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Canada Builds World's Fastest Network 184

jd writes "Canada has just constructed an all-optical network, CA*Net3, capable of 80 gigabits per second (though being expanded to 20 terabits per second). This is over 60 times faster than the Internet 2 project, and according to the description, this will be open to the public, rather than closed as Internet 2 is. Anyone in Canada interested in building the world's most distributed high-performance Beowulf?"
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Canada Builds World's Fastest NetworK

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  • Are you serious? Canada, a third world country!? That's news to me, and certainly news to Canada.

    "That far north". What country do YOU think borders the US on the north? Have you ever BEEN in the northern US or anywhere NEAR Canada?

    Do you really think there's some imaginary line that's drawn between the US and Canada where one second (in the US) it's warm, bright, sunny and technological and the next (in Canada) it's dark, cold, barren and they live in igloos?

    That'd be a fun dance.
    Canda (brr)
    US (ooh)
    Canada (bo-ring)
    US (ooh)

    *snort*

    Join the weather channel. They don't think Canada "exists" either (the weather just *stops* at the border!).

    -nicole
  • Is this new network being used for normal internet traffic as well? If not, why not? I mean, this kind of bandwidth would actually allow cable/ASDL/LAN users to use the whole bandwidth of their connection, rather than 10-50% as today...

    I'm just wondering what my ping in Q3A would be on this network... ;-)

    dufke
    ________________________________
  • Admittedly it's been a year since I lived in New Brunswick, and when I did, it was in Fredericton, not St. John, but the rates for fibre into your house were pretty prohibitive at the time. I looked into it and decided that my USR wasn't so bad after all. Especially when I saw what passes for "cable" modems there. ugh.

    I agree that NBTel is pretty good about bringing new technology to the homes, but it still wasn't there a year ago, my Roger's connection is a _lot_ better than any of the connections my old friends in NB have. (And that should speak volumes for anyone living in Ottawa.)
  • Eh. Why is American beer served cold?

    So you can tell it from piss.

    ;-)
  • 19990829-1051.42

    well, i always said that the canadians would (and in fact are) invade(ing) the united states. they can have it. with bandwidth like that i'm heading north. everyone may complain that it's cold up there, so what, it's hot as hell down here in florida. just think of it, i won't even need an industrial air conditioning unit to keep my machines cool. i can open the windows and use a ceiling fan! 8^)
    as for what to use the bandwidth for, i don't know just yet, how about an amazing 42,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 player quake 3 arena game? anyone interested? now i just need a server farm for the needed processing power and my personal powerplant to power them all! ahhhh! just thinking about it makes me spooge...
  • Hmmm, I wonder what else [openbsd.org] comes from Canada?
  • you know what? stick you computer outside in the winter, and see if you can overclock it more! heh.. maybe that's why we can have the fastest networks lol (its 31C outside now, if you don't know what Celcius is, join the world and learn it)..

    hmm, Canada is actually awesome for new technology to the public. I'd say its probably b/c its so widely spread, w/o that many people, we need a way to connect. so what better place to intro some new tech =8) there's a lot of room for it too (physically).. and a lot of places that aren't hooked up yet.

  • A great line about Canadians inventing the phone first goes like this...

    "How come we know we created the phone first?
    That day we called the U.S. and nobody answered"


    Just having a bit of fun, as I am sure the original U.S. poster was, or hope.

    Besides, nobody could be that ignorant / stereotypical...could they? Hmmm, I wonder.





  • I don't think the map shown in this article is in any way accurate. I live in Whitehorse (on the map) and I know for a fact all we've got running out of town right now is a T-3 over microwave.
  • Actually... on the canarie website, they have a probably accurate graphic.. [canarie.ca] Now it doesn't include Edmonton (*weep*).
  • Simple. We're the second largest country with about the 100th largest population (somewhat less than the other CA down south). Sending lots of information a long way really quick is kind of a specialty of ours.
  • Is this just a super-backbone that connects to everyones 56k's or will this speed go directly to each home?
  • Canada Kicks Ass!

    Jealously is not a virtue.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    So we got the world's fastest network, eh? You American posers! Let's go watch "Strange Brew".
  • Join the weather channel. They don't think Canada "exists" either (the weather just *stops* at the border!).

    Nope, if you look at those weather channel maps closely, you'll see that everything north of the U.S. border is white, which is because everything north of the U.S. border is burried under a ton of snow. (Honest! I can't even see out my window because of all that snow, and it's on the second floor! Really!) How exactly we manage to have that much snow when it's so darn hot out is beyond me, but when I look north across the border, I see that Detroit hasn't got any snow at all. Weird, eh?
    (For those who don't know, Detroit (in Michigan) is north of Windsor (in Canada).)
  • Weren't the Japanese going to create an internet that went 1000 times faster [maximumpcmag.com] than what we have right now?
  • Now that we've got this giant "library-in-a-second" capacity, we've got to fill it with piles of encrypted traffic.

    But this is Canada... our government encourages that sort of thing...
  • Cool... I live just 8 blocks from the fastest network in the world..

    Hmm... I wonder how the best way to tap into that would be :) (I'd probably have to move down the street :)
  • Maybe it's just me, but if they're going to connect several of the largest machines together on this network to help calculate for the Genome project... maybe they should write a piece of distributed computing software to get the entire world involved. Follow in the footsteps of SETI.

    Imagine using even 1% of the world's computing power. You'd have most of the genome project finished before the end of next year.

    If anyone knows who to contact.... I'm more than willing to give them a call.
  • Is there any other place in Montreal then StCathrines Street?
  • Wow. I had no idea this existed, and I live in Canada and am a Computer Science major.

    Maybe this means my university will scrap those stupid 14.4 dial-ups I used to have to use.

    Hmmm... Rogers, if you are listening, maybe it's time to reduce those cable modem rates?
  • Everyone forgets that in computer neworking, delay (latency) is deadly - it's time that you can't get back. For Beowulf clusters to be effective across the widest range of parallel problems, they have to be packed together as closely as possible, to keep the node-to-node delays down to a minimum. Put another way: the more node-to-node communication required, the more that trivial increments in node-to-node communication delay will suck serious multiples of performance from the application.

    A Canada-wide Beowulf cluster might work fine for RC5-64 cracking or SETI@HOME, but only because those problems require essentially no node-to-node communication, and the work-sets per node can be set arbitrarily large.

    As for Canarie, they did a silly thing: they're using Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), when they could be using raw SONET or SDH instead. ATM eats ten percent of the bandwidth right off the top, without adding any value at all. What could you do with an additional 8Gb/s out of the original 80Gb/s?

  • It's encouraging to see the strides that Canada and other third world countries have been making recently.

    I honestly didn't realize that computers had made it that far north. Of course, where there are computers there's Gates. Don't let Canada become just another extension of Mikkkrosoft!

    Welcome and Fight the Power!



  • Doubt any one cares about details this late in the stage but

    They are going to do this using WDM, creating 32 different channs on the wire using different colors

    l8r
    - cyphunk

    PS: This twiddler is freaking hard to type on!
  • Last school year I gave a report for my class on fiberoptic networking... if I remember correctly, they're doing preliminary tests in Atlanta Georgia on this sort of high speed hookup... if someone has any new information on this, I'd be very interested! I haven't heard any more about it since perhaps May. Do you guys think this sort of networking could potentially replace cable modems anytime soon? I know I'd subscribe! =)

    --
  • That's backslashdot.ca you.. you.. you.. guy!
  • Judging from these replies, Canadians (like me) don't seem to have a sense of humour. It was a JOKE, people! Notice the moderation of "Funny"!

    Anyway, the only appropriate response, joke or not, is a flood of American jokes (up here in the frozen north, we pass our time by telling Newfie and Yankee jokes, named after a Canadian province and North American country, respectively, whose inhabitants' stupidity is very funny). And please forget about the how-dare-you, we-invented-the-phone, we-burnt-down-the-white-house reactions.
  • Are gov is... a lacky.

    Are skool sistem, on the uthur hand, teeches speling verry wel.
  • An 80 gig network would never pass in the USA. Maybe in the Werner Von Braun age we would spend $billions on government projects but you can't even get $1 million for a satellite nowadays. In a way we're a lot more careful than other countries. The problem is that the CS majors who write internet software are more interested in the high bandwidth itself, seeing 1Meg/sec on their downloads, than devising any novel uses for it.
  • speaking as a Canadian I'd just like
    to voice my support for a dictatorship
    (fascist or otherwise).

    i believe they'll be able to get the all
    these potholes fixed in a more timely manner.

    fix the roads and then on to the ethnic cleansing.
    (you know who you are, better start packing).

  • What they need now is applications for the network, if you're a student, tell your prof and see if you can't get something started!

    pr0n!
    -russ

  • it's about 42 here... (Dallas)
  • Well, I thought the Germans had the fastest network.
    SIEMENS TRANSMITS 3.2 TBPS ON A FIBER -- 80 CHANNELS AT 40 GBPS

    Researchers at Siemen's Transport System Laboratories set a new record for optical data transmission on a single optical fiber: 3.2 terabits/second over a distance of 40 km. The demonstration transmitted 80 wavelengths of 40 Gbps channels generated using an Electronic Time Division Multiplexing ETDM system developed by Siemens.
    http://www.siemens.co m/ic/networks/news/icmore/en/events2.htm [siemens.com]
    Siemens, August 9, 1999
  • Chicago is listed on that map. WTF?
  • If Canada were a third world country i'd be drinking piss water and eating rice and I sure as hell wouldn't have a computer! Damn!
  • Welcome to Canada Chicago. MWAHAHAHA!
    That's one down.
  • aujourd'hui.... c'est Pepsi!

    GO HABS!
    ON Y VA!

  • Please do not show any disrespect to the Avro Arrow. Thank you. The man says it was doing Mach 2. It was bloody well doing Mach 2 - or pretty well Terrence-and-Philliping close. The biggest what if in Canadaian history. Our national trauma. Where were you the day the Arrow was scrapped? Too bad PET wasn't PM when the Arrow was around. He wouldn't have scrapped it. He would've flown one around himself. (Not that PET didn't have his faults - it just would've been cool.)
  • It was retribution for an invasion by those itchy-trigger-fingered Americans.

    Canada doesn't really go for beating up on other countries.

    We try pretty hard to stay with the peacekeeper role. America seems to go with the enforcer role.

    Canada just likes to remind the US that it doesn't win all of its fights. (And that winning a fight isn't that important, anyway).
  • The goalie mask
    Pablum for babies
    the paint roller
    the snowmobile
    Standard Time (i.e. modern system of time zones)
    1/2 of Superman
    The electric $^#%^ing light bulb!!! (1874) (Canadian Henry Woodward sold a share in his patent to Thomas Edison, who designed a more practical bulb in 1879. However, later on another Cdn Reginald Fessenden invented an even better version and its *his* model we *still* use today around the world. Edison was a middle man between two canucks baby!)

    voice over radio
    the best screwdriver: "the robertson"
    sonar
    many cancer-causing (oops) insect repellants
    the Polyethylene Garbage Bag (can anyone say landfill?)
    the Franks anti-gravity suit (G-suit) - (used by Allied WW2 pilots - later developed into more advanced G-suits)
    IMAX movies
    Trivial Pursuit
    The Java programming language (in the US supported by US coworkers and a US multinational giant)
    The Canadarm robotic space arm thing
    the rollerskate
    Insulin treatment for diabetics
    the walkie-talkie
    snowblower
    electric streetcar
    poutine
    insulated coverings for indoor skating rinks
    the zamboni
    kerosene fuel
    the McIntosh apple
    Greenpeace
    The English Patient (sorry guys)
    shooting down the Red Baron
    the idea of U.N. peacekeepers (blue helmets to you Euro-types)
    wood-pulp paper (i.e. modern "paper")
    *universal* medicare (Sask. was the first)
    Nanaimo Bars
    the heart pacemaker (an American later invented one that was much much smaller and could be implanted in the body - definately an improvemnt on the (very big) original)
    the kidney dialysis machine
    the electron microscope
    ginger ale
    Oka cheese (yum its so good I'm eating some right now as I hum the gens du pays)

    gotta go (yes, I realize doing this was sad)















  • That's an intersting idea. Is it lack of processing time that is slowing down the Human Genome Project? Or something else?
  • 80Gbit doesnt mean you have all 80Gbit piped right into your house/dormroom/basement.

    It just means that T1s and T3s will be provisioned much much cheaper, and your system surely can handle 1.5Mb or 45Mb easily.
  • Ya! You forgot to mention all the actors and comics who make Hollywood worthwhile. Remember the "Canadian Conspiracy"? Lorne Greene and Lorne Michaels? We also make the world's most secure operation system and the best verion of BSD-UNIX.
    Makes me kinda proud, eh?
  • Infinite number wavelengths does not imply infinite bandwidth, the max thoretical bandwidth for an optical fiber is on the order of several 100Tb/s, still pretty big. Ok, back to the fun
    stuff...
  • It's better then American Piss water, I mean Beer
  • I still remember beer strikes during the summer (many years ago) when I was in Canada. The pits was when they ran out of everything Canadian and had to import from the states.
  • beauty, now we can download dem mp3's of british new wave bands eh.
  • For complete details, consult http://www.canet2.net/
    the NOC for this network
  • GO HABS GO! GO HABS GO!
    --
    Let's not all suck at the same time please
  • Just a word to the wise that grouping ppl by stereotype doesn't work whether serious or not. By your comment you have already proven that you are the more stupid compared to Newfie's or Yankee's. As for the comment about Canada...
    like someone said, wherever you go there will be those who are educated and those who are not.

    Some people are just too arrogant for their own good, and I also believe you fall into the latter category.


    Lost One (Newfie)
    B.Sc Comp. Sci.
    Video Game Progammer
  • And, though it is almost always overlooked, let's not forget the Robertson screwdriver (I hate those damned slot screws and Philips is nearly as bad)

    For you americans you might be able to find a Robertson driver at Sears (I saw one there once in the states) and ask your canadian buddies to send you some descent screws (they'll know what you mean).


  • Aw crap! And I'm moving up there on Sat the 4th for University.. Guess the U of A won't be on this phat pipe =(

  • First, this network is using wave division multiplexing with 8 wavelengths to reach the 80 Gbits/sec. The article mentions that the network will go to 2000 wavelengths, or 20 Tbits/sec, in the future. However, the whole point is not that this is about a "technology being developed" but rather that this technology is being deployed, now, as in a physical network actually exists.
  • But Canada doesn't exist. The governments of the world just tell us it is "there" so we don't find out about where they moved Area51 to.
  • of course, if you lived in residence in guelph (like me), you'd have a 10Mbps switched Ethernet connection right to your room. Yeah, res sucks, but cheap bandwidth is good.

    (non UofGers: 100% of UGuelph residence is wired like this BTW... and it only costs $100/semester)

  • lots of big bandwidth providers have GigaPOPs (some of them more than one) in Chicago, so it's the best place to link up CA*Net III to the rest of the world.
  • That map is labeled "proposed".. (last updated Feb. 99)... isn't it supposed to be finished? ... maybe they made some changes?
  • Let's see. Since this new backbone will be capable of transmitting the content of digital music, the next step will be for the Canadians to tax it at the rate of $132/second since you'll be capable of transferring about 14 audio CDs a second.

    And that is at uncompressed rates!

    Damn Canadians, them with their floppy little heads and beady little eyes. BLAME CANADA!

  • I'm just curious as to what the intended uses of this large fiber network are? I read the article, and still find it very unclear. I don't think Canada currently has any kind of capacity to qualify the need for this. It's a big waste of fiber optic cable that could be running to my house instead if you ask me.

  • I always thought that was a high-tech weather barrier put up by the Ministry of the Environment to keep all that hot weather south of the border.
  • Americans should be mindful of themselves before making negative comments about Canadians. We have semi-free health care, and much less in-breeding.
  • Nice to see what can be done when you cut Ma' Bell out of the loop. Further proof that the telecos in the US are corrupt and don't serve the interest of their customers.

    First hockey, then comedians and musicians, now the world's fastest network. How do I move to emigrate?
  • And to think, i work in the Computer Group here at U of T, I live less then 200 feet away, and have have canet3 bandwidth. what more could i ask for.
  • Yeah.
    Fastest network != fastest networking technology.
    We are talking about really building a production network, not some lab test results.
  • Canada, land of happy taxpayers. Huh? IT jobs for half the pay. Gasoline for twice the price and twice the distance to get there. No need to trash this country, it's already done for you, and we'll pay you to notice.
    This message is from the End of the Line. And tomorrow I get my ADSL connection. No, there's nothing subsidized here. Nothing. We just pay and pay. And we LIKE it!
    There is no doubt the telecom utility will slap a buck a meg tax on data traffic, and we'll just sit there and take it. No history of revolution against taxation here. We LIKE monopolists!
    And at the same time, we practice survivalism on a permanent basis. We don't have to be wacos - I mean Wackos - to stock up on canned goods, rotate our stock, it's bred into us. A country that grew up on mail-order catalogs has been waiting a long time for the Internet to break through. So look out neighbours! A cultural bomb is about to blow!
    Dudley Do-right
  • yup, just acquired by Nortel. And you are right, Nortel currently leads in deployed bw.
  • and don't get me throwing tomatoes at the centre of your being!

    what the heck was that?

    cheers
  • Hey I didn't say he did or did not do good things. I just said he "looked" good doing what he was doing. By the way, the NEP rocked on! An excellent example of things going the way they should IMHO. He he.
  • I work at the University of Alberta and do work with the CanetII and CanetII syustems. While they are pulibc networks they are NOT commercial ones, check out the AUP on the site [canarie.ca] this link is for CanetII but will only change a little for CanetII to my understanding. Primarily access is given to educational institutions and research outfits which might benefit from and add quality to the the initiative. Although subject to change, it is a WDM GBE network connecting the different RANs (Regional Area Networks) together. Alberta is probably going to use dark fiber and light it up with multi-channel GBE as it's RAN backbone. All in all I feel this whole thing is pretty exciting and_I'M_ excited to be a part of it.
  • Actually, Philipp Reis, a German inventor, invented the telephone. G. Bell reinvented it about 20 years later.
  • Really? Canadians invented the Avro Arrow, the first aircraft to reach Mach 2+ (Americans were barely able to sustain Mach 1+). The Avro Arrow was the first aircraft which used the delta wing, a CANADIAN invention. When Avro Co. went bust (political in-fighting with the president of Avro and the Canadian prime minister lead to the literal destruction of these aircraft and their plans!) the americans hired all that Canadian brain power (instant visa's over night) to build their own military aircraft for Douglas, NASA, Boeing, etc - including the design for *your* space shuttle and the Concord. Bacon indeed.

    I see you don't have an interest in world history, just the american version of it. Tisk tisk.
  • Anyone in Canada interested in building the world's most distributed high-performance Beowulf?"
    Yes. I have been kicking this idea around for months. Any one else interested?
    Mail me or call me in Vancouver.
  • For all you ignorant americans out there, Canada has more tech jobs per capita than the US does... And that's DESPITE the brain drain to the south side of the border.
  • "It's encouraging to see the strides that Canada and other third world countries have been making recently. "

    Canada is the only country to ever invade the US and burn its capitol to the ground. Look up in your history books and you will find that's why your white house was hastily painted white.

    Now if you want to call the country that did that "third world", go ahead.
  • hrmm... across campus (ie. from my room to the CS buliding) I often run thwack into the 10Mbps ethernet limit... also grabbing MP3s from my friends at U of T at 800KB/sec over CA*Net2 was schweet... can't wait only eight more days until I move in!

  • Funny how Whitehorse is fully connected, but Calgary isn't even on the map.

    Way to go, abcnews
  • Got a 1040 tax instruction booklet from last year? Here's the breakdown:

    • Income
      • Personal Income taxes 46%
      • Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment 34%
      • Corporate Income Taxes 11%
      • Excise, customs, estate, gift and other misc taxes 8%
      • Borrowing 1%
    • Outlays
      • Social Security, Medicare, and other retirement 38%
      • National defense, veterans, and foreign affairs 20% (actual breakdown: defense 16%, veterans benefits 2%, military/economic assistance, maintenance of US embassies, etc 2%)
      • Social programs 18%
      • Interest on the national debt 15%
      • Physical, human, and community development 7%
      • Law enforcement and general government 2%
    If you look at the actual breakdown, we are spending more on social programs than on defense, and more on retirees than both combined. Your we spend so much money on defense line doesn't wash anymore. Since Clinton took office, spending on defense as a percentage of GDP has been halved.
  • I, who work for an unnamed NSP with an OC-48 backbone (that's over 2 Gigabits/sec), have seen that one of the major limitations isn't the bandwidth, but being able to route the damn packets. Nobody really has routers yet that are too terribly stable at that high a bandwidth.

    There's still a fair bit of dark fibre from the Qwest buildout, too...

    IMHO, what's going to be one of the major bottlenecks in domestic networks is the local loop that goes to your house and getting local fiber from the CO to elsewhere - not the backbones.
  • We're still trying to figure out how to get electric heat in our igloos...

    They keep melting.

    Oup... gotta go help my mom.. she's getting chased down by a polar bear!#$!#
  • by Tarnar ( 20289 )
    Hehe..

    The graphic on the article.. Doesn't include Calgary. That's comical, Regina is on there but Calgary isn't.

    Hopefully it's just a case of not enough room on the pic ;-)
  • I;ve got a good use for the bandwidth: Netcasting all of the radio and TV stations that the CRTC won't allow because they lack "Canadian Content" Anything that pisses off the CRTC is good for everyone!

    (I love seeing Edmonton on the map and not Calgary. Just makes my heart glow)

    BTW: Even without the CA*Net3, Canada is still more wired than the USA.
  • Perhaps Canada is just gearing up so they can submit canadian stories to slashdot without saturating there network.

    Or worse yet, canada puts up backslashdot.org and tries to backslashdot us.
    This could be the reason why slashdot was down last night and this morning!

    I think this is an act of war. :)

  • For more info on Canadian networking check out: http://www.canarie.ca [canarie.ca]

    This is the first totally optical network, which is pretty awesome... it involved a number of companies and government organizations working together, here is a quote from the site:

    Cisco Systems Canada Co., the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, will provide Cisco '12000's' which will in turn deliver the density, scalability and performance required to enable new multimedia applications for the new economy. JDS Fitel, a world leading supplier of fibre optics, will supply the key optical components needed to develop this optical Internet. Newbridge Networks, a world leader in communications networking, and Cambrian Systems Corporation, a Newbridge affiliate company, will provide leading-edge asynchronous transfer mode infrastructure equipment and advanced photonic networking solutions enabling the delivery of differentiated Internet Protocol services and other advanced, high-bandwidth applications. Nortel, the world's leading supplier of high-capacity optical networks, will supply infrastructure equipment for the project, enabling bandwidth-intensive IP traffic to be carried directly over optical channels on the WDM network.

    What they need now is applications for the network, if you're a student, tell your prof and see if you can't get something started!

    How sweet it is to be Canadian!

  • The article mentions:
    Canada's national human genome project, an effort to map all the DNA in the human body, is using CA*Net3 to link 40 powerful computers to perform necessary calculations.
  • The homepage for caNet3: http://www.canet3.net [canet3.net]

  • Oh, bite me, Mr. Anonymous J. You make American-bashers look like idiots. I wasn't saying anything bad about Canada.

    If you actually read the article, you'd know it pounded in the point that there was not local demand for the bandwidth that CA*Net3 provides. If the article's wrong, correct it, but don't blame me for responding to the article.

    I've always been impressed by my Canadian friends, remarkably insightful and well-educated. If you are Canadian, you sure are bringing down the average.

  • Ethernet in every dorm and 3 appartment complexes with 10Mbps ethernet. Well now, the university and two of those have to go through some state burocracy (called K20net) that's supposed to make internet to schools better but actually makes things pretty freaking slow. WSU also has/is getting Internet2 but that's only departmental access.

    So looks like the one appartment complex I'm in is has the best net access in Pullman... oh did I mention the rent didn't increase one bit as a result? Too bad the service is horrible. (someone want to help me set up a news box? they won't do it, but have the newsfeed)
  • Actually my friend and I were working on a way to get 4mbs download time over a 56k voice modem. It worked in theory. Basicaly use tonal frequncies and chords to represent 32bit bytes. Ok It's not near as cool as those damm Frenchies.
  • Do you really want to be a US citizen when the next draft comes allong? ;->
  • We should be very careful about making too many jokes about Canadians, they have BIG plans :)

    http://cwd.ptbcanadian.com/

    --Mark
  • Don't blame this guy. He is just a regular ignorant american, like every other american. He probably dropped out of high school, before he learned to pin point the second largest country in the world.
  • So what's the use of a superfast network when all other networks are 100 times slower?

    It's like having a ferrari in a driveway leading to terminally potholed roads!!!
    -- ----------------------------------------------
    Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!

  • It was only 4 years before, in 1861. It doens't matter though, Bell was the one who put it in everyones house. I'm sure there are tons of useful inventions that will never see the light of day as they sit in research laboratories an basements, like all of Tesla's "useful" inventions. Totally and completely worthless as far as the human condition at large is concerned.
  • I knew there was some reason I have not moved to the States... although I must admit I enjoyed the weather during the 4.5 months I lived in Irwine&Westlake.
  • The article mentions:
    Canada's national human genome project, an effort to map all the DNA in the human body, is using CA*Net3 to link 40 powerful computers to perform necessary calculations.

    I hope this increases our chances of getting our genes into the public domain before one of the private efforts succeeds and claims the inevitable patents.

  • I wonder sometimes if the Americans even know where the first phone call was made. Ever heard of Brantford ON. and Alexander G. Bell?

    I guess not, the dog sled team hasn't made it down that far yet!!!! Probably got ambushed by Polar Bears.



  • Now that we've got this giant "library-in-a-second" capacity, we've got to fill it with piles of encrypted traffic. The spy agencies will feel compelled to log, crack, and filter it all, thus consuming more resources and reducing the chance that they'll get up to naughty tricks in their (vastly reduced) spare time.

    I think it's safe to say that they've got their listening devices hooked up. It'd be fun to turn on the firehose and rip their lips off.

  • Everyone in Canada complains about the taxes, it's a national pastime ...
    But when you see what those taxes GET US ... wow!
    I mean, I'm not worried that I'll be financially ruined if I'm ever hospitalized, I can realistically own my own home, and now this!

    Sure, there are things I'd like to see changed ... but then, everyone can say the same no matter WHERE they're at.

    Now if only I could get DSL or cable out here in the woods ...

  • ..that blows the doors off almost all imported stuff.

    Only because good stuff is not imported. It is still piss compared to good German thing...

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce

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