This new "downloaded from the internet" warning causes some people problems, so provide a way to turn it off. Previous versions of AFP do not like files with more than 2 or 3 extended attributes (or whatever they're called) and trying to copy or move these files to a network AFP share fails. I setup my downloads folder as a watched folder, and created a folder action script to remove 2 or 3 of the most common extended attributes. Another thing I don't want to try to explain to someone.
I assume:
defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO
Only disables the GUI warning, not the creation of the attribute? We just got rid of our last OS9 computer ~6 months ago, and our network file server is running netatalk which seems to deal ok. At least I haven't noticed any problems lately.
Let me set my Terminal preferences for new windows, then actually use those preferences. Every day at work, I start up at least 2 rdesktop sessions using a separate script for each. Every day it adds another terminal preference to the list. Periodically I go back and delete these extra prefs. Just use my existing prefs like Tiger did, already!
That sounds irritating--what do you do to trigger the new settings being created?
Incidentally, why do you use rdesktop over one of the native RDP apps?
Change the swapping settings to be less aggressive by default. I upgraded to 4GB to get around most of the swapping but I've found the easiest way to keep the system stable and happy is to just shut it down regularly.
I haven't noticed this. I virtually never reboot my MBP and have not noticed extreme swapping (4gb).
Above all, the system works very well so don't screw it up. This is really important.
I've been using OSX since 10.3. I think every upgrade since then has been a good one. 10.6 probably my least favorite, though it did add some good things.
Spaces has a nasty "Oops I disabled the keyboard" bug that requires restarting the dock to get the keyboard back.
Interesting, how do you trigger that? I don't think I've run into it.
It also has as some UI issues, previously you could hit your "show all desktops" shortcut and then a number for the desktop to go directly to the desktop, that's no longer possible. You also used to be able to hit the spaces shortcut followed by moving your mouse pointer over a desktop and then hitting the shortcut again to go to that desktop, that's also been taken away in Snow Leopard for some reason...
Interesting, I didn't know about any of those shortcuts. The numbers one sounds useful. You CAN however however and switch to a space by press Enter, or switch to a window a space by pressing the space bar.
My main beef with spaces is:
1) It doesn't work at all with Java programs 2) It sucks on multi-monitor
As for Exposé, the new layout seems, IMHO, to fly in the face of what we know about efficient user interface design, previously windows were placed relative to their position on the screen and sizes were also relative (large windows being large and small ones being small). Now we've got some weird layout where windows fly all over the place for no reason which makes it a lot harder to find windows quickly.
Agree. I don't like the new exposé as much either. I also don't like how minimized windows show up at the bottom of exposé--very irritating, I never want to access them that way.
I definitely agree with you, but to an extent. I do put a lot of the blame for bad dogs on owners, but I don't think the owner is always everything.
My wife and I adopted two rescued puppies when they were about 6-7 weeks old (their mother had rejected some of the puppies). We've been doing things like taking them on walks since a very young age, and while they are in many ways very good dogs (good with commands and listening--best dogs I've ever had for holding in a sit/lay down until verbally released), they remain to this day TERRIFIED of other dogs. They know the neighbor dogs, and are good on walks, wary around new people, but if a dog in public comes up to them, they get totally scared and pull and whine to get away. It's a behavior I haven't figured out how to get rid of. They're just...scared of new people and dogs. No amount of social interaction seems to make it better either. Oh well.
I don't know much about AI, I took one course and that was it. The professor had a good pedigree and spotless credentials. The impression I got from him was exactly yours--AI IS depressing, and little progress of the type imagined in the 60s/70s has really occurred. Not to say there's been no advancement, just perhaps that a lot of the early optimism has proven to be unfounded and burned off.
Decades ago many people thought a computer could never beat a human at chess. Many millions of dollars have been spent on specialized hardware, computer-human tournaments, and AI research, we now have computers that can beat the best human players some of the time. Chess is admittedly, in turns of branching and possible moves, much simpler than Go. Far more able to be bruteforced, or to have lookup tables of millions of board positions.
But...
Isn't it obvious that the same thing will happen with Go? I don't know how long it will take, but I would bet a substantial amount of money that within my lifetime Go AIs will become, like Chess AIs, at the very least highly competitive at all levels. If you take current Go AIs and double their computing power, or quadruple, or 1000x, how much better would they be? Perhaps not hugely better, but between more AI research and exponentially increasing computing power and memory, I think the writing is on the wall.
I don't think too many places in America have that feature!
I know some people in Minnesota have some kind of engine block heater at home (either that or take their car batteries inside over night) but even there I've never seen parking lots with heaters. Perhaps they exist.
Depends on what your definition of "good" is. Efficient? Easy? Fast? etc
If you can map out every possible outcome of a game given every possible move (calculate every ply), you can play optimally. You might need multiple super computers, lots of time, etc (for now!), but if you can do that, you can pretty much guarantee optimal play. Other "smarter" methods are of course faster, more resource efficient, etc, but not as optimal if you know every possible outcome.
Hmm.. I would think that statement needs some serious backing up?
How many millions of people live in cities where they don't have driveways/houses? In other words, how many millions of people park on the street or some parking structure that is not remotely set up for plug-in cars? Currently i would think that an awful lot of city-dwellers, people who live in apartments, people who live in condos or even townhouses, are excluded. Heck, a lot of SFH-owners are probably excluded too!
(I'm assuming that a plugin car is what you're talking about ?)
But the idea of a car carrying both gas/electric makes zero sense
Why? Isn't gas in essence a very efficient and very portable battery?
How many continents are there? It seems like a simple question, but it really depends on where you are from. In most English speaking countries, we are taught that there are seven continents. In most of the rest of the world, including most of Europe, S.America, and Latin America, the answer is six. What we call North and South America, most of the world refers to as simply America. How could one possibly justify that usage of America?
That's rather Eurocentric, is it not? Europe--a mere appendage of Eurasia--is its own continent, but two massive landmasses, separated by a continental divide and on two different tectonic plates are just "America?" Interesting.
In any case, though it does seem like some some European countries use this worldview (though not all from what I've googled, and as I mentioned elsewhere, certainly not in my direct experience in the Middle East and South Asia), that doesn't change the fact--everybody in the world knows that if you say America or "I'm from America" or "I'm an American" you are referring not two the two continents, but to the United States of America. Or are you really claiming that somebody, somewhere, is confused by what "America" means if somebody were to say "I'm from America?"
(just so I'm clear and this doesn't dissolve into an EVEN MORE pedantic (!) discussion, you are definitely right that in some countries "America" can mean the two continents combine. Nonetheless, I stand by my statement that there is no ambiguity, and from my experience, no confusion as to what the phrase "I'm from America" means. Since Europe isn't really a continent but "I'm from Europe" has a meaning, it's clear the difference is political rather than geographic.)
If you grew up in Brazil you would ask the same question but with entirely different meaning.
Talk about completely and utterly missing the point!
Really? We still tend refer to it as 'the new World' when talking about it as a whole:P Otherwise America is indeed a reference to the continent*, we refer to the US as 'the US', surprisingly.
Ok, that's fine and dandy, however when using the word "America" the singular refers to the USA, the pl refers to both continents. You can call it the New World, India, that-place-across-the-pond -- whatever you want! Doesn't change the meaning of America et al.
Strangely enough, prefacing 'South' or 'North' in front of 'America' is usually enough to get the message across...
Yes, that's exactly the point I was making. When the OP tried to make a new usage of the word America (eg, a Canadian saying "I'm from America") that requires a meaning of "America" to refer to North America. That doesn't exist. You use NORTH America or SOUTH America to refer to the landmasses. That's what gets the message across.
Yeah I know, you have a point. I guess I'm just stubborn and obsessed with semantics. If I was Canadian, I would happily say that I was from America, and let people interpret it however they like.
That seems somewhat silly, and I actually think you're wrong about the semantics.
What does "America" mean? The most obvious answer (and ignoring the handful of towns around the world named America) is that it's an abbreviated form of "The United States of America." To what else could it possibly refer? North America? No, that doesn't make sense because if you say "America" referring to a continent, how do you differentiate between North and South America. Likewise, if you're referring to both continents it doesn't make sense, because they -- the landmass as a whole -- is referred to as the Americas (pl). It's possible that in a historical sense "America" (s) could be used to refer to the entire landmass, but this is most certainly not a modern usage. Deprecated!
So, if you were a Canadian it would make perfect sense to say you were either from North America or from the Americas. Neither statement is particularly useful nor descriptive but they would be accurate. Saying you were "from America" would mean you were from the United States of America (unless as I said earlier you were from the handful of towns or cities around the world named America).
So is this a pedantic semantic argument? I guess so, but I don't see how you could possibly justify that usage of America.
I rather think it depends on what you're doing. I work in publishing, and there are reasons most books are the way they are. Wide columns of text can be difficult to read. Obviously on a computer you're not just reading columns of text, but it does make a difference.
If you've got a iPad, Kindle, what not, try reading in landscape vs portrait. Not everybody likes the same thing, but in general I prefer narrow columns.
When I was in grad school (in a non-techie field) virtually none of my friends had heard of WoW, and all but one had no interest in WoW (or even more generally in video games).
OTOH, that one and I got married, so it worked out pretty well;)
Likewise, working in non-techie fields, the number of people that I've run into that have played WoW is pretty small!
I played classic for a number of months and then quit. Played BC for a number of months then quit. Played Wrath, etc. I only played Wrath for like 3 months...really did not enjoy it. I think in a lot of ways classic WoW was a better game than WoW now. Things like sparkly resource annoy me, though they do make it a lot easier.
I still think my favorite moments of WoW were exploring zones when I was just starting. Flying over high level areas into Ironforge? Awesome! Haven't felt that same thrill of exploration anywhere else. Definitely not in Wrath, I really thought it was uninspired. Seems like half the people now play with QuestHelper and all these other addons just making it a race to 80. I always liked leveling with friends, and never liked raiding nearly so much.
I also wish there was a server for like...people 21+ who don't have a ton of time to play. I guess that's a sign I'm getting old:p
Oddly enough given my comment (what's life without some self deprectation?) I actually quite enjoyed some of Ayn Rand's work. Take out the 80-page soliloquy at the end of Atlas and I thought it was a pretty solid book.
The characters are rather outsized and undersized though! Interestingly enough, I read that Rand had intended to include a priest character--a sympathetic character, somebody who was on the side of good, yet sided with the "looters" for misguided reasons. Rand apparently felt the character wasn't believable!
Do you really want films & books about nothing but outsized caricatures of humanity as characters, or filled with people who we are so utterly incapable of identifying with that they might as well be aliens from a civilization antithetical to our own?
Are you joking? I very clearly stated that it is illegal to attempt to overthrow the government with force or violence. Likewise, using force and violence against other political groups, etc, is highly illegal. Black panthers.
No, he appeared to the organizer and it seems from Wikipedia they were also writing Charters and compared themselves to other movements in Chinese history.
But the point is, the very worst thing you've accused this man of doing is passing around some letters, suggesting the government of China should change/enter a federation with Taiwan, and "being an organizer." No mention of violence. No mention of force. No mention of civil disobedience. Etc.
To your average European or North American, being jailed for over a decade for such things is really quite shocking!
Now the communists are in power and they are extremely wary about anybody else play the same game against them. The communist party itself actually wanted to introduce more liberal values, but they are afraid of their opponents taking advantage of it and losing their power.
Agreed. This is very much the problem with such systems of government. This is EXACTLY what F.A. Hayek describes in his book "The Road to Serfdom."
So the basic problem in China is how to be more transparent. And dramatic moves would actually make things worse. I am actually quite suspicious of western media in this matter because they always portray Chinese officials as whimsical as putting people to jail for no reason at all. This actually makes reform harder. Maybe that's the goal.
I disagree. The basic question is not "how to be more transparent" the basic question is "should Chinese society be more free?"
I am suspicious of news media too. I don't trust them all! The good thing about a free and open society is you don't hAVE to rely one on source of information. You don't have to rely on what the government says, or what the NY Times says, or what Xinhua says, etc. Bloggers, independents, newspapers, tv, government can all voice their opinions without fear of imprisonment.
Thank you for your point of view, I appreciate your comments very much.
Slashdot Mirror
I've wondered the same thing...it does seem like magic!
This new "downloaded from the internet" warning causes some people problems, so provide a way to turn it off. Previous versions of AFP do not like files with more than 2 or 3 extended attributes (or whatever they're called) and trying to copy or move these files to a network AFP share fails. I setup my downloads folder as a watched folder, and created a folder action script to remove 2 or 3 of the most common extended attributes. Another thing I don't want to try to explain to someone.
I assume:
defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO
Only disables the GUI warning, not the creation of the attribute? We just got rid of our last OS9 computer ~6 months ago, and our network file server is running netatalk which seems to deal ok. At least I haven't noticed any problems lately.
Let me set my Terminal preferences for new windows, then actually use those preferences. Every day at work, I start up at least 2 rdesktop sessions using a separate script for each. Every day it adds another terminal preference to the list. Periodically I go back and delete these extra prefs. Just use my existing prefs like Tiger did, already!
That sounds irritating--what do you do to trigger the new settings being created?
Incidentally, why do you use rdesktop over one of the native RDP apps?
Change the swapping settings to be less aggressive by default. I upgraded to 4GB to get around most of the swapping but I've found the easiest way to keep the system stable and happy is to just shut it down regularly.
I haven't noticed this. I virtually never reboot my MBP and have not noticed extreme swapping (4gb).
Above all, the system works very well so don't screw it up. This is really important.
I've been using OSX since 10.3. I think every upgrade since then has been a good one. 10.6 probably my least favorite, though it did add some good things.
Spaces has a nasty "Oops I disabled the keyboard" bug that requires restarting the dock to get the keyboard back.
Interesting, how do you trigger that? I don't think I've run into it.
It also has as some UI issues, previously you could hit your "show all desktops" shortcut and then a number for the desktop to go directly to the desktop, that's no longer possible. You also used to be able to hit the spaces shortcut followed by moving your mouse pointer over a desktop and then hitting the shortcut again to go to that desktop, that's also been taken away in Snow Leopard for some reason...
Interesting, I didn't know about any of those shortcuts. The numbers one sounds useful. You CAN however however and switch to a space by press Enter, or switch to a window a space by pressing the space bar.
My main beef with spaces is:
1) It doesn't work at all with Java programs
2) It sucks on multi-monitor
As for Exposé, the new layout seems, IMHO, to fly in the face of what we know about efficient user interface design, previously windows were placed relative to their position on the screen and sizes were also relative (large windows being large and small ones being small). Now we've got some weird layout where windows fly all over the place for no reason which makes it a lot harder to find windows quickly.
Agree. I don't like the new exposé as much either. I also don't like how minimized windows show up at the bottom of exposé--very irritating, I never want to access them that way.
I definitely agree with you, but to an extent. I do put a lot of the blame for bad dogs on owners, but I don't think the owner is always everything.
My wife and I adopted two rescued puppies when they were about 6-7 weeks old (their mother had rejected some of the puppies). We've been doing things like taking them on walks since a very young age, and while they are in many ways very good dogs (good with commands and listening--best dogs I've ever had for holding in a sit/lay down until verbally released), they remain to this day TERRIFIED of other dogs. They know the neighbor dogs, and are good on walks, wary around new people, but if a dog in public comes up to them, they get totally scared and pull and whine to get away. It's a behavior I haven't figured out how to get rid of. They're just...scared of new people and dogs. No amount of social interaction seems to make it better either. Oh well.
I don't know much about AI, I took one course and that was it. The professor had a good pedigree and spotless credentials. The impression I got from him was exactly yours--AI IS depressing, and little progress of the type imagined in the 60s/70s has really occurred. Not to say there's been no advancement, just perhaps that a lot of the early optimism has proven to be unfounded and burned off.
I think that's exactly the GP's point.
Decades ago many people thought a computer could never beat a human at chess. Many millions of dollars have been spent on specialized hardware, computer-human tournaments, and AI research, we now have computers that can beat the best human players some of the time. Chess is admittedly, in turns of branching and possible moves, much simpler than Go. Far more able to be bruteforced, or to have lookup tables of millions of board positions.
But...
Isn't it obvious that the same thing will happen with Go? I don't know how long it will take, but I would bet a substantial amount of money that within my lifetime Go AIs will become, like Chess AIs, at the very least highly competitive at all levels. If you take current Go AIs and double their computing power, or quadruple, or 1000x, how much better would they be? Perhaps not hugely better, but between more AI research and exponentially increasing computing power and memory, I think the writing is on the wall.
I don't think too many places in America have that feature!
I know some people in Minnesota have some kind of engine block heater at home (either that or take their car batteries inside over night) but even there I've never seen parking lots with heaters. Perhaps they exist.
Depends on what your definition of "good" is. Efficient? Easy? Fast? etc
If you can map out every possible outcome of a game given every possible move (calculate every ply), you can play optimally. You might need multiple super computers, lots of time, etc (for now!), but if you can do that, you can pretty much guarantee optimal play. Other "smarter" methods are of course faster, more resource efficient, etc, but not as optimal if you know every possible outcome.
It makes sense for most homes to buy an electric
Hmm.. I would think that statement needs some serious backing up?
How many millions of people live in cities where they don't have driveways/houses? In other words, how many millions of people park on the street or some parking structure that is not remotely set up for plug-in cars? Currently i would think that an awful lot of city-dwellers, people who live in apartments, people who live in condos or even townhouses, are excluded. Heck, a lot of SFH-owners are probably excluded too!
(I'm assuming that a plugin car is what you're talking about ?)
But the idea of a car carrying both gas/electric makes zero sense
Why? Isn't gas in essence a very efficient and very portable battery?
Hey, if 'Azzam al-Amriki (that's Adam Gadhn AKA Azzam the America) isn't right, who is?
How many continents are there? It seems like a simple question, but it really depends on where you are from. In most English speaking countries, we are taught that there are seven continents. In most of the rest of the world, including most of Europe, S.America, and Latin America, the answer is six. What we call North and South America, most of the world refers to as simply America. How could one possibly justify that usage of America?
That's rather Eurocentric, is it not? Europe--a mere appendage of Eurasia--is its own continent, but two massive landmasses, separated by a continental divide and on two different tectonic plates are just "America?" Interesting.
In any case, though it does seem like some some European countries use this worldview (though not all from what I've googled, and as I mentioned elsewhere, certainly not in my direct experience in the Middle East and South Asia), that doesn't change the fact--everybody in the world knows that if you say America or "I'm from America" or "I'm an American" you are referring not two the two continents, but to the United States of America. Or are you really claiming that somebody, somewhere, is confused by what "America" means if somebody were to say "I'm from America?"
(just so I'm clear and this doesn't dissolve into an EVEN MORE pedantic (!) discussion, you are definitely right that in some countries "America" can mean the two continents combine. Nonetheless, I stand by my statement that there is no ambiguity, and from my experience, no confusion as to what the phrase "I'm from America" means. Since Europe isn't really a continent but "I'm from Europe" has a meaning, it's clear the difference is political rather than geographic.)
If you grew up in Brazil you would ask the same question but with entirely different meaning.
Which question are you referring to?
That's certainly not my experience either in South Asia or the Middle East, or indeed the more limited parts of Europe I have been in.
Where are you from that it is not understood that "America" is the abbreviated form of The United States of America?
Talk about completely and utterly missing the point!
Really? We still tend refer to it as 'the new World' when talking about it as a whole :P Otherwise America is indeed a reference to the continent*, we refer to the US as 'the US', surprisingly.
Ok, that's fine and dandy, however when using the word "America" the singular refers to the USA, the pl refers to both continents. You can call it the New World, India, that-place-across-the-pond -- whatever you want! Doesn't change the meaning of America et al.
Strangely enough, prefacing 'South' or 'North' in front of 'America' is usually enough to get the message across...
Yes, that's exactly the point I was making. When the OP tried to make a new usage of the word America (eg, a Canadian saying "I'm from America") that requires a meaning of "America" to refer to North America. That doesn't exist. You use NORTH America or SOUTH America to refer to the landmasses. That's what gets the message across.
Yeah I know, you have a point. I guess I'm just stubborn and obsessed with semantics. If I was Canadian, I would happily say that I was from America, and let people interpret it however they like.
That seems somewhat silly, and I actually think you're wrong about the semantics.
What does "America" mean? The most obvious answer (and ignoring the handful of towns around the world named America) is that it's an abbreviated form of "The United States of America." To what else could it possibly refer? North America? No, that doesn't make sense because if you say "America" referring to a continent, how do you differentiate between North and South America. Likewise, if you're referring to both continents it doesn't make sense, because they -- the landmass as a whole -- is referred to as the Americas (pl). It's possible that in a historical sense "America" (s) could be used to refer to the entire landmass, but this is most certainly not a modern usage. Deprecated!
So, if you were a Canadian it would make perfect sense to say you were either from North America or from the Americas. Neither statement is particularly useful nor descriptive but they would be accurate. Saying you were "from America" would mean you were from the United States of America (unless as I said earlier you were from the handful of towns or cities around the world named America).
So is this a pedantic semantic argument? I guess so, but I don't see how you could possibly justify that usage of America.
I rather think it depends on what you're doing. I work in publishing, and there are reasons most books are the way they are. Wide columns of text can be difficult to read. Obviously on a computer you're not just reading columns of text, but it does make a difference.
If you've got a iPad, Kindle, what not, try reading in landscape vs portrait. Not everybody likes the same thing, but in general I prefer narrow columns.
I always wanted to play on a PVP server, but all of my friends were on PVE. In retrospect I'm glad I ended up on PVE.
Fair enough!
When I was in grad school (in a non-techie field) virtually none of my friends had heard of WoW, and all but one had no interest in WoW (or even more generally in video games).
OTOH, that one and I got married, so it worked out pretty well ;)
Likewise, working in non-techie fields, the number of people that I've run into that have played WoW is pretty small!
Agree.
I played classic for a number of months and then quit. Played BC for a number of months then quit. Played Wrath, etc. I only played Wrath for like 3 months...really did not enjoy it. I think in a lot of ways classic WoW was a better game than WoW now. Things like sparkly resource annoy me, though they do make it a lot easier.
I still think my favorite moments of WoW were exploring zones when I was just starting. Flying over high level areas into Ironforge? Awesome! Haven't felt that same thrill of exploration anywhere else. Definitely not in Wrath, I really thought it was uninspired. Seems like half the people now play with QuestHelper and all these other addons just making it a race to 80. I always liked leveling with friends, and never liked raiding nearly so much.
I also wish there was a server for like...people 21+ who don't have a ton of time to play. I guess that's a sign I'm getting old :p
WoW is a lot like the new golf. Nearly everyone has either played it, or has heard of it, and can at least carry on a conversation.
I think that is VERY much dependent on where you work / who is in your circle of acquaintances.
Oddly enough given my comment (what's life without some self deprectation?) I actually quite enjoyed some of Ayn Rand's work. Take out the 80-page soliloquy at the end of Atlas and I thought it was a pretty solid book.
The characters are rather outsized and undersized though! Interestingly enough, I read that Rand had intended to include a priest character--a sympathetic character, somebody who was on the side of good, yet sided with the "looters" for misguided reasons. Rand apparently felt the character wasn't believable!
You mean like ESPN360 / ESPN3, or whatever they're calling it now?
Do you really want films & books about nothing but outsized caricatures of humanity as characters, or filled with people who we are so utterly incapable of identifying with that they might as well be aliens from a civilization antithetical to our own?
We call that Atlas Shrugged.
Oh snap, you can always tell it's on when a Penny Arcade strip is referenced!
Black panthers? "a bit more vocal"
Are you joking? I very clearly stated that it is illegal to attempt to overthrow the government with force or violence. Likewise, using force and violence against other political groups, etc, is highly illegal. Black panthers.
No, he appeared to the organizer and it seems from Wikipedia they were also writing Charters and compared themselves to other movements in Chinese history.
But the point is, the very worst thing you've accused this man of doing is passing around some letters, suggesting the government of China should change/enter a federation with Taiwan, and "being an organizer." No mention of violence. No mention of force. No mention of civil disobedience. Etc.
To your average European or North American, being jailed for over a decade for such things is really quite shocking!
Now the communists are in power and they are extremely wary about anybody else play the same game against them. The communist party itself actually wanted to introduce more liberal values, but they are afraid of their opponents taking advantage of it and losing their power.
Agreed. This is very much the problem with such systems of government. This is EXACTLY what F.A. Hayek describes in his book "The Road to Serfdom."
So the basic problem in China is how to be more transparent. And dramatic moves would actually make things worse. I am actually quite suspicious of western media in this matter because they always portray Chinese officials as whimsical as putting people to jail for no reason at all. This actually makes reform harder. Maybe that's the goal.
I disagree. The basic question is not "how to be more transparent" the basic question is "should Chinese society be more free?"
I am suspicious of news media too. I don't trust them all! The good thing about a free and open society is you don't hAVE to rely one on source of information. You don't have to rely on what the government says, or what the NY Times says, or what Xinhua says, etc. Bloggers, independents, newspapers, tv, government can all voice their opinions without fear of imprisonment.
Thank you for your point of view, I appreciate your comments very much.