If you want pure CLI and pointless design welcome to Unix / FreeBSD, A system for those who want headaches, pain and broken packages.
I've been running FreeBSD in production for 6+ years and quite honestly unless there is a specific OSS package that isn't maintained in ports and refuses to compile; I have no reason what-so-ever to use Linux in its place. It's far more stable, far more secure, and people running production servers hardly need to waste precious resources on a GUI to make things "easier" for the uneducated.
While your last statement is clearly flamebait, I'll bite. Windows is great for the average PC and workstation user. It integrates well into many environments and in recent years has made strides to improve security and resource management. FreeBSD is great in the server room for it's rock solid stability and security, and was one of the building blocks for the popular PC OS, Apple Mac OS X. Linux is trying to fill many niches and as such, has uses in the server room, and on workstations. However, Linux is hardly usable for the majority of computer users because most (all?) distributions are incapable of attaining licenses to the many proprietary applications that the majority of people want/need to use. Linux is, point blank, one of the biggest jokes in OS and computing history. The sad part is it still has potential.
Ignore the fact that you'd have to get Sony, Nintendo and MS to cooperate with their matchmaking systems and such first.
Hi! Welcome to 2009! You may notice a new technology named ARPANET, colloquially known as "the Internet." The Internet allows you to communicate across vast distances at high speeds, and was designed with a set of protocols to facilitate these communications. These protocols are platform and computer architecture independent, and as such, said protocols may facilitate communication between two very different systems./sarcasm
Seriously though, the only reason is to sell PS3 hardware, since their standard means have not led to great success on this generation of the Playstation. I point you to the case of Quake3 on the Dreamcast being fully compatible with all other ports of Quake3 as proof that Sony is just trying to sap your wallet of $300+ to play the same fucking game and alienate all of your Xbox owning friends.
The main purpose of Slackware is to provide a Linux distribution that is very BSD-like. People familiar with FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD that need to use Linux will find Slackware very pleasant to work with.
Linux users that have no experience with UNIX and the CLI will find themselves stumbling around and complaining and asking stupid questions like: "Does Slackware have a real purpose?"
Is there an easy way to quit using the government?
Now, I think with the current totalitarian trend here in the USA, the politically correct answer would be: "Yes, you can vote for new officials in the next election."
However, I think we all know at this point that that is a bold faced lie propagated by the totalitarians themselves. Everyone knows for fact that you can't change the momentum they have generated in one election; let alone multiple elections over several decades.
My real answer would be more like: "Yes, you can stop paying your taxes and the most they can do is put you in prison (which according to IRS.gov they sentenced employment tax evaders an average of 29 months incarceration in 2008)." Also: "Yes, you can buy guns and ammo and rise up with your fellow patriots and overthrow these tyrannous totalitarian bastards." A bit less PC, I know.
No, not of his truck, but I have some vids of his supercharged SHO on my youtube account, username: groundzero612.
FWIW, he ran trials on the Excursion before and after the turbo install... with turbo it's 23 truck lengths faster than stock in the 1/4mi!
I'm not saying this one isn't gutless. But current diesel technology allows for some serious horsepower and the acceleration of some vehicles I have been in are on par with other vehicles of their size.
Unfortunately Diesel has a bad name. Partly because many gutless vehicles were made with it. I'd like to know this vehicles specs so I'm off to RTFA.
I think diesel's bad name has more to do with the generally bad quality fuels in the 1970-80s, and more specifically a lack of a good winter blend. I would happily drive any modern turbo diesel instead of a gasoline equivalent.
So it's diesel - is it as gutless as I've been led to believe diesel cars are? I've never driven one, but I am genuinely curious....
A friend of mine has a 2000 Ford Excursion turbo diesel running 30psi that consistently runs mid 13's at the drag strip. It truly is funny watching the little piece of shit jappy-sporty driver's jaws drop when they don't get to pass the full sized American diesel.
I predict the next headline will read something like this:
"Cops Say Man Used Puppy To Pick Up Women At The Park"
Or perhaps:
"Cops Say Man Used Unripe Fruit To Pick Up Women At The Grocery"
As if Starcraft wasn't damage enough, now comes Starcraft 2. Millions of young South Korean men idling away their lives on singleplayer servers. I think Blizzard's done them more damage than the Japanese occupation.
There, fixed that for ya!
I wonder if someone could do an energy consumption comparison to see how much extra electricity is being wasted, just in the server room, to play single player when forced to connect to an online server.
Seems like the green-zealots might have something new to get pissed about...
Ok first of all, Bede bede bede isn't from Battlestar Galactica, it's from Buck Rogers, duh. How anyone could fuck that up so bad and still get +5 Insightful I will may never know.
Second of all the "rip off" isn't the name, it's the fact that Ronald D. Moore intentionally crippled the Blu-Rays by applying an artificial static fuzz to the entire series. I happily spent my $260 w/tax to purchase "The Complete Series" only to be so severely disappointed as to most likely never watch them on Blu-Ray. I've complained to Universal Home Entertainment that they stole my money with false advertising by intentionally avoiding notifying potential buyers of the discs that they have been intentionally distorted and degraded. Feh.
I'll bite again. I live in the US and I can't say that I'm not being constantly bombarded with pro-government propaganda and censorship. We've also had plenty of protests stopped violently, including one where the military slaughtered students at a college. In the American Revolution we also had farmers with pitch-forks and torches. We had to make or buy firearms to compete "fairly" as you eluded to.
Sure, there is censorship in the US, yes, there is propaganda in the US. On the other hand though, there are many, many, many news outlets that we can turn to for US news. While each one has their own bias, we don't have a government-owned news station giving us -all- of our news and censorship in place where we can't get news from other sources about other forms of government. If you want Anarchy a quick Google search pulls up http://www.anarchistnews.org/ , want Communism? You are free to get your news from People's Weekly World (http://www.pww.org/). You can find news sites for every single political view. All uncensored in the USA. In China, you have a few state-run news agencies, and that is it.
However, it was not a crime to own a gun in colonial times in the USA. Everyone could own a gun. Heck, they even had their own militia allowing them to have military-grade weapons. It is -illegal- for a citizen in China to own even a low-powered gun. If the American Revolution happened today with all the same conditions just with newer weapons, the revolutionaries would have access to fighter aircraft, tanks, cruise missiles and almost every home would have a fully automatic rifle, all legally.
I've seen China do rolling formations with tanks to demonstrate their power, and read about them using infantry to suppress protesters with lethal force. I have never read of China deploying snipers, bombers, missiles, and using them on their civilians. I highly doubt that any 1st world country a part of the UN would sit idly by if that were indeed happening.
Sure, but if the revolution broke into full civil war (which is what would happen if a violent revolution ended up gaining momentum), it wouldn't be too far fetched for them to use those types of weapons.
"I have never read of China deploying snipers, bombers, missiles, and using them on their civilians. I highly doubt that any 1st world country a part of the UN would sit idly by if that were indeed happening."
You had me thinking I needed to respond to your argument until I read this. Ha.
I don't understand the Troll mods. Perhaps/. has acquired some Chinazi moderators.
It's a valid point that there are similar abuses here. However, the key difference is one of scale: here you're also bombarded with anti-US messages and almost every single protests goes smoothly and doesn't provoke a reaction from the state. This makes for a vastly different experience.
I can't agree with this at all. In my state (Minnesota), we have government spies infiltrating protest groups and staging mass-arrests before the protests even get started.
Ok I'll bite. They aren't a facade because they clearly have the manpower to overthrow their government, but have not done so. Either they keep their current form of government because it works better than anything they've had in their history, or because they are completely broken as a people and thus indifferent.
China has a reputation for strong oppression of political dissidents -- hence the "great firewall of China", and the massacre of hundreds of protesters in Tienanmen Square 20 years ago. If the government is so well loved, why can't dissidents be allowed to speak freely? Clearly, they fear revolution.
I think my own US Federal government fears revolution. FWIW they have also shot and killed student protesters (at least one infamous incident at Kent State). We still love our government, but why are they trying to subvert us and take away our freedoms?
I have dozens of examples of other countries failures by following in the US' footsteps. What works for one country may not work for another.
but rape that involves no weapon or fighting is just not something I would call "violent."
Bullshit. It's rape if one of the partners doesn't consent to the activity. The fact that the rapist wasn't armed really shouldn't enter into the calculation, except in so far as that they wind up charged with additional weapons offenses in addition to the rape charge.
Mind you, I don't think statutory rape should be regarded in the same manner as what I described above, but to say that rape isn't a violent crime just because no weapon was involved kind of misses the mark, IMHO. You don't regard it as a violent act to have something penetrate your body against your will?
I think we have some pretty sociopathic mods when a post like this is modded Troll. The simple fact is, being subjugated against your will is a form of violence. The definitions of the words rape and violence imply this.
Go look it up. In the mean time, and as usual, go fuck yourself.
"You don't regard it as a violent act to have something penetrate your body against your will?"
If you:
Do not fight, shout, shove, or resist in any way
Are not being threatened with a weapon of some sort
Were not poisoned or endangered
Then no, it is not violent. Violent crimes involve violence of some sort. A lack of violence makes the crime non-violent. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and it seems pretty fair to set the threshold of a "violent crime" to be "violence was involved." This is not to say that it is perfectly fine to rape someone -- violence is not the sole factor in determining whether or not something was wrong -- but I absolutely would separate a violent rape from a non-violent rape.
Yeah, it's not like bee's are natures #1 pollenators. Who needs food anyway? Animals? Animals suck worse than bees. Plants? Plants suck worse than animals. People? People suck worse than plants and animals.
It seems to me that the real hindrance is in getting a transparent display into a set of glasses. By this, I don't mean getting a bulky display mounted on the outside of a set of glasses, but in getting a transparent display built directly into the lenses, such that when the display is turned off, it's just a set of glasses.
I think we'll start to see real products once we can build both those sorts of lenses and a camera into a set of glasses, and not have them be too ridiculously heavy, bulky, and ugly. Also, it can't be too expensive.
People keep saying it's "almost ready" because there are practical and functional HUDs, but they all require this bulky machinery to be strapped to your head in a way that looks stupid. For geeks or specialized purposes (e.g. soldiers in combat, who are carrying heavy equipment anyway and care more about functionality than looks) that's all fine. But it won't be productized until people can walk down the street wearing them and still look cool.
Aside from the compact technology and display breakthroughs required to make a pair of regular glasses into a wearable "monitor," we need a breakthrough in video processing or all of these "augmented reality" fantasies will remain fantasies.
Think of bats and how they use sonar. Their brains have evolved to compensate for the time delay of the sound waves. Human sight relies on light, which travels orders of magnitudes faster than sound. I applaud the efforts of the scientists but I see some fundamental physics problems to overcome before it "works."
you might want to make sure to help him put it out, before the whole neighborhood is aflame. rather than watch his house burn down while you obsess over the fact the upstairs toilet's flush handle stays stuck
really, that's about the scale of comparison when it comes to the "stripping of our freedoms" under western governments (now there's a loaded concept) with what goes elsewhere in your world. do you think it made sense to focus only on fascist elements in great britain in 1939 as germany invaded poland? same concept in play here
as for your suggestion that you have very little influence over other world governments, while you can only wield influnece at home: this is like letting a murderer run away from a murder scene you witness because he won't stop when you yell "stop!" at him... meanwhile, the jaywalker stops and turns around and acts responsibly when you yell "stop!" so let's prosecute the hell out of the jaywalker instead of the murderer. your moral conscience should not be calibrated only to how receptive a criminal is to your prosecution of him, but by the scale of their crime
in fact, the very notion that you DO have influence at home, in a western democracy, speaks volumes about how good you really do have it in the west: your government listens to you. do you know how vital and fragile a concept that really is in the history of the world?
I agree with some of your ideas. Where your argument breaks down is where you make the leap to vigilantism and assumed responsibilities. I'm a citizen; it is not my responsibility to interpret nor enforce the laws. If I see a murder, it may be my responsibility to report the crime to the local law enforcement branch. If I see my neighbor in distress, however, it is my choice whether or not lend my assistance.
It's a shame that you trivialize the supposed plight of our Chinese brethren by suggesting that a an insignificant person can have any influence on the Chinese government. What you should have said was, "If you wish to attempt to influence the government of China, you must become well educated in foreign affairs. It may add legitimacy to your views if you take up a career as a foreign dignitary and potentially earn your way up to Ambassador. Once you achieve a high enough ranking in your own country's government department of said foreign affairs, you may begin to exert real influence."
Or you know, the fact that they are constantly being bombarded with pro-government propaganda, has internet censorship, the fact that protests are violently stopped, and the fact that even very basic rights like the right to religion isn't even there, even for religions that are very non-violent. Mix that in with the fact that a violent revolution is nearly impossible, no media to report on your death, and you have a situation that is nearly impossible to rebel against. Take the American revolution, you had guys with muskets fighting other guys with muskets, in China if you are lucky you are a guy with a 9 MM fighting other guys with tanks, sniper rifles, bombers, and missiles.
I'll bite again. I live in the US and I can't say that I'm not being constantly bombarded with pro-government propaganda and censorship. We've also had plenty of protests stopped violently, including one where the military slaughtered students at a college. In the American Revolution we also had farmers with pitch-forks and torches. We had to make or buy firearms to compete "fairly" as you eluded to.
I've seen China do rolling formations with tanks to demonstrate their power, and read about them using infantry to suppress protesters with lethal force. I have never read of China deploying snipers, bombers, missiles, and using them on their civilians. I highly doubt that any 1st world country a part of the UN would sit idly by if that were indeed happening.
Just remember what I said about anti-China propaganda in my country the USA.
Is China handling this delicate issue appropriately or are the news reports of justice and monitoring treatments merely a facade?
Of course it is not, you cannot say that a country that allows for few basic freedoms, has a mostly state-run economy, and has almost no non-state run news. Along with no real way for its people to voice their opinion in government matters. So lets see, we have no third-party news service, no public records, and no way for Chinese citizens to act against this. How can anyone say they are anything but a facade?
Ok I'll bite. They aren't a facade because they clearly have the manpower to overthrow their government, but have not done so. Either they keep their current form of government because it works better than anything they've had in their history, or because they are completely broken as a people and thus indifferent.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want pure CLI and pointless design welcome to Unix / FreeBSD, A system for those who want headaches, pain and broken packages.
I've been running FreeBSD in production for 6+ years and quite honestly unless there is a specific OSS package that isn't maintained in ports and refuses to compile; I have no reason what-so-ever to use Linux in its place. It's far more stable, far more secure, and people running production servers hardly need to waste precious resources on a GUI to make things "easier" for the uneducated.
While your last statement is clearly flamebait, I'll bite. Windows is great for the average PC and workstation user. It integrates well into many environments and in recent years has made strides to improve security and resource management. FreeBSD is great in the server room for it's rock solid stability and security, and was one of the building blocks for the popular PC OS, Apple Mac OS X. Linux is trying to fill many niches and as such, has uses in the server room, and on workstations. However, Linux is hardly usable for the majority of computer users because most (all?) distributions are incapable of attaining licenses to the many proprietary applications that the majority of people want/need to use. Linux is, point blank, one of the biggest jokes in OS and computing history. The sad part is it still has potential.
Ignore the fact that you'd have to get Sony, Nintendo and MS to cooperate with their matchmaking systems and such first.
Hi! Welcome to 2009! You may notice a new technology named ARPANET, colloquially known as "the Internet." The Internet allows you to communicate across vast distances at high speeds, and was designed with a set of protocols to facilitate these communications. These protocols are platform and computer architecture independent, and as such, said protocols may facilitate communication between two very different systems. /sarcasm
Seriously though, the only reason is to sell PS3 hardware, since their standard means have not led to great success on this generation of the Playstation. I point you to the case of Quake3 on the Dreamcast being fully compatible with all other ports of Quake3 as proof that Sony is just trying to sap your wallet of $300+ to play the same fucking game and alienate all of your Xbox owning friends.
The main purpose of Slackware is to provide a Linux distribution that is very BSD-like. People familiar with FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD that need to use Linux will find Slackware very pleasant to work with.
Linux users that have no experience with UNIX and the CLI will find themselves stumbling around and complaining and asking stupid questions like: "Does Slackware have a real purpose?"
I look forward to upgrading.
Is there an easy way to quit using the government?
Now, I think with the current totalitarian trend here in the USA, the politically correct answer would be: "Yes, you can vote for new officials in the next election."
However, I think we all know at this point that that is a bold faced lie propagated by the totalitarians themselves. Everyone knows for fact that you can't change the momentum they have generated in one election; let alone multiple elections over several decades.
My real answer would be more like: "Yes, you can stop paying your taxes and the most they can do is put you in prison (which according to IRS.gov they sentenced employment tax evaders an average of 29 months incarceration in 2008)." Also: "Yes, you can buy guns and ammo and rise up with your fellow patriots and overthrow these tyrannous totalitarian bastards." A bit less PC, I know.
If every human on this planet got rid of all the other humans they did not like, there would be no humans left.
** anon cause karma should not be for stating the truth
Citation needed.
This I gotta see - have any video?
No, not of his truck, but I have some vids of his supercharged SHO on my youtube account, username: groundzero612. FWIW, he ran trials on the Excursion before and after the turbo install... with turbo it's 23 truck lengths faster than stock in the 1/4mi!
I'm not saying this one isn't gutless. But current diesel technology allows for some serious horsepower and the acceleration of some vehicles I have been in are on par with other vehicles of their size.
Unfortunately Diesel has a bad name. Partly because many gutless vehicles were made with it. I'd like to know this vehicles specs so I'm off to RTFA.
I think diesel's bad name has more to do with the generally bad quality fuels in the 1970-80s, and more specifically a lack of a good winter blend. I would happily drive any modern turbo diesel instead of a gasoline equivalent.
So it's diesel - is it as gutless as I've been led to believe diesel cars are? I've never driven one, but I am genuinely curious....
A friend of mine has a 2000 Ford Excursion turbo diesel running 30psi that consistently runs mid 13's at the drag strip. It truly is funny watching the little piece of shit jappy-sporty driver's jaws drop when they don't get to pass the full sized American diesel.
I predict the next headline will read something like this: "Cops Say Man Used Puppy To Pick Up Women At The Park" Or perhaps: "Cops Say Man Used Unripe Fruit To Pick Up Women At The Grocery"
As if Starcraft wasn't damage enough, now comes Starcraft 2. Millions of young South Korean men idling away their lives on singleplayer servers. I think Blizzard's done them more damage than the Japanese occupation.
There, fixed that for ya!
I wonder if someone could do an energy consumption comparison to see how much extra electricity is being wasted, just in the server room, to play single player when forced to connect to an online server.
Seems like the green-zealots might have something new to get pissed about...
-1 Troll?
Did you even look at the fucking Wiki?
Apparently they did not.
Ok first of all, Bede bede bede isn't from Battlestar Galactica, it's from Buck Rogers, duh. How anyone could fuck that up so bad and still get +5 Insightful I will may never know.
Second of all the "rip off" isn't the name, it's the fact that Ronald D. Moore intentionally crippled the Blu-Rays by applying an artificial static fuzz to the entire series. I happily spent my $260 w/tax to purchase "The Complete Series" only to be so severely disappointed as to most likely never watch them on Blu-Ray. I've complained to Universal Home Entertainment that they stole my money with false advertising by intentionally avoiding notifying potential buyers of the discs that they have been intentionally distorted and degraded. Feh.
The Gibson Les Paul is a Large Cock Black Mans Dong originally developed in the early 1950s.
Dang.
I'll bite again. I live in the US and I can't say that I'm not being constantly bombarded with pro-government propaganda and censorship. We've also had plenty of protests stopped violently, including one where the military slaughtered students at a college. In the American Revolution we also had farmers with pitch-forks and torches. We had to make or buy firearms to compete "fairly" as you eluded to.
Sure, there is censorship in the US, yes, there is propaganda in the US. On the other hand though, there are many, many, many news outlets that we can turn to for US news. While each one has their own bias, we don't have a government-owned news station giving us -all- of our news and censorship in place where we can't get news from other sources about other forms of government. If you want Anarchy a quick Google search pulls up http://www.anarchistnews.org/ , want Communism? You are free to get your news from People's Weekly World (http://www.pww.org/). You can find news sites for every single political view. All uncensored in the USA. In China, you have a few state-run news agencies, and that is it. However, it was not a crime to own a gun in colonial times in the USA. Everyone could own a gun. Heck, they even had their own militia allowing them to have military-grade weapons. It is -illegal- for a citizen in China to own even a low-powered gun. If the American Revolution happened today with all the same conditions just with newer weapons, the revolutionaries would have access to fighter aircraft, tanks, cruise missiles and almost every home would have a fully automatic rifle, all legally.
I've seen China do rolling formations with tanks to demonstrate their power, and read about them using infantry to suppress protesters with lethal force. I have never read of China deploying snipers, bombers, missiles, and using them on their civilians. I highly doubt that any 1st world country a part of the UN would sit idly by if that were indeed happening.
Sure, but if the revolution broke into full civil war (which is what would happen if a violent revolution ended up gaining momentum), it wouldn't be too far fetched for them to use those types of weapons.
I think civil wars and revolutions are different.
"I have never read of China deploying snipers, bombers, missiles, and using them on their civilians. I highly doubt that any 1st world country a part of the UN would sit idly by if that were indeed happening."
You had me thinking I needed to respond to your argument until I read this. Ha.
I don't understand the Troll mods. Perhaps /. has acquired some Chinazi moderators.
It's a valid point that there are similar abuses here. However, the key difference is one of scale: here you're also bombarded with anti-US messages and almost every single protests goes smoothly and doesn't provoke a reaction from the state. This makes for a vastly different experience.
I can't agree with this at all. In my state (Minnesota), we have government spies infiltrating protest groups and staging mass-arrests before the protests even get started.
And all Americans know is the "American Revolution"?
We won our Civil War. If we had lost, and split into multiple countries, you would be calling it the "Second American Revolution."
China has a reputation for strong oppression of political dissidents -- hence the "great firewall of China", and the massacre of hundreds of protesters in Tienanmen Square 20 years ago. If the government is so well loved, why can't dissidents be allowed to speak freely? Clearly, they fear revolution.
I think my own US Federal government fears revolution. FWIW they have also shot and killed student protesters (at least one infamous incident at Kent State). We still love our government, but why are they trying to subvert us and take away our freedoms?
I have dozens of examples of other countries failures by following in the US' footsteps. What works for one country may not work for another.
but rape that involves no weapon or fighting is just not something I would call "violent."
Bullshit. It's rape if one of the partners doesn't consent to the activity. The fact that the rapist wasn't armed really shouldn't enter into the calculation, except in so far as that they wind up charged with additional weapons offenses in addition to the rape charge.
Mind you, I don't think statutory rape should be regarded in the same manner as what I described above, but to say that rape isn't a violent crime just because no weapon was involved kind of misses the mark, IMHO. You don't regard it as a violent act to have something penetrate your body against your will?
I think we have some pretty sociopathic mods when a post like this is modded Troll. The simple fact is, being subjugated against your will is a form of violence. The definitions of the words rape and violence imply this.
Go look it up. In the mean time, and as usual, go fuck yourself.
"You don't regard it as a violent act to have something penetrate your body against your will?" If you:
Then no, it is not violent. Violent crimes involve violence of some sort. A lack of violence makes the crime non-violent. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and it seems pretty fair to set the threshold of a "violent crime" to be "violence was involved." This is not to say that it is perfectly fine to rape someone -- violence is not the sole factor in determining whether or not something was wrong -- but I absolutely would separate a violent rape from a non-violent rape.
Wanna go camping?
Yeah, it's not like bee's are natures #1 pollenators. Who needs food anyway? Animals? Animals suck worse than bees. Plants? Plants suck worse than animals. People? People suck worse than plants and animals.
It seems to me that the real hindrance is in getting a transparent display into a set of glasses. By this, I don't mean getting a bulky display mounted on the outside of a set of glasses, but in getting a transparent display built directly into the lenses, such that when the display is turned off, it's just a set of glasses.
I think we'll start to see real products once we can build both those sorts of lenses and a camera into a set of glasses, and not have them be too ridiculously heavy, bulky, and ugly. Also, it can't be too expensive.
People keep saying it's "almost ready" because there are practical and functional HUDs, but they all require this bulky machinery to be strapped to your head in a way that looks stupid. For geeks or specialized purposes (e.g. soldiers in combat, who are carrying heavy equipment anyway and care more about functionality than looks) that's all fine. But it won't be productized until people can walk down the street wearing them and still look cool.
Aside from the compact technology and display breakthroughs required to make a pair of regular glasses into a wearable "monitor," we need a breakthrough in video processing or all of these "augmented reality" fantasies will remain fantasies.
Think of bats and how they use sonar. Their brains have evolved to compensate for the time delay of the sound waves. Human sight relies on light, which travels orders of magnitudes faster than sound. I applaud the efforts of the scientists but I see some fundamental physics problems to overcome before it "works."
you might want to make sure to help him put it out, before the whole neighborhood is aflame. rather than watch his house burn down while you obsess over the fact the upstairs toilet's flush handle stays stuck
really, that's about the scale of comparison when it comes to the "stripping of our freedoms" under western governments (now there's a loaded concept) with what goes elsewhere in your world. do you think it made sense to focus only on fascist elements in great britain in 1939 as germany invaded poland? same concept in play here
as for your suggestion that you have very little influence over other world governments, while you can only wield influnece at home: this is like letting a murderer run away from a murder scene you witness because he won't stop when you yell "stop!" at him... meanwhile, the jaywalker stops and turns around and acts responsibly when you yell "stop!" so let's prosecute the hell out of the jaywalker instead of the murderer. your moral conscience should not be calibrated only to how receptive a criminal is to your prosecution of him, but by the scale of their crime
in fact, the very notion that you DO have influence at home, in a western democracy, speaks volumes about how good you really do have it in the west: your government listens to you. do you know how vital and fragile a concept that really is in the history of the world?
I agree with some of your ideas. Where your argument breaks down is where you make the leap to vigilantism and assumed responsibilities. I'm a citizen; it is not my responsibility to interpret nor enforce the laws. If I see a murder, it may be my responsibility to report the crime to the local law enforcement branch. If I see my neighbor in distress, however, it is my choice whether or not lend my assistance.
It's a shame that you trivialize the supposed plight of our Chinese brethren by suggesting that a an insignificant person can have any influence on the Chinese government. What you should have said was, "If you wish to attempt to influence the government of China, you must become well educated in foreign affairs. It may add legitimacy to your views if you take up a career as a foreign dignitary and potentially earn your way up to Ambassador. Once you achieve a high enough ranking in your own country's government department of said foreign affairs, you may begin to exert real influence."
Or you know, the fact that they are constantly being bombarded with pro-government propaganda, has internet censorship, the fact that protests are violently stopped, and the fact that even very basic rights like the right to religion isn't even there, even for religions that are very non-violent. Mix that in with the fact that a violent revolution is nearly impossible, no media to report on your death, and you have a situation that is nearly impossible to rebel against. Take the American revolution, you had guys with muskets fighting other guys with muskets, in China if you are lucky you are a guy with a 9 MM fighting other guys with tanks, sniper rifles, bombers, and missiles.
I'll bite again. I live in the US and I can't say that I'm not being constantly bombarded with pro-government propaganda and censorship. We've also had plenty of protests stopped violently, including one where the military slaughtered students at a college. In the American Revolution we also had farmers with pitch-forks and torches. We had to make or buy firearms to compete "fairly" as you eluded to.
I've seen China do rolling formations with tanks to demonstrate their power, and read about them using infantry to suppress protesters with lethal force. I have never read of China deploying snipers, bombers, missiles, and using them on their civilians. I highly doubt that any 1st world country a part of the UN would sit idly by if that were indeed happening.
Just remember what I said about anti-China propaganda in my country the USA.
Is China handling this delicate issue appropriately or are the news reports of justice and monitoring treatments merely a facade?
Of course it is not, you cannot say that a country that allows for few basic freedoms, has a mostly state-run economy, and has almost no non-state run news. Along with no real way for its people to voice their opinion in government matters. So lets see, we have no third-party news service, no public records, and no way for Chinese citizens to act against this. How can anyone say they are anything but a facade?
Ok I'll bite. They aren't a facade because they clearly have the manpower to overthrow their government, but have not done so. Either they keep their current form of government because it works better than anything they've had in their history, or because they are completely broken as a people and thus indifferent.