HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: buckland@ucs.ubc.ca (Tony Buckland)
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Why aren't things like plutonium shipments kept secret?
Date: 10 Nov 1992 18:05:18 GMT
Organization: University Computing Services, UBC, Canada
NNTP-Posting-Host: swiss.ucs.ubc.ca

 I wonder why governments ask for so much trouble by doing in
 the glare of publicity some things, like shipping masses of
 plutonium out of France by sea, that could easily and with
 considerable justification be done secretly.
 
 Now  they have Greenpeace harassment and hostile stories likely
 to dog them for weeks across the oceans, while if they'd kept
 their mouths shut and shipped the stuff out under strict security
 on a cruiser they could have suffered no more adverse publicity
 than would come from a report to the appropriate agencies after
 the fact.
 
 The question in its general form came up in my mind some years
 back when public outcry and quixotic gestures of sabotage greeted
 the announcement of cruise missile tests across lightly-populated
 areas in Canada.  In the Cold War climate of the time, it seemed
 to me that the appropriate attitude for the government would
 have been to say something like "Cruise missiles are a strategic
 weapon.  Any testing of them would be a matter of national
 security, and any unauthorized possession or dissemination of
 information about such testing would be prosecuted as espionage."
 Period.
Newsgroups: can.general
From: bdb@becker.GTS.ORG (Bruce Becker)
Subject: Re: Why aren't things like plutonium shipments kept secret?
Organization: G. T. S., Toronto, Ontario
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 13:40:36 GMT

In article <1dotkuINNek2@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca> buckland@ucs.ubc.ca (Tony Buckland) writes:
|
| I wonder why governments ask for so much trouble by doing in
| the glare of publicity some things, like shipping masses of
| plutonium out of France by sea, that could easily and with
| considerable justification be done secretly.
| 
| Now  they have Greenpeace harassment and hostile stories likely
| to dog them for weeks across the oceans, while if they'd kept
| their mouths shut and shipped the stuff out under strict security
| on a cruiser they could have suffered no more adverse publicity
| than would come from a report to the appropriate agencies after
| the fact.
| 
| The question in its general form came up in my mind some years
| back when public outcry and quixotic gestures of sabotage greeted
| the announcement of cruise missile tests across lightly-populated
| areas in Canada.  In the Cold War climate of the time, it seemed
| to me that the appropriate attitude for the government would
| have been to say something like "Cruise missiles are a strategic
| weapon.  Any testing of them would be a matter of national
| security, and any unauthorized possession or dissemination of
| information about such testing would be prosecuted as espionage."
| Period.



	Jeez, are YOU ever a f*ckhead, or what?


	Aside from being extremely radioactive with a
	very long half-life, plutonium is *incredibly*
	toxic!  If such shipments are lost in an "act
	of god" or something there's a chance for all
	of us to be affected


	Greenpeace very much represents the concerns
	of everyone who demand to know what is going
	on and who want to have a say in it (such as
	"Plutonium - just say NO"; or the new video,
	"this is your reactor [picture of atomic reactor]...
	 this is your reactor on plutonium [picture of
	 Chernobyl]")


-- 
  ,u,	 Bruce Becker			Toronto, Ontario
a /i/	 Internet: bdb@becker.gts.org	Uucp: ...!web!becker!bdb
 `\o\-e
 _< /_	 	DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN BUSH - H. R. Perotnoid
Newsgroups: can.general,can.politics,soc.culture.canada
Organization: Queen's University at Kingston
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 18:25:13 EDT
From: andy <2893684@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>
Newsgroups: can.general,can.politics,soc.culture.canada
Subject: Re: Voting Systems (was Re: Proportional representation)
 <1dhqfrINNrjv@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca> <1992Nov8.074732.7435@ee.ubc.ca>
 <1dk6adINN5jb@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca>

There are two systems I like, the first is the transferable ballot where
voters list there 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices. First choices are counted on the
first count, then if no one receives 50% the lowest candidate is dropped and
the second choices of his/her voters are distributed and so on until someone
gets 50%.  Another alternative is a run-off, a week or two later between the
top two candidates.

The German system combines PR with a constituency system. Their is a two part
ballot, on the first part you vote for a party, on the second part you vote
for your constituency MP. Half the seats of the House (applying it to a
Canadian structure) would be made up of constituencey MPs. The other half
would be distributed to the various parties receiving more than 5% of the
vote in such a way that the OVER ALL composition of the House is proportional
to the votes each party recieves. For example, say there's an election where
the Liberals win all the constituency seats with 50% of the vote (as happened
in New Brunswick a few years ago) with the Tories and NDP getting 30% and
20% respectively. A 100 seat House would look like this

             %vote   Costit. seats     PR seats      Total
   Liberals   50%         50             -            50
   Tories     30%         -              30           30
   NDP        20%         -              20           20

 Thus while the principle of local MPs is preserved, so is the principle
of over all PR.  The beauty of this system is it also allows you to vote
for the best candidate running for your constituency seat since
PR is determined by the Which Party you vote for, not which candidate
(remember you vote seperately for your party of preference and candidate
of preferance). Thus if you are a New Democrat but you have an outstanding
local MP who happens to be a Tory, you can vote for the NDP and for your local
Tory MP without worrying that your local vote will help the Tories win
government since your local vote is not used to determine the overall numerical
composition of the house.
Newsgroups: can.general,tor.general,ont.events,ott.general,mtl.general,ut.general,ott.events
From: ndallen@r-node.gts.org (Nigel Allen)
Subject: ISDN demonstration at Bell Canada Communications Seminar
Organization: Echo Beach, Toronto
Distribution: can
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 06:03:14 GMT

Many telephone companies, including Bell Canada, will be offering 
ISDN demonstrations in connection with the Transcontinental ISDN 
Project (TRIP '92) next week.

TRIP '92 will focus on three major elements - demonstrations of 
actual applications of ISDN, national interconnectivity of ISDN 
through the interexchange network, and a series of activities 
centered in the Washington area.

For information about Bell Canada's participation in TRIP, call the 
Communications Seminar at  (416) 581-2400 in Toronto, 
(613) 785-2020 in Ottawa or (514) 875-2511 in Montreal.

For more information on ISDN demonstrations in your area, 
call the Corporation for Open Systems International (COSI) at 
1-800-759-COSI voice or 703-848-4572 fax, or the ISDN manager 
at your local telephone company.

A message from Bell Canada follows:

The week of November 16-20, 1992 has been chosen as it coincides 
with the industry's most extensive event of the year - the 
Transcontinental ISDN Project 1992 (TRIP '92). TRIP '92 heralds the 
arrival of National ISDN-1, the first ISDN service based on standards 
accepted by all vendors in North America.

The week-long program includes a number of two-hour tours 
scattered throughout each day, three or four per day, starting 
Tuesday, November 17 through Friday, November 20. Each tour will 
be hosted by numerous live demonstrations of the latest ISDN 
applications. Each day, except Friday November 20, will end with a 
one-hour Video Dial-up multipoint demonstration, between 5-6 PM 
and cocktail reception, sponsored by Canadian distributors of 
videoconferencing equipment.

The program will be held simultaneously in the three Bell 
Communications Seminars located in Toronto - Bell Trinity Square, 
Ottawa - Place Bell Canada and Montreal - Place Victoria.

As this is certain to be a busy week, please confirm your attendance 
by calling the Communications Seminar, listed below, and reserve for 
this most exciting event.

 Toronto : 416-581-2400
 Ottawa: 613-785-2020
 Montreal: 514-875-2511

We look forward to seeing you there.


Newsgroups: can.general
From: tcifelli@bmerh717.bnr.ca (Tony Cifelli)
Subject: Re: Simpsons Poke
Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada
Distribution: can
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 92 17:01:22 GMT

In article <1def9hINN59r@fido.asd.sgi.com> close@lunch.wpd.sgi.com (Diane Barlow Close) writes:
>So did anyone else catch the Simpson's poke at the Canadian referendum
>the other night?  I thought it was a cute comment on the general
>U.S. lack of interest in Canada.  The details:
>
>Marge is trying to convince Homer to let her take a job at his plant
>so they can get enough money to fix their faulty foundation.  In the
>midst of the argument Homer grabs the local paper and says something
>like "Oh, I can't talk now Marge.  I see Canada is having a
>referendum.  Gotta read!"  It's not an exact quote (being from my
>day-old memory) but it gets the gist of it across.  Pretty funny,
>imho!

Ya, I caught it, but I saw it differently.  I saw it not as a poke
at Canada, but a bone to throw all the loyal Canadian viewers.  I
think its a nice gesture on the part of the writers.  They could
have picked any current headline to sidetrack Marge.

Tony.
--
[Tony Cifelli              ][Phone:    613-765-2798   ][BNR is not accountable]
[Bell-Northern Research    ][FAX:      613-763-2714   ][for the opinions      ]
[P.O. Box 3511, Station C  ][Internet: tcifelli@bnr.ca][expressed herein.     ]
[Ottawa, On. K1Y 4H7 CANADA]["Still looking for a dramatic quote to put here!"]
Newsgroups: can.general,can.politics,soc.culture.canada
From: john@chance.gts.org (John R MacMillan)
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: Canada 125
Date: 10 Nov 92 18:52:02 GMT
Distribution: can
Organization: $HOME

|However, the Tories never had the *will* to solve the deficit.

True.  It was overcome by their will to get re-elected, an unfortunate
side-effect of our system.  Don't worry, I'm sure whoever is elected
next will the the right thing. ;-)
Xref: sparky can.general:5298 can.politics:9455 soc.culture.canada:8372
From: mathew@unixg.ubc.ca (Mathew B Englander)
Newsgroups: can.general,can.politics,soc.culture.canada
Subject: Voting Systems (was Re: Proportional representation)
Date: 8 Nov 1992 01:04:52 GMT
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
NNTP-Posting-Host: unixg.ubc.ca

In article <1992Nov6.123920.21484@access.usask.ca> (Gerry Gryschuk) writes:
>Anyway, yes this method would be flawed. However a simple fix would be to
>set a fixed number of "points" to the place a person voted a candidate.
>Simply base it on the number of candidates running and no problem should
>arise. That is in your examples a first place vote is worth 3, second 2 and
>3rd 1. In this case C wins both times and by a wider margin in the second
>scenario as she should. The math is left as an excercise for the reader.
>
>I believe this might be the way Australia does it, I could be wrong though.
>I do know they use STV of some sort.
>--
I believe Australia uses STV to elect their senators. Ireland uses
STV as well. However, what you have described here is not any sort
of STV at all, but a Borda count. It was invented by someone named
Borda, and I believe also by Lewis Carroll, independently.

The Borda Count is much better than STV, but is flawed in a couple
of ways. For one, it is very susceptible to strategic voting. For
example, suppose there are four candidates: A and B represent
mainstream parties, while C and D represent extremist parties, and
have little chance of winning. There will be a large number of
voters whose first choice is A, but would rather see B elected than
either C or D.

The "true" preference ranking of these voters is, let's say, 
A, B, D, C. 

However, under a Borda Count it's in their interests to vote
A, D, C, B. This is because only A and B have a real chance
of winning, so by putting B in second place is a detriment to
the voters first choice of A.

And of course, if enough people vote strategically this way,
one of the extremist candidates could win!

Even if only a few voters use this strategy, A could win when the
winner "should" be B, or vice-versa.

Mathew Englander.
Newsgroups: can.general
From: evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch)
Subject: Heirs to Cornelius?
Organization: Somewhere just far enough out of Toronto
Distribution: can
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 04:54:01 GMT

I'm looking for the address and/or phone number of the Rhino Party, if
it still exists.

In the next election, there IMO is going to be a need for a few
"none of the above" candidates...
-- 
 Evan Leibovitch, Sound Software Ltd., located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
         evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!utzoo!telly!evan / (416) 452-0504
         "IBM's three letters are probably EBCDIC for CYA" - Nik H.
From: leffler@physics.ubc.ca (Steve Leffler )
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: Why aren't things like plutonium shipments kept secret?
Date: 10 Nov 1992 20:20:02 GMT
Organization: The University of British Columbia
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics.ubc.ca

buckland@ucs.ubc.ca (Tony Buckland) writes:

> I wonder why governments ask for so much trouble by doing in
> the glare of publicity some things, like shipping masses of
> plutonium out of France by sea, that could easily and with
> considerable justification be done secretly.
> 
> Now  they have Greenpeace harassment and hostile stories likely
> to dog them for weeks across the oceans, while if they'd kept
> their mouths shut and shipped the stuff out under strict security
> on a cruiser they could have suffered no more adverse publicity
> than would come from a report to the appropriate agencies after
> the fact.
> 
   It was inevitable that the story would leak anyway.  This plan has been
public knowledge for several years at least.  The original plan was for
Japan to ship the plutonium by PLANE, and they tried to get permission 
from the US and/or Canada to fly the load across their territory.  While
Japan might conceivably have a great deal of interest in keeping the 
shipment secret, the latter two countries have no such interest, and in
fact if they did keep it a secret and it leaked, it could be very
damaging to the governments, politically.

> The question in its general form came up in my mind some years
> back when public outcry and quixotic gestures of sabotage greeted
> the announcement of cruise missile tests across lightly-populated
> areas in Canada.  In the Cold War climate of the time, it seemed
> to me that the appropriate attitude for the government would
> have been to say something like "Cruise missiles are a strategic
> weapon.  Any testing of them would be a matter of national
> security, and any unauthorized possession or dissemination of
> information about such testing would be prosecuted as espionage."

   This is the cost of living in a free and democratic country.  The 
public has an absolute right to know everything their government is
doing which cannot be justified under rather limited conditions, and an
even stronger right to discuss anything which does leak, whether it's
a matter of national security or not.  Myself, I prefer to live in a 
country where people are free to criticize what their government is doing
in the name of "protecting" their security.

				     ---Steven Leffler
					leffler@physics.ubc.ca

Xref: sparky can.general:5299 can.politics:9457 soc.culture.canada:8374
From: mathew@unixg.ubc.ca (Mathew B Englander)
Newsgroups: can.general,can.politics,soc.culture.canada
Subject: Voting Systems (was Re: Proportional representation)
Date: 8 Nov 1992 01:28:27 GMT
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
NNTP-Posting-Host: unixg.ubc.ca

leei@lightning.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (Lee Iverson) writes:
>This discussion is interesting but sadly uninformed.
>
>There is a well-known theorem which essentially says that there is no
>system of voting system which accurately reflects a system of
>preferences without introducing paradoxes (i.e. situations in which
>moving up in the rankings of some subset of voters will actually cause
>someone to do worse)!

This theorem was discovered by Kenneth Arrow (or Kevin Archer? I can
never remember his name), in the late '50s. You should be able to
find his original work in any university library; there were two
editions; the ~1958 edition had a small error in the proof, which
was fixed in the ~1963 edition.

His theorem was more general than just voting systems; it applies to
all areas of social choice, such as markets. His five axioms for a method
of social choice (expressed here in the language of voting systems),
according to my memory, are:

1. There should not be a dictatorship (i.e., the choice cannot simply be
	that of one individual; other voters must be able, somehow,
	to influence it)
2. A candidate should not be hurt by an increase in support
3. A shift from one candidate to a second should not hurt a third candidate
	in favour of a fourth candidate
4. There should be at least three candidates, and voters should not
	be restricted in their choices among ranking these candidates
5. A system that would choose one candidate over a second, and that second
	candidate over a third, should also choose the first candidate
	over the third.

Arrow's theorem showed that under any voting system, one of these axioms
is violated.

However, this does not mean we should just give up on democracy, or on
voting. While every voting system is flawed, some are flawed worse than
others.

Abrams, who has written extensively on game theory in political science,
and included a simplified proof of Arrow's theorem in at least one of
his books, has suggested the voting method of Approval Voting, where
voters do not rank the candidates but instead just say, for each candidate
whether they approve or disapprove. The candidate of whom the most
candidates approve is elected. This is described and elaborated on in
a book Abrams co-authored, called _Approval_Voting_.

Mathew Englander.
Xref: sparky can.francais:594 soc.culture.canada:8439 soc.culture.french:8388
From: root@catnix.UUCP (Wonder user (M.Simond))
Newsgroups: can.francais,soc.culture.canada,soc.culture.french
Subject: Richard Desjardins
Date: 10 Nov 92 03:29:38 GMT


Pour ceux qui aiment Richard Desjardins : Un nouvel enregistrement
de lui vient de sortir "Les derniers humains (1988)".

A mon avis, c'est vraiment superieur a "Tu m'aimes-tu?".
From: <news@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Subject: Manitoba News System Report
Originator: news@ccu.umanitoba.ca
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Distribution: can
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 14:26:25 GMT


System       	Accept	Reject	Junked	Xmit to	Control	% total	% rejct
access        	 12056	    24	   331	   2942	      0	    77%	     0%
alberta       	     0	     0	     0	     12	      0	     0%	     0%
bison         	     7	     0	     0	   2621	      0	     0%	     0%
bugs-l        	     0	     0	     0	      1	      0	     0%	     0%
ciit85        	     5	     0	     0	  15068	      0	     0%	     0%
local         	   109	     0	     0	      0	      0	     0%	     0%
mizar         	    27	     0	     0	  15463	      0	     0%	     0%
mona          	     2	     0	     0	   3061	      0	     0%	     0%
newsflash     	  3398	    38	    55	  11498	      0	    21%	     1%

TOTALS        	 15604	    62	   386	  50666	      0	   100%	     0%

Total Articles processed 15666
From: news@access.usask.ca (USENET News System)
Subject: UofS NNTP summary Fri Nov 13 00:04:17 CST 1992
Organization: University of Saskatchewan Gateway
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 06:07:35 GMT


NNTP peer article transfers

Article Reception (they contact us)
System                  Offered  Took  Toss  Fail Toss   Elapsed       CPU  Pct
sue.cc.uregina.ca             8     8     0     0   0%   0:03:14   0:00:27  14%
scapa.cs.ualberta.ca         44    39     5     0  11%   1:06:47   0:00:48   1%
americast.com               257   257     0     0   0%   1:02:10   0:00:56   2%
jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca     1043  1043     0     0   0%   3:17:25   0:05:37   3%
mizar.cc.umanitoba.ca      6935  4464  2471     0  36%   2:27:13   0:10:33   7%
kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca     13262 11890  1368     4  10%  18:22:35   0:27:33   2%

TOTALS                    21549 17701  3844     4  18%  26:19:27   0:45:57   3%

Article Transmission (they poll us)
System                     Conn Offrd  Took   Elapsed       CPU  Pct  Groups
sask.usask.ca                 1     0     0  20:03:56   0:09:32   1%  misc.forsale.computer

TOTALS                        1     0     0  20:03:56   0:09:32   1%

Article Transmission (we contact them)
System                    Offrd  Took  Toss  Fail  Pct   Elapsed       CPU  Pct
sue.cc.uregina.ca         16201 16201     0     0   0%   5:29:58   0:10:55   3%
scapa.cs.ualberta.ca         14     9     5     0  36%   0:01:29   0:00:05   7%
uucp-gw-2.pa.dec.com        781     4   776     4  99%   0:35:06   0:00:12   1%
mizar.cc.umanitoba.ca     11753  9165  2588     0  22%   5:58:40   0:06:55   2%
kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca      3610  3566     0     0   0%   6:01:56   0:03:03   1%
ludwig.microplex.com       1149   275   874     0  76%   0:55:24   0:00:56   2%
softy.softwords.bc.ca       868   821     0     0   0%   0:59:59   0:01:43   3%

TOTALS                    34376 30041  4243     4  12%  20:02:35   0:23:54   2%

Transmission Connection Attempts         ------errors-------
System                     Conn    OK    NS   Net   Rmt  Pct
sue.cc.uregina.ca            70    70     0     0     0   0%
scapa.cs.ualberta.ca         29     4     0    25     0  86%
uucp-gw-2.pa.dec.com         46     0     0     2    44 100%
mizar.cc.umanitoba.ca        65    64     0     1     0   2%
kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca        42    40     0     2     0   5%
ludwig.microplex.com         36    31     0     5     0  14%
softy.softwords.bc.ca        55    50     0     4     1   9%

TOTALS                      343   259     0    39    45  24%

Unknown NNTP server explorers
System                     Conn
fuzzy.usask.ca                1
tesla.usask.ca                2
dvinci.usask.ca              11
jester.usask.ca              28
imhotep.usask.ca              1

Newsgroups: can.canet.stats
From: root@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca (Operator)
Subject: UofNB NNTP summary
Organization: University of New Brunswick
Distribution: can
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 06:06:45 GMT

NNTP stats for csd.unb.ca  from Nov  5 02:04:31 to Nov  6 02:05:24.

                              +--------- stats ---------+ +-- ihave_stats ---+
Host                           offer accept reject   fail accept reject   fail
============================= ====== ====== ====== ====== ====== ====== ======
access.usask.ca                  909    909      0      0      -      -      -
eclipse.sheridanc.on.ca            -      -      -      -    778      0      0
morgan.ucs.mun.ca              20067  19868    199      0   4972      0      0
news.sheridanc.on.ca               1      0      1      0      -      -      -
owl.nstn.ns.ca                     -      -      -      -    326      0      0
torn.onet.on.ca                 3102   2901    201      0  21901      0      0
                              ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------
TOTALS                         24079  23678    401      0  27977      0      0