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China Walks Out of Wireless LAN Security Talks
Ant writes "A CommsDesign article reports that China walked out of a wireless standards meeting this week, accusing the International Organization for Standardization of favoring the IEEE's 802.11i ANSI-certified wireless LAN security scheme over its own controverisal proposal, EE Times has learned.
The gambit came after China's Wireless Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) security scheme was withdrawn and placed on a slower track by the ISO." From the article: "China initially agreed last year to refrain from making its WAPI security scheme mandatory for wireless LAN equipment in China. It then approached ISO with a fast-track submission in an effort to make WAPI an international security standard."
Remember, China still has a repressive few who are determined to remain in power and if strangling wireless LAN in their own country helps them stay in power one more day, so much the better for them. Not much of a difference between them and the old emperors and such, just exert power differently...
"We get signal!"
"No you don't, and off to reeducation camp for you!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Isn't that sort of oxymoronic? In a communist country how does one fit "privacy" and/or "secure" encryption? This is obviously for public use. The government can adopt whatever security standards they dam please for their own communications.
As lighthearted as your comment is... that's the scary part of all this. I imagine it terrifies the large communcations and networking firms.
The catch-22 that so many vendors are facing is to not participate in such a huge market (bad idea) or be forced to partner with a company in China to produce the product locally for China [because WAPI won't be licensed to foreign firms] (also a bad idea). It's worse than a prisoner's dilemma, because you already KNOW that Huawei and others will provide equipment that is "legal" in China... so the ability to "win" by refusing to play (both prisoners remaining silent) is not dependent on your competitors. It is - precisely - zero. Refusing to enter the Chinese market also reduces competition and price pressure in China, allowing local firms an even better base with which to compete with firms in the US and EU.
This just stinks, in my opinion. It goes right along with China selecting the EVD standard for DVDs. It's playing a market power game... and while it's effective (and just might work in this case), it doesn't make the 'game' any less dangerous for US and EU firms.
"is that Communist ideals, always and everywhere, fail in practice"
Like most unfounded generalizations, thats not really true.
They only thing thats failed recently was Stalinism which was really the only thing resembling Communism that was tried on a large scale in the last century and it was really more Authoritarian Socialism. Trotsky advocated a substantially more democratic form of communism, abhorred Stalin's repressive tendencies, but lost a power struggle and his life. If Trotsky had won, the last century would have been a much different place. All that was proved in China and Russia in the last century is that dictators can be ruthless and brutal, both Stalin and Mao were, but so were Hitler, and Mussolini, Pinochet and the Shah of Iran...this list goes on for a while so for brevity I'll stop here.
Before humankind developed agriculture and started economies man lived under "primitive communism". It worked quite well and was substantially less devastating to our planet than capitalism has proven to be. It was the social form most native american tribes practiced and worked quite well until it encountered imperialist capitalism.
A few other examples of communism that doesn't really fit your mold were the earliest Christians which is somewhat ironic. They did in many instances live in communes and if you actually read Christ's teaching without bias he is in most instances advocating Communism and abandonment of personal property. Some community's like the Amish and Mennonite's live in communes today for this reason, its the closest economic model to the teachings of Christ. Their communes aren't perfect but many work quite well. The problem with modern Christian's are most of them like their wealth and property so they turn a blind eye to Christ's teachings on the subject.
Its a little hard to quantify what system China runs under these days but it appears to mostly be a Stalinist dictatorship with a mix of capitalist economics though its economy is so heavily controlled by the government it recently resembles Fascism more than Communism or Capitalism. China does present a problem with your generalization because it was for a very long time Stalinist Communism and its Communist party is still very much intact and now very successful though I grant you its sure not pure communism anymore.
Cuba certainly isn't perfect but it does get by and it has a few things over the U.S. In particular, quality health care for everyone, not just those who can afford it like in the U.S., and higher education for everyone based on merit and not based on who can afford it. Its certainly not a wealthy country but it does get buy which is amazing considering it has to endure economic boycott from its largest neighbor and has been under various forms of attack from the U.S. since its inception.
I'll probably get flamed for it but Gates and Balmer were right when they said it. The Linux community is in most respects a stateless communist community where everyone is contributing to the common good and no one is exacting property rights in return. It is an example of a true virtual commune that seems to work very well.
"the memory of the hundreds of millions killed by Communism"
Nice attempt to say:
Communism = killing millions of people
There isn't really any correlation. For example:
Fascism = killing millions of people too
Capitalism = killing millions of people too
Americans murdered millions of native American's by various means and generally practiced ethnic cleansing to push them out of their ancestral homes, and on to lands that were for the most part desolate and encouraged them to wither away and die. Many were killed in the process either directly or through famine and disease as Americans destroyed their primitive communes and their way of life in the name of profit and imperialism, the term used was "Manifest Destiny".
American's inflicted slavery on millions of people plucked out of Africa ag
@de_machina