Slashdot Mirror

First, stop speaking for the rest of America, no one I know calls Canada the 51st state.

Second, Taiwan considers intself the Chinese government in exile (hence the formal name "The Republic of China (http://www.gio.gov.tw/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China), and the Peoples Republic of China (or just China) considers Taiwan to be within their jurisdiction, and not a seperate nation. Lucractius was correct in what he said. QED.

Bill Gates knows they will say this because he (if I may cut you off here) is trying to get whatever profit he can from the country while those evil Communist psychos still let them operate in China in the first place. After all, what semi-sane company wants to disrespect a belligerent, nuke-brandishing government who wants to blow up their corporate country of origin, nevermind extinguish all free speech in their own spaces?

lol you are absolutely right. fwiw, I sincerely support the right of the Tibetans to be free. I was only commenting on the military aspirations of the Chinese. I'd say the way the Chinese have treated Tibet pretty much supports that view. The way they, for instance, are trying to assimilate Tibet into Chinese culture (by exporting native Chinese to the Tibetan region) is a nice example of dominance through culture.

I don't give the Tibetans much chance, to be honest. They might be better off trying to establish an ethnic region in India...

btw, according to this news article (first hit on google), only 7 out of 10 Taiwanese would agree. The other 3 are probably Chinese spies ;)

So, who would that be? China and . . . China?

Well... there's the "People's Republic of China", and the "Republic of China", two completely different countries (well, in the eyes of the PROC, the ROC is a breakaway republic, sort of like how Saddam viewed Kuwait). So, "Chinese countries" would be technically correct--and that's the best kind of correct!

Also, the ROC (aka Taiwan) is the source of much of the world's RAM, so the original poster's comment has some validity.

M-

I said that it was a country in practice, but not legally (it doesn't have a seat in the UN, for instance). The KMT (the government in Taiwan till recently) insisted (and still does, at least formally) that it's the legitimate government of "the Republic of China". Taiwan could have formally declared independence in the 60s when the US would have backed them up, but since the US recognised the PRC government and China has become more powerful economically, and acquired nuclear weapons, no one dares to piss them off by supporting Taiwan independence.

Look at a random Taiwanese government website, for instance: Government Information Office, Republic of China:

In April 1947, the ROC government completed all preparations for the implementation of constitutional rule and made the transition from the stage of political tutelage to that of constitutional government. All ministries, commissions and councils under the Executive Yuan were expanded, and on April 23, the Executive Yuan established the Government Information Office and agencies for health, irrigation and land affairs. The GIO was formally inaugurated in Nanking on May 2, 1947 ... The further relocation of the central government to Taipei on December 7, 1949, led to another organizational change ...

Yes it is, according to both governments. But in reality it's independent.

From mid-February:
http://publish.gio.gov.tw/FCJ/past/03021481.html

It goes into a lot more regarding the history of domestic fish and the market conditions under which this was developed.

Sigh. Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China. Mainland China calls itself the People's Republic of China. So it's Taiwan (democratic) that's making the request, not the Tienamen butchers. Still, I take back the cretin remark, this would confuse anyone.

Paper has historically been the cheapest part of book publishing. You have to sell an awful lot of copies before the costs of the paper exceed the costs of inscribing text by hand or, more modernly, type setting, and you only sell that many copies of a book by mass advertising. The internet is not just a continuation of the revolution in printing that Pi Sheng (see link above) innaugurated. In the digital world, I can send you both an email and the font I want you use to read it. Or I can let you read it using any font you choose. The look of a document has become exceedingly maleable. Today there are a billion personal computers in the world, fonts are plentiful (even on X11),and information scarcities are patently bogus.

Uh... where is the proof for these allegations? Sounds to me like another one of those "all-powerful-world-controlling-law-evading-whinin g-parasitic-Jews" theories.