Scroll to the bottom of this
page for more information on the complexities of this corner
of the world.
Watch this:
Independence: 221 BC (unification
under the Qin or Ch'in Dynasty 221 BC; Qing or Ch'ing Dynasty
replaced by the Republic on 12 February 1912; People's Republic
established 1 October 1949)
Wow!
221 years ***BEFORE*** Jesus H. Fucking Christ (yeah,
the dude who got nailed 1968 years ago) !
Note to Katz: go to Mongolia. Don't bring any techno-gizmos
at all. Remain unwired for a month. Watch the traders and tribesmen.
See how they interact.
So what do they do in response? They forcibly imprison
24 of our people. 24 people denied their freedom and separated
from their friends, coworkers, and family.
Those 24 people (as well as the one who died) are **SOLDIERS**,
who are, by definition **EXPENDABLE**. It's even part of
their JOB DESCRIPTION.
This is the true face of Communism.
And the true face of capitalism wants to send people to jail
for copying songs or movies.
The rhetoric that comes out of their country is largely
overlooked in the US. Many of their leaders (political, social,
military) have spoken openly of their expectations that the US
will become a "has been" in the coming century.
[...]
And can you blame them, when in the USA, the pityfully small
movie and recording industry demands that the much bigger
computer industry includes compulsory copy protection in storage
devices, to insure that it's wares aren't fairly used???
Nationalism is outdated, and rather illogical in the first
place.[...]
Words that can only come from a citizen of an imperialist nation.
You would not say that if your nation was dominated by another
one whose values are quite alien to yours, and forced to follow alien rules.
If a nation simply appeases at each standoff, then the smaller
wolves will gain some bravery. Look at Israel and it's neighbors..
They've gone to war numerous times to assert themselves in the
bullied area. Sure they don't play nicely either, but they're
still here as a nation because they have the means and the resolve
to confront bullies.
That's because the american media is pro-israeli and is thus
able to make public opinion believe that israel is good whilst
the arabs are bad. Thus, no anti-israeli politican ever gets elected
(they get weeded-out pretty fast) and so, the official US policy
is to back israel.
In fact, the arabs are quite stupid in that matter; if they
were any intelligent, they'd make peace with the jews, and then,
deprived of an ennemy, the jews would kill each other...
Nothing could be futher from the truth. China is a xenophobic,
imperialist, racist nation. Only the most xenophobic people
on earth could have come up with the Great Wall of China. China
has always shunned the outside world, even when the ideas from
the outside world would better their society. That is why
the nation that 1000 years ago was the greatest nation on earth
no longer is the greatest nation on earth. They cannot learn
from the outside world.
If I'm not mistaken, Communism is an European invention.
And Mao used Communism to better the life of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS
of peasants. So what is your point?
The *REST* of the planet is trying their damndest to get
Madonna and McDonalds in their countries as fast as they can.
The LEADERS in other countries have a ton of ideas about how
the world should be run -- all of them bad. American doesn't
want to rule the world, they just want to have a good time on
Saturday night.
Correction. Mc Donald and Watchamacallit records marketing
directors are making their damnest to **SHOVE** Madonna
& Mc Donald's down the throats of other countries who normally
wouldn't give a shit about that. The rest of americans **ONLY**
want to have a good time on Saturday night.
Another story that I seem to recall: In the 1970's, when
a Russian spy plane was forced to land near Japan, it was taken
quietly into an American base, dismantled, and sent back to Russia
in pieces two/three weeks later.
Was the pilot at least offered political asylum? For it's sure
that after that stunt, he'd end up in the G.O.U.L.A.G...
As a side note. KAL 007 was a Korean Air Lines 747 passenger
jet that penetrated Soviet airspace accidently and was shot down.
It is interesting to note that its course matched what a recon
penetration would look like, and a 747 on radar looks just like
an E-2 (military 707). That said, the Soviet pilots got a visual
ID before they fired, so they knew it was a civilian aircraft.
KAL has a long history of having planes straying over soviet
airspace. In the late 1970's, a KAL Boeing 707 was shot down over
the Soviet-Union and was able to do an emergency landing on a
frozen lake. Turns out that it was a gross navigational error
where the crew mistook the geographic north pole with the magnetic
north pole; the plane turned changed almost 180 near the
pole; when they were shot down, they were damn sure they were
over Canada...
As for KAL-007 (what a number!), there were american spyplanes
in the vicinity when it got shot down.
Of course, the Chinese pilot was already violating FAA
rules. Specifically, 91.111.b states that formation flying requires
arrangement with each of the involved pilots.
I didn't know that the FAA had jurisdiction over International
airspace, or over Chinese airspace, for that matter...
Blackmail. Work at any corporation and you will immediately
find out that they do something terribly illegal. In fact, if you're in
IT, you're definitely going to find out. You manage their information.
You see everything. You know all. When the time comes you can truly make
them pay.
Indeed. I know someone who was managing the IT ressources of a small manufacturer.
That small manufacturer once decided to fund a political party, in contravention
to the political financing law (no corporation can give money to a political
party, only individuals, and to a maximum of $100 per year). So, they asked
my friend to make every employee donate $100 to that political party during
the next payroll iteration.
Of course, the political party in question was not the one most of the
employees voted for, so he blew the whistle on the unionized employees
who, got pretty pissed-off at it. To make a story short, the company owner's
got his Mecedes torched, his office was smeared with grease and other gooey
disgusting stuff, his lawn sprinkled with pesticides and fertilizer at
different places, and plenty of the employees who "gave" to the political
party went to the political party to demand their money back, and my friend
provided information about all this to the Elections Supervisor office,
who promptly laid charges against the company and the political party (the
candidate was later convincted of election fraud for paying people to vote
several times for him).
The company, each director, the political party and the candidate were
each fined six times the amount of the "contributions", it's directors
and the candidate deprived of civic rights for 10 years (they can't vote
and can't present themselves as candidates to elections),
Better yet, the insurance company didn't pay a cent for the torched
Mecedes, as it was able to allege that the owner deliberately torched it
himself to commit insurance fraud (the owner didn't bother fighting this
as he was entangled with the bigger legal problems with the Elections Supervisor),
and when my friend was fired for blowing the whistle, he successfully went
to court and was reinstated with indexed back pay (the case took two years).
And the company had to keep his replacement, too.
So, as you can see, in a Socialist country, democracy cannot be corrupted
easily, and the workers cannot be screwed either.
2. Investment: You DO NOT need it, and it is NOT worth the
trouble! Furthermore the money is non-existant anyway, there is only a
weak promise. If you push yourself, you would be surprised at how much
you are capable of by yourself. There are government and industry bodies
that provide assistance and grants, WITHOUT you having to sell your soul.
Consult these instead, apply for a grant if you need it.
Now, let's wait until those rabid anglo-saxon libertarians start harping
about the government being evil...
We are, IMO, far too fixated on "the children" these
days. Society and civilization exist for the benefit of all their members,
not solely the next generation. We do children a disservice when we
overprotect them - it renders them incapable of dealing with the wider
world when they are released into it. [...]
This is total oxdung. Society doesn't give a flying fuck about children,
given the way pollution is spewed forth and natural ressources are being
wastefully depleted, in order to bring profits to a very select few. The
next generation will be stuck with an awesome cleaning bill!!!
Am I from the US? Nope.. Finland. But if the USA is like
you say it is ("our entire system of political philosophy is based on the
concept that government is essentially evil and oppressive and must be
carefully limited by the people to restrain its power") then I think it's
a little funny to call it "land of the free". Sounds pretty opressed to
me...
That's because England, the seminal culture of the USA (no matter
how much the americans drum being a colony that broke free) had quite a
few "revolutions" where powerful barons revolted against weak kings, and
thus the notion that the State (the king's power) was nocious was slowly,
over the centuries, brewed into public opinion.
The corolary is that it is not seen wrong that the powerful barons/big
corporations are able to accumulate so much wealth and influence so they
can directly challenge the State/king. This is why the US is so corrupted:
it's okay for powerful corporations to abuse the people, but the State
cannot abuse the people (or big powerful corporations).
The police are not on "my" side of anything. Police can
do very little to directly protect you, and a hell of a lot to destroy
your life. I'm increasingly of the opinion that the idea of large full-time
professional police forces, at least as we currently structure them,
is a failed experiment.
There should be a national service program, in where everyone, to earn
his citizenship, has to do service in the police forces. The high number
of enlisted people amongst professionnal officers should ensure that there
would be no assault on private rights by professional police force officers.
I used to live in an area in North Wales where a fairly
comprehensive network of security cameras were fitted. After one year,
the violent crime figures in that area were down something like 40-50%
on the previous year.
And the violent crime rate went up something like 40-50% in the
unsurveillanced neighbouring areas, right?
It's like when you drive out the pimps and the prostitutes from a district,
they just move elsewhere.
That's a so fucking typically anglo-saxon "solution": drive the problem elsewhere,
so someone else is stuck with it.
The composite, made of fiberglass and copper,
caused microwaves shot through it to bend in an opposite direction
than the laws of physics predict, making it the first material
to have a ``negative index of refraction,'' physicists said in
a study appearing in the journal Science.
Fiberglass and copper, eh? Well, how about the fiberglass
REFRACTING it in the PROPER direction, and right after
the copper REFLECTS it exactly the other way????
--
Re:If there is a will, there is a way (to prison)
on
CPRM Voted Down
·
· Score: 2
The DMCA was passed into US law to comply with an international treaty. You'll get yours soon enough.
Here, courts will not penalize someone for exercing his fair use rights.
Still, this seems unlikely. People want.com. They don't
want country codes, and they don't want the other minor ones.
I don't want.com (et al.). I used to have a country code (it was
*FREE* until this year), but the morons-in-"charge" "opened" it to "competition",
and it would have cost me at lear $50 to get back my country code.
Fortunately, I was able to get a.org (et al.) for only $11 there.
I still miss my country code, just because the.com (et al.) really
needlessly obfuscates the Internet beyond reason.
Observations made by the Hubble telescope have produced
evidence that the universe is full of "dark energy", stuff that has mass
but does not emit nor block light,...
Ah, great! They finally found the styrofoam packing peanuts the
Universe was packed with when it still was in the crate...
--
Re:Where are IBM's priorities?
on
CPRM Voted Down
·
· Score: 2
This only marks you as under 40. Older programmers and hackers used to
regard IBM the way young kiddies do Microsoft, and with better reason, since
their monopoly was more complete and there weren't nice squishy linux sandboxes
to play in. Ouch! Did I just bite a troll? Hate when I do that, it's like
biting tinfoil.
I wonder if somehow, something bad will eventually happen to Microsoft and cause it to
shrink into underdog status, just like it happenned to IBM.
But, to do that, it's gonna have to be FRIGHTFULLY bad, and whatever
does it will have to be EVEN MORE frightful than Microsoft nowadays...
--
Re:If there is a will, there is a way (to prison)
on
CPRM Voted Down
·
· Score: 2
Even if those copy protected hard drives become your staple diet, what
stops people from developing mod-chips for them...?
Umm, how about five years in federal prison?
Er, this does applies ONLY to american citizens. Fortunately, 95% of
the earth population are NOT american citizens.
Slashdot Mirror
Watch this:
Wow!
221 years ***BEFORE*** Jesus H. Fucking Christ (yeah, the dude who got nailed 1968 years ago) !
Beats the shit outta 1776!!!!
--
Note to infonaut : Mongolia used to rule China.
--
Those 24 people (as well as the one who died) are **SOLDIERS**, who are, by definition **EXPENDABLE**. It's even part of their JOB DESCRIPTION.
And the true face of capitalism wants to send people to jail for copying songs or movies.
--
They also been around for 20 times longer than the U.S.
How about Dubya's plans to open up Alaska for oil drilling?
--
And can you blame them, when in the USA, the pityfully small movie and recording industry demands that the much bigger computer industry includes compulsory copy protection in storage devices, to insure that it's wares aren't fairly used???
--
Words that can only come from a citizen of an imperialist nation. You would not say that if your nation was dominated by another one whose values are quite alien to yours, and forced to follow alien rules.
--
That's because the american media is pro-israeli and is thus able to make public opinion believe that israel is good whilst the arabs are bad. Thus, no anti-israeli politican ever gets elected (they get weeded-out pretty fast) and so, the official US policy is to back israel.
In fact, the arabs are quite stupid in that matter; if they were any intelligent, they'd make peace with the jews, and then, deprived of an ennemy, the jews would kill each other...
--
If I'm not mistaken, Communism is an European invention. And Mao used Communism to better the life of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of peasants. So what is your point?
--
Correction. Mc Donald and Watchamacallit records marketing directors are making their damnest to **SHOVE** Madonna & Mc Donald's down the throats of other countries who normally wouldn't give a shit about that. The rest of americans **ONLY** want to have a good time on Saturday night.
--
Was the pilot at least offered political asylum? For it's sure that after that stunt, he'd end up in the G.O.U.L.A.G...
--
KAL has a long history of having planes straying over soviet airspace. In the late 1970's, a KAL Boeing 707 was shot down over the Soviet-Union and was able to do an emergency landing on a frozen lake. Turns out that it was a gross navigational error where the crew mistook the geographic north pole with the magnetic north pole; the plane turned changed almost 180 near the pole; when they were shot down, they were damn sure they were over Canada...
As for KAL-007 (what a number!), there were american spyplanes in the vicinity when it got shot down.
--
I didn't know that the FAA had jurisdiction over International airspace, or over Chinese airspace, for that matter...
--
Of course, the political party in question was not the one most of the employees voted for, so he blew the whistle on the unionized employees who, got pretty pissed-off at it. To make a story short, the company owner's got his Mecedes torched, his office was smeared with grease and other gooey disgusting stuff, his lawn sprinkled with pesticides and fertilizer at different places, and plenty of the employees who "gave" to the political party went to the political party to demand their money back, and my friend provided information about all this to the Elections Supervisor office, who promptly laid charges against the company and the political party (the candidate was later convincted of election fraud for paying people to vote several times for him).
The company, each director, the political party and the candidate were each fined six times the amount of the "contributions", it's directors and the candidate deprived of civic rights for 10 years (they can't vote and can't present themselves as candidates to elections),
Better yet, the insurance company didn't pay a cent for the torched Mecedes, as it was able to allege that the owner deliberately torched it himself to commit insurance fraud (the owner didn't bother fighting this as he was entangled with the bigger legal problems with the Elections Supervisor), and when my friend was fired for blowing the whistle, he successfully went to court and was reinstated with indexed back pay (the case took two years). And the company had to keep his replacement, too.
So, as you can see, in a Socialist country, democracy cannot be corrupted easily, and the workers cannot be screwed either.
(there. Score: 5: flamebait+3, troll+2)
--
--
--
--
That's because England, the seminal culture of the USA (no matter how much the americans drum being a colony that broke free) had quite a few "revolutions" where powerful barons revolted against weak kings, and thus the notion that the State (the king's power) was nocious was slowly, over the centuries, brewed into public opinion.
The corolary is that it is not seen wrong that the powerful barons/big corporations are able to accumulate so much wealth and influence so they can directly challenge the State/king. This is why the US is so corrupted: it's okay for powerful corporations to abuse the people, but the State cannot abuse the people (or big powerful corporations).
--
--
It's like when you drive out the pimps and the prostitutes from a district, they just move elsewhere.
That's a so fucking typically anglo-saxon "solution": drive the problem elsewhere, so someone else is stuck with it.
--
Fiberglass and copper, eh? Well, how about the fiberglass REFRACTING it in the PROPER direction, and right after the copper REFLECTS it exactly the other way????
--
--
Fortunately, I was able to get a .org (et al.) for only $11 there.
I still miss my country code, just because the .com (et al.) really
needlessly obfuscates the Internet beyond reason.
--
--
I wonder if somehow, something bad will eventually happen to Microsoft and cause it to shrink into underdog status, just like it happenned to IBM.
But, to do that, it's gonna have to be FRIGHTFULLY bad, and whatever does it will have to be EVEN MORE frightful than Microsoft nowadays...
--
Er, this does applies ONLY to american citizens. Fortunately, 95% of the earth population are NOT american citizens.
--