That's not a fanboy response at all - it's probably the only other response, beyond any financially motivated ones, that makes sense. Solaris is considered by many (with more than just passing knowledge of UNIX) to be still 'l33t'-er than either Linux or BSD (I beg to differ of course, being a Linux/BSD 'fanboy' and all). Eventually any technical differences between those two (Solaris, Linux) ought to fade, and we could have a great, free, open-source, commodity server OS that anyone can look at, improve, etc. Now if we can get something like the Mac OS X type of GUI going with Linux on the desktop.... where would that leave other 'windowing' operating systems?:)
there is only what makes you look good and what helps you avoid looking bad (think of this in a wide context - unless you are living isolated from humans, it applies anywhere - personal life, professionally, socially, everywhere). If everything you ever did only resulted in you looking good for everyone else around you, would really need privacy? Conversely, if you could avoid looking bad in everything you do, would you still need privacy?
So if you have something you like to keep private - 99.999% of the time, it has to do with looking good or avoiding looking bad.
a moratorium would be more appropriate. There are open source voting systems (google for "open source voting") developed by the Open Voting Consortium which can do it all - enable electronic voting, provide a paper trail and the ability to do recounts/vote verification by using the paper trail.
To those who have knee-jerk reactions when they hear "electronic voting" and think "fiasco" right off the top of their head - open-source, non-vendor,non-proprietary electronic voting+paper trail ARE possible - _today_.
Now the hardest part about this isn't the technology, but rather getting off your bum, visiting congress.gov, writing your congress(man|woman) by email/letter, urging them to adopt open-source voting. Check out http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/ - it should make you a believer, even if you are technologically challenged (and who on/. is, right?:).
Wrong, dumbass. You never put the SPOUSE second. Think about what you are saying. If you victimize the spouse on the account of your children, you will, albeit in a very prolonged, procrastinated way, negatively stimulate your spouse to the point where she can't even be sexually exicted around you. That kind of spouse NEVER makes for a good parent. I remember even a SLIGHT, REMOTE disrespect or anything that disturbed my mother was severely reprimanded by my father to the point where he'd threaten to use force (e.g. like slap us around to scare us a bit, he never ever hurt us when he did anything like that - so I wasn't abused in any shitty, catholic-priest sort of way). Both me and my brother are fine, had happy childhoods, and normal adulthoods (well, as normal as can be:). My mom and dad always came first, we came second. We were never disregarded, but we weren't being put on pedestals or were ever allowed to be the cause of disagreements between my folks. They _naturally_ came before us, and _naturally_ we are a product of their love - in that order, they came first, then we did. I know this kind of sounds "stupid", but it is how it is, and my parents are still married for 31 years so far. My dad wasn't as perfect as my mom, but he is happy to have found a woman as angelic as my mother to have accepted him with all his flaws, sins, etc.
Don't EVER put your SPOUSE second. Children are always second to the spouse.
I'm in Redmond right now, staring out my window, the damn sky is clear as it was in the summer. The temperature is exactly where you want it to be, mid to upper 60's, and this type of October hasn't repeated since 1992. It rains more inches in NYC, east coast, than it does in Seattle per year. What gets people thinking it rains here more than elsewhere is that there are extended periods of time when it's rather cloudy which is unlike other areas of the US. That, and when it rains here, it can rain for a good long time and it ain't even rain- it's like this constant, pain in the ass drizzle...... However, I can freely claim, having lived in San Diego for 5 years and 2+ in Seattle, that Seattle summers are unlike any other, including Southern California.
I am in agreement w/you on that - I know better than to use GOffice (at this time) for sensitive data, but that wasn't my point. I _like_ google. I use GMail. I use the their search engine among and above others regularly. I believe they're a great company w/superb engineers. So how is it that no one ever thought that if they wanted people to use their online spreadsheet, you'd better implement some client-side encryption before you send your monthly income/expenses spreadsheet the data off to their servers? I am very much in favor of storing my data on a server farm versus my hard drive alone - the chances of google corrupting/losing my data are non-existent compared to storing the same data on my hard drive at home (a single hard drive can and does crash).
So, I would like to use Google for everything, provided they keep their scanning paws off _some_ of the data that I'd be willing to place on their servers.
I think you misunderstood the nature of my complaint (or at least, I wasn't clear enough in my original post:).
But can someone please explain to me why should I be entering my monthly expenses, bills, tax returns or what have you, in a spreadsheet that does not locally reside on my computer? How is Google Spreadsheet supposed to make me feel "better" than forking cash over for MS Excel which at least I know can run on my computer with the network cable detached (if need be)?
Since when am I supposed to be infatuated by an online spreadsheet or word processor that compels me to give up any kind of privacy in existence? Maybe there's something I'm missing here, so someone please clue me in.
programmers design too. if they didn't, then they end up re-programming whatever it is they're doing before long (an expensive proposition) - because they lacked minimal foresight to begin with. i suppose you could program without designing, but i cant see you do much more than hacking up personal web pages with embedded scripting languages or 3 page webapps for a dinky website with minimal requirements and a halfassed use-case... some amount of upfront design is always required, even in agile/xp/iterative type of development.
a lot of newbie programmers must be reading slashdot, otherwise you wouldn't be getting modded up to 4.
Did we grant a monopoly on cable and water to a company then give them billions after they promised to deliver it to everyone?
I believe your definition of 'everyone' is vastly different than either of the phone or cable company's:). They cover the most urban areas while neglecting most rural areas, which I think is sad. I'm of the opinion that even a Nebraska farm (as some previously pointed out) should have access to the internet - that might just help the poor farmers with cheaper product advertising. If anything, it could boost the economy in such rural areas if enough people knew about what was going on there.
does this mean all P2P companies are going to get sued? Kill the messenger, of course, it's the "easiest" way. Instead of thinking about how to change their business model in light of disruptive technology like P2P, recording/movie studios are pissing off even those who might potentially pay for their products some other way (e.g. flat fee per month).
What would happen if we had a subscription-based, DRM-free service where we could download all the MP3s and movies we wanted for a flat monthly fee, even if that fee may have to be substantially more than let's say 20 per month? Well for one, I would subscribe. The myth that I'm going to pirate the shit out of everything is completely bogus. Most people who earn a living through a job do not have time to pirate music or films nor do they want to. Yes, I may occasionaly burn a copy of a movie or a song and give it to someone I know, but that would be the final extent of such "piracy". If someone who is ethical (and most my friends are) understands the ramifications of piracy, he or she would choose to subscribe to the service too. Why? Because by removing DRM, and allowing unlimited downloads for a flat fee - the RIAA/MPAA says - "we trust you will do the right thing". I know this is absurd to say, but you can't gaun trust out of people by suing them. All that does is generate bad press and more antagonism. Studios have to eat the monetary loss to gain that trust at first (think of it as investing in your future, or changing the consumers' mood), and then expect to reap the benefits of that later down the line.
Universal already figured this out (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=6&url=ht tp%3A%2F%2Fwww.techdirt.com%2Farticles%2F20060829% 2F0819245.shtml&ei=wUUHRcDSJ4LyYK338N8E&sig=__LLzf axSLA1fYwCwLwRdYHzz-Zso=&sig2=eyOXGhJL0WAGNBWMBNoc uQ) . Alright, well, they'll probably try to plug some ads in there... But there has got to be another model, which has NO DRM, is flat fee, and allows unlimited downloads of movies and/or songs. Well, at least MOVIES, because it takes you 2+ hours to watch a movie, whereas in the same time frame you could hear 2 albums worth of songs, so there's some additional logistics as to how you'd price either one... but the concept's the same - flat fee, no DRM, unlimited downloads OR no flat fee, no DRM and be forced to hear/watch advertisements either directoly prior or directly after the movie/song. A compromise can be made. I just dont know why it hasn't been made yet.
but to this day, they have yet to disappoint with their engineering/technical appeal... Solaris... Java.... now adding support for a wildly popular dynamically typed language... The only one that comes close to their engineering savvy is Apple. Not so long ago there was talk of a Sun-Apple (Snapple?:) merger - http://digg.com/apple/Dvorak_Is_an_Apple_Sun_Merge r_in_the_Works. I've been writing software for 10 years now, and I prefer the small company setting... but if I were to ever work for a large company again, I'd like it to be like Sun or Apple, with superb engineers around me who are going to make me re-examine everything I know on a daily basis and keep me challenged forever.
> 2. Would good does it do to send MS a message that XP is perfectly fine? Is any business going to stop developing new versions of sucessful products just because people liked the old version?
Well, do you necessarily go out and buy a new car of the same model every 2 years because the manufacturer developed a new one? Unless your old one is costing you more to maintain than buying a new one, the only reason why you'd get a new car is because of purely pathological (e.g. grandomania) reasons. That is, if the problem is optimally solved with your current product, why buy the new one? I'm not saying R&D sucks - so please don't twist it into that type of argument - however, most R&D exists only because some problem exists waiting to be solved. So on a large scale, R&D makes sense. But does it make sense to ditch XP and replace it with just a better looking version of XP (don't buy into the bullshit that they've rewritten 60% of the code - that's absolutely incorrect - they may have "touched" or did work in 60% of the code for Windows, which is different than rewriting/reengineering it)? IMHO, I don't think so.
Besides, the only way to give other operating systems (OSX, Linux) a fighting chance to even out the playing field on the desktop, is to abstain from upgrading to Vista.
The problem with this is, people can not control their urges.... We've been conditioned that way.
somehow i dont see that happening either. introducing a thousand new drivers for all commodity hardware out there into OSX is probably going to make OSX suck just as hard as Windows (or at least, increase the likelyhood of destabilizing OSX by orders of magnitude). What does OSX support nowadays - only a few video cards, chipset never changes, and some other hardware that apple makes - nothing else gets plugged in unless it's 'apple-blessed'.... makes apple's job a lot easier, wouldnt you say?
Isn't measuring the velocity of the ball, the wheel, etc. akin to acquiring inside information on any given company via some top executive (e.g. CEO, board member, etc)? Both ways of acquiring money are illegal. You may catch a lucky break once or twice - but you can not hope for a streak. Most, if not all, people who are career cheats end up in jail or pushing up daisies. I'd actually trust the roulette cheating techniques more than I would trust insider information as the former is rooted in physics/math, and the latter is rooted in potentially incorrect information even if it's coming from the company's top management. The insider information would still be belief-based information (unless the company itself is pulling a fast one like Enron did with their accounting practices, in which case we have a complete breakdown of ethics and the system).
> They haven't made any money directly off me with this service, but since I enjoy and use the service so much I'd say I'm more likely to look out for other google offerings and use other google products in the future.
Hypothetically, if the Google SMS service gets heavy use, Google can cut a deal with Verizon Wireless (or Cingular, or whoever) for a cut of the SMS profit, which you get billed for each month. Therefore, you could be already helping Google make money, while keeping both Google and the wireless operator happy.:)
Since when can one's belief system be called 'strange'? If you think this guy's strange, then I think 300 million Americans are freaks of nature in their belief systems. Would you agree with that? Or do you think I'm strange for saying this?
you know, last time someone took this out of context, 6 million people were systematically exterminated because they 'genetic makeup' didn't seem to matter or was 'inferior'. I'd watch it before conveniently using genetic makeup as a plausible explanation for anything, including intellectual pursuit or even bodybuilding.... unless you can fully define why we are the way we are - it's best to just pipe it with these empirical observations which no one can prove as of yet. I know a black Jamaican and a white anglo-saxon American with similar credentials (PhD's in physics and/or computer science) and 20 years of experience - both originating from opposite parts of the planet, with perhaps not even a touch of genetic similarity - yet I do know both of their upbringing was a major factor in their intelectual achievements.... does it mean one was more prone to learning than the other based on their genetic makeup? or was it their upbringing? Or was it both? Which is it then?
they both produce an antivirus solution which annoys me with their anal-retentiveness. Since joining my current company, I discovered they used NOD32 - as soon as I installed it, I never ever wanted to go back to either McAfee or Symantec. I ditched McAfee about 6-7 years ago, and Symantec as of a year or so ago. Couldn't be happier. NOD32 is the most unobtrusive antivirus I've ever had. Ditch McAfee and/or Symantec, get NOD32 (or something better if it exists). Give the underdog a chance.
wiretapping is not a standard operating practice in the united states, unless it is preceeded with a probable cause as well as a warrant (in principle). having said that, the issue at stake here isn't that - it goes much deeper - China is still a repressive regime. they can claim all they want they are going to be the largest economy in another 20 years - and they still will never attain the civilized status of the USA in many respects. what status? start with the constitution - we have a bill of rights/constitution which many other developed countries model. China does not. nor do they want to. nor will they ever, most likely, unless a certain revolution on the inside takes place.
their desire to curtail skype's use among its citizens is indicative of a stale communist/dictatorship-like policy that still permeates to this day. china's government is afraid to let information of the sickest and the best kind flow freely among its citizens. it, the govt, thinks its citizens en masse are morons, who aren't able to make the most basic decisions about the benefit of the country, or the communities they live in. of course i'm exaggarating - but only to make a point. without a free flow of information and without allow people their ability to choose (regardless of how bad their choice may be or what not), china will never attain any kind of civilized status, of the kind we enjoy in the united states, or other western countries.
you can be the largest economy in the world, and at the same time be the most repressive, poluted and demoralizing place to live in - which is what China is currently, for a vast percentage of the population. change that? good luck. the USA isn't going to change that. however, the internet in its intended form does have the capability to help/catalyse that change along. what their corrupt leaders are doing is stifling the only source of untainted information available.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not a fanboy response at all - it's probably the only other response, beyond any financially motivated ones, that makes sense. Solaris is considered by many (with more than just passing knowledge of UNIX) to be still 'l33t'-er than either Linux or BSD (I beg to differ of course, being a Linux/BSD 'fanboy' and all). Eventually any technical differences between those two (Solaris, Linux) ought to fade, and we could have a great, free, open-source, commodity server OS that anyone can look at, improve, etc. Now if we can get something like the Mac OS X type of GUI going with Linux on the desktop.... where would that leave other 'windowing' operating systems? :)
there is only what makes you look good and what helps you avoid looking bad (think of this in a wide context - unless you are living isolated from humans, it applies anywhere - personal life, professionally, socially, everywhere). If everything you ever did only resulted in you looking good for everyone else around you, would really need privacy? Conversely, if you could avoid looking bad in everything you do, would you still need privacy?
So if you have something you like to keep private - 99.999% of the time, it has to do with looking good or avoiding looking bad.
Sad but true.
s/Christmast/Christmas/g
It ain't Christmast in China yet.
a moratorium would be more appropriate. There are open source voting systems (google for "open source voting") developed by the Open Voting Consortium which can do it all - enable electronic voting, provide a paper trail and the ability to do recounts/vote verification by using the paper trail.
/. is, right? :).
To those who have knee-jerk reactions when they hear "electronic voting" and think "fiasco" right off the top of their head - open-source, non-vendor,non-proprietary electronic voting+paper trail ARE possible - _today_.
Now the hardest part about this isn't the technology, but rather getting off your bum, visiting congress.gov, writing your congress(man|woman) by email/letter, urging them to adopt open-source voting. Check out http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/ - it should make you a believer, even if you are technologically challenged (and who on
that thinks MySpace is a huge overdone, bloated, kitsch, piece of crap? I personally like multiply.com 10x better...
Wrong, dumbass. You never put the SPOUSE second. Think about what you are saying. If you victimize the spouse on the account of your children, you will, albeit in a very prolonged, procrastinated way, negatively stimulate your spouse to the point where she can't even be sexually exicted around you. That kind of spouse NEVER makes for a good parent. I remember even a SLIGHT, REMOTE disrespect or anything that disturbed my mother was severely reprimanded by my father to the point where he'd threaten to use force (e.g. like slap us around to scare us a bit, he never ever hurt us when he did anything like that - so I wasn't abused in any shitty, catholic-priest sort of way). Both me and my brother are fine, had happy childhoods, and normal adulthoods (well, as normal as can be :). My mom and dad always came first, we came second. We were never disregarded, but we weren't being put on pedestals or were ever allowed to be the cause of disagreements between my folks. They _naturally_ came before us, and _naturally_ we are a product of their love - in that order, they came first, then we did. I know this kind of sounds "stupid", but it is how it is, and my parents are still married for 31 years so far. My dad wasn't as perfect as my mom, but he is happy to have found a woman as angelic as my mother to have accepted him with all his flaws, sins, etc.
Don't EVER put your SPOUSE second. Children are always second to the spouse.
I'm in Redmond right now, staring out my window, the damn sky is clear as it was in the summer. The temperature is exactly where you want it to be, mid to upper 60's, and this type of October hasn't repeated since 1992. It rains more inches in NYC, east coast, than it does in Seattle per year. What gets people thinking it rains here more than elsewhere is that there are extended periods of time when it's rather cloudy which is unlike other areas of the US. That, and when it rains here, it can rain for a good long time and it ain't even rain- it's like this constant, pain in the ass drizzle...... However, I can freely claim, having lived in San Diego for 5 years and 2+ in Seattle, that Seattle summers are unlike any other, including Southern California.
I am in agreement w/you on that - I know better than to use GOffice (at this time) for sensitive data, but that wasn't my point. I _like_ google. I use GMail. I use the their search engine among and above others regularly. I believe they're a great company w/superb engineers. So how is it that no one ever thought that if they wanted people to use their online spreadsheet, you'd better implement some client-side encryption before you send your monthly income/expenses spreadsheet the data off to their servers? I am very much in favor of storing my data on a server farm versus my hard drive alone - the chances of google corrupting/losing my data are non-existent compared to storing the same data on my hard drive at home (a single hard drive can and does crash).
:).
So, I would like to use Google for everything, provided they keep their scanning paws off _some_ of the data that I'd be willing to place on their servers.
I think you misunderstood the nature of my complaint (or at least, I wasn't clear enough in my original post
... mail order brides come with no warranties stated or implied, Hans.
Eudora was the best Mac email client for a long time out there (with a huge following)! Now it's free. And please, no more Net2Phone ad campaigns :).
But can someone please explain to me why should I be entering my monthly expenses, bills, tax returns or what have you, in a spreadsheet that does not locally reside on my computer? How is Google Spreadsheet supposed to make me feel "better" than forking cash over for MS Excel which at least I know can run on my computer with the network cable detached (if need be)?
Since when am I supposed to be infatuated by an online spreadsheet or word processor that compels me to give up any kind of privacy in existence? Maybe there's something I'm missing here, so someone please clue me in.
programmers design too. if they didn't, then they end up re-programming whatever it is they're doing before long (an expensive proposition) - because they lacked minimal foresight to begin with. i suppose you could program without designing, but i cant see you do much more than hacking up personal web pages with embedded scripting languages or 3 page webapps for a dinky website with minimal requirements and a halfassed use-case... some amount of upfront design is always required, even in agile/xp/iterative type of development.
a lot of newbie programmers must be reading slashdot, otherwise you wouldn't be getting modded up to 4.
I believe your definition of 'everyone' is vastly different than either of the phone or cable company's :). They cover the most urban areas while neglecting most rural areas, which I think is sad. I'm of the opinion that even a Nebraska farm (as some previously pointed out) should have access to the internet - that might just help the poor farmers with cheaper product advertising. If anything, it could boost the economy in such rural areas if enough people knew about what was going on there.
does this mean all P2P companies are going to get sued? Kill the messenger, of course, it's the "easiest" way. Instead of thinking about how to change their business model in light of disruptive technology like P2P, recording/movie studios are pissing off even those who might potentially pay for their products some other way (e.g. flat fee per month).
t tp%3A%2F%2Fwww.techdirt.com%2Farticles%2F20060829% 2F0819245.shtml&ei=wUUHRcDSJ4LyYK338N8E&sig=__LLzf axSLA1fYwCwLwRdYHzz-Zso=&sig2=eyOXGhJL0WAGNBWMBNoc uQ) . Alright, well, they'll probably try to plug some ads in there... But there has got to be another model, which has NO DRM, is flat fee, and allows unlimited downloads of movies and/or songs. Well, at least MOVIES, because it takes you 2+ hours to watch a movie, whereas in the same time frame you could hear 2 albums worth of songs, so there's some additional logistics as to how you'd price either one... but the concept's the same - flat fee, no DRM, unlimited downloads OR no flat fee, no DRM and be forced to hear/watch advertisements either directoly prior or directly after the movie/song. A compromise can be made. I just dont know why it hasn't been made yet.
What would happen if we had a subscription-based, DRM-free service where we could download all the MP3s and movies we wanted for a flat monthly fee, even if that fee may have to be substantially more than let's say 20 per month? Well for one, I would subscribe. The myth that I'm going to pirate the shit out of everything is completely bogus. Most people who earn a living through a job do not have time to pirate music or films nor do they want to. Yes, I may occasionaly burn a copy of a movie or a song and give it to someone I know, but that would be the final extent of such "piracy". If someone who is ethical (and most my friends are) understands the ramifications of piracy, he or she would choose to subscribe to the service too. Why? Because by removing DRM, and allowing unlimited downloads for a flat fee - the RIAA/MPAA says - "we trust you will do the right thing". I know this is absurd to say, but you can't gaun trust out of people by suing them. All that does is generate bad press and more antagonism. Studios have to eat the monetary loss to gain that trust at first (think of it as investing in your future, or changing the consumers' mood), and then expect to reap the benefits of that later down the line.
Universal already figured this out (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=6&url=h
but to this day, they have yet to disappoint with their engineering/technical appeal... Solaris... Java.... now adding support for a wildly popular dynamically typed language... The only one that comes close to their engineering savvy is Apple. Not so long ago there was talk of a Sun-Apple (Snapple? :) merger - http://digg.com/apple/Dvorak_Is_an_Apple_Sun_Merge r_in_the_Works. I've been writing software for 10 years now, and I prefer the small company setting... but if I were to ever work for a large company again, I'd like it to be like Sun or Apple, with superb engineers around me who are going to make me re-examine everything I know on a daily basis and keep me challenged forever.
> 2. Would good does it do to send MS a message that XP is perfectly fine? Is any business going to stop developing new versions of sucessful products just because people liked the old version?
Well, do you necessarily go out and buy a new car of the same model every 2 years because the manufacturer developed a new one? Unless your old one is costing you more to maintain than buying a new one, the only reason why you'd get a new car is because of purely pathological (e.g. grandomania) reasons. That is, if the problem is optimally solved with your current product, why buy the new one? I'm not saying R&D sucks - so please don't twist it into that type of argument - however, most R&D exists only because some problem exists waiting to be solved. So on a large scale, R&D makes sense. But does it make sense to ditch XP and replace it with just a better looking version of XP (don't buy into the bullshit that they've rewritten 60% of the code - that's absolutely incorrect - they may have "touched" or did work in 60% of the code for Windows, which is different than rewriting/reengineering it)? IMHO, I don't think so.
Besides, the only way to give other operating systems (OSX, Linux) a fighting chance to even out the playing field on the desktop, is to abstain from upgrading to Vista.
The problem with this is, people can not control their urges.... We've been conditioned that way.
somehow i dont see that happening either. introducing a thousand new drivers for all commodity hardware out there into OSX is probably going to make OSX suck just as hard as Windows (or at least, increase the likelyhood of destabilizing OSX by orders of magnitude). What does OSX support nowadays - only a few video cards, chipset never changes, and some other hardware that apple makes - nothing else gets plugged in unless it's 'apple-blessed'.... makes apple's job a lot easier, wouldnt you say?
Isn't measuring the velocity of the ball, the wheel, etc. akin to acquiring inside information on any given company via some top executive (e.g. CEO, board member, etc)? Both ways of acquiring money are illegal. You may catch a lucky break once or twice - but you can not hope for a streak. Most, if not all, people who are career cheats end up in jail or pushing up daisies. I'd actually trust the roulette cheating techniques more than I would trust insider information as the former is rooted in physics/math, and the latter is rooted in potentially incorrect information even if it's coming from the company's top management. The insider information would still be belief-based information (unless the company itself is pulling a fast one like Enron did with their accounting practices, in which case we have a complete breakdown of ethics and the system).
> They haven't made any money directly off me with this service, but since I enjoy and use the service so much I'd say I'm more likely to look out for other google offerings and use other google products in the future.
:)
Hypothetically, if the Google SMS service gets heavy use, Google can cut a deal with Verizon Wireless (or Cingular, or whoever) for a cut of the SMS profit, which you get billed for each month. Therefore, you could be already helping Google make money, while keeping both Google and the wireless operator happy.
I'm sure a large number of college professors (who might happen to read /.) jizzed their pants after they read your post.
Since when can one's belief system be called 'strange'? If you think this guy's strange, then I think 300 million Americans are freaks of nature in their belief systems. Would you agree with that? Or do you think I'm strange for saying this?
> genetic makeup matters big time
you know, last time someone took this out of context, 6 million people were systematically exterminated because they 'genetic makeup' didn't seem to matter or was 'inferior'. I'd watch it before conveniently using genetic makeup as a plausible explanation for anything, including intellectual pursuit or even bodybuilding.... unless you can fully define why we are the way we are - it's best to just pipe it with these empirical observations which no one can prove as of yet. I know a black Jamaican and a white anglo-saxon American with similar credentials (PhD's in physics and/or computer science) and 20 years of experience - both originating from opposite parts of the planet, with perhaps not even a touch of genetic similarity - yet I do know both of their upbringing was a major factor in their intelectual achievements.... does it mean one was more prone to learning than the other based on their genetic makeup? or was it their upbringing? Or was it both? Which is it then?
they both produce an antivirus solution which annoys me with their anal-retentiveness. Since joining my current company, I discovered they used NOD32 - as soon as I installed it, I never ever wanted to go back to either McAfee or Symantec. I ditched McAfee about 6-7 years ago, and Symantec as of a year or so ago. Couldn't be happier. NOD32 is the most unobtrusive antivirus I've ever had. Ditch McAfee and/or Symantec, get NOD32 (or something better if it exists). Give the underdog a chance.
wiretapping is not a standard operating practice in the united states, unless it is preceeded with a probable cause as well as a warrant (in principle). having said that, the issue at stake here isn't that - it goes much deeper - China is still a repressive regime. they can claim all they want they are going to be the largest economy in another 20 years - and they still will never attain the civilized status of the USA in many respects. what status? start with the constitution - we have a bill of rights/constitution which many other developed countries model. China does not. nor do they want to. nor will they ever, most likely, unless a certain revolution on the inside takes place.
their desire to curtail skype's use among its citizens is indicative of a stale communist/dictatorship-like policy that still permeates to this day. china's government is afraid to let information of the sickest and the best kind flow freely among its citizens. it, the govt, thinks its citizens en masse are morons, who aren't able to make the most basic decisions about the benefit of the country, or the communities they live in. of course i'm exaggarating - but only to make a point. without a free flow of information and without allow people their ability to choose (regardless of how bad their choice may be or what not), china will never attain any kind of civilized status, of the kind we enjoy in the united states, or other western countries.
you can be the largest economy in the world, and at the same time be the most repressive, poluted and demoralizing place to live in - which is what China is currently, for a vast percentage of the population. change that? good luck. the USA isn't going to change that. however, the internet in its intended form does have the capability to help/catalyse that change along. what their corrupt leaders are doing is stifling the only source of untainted information available.