Not true, the average Chinese worker feels guilty about just walking out like that, they feel it's their duty to help, even when they're treated poorly.
Many of them could be in better jobs than the ones they find themselves stuck in.
Also, many employers there break the law. My ex in China works 7 days a week, despite that being against the law. She could get a better job easily, but she feels compelled to stay.
I take it that you've not been to China. These work standards are absolutely shocking even there.
The Chinese government does need to do more to fix these issues, alas the government there is very corrupt, especially the local government branches. While I was in China there was a riot with tens of thousands of people after the son of a local government official was accused of raping and killing a girl. In the city I was in it was common to see government cars parked out front of 'saunas' where they were going for prostitutes, whatever you think of that, prostitution is illegal in China, so the government officials don't even follow their own laws. I'm sure you also saw stories about things that went on during the olympics too.
So yes, the Chinese government needs to improve things, and one big step would be allowing workers to make a fuss when their working conditions are absolute shit. At the moment from what I know, it would be nigh impossible for workers to legally organize and try to improve their situation. At this point in China's progress I think that unions could be useful, though I'm not particuarly pro-union.
Those examples you made at the end, working in a coal mine for 14 hours, living in shanty-towns... That's right at the very very bottom of life in China, it's not so easy to find situations that bad now.
The types of problems China is facing now are similar to those in America around 1900, with corrupt employees exploiting their workers, and even bringing in the police to violently break up meetings between workers.
Amusing, I've heard though haven't confirmed, that the law in NZ where I live, says that the employer has to provide free coffee. I haven't confirmed this though.
Okay, just looked it up... It's not required by law, but is part of a long standing tradition, and so is uncommon for employers to not provide coffee and tea.
Mmmm, you're unfortunately right on those points. I've spent about 7 months in total, in China, and I know that some of the boss' there are exactly like you've described.
Complete arseholes that don't even understand that they're damaging the country that they claim to love. I myself love China, and would love to see it become an actually great country.
Silly anti-union thinking.
$100 for a keyboard just because working conidiots and pay rates are at a level that isn't apalling?
Unlikely. Stop exageratting please.
The job you're working in is the best one available to you? I some how doubt it.
It's the same in China. During my time in China, people there don't like their working conditions, but they feel like there is nothing they can do about it. If they complained their boss' would fire them, if workers organized and protested they'd probably get in a lot of trouble with police.
I don't think that it would take that much effort for foreign companies like HP, IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Mattel, and others to have someone that they pay to go and check out conditions in manufacturing plants before signing a contract.
I wonder how hard it would be to remove the middle man, and would this decrease or increase costs?
I wouldn't have thought it'd be that hard to find out who a manufacturer is, unless if parts of coming from many different companes. Then yeah, it would become difficult.
Foreign companies that utilize this type of thing should be hit with heavy penalties. This would also encourage them to check working conditions before signing a contract with a manufacturer.
I'm I understanding this correctly? They've paid you to write some software for them. I would assume that they would then be the owners of the software, but this doesn't seem to be the case here, as if they were the owners they could give it away as they please.
Is this common? I thought that when a client paid for customer software to be written for them, they ended up owning all the rights to the program, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
A quite skim over the article. It's rubbish. That Darwin distracts from all the others who have helped strengthen our understanding of how the variety of life on the planet came to be, I'll accept that.
That 'Darwinism' must die so people can understand evolution? That's just bollocks.
Education must simply improve, and ignorance should never be tolerated.
GNU has produced an operating system. It's nowhere near as advanced in functionality as Linux, but it exists, and GCC one of the largest parts of it.
Woah woah, let's be a bit more accurate here. The GNU project has produced a kernel, it's nowhere near as advanced in functionality as Linux, but it exists...
GNU and Linux go together to form the base of a GNU/Linux distribution, you can get a running system going with GNU and Linux and virtually nothing else, those are the two main parts.
I see no decent reason to call it 'Linux' rather than 'GNU'. Sure it might differentiate between a system with a Linux kernel and a HURD kernel, but virtually everyone that uses GNU, uses it with the Linux kernel.
Not being a great fan of Linus and being very appreciative of GNU and agreeing with Stallman, I call it GNU/Linux.
I also think that Freedom with software and computers is important, I just recently came across a story about a guy who was trying to scan some stuff, but the scanner refused to do it because it recognized some anti-copying marks. This is pathetic, when I buy hardware, I expect it to be mine, and to be in charge of it. With more and more hardware based restrictions coming out, that may or may not be able to be circumvented in software, then the basic principle of Freedom is going to be the best objection to these restrictions. The free market can only solve these problems when there are alternatives, if hardware based restrictions become standard, then people will not be able to vote with their money, it will simply be an issue of whether you value freedom.
So I say GNU/Linux because the GNU project is dedicated to raising awareness of freedom with regards to software and computers.
Is this 'system software', a driver for Windows, or is it a bug in the firmware and therefore compromises the security this provides regardless of OS?
Also, if it's firmware, is it the type that's burnt into the hardware and can't be changed, or the type that's loaded by the OS? If the later, this seems to me like a good reason for companies like Intel to release the source code for firmware.
I myself would like to use this for working on projects, having an ebook or website open on the side screen so I can easily get information that I need for whatever I'm working on. Yes I can tab, or resize windows and stuff, but I think that this would be very convenient.
It seems that you have been poorly educated about evolution, as was I, so I got up off my arse and actually looked into both sides.
Evolution is fact. To deny that is the same as denying genetic mutation, and that certain mutations would be better suited for survival in the enviroment they exist in. That is after all, what evolution by natural selection is all about.
Yes, there have been mistakes by individual scientists, such as with Nebraska man. Scientists should ideally publicize their mistakes (but as humans themselves they're not likely to promote their own mistakes). Part of what drives science forward is falsification, weeding out the incorrect stuff.
If the textbook that your sister was reading was full of known mistakes and hoaxes, then it's either a crap text book, or it's a creationist text book that presents how species come into being, that is through evolution via natural selection, by only showing mistakes, and not showing the over-whelming evidence in favour of the fact that all life on this planet is related.
It's also not just fossils that back up the fact of evolution, it's also the mountains of genetic data that we have. It all fits together.
No decent scientist, even the Christian ones like Francis Collins, rejects the fact of evolution.
I agree with your second point there. It is why I've thought that saying stuff like, illegal downloading, which while correct, carries with it a lot of emotion.
I'm still not convinced though that the public think of 'pirates' in a positive way. When reading an article on the BBC about some new copyright law, or some Three Strikes policy, in order to stop pirates/piracy, the connection with pirates and 'bad' is made in their mind.
I thought that saying "I just lessig'd Jonathan Coulton's new album" would be funny and could catch on... Just not so sure it's right. It's not what Lessig promotes, and it's again loaded with bias. It could though promote knowledge about Lessig and creative commons... It's not a very catchy term though... Ahwell.
I don't really think that outside the geek community they've really made the term a positive thing, hence why the RIAA still use the term.
You're right that a catchy term would really help though. Typing copyright infringers is a pain. I wonder if there is some word that could be used, related to say Robin Hood. In the stories, what he did was illegal, the law made that clear, but the morality was not as clear cut as the Sherrif/RIAA would have liked it to be.
Can't we stop it with using the term pirate? Yes, it might be a humurous label amongst us geeks, but by going along with it, instead of actively resisting it, we help to fuel in the minds of those who only hear one side of the story, that people who violate copyright law are bad evil pirates. Let's try using more accurate terms like copyright infringers, or something that doesn't have so much obvious bias in it.
It is rather funny though that a game known perhaps more for it's crazy DRM (heck I don't know what the actual game is about...) than anything else, is the game that has had the most unauthorised downloads.
There certainly is no real further need for the Chinese government to monitor internet cafe's anymore than they do. They have an army of internet police that delete forum posts and block websites (I wonder how they delete forum posts? Are only forums where these police are moderators, allowed?), they then have the great firewall for automatic censoring, and then every internt cafe has to have surveillance cameras installed (something that Noami Klein has reported on, as this surveillance tech is largely coming from American corporations who are forbidden from selling such tech to China, but have been able to do it via legal tricks), and all Chinese people have to show their ID to be able to use the machines (a laowai (foreigner) like myself wouldn't have to show ID).
Even if there was monitoring software installed with Redflag it don't think it's going to make much difference, though perhaps keyloggers that report keywords typed in might show up some IM conversations that they couldn't see before, I believe most IM conversations are encrypted?
Trying to look on the bright side of things, reforms are happening in China, albiet slowly, and hopefully when the Chinese people get the freedom they should have, we'll have a whole country familiar with GNU/Linux!
More interesting is the advert on the side "Happy Birthday, Turing's Universal Machine".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/18/alan_turing_anniversary/
It's a shame that Greenpeace have let go of logic and reason. Too many stupid emotional people. It's become like a religion, and indeed it tries to use fear to keep people inline. I really used to like them. Not now.
That is a ridiculous reason. As if the bus company is interested in anything more than it's own profits. It's a very obvious lie when they start saying they care about public safety, so competition gets shut down.
This is a point where I would agree completely with Milton Friedman. The private minibus drivers/owners should be allowed to run their own services. When I was in China there were lots of these, but my girlfriend told me that they were dangerous (so I also had information, a very cruicial part of a good market), so I decided to pay extra and go on the normal buses.
So long as people have access to the information to make informed choices, they should be allowed to make those choices, even if it means they put themselves at risk.
The government could if they want require a certain license for minibus' which I believe are larger than vans?
It sounds to me though like it's not just minibus' that they're trying to stop, but normal cars from carpooling too, and if the bus company is so concerned about safety then why are they sitting idle with all those individuals out there driving their own cars, when they should be in the safety of a bus?
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You've not been to China. It does violate Chinese labour laws. Your employer is not allowed to make you work 7 days a week.
Not true, the average Chinese worker feels guilty about just walking out like that, they feel it's their duty to help, even when they're treated poorly.
Many of them could be in better jobs than the ones they find themselves stuck in.
Also, many employers there break the law. My ex in China works 7 days a week, despite that being against the law. She could get a better job easily, but she feels compelled to stay.
I take it that you've not been to China. These work standards are absolutely shocking even there.
The Chinese government does need to do more to fix these issues, alas the government there is very corrupt, especially the local government branches. While I was in China there was a riot with tens of thousands of people after the son of a local government official was accused of raping and killing a girl. In the city I was in it was common to see government cars parked out front of 'saunas' where they were going for prostitutes, whatever you think of that, prostitution is illegal in China, so the government officials don't even follow their own laws. I'm sure you also saw stories about things that went on during the olympics too.
So yes, the Chinese government needs to improve things, and one big step would be allowing workers to make a fuss when their working conditions are absolute shit. At the moment from what I know, it would be nigh impossible for workers to legally organize and try to improve their situation. At this point in China's progress I think that unions could be useful, though I'm not particuarly pro-union.
Those examples you made at the end, working in a coal mine for 14 hours, living in shanty-towns... That's right at the very very bottom of life in China, it's not so easy to find situations that bad now.
The types of problems China is facing now are similar to those in America around 1900, with corrupt employees exploiting their workers, and even bringing in the police to violently break up meetings between workers.
Amusing, I've heard though haven't confirmed, that the law in NZ where I live, says that the employer has to provide free coffee. I haven't confirmed this though.
Okay, just looked it up... It's not required by law, but is part of a long standing tradition, and so is uncommon for employers to not provide coffee and tea.
Mmmm, you're unfortunately right on those points. I've spent about 7 months in total, in China, and I know that some of the boss' there are exactly like you've described.
Complete arseholes that don't even understand that they're damaging the country that they claim to love. I myself love China, and would love to see it become an actually great country.
I'll also point out, that I'm not particuarly pro-union.
Silly anti-union thinking. $100 for a keyboard just because working conidiots and pay rates are at a level that isn't apalling? Unlikely. Stop exageratting please.
The job you're working in is the best one available to you? I some how doubt it. It's the same in China. During my time in China, people there don't like their working conditions, but they feel like there is nothing they can do about it. If they complained their boss' would fire them, if workers organized and protested they'd probably get in a lot of trouble with police. I don't think that it would take that much effort for foreign companies like HP, IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Mattel, and others to have someone that they pay to go and check out conditions in manufacturing plants before signing a contract.
Those are hardly the only alternatives in China now.
I wonder how hard it would be to remove the middle man, and would this decrease or increase costs? I wouldn't have thought it'd be that hard to find out who a manufacturer is, unless if parts of coming from many different companes. Then yeah, it would become difficult.
Foreign companies that utilize this type of thing should be hit with heavy penalties. This would also encourage them to check working conditions before signing a contract with a manufacturer.
I'm I understanding this correctly? They've paid you to write some software for them. I would assume that they would then be the owners of the software, but this doesn't seem to be the case here, as if they were the owners they could give it away as they please. Is this common? I thought that when a client paid for customer software to be written for them, they ended up owning all the rights to the program, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
Interesting that they used a lot of software that is available to anyone. Perhaps there is some hope for young bedroom/basement hackers.
A quite skim over the article. It's rubbish. That Darwin distracts from all the others who have helped strengthen our understanding of how the variety of life on the planet came to be, I'll accept that.
That 'Darwinism' must die so people can understand evolution? That's just bollocks.
Education must simply improve, and ignorance should never be tolerated.
GNU has produced an operating system. It's nowhere near as advanced in functionality as Linux, but it exists, and GCC one of the largest parts of it.
Woah woah, let's be a bit more accurate here. The GNU project has produced a kernel, it's nowhere near as advanced in functionality as Linux, but it exists...
GNU and Linux go together to form the base of a GNU/Linux distribution, you can get a running system going with GNU and Linux and virtually nothing else, those are the two main parts.
I see no decent reason to call it 'Linux' rather than 'GNU'. Sure it might differentiate between a system with a Linux kernel and a HURD kernel, but virtually everyone that uses GNU, uses it with the Linux kernel.
Not being a great fan of Linus and being very appreciative of GNU and agreeing with Stallman, I call it GNU/Linux.
I also think that Freedom with software and computers is important, I just recently came across a story about a guy who was trying to scan some stuff, but the scanner refused to do it because it recognized some anti-copying marks. This is pathetic, when I buy hardware, I expect it to be mine, and to be in charge of it. With more and more hardware based restrictions coming out, that may or may not be able to be circumvented in software, then the basic principle of Freedom is going to be the best objection to these restrictions. The free market can only solve these problems when there are alternatives, if hardware based restrictions become standard, then people will not be able to vote with their money, it will simply be an issue of whether you value freedom.
So I say GNU/Linux because the GNU project is dedicated to raising awareness of freedom with regards to software and computers.
Is this 'system software', a driver for Windows, or is it a bug in the firmware and therefore compromises the security this provides regardless of OS? Also, if it's firmware, is it the type that's burnt into the hardware and can't be changed, or the type that's loaded by the OS? If the later, this seems to me like a good reason for companies like Intel to release the source code for firmware.
Uhh no thanks, that's proprietary from the looks of it. Synergy would be a much better option. http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
I myself would like to use this for working on projects, having an ebook or website open on the side screen so I can easily get information that I need for whatever I'm working on. Yes I can tab, or resize windows and stuff, but I think that this would be very convenient.
It seems that you have been poorly educated about evolution, as was I, so I got up off my arse and actually looked into both sides.
Evolution is fact. To deny that is the same as denying genetic mutation, and that certain mutations would be better suited for survival in the enviroment they exist in. That is after all, what evolution by natural selection is all about.
Yes, there have been mistakes by individual scientists, such as with Nebraska man. Scientists should ideally publicize their mistakes (but as humans themselves they're not likely to promote their own mistakes). Part of what drives science forward is falsification, weeding out the incorrect stuff.
If the textbook that your sister was reading was full of known mistakes and hoaxes, then it's either a crap text book, or it's a creationist text book that presents how species come into being, that is through evolution via natural selection, by only showing mistakes, and not showing the over-whelming evidence in favour of the fact that all life on this planet is related.
It's also not just fossils that back up the fact of evolution, it's also the mountains of genetic data that we have. It all fits together.
No decent scientist, even the Christian ones like Francis Collins, rejects the fact of evolution.
I agree with your second point there. It is why I've thought that saying stuff like, illegal downloading, which while correct, carries with it a lot of emotion. I'm still not convinced though that the public think of 'pirates' in a positive way. When reading an article on the BBC about some new copyright law, or some Three Strikes policy, in order to stop pirates/piracy, the connection with pirates and 'bad' is made in their mind.
I thought that saying "I just lessig'd Jonathan Coulton's new album" would be funny and could catch on... Just not so sure it's right. It's not what Lessig promotes, and it's again loaded with bias. It could though promote knowledge about Lessig and creative commons... It's not a very catchy term though... Ahwell.
I don't really think that outside the geek community they've really made the term a positive thing, hence why the RIAA still use the term.
You're right that a catchy term would really help though. Typing copyright infringers is a pain. I wonder if there is some word that could be used, related to say Robin Hood. In the stories, what he did was illegal, the law made that clear, but the morality was not as clear cut as the Sherrif/RIAA would have liked it to be.
Can't we stop it with using the term pirate? Yes, it might be a humurous label amongst us geeks, but by going along with it, instead of actively resisting it, we help to fuel in the minds of those who only hear one side of the story, that people who violate copyright law are bad evil pirates. Let's try using more accurate terms like copyright infringers, or something that doesn't have so much obvious bias in it.
It is rather funny though that a game known perhaps more for it's crazy DRM (heck I don't know what the actual game is about...) than anything else, is the game that has had the most unauthorised downloads.
There certainly is no real further need for the Chinese government to monitor internet cafe's anymore than they do. They have an army of internet police that delete forum posts and block websites (I wonder how they delete forum posts? Are only forums where these police are moderators, allowed?), they then have the great firewall for automatic censoring, and then every internt cafe has to have surveillance cameras installed (something that Noami Klein has reported on, as this surveillance tech is largely coming from American corporations who are forbidden from selling such tech to China, but have been able to do it via legal tricks), and all Chinese people have to show their ID to be able to use the machines (a laowai (foreigner) like myself wouldn't have to show ID). Even if there was monitoring software installed with Redflag it don't think it's going to make much difference, though perhaps keyloggers that report keywords typed in might show up some IM conversations that they couldn't see before, I believe most IM conversations are encrypted?
Trying to look on the bright side of things, reforms are happening in China, albiet slowly, and hopefully when the Chinese people get the freedom they should have, we'll have a whole country familiar with GNU/Linux!
More interesting is the advert on the side "Happy Birthday, Turing's Universal Machine".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/18/alan_turing_anniversary/
It's a shame that Greenpeace have let go of logic and reason. Too many stupid emotional people. It's become like a religion, and indeed it tries to use fear to keep people inline. I really used to like them. Not now.
That is a ridiculous reason. As if the bus company is interested in anything more than it's own profits. It's a very obvious lie when they start saying they care about public safety, so competition gets shut down. This is a point where I would agree completely with Milton Friedman. The private minibus drivers/owners should be allowed to run their own services. When I was in China there were lots of these, but my girlfriend told me that they were dangerous (so I also had information, a very cruicial part of a good market), so I decided to pay extra and go on the normal buses. So long as people have access to the information to make informed choices, they should be allowed to make those choices, even if it means they put themselves at risk. The government could if they want require a certain license for minibus' which I believe are larger than vans? It sounds to me though like it's not just minibus' that they're trying to stop, but normal cars from carpooling too, and if the bus company is so concerned about safety then why are they sitting idle with all those individuals out there driving their own cars, when they should be in the safety of a bus?