That was more of a proof of concept (and the only example I could find.) Consider another case: there's a technique where you put your thumb up to the phone's camera sensor and it measures your heart rate based on minute colour changes. Should that be regulated? What if someone has a heart attack because they trusted a faulty implementation of that algorithm?
Education
Even in the US that depends on the school—the University of Iowa, for example, has tuition fees closely matching those of the University of Toronto.
Food
Journalists travelling to North Korea are rarely allowed to see more than a few sanctioned areas, so interviews wouldn't show you lower class North Koreans. If you watch the Dispatches video I linked you to, there are some photos in there smuggled out by defectors that show people as emaciated as Nazi concentration camp survivors.
Indoctrination
The US is actually extremely diverse in some areas (mostly the big cities); if you compare San Francisco to Detroit, the gulf is almost as big as Sweden and Greece. I can say with absolute certainty that English-speaking Canada does not indoctrinate its students; there are very few patriotic Canadians except those in our (laughable, UN-serving) military, and most in Ontario and BC are agnostic or atheist. The US conservatism I'm speaking of mostly decayed in the late sixties.
Pluralism
I don't think the basic elections matter too much when they only exist for show. The candidates are appointed anyway, after all.
Personally, I'm very sad about the Truman doctrine and all of the tinpot dictatorships that the US created in south-eastern Europe and south-west Asia to impede the Soviet Union.
The US political parties aren't just financial interests; despite corruption, they still respond to voter feedback as well. A very prominent example of this was the defeat of SOPA earlier this year, which was accomplished primarily through protest and the petitioning of citizens. If you've never watched C-SPAN before, it's a very insightful (and extremely dry) window into the world of the American democratic process.
Colonialism and the Free World
The original definition of "Free World" just meant any anti-communist, capitalist country, including dictatorships. It was propaganda invented by the US. What do you think makes a 'free' country?
I can imagine a world where that might be okay, but only with one condition: if something does get tested by the FDA and it's rejected, it should have to be labelled "REJECTED BY THE FDA" and not just "NOT FDA APPROVED," which is ambiguous (perhaps the sticker "NOT EVALUATED BY THE FDA" could be used too.) Wouldn't you want to know if research had been done on a given product?
To be fair, I do understand wariness around the FDA. There are a lot of very close corporate ties that have been a source of trouble in the past.
You're correct; the FDA gets very touchy about even the slightest modifications being made to hardware. For apps that don't know what hardware they're running on, I'm pretty sure just saying "this app has been tested on [list of phones and tablets] and has only been certified by the FDA for use on those devices" should do it.
I left pure reference works out, actually. That's be analogous to your "any ol' website" statement. I don't think that expanding the Darwin Awards is a very noble ulterior motive, however. Gene Roddenberry would disapprove.
Yes, they absolutely should; for the consumer, to prevent abominations like this. I would say that anything more interactive than a reference document or log book. For more real medical software (i.e. patient monitors or diagnostic tools), just because it's on a smartphone and not a dedicated box doesn't mean it suddenly stops being a medical tool.
You know what I would do if I had a million dollars? I would invest half of it in low risk dark fiber and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in software...
Using the word 'weapon' to describe something that may give someone leverage in a conversation or argument is not a new usage in English; it's a very common piece of figurative language.
I'm not here to discuss my own perspective—I'm simply relating to the cultural norms in the United States which have been put forth by the Judeo-Christian belief system. I do not purport to necessarily hold any of the opinions advanced.
a) it was a joke about relationships that are so entrenched that their group decisions effectively constitute a layer of obligation similar to laws; in which case, 'woosh'
b) cultural norms regarding premarital sex in your community could effectively pressure you into behaving as though you needed to get married before sex could be used in this manner, even if you didn't personally believe it was right
c) the idea of using sex as a bargaining chip to force people to marry is, itself, a weaponization of sex ('woosh' again)
d) laws are, at some level, the aggregate results of political beliefs of the people (politicans, ancestors, whatever—don't debate politics in response to this post, please) they affect, and are hence dependent on your views and the views of others near you when considered at a national or global scale
I'm a little surprised I have to spell this out, but, okay. Stereotypically, physical intimacy in a heterosexual relationship only transpires when both members feel comfortable participating in it. The idea of a 'sex weapon' arises when one member of the relationship feels that the other's reason for avoiding physical intimacy is undue; i.e. the sex becomes an object of desire in and of itself, which is very understandable as physical intimacy is a psychological need for people who are adjusted to it. Alternatively (and frequently in popular culture) one member may withhold sex from the other in order to manipulate them unfairly. This kind of disagreement, usually represented in heterosexual situations as the woman withholding from the man, is exacerbated by poor matches.
The idea of a 'licence,' therefore, is a simple by-product: without premarital sex, then one indeed needs a marriage licence before intercourse is a consideration—although lesser forms of physical intimacy may still get the same treatment.
This phenomenon is very widely represented, and I'm perplexed that you aren't already familiar with at least its popular portrayal.
Here's the other part, though: Taiwan considers itself to be China, too. Its official title is the Republic of China. Everyone just calls it Taiwan to avoid annoying the PRC.
1) Don't be so eager to downplay conservative social attitudes—after all, there are lots of countries where something is legal, but so shameful that no one would ever get caught doing it for fear of being disowned by their families. Unfortunately this even happens in the United States. A state-encouraged culture of conservatism constitutes a form of repression itself; the United States became much more conservative after World War II in part because the government wanted to show a strong face to Russia. And lo and behold: two women were executed for being 'tinged with capitalism' because they had sex with each other and had been to Japan.
3) Here's a bit more on the educational situation. I do agree that university tuition is a scandal in a lot of Western countries, but (in Canada and the US, anyway) that tuition is just a matter of acquiring a loan, usually from the government, which you can reasonably expect to pay back, especially if you finish your degree. Regardless of how university is in North Korea, many never get through basic school, and much of the curriculum is political indoctrination.
3 again, let's call it 4) If you read the articles on each of the four parties' pages, it appears they exist now only to give the illusion of choice. While they had political agendas early on, all of them are allied with the ruling party, and none exist except as a formality. It's slightly more elaborate than the CPSU, but it does not appear to be any more free. In the United States the two parties aren't truly political causes, but really more sets of rich people, who at least actually oppose each other. There are many political movements (ranging from the Tea Party, to the Libertarians, to the Green Party, to the Neocons, to Occupy Wall Street) which are allowed to express their views publicly, and have influenced the policies of their corresponding political parties.
4, bumped to 5) Have you seen this? I think it might be useful. You are wrong to say North Koreans are free to be homosexual (which you called "totally ok"); the statement that women have suffrage is meaningless because no democratic elections occur; there are numerous sources stating that North Korea has a serious and continual food problem; and for many North Koreans, public school education is very different from the equivalent in other countries, consisting largely of indoctrination.
5, bumped to 6) Like it or not, the government of Taiwan still claims mainland China. The official 'Taiwan' got stuck to it largely because other countries wanted to open up dealings with the PRC, and not offend the PRC when they did so. The legislature is still the Republic of China's legislature all the way back—you might as well say that Constantine's empire wasn't the Roman Empire just because it didn't possess Rome.
6, bumped to 7) Colonialism in the past doesn't affect a country's participation in the free world in the present. The UK does have a lot of problems, but it is still essentially a free country.
As for Greeks: no, it's more about your English.:) The person I knew was actually very conservative and admired the social order and relative lack of corruption in the US.
That little bit of word order is a classic example of a difference of opinion between Romance and Germanic languages. All of the Romance languages put adjectival clauses after the noun they affect in the same situation; the French call Mexico "États-Unis mexicains" (i.e. the Mexican United States). In Canada, where all of the government agencies list their initialisms bilingually, we often joke that the French one is derived by reversing the English one letter for letter.
So, um. Where do you get your information about the DPRK from, exactly? It's outright wrong.
As for China—the Taiwanese government certainly isn't recognized very often as the Government of China, but it's still actually called the Republic of China.
(Also, I should've guessed you're Greek—you sound very much like a friend of mine...)
Are you sure? Sidney Gottlieb once destroyed a large number of classified CIA papers. At any rate, I think that's a bit of a fallacy—to invoke Godwin, the Nuremberg Trials did little for those who were already dead.
Nope—I was speaking from experience in Canada. I think you'll find your (kinda repetitive and obvious) moanings more useful on this story, or perhaps this one.
Really, and seriously: try to keep a sense of perspective. Most of the population of the DPRK is starving to death, completely uneducated, and is unable to emigrate or do anything else to fix their living conditions. No country is perfect, but that's orders of magnitude worse than even Saudi Arabia.
Slashdot Mirror
That was more of a proof of concept (and the only example I could find.) Consider another case: there's a technique where you put your thumb up to the phone's camera sensor and it measures your heart rate based on minute colour changes. Should that be regulated? What if someone has a heart attack because they trusted a faulty implementation of that algorithm?
Education
Even in the US that depends on the school—the University of Iowa, for example, has tuition fees closely matching those of the University of Toronto.
Food
Journalists travelling to North Korea are rarely allowed to see more than a few sanctioned areas, so interviews wouldn't show you lower class North Koreans. If you watch the Dispatches video I linked you to, there are some photos in there smuggled out by defectors that show people as emaciated as Nazi concentration camp survivors.
Indoctrination
The US is actually extremely diverse in some areas (mostly the big cities); if you compare San Francisco to Detroit, the gulf is almost as big as Sweden and Greece. I can say with absolute certainty that English-speaking Canada does not indoctrinate its students; there are very few patriotic Canadians except those in our (laughable, UN-serving) military, and most in Ontario and BC are agnostic or atheist. The US conservatism I'm speaking of mostly decayed in the late sixties.
Pluralism
I don't think the basic elections matter too much when they only exist for show. The candidates are appointed anyway, after all.
Personally, I'm very sad about the Truman doctrine and all of the tinpot dictatorships that the US created in south-eastern Europe and south-west Asia to impede the Soviet Union.
The US political parties aren't just financial interests; despite corruption, they still respond to voter feedback as well. A very prominent example of this was the defeat of SOPA earlier this year, which was accomplished primarily through protest and the petitioning of citizens. If you've never watched C-SPAN before, it's a very insightful (and extremely dry) window into the world of the American democratic process.
Colonialism and the Free World
The original definition of "Free World" just meant any anti-communist, capitalist country, including dictatorships. It was propaganda invented by the US. What do you think makes a 'free' country?
I can imagine a world where that might be okay, but only with one condition: if something does get tested by the FDA and it's rejected, it should have to be labelled "REJECTED BY THE FDA" and not just "NOT FDA APPROVED," which is ambiguous (perhaps the sticker "NOT EVALUATED BY THE FDA" could be used too.) Wouldn't you want to know if research had been done on a given product?
To be fair, I do understand wariness around the FDA. There are a lot of very close corporate ties that have been a source of trouble in the past.
You're correct; the FDA gets very touchy about even the slightest modifications being made to hardware. For apps that don't know what hardware they're running on, I'm pretty sure just saying "this app has been tested on [list of phones and tablets] and has only been certified by the FDA for use on those devices" should do it.
I left pure reference works out, actually. That's be analogous to your "any ol' website" statement. I don't think that expanding the Darwin Awards is a very noble ulterior motive, however. Gene Roddenberry would disapprove.
Let me get this straight—you're arguing against eliminating scammers because you want the intellectually deficient and uneducated to suffer?
I've found it's a little like delivering a stand-up routine at an impound lot.
Yes, they absolutely should; for the consumer, to prevent abominations like this. I would say that anything more interactive than a reference document or log book. For more real medical software (i.e. patient monitors or diagnostic tools), just because it's on a smartphone and not a dedicated box doesn't mean it suddenly stops being a medical tool.
You know what I would do if I had a million dollars? I would invest half of it in low risk dark fiber and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in software...
Using the word 'weapon' to describe something that may give someone leverage in a conversation or argument is not a new usage in English; it's a very common piece of figurative language.
I'm not here to discuss my own perspective—I'm simply relating to the cultural norms in the United States which have been put forth by the Judeo-Christian belief system. I do not purport to necessarily hold any of the opinions advanced.
I have a few different answers to this:
a) it was a joke about relationships that are so entrenched that their group decisions effectively constitute a layer of obligation similar to laws; in which case, 'woosh'
b) cultural norms regarding premarital sex in your community could effectively pressure you into behaving as though you needed to get married before sex could be used in this manner, even if you didn't personally believe it was right
c) the idea of using sex as a bargaining chip to force people to marry is, itself, a weaponization of sex ('woosh' again)
d) laws are, at some level, the aggregate results of political beliefs of the people (politicans, ancestors, whatever—don't debate politics in response to this post, please) they affect, and are hence dependent on your views and the views of others near you when considered at a national or global scale
Take your pick!
I'm a little surprised I have to spell this out, but, okay. Stereotypically, physical intimacy in a heterosexual relationship only transpires when both members feel comfortable participating in it. The idea of a 'sex weapon' arises when one member of the relationship feels that the other's reason for avoiding physical intimacy is undue; i.e. the sex becomes an object of desire in and of itself, which is very understandable as physical intimacy is a psychological need for people who are adjusted to it. Alternatively (and frequently in popular culture) one member may withhold sex from the other in order to manipulate them unfairly. This kind of disagreement, usually represented in heterosexual situations as the woman withholding from the man, is exacerbated by poor matches.
The idea of a 'licence,' therefore, is a simple by-product: without premarital sex, then one indeed needs a marriage licence before intercourse is a consideration—although lesser forms of physical intimacy may still get the same treatment.
This phenomenon is very widely represented, and I'm perplexed that you aren't already familiar with at least its popular portrayal.
That depends on your views regarding premarital sex.
Here's the other part, though: Taiwan considers itself to be China, too. Its official title is the Republic of China. Everyone just calls it Taiwan to avoid annoying the PRC.
1) Don't be so eager to downplay conservative social attitudes—after all, there are lots of countries where something is legal, but so shameful that no one would ever get caught doing it for fear of being disowned by their families. Unfortunately this even happens in the United States. A state-encouraged culture of conservatism constitutes a form of repression itself; the United States became much more conservative after World War II in part because the government wanted to show a strong face to Russia. And lo and behold: two women were executed for being 'tinged with capitalism' because they had sex with each other and had been to Japan.
2) The Carter comment comes from a BBC story. This Guardian article, also cited on the page, says that the World Food Programme estimates that six million (out of 23 million total) are short of food.
3) Here's a bit more on the educational situation. I do agree that university tuition is a scandal in a lot of Western countries, but (in Canada and the US, anyway) that tuition is just a matter of acquiring a loan, usually from the government, which you can reasonably expect to pay back, especially if you finish your degree. Regardless of how university is in North Korea, many never get through basic school, and much of the curriculum is political indoctrination.
3 again, let's call it 4) If you read the articles on each of the four parties' pages, it appears they exist now only to give the illusion of choice. While they had political agendas early on, all of them are allied with the ruling party, and none exist except as a formality. It's slightly more elaborate than the CPSU, but it does not appear to be any more free. In the United States the two parties aren't truly political causes, but really more sets of rich people, who at least actually oppose each other. There are many political movements (ranging from the Tea Party, to the Libertarians, to the Green Party, to the Neocons, to Occupy Wall Street) which are allowed to express their views publicly, and have influenced the policies of their corresponding political parties.
4, bumped to 5) Have you seen this? I think it might be useful. You are wrong to say North Koreans are free to be homosexual (which you called "totally ok"); the statement that women have suffrage is meaningless because no democratic elections occur; there are numerous sources stating that North Korea has a serious and continual food problem; and for many North Koreans, public school education is very different from the equivalent in other countries, consisting largely of indoctrination.
5, bumped to 6) Like it or not, the government of Taiwan still claims mainland China. The official 'Taiwan' got stuck to it largely because other countries wanted to open up dealings with the PRC, and not offend the PRC when they did so. The legislature is still the Republic of China's legislature all the way back—you might as well say that Constantine's empire wasn't the Roman Empire just because it didn't possess Rome.
6, bumped to 7) Colonialism in the past doesn't affect a country's participation in the free world in the present. The UK does have a lot of problems, but it is still essentially a free country.
As for Greeks: no, it's more about your English. :) The person I knew was actually very conservative and admired the social order and relative lack of corruption in the US.
That little bit of word order is a classic example of a difference of opinion between Romance and Germanic languages. All of the Romance languages put adjectival clauses after the noun they affect in the same situation; the French call Mexico "États-Unis mexicains" (i.e. the Mexican United States). In Canada, where all of the government agencies list their initialisms bilingually, we often joke that the French one is derived by reversing the English one letter for letter.
The gay rights thing appears to be propaganda. North Korea has perpetually been on the verge of starvation and occasionally veers over it, with standard food rations being only 700 calories per day. I might've gotten the education picture wrong, but whatever it is, it's not pretty. The ballots only have one option on them, and voting 'no confidence' must be done in public (and is therefore essentially suicide.)
So, um. Where do you get your information about the DPRK from, exactly? It's outright wrong.
As for China—the Taiwanese government certainly isn't recognized very often as the Government of China, but it's still actually called the Republic of China.
(Also, I should've guessed you're Greek—you sound very much like a friend of mine...)
Are you sure? Sidney Gottlieb once destroyed a large number of classified CIA papers. At any rate, I think that's a bit of a fallacy—to invoke Godwin, the Nuremberg Trials did little for those who were already dead.
Gadzooks, you're right! Quick, let's get into space and then destroy the surface with nukes so no one can live there any mo—wait.
Nope—I was speaking from experience in Canada. I think you'll find your (kinda repetitive and obvious) moanings more useful on this story, or perhaps this one.
Really, and seriously: try to keep a sense of perspective. Most of the population of the DPRK is starving to death, completely uneducated, and is unable to emigrate or do anything else to fix their living conditions. No country is perfect, but that's orders of magnitude worse than even Saudi Arabia.
It's a national pride thing. You won't see it often, and it's pretty much only Koreans (both north and south) who do it.
Apoptochip! This is a fantastic neologism and I hope it sees more use. Except I don't, because apoptochips sound like a terrible idea.
Silly. I was talking about the usage of the meme "X all the things."
I realise that parenthesis was a little ambiguous; I meant "the PRC de facto possesses the mainland."