Right and this is where I think a lot of the mockery of the way people use FB makes no sense. Yes, I agree that no-one has that many real friends, but I think that is getting too hung up on the word "friend". Partly this is FB's own fault, because they market themselves as a way to stay in touch with your friends, family and schoolmates but those links are all grouped under the one name "Friends", which in other contexts we use only for closer relationships. In contrast, on Twitter you "follow" people and have "followers" and "followees" but people don't mock Twitter just because in other contexts, we can say things like "I'm a follower of Buddhism" or something like that.
If it makes things better, people should simply imagine that FB calls them "Contacts". Some of those close, some of them are not. It's up to you whether you want to add only close contacts to your FB, or whether you're happy to have looser affiliations on there. In practice I'm a pretty private person, and I deliberately am willing to add people I've met loosely, just because it makes me a little bit more socially open than I otherwise would be.
But other people are not using it wrongly if they choose to be casual with their contact list, nor if they choose to have close friends only. Both are perfectly acceptable in my mind, and people shouldn't let themselves get overly hung up on the word "Friends".
I think you're quite right but I honestly believe that Wikileaks (or at least Assange) has some leftish anti-American bias. I think they probably would release documents from $COUNTRY if they could, but they seem to focus more on the USA.
I'm not American but this latest release seems to have very little of actual substance. Comments on this leader or that leader are not actually directly useful to the public; it is not of direct concern to me what diplomat X thinks of leader Y in country Z. It is more geopolitically interesting that Arab leaders are urging strikes on Iran, but again I'm unsure of the importance of that information to the public.
Every country would say unflattering things sometimes, just as in a workplace one must sometimes frankly discuss the strengths and weaknesses of colleagues. But sending transcripts of such frank discussions to a company-wide mailing list wouldn't be appropriate, and it feels as if that's what Wikileaks has done: send lots of unflattering info to everyone without it actually benefiting them or the people discussed.
No, the short difference is that friend relationships on Facebook are symmetric but on Twitter they're asymmetric. Just this minor difference changes the usage dynamic. People can be interested in my updates without my being forced to see their updates.
But what about Turkey and Indonesia? Indonesia is one of the largest democratic countries in the world by population.
Those countries still have Islamic agitators, but I think it's fundamentally quite similar to the US and Australia (where I live). In both countries there are strongly religious conservatives who fight against the usual suspects (abortion, gay rights etc.) and often make headlines or influence policy but are not literally in power.
There is a strong cultural element as well; many of the Islamic and/or Asian countries (including democratic Hong Kong, Japan et al.) have conservative social mores, rather than the more relaxed attitude that tends to hold sway in the English-speaking Western world. When social attitudes are conservative, people will use any excuse (including religion) to enforce their cultural preferences.
He is perplexed as to why anybody would choose to pay for Apple's platform and accept the restrictions imposed by it.
I don't think he's perplexed. Someone who spends that much time arguing that freedom is the greater good clearly understands that other people are valuing convenience, appearance, ease of use etc. over freedom.
Really? I thought the problem might be that they see the flaw but see it as lacking urgency as they have insufficient stake in an urgent patch.
When it becomes an exploited flaw, the company reputation is now at risk and customers/users experiencing actual (as opposed to possible) loss are much more likely to get angry and demanding. Now the company has a stake in the patch.
(But as pointed out elsewhere, it's hard to comprehensively test on an urgent patch.)
If you don't use Twitter then you're not one of the people the GP is referring to. The relationship is between Twitter and Twitter users, not corporation to third party person.
Being able to sell out a single game doesn't mean it's popular; there's novelty value in it. Rugby union matches sold out in Hong Kong but that doesn't mean rugby is big there.
I guess the question is about which countries basketball is big in. It's surprising to me that it's big in China but that is fascinating to read.
Good post. I think what China stories often reveal on Slashdot is the gap between China and the US in the cultural attitude towards government. In the US, there is a founding principle of skepticism towards government. It is seen somewhat as a necessary evil but one to be minimised so that the people's rights are not abridged. That is, I think in the US it is celebrated and inculcated in the people that personal freedom is the greatest of all rights and principles, to be interfered with only on overwhelming social need.
In Chinese culture there is a relative faith in government, which is as you say very Confucian. This is not merely some PRC-inspired more but a historical/cultural thing; it is just as strong in my family and other ethnic Chinese people who have never lived in China. They are not simply blind.
It's true that Chinese culture values harmony; but they also probably don't mostly feel that a bit of Internet censorship is that bad. This is not a "frog in boiling water" scenario to them. Instead the Chinese people are more like water; very slightly compressible, in the sense that you can squeeze them a little and they won't really push back, but what they really value is harmony, health/long life and prosperity.
You can take a few minor things away from them, but they have two thousand years of war and peasant rebellion in their history over taxation, corruption etc. - things that threaten their prosperity and family. Rebellion over prosperity is what the government fears most, and (in a way) so do the people. They don't want a rebellion or years like the late 19th/early 20th century with (in their eyes) humiliation by Japan and Western powers. The people are willing to tolerate some badness and annoyance in return for that prosperity. You know the famous Chinese proverb, "This, too, shall pass." ? That applies to the government when looking at foreign states - a long-term attitude - but I'd say that the people look at the Chinese government in much the same way. That government will pass, and the people will outlast them. There is no raging hurry for a bloody revolution to get past that government right now. Internet censorship to them mostly stops them accesssing an Internet that is in languages most of them don't understand anyway.
I'm sure there's a thriving Internet in Spanish but I know barely a word of it. If the Australian government censored it from me then I would oppose it as very bad on principle, but of course the real practical loss to me would be minimal.
I love LWN's ad/subscriber policy in that it's so reader-friendly but Jon Corbet repeatedly indicates that the site is not economically sustainable in the long term.
Effectively he must be subsidising it, so it does't serve as an example of how sites can succeed with such pleasant policy.
The science will always be intertwined with politics though, because it's about people's lifestyles and the environmental framework we live in.
It's not about someone doing science to just to increase the bit density on hard disk platters.
The problem is that serious science in this field is still questionable depending on which data sources you believe to be reliable, which extrapolations are considered reliable. There will never be any more consensus than there already is, without actual climate catastrophe happening. If it doesn't happen then the naysayers will feel vindicated, and the believers will simply adjust their models and timeframes.
The idea of a group of peasants gathering to make decisions above the emperor, (and even about who the emperor should be) is very alien to their culture.
Haven't there been plenty of peasant rebellions though? Some have led to the fall of dynasties such as the Han.
I agree with the basic thrust of your post, in that the Confucian society encourages knowing your place and acting accordingly. But I wouldn't say that rebellion is alien (as if unfamiliar), rather that it's familiar but considered more radical than it is in Western societies.
Hmm are you in the US? Since corn is a much smaller crop here in Australia, I'd be surprised if there was anywhere near the equal numbers of supermarket products here that would find it economical to use, even as a processed form.
In Australia I understand our main source of biomass is sugar cane waste, that being our main source of sugar. Corn farming & prices never make the news here, but cane farming and sugar prices do.
At least with respect to most Western countries, I'm not sure this is actually true. It's definitely not true of Australia, where I don't think HFCS is cheaper than sugar. Wikipedia seems to hint it is most true of the USA & Canada.
I have become Facebook friends with one or two people through playing an app that was a trading game - just a distracting waste of time actually. It's true that I'm not really "friends" with these people, but the point is that we interacted enough for one of us to add the other as a friend and be accepted.
This is one of the things some people just don't understand about Facebook, partly because they are too hung up on it using the term "friend". You can use it just to reconnect with your real-life friends, because they are friends. But you can also use Facebook groups, apps, fan pages or whatever to find people who aren't your real-life friends, but have common interests, like-minded or fun to talk to, *if you want*.
It's no different to hanging out on IRC in channels about Linux or animal photography or posting in a Buffy newsgroup and becoming friends with those people over time. IRC, newsgroups, Facebook and Twitter are just all ways of socialising. Certainly Twitter et al are nothing special, but neither are they something awful that signals the end of intelligence.
That may be possible (though not inevitable). But on the plus side, if you settle in Sydney/Melbourne there would be sizeable ethnic communities, especially from China and probably India. From Africa this would be less true, but you're also likely to hit less xenophobia if you are black; to most white Anglo Australians, black people are interesting and non-threatening culturally.
A lot of Slashdotters seem to ascribe no value to Twitter, or maybe they're just more vocal. Here's my experience, and a general comment on the social media scorn we read here.
Like perhaps many geeks/nerds I'm not a very social person, but I used a Twitter client that let me see messages from people in my local area (Sydney), much like an IRC channel except people write from places other than home/work. After a while of reading and occasional replying I found it quite enjoyable, followed a bunch and and managed to become somewhat friends with some.
There's no fundamental difference between IRC, a forum, Facebook or Twitter; they are all mediums of socialising. Slashdotters laugh at the last two because they are seen as "not special", which is true, but not the same as being "of no value". My local Thai restaurant is nothing special but that doesn't mean it has no value.
On Facebook, I understand the scorn that you don't want to be friends with classmates you never cared about then or now. But you don't have to use it for that, so it's like complaining that you don't like pad thai (I don't) so why go to a Thai restaurant? One of the reasons Facebook provides groups, fan pages and even apps is to provide other ways for you to interact with users. Yes some of those apps (like the quiz ones) are VERY annoying, but a small number of apps have been pretty fun and addictive (generally trading games) and I've made a few more online Facebook friends that way, people who I otherwise would never have met or interacted with.
It has been ephemeral, some of those people I don't talk to much anymore. But that is just like IRC and real life, where some of my friendships have lapsed over the years and new ones have taken their place. People move in and out of our lives, and Facebook and Twitter are just another ordinary way for this to happen. They are not worthy of the hype, but neither are they worthy of the derision.
I've never claimed that plants feel pain, but what irritates me is the holier-than-thou nature of some vegans about it. It's fair enough for them to believe as they do, I have some sympathy, but I wish more of them realised what you pointed out - that it's just about where you draw the line. Their position isn't somehow a quantum level better, they've just drawn the line further along.
As for hte "right to life" argument, why doesn't this apply to omnivorous creatures such as bears?
I just finished PoP as well and I like the lack-of-dying. I'm the kind of nervous gamer that always saves compulsively because I hate dying and redoing bits, so Elika's autosaving fits me perfectly. I agree the game does feel a bit easy, as if progress is semi-inevitable. But that tends to be true in all platform games, you just have to pull off the moves and you advance. I remember playing Sands of Time and dying repeatedly, that didn't make me enjoy it more. But at the same time, knowing the penalty is there does make success more satisfying. With a sufficiently good game though, I tend to desire progress due to the story, and the puzzles are just tasks before the story continues.
No-one's mentioned the directional assistance, which I think may have gone too far. Part of the platforming puzzle is figuring out how to get from here to there, or where to go next, and Elika's pathfinding magic takes that challenge away completely - sometimes I just want to know which way at a fork in the path, no need for the "climb this, jump there" tip.
I agree that collecting the light seeds was a bit tedious, especially as most levels to collect them all you get to the top, heal the land, then find your way down and then all the way back up again (via plates), just to get back to where you started. That's poor game design, even if the levels themselves are often lovely.
The thing is, most countries feel they're acting for the good of the world. The US, in trying to stop communism, felt that was the act of a force for good. Presumably the Soviets felt that spreading communism was likewise a force for good.
I don't think most countries, if given US superpower, would have gone on a war campaign, because frankly doing that invites the rest of the world to ally against you. Most countries just don't care, they simply like being strong enough to intimidate others into acquiescence.
I'm Australian, but I have no hate of the US. They think they're doing the right thing, they aspire to be noble and that's one of their most admirable traits. But their pride also leads them to an enshrined view of their superior morals, which means they do have a little trouble understanding that other countries can be great without being like the US.
As for China, well obviously they considered Taiwan (not sure about Tibet) part of their historical territory (the usual beliefs). I do think that _generally_, China historically and culturally doesn't care about the rest of the world. Europe can do what it wants as long as it doesn't interfere in China, China has little interest in assimilation of countries with people of a different skin colour.
Slashdot Mirror
Right and this is where I think a lot of the mockery of the way people use FB makes no sense. Yes, I agree that no-one has that many real friends, but I think that is getting too hung up on the word "friend". Partly this is FB's own fault, because they market themselves as a way to stay in touch with your friends, family and schoolmates but those links are all grouped under the one name "Friends", which in other contexts we use only for closer relationships. In contrast, on Twitter you "follow" people and have "followers" and "followees" but people don't mock Twitter just because in other contexts, we can say things like "I'm a follower of Buddhism" or something like that.
If it makes things better, people should simply imagine that FB calls them "Contacts". Some of those close, some of them are not. It's up to you whether you want to add only close contacts to your FB, or whether you're happy to have looser affiliations on there. In practice I'm a pretty private person, and I deliberately am willing to add people I've met loosely, just because it makes me a little bit more socially open than I otherwise would be.
But other people are not using it wrongly if they choose to be casual with their contact list, nor if they choose to have close friends only. Both are perfectly acceptable in my mind, and people shouldn't let themselves get overly hung up on the word "Friends".
Yep, it's to be expected. I was doubting that Wikileaks is just a purely disinterested poster of leaks, as some /.ers have claimed.
I feel a little surprised that China wouldn't have already had Wikileaks blocked.
I think you're quite right but I honestly believe that Wikileaks (or at least Assange) has some leftish anti-American bias. I think they probably would release documents from $COUNTRY if they could, but they seem to focus more on the USA.
I'm not American but this latest release seems to have very little of actual substance. Comments on this leader or that leader are not actually directly useful to the public; it is not of direct concern to me what diplomat X thinks of leader Y in country Z. It is more geopolitically interesting that Arab leaders are urging strikes on Iran, but again I'm unsure of the importance of that information to the public.
Every country would say unflattering things sometimes, just as in a workplace one must sometimes frankly discuss the strengths and weaknesses of colleagues. But sending transcripts of such frank discussions to a company-wide mailing list wouldn't be appropriate, and it feels as if that's what Wikileaks has done: send lots of unflattering info to everyone without it actually benefiting them or the people discussed.
No, the short difference is that friend relationships on Facebook are symmetric but on Twitter they're asymmetric. Just this minor difference changes the usage dynamic. People can be interested in my updates without my being forced to see their updates.
But what about Turkey and Indonesia? Indonesia is one of the largest democratic countries in the world by population.
Those countries still have Islamic agitators, but I think it's fundamentally quite similar to the US and Australia (where I live). In both countries there are strongly religious conservatives who fight against the usual suspects (abortion, gay rights etc.) and often make headlines or influence policy but are not literally in power.
There is a strong cultural element as well; many of the Islamic and/or Asian countries (including democratic Hong Kong, Japan et al.) have conservative social mores, rather than the more relaxed attitude that tends to hold sway in the English-speaking Western world. When social attitudes are conservative, people will use any excuse (including religion) to enforce their cultural preferences.
I don't think he's perplexed. Someone who spends that much time arguing that freedom is the greater good clearly understands that other people are valuing convenience, appearance, ease of use etc. over freedom.
Really? I thought the problem might be that they see the flaw but see it as lacking urgency as they have insufficient stake in an urgent patch.
When it becomes an exploited flaw, the company reputation is now at risk and customers/users experiencing actual (as opposed to possible) loss are much more likely to get angry and demanding. Now the company has a stake in the patch.
(But as pointed out elsewhere, it's hard to comprehensively test on an urgent patch.)
If you don't use Twitter then you're not one of the people the GP is referring to. The relationship is between Twitter and Twitter users, not corporation to third party person.
Being able to sell out a single game doesn't mean it's popular; there's novelty value in it. Rugby union matches sold out in Hong Kong but that doesn't mean rugby is big there.
I guess the question is about which countries basketball is big in. It's surprising to me that it's big in China but that is fascinating to read.
Good post. I think what China stories often reveal on Slashdot is the gap between China and the US in the cultural attitude towards government. In the US, there is a founding principle of skepticism towards government. It is seen somewhat as a necessary evil but one to be minimised so that the people's rights are not abridged. That is, I think in the US it is celebrated and inculcated in the people that personal freedom is the greatest of all rights and principles, to be interfered with only on overwhelming social need.
In Chinese culture there is a relative faith in government, which is as you say very Confucian. This is not merely some PRC-inspired more but a historical/cultural thing; it is just as strong in my family and other ethnic Chinese people who have never lived in China. They are not simply blind.
It's true that Chinese culture values harmony; but they also probably don't mostly feel that a bit of Internet censorship is that bad. This is not a "frog in boiling water" scenario to them. Instead the Chinese people are more like water; very slightly compressible, in the sense that you can squeeze them a little and they won't really push back, but what they really value is harmony, health/long life and prosperity.
You can take a few minor things away from them, but they have two thousand years of war and peasant rebellion in their history over taxation, corruption etc. - things that threaten their prosperity and family. Rebellion over prosperity is what the government fears most, and (in a way) so do the people. They don't want a rebellion or years like the late 19th/early 20th century with (in their eyes) humiliation by Japan and Western powers. The people are willing to tolerate some badness and annoyance in return for that prosperity. You know the famous Chinese proverb, "This, too, shall pass." ? That applies to the government when looking at foreign states - a long-term attitude - but I'd say that the people look at the Chinese government in much the same way. That government will pass, and the people will outlast them. There is no raging hurry for a bloody revolution to get past that government right now. Internet censorship to them mostly stops them accesssing an Internet that is in languages most of them don't understand anyway.
I'm sure there's a thriving Internet in Spanish but I know barely a word of it. If the Australian government censored it from me then I would oppose it as very bad on principle, but of course the real practical loss to me would be minimal.
I love LWN's ad/subscriber policy in that it's so reader-friendly but Jon Corbet repeatedly indicates that the site is not economically sustainable in the long term.
Effectively he must be subsidising it, so it does't serve as an example of how sites can succeed with such pleasant policy.
The science will always be intertwined with politics though, because it's about people's lifestyles and the environmental framework we live in.
It's not about someone doing science to just to increase the bit density on hard disk platters.
The problem is that serious science in this field is still questionable depending on which data sources you believe to be reliable, which extrapolations are considered reliable. There will never be any more consensus than there already is, without actual climate catastrophe happening. If it doesn't happen then the naysayers will feel vindicated, and the believers will simply adjust their models and timeframes.
The idea of a group of peasants gathering to make decisions above the emperor, (and even about who the emperor should be) is very alien to their culture.
Haven't there been plenty of peasant rebellions though? Some have led to the fall of dynasties such as the Han.
I agree with the basic thrust of your post, in that the Confucian society encourages knowing your place and acting accordingly. But I wouldn't say that rebellion is alien (as if unfamiliar), rather that it's familiar but considered more radical than it is in Western societies.
Hmm are you in the US? Since corn is a much smaller crop here in Australia, I'd be surprised if there was anywhere near the equal numbers of supermarket products here that would find it economical to use, even as a processed form.
In Australia I understand our main source of biomass is sugar cane waste, that being our main source of sugar. Corn farming & prices never make the news here, but cane farming and sugar prices do.
At least with respect to most Western countries, I'm not sure this is actually true. It's definitely not true of Australia, where I don't think HFCS is cheaper than sugar. Wikipedia seems to hint it is most true of the USA & Canada.
I have become Facebook friends with one or two people through playing an app that was a trading game - just a distracting waste of time actually. It's true that I'm not really "friends" with these people, but the point is that we interacted enough for one of us to add the other as a friend and be accepted.
This is one of the things some people just don't understand about Facebook, partly because they are too hung up on it using the term "friend". You can use it just to reconnect with your real-life friends, because they are friends. But you can also use Facebook groups, apps, fan pages or whatever to find people who aren't your real-life friends, but have common interests, like-minded or fun to talk to, *if you want*.
It's no different to hanging out on IRC in channels about Linux or animal photography or posting in a Buffy newsgroup and becoming friends with those people over time. IRC, newsgroups, Facebook and Twitter are just all ways of socialising. Certainly Twitter et al are nothing special, but neither are they something awful that signals the end of intelligence.
That may be possible (though not inevitable). But on the plus side, if you settle in Sydney/Melbourne there would be sizeable ethnic communities, especially from China and probably India. From Africa this would be less true, but you're also likely to hit less xenophobia if you are black; to most white Anglo Australians, black people are interesting and non-threatening culturally.
I'm Australian, I just went to New Orleans and that did not happen :) Then again, I am not white-skinned.
A lot of Slashdotters seem to ascribe no value to Twitter, or maybe they're just more vocal. Here's my experience, and a general comment on the social media scorn we read here.
Like perhaps many geeks/nerds I'm not a very social person, but I used a Twitter client that let me see messages from people in my local area (Sydney), much like an IRC channel except people write from places other than home/work. After a while of reading and occasional replying I found it quite enjoyable, followed a bunch and and managed to become somewhat friends with some.
There's no fundamental difference between IRC, a forum, Facebook or Twitter; they are all mediums of socialising. Slashdotters laugh at the last two because they are seen as "not special", which is true, but not the same as being "of no value". My local Thai restaurant is nothing special but that doesn't mean it has no value.
On Facebook, I understand the scorn that you don't want to be friends with classmates you never cared about then or now. But you don't have to use it for that, so it's like complaining that you don't like pad thai (I don't) so why go to a Thai restaurant? One of the reasons Facebook provides groups, fan pages and even apps is to provide other ways for you to interact with users. Yes some of those apps (like the quiz ones) are VERY annoying, but a small number of apps have been pretty fun and addictive (generally trading games) and I've made a few more online Facebook friends that way, people who I otherwise would never have met or interacted with.
It has been ephemeral, some of those people I don't talk to much anymore. But that is just like IRC and real life, where some of my friendships have lapsed over the years and new ones have taken their place. People move in and out of our lives, and Facebook and Twitter are just another ordinary way for this to happen. They are not worthy of the hype, but neither are they worthy of the derision.
I've never claimed that plants feel pain, but what irritates me is the holier-than-thou nature of some vegans about it. It's fair enough for them to believe as they do, I have some sympathy, but I wish more of them realised what you pointed out - that it's just about where you draw the line. Their position isn't somehow a quantum level better, they've just drawn the line further along.
As for hte "right to life" argument, why doesn't this apply to omnivorous creatures such as bears?
I didn't realise the little mermaid worked for the US government.
Works here, I see just the number 1 being echoed, and then the script exits with status 1.
I just finished PoP as well and I like the lack-of-dying. I'm the kind of nervous gamer that always saves compulsively because I hate dying and redoing bits, so Elika's autosaving fits me perfectly. I agree the game does feel a bit easy, as if progress is semi-inevitable. But that tends to be true in all platform games, you just have to pull off the moves and you advance. I remember playing Sands of Time and dying repeatedly, that didn't make me enjoy it more. But at the same time, knowing the penalty is there does make success more satisfying. With a sufficiently good game though, I tend to desire progress due to the story, and the puzzles are just tasks before the story continues.
No-one's mentioned the directional assistance, which I think may have gone too far. Part of the platforming puzzle is figuring out how to get from here to there, or where to go next, and Elika's pathfinding magic takes that challenge away completely - sometimes I just want to know which way at a fork in the path, no need for the "climb this, jump there" tip.
I agree that collecting the light seeds was a bit tedious, especially as most levels to collect them all you get to the top, heal the land, then find your way down and then all the way back up again (via plates), just to get back to where you started. That's poor game design, even if the levels themselves are often lovely.
The thing is, most countries feel they're acting for the good of the world. The US, in trying to stop communism, felt that was the act of a force for good. Presumably the Soviets felt that spreading communism was likewise a force for good.
I don't think most countries, if given US superpower, would have gone on a war campaign, because frankly doing that invites the rest of the world to ally against you. Most countries just don't care, they simply like being strong enough to intimidate others into acquiescence.
I'm Australian, but I have no hate of the US. They think they're doing the right thing, they aspire to be noble and that's one of their most admirable traits. But their pride also leads them to an enshrined view of their superior morals, which means they do have a little trouble understanding that other countries can be great without being like the US.
As for China, well obviously they considered Taiwan (not sure about Tibet) part of their historical territory (the usual beliefs). I do think that _generally_, China historically and culturally doesn't care about the rest of the world. Europe can do what it wants as long as it doesn't interfere in China, China has little interest in assimilation of countries with people of a different skin colour.