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http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/fists.html

KFG

Gotta love the wording here:
"The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely published..." Emphasis mine.
Fake? The only fake part is that it would be a Cuban attack, as opposed to actually being American. Please don't try to tell me that intentionally killing innocent Cubans is any less despicable than killing innocent Americans.

But seriously, the government would never do such a thing because they would never get away with it!

Jim Jones is the president and you're drinking his Kool-Aid. Your statement is a perfect explaination of just how they do get away with it. The government covered up the lies of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which never happened, specifically to justify a war. It caused the death of over 58,000 Americans and 2 million(!) Vietnamese. Yes, the government will kill ANYBODY that gets in its way. Oh, and "Remember the Maine". Use that as a reminder that we don't really know who was behind 9/11.

Remember the Maine!

I have first-hand knowledge of both Thailand and China, and I can tell you that the hardware there is already cheap by our standards. But it's still beyond the reach of most of the population. Ballmer does make a semi-interesting point about the cybercafes (although he manages to scramble it, like most of his other utterances)--the people can't afford to have a PC at home, so they have adopted a scheme that they can afford. And therein lies a fundamental point that Ballmer and Co. just don't get: They would have to practically give away PC's with Windows already loaded to get these people interesting in taking one home with them.

The other issue facing MS is one of national pride, which they also don't seem to get. I know from my own experiences that many Asians regard MS as an arrogant and obnoxious US company, and their monopolistic game plan causes a significant amount of anxiety, and some degree of embarrassment, for both governments and end users. When they pay for Windows, where does their money go? Back into Thailand or China? No, it goes into Ballmer and Gates' pockets. And then they get to watch Ballmer on video do his "monkey-boy" prancing at MS presentations, or Gates going on about his great vision for the future, which is something that even makes me squirm to watch. Do the Thai and the Chinese resent giving their hard-earned money to a bunch of greedy American bozos? Hell yes they do.

Trying to sell marginally usable and drastically overpriced software to people in other countries without giving them some reason to feel good about their money going overseas is never going to work for MS, or any other company. You've got to give something back, and you've got to make the buyers and users feel like they have a stake in it, otherwise you're just another foreigner intent on taking advantage of the locals. The Chinese still remember the Boxer Rebellion and the occupation of Manchuria very clearly. A little thought will show why the Chinese want their own version of Linux and not Windows on their PC's. It makes perfect sense from a Chinese point of view.

Ballmer's biggest problem with Asia is that he appears to be completely incapable, like many Americans, of even recognizing that the Chinese, the Thai, or anyone else in Asia, might have a point of view different than his own.

(Bigoted crap flushed)

You know, I've been seeing more and more anti-China/Chinese garbage on the web over the last 18 months or so--stuff about how evil and totalitarian their government is, how the Chinese people as a whole are "bent on conquest;" how China will be the United States' chief rival in the coming years and that "something should be done about it" now, before it's "too late." And some of it comes not just from net.nazis such as yourself, but from policy makers in places like the Bush administration and the Pentagon. I'm even hearing whispers about how the "brutish" Chinese will eventually have to be brought to "democracy" at bayonet point, as we are currently doing to Iraq.

No love lost for the authors of Tiananmen Square, but still I hope the Chinese, both government and people, are keeping an eye on the U.S. A new era of colonial degradation won't be any better for them in the 21st Century then it was the last time around.

Amnesty says US leads in human rights violations following September 11

Released secret documents prove US involvement in Chile

A very brief timeline of US intervention in Latin America and the Carribean

A Cato institute report linking terrorism against the US directly to US interventionist policies worldwide

The Age of Imperialism: an online history of the US

I could keep looking up stuff like this for hours, but I'm getting bored and depressed. Try on google, look for US massacre, intervention, human rights abuse, etc. We Americans need to educate ourselves on what our government has been doing in our name while we weren't looking.

yellow journalism

Those nasty tech journals have dragged the precious name of journalism through the mud.

Despite the fact that that inane sock puppets get segments on morning news shows.

Despite the fact that this is America's second favorite newspaper.

Despite the fact that this paper has any chance of gaining respectability, and has lost circulation because the mainstream media now covers what it's been covering for years.

Despite the fact that this guy is let anywhere near a camera, even though he is blatenly biased and seems to have fabricated data in one of his reports.

Look. If you're reading slashdot to get an unbiased opinion of the world you live in, you need to have your head examined. I read it to find out when Linus has another baby or what the latest crazy thing that ESR or RMS has said. I believe that for various reasons, a lot of tech journals have very little in the way of ethics, and that software and hardware reviews are often favorablewhen the shouldn't be.

OTOH, I challenge you to pick up Cosmopolitan and find an article taht says "Such-and-such lip moisturiser is crap" or "Most designer fashions aren't worth the extra money." Why? Partly ad revenues, and partly that plugging products sells magazines, and panning them doesn't. Do you think that car magazines would sell vey well if they had "2002: A mediocre year for cars" splashed on the front cover?

The tech magazine boom has opened up a lot of information to the average reader, but this has come at a price. We all have to evaluate the truthfulness or slant of what we read. This isn't a new problem, in fact it's a very old problem Now there's just more of it.