Back in my youth I worked as an onsite contractor. We handled PC installation and maintanance, in-house staff handled the network. One afternoon, the network went down, taking a couple of thousand PCs with it. Then the executive secretary to the Chairman calls, demanding to know what happened to her PC and how soon we'd have it fixed. I arrived at her desk and jiggled her mouse just in time to watch the machine reboot (did I mentioned it was Windows?). No amount of explanation in the world could convince the sainted woman it wasn't my fault. When she demanded to know what had happened to the report she'd spent the last six hours working on, my life flashed before my eyes. I explained that only the changes she'd made since her last save were lost, then steeled myself for the inevitable reply. "Save?!", she hissed.
The ensuing political firestorm almost lost my compan its support contract. As it was, my manager (who fully understood the situation), was forced to transfer me to a new site (with an apologetic compensatory raise, bless his heart).
The bottom line is the customer is always right, even when he (or she) is wrong. If you don't have the hide to grin and bear it, perhaps you might want to look for a new direction in your career. It's what I ultimately did.
"I imagine things will stay pretty much the same... . Before... you would just install Tor on your PC. Now you would just wipe the hard drive and install your OS of choice from a trustworthy CD."
Agreed, in part. However, as others have argued, technologically there is nothing preventing the government from, say, forcing the software into the IP stack, or requiring ISPs to incorporate it into the software suite they already install on customer PCs ("You need this to access the Internet" is all your friendly serviceman need say)***. Of course, as long as the software is restricted to IP banning, any anonymous proxy will still circumvent it. But can you say "feature creep"? Let Skype be a lesson to us all: Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China's TOM-Skype platform (http://www.nartv.org/mirror/breachingtrust.pdf).
I would caution, however, against vilifying China too much in this regard. Even much of the Chinese intelligentsia believes that their country needs a brutal government to avoid total chaos.
I was tempted to argue with your adjectives here, but then why? Ask the inmates at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib about the brutality of the US government, and then note the ease with which the Patriot Act passed, and the significant percentage of American intelligentsia that argued for its necessity in protecting American values. The American bogeyman is the "terrorist", hell-bent on destroying "freedom". Replace "terrorist" and "freedom" with "political dissident" and "social harmony" and the Chinese argument becomes indistinguishable. Certain levels of censorship and monitoring (pronounced "warrantless wiretapping") are viewed as necessary and essential tools in the struggle to protect social harmony from the onslaught of its political enemies, and most Chinese are more than happy to allow it.
Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai.
***Actually, I'm surprised it wasn't done this way. Since the the software only needs to be present on PCs that actually access the Internet, what more efficient point of attack than ISPs? Mandating the software for Internet service would go along way toward ensuring its ubiquity. 'Course, I don't wanna be giving the government any ideas:-).
The grandparent post is correct. The Great Firewall, dubbed the most sophisticated of its kind in the world, is easily circumvented by anyone who knows how to spell "anonymous proxy" or, barring that, "Tor". IP-banning software, even if it's mandated in the future, will be no different. The operative word here is won't, not can't, and the point is the vast majority of Chinese netizens won't bother circumventing it, even if they know they can.
Of course, I run Linux (Ubuntu, thanks for asking), so all this is moot to me.
"Why would I expect the privileged class to rock the boat?"
Interesting. This has been precisely the argument coming from Western China experts for the past quarter century -- the view that as China develops economically, the people (i.e., the "privileged class") benefiting the most would begin to demand equal amounts of political power. Now you argue it'll lead to a population of sheep. Which is, not incidentally, what most Americans seem to believe the Chinese people are now.
"the hundreds of millions of rural poor... who never wanted anything to do with Beijing"
Quite the cultural expert, aren't we? The "hundreds of millions of rural poor" have about as much to do with Beijing as they have with any Chinese government. Not because Beijing is autocratic (save for a brief period of republican rule, China has never known anything else) but simply because in any average year in rural China it hardly makes a difference what's happening in Beijing.
Or does it? The fact is China has experienced near miraculous economic growth over the past thirty years. As to the "rural poor", according to the latest World Bank numbers China's poverty rate plummeted from 69% in 1978, to 10% in 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China) -- significantly lower than the US's usual 12 to 17% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States). In fact no other country in the world has equaled China's record on poverty reduction in the last quarter century.
If I were amongst the "hundreds of millions of" Chinese "rural poor", I think I'd have good reason to be happy with Beijing.
"I would be curious what the general opinion would be if they were guaranteed equal stability with either form of government."
And how do you guarantee that? Having lived in numerous countries around the world, I'd argue that, if stability is your meter-stick, authoritarian regimes win hands down. By far the most unstable countries I've lived in -- democracies all -- were in central Africa; in Zaire, for example, the people lived in abject terror of the military. I'm personally of the opinion that stable democracies are in the minority, and that the US owes its stability far more to the balance of powers than to democracy per se. Absent that, democracies are easy prey to anyone who manages to amass enough power. Hardly a month goes by you don't hear yet another story of fraudulent elections, e.g.
Currently, I live in Shanghai, where I find life on a daily basis nearly indistinguishable from the States: I get up, go to work, collect my paycheck; I have all the usual amenities at my fingertips -- movies, good restaurants, excellent parks and recreational facilities, etc. And at that level, issues such as democracy and censorship tend to fade into the bleary realm of principle. With most Chinese feeling the government performs well, and with a general level of satisfaction in their daily lives, what practical difference does it make that they don't elect their national leaders, or that I can't get to Youtube?
Vis-a-vis the government, the only significant attitudinal difference I've noticed is that the Chinese feel a bit more detached from theirs. As much as Americans like to diss their own government, it's generally one of the first places they turn to for help -- the US has government hotlines for everything -- and they expect to get it. Chinese tend to be a bit more pessimistic about such things. But then, so were Zairians.
35,000 is a "huge" cache?! Puh-LEESE! Here in Shanghai, DVD factories churn out ten times that number before breakfast. In economic terms, it'd be like running down to the police station to report my pocket change missing.
China is a movie watcher's paradise. 5rmb'll get you anything. The new Star Trek hit the streets four days before it hit theatres.
Doesn't sound like the block is self-imposed. But would that make sense in any case? Self-imposed censorship in the name of free speech?
As someone who lives in China
As someone who also lives in China, my attempts to load Twitter bear the usual Great Firewall earmarks: "The connection was reset" errors with easy circumvention via anonymous proxy. Note that as of this writing (June 5, 9 PM local time), MSN, LiveMail and HotMail are accessible in Shanghai; Twitter and YouTube are not.
I don't have figures for ten years ago, but since the institution of economic reforms in 1978, by most estimates some 54 percent of the Chinese population has been lifted out of poverty (64% in 1978 vs. 10% in 2004). In fact, recent World Bank revised estimates (http://eapblog.worldbank.org/content/new-ppps-reveal-china-has-had-more-poverty-reduction-than-we-thought) push the '78 poverty rate up to 69%. making the reduction even greater. According to this Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China), China has had the world's fastest growing economy for the past quarter century, with a resultant "huge increase in standards of living".
Right to peaceful protest: There are hundreds of peaceful protests a year throughout China, ranging in size from single individuals up to groups of hundreds. While I'm no legal expert, it seems to me the relevant differences between Chinese and, say, US laws governing peaceful assembly are that the Chinese government can be a bit more nebulous in denying permits, and that protests espousing illegal activities or undermining social harmony are not tolerated. Now, one might (and probably could) argue that the government has abused loopholes in the laws. But the right to peaceful protest is enshrined in the Chinese constitution.
Right to choice of religion: Again, the right is constitutionally guaranteed. I am a practicing Catholic who attends Mass weekly here in Shanghai. If I wanted to, I could become Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or one of hundreds of persuasions of Protestant, all without government interference. I'm even free to proselytize.
Yes China has laws governing the limits and nature of permissible religious activities. So does the US. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, have found themselves in US court over refusal on religious grounds of medical treatment for their children. American religious and charitable groups are required to register with the government (currently only for tax purposes) and their right to freedom speech is curtailed: ask an American pastor or priest to endorse a particular political candidate (or even party) next election cycle, and watch how fast the government comes down on his church. How is this substantively different from China? While you or I may not like where China draws its lines, the fact remains every country draws lines.
Right to have children: Without intending to start a protracted debate over China's one-child policy, it is not illegal in China for couples to have multiple children; the national average is currently two, statistically identical to the US. It is true that the government attempts to dissuade multiple children through a(n often heavy-handed) system of positive and negative incentives, such as fines, denials of government assistance, and lump-sum retirement payments to compliant couples. It is also true that the policy has always been ripe for abuse by corrupt (an endemic problem in China) or overzealous local officials, most notoriously through incidences of forced abortion and sterilization (both of which are illegal; http://www.mahalo.com/china-forced-abortions) in rural areas. But that hardly equates to accusations of systematic government policy, and your assertion that Chinese couples have no right to have children is plain silly.
In any case, the government is slated to scrap the one-child policy completely in the near future http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article3451974.ece.
Right to choice of political persuasion: depends on what you mean. Yeah, there's only one legal political party in China (and yet, CP membership, which is in decline, barely keeps pace with the US Democratic party). And yes publicly advocating contrary to the "party line" can get you in a boatload of trouble. However, I am free to personally believe any politics I wish, as long as I don't make myself a public nuisance in the process. You may not like that, and you may consider that a violation of free speech (personally, I don't and I do). I just wanted to clarify that the Chinese government doesn't give a rat's petutti what my political opinions are as long as I don't go around disturbing social harmony.
OK, flame away. But flame me for what I'm saying, not what I'm not: don't accuse me of being some pro-China apologist who thinks China has no human rights problems (even Beijing admits it does; see its 2009-2010 "National Human Rights Action Plan"). What I am arguing is th
I notice you fail to allow for lower premiums for those who drink in moderation.
So do many insurance companies. Which, of course, was his point.
There's no way to know WHEN you used a condom....
Unless each one were individually tagged. Next morning out goes the garbage with a couple of condoms in it. But never mind that. Purchasing records show Tom Jones picking up a 10-pack of Trojans on the way home from work on Monday. Friday night he purchases another. That alone tells us a hell of a lot about Tom's sex life, even if we don't know exactly when each condom did duty.
You CAN'T penalize someone for seeking treatment for a disease/disorder in the US. The ADA makes it a civil rights violation to do so.
But I can easily imagine drug companies bedding down with insurance firms to subtly pressure their customers into seeking the right brand of treatment. And in the real world it's only a violation if you get caught. Remember, age- and race-discrimination are also civil rights violations. Doesn't change the fact that it happens a hundred thousand times a day in the U.S., and 99.44% of the time it's damn near impossible to prove.
Unless of course you believe your employer/the government is going to follow you home and scan your books while you're out.
Ah, then you've forgotten the flap over Amazon.com's "purchasing circles" back in '99. Do employers care about what their employees read? Damn straight they do. Just ask the Microsoftees who found themselves in deep doo-doo when Microsoft discovered they had been purchasing anti-MS books.
Only a couple of years ago RFID tags couldn't be read from more than a few inches away. Today it's 30 feet. Within a few years it will be possible to inventory your entire house in a couple of seconds from inside a moving vehicle. Insurance companies would love to know what's sitting inside your medicine cabinet or fridge. Legal or not, I expect in the near future drive-by scannings will become part of the standard background check all insurance companies and employers do.
Or forget insurance companies. I imagine even those of us who have nothing to hide are happier living in a country where police can't just come barging in our doors on a whim. There's a reason police need subpoenas for anything that's not in plain sight. But we're now entering a world where police can search our homes from the comfort of their squad cars, where every police-wielded radar gun has a built-in RFID scanner, and "plain sight" just may include anything in the EMF range.
If Americans can be educated to equate dollar coins with lower taxes (not that big of a stretch) I think you'll find resistance decreasing.
This argument fails to take into account one of the great universal principles of budgetary politics: politicians spend money, they never give it back. Thirty milliseconds after the mints realize their first dollar in savings, every politician in Washington will be lined up with a minimum of three proposals apiece on alternative ways to spend it, most of them involving the pocket linings of their bigger contributors back home.
As I recall, back in pre-Windows days, DR-DOS ruled Germany. The point being, of course, that much as our European friends might not want to hear it, the future of technology isn't being decided on the Continent.
You won't get any arguments from me over Microsoft UIs -- to paraphrase Douglas Adams, "This must be some strange definition of 'user friendly' I wasn't previously familiar with."
I tell you what I would like to be able to do in Word -- slap a graphic on a page and expect it stay put while text reflows around it. I'm still unclear as to the subtle differences between text boxes and frames (or why Word even needs both), so maybe that's my problem: do I enclose the graphic in a frame, a text box, or drop it in directly? How do I safely anchor it to a page, rather than a paragraph? And can I attach a subtitle to a picture and expect it to still be in place next time I open the document?
And don't even get me started on section breaks in Word. Why, for example, when I delete a "continuous" section break, does the previous section break change?
Yes, I agree Word is hardly the most intuitive wp. But I rarely have a need that Word hasn't been up to, albeit occasionally with a little digging and some judicious postings to the free support sites and mailing lists.
And its East Asian languages support leaves OpenOffice in the dust.
there is STILL no way to "link" headings and text to stop leaving an orphaned heading
You aren't, by any chance, referring to the "Keep with next" or "Keep lines together" features (Format-Paragraph-Line and Page Breaks tab)? If so, Word's had this for at least a decade.
The above link is to an article describing incidents of Beijing officials pestering US citizens during the SLC Winter Games two years ago over display of the Taiwanese flag on private property, as well as the incident I mentioned earlier involving some friends who were detained in Atlanta for attempting to wear T-shirts bearing the Taiwanese flag at an Olympic event. From the article:
"This business goes back to the Atlanta Summer Games [in 1986] when a few Taiwanese students went to the Games sporting shirts that bore the national flag. They were stopped and were told to remove or reverse the shirts. They refused and I believe they were arrested," [Team Taiwan spokesman Sam] Huang said.
The IOC doesn't restrict its censorship to corporate interests -- it also meddles in the political sphere.
Amidst all the flag-waving you see going on -- US flags, Russian flags, Greek flags, Chinese flags, flags from every country with representatives in the games -- there is one flag you WON'T see -- Taiwan's. Why? Because it makes Beijing unhappy.
At the Atlanta games -- smack in the middle of the "Land of the Free" -- three friends of mine were removed for displaying a Taiwanese flag at an event in which Taiwanese athletes were competing. This year, while watching, for example, the archery competition (the only event in which Taiwan medaled), Taiwanese spectators were waving IOC-issued flags to replace the Taiwanese flags they had brought.
The IOC is not merely a corporate puppet -- it's a political lackey as well.
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
Personally, I thought Cringley wasted way too many words on geometry and circuit design trying to set up what I had always thought was a rather obvious point: if penalties cost you less than compliance, you pay the penalties and just file it under business expenses. (Hmm, I wonder if it's tax deductible.)
I would have thought any sixth grader could have figured that one out.
One night during my freshman year at university, as I approached a crosswalk, I habitually glanced both ways despite the walk light in my favor -- fortuitously, as it turns out. Off to my left, a car veered suddenly from left lane to right, dodging around the traffic waiting at the red light, then veered quickly left again. I waited. Sure enough, he arrived at my intersection just in time to pick off the last five or six pedestrians crossing before me, dragging one woman more than fifty yards under his front bumper before coming to a stop. Needless to say, she didn't survive.
The driver -- drunk, with two priors and a suspended license -- was reported to have said to the judge at his previous court appearance, "What's the problem, your honor? I haven't killed anyone, have I?"
Well, no, not yet.
How many innocent pedestrians has MS picked off in its drunken careen through the anti-trust regulations?
comes from the publisher persuading Tokien to make The Hobbit a children's story
The Hobbit was written by Tolkien to his children (it was sent out, chapter by chapter as he wrote it to his son, who was with the RAF airforce in South Africa). It was only shopped around to publishers after he completed it.
LOTR, conversely, was written in response to the demands of the public for a sequel to The Hobbit.
Of course, Jackson had the benefit of high-integrity source material, whereas Lucas made it up as he went along.
Lucas had the story completed (a nine-film outline) before beginning the original Star Wars.
As consistency goes, I'd say credit belongs to A) the fact that Jackson was working from unalterable source material (whereas Lucas freely altered his own material as he went along), and B) the fact that Jackson essentially made all three films at once. That alone will do wonders for consistency. Lucas, conversely, has been making the Star Wars series for thirty years now.
I would rather see those four movies made than the Hobbit actually, but it's not my decision:)
Don't hold your breath. The only reason the LOTR and the Hobbit were/will be filmed is because Tolkien sold the movie rights while he was still alive.
Christopher Tolkien, who owns the rights to The Silmarillion (which was published by him after his father's death), has made abundantly clear how he feels about movie versions of his father's works. It's not a subject you want to bring up in his presence.
I'm almost certain that most of the Silmarillion was finished before JRR started writing Lord of the Rings
Although The Silmarillion was begun long before The Lord of the Rings, it was never, to Tolkien's mind, finished.
The work later to be published (posthumously by his son Christopher, in 1972 or '73) was begun by Tolkien as a teenager, and was a constant engagement of his throughout his life. Ever the perfectionist, Tolkien was constantly engaged in rewrites, fiddlings, recastings, etc., right up until his death.
Hooded One points to Tolkien letter #131 (published and enumerated in The Letters of JRR Tolkien, probably still purchaseable at Amazon) to demonstrate that The Silmarillion was in completed form by 1950 or so, at which time Tolkien was engaged in an attempt to have it published together with The Lord of the Rings as "interdependent" works. Allen and Unwin, spooked by the size of the combined manuscripts, declined, and Collins, though initially agreeing, was beset by a series of delays eventually causing Tolkien to pull the manuscript and re-petition Allen and Unwin.
However, Hooded One overlooks both Tolkien's inveterate perfectionist nature, and letter #133, dated June of 1952, in which Tolkien writes the following:
As for
The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, they are where they were [i.e., at the time he was refused by Allen and Unwin, and began shopping them off to Collins]. The one [LOTR] finished (and the end revised), and the other still unfinished (or unrevised), and both gathering dust.... Although to me all are one, and the 'L of the Rings' would be better far (and eased) as part of the whole, I would gladly consider the publication of any part of this stuff....
When I have a moment to turn round I will collect The Silmarillion fragments in process of completion -- or rather the original outline which is more or less complete and you can read it.
So yes, on the one hand, Collins apparently had "a" submitted manuscript in hand. However, Tolkien does not appear to have considered it "finished". And indeed, it continued to be the target of much reworking throughout his life. As demonstrated in Christopher Tolkien's HOME series, Tolkien made many changes, both major and minor, after publication of LOTR, right up until his death in 1967.
Don't hold your breath -- the movie rights are not available.
The only reason Jackson was able to get the movie rights to LOTR is because Tolkien himself sold them back in the 60s. The Silmarillion was published posthumously by his son, Christopher who now holds the rights to the Tolkien estate and has made abundantly clear on many occasions his disdain for theatrical remakes of his father's works, and his personal wish that the movie rights had never been sold.
Ah, yes, thank you -- I'd forgotten. Separate ink tanks were a close second to ink prices in my deliberations. Throwing away half tanks of cyan and yellow just because magenta's out means throwing away money. Beats me why all printer companies don't do this. Oh, yeah. More money to them.
the printer uses a generic body frame with ill fitting parts
Sounds like my first car -- 1980 Chevy Citation. Used a stock engine which would only fit the chasis mounted transversally; result was you couldn't even change oil without putting the thing up on a lift.
Nearly forgot. With all the money I won't be spending on Lexmark ink, I decided I could buy more printer; hence the i550, rather than, say, the z33. I figure ink savings alone will make up the price difference in a couple of months' time.
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
Slashdot Mirror
Back in my youth I worked as an onsite contractor. We handled PC installation and maintanance, in-house staff handled the network. One afternoon, the network went down, taking a couple of thousand PCs with it. Then the executive secretary to the Chairman calls, demanding to know what happened to her PC and how soon we'd have it fixed. I arrived at her desk and jiggled her mouse just in time to watch the machine reboot (did I mentioned it was Windows?). No amount of explanation in the world could convince the sainted woman it wasn't my fault. When she demanded to know what had happened to the report she'd spent the last six hours working on, my life flashed before my eyes. I explained that only the changes she'd made since her last save were lost, then steeled myself for the inevitable reply. "Save?!", she hissed. The ensuing political firestorm almost lost my compan its support contract. As it was, my manager (who fully understood the situation), was forced to transfer me to a new site (with an apologetic compensatory raise, bless his heart). The bottom line is the customer is always right, even when he (or she) is wrong. If you don't have the hide to grin and bear it, perhaps you might want to look for a new direction in your career. It's what I ultimately did.
Agreed, in part. However, as others have argued, technologically there is nothing preventing the government from, say, forcing the software into the IP stack, or requiring ISPs to incorporate it into the software suite they already install on customer PCs ("You need this to access the Internet" is all your friendly serviceman need say)***. Of course, as long as the software is restricted to IP banning, any anonymous proxy will still circumvent it. But can you say "feature creep"? Let Skype be a lesson to us all: Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China's TOM-Skype platform (http://www.nartv.org/mirror/breachingtrust.pdf).
I would caution, however, against vilifying China too much in this regard. Even much of the Chinese intelligentsia believes that their country needs a brutal government to avoid total chaos.
I was tempted to argue with your adjectives here, but then why? Ask the inmates at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib about the brutality of the US government, and then note the ease with which the Patriot Act passed, and the significant percentage of American intelligentsia that argued for its necessity in protecting American values. The American bogeyman is the "terrorist", hell-bent on destroying "freedom". Replace "terrorist" and "freedom" with "political dissident" and "social harmony" and the Chinese argument becomes indistinguishable. Certain levels of censorship and monitoring (pronounced "warrantless wiretapping") are viewed as necessary and essential tools in the struggle to protect social harmony from the onslaught of its political enemies, and most Chinese are more than happy to allow it.
Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai.
***Actually, I'm surprised it wasn't done this way. Since the the software only needs to be present on PCs that actually access the Internet, what more efficient point of attack than ISPs? Mandating the software for Internet service would go along way toward ensuring its ubiquity. 'Course, I don't wanna be giving the government any ideas :-).
It's its current iteration, at least.
The grandparent post is correct. The Great Firewall, dubbed the most sophisticated of its kind in the world, is easily circumvented by anyone who knows how to spell "anonymous proxy" or, barring that, "Tor". IP-banning software, even if it's mandated in the future, will be no different. The operative word here is won't, not can't, and the point is the vast majority of Chinese netizens won't bother circumventing it, even if they know they can.
Of course, I run Linux (Ubuntu, thanks for asking), so all this is moot to me.
Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai
Interesting. This has been precisely the argument coming from Western China experts for the past quarter century -- the view that as China develops economically, the people (i.e., the "privileged class") benefiting the most would begin to demand equal amounts of political power. Now you argue it'll lead to a population of sheep. Which is, not incidentally, what most Americans seem to believe the Chinese people are now.
"the hundreds of millions of rural poor ... who never wanted anything to do with Beijing"
Quite the cultural expert, aren't we? The "hundreds of millions of rural poor" have about as much to do with Beijing as they have with any Chinese government. Not because Beijing is autocratic (save for a brief period of republican rule, China has never known anything else) but simply because in any average year in rural China it hardly makes a difference what's happening in Beijing.
Or does it? The fact is China has experienced near miraculous economic growth over the past thirty years. As to the "rural poor", according to the latest World Bank numbers China's poverty rate plummeted from 69% in 1978, to 10% in 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China) -- significantly lower than the US's usual 12 to 17% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States). In fact no other country in the world has equaled China's record on poverty reduction in the last quarter century.
If I were amongst the "hundreds of millions of" Chinese "rural poor", I think I'd have good reason to be happy with Beijing.
Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai
And how do you guarantee that? Having lived in numerous countries around the world, I'd argue that, if stability is your meter-stick, authoritarian regimes win hands down. By far the most unstable countries I've lived in -- democracies all -- were in central Africa; in Zaire, for example, the people lived in abject terror of the military. I'm personally of the opinion that stable democracies are in the minority, and that the US owes its stability far more to the balance of powers than to democracy per se. Absent that, democracies are easy prey to anyone who manages to amass enough power. Hardly a month goes by you don't hear yet another story of fraudulent elections, e.g.
Currently, I live in Shanghai, where I find life on a daily basis nearly indistinguishable from the States: I get up, go to work, collect my paycheck; I have all the usual amenities at my fingertips -- movies, good restaurants, excellent parks and recreational facilities, etc. And at that level, issues such as democracy and censorship tend to fade into the bleary realm of principle. With most Chinese feeling the government performs well, and with a general level of satisfaction in their daily lives, what practical difference does it make that they don't elect their national leaders, or that I can't get to Youtube?
Vis-a-vis the government, the only significant attitudinal difference I've noticed is that the Chinese feel a bit more detached from theirs. As much as Americans like to diss their own government, it's generally one of the first places they turn to for help -- the US has government hotlines for everything -- and they expect to get it. Chinese tend to be a bit more pessimistic about such things. But then, so were Zairians.
Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai, China
Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai
It is clearly a message of solidarity.
An article in the Wall Street Journal (http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/2009/06/02/twitter-goes-down-in-china/) says, "A Twitter spokeswoman didn't have an immediate comment and couldn't confirm whether the service was blocked in China." while Australian news media (http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25581519-5001028,00.html) report, "A Microsoft official said Tuesday its Bing.com, Live.com and Hotmail.com sites were among several to have been blocked for customers in China."
Doesn't sound like the block is self-imposed. But would that make sense in any case? Self-imposed censorship in the name of free speech?
As someone who lives in China
As someone who also lives in China, my attempts to load Twitter bear the usual Great Firewall earmarks: "The connection was reset" errors with easy circumvention via anonymous proxy. Note that as of this writing (June 5, 9 PM local time), MSN, LiveMail and HotMail are accessible in Shanghai; Twitter and YouTube are not.
Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai, Chine
Lee Kaiwen, Shanghai, China
Right to peaceful protest: There are hundreds of peaceful protests a year throughout China, ranging in size from single individuals up to groups of hundreds. While I'm no legal expert, it seems to me the relevant differences between Chinese and, say, US laws governing peaceful assembly are that the Chinese government can be a bit more nebulous in denying permits, and that protests espousing illegal activities or undermining social harmony are not tolerated. Now, one might (and probably could) argue that the government has abused loopholes in the laws. But the right to peaceful protest is enshrined in the Chinese constitution.
Right to choice of religion: Again, the right is constitutionally guaranteed. I am a practicing Catholic who attends Mass weekly here in Shanghai. If I wanted to, I could become Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, or one of hundreds of persuasions of Protestant, all without government interference. I'm even free to proselytize.
Yes China has laws governing the limits and nature of permissible religious activities. So does the US. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, have found themselves in US court over refusal on religious grounds of medical treatment for their children. American religious and charitable groups are required to register with the government (currently only for tax purposes) and their right to freedom speech is curtailed: ask an American pastor or priest to endorse a particular political candidate (or even party) next election cycle, and watch how fast the government comes down on his church. How is this substantively different from China? While you or I may not like where China draws its lines, the fact remains every country draws lines.
Right to have children: Without intending to start a protracted debate over China's one-child policy, it is not illegal in China for couples to have multiple children; the national average is currently two, statistically identical to the US. It is true that the government attempts to dissuade multiple children through a(n often heavy-handed) system of positive and negative incentives, such as fines, denials of government assistance, and lump-sum retirement payments to compliant couples. It is also true that the policy has always been ripe for abuse by corrupt (an endemic problem in China) or overzealous local officials, most notoriously through incidences of forced abortion and sterilization (both of which are illegal; http://www.mahalo.com/china-forced-abortions) in rural areas. But that hardly equates to accusations of systematic government policy, and your assertion that Chinese couples have no right to have children is plain silly. In any case, the government is slated to scrap the one-child policy completely in the near future http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/china/article3451974.ece.
Right to choice of political persuasion: depends on what you mean. Yeah, there's only one legal political party in China (and yet, CP membership, which is in decline, barely keeps pace with the US Democratic party). And yes publicly advocating contrary to the "party line" can get you in a boatload of trouble. However, I am free to personally believe any politics I wish, as long as I don't make myself a public nuisance in the process. You may not like that, and you may consider that a violation of free speech (personally, I don't and I do). I just wanted to clarify that the Chinese government doesn't give a rat's petutti what my political opinions are as long as I don't go around disturbing social harmony.
OK, flame away. But flame me for what I'm saying, not what I'm not: don't accuse me of being some pro-China apologist who thinks China has no human rights problems (even Beijing admits it does; see its 2009-2010 "National Human Rights Action Plan"). What I am arguing is th
So do many insurance companies. Which, of course, was his point.
There's no way to know WHEN you used a condom....
Unless each one were individually tagged. Next morning out goes the garbage with a couple of condoms in it. But never mind that. Purchasing records show Tom Jones picking up a 10-pack of Trojans on the way home from work on Monday. Friday night he purchases another. That alone tells us a hell of a lot about Tom's sex life, even if we don't know exactly when each condom did duty.
You CAN'T penalize someone for seeking treatment for a disease/disorder in the US. The ADA makes it a civil rights violation to do so.
But I can easily imagine drug companies bedding down with insurance firms to subtly pressure their customers into seeking the right brand of treatment. And in the real world it's only a violation if you get caught. Remember, age- and race-discrimination are also civil rights violations. Doesn't change the fact that it happens a hundred thousand times a day in the U.S., and 99.44% of the time it's damn near impossible to prove.
Unless of course you believe your employer/the government is going to follow you home and scan your books while you're out.
Ah, then you've forgotten the flap over Amazon.com's "purchasing circles" back in '99. Do employers care about what their employees read? Damn straight they do. Just ask the Microsoftees who found themselves in deep doo-doo when Microsoft discovered they had been purchasing anti-MS books.
Only a couple of years ago RFID tags couldn't be read from more than a few inches away. Today it's 30 feet. Within a few years it will be possible to inventory your entire house in a couple of seconds from inside a moving vehicle. Insurance companies would love to know what's sitting inside your medicine cabinet or fridge. Legal or not, I expect in the near future drive-by scannings will become part of the standard background check all insurance companies and employers do.
Or forget insurance companies. I imagine even those of us who have nothing to hide are happier living in a country where police can't just come barging in our doors on a whim. There's a reason police need subpoenas for anything that's not in plain sight. But we're now entering a world where police can search our homes from the comfort of their squad cars, where every police-wielded radar gun has a built-in RFID scanner, and "plain sight" just may include anything in the EMF range.
Lee Kaiwen
This argument fails to take into account one of the great universal principles of budgetary politics: politicians spend money, they never give it back. Thirty milliseconds after the mints realize their first dollar in savings, every politician in Washington will be lined up with a minimum of three proposals apiece on alternative ways to spend it, most of them involving the pocket linings of their bigger contributors back home.
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
I tell you what I would like to be able to do in Word -- slap a graphic on a page and expect it stay put while text reflows around it. I'm still unclear as to the subtle differences between text boxes and frames (or why Word even needs both), so maybe that's my problem: do I enclose the graphic in a frame, a text box, or drop it in directly? How do I safely anchor it to a page, rather than a paragraph? And can I attach a subtitle to a picture and expect it to still be in place next time I open the document?
And don't even get me started on section breaks in Word. Why, for example, when I delete a "continuous" section break, does the previous section break change?
Yes, I agree Word is hardly the most intuitive wp. But I rarely have a need that Word hasn't been up to, albeit occasionally with a little digging and some judicious postings to the free support sites and mailing lists.
And its East Asian languages support leaves OpenOffice in the dust.
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan.
You aren't, by any chance, referring to the "Keep with next" or "Keep lines together" features (Format-Paragraph-Line and Page Breaks tab)? If so, Word's had this for at least a decade.
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/archives/2002/02/1 5/0000124045
The above link is to an article describing incidents of Beijing officials pestering US citizens during the SLC Winter Games two years ago over display of the Taiwanese flag on private property, as well as the incident I mentioned earlier involving some friends who were detained in Atlanta for attempting to wear T-shirts bearing the Taiwanese flag at an Olympic event. From the article:
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
The IOC doesn't restrict its censorship to corporate interests -- it also meddles in the political sphere. Amidst all the flag-waving you see going on -- US flags, Russian flags, Greek flags, Chinese flags, flags from every country with representatives in the games -- there is one flag you WON'T see -- Taiwan's. Why? Because it makes Beijing unhappy. At the Atlanta games -- smack in the middle of the "Land of the Free" -- three friends of mine were removed for displaying a Taiwanese flag at an event in which Taiwanese athletes were competing. This year, while watching, for example, the archery competition (the only event in which Taiwan medaled), Taiwanese spectators were waving IOC-issued flags to replace the Taiwanese flags they had brought. The IOC is not merely a corporate puppet -- it's a political lackey as well. Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
I would have thought any sixth grader could have figured that one out.
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
The driver -- drunk, with two priors and a suspended license -- was reported to have said to the judge at his previous court appearance, "What's the problem, your honor? I haven't killed anyone, have I?"
Well, no, not yet.
How many innocent pedestrians has MS picked off in its drunken careen through the anti-trust regulations?
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
The Hobbit was written by Tolkien to his children (it was sent out, chapter by chapter as he wrote it to his son, who was with the RAF airforce in South Africa). It was only shopped around to publishers after he completed it.
LOTR, conversely, was written in response to the demands of the public for a sequel to The Hobbit.
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
Lucas had the story completed (a nine-film outline) before beginning the original Star Wars.
As consistency goes, I'd say credit belongs to A) the fact that Jackson was working from unalterable source material (whereas Lucas freely altered his own material as he went along), and B) the fact that Jackson essentially made all three films at once. That alone will do wonders for consistency. Lucas, conversely, has been making the Star Wars series for thirty years now.
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
Don't hold your breath. The only reason the LOTR and the Hobbit were/will be filmed is because Tolkien sold the movie rights while he was still alive.
Christopher Tolkien, who owns the rights to The Silmarillion (which was published by him after his father's death), has made abundantly clear how he feels about movie versions of his father's works. It's not a subject you want to bring up in his presence.
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
Although The Silmarillion was begun long before The Lord of the Rings, it was never, to Tolkien's mind, finished.
The work later to be published (posthumously by his son Christopher, in 1972 or '73) was begun by Tolkien as a teenager, and was a constant engagement of his throughout his life. Ever the perfectionist, Tolkien was constantly engaged in rewrites, fiddlings, recastings, etc., right up until his death.
Hooded One points to Tolkien letter #131 (published and enumerated in The Letters of JRR Tolkien, probably still purchaseable at Amazon) to demonstrate that The Silmarillion was in completed form by 1950 or so, at which time Tolkien was engaged in an attempt to have it published together with The Lord of the Rings as "interdependent" works. Allen and Unwin, spooked by the size of the combined manuscripts, declined, and Collins, though initially agreeing, was beset by a series of delays eventually causing Tolkien to pull the manuscript and re-petition Allen and Unwin.
However, Hooded One overlooks both Tolkien's inveterate perfectionist nature, and letter #133, dated June of 1952, in which Tolkien writes the following:
So yes, on the one hand, Collins apparently had "a" submitted manuscript in hand. However, Tolkien does not appear to have considered it "finished". And indeed, it continued to be the target of much reworking throughout his life. As demonstrated in Christopher Tolkien's HOME series, Tolkien made many changes, both major and minor, after publication of LOTR, right up until his death in 1967.
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
The only reason Jackson was able to get the movie rights to LOTR is because Tolkien himself sold them back in the 60s. The Silmarillion was published posthumously by his son, Christopher who now holds the rights to the Tolkien estate and has made abundantly clear on many occasions his disdain for theatrical remakes of his father's works, and his personal wish that the movie rights had never been sold.
So, Silmarillion: The Movie will never happen.
Ah, yes, thank you -- I'd forgotten. Separate ink tanks were a close second to ink prices in my deliberations. Throwing away half tanks of cyan and yellow just because magenta's out means throwing away money. Beats me why all printer companies don't do this. Oh, yeah. More money to them.
the printer uses a generic body frame with ill fitting parts
Sounds like my first car -- 1980 Chevy Citation. Used a stock engine which would only fit the chasis mounted transversally; result was you couldn't even change oil without putting the thing up on a lift.
Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan
Nearly forgot. With all the money I won't be spending on Lexmark ink, I decided I could buy more printer; hence the i550, rather than, say, the z33. I figure ink savings alone will make up the price difference in a couple of months' time. Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan