I've just tried it now, and it's accessible. Long time China writer and rocker Kaiser Kuo made some interesting points in his keynote speech at the TWEEN conference regarding Chinese and western ideas of the Chinese internet.
Just glancing at my MSN right now, the vast majority of my Chinese friends have changed their nicks by adding (L)China and a rainbow.
Both my foreign friends and I have been on the recieving end of some pretty impressive rabid tirades and walk-outs from girlfriends when dicussing or criticising various actions of the government.
One of my friends has openly said on a number of occasions that she hates the French and Germans. The reason why they appear apolitical is that they are so indoctrinated from their schooling, through university (millions of students have to take the Mao Zedong Thought Exam in university) that there is no sense or thought of taking a political side - there's nothing for them to compare life under the CCP to, there's no CCP opposition, and any anti-CCP ideals that emerge don't really get very far through the state controlled presses.
What the CCP has done, is that they've realised when they opened up the free market of China, they essentially threw Marxism and Maoism in the bin. When people lost their revolutionary zeal, it had to be replaced by something, and effectively that meant using nationalism and a instilling a strong sense of victimization.
The idea that Chinese people feel oppressed or that they want to rise up against the government is a complete fallacy, people here have never had it so good, and the government is the first to claim credit for improving people's lives.
Largely, amongst the well educated, English speaking professional Chinese people that I meet (I've lived in China for 2 years) who are in their mid/late 20's, the reverence and respect they havefor the CCP is probably more fervant tham amongst the older generation who helped to found the People's Republic. The patriostism gives way to nationalism, and I find some of my friends who I had respected as having been able to form their own intelligent opinions on the world at large have descended into China-loving, French-hating lunatics.
Westerners have to try to understand that the generation that's in it's mid-late 20's owe their standard of living and level income to the Communist Party, they and look to the party members for moral guidance. Propaganda, even on the "international" CCTV-9 has reached an all time high with wall to wall interview of people who have lost everything praising the work of the government.
When it comes to Internet censorship, it's largely a joke. Websites can be overcome with any number of web proxies, and even if you can't get to the porn that you want, you can go to the local computer markets in Zhongguancun or Chaoyangmen, where you'll be offered "DVD sex movies". The BBC had been unblocked, but blocks are still in place for servers on Flicker and on Livejournal and Blogspot.
The government here is rather sneaky. They don't say that they actively and specifically filter websites, rather, they ask ISPs to self-censor and these ISP's face heavy fines for allowing undesirable content through. This is the reason that websites that are accessbile in Shanghai aren't accessible in Beijing or other parts of China.
A good project to keep an eye on is Concept Doppler, which has a list of what keywords and phrases are filtered by the GFW. What is interesting is that of all the tests that CD team performed, a certain number of the phrases did managed to get through the filter, showing that the GFW doesn't filter everything all the time, but filters some most of the time, which creates the impression that everything is filtered, and, ultimately, keeps people scared.
Well that's true. A lot of Chinese users are using MSN exactly because of that, but still a lot of Chinese citizens think that the Chinese government is doing good things:)...
a lean, creator-driven show could succeed artistically
It's been noted a couple of times that the main difference between TV writing in the UK and the US is that US shows are more often than not written by committee, whereas in the UK, it's not that unusual for a single writer to writer an entire series (...sorry, season), pretty much by him/herself (especially for comedy shows). Doug Grant and Rob Naylor created and co-wrote six seasons of Red Dwarf as did David Renwick who had huge success writing long running comedy and comedy-drama shows for the BBC.
Although not written by it's creator, the new (and terrifically popular) series of Doctor Who are written the same way. AFAIK the only "committee-driven" show on UK domestic channels (excluding the large amount of US programming we import) is the comedy My Family. This isn't to say that there aren't story meetings, but the open re-writing of scripts by other writers that happens on shows like The Simpsons would be a rarity.
Granted we are talking about the more cut-throat, ad-powered cable TV in the States, but I'd just like to point out that, dependant on your perspective, it's not that wierd to have a successful creator-driven show.
I remember the blind (Whistler, I think his name was) character in Sneakers using braille strip gadget that used little plastic pins to create the 'bumps' of Braille from the screen. There is, of course, the possibility that this was just a film prop, but it looked like the kind of thing that could really be implemented. SuSE have included modules for Braille too, haven't they?
Seem to remember this story
about the Mafioso complaining about the FBI breaking into his computers and
decrypting his files, after getting his password through dubious means. I
wonder where they are now?
Menwith
Hill in the UK could be one of these 'key locations'?
...and polluting, don't forget. This planet is in a particularly sh-tty way, and I don't think we should be too anxious to try a screw up another one just yet.
Pah! I laugh in the face of using a heatsink, a real man would use liquid
nitrogen.
Originally the Dreamcast was supposed to be liquid-cooled. We were pretty
excited to open up the case and check that out -- no doubt it would involve
hundreds of tiny valves and pipes and pumps and very small migrant laborers to
work them. However, Sega seems to have engineered the Dreamcast to run without
overheating and scrapped the liquid-cooling -- we saw no evidence of it when we
poked around.
Instead, heat is distributed out through a large metal plate that acts as
both shielding as well as a heat sink. A sizable fan runs when the system is on
to circulate air -- it's both effective and a little noisy. We've had no
overheating problems with the Dreamcast, even after extended 12-hour or more
sessions.
Blimey, looks like the controller for my Jaguar.
Hope this one dosen't cripple your hands like that one used to. My thumbs are still aching from all those late night Alien vs. Predator sessions. And Doom too, natch.
How goes the rip CD's from XP thing, or has this been dropped? It looked like a pure publicity exercise to me, it'd be weird to see 'rip with windows' or something on a CD sticker. MS'd have to pay a shedload of money for the privilege I
guess, not that they don't have it.
I remember a story on/. a while back that expressed concern that there would be no electronic records from the 20th/21st century because of our reliance on computer technology (and the fact that things can be deleted/degrade over time) is a catalogue of webapages (I know they're not supposed to be a definitive record of eventss, but...) a little redundant?
Since the fastest leaps forward with regards to 3D graphics rendering are being made on the games console front, I wonder if Nintendo or Sony are considering putting this on one of their future internet capable consoles. This would've been pretty damn impressive on my dc, or maybe they could combine a later chapter of Shenmue with this technology...?
Agree totally, they're doing a fantastic job. my first brush with linux was suse 6.2 and now I get updates courtesy of coverdisks, and I've been impressed with every update, well done, you chaps.
BBC News 24 said something about the towers having no concrete columns inside them, so the whole weight of the planes was being taken by the 'outside' of the buildings. As the fuel from the planes burned the metal that the towers where constructed with got softer until it finally gave.
In UK: (for what it's worth):
UK news has been running constantly with this since 2:00pm, Tony Blair has convened a COBRA commitee (basically a war cabinet) and has banned all air traffic over London.
Slashdot Mirror
I've just tried it now, and it's accessible. Long time China writer and rocker Kaiser Kuo made some interesting points in his keynote speech at the TWEEN conference regarding Chinese and western ideas of the Chinese internet.
Just glancing at my MSN right now, the vast majority of my Chinese friends have changed their nicks by adding (L)China and a rainbow. Both my foreign friends and I have been on the recieving end of some pretty impressive rabid tirades and walk-outs from girlfriends when dicussing or criticising various actions of the government. One of my friends has openly said on a number of occasions that she hates the French and Germans. The reason why they appear apolitical is that they are so indoctrinated from their schooling, through university (millions of students have to take the Mao Zedong Thought Exam in university) that there is no sense or thought of taking a political side - there's nothing for them to compare life under the CCP to, there's no CCP opposition, and any anti-CCP ideals that emerge don't really get very far through the state controlled presses. What the CCP has done, is that they've realised when they opened up the free market of China, they essentially threw Marxism and Maoism in the bin. When people lost their revolutionary zeal, it had to be replaced by something, and effectively that meant using nationalism and a instilling a strong sense of victimization. The idea that Chinese people feel oppressed or that they want to rise up against the government is a complete fallacy, people here have never had it so good, and the government is the first to claim credit for improving people's lives.
Westerners have to try to understand that the generation that's in it's mid-late 20's owe their standard of living and level income to the Communist Party, they and look to the party members for moral guidance. Propaganda, even on the "international" CCTV-9 has reached an all time high with wall to wall interview of people who have lost everything praising the work of the government.
When it comes to Internet censorship, it's largely a joke. Websites can be overcome with any number of web proxies, and even if you can't get to the porn that you want, you can go to the local computer markets in Zhongguancun or Chaoyangmen, where you'll be offered "DVD sex movies". The BBC had been unblocked, but blocks are still in place for servers on Flicker and on Livejournal and Blogspot.
The government here is rather sneaky. They don't say that they actively and specifically filter websites, rather, they ask ISPs to self-censor and these ISP's face heavy fines for allowing undesirable content through. This is the reason that websites that are accessbile in Shanghai aren't accessible in Beijing or other parts of China.
A good project to keep an eye on is Concept Doppler, which has a list of what keywords and phrases are filtered by the GFW. What is interesting is that of all the tests that CD team performed, a certain number of the phrases did managed to get through the filter, showing that the GFW doesn't filter everything all the time, but filters some most of the time, which creates the impression that everything is filtered, and, ultimately, keeps people scared.
Well that's true. A lot of Chinese users are using MSN exactly because of that, but still a lot of Chinese citizens think that the Chinese government is doing good things :)...
Ironically, in it's attempt to open up a little, the Google blog is blocked by the GFW of China...
Just wanted to echo the same idea that here in China, MyQQ is the IM of choice of most of the Chinese internet users.
It's been noted a couple of times that the main difference between TV writing in the UK and the US is that US shows are more often than not written by committee, whereas in the UK, it's not that unusual for a single writer to writer an entire series (...sorry, season), pretty much by him/herself (especially for comedy shows). Doug Grant and Rob Naylor created and co-wrote six seasons of Red Dwarf as did David Renwick who had huge success writing long running comedy and comedy-drama shows for the BBC.
Although not written by it's creator, the new (and terrifically popular) series of Doctor Who are written the same way. AFAIK the only "committee-driven" show on UK domestic channels (excluding the large amount of US programming we import) is the comedy My Family. This isn't to say that there aren't story meetings, but the open re-writing of scripts by other writers that happens on shows like The Simpsons would be a rarity.
Granted we are talking about the more cut-throat, ad-powered cable TV in the States, but I'd just like to point out that, dependant on your perspective, it's not that wierd to have a successful creator-driven show.
My thoughts exactly...I'm half expecting a /. headline like "Man dies of natural causes" anytime now...
I remember the blind (Whistler, I think his name was) character in Sneakers using braille strip gadget that used little plastic pins to create the 'bumps' of Braille from the screen. There is, of course, the possibility that this was just a film prop, but it looked like the kind of thing that could really be implemented. SuSE have included modules for Braille too, haven't they?
http://www.acronymfinder.com
Menwith Hill in the UK could be one of these 'key locations'?
What are the implications for racial and ethnic groups (eg - asylum seeking Afghans) haven't they applied for asylum/emigrated to escape persecution?
...and polluting, don't forget. This planet is in a particularly sh-tty way, and I don't think we should be too anxious to try a screw up another one just yet.
An oldie but a goodie...
Originally the Dreamcast was supposed to be liquid-cooled. We were pretty excited to open up the case and check that out -- no doubt it would involve hundreds of tiny valves and pipes and pumps and very small migrant laborers to work them. However, Sega seems to have engineered the Dreamcast to run without overheating and scrapped the liquid-cooling -- we saw no evidence of it when we poked around.
Instead, heat is distributed out through a large metal plate that acts as both shielding as well as a heat sink. A sizable fan runs when the system is on to circulate air -- it's both effective and a little noisy. We've had no overheating problems with the Dreamcast, even after extended 12-hour or more sessions.
- PlannetDreamcast
Blimey, looks like the controller for my Jaguar. Hope this one dosen't cripple your hands like that one used to. My thumbs are still aching from all those late night Alien vs. Predator sessions. And Doom too, natch.
How goes the rip CD's from XP thing, or has this been dropped? It looked like a pure publicity exercise to me, it'd be weird to see 'rip with windows' or something on a CD sticker. MS'd have to pay a shedload of money for the privilege I guess, not that they don't have it.
I remember a story on /. a while back that expressed concern that there would be no electronic records from the 20th/21st century because of our reliance on computer technology (and the fact that things can be deleted/degrade over time) is a catalogue of webapages (I know they're not supposed to be a definitive record of eventss, but...) a little redundant?
Since the fastest leaps forward with regards to 3D graphics rendering are being made on the games console front, I wonder if Nintendo or Sony are considering putting this on one of their future internet capable consoles. This would've been pretty damn impressive on my dc, or maybe they could combine a later chapter of Shenmue with this technology...?
Agree totally, they're doing a fantastic job. my first brush with linux was suse 6.2 and now I get updates courtesy of coverdisks, and I've been impressed with every update, well done, you chaps.
Hear, hear. Can we have no more posts about 09/11 as well, please?
In UK: (for what it's worth):
UK news has been running constantly with this since 2:00pm, Tony Blair has convened a COBRA commitee (basically a war cabinet) and has banned all air traffic over London.
so whats new/cool with banjo?
Warpdrive-a-licious
Now, who can argue with that? I'm glad those young children were present to hear that beautiful speech.