Only if you are using the software illegally. If you paid for all the copies of windows that you use the who cares if MS knows you bought naked PC's. That was my point, the only reason to be afraid is if you are trying to pull one over on MS otherwise it doesn't matter.
I am sick and tired of people getting mad for a copropation wanting to get paid for a product that they have provided.
Not that I support invasions of privacy in ANY way but what is the big deal? If you are a company that wants to use linux and you are all in the clear who the hell cares if MS knows. What is the worst that can happen? MS sends you a bit of extra advertising? They send you offers of discounted rates if you switch back? I mean if you don't have anything to hide then it doesn't matter if MS knows you got naked PC's or not. Quit being so scared. Open source is legal, and it works, so be proud of it instead of being scared of corporations that have NO power unless they have your money.
The only problem with the original MS Natural Keyboard is that the keys went mushy really fast, other than that its by far the best version MS sold.
I recommend highly against the Natural Elite because they tried to make it smaller and so use a non-standard layout of the arrow keys and edit keys that always slows me down.
I must say that the newest MS Natural Pro with the media keys is cool. Almost the same size and shape as the original MS Natural keyboard, the keys are fairly "clicky", and it has media keys which if I ever remember to use them speed things up alot. Not to mention that it is a USB hub (and USB keyboard if you lack a PS/2 keyboard port).
The windows keys are terribly useful under windows (which I'm assuming you don't use) so I like having them. They save a ton of time over switching to the mouse and going through the menus. I use window-r all the time.
Where I work we classify bugs on two scales, severity and priority.
Severity rates the effect of the bug and runs from 1 to 4. 1 being a bug that makes the software unusable (usually a bug that crashes the program) and 4 being something like a spelling mistake.
Priority rates how likely the bug is to affect a user and also is rated from 1 to 4. 1 means the user will always be affected and 4 means almost never.
Using this system I could see how it was possible to leave a severity 1 bug in the sorfware if its low priority 4.
Well today the fastest and arguably safest way to back up a large hard drive is on to another large hard drive so I'd say just grab another data cube and transfer the data.
Though with 1tb of data I think we need to go for incremental backups, the transfer time on 1tb can't be good.
Again you miss the point, if you are reading lots of OpenSource code, there is certainly things you are going to learn from it. If you apply that learning to work there is a possibility that the OpenSource people you learned from would come back on the company. That can't be allowed, or there has to be protection against it. Also as someone pointed out the converse is true, if you work with closed source all the time there is a good chance what you learn could leak in to the open source work you do and the company would want compensated.
It doesn't matter that the projects are seemingly unrelated as at the base units what you know applies to all projects. The very real potential exists of things migrating from one place to another and so to prevent this companies put in a clause in contracts that say people cannot work on open source projects (and more likely can't work on external projects or have a clause that says external projects are company property).
The problem comes from the fact that open source people still claim ownership of what they do. If they were truely for the free dispersal of information they would drop thier new knowledge out on the web, promote it, and then not work a wit where it went. In that they want to keep ownership and get recogintion they are no better than the corporations. They say "read my code but don't use it unless I say its ok" where corporations say "don't read my code, buy my product its better really". Argue on either side but the information is still not free.
The big problem here that all the posters so far seem to be missing is that if somehow some OpenSource code got into the companies presumably ClosedSource product then there would be grounds to sue that company.
I have to stand on the corporations side on this, until the contract allows that company to incorporate the code into a closed source product without fear of retribution then the company would be stupid to allow its employees to work in the open source world. I'm not saying I want companies to be able to rip off all the open source code in the world and use it for thier own, but just saying that they need some sort of protection or they will never allow this sort of thing to happen.
Unfortunately this fear of having a closed source project contaminated with open source code is furthered by the open source community when they complain that companies might be harboring open source in thier projects. Companies exist to make money and they are under the (maybe misguided) conception that they need to keep code hidden in order to have a leg on competition. They are thrown into a world where they might accidentially (or purposely but we won't cover that) get some code that they don't have rights to so they do everything possible to protect themselves from this.
Bottom line is this, unless the contract provides protection along the lines of if the employee developing the open source code puts some of it in the companies product they are free to release it in a closed source fashion with the caveat that if they find that code in an open sourced product they cannot sue on the grounds of copyright infringement. So basically it is a compromise between the ideals of open source and the praticality of business that has to happen if the two sides are to work together.
If the person holding the challenged had defined it as the "total amount the file took on my filesystem including filesystem overhead and such" all the person taking the challenge would have to do to win is put the file on a more efficient file system. The way to stop all the trickery in winning seems to be to specify the file name in advance and specifying only one final file and specifying a sandbox to work in that had a defined (yet Turing complete) set of operators to work in the data.
Even given these restrictions the contest has the possibility to be won because the chances of the person holding the challenge being able to create a file of a size requested by the challenger that cannot be compressed by legitimate ways is very low. This is due to the fact that given any piece of data generated at random there is a decent chance of finding an algorithm for representing that data specific piece of data in a smaller form.
Of course your algorithm would only work on creating that one piece of data.
An impossible task would be for the holder of the challenge to have a file of fixed size that the challenger must compress (given the tigher restrictions mentioned in this post) because then the person holding the challenge has much more control.
This is definitely off topic but I'd think the bigger advantage of DVD's or CD's as tires is that they are far nearer to perfectly round than just about anything common that I can think of and most certainly when compared to something cut out of wood or paper.
Well since splitting the files was allowed, let the filesystem record the position with a file split. The key then would be to get a sufficiently large run that you could "throw out" to allow you to fit in the decompressor and the filehead penalty. Possible in theory but I doubt the example file had any sufficiently long runs.
Along these same lines of thought, we can assume that the data was computer generated in some way (doubtful the creater of the challenge flipped pennies to figure each bit of the output or something such as that) in which case there is a repeatability factor in the data. Chances are if you chose a file of sufficient size you could get a complete (or most) of a repetition of the file. (Classic problem with pseudo-random generators of course). This would allow you to get near 50% compression of the data with no "tricks".
Not that I feel like trying a challenge like this but it seems if you ask for about 60gig of data and analyze the hell out of it you will be able to get sufficient patterns in the data to get the compression needed. A complete waste of time but would beat this challenge because its not very good. Of course this is what any math or science type person would be able to tell you so I'm not saying anything revolutionary.
This whole flaming pile of dung is a result of the late 80's and the 90's when the responsibility for ones actions shifted away from ones self.
It used to be if you shot yourself in the foot or cut off your finger with a lawnmower it was written up to you being dumb as bricks and left at that. People looked at the example and tried not to emulate it. Then a lawyer was born and that lawyer said "I can make money with this." and started suing the hell out of companies that made the products that people hurt themselves with.
This wasn't too bad to start because some things were maybe unsafe and so people let it go and companies made things safer and paid for thier "mistakes". Thats where things start going bad. More and more people found ways to blame others for the dumb shit they were doing. Unfortunately this also lead to dumber people who were armed with the saying, "Its not my fault."
Also around this time people decided that discipline was bad because there were a few bad (well maybe alot of bad) parents. The system started turning kids against thier parents (god I have too much personal experience with that crap) and basically took away the right to really teach your kids about morals and all that stuff. That caused parents to ask the schools to start teaching morals. Soon this lead to people who expected that schools were supposed to teach morals to children.
Basically what all this stuff (which unfortunately I did not articulate well at all) lead to in the end was a world where parents neither can, nor want to teach kids to be disciplined, a world where nothing is the fault of the person that did it and hell be damned if the person that does something gets disciplined, a world where bullies can bully because they are "disturbed" but serious and normal people get thrown on the streets because they are "trouble".
I remember in school when I was bullied terribly (all the way from about 2nd grade clear to 6th grade) and the principal told me in 4th grade to stand up for myself. He said what you need to do is just let loose on one of those people bugging you to show that you aren't a victim and he will leave you alone. So the next time someone bothered me I punched him in the nose 2 or 3 times. Want to know something? That didn't teach me that violence was the answer, it just taught me that you have to not let yourself get pushed around. It only worked because my parents had instilled into me at a VERY early age that fighting was wrong. (I got whupped in the ass so many times for beating up my lil bro) I only had to fight 1 other time in my life, and thats when a little shrimpy punk at school pulled a knife on me (or a letter opener, I didn't really look at it, you rather freak when sharp objects are placed against your neck) and I basically just grabbed the arm that he was holding the knife with and held it away from me until a teacher came to see what was up and the dude was dealt with.
I think what this world needs is movement back to consequences for actions. I mean real actions that deserve consequences not the crap they do now with there over reacctions to nothing. Parents need to discipline thier kids and teach them manners and all crap like that. People need to get respect for others and others property. Schools need to be about teaching numbers and letters and not about teaching morals and sex and whatever else they are being asked to do right now.
I think the biggest thing that has to happen (but never will because too many people have nothing but grey mush in thier head) is that people need to take responsiblity for themselves. DO NOT RELY ON THE GOVT.
As you can see I am truely worried about the future of our country. Unless people decide to discipline themselves, teach thier kids, do thier own work, and take care of thier own things we are lost.
This isn't big news its just that MS has stated thier goals at this point and thier goals make total sense from thier business perspective.
The mp3 recording tools that MS provided pretty much sucked anyways, They were just a bunch of codec dll's with no provided interface and they were limited at a low bitrate as it is. Windows media player (as far as I ever found) never supported recording of mp3's anyway.
I love how slashdot looks for every opportunity to bash MS and when they can't find one they make something out of nothing.
The story really is: "MS to continue supporting WMA. People will continue to use other ripping/encoding software."
The secure music format does not really limit fair use. Its there to stop the unfair use and distribution.
The security in windows media player never stopped me from listening to the songs I ripped, just stopped the person I sent the songs to from listening to them.
The only thing that sux about the security is that when I wipe out the directory that contains all the certificates for playing the songs I have to rip them all over again to listen to them.
This is just flipping a single bit. They just made the "clip default" to off instead of on. The code is still there taking up resources on your machine, you just don't see it unless you force it to show up. Isn't there real news happening in the world today?
If you could manage to make a generic type cartridge that had an EPROM for the memory instead of just a rom you could most likely create copy games pretty easily. Of course you wouldn't be able to create copies of any of the games that had special hardware in the cartridge, only those that had software on a single rom.
I know that this is how you make hardware copies of most Atari 2600 games (and I would assume the same applies to Intellivision and CollicoVision games and stuff too)
You can't even leagally archive a rom image under American copyright laws because a rom image is considered a durable good. No "backup copy" allowed here. Also I am sure modification of the original product is strictly prohibited under the law in a couple different places
That aside I think this hack is absolutely great. I love when someone takes something they love and with thier passion for that item create something completely new and wonderful with it. I read about this game about a week ago I think and it looks like a top notch mod. I just wish more game companies supported modification of thier games. I also wish that more companies were more liberal with distribution of out of production games. There were so many things I saw when I was a child that I was never able to get and I would like to get a chance for that now when I have the cash in my pocket.
I have no proof of this so take it with the proverbial grain of salt.
I am willing to bet that American consumers with all of their keeping houses heated to 80degrees and having lights on in every room and driving thier gas guzzling cars for every tiny trip make more pollution than the corporations in America. I am not one to preach conservation but if you really want to cut CO2 emmisions by 10% turn off the lights when you are out of the room, shut off your computer monitor when you get up from the desk, drop your thermostats to 60degrees and figure out all the things you need in town so you can make a single trip instead of 50.
I know that in the midst of what people consider terribly high energy prices I don't have an electrical bill over $25 a month (that includes heat) and my gas bill is not over $15 a month except for when I visit my parents (which happens about every 3 months). You want to know something guys, I don't evey have to sacrifice to get these savings, I do ALL the things I want and live in great comfort in my home. The key is not wasting the energy and resources when they aren't benifiting me.
The same would go for reducing resource consumption and all the other things that people get so upset about. If you don't need something, don't take it. Don't throw something out because its not the best on the block. Use what you need to be happy but don't use 10 times more just because you can.
Bush may not be regulating the amount of polution produced by corporations but at least he isn't pushing a society that promotes people to use resources they don't necessarily need just because they have the "right" to do so like Cliton and his friends.
So you would rather believe the Chinese Communist propogandists that have far more to gain that the US by making China look stronger and give them the right to take action on the US? That makes sense, everyone knows that communist govt run news organizations always print the truth. I think you should move over there because they are way better people than the evil American capitalists.
Also, whether its a trick of the US plane to turn sharply or not (and that plane is like turning an 18 wheeler sharply in front of a ferrari, hmm I wonder who can get out of the way easier?) the chinese pilots would have to have been WAY TOO CLOSE to the US plane in the first place.
I think it runs deeper than that. They want to get a step up on the United States and having them apologize will "prove" that China is the stronger power. It may also give China the right to give the United States a whole lot of trouble. Politics are a pain in the ass but the US needs to continue to assert that it was not wrong or else they lose a much bigger battle than getting a plane or crew back to the US.
They would gain information from the event, but they would have the pilots and the airplane back home as soon as possible, and we certainly wouldn't be asking for an apology for that spy plane letting itself get knocked out of the sky.
I am getting really angered at the american peoples overriding desire to support everyone in the world. If you are so damn supportive of the chinese you should move your butts over there and start working in thier factories. 14 hours a day for a few bowls of rice will teach you how bad you had it living in the terrible United States of American.
Yes this is a troll but you just get pissed of reading post after post saying "America should just apologize and get it over with." and "America is obviously wrong because they are bigger." and "Why is the US govt being so MEAN to the chinise."
I agree that there are 3 sides to this story for sure. Your assesement of the events is quite feasable. I still don't know why americans have to apologize though. Even if we did have a stupid reaction weren't the chinese pilots equally at fault for being stupid as well?
Now on a more american biased note, America has a sickness today. Our people are our own worst enemy and it quite likely will have the result of the world being run by China and believe me people you won't like working 14 hours a day for 3 bowls of rice.
The problem with this whole issue is that Americans want to rule the world by being friends with everyone while the Chinese know that the real way to rule is to manipulate people and maintain opressive control. The only thing that can fight that opressive control is a free spirit and the will to do what you want when you want where you want. Americans have lost that spirit. It seems that all Americans want today is a free ride. People that have complain that people that have-not are stealing there money and the people that have-not are complaining because they don't have as much money as the people that have. The govt. doesn't help the situation because it has to go with the majority will which isn't always moving toward the most advantageous goal.
People be cautious, we have learned in the past that giving greedy, imperialist leaders what they want only leads them to wanting more (reference Neville Chamberlain and sorry to the British readers if I spelled that wrong). We must stand strong. It is fairly apparernt that even in the best case both sides were at fault in this incident. The american govt should stand strong in saying "We were there, the planes collided and we regret that, but there was no negligance or intent on the part of our crew to down your plane or pilot and so we will not apologize for what is clearly an accident". (I won't advise that the govt tells the chinese the way I believe it is and tell them that they should be apologizing for running their fighter into our plane in an obvious attack on american people and property)
Now is time to wage economic warfare on the chinese right here where it counts. Check those labels and if the product comes from china, or if you know it has chinese parts, DO NOT BUY IT. Buy an american product if possible. Support your country because if you don't, you will be living in a world that you are not ready for, and if you really want to apologize and tell china that they are right, be ready for the day when they ask you to do more and red flags fly in america.
Remember, to have your picture of the perfect world of piece, someone needs to lead, and it had better be someone that agrees with your principles or you will have failed.
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I am sick and tired of people getting mad for a copropation wanting to get paid for a product that they have provided.
You do realize that China is communist right? That means ALL computers in china are owned by the govt. Hmmmmm....
Not that I support invasions of privacy in ANY way but what is the big deal? If you are a company that wants to use linux and you are all in the clear who the hell cares if MS knows. What is the worst that can happen? MS sends you a bit of extra advertising? They send you offers of discounted rates if you switch back? I mean if you don't have anything to hide then it doesn't matter if MS knows you got naked PC's or not. Quit being so scared. Open source is legal, and it works, so be proud of it instead of being scared of corporations that have NO power unless they have your money.
I recommend highly against the Natural Elite because they tried to make it smaller and so use a non-standard layout of the arrow keys and edit keys that always slows me down.
I must say that the newest MS Natural Pro with the media keys is cool. Almost the same size and shape as the original MS Natural keyboard, the keys are fairly "clicky", and it has media keys which if I ever remember to use them speed things up alot. Not to mention that it is a USB hub (and USB keyboard if you lack a PS/2 keyboard port).
The windows keys are terribly useful under windows (which I'm assuming you don't use) so I like having them. They save a ton of time over switching to the mouse and going through the menus. I use window-r all the time.
Severity rates the effect of the bug and runs from 1 to 4. 1 being a bug that makes the software unusable (usually a bug that crashes the program) and 4 being something like a spelling mistake.
Priority rates how likely the bug is to affect a user and also is rated from 1 to 4. 1 means the user will always be affected and 4 means almost never.
Using this system I could see how it was possible to leave a severity 1 bug in the sorfware if its low priority 4.
Though with 1tb of data I think we need to go for incremental backups, the transfer time on 1tb can't be good.
It doesn't matter that the projects are seemingly unrelated as at the base units what you know applies to all projects. The very real potential exists of things migrating from one place to another and so to prevent this companies put in a clause in contracts that say people cannot work on open source projects (and more likely can't work on external projects or have a clause that says external projects are company property).
The problem comes from the fact that open source people still claim ownership of what they do. If they were truely for the free dispersal of information they would drop thier new knowledge out on the web, promote it, and then not work a wit where it went. In that they want to keep ownership and get recogintion they are no better than the corporations. They say "read my code but don't use it unless I say its ok" where corporations say "don't read my code, buy my product its better really". Argue on either side but the information is still not free.
I have to stand on the corporations side on this, until the contract allows that company to incorporate the code into a closed source product without fear of retribution then the company would be stupid to allow its employees to work in the open source world. I'm not saying I want companies to be able to rip off all the open source code in the world and use it for thier own, but just saying that they need some sort of protection or they will never allow this sort of thing to happen.
Unfortunately this fear of having a closed source project contaminated with open source code is furthered by the open source community when they complain that companies might be harboring open source in thier projects. Companies exist to make money and they are under the (maybe misguided) conception that they need to keep code hidden in order to have a leg on competition. They are thrown into a world where they might accidentially (or purposely but we won't cover that) get some code that they don't have rights to so they do everything possible to protect themselves from this.
Bottom line is this, unless the contract provides protection along the lines of if the employee developing the open source code puts some of it in the companies product they are free to release it in a closed source fashion with the caveat that if they find that code in an open sourced product they cannot sue on the grounds of copyright infringement. So basically it is a compromise between the ideals of open source and the praticality of business that has to happen if the two sides are to work together.
Even given these restrictions the contest has the possibility to be won because the chances of the person holding the challenge being able to create a file of a size requested by the challenger that cannot be compressed by legitimate ways is very low. This is due to the fact that given any piece of data generated at random there is a decent chance of finding an algorithm for representing that data specific piece of data in a smaller form.
Of course your algorithm would only work on creating that one piece of data.
An impossible task would be for the holder of the challenge to have a file of fixed size that the challenger must compress (given the tigher restrictions mentioned in this post) because then the person holding the challenge has much more control.
This is definitely off topic but I'd think the bigger advantage of DVD's or CD's as tires is that they are far nearer to perfectly round than just about anything common that I can think of and most certainly when compared to something cut out of wood or paper.
Well since splitting the files was allowed, let the filesystem record the position with a file split. The key then would be to get a sufficiently large run that you could "throw out" to allow you to fit in the decompressor and the filehead penalty. Possible in theory but I doubt the example file had any sufficiently long runs.
Not that I feel like trying a challenge like this but it seems if you ask for about 60gig of data and analyze the hell out of it you will be able to get sufficient patterns in the data to get the compression needed. A complete waste of time but would beat this challenge because its not very good. Of course this is what any math or science type person would be able to tell you so I'm not saying anything revolutionary.
It used to be if you shot yourself in the foot or cut off your finger with a lawnmower it was written up to you being dumb as bricks and left at that. People looked at the example and tried not to emulate it. Then a lawyer was born and that lawyer said "I can make money with this." and started suing the hell out of companies that made the products that people hurt themselves with.
This wasn't too bad to start because some things were maybe unsafe and so people let it go and companies made things safer and paid for thier "mistakes". Thats where things start going bad. More and more people found ways to blame others for the dumb shit they were doing. Unfortunately this also lead to dumber people who were armed with the saying, "Its not my fault."
Also around this time people decided that discipline was bad because there were a few bad (well maybe alot of bad) parents. The system started turning kids against thier parents (god I have too much personal experience with that crap) and basically took away the right to really teach your kids about morals and all that stuff. That caused parents to ask the schools to start teaching morals. Soon this lead to people who expected that schools were supposed to teach morals to children.
Basically what all this stuff (which unfortunately I did not articulate well at all) lead to in the end was a world where parents neither can, nor want to teach kids to be disciplined, a world where nothing is the fault of the person that did it and hell be damned if the person that does something gets disciplined, a world where bullies can bully because they are "disturbed" but serious and normal people get thrown on the streets because they are "trouble".
I remember in school when I was bullied terribly (all the way from about 2nd grade clear to 6th grade) and the principal told me in 4th grade to stand up for myself. He said what you need to do is just let loose on one of those people bugging you to show that you aren't a victim and he will leave you alone. So the next time someone bothered me I punched him in the nose 2 or 3 times. Want to know something? That didn't teach me that violence was the answer, it just taught me that you have to not let yourself get pushed around. It only worked because my parents had instilled into me at a VERY early age that fighting was wrong. (I got whupped in the ass so many times for beating up my lil bro) I only had to fight 1 other time in my life, and thats when a little shrimpy punk at school pulled a knife on me (or a letter opener, I didn't really look at it, you rather freak when sharp objects are placed against your neck) and I basically just grabbed the arm that he was holding the knife with and held it away from me until a teacher came to see what was up and the dude was dealt with.
I think what this world needs is movement back to consequences for actions. I mean real actions that deserve consequences not the crap they do now with there over reacctions to nothing. Parents need to discipline thier kids and teach them manners and all crap like that. People need to get respect for others and others property. Schools need to be about teaching numbers and letters and not about teaching morals and sex and whatever else they are being asked to do right now.
I think the biggest thing that has to happen (but never will because too many people have nothing but grey mush in thier head) is that people need to take responsiblity for themselves. DO NOT RELY ON THE GOVT.
As you can see I am truely worried about the future of our country. Unless people decide to discipline themselves, teach thier kids, do thier own work, and take care of thier own things we are lost.
This isn't big news its just that MS has stated thier goals at this point and thier goals make total sense from thier business perspective.
The mp3 recording tools that MS provided pretty much sucked anyways, They were just a bunch of codec dll's with no provided interface and they were limited at a low bitrate as it is. Windows media player (as far as I ever found) never supported recording of mp3's anyway.
I love how slashdot looks for every opportunity to bash MS and when they can't find one they make something out of nothing.
The story really is: "MS to continue supporting WMA. People will continue to use other ripping/encoding software."
The security in windows media player never stopped me from listening to the songs I ripped, just stopped the person I sent the songs to from listening to them.
The only thing that sux about the security is that when I wipe out the directory that contains all the certificates for playing the songs I have to rip them all over again to listen to them.
This is just flipping a single bit. They just made the "clip default" to off instead of on. The code is still there taking up resources on your machine, you just don't see it unless you force it to show up. Isn't there real news happening in the world today?
I know that this is how you make hardware copies of most Atari 2600 games (and I would assume the same applies to Intellivision and CollicoVision games and stuff too)
That aside I think this hack is absolutely great. I love when someone takes something they love and with thier passion for that item create something completely new and wonderful with it. I read about this game about a week ago I think and it looks like a top notch mod. I just wish more game companies supported modification of thier games. I also wish that more companies were more liberal with distribution of out of production games. There were so many things I saw when I was a child that I was never able to get and I would like to get a chance for that now when I have the cash in my pocket.
I am willing to bet that American consumers with all of their keeping houses heated to 80degrees and having lights on in every room and driving thier gas guzzling cars for every tiny trip make more pollution than the corporations in America. I am not one to preach conservation but if you really want to cut CO2 emmisions by 10% turn off the lights when you are out of the room, shut off your computer monitor when you get up from the desk, drop your thermostats to 60degrees and figure out all the things you need in town so you can make a single trip instead of 50.
I know that in the midst of what people consider terribly high energy prices I don't have an electrical bill over $25 a month (that includes heat) and my gas bill is not over $15 a month except for when I visit my parents (which happens about every 3 months). You want to know something guys, I don't evey have to sacrifice to get these savings, I do ALL the things I want and live in great comfort in my home. The key is not wasting the energy and resources when they aren't benifiting me.
The same would go for reducing resource consumption and all the other things that people get so upset about. If you don't need something, don't take it. Don't throw something out because its not the best on the block. Use what you need to be happy but don't use 10 times more just because you can.
Bush may not be regulating the amount of polution produced by corporations but at least he isn't pushing a society that promotes people to use resources they don't necessarily need just because they have the "right" to do so like Cliton and his friends.
Also, whether its a trick of the US plane to turn sharply or not (and that plane is like turning an 18 wheeler sharply in front of a ferrari, hmm I wonder who can get out of the way easier?) the chinese pilots would have to have been WAY TOO CLOSE to the US plane in the first place.
I think it runs deeper than that. They want to get a step up on the United States and having them apologize will "prove" that China is the stronger power. It may also give China the right to give the United States a whole lot of trouble. Politics are a pain in the ass but the US needs to continue to assert that it was not wrong or else they lose a much bigger battle than getting a plane or crew back to the US.
I am getting really angered at the american peoples overriding desire to support everyone in the world. If you are so damn supportive of the chinese you should move your butts over there and start working in thier factories. 14 hours a day for a few bowls of rice will teach you how bad you had it living in the terrible United States of American.
Yes this is a troll but you just get pissed of reading post after post saying "America should just apologize and get it over with." and "America is obviously wrong because they are bigger." and "Why is the US govt being so MEAN to the chinise."
Now on a more american biased note, America has a sickness today. Our people are our own worst enemy and it quite likely will have the result of the world being run by China and believe me people you won't like working 14 hours a day for 3 bowls of rice.
The problem with this whole issue is that Americans want to rule the world by being friends with everyone while the Chinese know that the real way to rule is to manipulate people and maintain opressive control. The only thing that can fight that opressive control is a free spirit and the will to do what you want when you want where you want. Americans have lost that spirit. It seems that all Americans want today is a free ride. People that have complain that people that have-not are stealing there money and the people that have-not are complaining because they don't have as much money as the people that have. The govt. doesn't help the situation because it has to go with the majority will which isn't always moving toward the most advantageous goal.
People be cautious, we have learned in the past that giving greedy, imperialist leaders what they want only leads them to wanting more (reference Neville Chamberlain and sorry to the British readers if I spelled that wrong). We must stand strong. It is fairly apparernt that even in the best case both sides were at fault in this incident. The american govt should stand strong in saying "We were there, the planes collided and we regret that, but there was no negligance or intent on the part of our crew to down your plane or pilot and so we will not apologize for what is clearly an accident". (I won't advise that the govt tells the chinese the way I believe it is and tell them that they should be apologizing for running their fighter into our plane in an obvious attack on american people and property)
Now is time to wage economic warfare on the chinese right here where it counts. Check those labels and if the product comes from china, or if you know it has chinese parts, DO NOT BUY IT. Buy an american product if possible. Support your country because if you don't, you will be living in a world that you are not ready for, and if you really want to apologize and tell china that they are right, be ready for the day when they ask you to do more and red flags fly in america.
Remember, to have your picture of the perfect world of piece, someone needs to lead, and it had better be someone that agrees with your principles or you will have failed.
Is Tad going to put up his chapters in E-Books format too? I want to read it on my PDA.