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Also if you know next to nothing about photography or you just need to take pictures 'at the moment' without setting your camera up (like on a crowded japanese train),

Is it just me, or does this guy sound like one of those sick perverts that infest Japanese commuter trains

Brazil is getting reeel cozy, trade-wise, with China. Can't say I blame them.

The link above is a few days old -- lots of trade agreements have been signed already, to much hoopla here (Brazil).

Short Answer : No

Not true.
Quoted from the peopledaily.com.cn article:

Sources concerned said that as the three nations were heading for the same goal of promoting the cooperation on and development of open source software and pushing forward the campaign of opening source code in the northeast Asia, they agreed to exchange information on open source software, share research results, and make joint efforts on developing open source software of next generation based on the software with freely available source code represented by Linux.
..
The three parties vowed to adhere to the principle of opening source code and make joint efforts to give contribution to the global open source software community.

I'm going to assume that the "country's growth" you refer to is its economy (which, ultimately, defines who is a superpower and who is not).

China's population rate is still growing (0.6% in 2003 and 0.9% in 2000, compared to the United States' 0.95% in 2003)

Your example, India, grows at 1.47%.

I realize that the lag between an increase in population and an increase in the country's population exists (i.e. until the new population become functioning citizens), but even then... the effects of the staggering birth rates in China during the 60's will last for many decades. India's current and continuing population growth will likely continue propel its economy (and, therefore, world clout) in the future, I don't think China's lacking in that respect either.

While a country's growth rate may influence its GDP growth, their link really isn't strong enough to say that on that factor alone, a country will or will not be an economic superpower - letting alone the fact that China has yet to have a negative population rate in recent years. That may change, though.

Here is an old article on the subject: the more-left and more-right Republicans and Democrats were mostly pushing for human rights, and the centrist Democrats and Republicans were mostly pushing for free trade. Kind of strange, huh? Clinton, in fact, flip-flopped on this one; he was in favor of granting MFN here and here, and finally pushed for and got permanent trade status for China. That last article also mentions that it happened on GW's watch when they finally entered the WTO.

Hong Kong is one of the safest cities in the world.

As a Hong Kong resident I can tell you I would have absolutely no reservations whatsoever about letting my 13 year old daughter roam the streets of even the darkest parts of HK at 3am alone. The only crime here is organised (not that that's acceptable), but the streets are absolutely safe.

This robot cop is to be used primarily to educate youths on crime and the dangers of joining triad rings, not to actually fight crime RoboCop-style.

In China this has been around for years. Chinese numerology gives great value to number 8. See for instance "A special phone number, 88888888, was auctioned Monday in this capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, for 2.33 million yuan (about 280,723 US dollars)." In Hong Kong there's a premium on lucky phone numbers and you can buy and sell them, the mobile phone companies usually have a board outside with lists of auspicious numbers available.

Bzzzt, wrong! From the Chinese Constitution:

Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.

Amnesty would have no luck attacking the government, because as we can now see, the government isn't at fault! The only party left that could have perpetrated this oppression is Microsoft, and therefore Amnesty is obligated to go after them singularly. Duh!

Of course it isn't the whiz bang system that e-voting is but it's 10000 year track record says that it is ready for the mainstream :)

That would be rather difficult, seeing as paper has only been around for about 2200 years

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/home.shtml

$400 million? Does that include the cost of getting it there?

No, it doesn't. NASA engineers saved up some frequent flyer miles accrued on the space shuttle and the space station, and got a free trip to mars. Next, they'll be saving up for a round-trip and I've heard that they are soliciting milage donations from the public.

Put another way, $400 million is about a dollar for each american. Have you gotten your dollar's worth of entertainment yet? (Or $2.30 if the price is $810 mil)

To compare, bush's little iraq war is going to cost 100-200 Billion dollars and over 500 coallition lives so far. Do you expect to get your $1400 worth of oil/entertainment from that?

I'm not sure the elaborate glyphs are what make Chinese more complicated, but rather the vertical orientation.

Chinese script is written left to right, just like English. Go to some popular Chinese Websites if you don't believe me.

Traditional / Classical Chinese was written top to bottom, but the script that everyone uses in their daily lives is left to right.

"As Wal-Mart, we do not discriminate against anyone, including women," said Mona Williams, Wal-Mart's vice president for communications.

She noted that when Wal-Mart posted notices companywide in January inviting workers to apply to become management trainees, only 43 percent of those who expressed interest were women.

(emphasis mine)

13-16 hour days molding, assembling, and painting toys, 7 days a week; 20 hour days in the peak season.

A whole 13 hours at Christmas? And here I am working at my shop doing 24 hour days. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. They have it good. But hey, just pretend nobody is working long hours at Christmas in North America, the wool over your eyes will keep you warm.

Workers are paid 13 cents/hour wages in China: the minimum wage is 31 cents.

Incorrect. There is no minimum wage in China. However, individual Chinese cities have elected to enact minimum wage standards.

The minimum wage in Shenyang, for example, is 320 yuan monthly, or 8 cents per hour if your above numbers are true.

But that's ok. Don't let the truth cloud your rhetoric.

There is no health or safety enforcement: constant headaches and nausea from chemical fumes, indoor temperatures above 100 degrees F, rampant repetitive stress disorder, no protective clothing available.

That's not unusual for any Chinese factory. It's not unusual for any developing nation. It is unfortunate and my heart bleeds for them. But denying them employment and money will only serve to exacerbate such problems through death and pestilence.

Most employees are young women or teenage girls.

It is unfortunate that in most rural areas choices are diffcult and it is believed in such areas that men are more suited to farm work than women. This leads to women working in such factories to support the financial aspect of such families.

Suppliers have to open their accounting books to Wal-Mart executives so they can cut "unnecessary expenses" like unionized worke

Japanese phone in US market? Take a quick look at the cell phones available in the US, Japanese vendors have very small percentage of the market. Korean vendors like LG or Samsung has much better share of the markets.

Japanese 2G system is based on Docomo's own TDMA technology and isn't compatible with the international standard GSM. While this allows Docomo to evolve the system faster and benefit from the success of i-mode in Japan, the incompatibility has casue Japanse phone vendors such as Panasonic, Sony and others the world market.

The world wide mobile phone market has been dominated by the MEN (Motorola, Ericsson, and Nokia) and three of them has combined market shares of 80% or so.

Right now, the battlefield for mobile phone market is in China who has 250 millions mobile subscribers and that's almost the whole population of the US. Chinese market is expected to double to 500 millions by 2007.

The battle in China is just the beginning and the next will be India with has only 5 millions of cell phone subscribers. With a population of 1 billions, there are plenty of growth opportunities.

Laying out the facts about the market, we can see how important Chinese cell phne market is today. Whoever gets Chinese market will get India market. Cell phone, much like computers, has almost the same price across the world. A handset costs $100 in the US will still cost $100 in China or Inida. In this regard, US market is relatively unimportant.

In late 2002, several Chinese vendors like Ningbo Bird, TCL, Haier and Legend announced that they would enter the Chinese cell phone market while was dominated by MEN with 80% market shares along with Samsung, Panasonic and Seimen for the rest, the Chinese vendors was laughed at by the press. The prediction was the Chinese vendors' combined market share would be about 10%. Early this year, the number was adjusted to 20% and the truth came out is that Chinese vendors now have 55% of the Chinese cell phone markets and Motorola was overtaken by Ningbo Bird which is now the #1 cell phone vendor in China.

However, with all the glory in gaining the market share, Chinese vendors was doing it by licensing, OEM, ODM the phones from vendors from other countries such as Korea, Taiwan, Europe, and US including Motorola. Lack of the control to the core technologies, the Chinese vendors can't gain huge profit from their market share and also means their market domination depends on the competitors to supply the technologies.

Now, with market shares at hand, the Chinese vendors will be able to support domestic vendors to develop technologies for cell phones. Europe GSM has long developing the model of having large companies like Nokia or Ericsson in charge of the global branding and marketing while supporting start-ups at home to do design and development. Same thing is going to happen in China. The company E28 in the story was founded by top level executive of Motorola's China operation.

In conclusion, Japanese vendors are niche in the global cell phone markets. US cell phones market isn't important because there is no market growth and the standard used in the US is also not standard compliant (GSM runs at 900/1800 Mhz while US GSM called PCS runs at 1900 Mhz). The real market of significant is China today and India tomorrow and whoever wins China today will have India tomorrow.

Japanese phone in US market? Take a quick look at the cell phones available in the US, Japanese vendors have very small percentage of the market. Korean vendors like LG or Samsung has much better share of the markets.

Japanese 2G system is based on Docomo's own TDMA technology and isn't compatible with the international standard GSM. While this allows Docomo to evolve the system faster and benefit from the success of i-mode in Japan, the incompatibility has casue Japanse phone vendors such as Panasonic, Sony and others the world market.

The world wide mobile phone market has been dominated by the MEN (Motorola, Ericsson, and Nokia) and three of them has combined market shares of 80% or so.

Right now, the battlefield for mobile phone market is in China who has 250 millions mobile subscribers and that's almost the whole population of the US. Chinese market is expected to double to 500 millions by 2007.

The battle in China is just the beginning and the next will be India with has only 5 millions of cell phone subscribers. With a population of 1 billions, there are plenty of growth opportunities.

Laying out the facts about the market, we can see how important Chinese cell phne market is today. Whoever gets Chinese market will get India market. Cell phone, much like computers, has almost the same price across the world. A handset costs $100 in the US will still cost $100 in China or Inida. In this regard, US market is relatively unimportant.

In late 2002, several Chinese vendors like Ningbo Bird, TCL, Haier and Legend announced that they would enter the Chinese cell phone market while was dominated by MEN with 80% market shares along with Samsung, Panasonic and Seimen for the rest, the Chinese vendors was laughed at by the press. The prediction was the Chinese vendors' combined market share would be about 10%. Early this year, the number was adjusted to 20% and the truth came out is that Chinese vendors now have 55% of the Chinese cell phone markets and Motorola was overtaken by Ningbo Bird which is now the #1 cell phone vendor in China.

However, with all the glory in gaining the market share, Chinese vendors was doing it by licensing, OEM, ODM the phones from vendors from other countries such as Korea, Taiwan, Europe, and US including Motorola. Lack of the control to the core technologies, the Chinese vendors can't gain huge profit from their market share and also means their market domination depends on the competitors to supply the technologies.

Now, with market shares at hand, the Chinese vendors will be able to support domestic vendors to develop technologies for cell phones. Europe GSM has long developing the model of having large companies like Nokia or Ericsson in charge of the global branding and marketing while supporting start-ups at home to do design and development. Same thing is going to happen in China. The company E28 in the story was founded by top level executive of Motorola's China operation.

In conclusion, Japanese vendors are niche in the global cell phone markets. US cell phones market isn't important because there is no market growth and the standard used in the US is also not standard compliant (GSM runs at 900/1800 Mhz while US GSM called PCS runs at 1900 Mhz). The real market of significant is China today and India tomorrow and whoever wins China today will have India tomorrow.

Japanese phone in US market? Take a quick look at the cell phones available in the US, Japanese vendors have very small percentage of the market. Korean vendors like LG or Samsung has much better share of the markets.

Japanese 2G system is based on Docomo's own TDMA technology and isn't compatible with the international standard GSM. While this allows Docomo to evolve the system faster and benefit from the success of i-mode in Japan, the incompatibility has casue Japanse phone vendors such as Panasonic, Sony and others the world market.

The world wide mobile phone market has been dominated by the MEN (Motorola, Ericsson, and Nokia) and three of them has combined market shares of 80% or so.

Right now, the battlefield for mobile phone market is in China who has 250 millions mobile subscribers and that's almost the whole population of the US. Chinese market is expected to double to 500 millions by 2007.

The battle in China is just the beginning and the next will be India with has only 5 millions of cell phone subscribers. With a population of 1 billions, there are plenty of growth opportunities.

Laying out the facts about the market, we can see how important Chinese cell phne market is today. Whoever gets Chinese market will get India market. Cell phone, much like computers, has almost the same price across the world. A handset costs $100 in the US will still cost $100 in China or Inida. In this regard, US market is relatively unimportant.

In late 2002, several Chinese vendors like Ningbo Bird, TCL, Haier and Legend announced that they would enter the Chinese cell phone market while was dominated by MEN with 80% market shares along with Samsung, Panasonic and Seimen for the rest, the Chinese vendors was laughed at by the press. The prediction was the Chinese vendors' combined market share would be about 10%. Early this year, the number was adjusted to 20% and the truth came out is that Chinese vendors now have 55% of the Chinese cell phone markets and Motorola was overtaken by Ningbo Bird which is now the #1 cell phone vendor in China.

However, with all the glory in gaining the market share, Chinese vendors was doing it by licensing, OEM, ODM the phones from vendors from other countries such as Korea, Taiwan, Europe, and US including Motorola. Lack of the control to the core technologies, the Chinese vendors can't gain huge profit from their market share and also means their market domination depends on the competitors to supply the technologies.

Now, with market shares at hand, the Chinese vendors will be able to support domestic vendors to develop technologies for cell phones. Europe GSM has long developing the model of having large companies like Nokia or Ericsson in charge of the global branding and marketing while supporting start-ups at home to do design and development. Same thing is going to happen in China. The company E28 in the story was founded by top level executive of Motorola's China operation.

In conclusion, Japanese vendors are niche in the global cell phone markets. US cell phones market isn't important because there is no market growth and the standard used in the US is also not standard compliant (GSM runs at 900/1800 Mhz while US GSM called PCS runs at 1900 Mhz). The real market of significant is China today and India tomorrow and whoever wins China today will have India tomorrow.

the chinese are building a maglev shanghai-beijing

Check your facts.

Instead, there will be one huge mammoth of a country squashing a football-field-sized other country.

Here's an interesting tidbit: Taiwan happens to be a major trading partner with China. Many enterprises on the mainland are owned and/or operated by Taiwanese. This despite the two countries being in a technical state of war!

You have to consider this in the context of Taiwan's historical relationship with China (or the rest of China, depending on your party line). The old Chinese Empire always claimed to own Taiwan, even though they did a very poor job of enforcing that claim. And whenever there was a civil war or dynastic dispute, the underdog would always retreat to Taiwan. They did this because the island is notoriously hard to invade, not having a lot of good beaches or harbors. The last time this happened was in 1948, when the Chinese Nationalists, having lost their civil war with the Communists, retreated to Tawain and set up a sort of government in exile. Said government was recognized by much of the world (including the U.S. and the UN) as the legal authority in all of China, right up until 1971.

For nearly 40 years, the Nationalists ruled Taiwan like an occupying power, tolerating no dissent. They were finally forced to allow elections in 1992. This resulted in the old mainland gerontocracy being replaced by local politicians, many of which are strong believers in Taiwanese independence. The big irony of the current situation is that this independence movement is directed as much at the old Nationalists as at the mainland government, and the Nationalists are now effectively allied with their Communist enemies!

What Beijing would really like to do is somehow take over Taiwan peacefully, the way they did with Hong Kong and Macao. They would then crack down on the most conspicuous dissent, but do their best to leave the Taiwanese free market in place. That might sound like a strange strategy for the last remaining Marxist-Leninist state. But that state is run by an elite that is as anxious to turn a buck as any Wall Street tycoon.

SARS fatality rate:14-15%
AIDS fatality rate:90% when untreated Regardless of how its transmitted, it should be a bigger deal. Its not like people go through life without having sex, you can go longer than without breathing, but there are only 6 degrees of seperation between you and anyone else on the planet, so if you have sex with six diferent partners, and they all had sex with six different partners, etc. P{retty soon everybody has it. "Its not important because its transmitted sexually" is a load of crap. Its important because it kills alot of people.

If you, and I'm guessing that you're from the USA, published a security exploit before notifying the vendor, would it follow that your motive must have been America's intention to harm the vendor? Of course it wouldn't. Your logic is fallacious.

On another note, although China, like many countries is embracing open source software, it doesn't mean that they are anti-Microsoft. Adopting open source software is a reasonable thing to do, independent of other considerations.

I would keep my damned perverted teenager away from those perverted websites.

I would note that 100 year floods can occur 2 years in a row, so the search for near-Earth asteroids should continue

I think 'Want to see my tattoo?' would be a more honest pick-up line than relying on an electronic beeper that goes off when I get near someone with supposed similar interests



Oh dang - wrong post - hmm.... maybe not -

From perverted teenager result

From 100 year flood search

From 'Want to see my tattoo?'

Just too much fun!

That's true, and Japan has been meaning to change the constitution to have an army again.

AND... China spent this money even though large numbers of people in their own country struggle in abject poverty.

This is true. Sadly.

AND ...China spends a larger percentage of their GDP on the military than the US. According to the US government docs I could find, the US spends 4% of their GDP on their military. China spends 68-80 billion a year, which, although less money than spent by the US, is a significantly larger percentage of their GDP than US spending is.

Your figure is quite wrong. According to People Daily. The military budget for 2002 is around 166.2 billion yuan, while their estimated GDP for 2002 is around 10.217 trillion yuan. Therefore China only spends around 1.62% GDP on military.

While US spent US$343.2 billion on military out of US$10.4 GDP, which is 3.3% GDP on military - more than a double whereas in China.

What planet are you from?

I can tell from you nearly fictional facts and figures we are definitely not living in the same planet or dimension. :)

AND... China spent this money even though large numbers of people in their own country struggle in abject poverty.

This is true. Sadly.

AND ...China spends a larger percentage of their GDP on the military than the US. According to the US government docs I could find, the US spends 4% of their GDP on their military. China spends 68-80 billion a year, which, although less money than spent by the US, is a significantly larger percentage of their GDP than US spending is.

Your figure is quite wrong. According to People Daily. The military budget for 2002 is around 166.2 billion yuan, while their estimated GDP for 2002 is around 10.217 trillion yuan. Therefore China only spends around 1.62% GDP on military.

While US spent US$343.2 billion on military out of US$10.4 GDP, which is 3.3% GDP on military - more than a double whereas in China.

What planet are you from?

I can tell from you nearly fictional facts and figures we are definitely not living in the same planet or dimension. :)

1. China People's Daily

The "China People's Daily" is run by the Beijing government and is the mouthpiece of the Chinese government. It has conducted a number of terrorist activities in Tibet. You can find some descriptions at Tibet Online and Amnesty International.

Further, operatives of the "China People's Daily" were stationed at the Chinese embassy in Serbia in 1999 when the embassed was hit by American bombs. The majority of people in China (which includes Taiwan Province and Hong Kong) supported the Serbian military aggression against the Kosovars. The Serbians executed thousands of men, women, and children in Kosovar in an attempt to remove them from Kosovo: the Serbia military raped the women and slit the throats of the children. The Americans sent military forces to Serbia in an attempt to stop the genocide. At the time, Chinese operatives of the "China People's Daily" operated secretly from the relative safety of the embassy and relayed communications to the Serbian army and helped the Serbians to defeat American electronic warfare. (reference: "NATO hit embassy on purpose")

The Serbian aggression against the Kosovars was strongly supported by the Chinese and is the first major case of genocide after the genocide of the Cambodians by Pol Pot. The Chinese also supported Pol Pot.

... from the desk of the reporter

Le Temple des Lamas YHL HAND

The ironic thing about that, of course, is that the Chinese remember Nixon quite fondly; he broke through to China with his '72 visit, a pretty amazing feat soon overshadowed by the famous scandal.

...I wonder if China is going to end up as the next stand-in for the old Soviet union. Espionage, nuke stand-offs and a race to the moon are already in the wings.

Just to clear one point, the rocket that exploded is not intended for space exploration; it is the third generation of the "VLS - Veiculo Lancador de Satelites", or Satellite Launch Vehicle.

It is a rocket to boost satellites to orbit, a scientific and commercial endeavor, since being close to the Equator make the Alcantara base in Brazil a good launch site.

More on english:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200308/23/eng200 30823_122894.shtml

More on Google News:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe= utf-8&q=brazil+vls&sa=N&tab=wn

Thanks,
a Brazilian.

• SCO Members Begin Anti-terrorism Maneuvers

Hong Kong is part of China. The Chinese have developed a processor that will be the backbone of its information-technology infrastructure. It is an issue for the USA, economically and militarily.

The Chinese government, via "China People's Daily", have several employees who post messages in American discussion boards whenever the topic of China arises. It is a concerted attempt at propaganda.

I suggest that the moderators of Slashdot contact the former moderators of the old CNN message boards and the moderators of the current message boards at "The New York Times". Whenever a message that criticizes China appears in either of those message boards, the message boards suddenly become inundated with mysterious messages that viciously attack the parent message.

A similar game is being played here, on SlashDot, by pro-China posters. They deliberately try to sway the moderators to mod down messages criticizing China. Several of the pro-China posters are affiliated with the Chinese government.

Look, I would gladly agree that the US is spending too much on the military. But you seem to be exagerating when you state "America spends vastly more per capita on the military on Earth". Here is the obligatory link. You can see that the US per capita defense budget in 2001 was approximately $950 (adjusted for inflation to 1995 terms). France's budget was about $775 per person. Norway's was over $800 per person (Norway!?!). Yep, the US spends more per capita. But not "vastly more". Certainly far less than 2 or 3 times as anyone else.

I think a better method of comparison is to look at defense spending as a percentage of GDP. Here is another page that demonstrates this. The US spends about 3% of its GDP on defense. This is lower than Greece and Turkey by a wide margin. In fact, it is less than half the percentage China spends.

I'm not trying to justify what the US spends on its military. But I think it distorts the figures when one looks at US military spending without considering the size of the US economy or the per capita wealth enjoyed in the US. The US still does spend more per capita than Europe. But, then again, Europe had to call on the US to help them solve the Yugoslavia situation. With the relative ineffectiveness of European military spending, one could argue just as easily that Europe should increase its military spending (again, not my argument....but I don't like to hear statistics get twisted, and I thought this deserved a response).

Yep. Not just "negation", but also other countries have seen the advantage that GPS guided weapons gives to the US, and are no doubt paying keen attention to the US's recently announced global reach weapons plans:

US to Develop High-speed Drone with Global Reach

What with the European Space Agency now in collaboration with the Russian's and China's newfound interest, it looks like the next space (weapons) race may be on.

Somehow I get the funny feeling that the same people who write press releases for the BSA also do the news for the PRC's "People's Daily".

With as much water as Lake Superior, the reservoir will stretch 385 miles east to west and more than one mile north to south and 600 feet deep

I dunno. Will Jiang Zemin start building mines below the dam and end up pissing off the Ents? If so, I don't think his plan holds water, if you pardon the expression

Works every time (just ask some former relatives of some Iraqi families).

that pile of crap ? just ask the relative of the former apache crew...
shot down by a farmer with a rifle and was downed in Afghanistan or simply just crashed...
you should be moded funny :-)

But how is it that we have had troops (US gov. employees) all over the world doing the most dangerous things for decades but 7 astronauts are unreasonable losses?

Without trying to trivialise death, it must be said that this is a brilliant point. Soldiers, people with the dual purpose - at least from a government standpoint - of killing and being killed. The U.S. has just come out of a war in which at least 79 American soliders were killed. Yet, a politician has the balls to stand up and say what seems to be, "It's okay to die for your country, just make sure there's a gun in your hand."

A truly disgusting man, with little more in mind than the lining of his own pockets.

Yes, Russia is nominally capitalist now, but the Communist Party is still in a position of some power. Remember that while Boris Yeltsin was thought to have rid Russia of the Communist Party, he did not. So it's not quite that simple.

The country didn't become broke by turning capitalist. The country became broke because they lost the Cold War. They spent all of their resources trying to keep up with United States, and the U.S. just basically outspent them, particularly during the Reagan Administration.

To my knowledge, there are no communist countries that don't have money. Surely you know that China has currency, right? And China, by any accounting today, is the largest communist country in the world. Most people in China have a much lower standard of living then elsewhere in the world, particularly in comparison to the U.S.

Chinese citizens recieve only about US$35 a month from the Chinese government. This is expected to meet the basic needs of those in poverty. Could *you* live on $35 a month? Anyway, according to the article, there are about 14 million impoverished city residents in the country, and only about 4 million of those recieve even the minimum allowance.

The yearly per capita disposable income of the average Chinese person is about $620 for urban residents and $250 for rural dwellers, compared with the national U.S. average of $25,000. (Disposable income is the amount of money available for spending or saving.) Considering China has something like the 4th or 5th largest GDP in the world, this sucks. So if you measure the success of a sociopolitical/economic system by the standard of living of its people, the U.S.-style capitalism beats Chinese-style communism hands down. The results are similar for other communist countries.

Quite honestly, your post comes off as quite naive. Just guessing, but I'd have to guess you're a high school student right?

Yes, Russia is nominally capitalist now, but the Communist Party is still in a position of some power. Remember that while Boris Yeltsin was thought to have rid Russia of the Communist Party, he did not. So it's not quite that simple.

The country didn't become broke by turning capitalist. The country became broke because they lost the Cold War. They spent all of their resources trying to keep up with United States, and the U.S. just basically outspent them, particularly during the Reagan Administration.

To my knowledge, there are no communist countries that don't have money. Surely you know that China has currency, right? And China, by any accounting today, is the largest communist country in the world. Most people in China have a much lower standard of living then elsewhere in the world, particularly in comparison to the U.S.

Chinese citizens recieve only about US$35 a month from the Chinese government. This is expected to meet the basic needs of those in poverty. Could *you* live on $35 a month? Anyway, according to the article, there are about 14 million impoverished city residents in the country, and only about 4 million of those recieve even the minimum allowance.

The yearly per capita disposable income of the average Chinese person is about $620 for urban residents and $250 for rural dwellers, compared with the national U.S. average of $25,000. (Disposable income is the amount of money available for spending or saving.) Considering China has something like the 4th or 5th largest GDP in the world, this sucks. So if you measure the success of a sociopolitical/economic system by the standard of living of its people, the U.S.-style capitalism beats Chinese-style communism hands down. The results are similar for other communist countries.

Quite honestly, your post comes off as quite naive. Just guessing, but I'd have to guess you're a high school student right?

The Beijing police "hotmail" has received more than 200 communications, including 69 e-mails, from local residents since it was opened a month ago, a spokesman with the Beijing Public Security Bureau said Tuesday.

The bureau has classified all the communications, and dealt with those within their responsibility, while sending others to the relevant departments for resolution, the spokesman said.

Beijing citizens reported clues to robberies, prostitution, sales of fake certificates, pornographic VCDs and security breaches.

The police "hotmail" was opened for the public to report on criminal and security issues in the capital, and mails to "Mailbox 110" are free. E-mails can be sent to www.bjgaj.gov.cn. The police have promised to keep all information and details of the senders confidential.

" Well, for many reasons, for one, our Samba server locked up and kicked everyone out for no reason yesterday..."

For every 1 Linux nightmare story I have 101 M$ nightmare stories. What about China Internet Attacked by Worm Virus? This affected an entire nation! Not just one country. Also, samba is NOT Linux, it is a program that uses a reverse engineered version of the SMB protocol. It's only purpose it to let a Linux box interact with a M$ Network. If you want to set up a stable Linux network, you don't use samba.

China is planning on becoming a lot more active in space shortly. I sort of feel this will give the US a huge incentive to give more funding to NASA, there's nothing like competition to get the money pumping in.

Actually that only holds for less qualified Chinese. The trend is already reversing (none Chinese source)

Alan's radical prognosis was very much a forward looking statement. China is a future power to reckon with I just hope that they will find their own path towards democratic structures without further blood shed. I also hope that the IP pendelum will swing back before it causes too much harm to the people inside and outside the US.

Let me see if I have this straight.

The government that brought us arms sales to Iran's Ayatollah, supported al Queda et al when it was Russia they were fighting, funded CIA-trained death squads in South America, that has killed a million-plus Iraqi children with their embargo (and noted "we think the price is worth it"), who have so far provded Turkey with $15B (yes, billions) worth of weapons and training to fight the Northern Kurds (who the U.S. claims to be protecting from Saddam) ...this is the same government which claims to want to protect my child (yes, I have one) from the implication of violence?

If I want to keep my daughter away from violence, I think my best bet is to turn off the nightly news and give her permission to skip history class.

"The robot named BHR-1 passed appraisal on Saturday as a major project for the Beijing University of Science and Engineering under China's High and New Technology Research and Development Program, the official Xinhua news agency said."

I think this is the original story that was cut and pasted. I Haven't been able to find anything else on it. I can't even find a home page for the school in question, only obscure references in other not very informative articles. such as... this

I'd love to see a more technical description of how it balances itself without an equilibrium and thousands of years of evolution.

-niles

When the USSR invaded Afghanistan, the United States assisted them in fighting the Soviets. link

During the Iraq-Iran war, the United States provided intelligence to the Iraqis. link

China is the new America.

Really?

http://iso.hrichina.org/iso/
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/hr_facts.html
http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/nasia/china/
http://www.hrw.org/asia/china.php

Or you could listen to the Chinese government propaganda...
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/zhuanti/Zhuanti_ 29.html

Well, I -am- actually amazed at the progression of China's CPU, but I'm even more stunned that Slashdot checked to see if this was already posted...

Here's an October story from the People's Daily (and another from September) to see how they see it...

Well, I -am- actually amazed at the progression of China's CPU, but I'm even more stunned that Slashdot checked to see if this was already posted...

Here's an October story from the People's Daily (and another from September) to see how they see it...

Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, November 28, 2002
Fed Report Says US Economy Growing Slowly The US economy is growing slowly but business conditions are patchy and the jobs market is soft, the US Federal Reserve (Fed) said in a report Wednesday.
The US economy is growing slowly but business conditions are patchy and the jobs market is soft, the US Federal Reserve (Fed) said in a report Wednesday. "Economic activity grew slowly, on balance, in late October and early November," said the report known as the "Beige Book" for the color of its cover. It said that buying activity continued into mid-November with six of the Fed's regional bank districts reporting improvement in general merchandise sales despite the fact that auto sales were down across the country. "Service industry activity was generally sluggish," the report said. Manufacturing remained soft in most districts and business investment was limited. "Most Reserve banks reported nearly steady prices at both the consumer and producer levels, with the exception of shipping charges, which have risen in the wake of the West Coast port disruptions." The report will be used by Fed policy-makers when they meet on Dec. 10 to consider whether to cut interest rates again to spur the US economy. With a string of stronger-than-expected economic reports, many economists believe the US Fed will leave its target for overnight bank lending unchanged at a 41-year low of 1.25 percent. The Fed cut the federal funds rate by a half percentage point at its last meeting on Nov. 6.