLP projector (there was only one in the school). There are plenty of these available for less than $1,000 CDN - sure they don't have 3000 lumens, but you can always pull the shades, right? Then, of course, they need a laptop to run the thing. $700 CDN buys a perfectly serviceable unit if all you're going to do is run PowerPoint or play a CD/DVD.
But nooooooo.... the board's policies are to only buy standardised machines, which are configured so they can run *every* program the school has access to, such as speech-to-text, photoshop, etc. So they mandate machines with 1 GB RAM, 2 GHz processors (no Celerons, of course), etc., etc., and of course they must have Windows. Otherwise, the board won't maintain them, and won't allow them to connect to the board's intranet. (This is a portable machine that's being used to drive the DLP, remember - why does it need to connect to the board's intranet? If there's any content that they need, burn it to a CD on an "approved" machine, and install it that way, I suggested. "Oh no, we couldn't do that.") On the maintenance issue, I suggested that purchasing a maintenance contract with the machine would still be cheaper than the gold-plated model (over $2,500) that they were oogling. The DLP they settled on was $1,700. So, for over $4,000, we got one laptop and one projector, whereas we could have had two (and nearly three) if they'd taken my suggestion.
Then of course, they all complain that they don't have enough money to buy workbooks, and agendas, and etc. I quit in disgust this year.
As a Canadian who worked in the US - for Blue Cross Blue Shield, no less - I have a somewhat different perspective. In the US, if you're employed at a decent job, yes, you get health care benefits. Some companies, like Blue Cross, offered true health care, while others offer "HMO" care - i.e. health care where some penny-pinching niggard with no medical education decides what doctor you can see, and what procedures will be covered. There have been plenty of horror stories of people whose HMO decided that something wasn't necessary, and serious problems ensued. So there is plenty of variation in the quality of care you can get in the US.
But to me, the greatest difference between the two countries was the mortal fear that many of my American co-workers had about losing their jobs - not because they'd be broke (they had money for their regular bills) but because "what will happen to my health care?". They took enormous amounts of fecal matter from their bosses as a result. One woman had been there for 25 years, and was entitled to 5 weeks of vacation per company policy. However, company policy also stipulated that all vacation had to approved by the employee's manager. Her manager only took two weeks a year (Sxxxxx was a workaholic spinster), so she decided no one in her department could take more than two weeks either. I asked why she didn't complain to HR. Her response was "My god, if Sxxxxx found out, she'd find some reason to fire me. Where would I ever get a job with decent health care?". (She was a clerk, not a programmer.)
So I think this is one reason US corporations are ambivalent about universal health care. On the one hand, they might save money, especially on retirees. On the other hand, their employees might become less docile and less willing to work overtime, etc. (Let's remember US workers take less vacation and work longer hours than their Canadian or European counterparts.)
Many countries want the US to go away...until they want something from the US.
Exactly. When then tsunami hit, look how much the US was criticized for being too slow in its response to an event that was manifestly not its fault. But when Katrina hit New Orleans, what other country (besides my Canada) offered aid or assistance to the US?
Yep, everyone all over the world hates the US until they get a green card.
The reason nobody else did anything is because two thirds of Somalia had been granted as oil concessions to Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips. American oil companies.
Interesting, in that, according to SourceWatch (www.sourcewatch.org), Somalia has zero proven oil reserves, and only 200 billion cu. ft. of natural gas. So is it your argument that US foreign policy is run by oil companies seeking rights in countries that don't have any oil?
Slashdot Mirror
Wasn't there an article here in the last couple of weeks pointing out that the Vista EULA wouldn't allow benchmarking? Or am I imagining things in my dotage?
Mod parent up!
Extreme: 6 Mbps down/800 k up for $51.95/month (+ $3 modem rental, or buy modem for $99)
Express: 5 Mbps down/384 k up for $43.95/month (+ modem as above)
Lite: 1 Mpbs down/128 k up for $31.95/month (+ modem as above)
UltraLite: 128k down/64 k up for $21.95/month (+ modem as above)
All come with a 60 GB activity limit per month (additional use at $1.25/Gig)
So the 43.95 Cdn = $39.55 US for the Express service seems very close to what you are paying for roughly the same service. (As if I ever see 5 Mbps down; I'm thrilled when it tops 200k..)
Not so, my friend. Canada is large, yes, but 90% of its population lives within 100 miles of the US border. Seat of the pants population density for that skinny country: 33 million * .9 divided by 3900 mile long border * 100 miles = 76 people per sq mile. For the US (lower 48): 300 million divided by 3.5 million sq mi = 85 people per sq mile.
And, BTW, I thought George W. Bush was the "decider".
So the claim that access to broadband means higher incomes is at best "not proven".
MR. T Documents? Does that mean we all have to get bad Mohawks for our passport pictures?
Shurely you mean "watery tarts"? Or perhaps "moistened bints lobbing scimitars"?
Short condom makers.
After the voter makes his selection on the e-voting machine, the machine then prints out a piece of paper with the voter's choice on it. The voter reviews it, makes sure it's correct, and then exits the booth and deposits the paper ballot in an old-fashioned ballot box. When the polls close, we have an instant count but if the result is challenged, we have the old-fashioned system to do a recount. Note that "hanging chads" and other such nonsense wouldn't apply, as the machine would print the voter's choice - no question of "unclear marks" or "multiple selections", or other problems that exist with manual ballots today. It seems to me this would satisfy both camps, without requiring a massive rewrite of the software, and minimal physical changes. (These machines must have a port somewhere that a printer could be connected to.) Any thoughts?
I don't like the idea of Defender deciding on its own what software it likes and doesn't like. I'll be sticking with XP for a long time.
And the issue of whether a property owner can dictate that you must use their WiFi system is not the slam-dunk you think it is. If you rent an apartment, your landlord has certain rights on how you can use it (e.g. you can't run a restaurant in it) but can't tell you you have to buy mobile phones from him. To use your Starbucks example, you can't go into Starbucks and order a pizza from Dominos, but Starbucks also cannot tell you you can only read magazines purchased from them.
I believe "bogous" is the Canadian spelling. :}
Our head of IT sent out a note to all staff saying DON'T download Internet Exploder 7. He wants to make sure 1) it's compatible with all our existing apps, and 2) it doesn't have huge exploitable weaknesses that MS missed. I asked him about FF, and he said they've upgraded individual users to FF when IE6 had problems, but some apps don't work with it. Nothing, it seems, is perfect.
Are you still the home of the brave, and the land of the free? Or have you been cowed into accepting a police state? In many ways, America has been the greatest nation in history. Are you going to give up that status now because of a single incident?
What a remarkably vapid comment. This kid who "learned his basic science" on Wikipedia, if he's going to become a surgeon, is going to be tested repeatedly by other 'moderators' - teachers, professors, other physicians - before he'll be allowed to touch anyone. If he's been misled by anything on Wiki, it will be knocked out of him long before he graduates.
But, that said, I'm an electrical engineer. When I've tried to teach my two daughters about science, I often turn to Wiki, and I've yet to find any technical article that conflicts with what I learned in traditional school. If the OP wants to point out any specific scientific article that is plainly wrong, I'll concede his point; I'm pretty sure I won't have to.
Now on political and sociological issues, I'll admit that there is plenty of bias in Wikipedia, and when I start to read articles with many normative terms, I take them with a grain of salt. But seriously, if you start reading monographs on these subjects, don't you expect to find the author's bias creeping in as well? The truly disinterested expert is very rare indeed.
As an example of what I think is Wiki's disinterested view, I invite you to read the article on "Operation Husky" - the WWII invasion of Sicily. For most Americans (and Canadians, for that matter), this was a complete victory for the Allied forces, with the biggest contest the one between Patton and Montgomery to see who could get to Messina first, thanks to the hagiophraphy starring George C. Scott. In the Wiki article, they note that despite overwhelming Allied air and sea superiority, the Germans were able to evacuate more than 100,000 men and that this was really a major failure for the Allies. I've read plenty of popular histories of WWII, and few of them take this view. So I do think Wiki contributes another view, and one that incorporates multiple points of view better than many books.
I'm in complete agreement with anyone who thinks you can't sole-source your research on Wiki for most things, just as I would wonder about any serious scholar who cited only a single work in his bibliography. Being a good scholar, just like being a good reporter, means checking your facts against more than one source. But to suggest that the fact-based (science, math, etc.) articles on Wiki are going to permanently impair one's ability to perform surgery is ludicrous.
I agree that the number may well be accurate. At least one major ISP, Rogers, has installed software that seeks out P2P connections, and throttles them. My (cough) friends (cough) tell me that P2P downloads start up OK, but after a couple of minutes, the bit rate falls off to a trickle. A Rogers spokesperson said that "email, http, IM" were the priority services for their internet customers, and that "movies and video" were at the bottom. My friends that use Rogers tell me that P2P doesn't do very much for them.
Obviously, you missed the South Park movie.
But on a serious note, as a Canadian who has lived and worked in the US, I have to say: I think America is a great country, and Americans are great people, but I would rather live in Canada. It's not as crowded, violent, insular, or dangerous as the US, even if economic opportunity is slightly more limited. Pop culture is much the same, with the added benefit that Canadians can actually see the puck on a TV screen, and understand curling.
Part of it is a "Broken Windows" phenomenon. In May, I visited my company's HQ in New Jersey. Wandering around the streets, I noticed that the boulevards were full of unmown grass and weeds, and that vacant lots were common and decrepit. And I've seen that in Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, NYC, Chicago, Orlando, etc., as well. I think that leads to a perception of "if it's not mine, who gives a f***?". On the other hand, in Toronto, the streets are neat and clean, and I think that leads to a perception of "we have a nice place here, let's keep it that way".
In the words of G.H.W. Bush, we are a "kinder, gentler America". Yes, not as rich. Yes, not as important. Yes, militarily impotent. But I think there is less day-to-day strife in our society, and I think we live richer lives on balance. YMMV.
"Twas ever thus." About 20 years ago, a colleague and I drove from Toronto to Chicago to demo our new software for potential clients there. Our product was installed on a Compaq luggable (it weighed about 25 lbs!) which, at the time, was manufactured in Texas. The border guard wanted to know why we were bringing the computer back into the US. "Are you gonna sell it? We can't have you taking bidness away from US companies." Worse, our product was Unix-based (SCO - so shoot me..), so no MS-DOS command line, and no Lotus 1-2-3 to show them, which apparently were the only OS/application they had ever heard of. We spent almost an hour convincing this moron, and his supervisor, that we weren't interested in selling it, that it did have legitimate business software on it, and that we were going to take it back with us. After making us fill out three or four forms, we were finally permitted to enter. But I'll never forget the last words from the border guard:
"You better make damn sure this machine leaves the United States, boy!"
The US gave us Krispy Kreme, and we gave you Tim Horton's. You hosed us again!
But nooooooo.... the board's policies are to only buy standardised machines, which are configured so they can run *every* program the school has access to, such as speech-to-text, photoshop, etc. So they mandate machines with 1 GB RAM, 2 GHz processors (no Celerons, of course), etc., etc., and of course they must have Windows. Otherwise, the board won't maintain them, and won't allow them to connect to the board's intranet. (This is a portable machine that's being used to drive the DLP, remember - why does it need to connect to the board's intranet? If there's any content that they need, burn it to a CD on an "approved" machine, and install it that way, I suggested. "Oh no, we couldn't do that.") On the maintenance issue, I suggested that purchasing a maintenance contract with the machine would still be cheaper than the gold-plated model (over $2,500) that they were oogling. The DLP they settled on was $1,700. So, for over $4,000, we got one laptop and one projector, whereas we could have had two (and nearly three) if they'd taken my suggestion.
Then of course, they all complain that they don't have enough money to buy workbooks, and agendas, and etc. I quit in disgust this year.
The many competent doctors who look after me and my family in Canada would be surprised by this quite ludicrous comment.
In doing so, they are ignoring the fact that hate speech is a subset of thought crime.
There, fixed that for you, Big Brother.
But to me, the greatest difference between the two countries was the mortal fear that many of my American co-workers had about losing their jobs - not because they'd be broke (they had money for their regular bills) but because "what will happen to my health care?". They took enormous amounts of fecal matter from their bosses as a result. One woman had been there for 25 years, and was entitled to 5 weeks of vacation per company policy. However, company policy also stipulated that all vacation had to approved by the employee's manager. Her manager only took two weeks a year (Sxxxxx was a workaholic spinster), so she decided no one in her department could take more than two weeks either. I asked why she didn't complain to HR. Her response was "My god, if Sxxxxx found out, she'd find some reason to fire me. Where would I ever get a job with decent health care?". (She was a clerk, not a programmer.)
So I think this is one reason US corporations are ambivalent about universal health care. On the one hand, they might save money, especially on retirees. On the other hand, their employees might become less docile and less willing to work overtime, etc. (Let's remember US workers take less vacation and work longer hours than their Canadian or European counterparts.)
Exactly. When then tsunami hit, look how much the US was criticized for being too slow in its response to an event that was manifestly not its fault. But when Katrina hit New Orleans, what other country (besides my Canada) offered aid or assistance to the US?
Yep, everyone all over the world hates the US until they get a green card.
Interesting, in that, according to SourceWatch (www.sourcewatch.org), Somalia has zero proven oil reserves, and only 200 billion cu. ft. of natural gas. So is it your argument that US foreign policy is run by oil companies seeking rights in countries that don't have any oil?