Wayland has no drawing api, and it's scope is extremely limited compared to x, x will still be needed on top of it for the forseeable future.
X has no drawing API!
Do you even know what Xlib provides in the way of drawing? 1980's-style graphics primitives, pixel-based, non-anti-aliased polylines, circles and arcs. Nobody is seriously using X for drawing anything anymore. You say in another post that "the fundamentals of drawing haven't changed" - Yes, they have.
X was designed entirely around raster graphics. It had no support for bitmap fonts, and no support for device-independent graphics. That hasn't been the right way to do things since at least the early 90's, and with PostScript debuting in 1983, it was arguably an obsolete device model even when X was created. Nobody uses X for "drawing", all they use it for is pushing pixels out to the screen.
Today, either you're doing explicitly raster graphics (read: 3D stuff, which is device-dependent), or you should be doing device-independent rendering. Bitmap fonts are the exception, not the rule. It's insane to expect people to write separate drawing routines for printing, or generating a PDF or whatever. (And X of course never had any kind of real printing support to begin with) If you think we need X for drawing, then you simply have no clue.
The problem is that they're "among, not "are". More people in the US/UK get what those countries reserve for the few and well connected.
In the US, we don't need Potemkin Villages, but those countries sure do.
WTF? Are you seriously lumping together North and South Korea in terms of living standards?
Did I miss something? When did South Korea cease to be a first-world democracy?
You don't need to be 'well-connected' to buy something in South Korea. You go to the store, and you buy it. It's a friggin market-economy.
Making 1/3 of a US wage does not mean you're a developing nation. People in Portugal make 1/3 of the average US salary,
if you make a raw dollar comparsion, and they aren't starving. They have homes, cars, computers, phones, etc. Same in South Korea.
Maybe not two cars, and maybe not the latest computer, and maybe a smaller home, etc. But they're by no means poor.
By all means, speak up on behalf of the North Koreans, who have no say in their government or situation, but talking that way about South Korea is just condescending.
They're one of the richest nations in the world, and the second-richest nation in Asia.
Is it "swastica-waving", though, or are they "just" racist?
Nobody who isn't retarded would wave a swastika and still believe they had a shot at getting elected. But you be the judge:
But they were born out of the first wave of neo-Nazism in Sweden in the 1980's. Their original program consisted of (among other things):
A ban on all immigration except for people from 'ethnically related nations'
Government-sponsored repatriation of people of non-Nordic ethnicity.
Banning all international adoptions, and abortion, as well as increased government support, tax breaks and such for families of the 'right' ethnicity.
Obviously they would never get elected on that program, so in the past 20 years they've successively toned it down to try to gain an air of respectability. But it's the same party and the same people, many of whom once were unabashed swastika-wearers. (And like all good fascists, they're really into 'law and order', which means cracking down on 'immigrant crime', yet have a very disproportionate number of criminally-convicted members.
I wrote that the Commission withdrew the proposed directive. Seems I misremembered. What happened was that they changed the directive to a 'compromise' version that basically threw out all the amendment, and it ended up getting rejected. Point still stands anyway, the Council dumped all over parliament on the SW patent thing, and I've no reason to believe they'll do differently now.
Officially, negotiations are ongoing. In reality, the majority of those that would vote on it have pledged to vote no, if true, ACTA will never go though and become law. So the issue is 'all but dropped' in that the negotiations are still open, but no one on either side expects them to go anywhere.
Well, they haven't pledged to vote 'no' just made a vague list of demands and expressed quite a lot of reservations.
Sadly, I don't think it means that much. The EU Parliaments has expressed skepticism of ACTA earlier, without any reaction. It would not be the first time the Commission tried to goad the Parliament into accepting draconian IP laws, if you remember their attempt at legalizing software patents. They withdrew the proposed directive after the Parliament amended it to something most of the anti-SW-patent crowd could live with (In other words: A reasonable deal). Total disrespect for the directly-elected representatives.
That's a totally bogus argument. Nobodydecides to become a rapist, or murderer, etc. Not in the sense of having made some rational, well-thought out decision. If that were the case, there would hardly be any murders or rapes to begin with. But if you want to play that game, you can equally well make the opposite argument: Since he was in the media recently over the leaks, he saw his chance to rape someone and get away with it, because people like you would surely believe he must be innocent. (And no, I don't believe that, because I'm not a moron who thinks rapists are acting rationally)
If he's guilty, then the timing means nothing. In fact, the better timing would be before the documents had been leaked. Afterwards, what is the point of discrediting him?
The leaks do not depend on his crediblity, he's not the source. (which is the big hole in this conspiracy theory) Everyone knows smearing him won't stop Wikileaks, including the CIA. So what would the point even be? They can apparently manipulate foreign prosecutors and citizens, but are also too dumb to realize that it wouldn't achieve their goal?
No it's not a coincidence, in the sense that he was in the media, and was being asked around to give talks and whatnot and meet with possible allies (i.e. the Pirate Party in Sweden) and during that, he met these women. One of whom is (allegedly) a member of the Swedish Social Democratic party. So what's her motive then? We're talking about the party of Olof Palme, here, the party who spent most of the last 50 years being a giant pain in the USA's ass over foreign policy. Hell, when Assange was born in 1971, the US had broken off diplomatic relations with Sweden over their harsh criticism of the Vietnam War.
Out of all the countries he's going around visiting, you think Sweden is the one most likely to collaborate with the CIA? And their 'socialist' party, at that? This is typical conspiracy theory thinking. You have zero evidence that the CIA or whoever did this. All you have is a coincidence. And coincidences do happen. Just because a set of events may or may not benefit someone, doesn't mean the were behind it. Shit happens.
To take an example from Norway, we have 29 letters including æøå. The last looks like a+circle but it's a separate letter, while say à is considered simply a variant of a.
It's a bit arguable whether 'w' is a unique letter in the Scandinavian alphabets though; it's essentially a fancy variant of 'v', seldom used in actual words. (And they occupy the same place in alphabetical ordering)
Random trivia: In Finnish "Å" is called a "Swedish O".
Language evolves.. but it still evolves along the same lines and 'rules' as before. For instance, we now have "to google" in English, but if you turn that into a French verb, it needs a French verb ending, thus "googler". In German you'd need an -n but "googlen" doesn't work, but by transposing the letters you can use the -eln verb ending and so you have "googeln". In Swedish, verbs need an -a ending, requiring the 'e' be dropped, so "googla".
*) What did happen in the government during the tsunami in Thailand? Why do we need to keep these e-mails secret for 50 years?
Ask the administration. But they're not secret for 50 years, they're temporarily sealed for 3 (now 2) years pending investigation on whether the law should be changed re: backup copies. I don't think it's going to happen in the end.
*) What did happen to Raoul Wallenberg?
By Soviet accounts, he was executed in Lubyanka prison in 1947.
*) Why is a big part of the Palme murder still classified?
Because it remains an active police investigation.
If I recall correctly, in Sweden the servers of political parties, served from their political offices, are immune to prosecution for a variety of offenses. It's intended to protect the freedom of independent parties. It just adds another layer of shielding on top of Sweden's other protections.
Not quite. Members of parliament there, as in many countries, have immunity from prosecution. But the Pirate Party is not, as of yet, represented in the Swedish parliament. There's a 4% of the popular-vote threshold for entry.
That said, Sweden has much more powerful transparency laws than most nations. Prior restraint on publication is banned, with the exception of cinema* and matters of national security. This can be challenged in court of course, like every democratic country they have due process. Every government document is public (per the constitution) unless explicitly classified, and has to be handed over, without question or delay. (E.g. anyone can waltz in to Rosenbad, the executive offices, and ask for a copy of the Prime Minister's e-mail from the last week). Classification requires explicit action (which again can be challenged in court) and is limited to national security, personal privacy, documents which are still under preparation, and a few other fairly obvious exceptions.
Source protection is exceptionally strong; If a classified document is leaked, it is illegal (unconstitutional, even) for the government to investigate, much less prosecute, the source of the leak. The only exceptions are essentially if the leak constitutes espionage or treason, or if it was an intentional violation of confidentiality (the latter is difficult to prove in court). In short, their government is severely limited in its powers to stop even its own leaks, much less leaks of information pertaining to foreign governments.
(* Cinema releases have to pass a ratings board that has the authority to cut footage or even ban releases. It's fairly inactive, today they only cut a few minutes of footage in total every year, almost exclusively for violence, not profanity or nudity. I believe the last movie that was banned from cinematic viewing altogether was the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 36 years ago)
Seriously, in any given cirumstance I'd be extremely skeptical of this stuff. But in this case we don't really know whether all of "Plato's" writings were actually written by Plato, and certainly not if they're verbatim.
Given that ancient Greek had five grammatical cases, it didn't have very strict word order (much like Latin). So it's even less of a coincidence if someone manages to string the words together into comprehensible sentences.
I doubt this will be the revolution Dr Kennedy thinks it will be. It'd be interesting to hear what others have to say. But of course, this is a press release, not a real article.
Why not? In the opposite situation to AC, I know the PDC supercomputing center in Stockholm, Sweden feeds the surplus heat from their machines into the local district heating system.
Perhaps even more originally, those crafty Swedes have also hooked up their crematoriums!
I dunno why, but I suddenly pictured a bunch of embarrassed Swedes whistling as they quietly move the town over a few hundred meters.
Well, it's not the first town we've moved! Malmberget and Grängesberg are a few others. And Falun (one of the world's largest copper mines from the 7th century until it closed in 1992) collapsed in 1687 resulting in a hole 1.5 km in diameter right next to the town. (Miraculously, nobody was injured because it occured during one of their few holidays).
Here's a pic I took in Grängesberg (the largest ore body in Sweden second only to Kiruna), whose old town center had to be evacuated in the 1970's. The farther wall of the building has fallen into the open pit (and in the background, one can glimpse the mine office and one of the main shaft elevators). The pit behind it is well over 100 meters deep. That mine was shut down in 1991, and even though it filled at rates of tens of thousands of cubic meters of water per month, it took 18 years to fill up after the pumps were switched off.
For the inhabitants of Mönsterås, Sweden.
The town name means 'patterned ridge', but to date they've have had to put up with the domain "Monsteras" - which means "monster-carcass".
(å, ä, ö/ø in the Scandinavian languages are considered to be their own unique characters, not accented 'a's and 'o's.)
Well, no, Moore's Law was never passed by any legislative authority, no.
As for a scientific law, 'laws' in science are like version numbers in software: There's no agreed-upon definition whatsoever, but for some reason, people still seem to attribute massive importance to them for some reason.
If anything a 'law' is a scientific statement that dates from the 18th or 19th century, more or less. Hooke's law is an empirical approximation. The Ideal Gas law is exact, but only as a theoretical limit. Ohm's law is actually a definition (of resistance). The Laws of Thermodynamics are (likely) the most fundamental properties of nature that we know of.
The only thing these have in common is that they're from before the 20th century, really.
The entire premise of forming a political party is to be in government. Why else would you do such a thing? It amounts to an act of fraud on the citizens to form a political party without aiming to govern.
You're confusing governing with being in government.
You don't have to be in the government (have cabinet posts, i.e. control the executive branch) to govern. You still have full legislative influence by being in parliament.
For instance, the Swedish Greens have never been in government, but have succeeded in influencing lots of legislation. To make an analogy to US politics, what you're saying is akin to it being dishonest to run for Congress if you have no intention of seeking the Presidency.
It's not necessarily the case that a small, single-issue party can maximize their influence by being part of government, since that would force them to ally themselves with a political block. It would also force them to shoulder political responsibility for the government's policies, even when outside their sphere of interest, something which could risk dividing their membership.
I agree. However, forming single-issue political parties is generally a "bad thing". Pushing as hard as you can on a single issue and ignoring the rest of the world is ok when you are a non-governmental pressure group but not when your goal is to be in the government.
Who says their goal is to be in government?
Besides, the fact is, the PP in Sweden has succeeded rather well in both gaining lots of attention for the issues, and largely forced the hand of the established parties to start listening to people on copyright/IP issues. Across the board. The result is that Sweden is now one of the EU's biggest champions when it comes to advocating common-sense on these issues. (for instance, they've already made it quite clear they won't sign ACTA the way it looks at the moment).
take a look at crazy coalitions in some European countries where parties with 0.5% of the vote are actually represented in the government
Hyperbole. Which European country has parliamentary representation for a party with 0.5% of the vote? Usually the cutoff to get a seat in parliament is 3-4%.
..and able to influence things way beyond their mandate since their limited platform allows them to trade support on all kinds of issues in exchange for their favorite issue.
So? If all people care about is one issue, to the extent that they're prepared to vote for a single-issue party, then why shouldn't that count for something? It's up to the other parties to decide if they want to compromise in exchange for support or not. If anyone should be criticized it's them.
It's always nice to see companies following local laws.
Examples of immoral behavior aside, yes it is.
If a country has say, a ban on advertising cigarettes to children, then that's a perfectly sane thing to comply with.
If a country doesn't have the draconian copyright laws the US has, refusing to enforce them there is perfectly sane as well.
OTOH, assisting in silencing political speech is hardly moral. If only there was some universal minimum standard for what's okay and what's not...
Oh right.. there is:The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (Which didn't exist in the 1930's, although I don't feel that excuses IBM - considering the Allies penalized the German corporations who assisted the Holocaust)
And from that declaration, it's entirely clear-cut the first two examples are fine, and the third isn't okay. While we all know that China doesn't give a damn about the UDHR, it doesn't change the fact that they've ratified it (and in fact, Nationalist China was involved in drafting it). They can't legitimately complain about 'cultural bias' or respecting their system or whatever.
It's a matter of holding them to their own words. And holding our corporations responsible to follow at least those basic rights.
A measurement cannot have such great precision that the inaccuracy in the measurement is shorter than the plank length.
That is not known to be the case. Got a reference for that?
It's also something entirely different from suggesting that space is discretized in Planck-length units, which is certainly not the case. In fact, it's a fundamental postulate of QM that the wave function is smooth and continuous (and hence, so is the location-probability distribution). If it wasn't continuous, then you'd end up with undefined momentum.
Slashdot Mirror
X has no drawing API!
Do you even know what Xlib provides in the way of drawing? 1980's-style graphics primitives, pixel-based, non-anti-aliased polylines, circles and arcs.
Nobody is seriously using X for drawing anything anymore. You say in another post that "the fundamentals of drawing haven't changed" - Yes, they have.
X was designed entirely around raster graphics. It had no support for bitmap fonts, and no support for device-independent graphics. That hasn't been the right way to do things since at least the early 90's, and with PostScript debuting in 1983, it was arguably an obsolete device model even when X was created. Nobody uses X for "drawing", all they use it for is pushing pixels out to the screen.
Today, either you're doing explicitly raster graphics (read: 3D stuff, which is device-dependent), or you should be doing device-independent rendering. Bitmap fonts are the exception, not the rule. It's insane to expect people to write separate drawing routines for printing, or generating a PDF or whatever. (And X of course never had any kind of real printing support to begin with)
If you think we need X for drawing, then you simply have no clue.
WTF? Are you seriously lumping together North and South Korea in terms of living standards?
Did I miss something? When did South Korea cease to be a first-world democracy?
You don't need to be 'well-connected' to buy something in South Korea. You go to the store, and you buy it. It's a friggin market-economy.
Making 1/3 of a US wage does not mean you're a developing nation. People in Portugal make 1/3 of the average US salary,
if you make a raw dollar comparsion, and they aren't starving. They have homes, cars, computers, phones, etc. Same in South Korea.
Maybe not two cars, and maybe not the latest computer, and maybe a smaller home, etc. But they're by no means poor.
By all means, speak up on behalf of the North Koreans, who have no say in their government or situation, but talking that way about South Korea is just condescending.
They're one of the richest nations in the world, and the second-richest nation in Asia.
Nobody who isn't retarded would wave a swastika and still believe they had a shot at getting elected. But you be the judge:
But they were born out of the first wave of neo-Nazism in Sweden in the 1980's. Their original program consisted of (among other things):
A ban on all immigration except for people from 'ethnically related nations'
Government-sponsored repatriation of people of non-Nordic ethnicity.
Banning all international adoptions, and abortion, as well as increased government support, tax breaks and such for families of the 'right' ethnicity.
Obviously they would never get elected on that program, so in the past 20 years they've successively toned it down to try to gain an air of respectability. But it's the same party and the same people, many of whom once were unabashed swastika-wearers. (And like all good fascists, they're really into 'law and order', which means cracking down on 'immigrant crime', yet have a very disproportionate number of criminally-convicted members.
I wrote that the Commission withdrew the proposed directive. Seems I misremembered. What happened was that they changed the directive to a 'compromise' version that basically threw out all the amendment, and it ended up getting rejected.
Point still stands anyway, the Council dumped all over parliament on the SW patent thing, and I've no reason to believe they'll do differently now.
Well, they haven't pledged to vote 'no' just made a vague list of demands and expressed quite a lot of reservations.
Sadly, I don't think it means that much. The EU Parliaments has expressed skepticism of ACTA earlier, without any reaction. It would not be the first time the Commission tried to goad the Parliament into accepting draconian IP laws, if you remember their attempt at legalizing software patents. They withdrew the proposed directive after the Parliament amended it to something most of the anti-SW-patent crowd could live with (In other words: A reasonable deal). Total disrespect for the directly-elected representatives.
That's a totally bogus argument. Nobody decides to become a rapist, or murderer, etc. Not in the sense of having made some rational, well-thought out decision. If that were the case, there would hardly be any murders or rapes to begin with. But if you want to play that game, you can equally well make the opposite argument: Since he was in the media recently over the leaks, he saw his chance to rape someone and get away with it, because people like you would surely believe he must be innocent. (And no, I don't believe that, because I'm not a moron who thinks rapists are acting rationally)
If he's guilty, then the timing means nothing. In fact, the better timing would be before the documents had been leaked. Afterwards, what is the point of discrediting him?
The leaks do not depend on his crediblity, he's not the source. (which is the big hole in this conspiracy theory) Everyone knows smearing him won't stop Wikileaks, including the CIA. So what would the point even be? They can apparently manipulate foreign prosecutors and citizens, but are also too dumb to realize that it wouldn't achieve their goal?
No it's not a coincidence, in the sense that he was in the media, and was being asked around to give talks and whatnot and meet with possible allies (i.e. the Pirate Party in Sweden) and during that, he met these women. One of whom is (allegedly) a member of the Swedish Social Democratic party. So what's her motive then? We're talking about the party of Olof Palme, here, the party who spent most of the last 50 years being a giant pain in the USA's ass over foreign policy. Hell, when Assange was born in 1971, the US had broken off diplomatic relations with Sweden over their harsh criticism of the Vietnam War.
Out of all the countries he's going around visiting, you think Sweden is the one most likely to collaborate with the CIA? And their 'socialist' party, at that? This is typical conspiracy theory thinking. You have zero evidence that the CIA or whoever did this. All you have is a coincidence. And coincidences do happen. Just because a set of events may or may not benefit someone, doesn't mean the were behind it. Shit happens.
It's a bit arguable whether 'w' is a unique letter in the Scandinavian alphabets though; it's essentially a fancy variant of 'v', seldom used in actual words. (And they occupy the same place in alphabetical ordering)
Random trivia: In Finnish "Å" is called a "Swedish O".
Below Å.
Finland hasn't been a part of Sweden since 1809.
Language evolves.. but it still evolves along the same lines and 'rules' as before.
For instance, we now have "to google" in English, but if you turn that into a French verb, it needs a French verb ending, thus "googler".
In German you'd need an -n but "googlen" doesn't work, but by transposing the letters you can use the -eln verb ending and so you have "googeln".
In Swedish, verbs need an -a ending, requiring the 'e' be dropped, so "googla".
Ask the administration. But they're not secret for 50 years, they're temporarily sealed for 3 (now 2) years pending investigation on whether the law should be changed re: backup copies. I don't think it's going to happen in the end.
By Soviet accounts, he was executed in Lubyanka prison in 1947.
Because it remains an active police investigation.
Not quite. Members of parliament there, as in many countries, have immunity from prosecution. But the Pirate Party is not, as of yet, represented in the Swedish parliament. There's a 4% of the popular-vote threshold for entry.
That said, Sweden has much more powerful transparency laws than most nations. Prior restraint on publication is banned, with the exception of cinema* and matters of national security. This can be challenged in court of course, like every democratic country they have due process. Every government document is public (per the constitution) unless explicitly classified, and has to be handed over, without question or delay. (E.g. anyone can waltz in to Rosenbad, the executive offices, and ask for a copy of the Prime Minister's e-mail from the last week). Classification requires explicit action (which again can be challenged in court) and is limited to national security, personal privacy, documents which are still under preparation, and a few other fairly obvious exceptions.
Source protection is exceptionally strong; If a classified document is leaked, it is illegal (unconstitutional, even) for the government to investigate, much less prosecute, the source of the leak. The only exceptions are essentially if the leak constitutes espionage or treason, or if it was an intentional violation of confidentiality (the latter is difficult to prove in court). In short, their government is severely limited in its powers to stop even its own leaks, much less leaks of information pertaining to foreign governments.
(* Cinema releases have to pass a ratings board that has the authority to cut footage or even ban releases. It's fairly inactive, today they only cut a few minutes of footage in total every year, almost exclusively for violence, not profanity or nudity. I believe the last movie that was banned from cinematic viewing altogether was the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 36 years ago)
I know! It's just the same with the half-dozen ninja assassins lurking in my apartment!
But they're there. I can feel it.
Fortelling assassinations! (This originally being a refutal of Drosnin's "Bible Code" nonsense)
Seriously, in any given cirumstance I'd be extremely skeptical of this stuff. But in this case we don't really know whether all of "Plato's" writings were actually written by Plato, and certainly not if they're verbatim. Given that ancient Greek had five grammatical cases, it didn't have very strict word order (much like Latin). So it's even less of a coincidence if someone manages to string the words together into comprehensible sentences.
I doubt this will be the revolution Dr Kennedy thinks it will be. It'd be interesting to hear what others have to say. But of course, this is a press release, not a real article.
Why not? In the opposite situation to AC, I know the PDC supercomputing center in Stockholm, Sweden feeds the surplus heat from their machines into the local district heating system.
Perhaps even more originally, those crafty Swedes have also hooked up their crematoriums!
I dunno why, but I suddenly pictured a bunch of embarrassed Swedes whistling as they quietly move the town over a few hundred meters.
/Unabashed mine geek.
Well, it's not the first town we've moved! Malmberget and Grängesberg are a few others. And Falun (one of the world's largest copper mines from the 7th century until it closed in 1992) collapsed in 1687 resulting in a hole 1.5 km in diameter right next to the town. (Miraculously, nobody was injured because it occured during one of their few holidays).
Here's a pic I took in Grängesberg (the largest ore body in Sweden second only to Kiruna), whose old town center had to be evacuated in the 1970's. The farther wall of the building has fallen into the open pit (and in the background, one can glimpse the mine office and one of the main shaft elevators). The pit behind it is well over 100 meters deep. That mine was shut down in 1991, and even though it filled at rates of tens of thousands of cubic meters of water per month, it took 18 years to fill up after the pumps were switched off.
For the inhabitants of Mönsterås, Sweden.
The town name means 'patterned ridge', but to date they've have had to put up with the domain "Monsteras" - which means "monster-carcass".
(å, ä, ö/ø in the Scandinavian languages are considered to be their own unique characters, not accented 'a's and 'o's.)
Uh, wow. And I suppose the big "Sunshine News" logo was actually in the room? And the guy just repeated the exact same action twice??
It's EDITED, you dolt! You think a news organization would put that online _without_ censoring the naughty bits??
Well, no, Moore's Law was never passed by any legislative authority, no.
As for a scientific law, 'laws' in science are like version numbers in software:
There's no agreed-upon definition whatsoever, but for some reason, people still seem to attribute massive importance to them for some reason.
If anything a 'law' is a scientific statement that dates from the 18th or 19th century, more or less.
Hooke's law is an empirical approximation.
The Ideal Gas law is exact, but only as a theoretical limit.
Ohm's law is actually a definition (of resistance).
The Laws of Thermodynamics are (likely) the most fundamental properties of nature that we know of.
The only thing these have in common is that they're from before the 20th century, really.
Hmm, yes, but how does the supposedly soon-to-be-open-source VP8 codec stack up?
And if YouTube moves to VP8.. will Microsoft have a choice?
You're confusing governing with being in government.
You don't have to be in the government (have cabinet posts, i.e. control the executive branch) to govern. You still have full legislative influence by being in parliament.
For instance, the Swedish Greens have never been in government, but have succeeded in influencing lots of legislation.
To make an analogy to US politics, what you're saying is akin to it being dishonest to run for Congress if you have no intention of seeking the Presidency.
It's not necessarily the case that a small, single-issue party can maximize their influence by being part of government, since that would force them to ally themselves with a political block. It would also force them to shoulder political responsibility for the government's policies, even when outside their sphere of interest, something which could risk dividing their membership.
Who says their goal is to be in government?
Besides, the fact is, the PP in Sweden has succeeded rather well in both gaining lots of attention for the issues, and largely forced the hand of the established parties to start listening to people on copyright/IP issues. Across the board. The result is that Sweden is now one of the EU's biggest champions when it comes to advocating common-sense on these issues. (for instance, they've already made it quite clear they won't sign ACTA the way it looks at the moment).
Hyperbole. Which European country has parliamentary representation for a party with 0.5% of the vote? Usually the cutoff to get a seat in parliament is 3-4%.
So? If all people care about is one issue, to the extent that they're prepared to vote for a single-issue party, then why shouldn't that count for something? It's up to the other parties to decide if they want to compromise in exchange for support or not. If anyone should be criticized it's them.
True. But since the Trololo guy is one them, I can't help being very glad.
It's always nice to see companies following local laws.
Examples of immoral behavior aside, yes it is.
If a country has say, a ban on advertising cigarettes to children, then that's a perfectly sane thing to comply with.
If a country doesn't have the draconian copyright laws the US has, refusing to enforce them there is perfectly sane as well.
OTOH, assisting in silencing political speech is hardly moral. If only there was some universal minimum standard for what's okay and what's not...
Oh right.. there is: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (Which didn't exist in the 1930's, although I don't feel that excuses IBM - considering the Allies penalized the German corporations who assisted the Holocaust)
And from that declaration, it's entirely clear-cut the first two examples are fine, and the third isn't okay. While we all know that China doesn't give a damn about the UDHR, it doesn't change the fact that they've ratified it (and in fact, Nationalist China was involved in drafting it). They can't legitimately complain about 'cultural bias' or respecting their system or whatever.
It's a matter of holding them to their own words. And holding our corporations responsible to follow at least those basic rights.
That is not known to be the case. Got a reference for that?
It's also something entirely different from suggesting that space is discretized in Planck-length units, which is certainly not the case. In fact, it's a fundamental postulate of QM that the wave function is smooth and continuous (and hence, so is the location-probability distribution). If it wasn't continuous, then you'd end up with undefined momentum.