When state controls tell you exist what you can do where, to the point that it has absolute control over your life, you're a slave. You exist to serve the communist party.
They do indeed have a tremendous amount of control over your life. I responded to another post saying that one of the reasons they control physical mobility is because otherwise the cities would be flooded with rural populations (more so than they already are) and that would lead to an economic collapse.
The point was simply that China isn't simply going through what other countries went through earlier now - China has advantages, economic and technological, that obviously the "West" didn't have as it developed. Saying "OMG! China is doing it so much better than England did in the 1800s" just sounds rather...ridiculous.
China's doing it better than England did. They are not allowing it to be free enterprise. To do so would be a mistake. The poplation movement I mentioned above would be one example. A lot of developing countries that have not good management of their economies have developed failed economies. China has seen what its options are -- those that were available to England and benefits since developed that were unavailable -- and has chosen quite wisely which to take. That's why I objected to "slingshotting." Most countries in the West's slingshot end up spat againt a wall.
Not to mention that England was only able to pull their stunt off by suppressing their own and many other countries' peoples. Same with the U.S. The greatest accomplishment of the 21st century will be the country that creates a modern economy that doesn't depend on the subdjugation of another population.
Um, no - China is "of course" cleaning up. It's basically in the cards for every progressing economy - it reaches a stage and then suddenly environmental concerns come to the forefront. When you have huge centrist control and a docile population, you also have the ability to "pioneer" by pushing people around to do whatever you want. Oooh, win win.
China is looking into sustainable technology because they want sustainable growth and a sustainable economy. Not all countries have this much foresight. Certainly the developing countries with weak central governments don't have any shining examples that I can think of.
Power is a tricky thing. We are all victims of circumstance -- some of us got lucky and were in the West when the west took off and sustained itself on the backs of those who didn't. In order to get out from under that West Rock you need vision. Vision is hard to pull off without power.
But if you can then "hear hear!" I certainly would prefer a country lead by a self-determined, mindful, foresighted, sustainably-minded population.
As does every country. Not that that makes it right -- but it makes it so you can't talk about China's past feudal system as being oppressive like it is something unique.
China still mistreats lots of its population, especially mobility-minded minorities. I don't believe that they indent to hold the peasant populations back forever, though. I think that they, rightly, are concerned that everyone would flock to the cities looking for the "Chinese dream" and that that population move would destroy the economy and ruin the lives of everyone.
I grew up in China. I would rather spend 50 dollars more on my DVD player. In fact, I am in the field of International Development. One of the things I focus on is helping populations develop indigenous concepts of modernity, so they don't sacrifice ethics so they can succeed in the western sense (eating a lot, having a lot, etc.)
But I have to ask, do you know what the conditions were for Chinese women BEFORE 1949? Much worse. Foot-binding. Mass forced marriages. Servitude. Total unequal status.
Please elaborate on these slaves. I know of no huge slave populations in China's history.
Also, China's wealth is not simple "slingshotting." That's pretty insulting. They have made HUGE strides on EVERY level since the collapse of the last (puppet for the west) empire fell. Literacy rate has gone from the teens to the 85% in that time period. Women have gained TREMENDOUS amounts of rights/freedoms. Is China perfect? No. But China has succeeded where many countries with seemingly disasterous problems (negligible literacy, feudal system still in place) have not.
And China is not "of course" cleaning up. China is pioneering. China is looking forwards 50 years. That is what has kept China chugging and not collapsing. That's why they have not allowed themselves to become dependent on the west -- they know that if they had they would have been abused.
China's no holy country, but it deserves a lot more respect than you're giving it.
I disagree. If you wanted to start a network of evironmentalists this would be great. Or of a counter-popular network. Anything that wouldn't want to group themselves with a site like thefacebook -- not to mention that they might want to have a more professional, and closed, system.
Or use a service like EDGE (verizon?), or is it "EV-DO" -- anyways, broadband through cell phone providers. I currently have a cable modem, but I'm thinking of moving over the cellular broadband. I never watch cable T.V. and I wouldn't mind being able to use my (IBM x40) laptop wherever and whenever with high-speed connectivity.
maybe the tablet will have a pcmcia card and you could enable that... would make it much more useful. the problem is that (i think) the cards for cingular's network don't work with verizons, etc. yay for the deployment of the next gen of 802.11
I have been looking for decent answers about this for a long time, so here i go:
What is a good way to have redundant external storage with linux? I'm thinking like mirroring "RAID" with two external USB hard drives.
I ask this because I recently lost a good deal of data when a harddrive failed when I didn't have a copy of a lot of my stuff on my laptop. I recovered some, but I'd like to not have to worry about it again.
"Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and possibly have triggered a mass extinction," said Bryan Gaensler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)."
Possible explaination for the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, and others?
get the iAudio U2 -- connects to your PC as a USB mass storage device, so it works on any OS. and you don't have to worry about the interface -- you just copy/paste the songs you want.
I can't believe how often highly educated people will pontificate on this subject, and get it wrong. Yes, usually the media is to blame -- science reporting is notoriously bad -- but that does not appear to be the case here.
Or maybe you don't get it. Evolution doesn't have to happen throughout the species. Our new-found mobility and related partner-selection freedom might be driving people of different abilities to find people of similar abilities. And, since we can move and choose freely, we are mating with people who are much more unlike ourselves than was possible 10000 years ago (where it was almost always going to be someone in your tribe you mated with.) That is probably causing some interesting blends.
Does everyone marry outside of their town? No. But, like I said, it doesn't have to happen with everyone. People of similar abilities (and interests) are finding oneanother. Smart people find other smart people. Artistic people find artistic people. Calculating/math people find calculating/math people.
So those areas are probably evolving in their own sub-spheres, where "survival of the fittest" means whatever-you-decide-"survival"-is, not about kicking everyone else's ass. So the greatest artists survive, the greatest math minds survive, the greatest business minds survive. But survival/evolutionary success isn't about having lots of kids, it's about getting the mate you want.
So I think there is evolution -- I just think it is a lot different than most people assume.
The GPL is fine. They will not be able to make commercial applications based off of your code, and they can make all the plugins they want, closed or open source, so long as they don't modify the host application's (MultiMAD's) code.
If you can choose what show you watch, won't that just mean that there will be fewer and fewer shows? Because people will stop ever having to watch "whatever's on" -- they'll just watch the shows they already know they like. So the super popular shows will be watched even MORE frequently.
I recently read a New York Times article that I thought spoke to this theme. It was an op-ed by David Brooks called "All Cultures Are Not The Same." I don't agree with everything he says (i feel it's too simplistic) but I did think what he said about how American's increased mobility causes them to cluster into groups where they already feel comfortable.
I have been using linux exclusively 8 years now. (I sort of miss the excitement of it in 1997... oh well.)
I have used debian almost that entire time. The packaging system is just so beautiful. I now use Ubuntu.
I think one of the major challenges, though, is that people are used to buying software off the shelf. I think the OSS world would benefit from adopting a mac OS kind of program-in-a-folder system. It doesn't have to take over everything -- can just be on top of the distro's own packaging system.
And I think that having a stronger LSB is important, so independent groups can package programs easily and have some assurance they will work on most distros.
Infinite time or billions of years, which is it? Also, from where did the chemicals come?
yes -- it was infinite time. it could have taken however long it wanted. it just happened to take the time it did. there as no limit. that's what infinite means.
Pick up a Bible, the answer is in the first couple pages.
I've read the bible -- several times. and i know what it says. but if intelligent design is true (and i understand the theory agrees with the general progression of events as evolution suggests) then why did got make bacteria first? why didn't he just do it all at once?
Huh?
there were two points in there. one -- who is to say god's plan is complete? maybe there will be some more advanced species that were REALLY god's final plan. and maybe humans just wrote down in the bible that they were the final thign because they couldn't imagine that there was more to come.
and maybe proto-man thought the same thing. maybe some of those proto-men thought that THEY were the final product. but they were wrong, according to the bible we now use. but for a LONG time they might have thought they were right -- that they were the final product. so who is to say we are the final product, and that we're not just proto-whatevers?
and the second point (though you didn't quote it so maybe you understood) was drawing this mentality we get from the abrahamistic religions -- that we're the final product -- into our general feelings in society. we feel like the status quo is basically where things will end up. people in america are complacent about the current social problems (poverty) becasue they feel like the current system is the only system that works, and that if any other system could work it would already have been created. just like with our religion -- we feel we're at the end-product stage.
Especially since we had an infinite amount of time for it to happen. It would be more confusing if it hadn't taken billions of years. The # of chemical interactions that happen in billions of years is tremendous.
And I have to ask -- if ID is indeed true, then aren't single-cell organisms God's primary children? And who's to say we're the end product? It took such a long time to get humans from proto-humans -- maybe those proto-humans thought THEY were the end product. And then we came. So who's to say we're not like the proto-humans? Maybe 3 million years from now we'll go to some other planet and evolve in a way we haven't evolved yet and we'll consider our present day species as proto-whatever-we-call-ourselves.
And that makes me think -- maybe this abrahamistic we're-the-end-product explains the if-it-were-to-happen-it-would-have-happened-by-now mentality so many people have about things like social change. many people believe that the U.S.'s system is the "end-product" of socio/economic models -- that if anything else could have worked better it would have happened already.
glad they weren't too caught up in that july 3rd, 1776...
I always wondered about the religious issues concerning cloning. I cound never understand a couple of things.
One -- if only god can give you a soul, does an animal you clone have a soul? If it does, did he put it in there even though you (supposedly) did something immoral?
What's so terrible about playing god? all his creatures are wonderful, why not make more?
i had more... but i just blanked. it's too late at night for this...
(but if anyone else thinks the this-is-evil claim doesn't make sense, chip in.)
When I posted this there were 588 comments and 5 comments above level 3.
Less than one in a hundred! This is pathetic. I thought it would just take time and some comments would be modded up. 500 comments later, I realize I was wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
When state controls tell you exist what you can do where, to the point that it has absolute control over your life, you're a slave. You exist to serve the communist party.
They do indeed have a tremendous amount of control over your life. I responded to another post saying that one of the reasons they control physical mobility is because otherwise the cities would be flooded with rural populations (more so than they already are) and that would lead to an economic collapse.
The point was simply that China isn't simply going through what other countries went through earlier now - China has advantages, economic and technological, that obviously the "West" didn't have as it developed. Saying "OMG! China is doing it so much better than England did in the 1800s" just sounds rather...ridiculous.
China's doing it better than England did. They are not allowing it to be free enterprise. To do so would be a mistake. The poplation movement I mentioned above would be one example. A lot of developing countries that have not good management of their economies have developed failed economies. China has seen what its options are -- those that were available to England and benefits since developed that were unavailable -- and has chosen quite wisely which to take. That's why I objected to "slingshotting." Most countries in the West's slingshot end up spat againt a wall.
Not to mention that England was only able to pull their stunt off by suppressing their own and many other countries' peoples. Same with the U.S. The greatest accomplishment of the 21st century will be the country that creates a modern economy that doesn't depend on the subdjugation of another population.
Um, no - China is "of course" cleaning up. It's basically in the cards for every progressing economy - it reaches a stage and then suddenly environmental concerns come to the forefront. When you have huge centrist control and a docile population, you also have the ability to "pioneer" by pushing people around to do whatever you want. Oooh, win win.
China is looking into sustainable technology because they want sustainable growth and a sustainable economy. Not all countries have this much foresight. Certainly the developing countries with weak central governments don't have any shining examples that I can think of.
Power is a tricky thing. We are all victims of circumstance -- some of us got lucky and were in the West when the west took off and sustained itself on the backs of those who didn't. In order to get out from under that West Rock you need vision. Vision is hard to pull off without power.
But if you can then "hear hear!" I certainly would prefer a country lead by a self-determined, mindful, foresighted, sustainably-minded population.
As does every country. Not that that makes it right -- but it makes it so you can't talk about China's past feudal system as being oppressive like it is something unique.
China still mistreats lots of its population, especially mobility-minded minorities. I don't believe that they indent to hold the peasant populations back forever, though. I think that they, rightly, are concerned that everyone would flock to the cities looking for the "Chinese dream" and that that population move would destroy the economy and ruin the lives of everyone.
I grew up in China. I would rather spend 50 dollars more on my DVD player. In fact, I am in the field of International Development. One of the things I focus on is helping populations develop indigenous concepts of modernity, so they don't sacrifice ethics so they can succeed in the western sense (eating a lot, having a lot, etc.)
But I have to ask, do you know what the conditions were for Chinese women BEFORE 1949? Much worse. Foot-binding. Mass forced marriages. Servitude. Total unequal status.
"there is gold in software support, training and publishing."
thats all well and good.. doesnt help a programmer pay the bills though.
Sure it does -- the company gets revenue through support, etc and pays programmers to make software so they have a product to support.
Please elaborate on these slaves. I know of no huge slave populations in China's history.
Also, China's wealth is not simple "slingshotting." That's pretty insulting. They have made HUGE strides on EVERY level since the collapse of the last (puppet for the west) empire fell. Literacy rate has gone from the teens to the 85% in that time period. Women have gained TREMENDOUS amounts of rights/freedoms. Is China perfect? No. But China has succeeded where many countries with seemingly disasterous problems (negligible literacy, feudal system still in place) have not.
And China is not "of course" cleaning up. China is pioneering. China is looking forwards 50 years. That is what has kept China chugging and not collapsing. That's why they have not allowed themselves to become dependent on the west -- they know that if they had they would have been abused.
China's no holy country, but it deserves a lot more respect than you're giving it.
I think the GP has a legitimate point -- the minimum specs for this thing are a 1.2+ Ghz processor, 64MB graphics with hardware T&L, etc.
What performance will that really give you?
I prefers the audio format to traditional page flipping. I listem during menial tasks like my job.
I disagree. If you wanted to start a network of evironmentalists this would be great. Or of a counter-popular network. Anything that wouldn't want to group themselves with a site like thefacebook -- not to mention that they might want to have a more professional, and closed, system.
Or use a service like EDGE (verizon?), or is it "EV-DO" -- anyways, broadband through cell phone providers. I currently have a cable modem, but I'm thinking of moving over the cellular broadband. I never watch cable T.V. and I wouldn't mind being able to use my (IBM x40) laptop wherever and whenever with high-speed connectivity. maybe the tablet will have a pcmcia card and you could enable that... would make it much more useful. the problem is that (i think) the cards for cingular's network don't work with verizons, etc. yay for the deployment of the next gen of 802.11
I have been looking for decent answers about this for a long time, so here i go:
What is a good way to have redundant external storage with linux? I'm thinking like mirroring "RAID" with two external USB hard drives.
I ask this because I recently lost a good deal of data when a harddrive failed when I didn't have a copy of a lot of my stuff on my laptop. I recovered some, but I'd like to not have to worry about it again.
Suggestions?
Thank you.
Unfortunately, I don't have a floppy disk.
"Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and possibly have triggered a mass extinction," said Bryan Gaensler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)."
Possible explaination for the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, and others?
get the iAudio U2 -- connects to your PC as a USB mass storage device, so it works on any OS. and you don't have to worry about the interface -- you just copy/paste the songs you want.
I can't believe how often highly educated people will pontificate on this subject, and get it wrong. Yes, usually the media is to blame -- science reporting is notoriously bad -- but that does not appear to be the case here.
Or maybe you don't get it. Evolution doesn't have to happen throughout the species. Our new-found mobility and related partner-selection freedom might be driving people of different abilities to find people of similar abilities. And, since we can move and choose freely, we are mating with people who are much more unlike ourselves than was possible 10000 years ago (where it was almost always going to be someone in your tribe you mated with.) That is probably causing some interesting blends.
Does everyone marry outside of their town? No. But, like I said, it doesn't have to happen with everyone. People of similar abilities (and interests) are finding oneanother. Smart people find other smart people. Artistic people find artistic people. Calculating/math people find calculating/math people.
So those areas are probably evolving in their own sub-spheres, where "survival of the fittest" means whatever-you-decide-"survival"-is, not about kicking everyone else's ass. So the greatest artists survive, the greatest math minds survive, the greatest business minds survive. But survival/evolutionary success isn't about having lots of kids, it's about getting the mate you want.
So I think there is evolution -- I just think it is a lot different than most people assume.
sorry if that rambled. It's 6:30am...
On an unrelated note, many are also finding
The GPL is fine. They will not be able to make commercial applications based off of your code, and they can make all the plugins they want, closed or open source, so long as they don't modify the host application's (MultiMAD's) code.
Thank you for your contribution.
I'll wait for a real announcement before I assume anything.
Huh? You will start making assumptions about what they're doing after they announce what they're doing?
If you can choose what show you watch, won't that just mean that there will be fewer and fewer shows? Because people will stop ever having to watch "whatever's on" -- they'll just watch the shows they already know they like. So the super popular shows will be watched even MORE frequently.
I recently read a New York Times article that I thought spoke to this theme. It was an op-ed by David Brooks called "All Cultures Are Not The Same." I don't agree with everything he says (i feel it's too simplistic) but I did think what he said about how American's increased mobility causes them to cluster into groups where they already feel comfortable.
I have been using linux exclusively 8 years now. (I sort of miss the excitement of it in 1997... oh well.)
I have used debian almost that entire time. The packaging system is just so beautiful. I now use Ubuntu.
I think one of the major challenges, though, is that people are used to buying software off the shelf. I think the OSS world would benefit from adopting a mac OS kind of program-in-a-folder system. It doesn't have to take over everything -- can just be on top of the distro's own packaging system.
And I think that having a stronger LSB is important, so independent groups can package programs easily and have some assurance they will work on most distros.
You're absolutely right. I didn't see the date in the article. Oops.
Infinite time or billions of years, which is it? Also, from where did the chemicals come?
yes -- it was infinite time. it could have taken however long it wanted. it just happened to take the time it did. there as no limit. that's what infinite means.
Pick up a Bible, the answer is in the first couple pages.
I've read the bible -- several times. and i know what it says. but if intelligent design is true (and i understand the theory agrees with the general progression of events as evolution suggests) then why did got make bacteria first? why didn't he just do it all at once?
Huh?
there were two points in there. one -- who is to say god's plan is complete? maybe there will be some more advanced species that were REALLY god's final plan. and maybe humans just wrote down in the bible that they were the final thign because they couldn't imagine that there was more to come.
and maybe proto-man thought the same thing. maybe some of those proto-men thought that THEY were the final product. but they were wrong, according to the bible we now use. but for a LONG time they might have thought they were right -- that they were the final product. so who is to say we are the final product, and that we're not just proto-whatevers?
and the second point (though you didn't quote it so maybe you understood) was drawing this mentality we get from the abrahamistic religions -- that we're the final product -- into our general feelings in society. we feel like the status quo is basically where things will end up. people in america are complacent about the current social problems (poverty) becasue they feel like the current system is the only system that works, and that if any other system could work it would already have been created. just like with our religion -- we feel we're at the end-product stage.
Especially since we had an infinite amount of time for it to happen. It would be more confusing if it hadn't taken billions of years. The # of chemical interactions that happen in billions of years is tremendous.
w mentality so many people have about things like social change. many people believe that the U.S.'s system is the "end-product" of socio/economic models -- that if anything else could have worked better it would have happened already.
And I have to ask -- if ID is indeed true, then aren't single-cell organisms God's primary children? And who's to say we're the end product? It took such a long time to get humans from proto-humans -- maybe those proto-humans thought THEY were the end product. And then we came. So who's to say we're not like the proto-humans? Maybe 3 million years from now we'll go to some other planet and evolve in a way we haven't evolved yet and we'll consider our present day species as proto-whatever-we-call-ourselves.
And that makes me think -- maybe this abrahamistic we're-the-end-product explains the if-it-were-to-happen-it-would-have-happened-by-no
glad they weren't too caught up in that july 3rd, 1776...
I always wondered about the religious issues concerning cloning. I cound never understand a couple of things.
One -- if only god can give you a soul, does an animal you clone have a soul? If it does, did he put it in there even though you (supposedly) did something immoral?
What's so terrible about playing god? all his creatures are wonderful, why not make more?
i had more... but i just blanked. it's too late at night for this...
(but if anyone else thinks the this-is-evil claim doesn't make sense, chip in.)
This is absured.
The first 9 stories on slashdot have 0 comments above a 3.
And the first story that has a non-zero value has over 700 comments, and it only has 5!
When I posted this there were 588 comments and 5 comments above level 3.
Less than one in a hundred! This is pathetic. I thought it would just take time and some comments would be modded up. 500 comments later, I realize I was wrong.
We have 293 comments and none are above 3?
That's pathetic.