When will countries finally realize that hiding information only makes people want to find it more? Of course, if they were absolutely positive that their citizens were happy they would have nothing to fear.
Not really. It depends on how used the society is to crackpot views, rumors and plains lies. Long time users of the internet are used to this. A society that is just emerging from authoritarian rule, used to seeing only one side of things, are not used to this and are easily taken advantage of.
A non-internet example would be pyramid schemes. The average US/European/developed country person is wary of these things and rarely taken in, though the occassional sucker exists. On the other hand, it has brought down an entire country's financial system. (East European, forgot name.)
An internet example would be Malaysia, when some idiot office worker sent out an email saying there would be a riot. Thousands of forwards ensued and next thing you knew, half the office workers stayed home fearing the riot. How many millions of dollars of productivity was lost that day? If this can happen in M'sia (highly educated, 97%+ literate, etc,) can it not happen elsewhere?
We focus so much on the internet as a place of freedom that we sometimes forget that there really is a dark underbelly to it. We forget that hatred sites, anarchy sites and just plain misinformation is scattered through it. Until a population matures, there will be a lot of hiccups coming from this unchecked flow of information. Do you blame a government from trying to at least slow down this flow?
Note also that the government is trying to crack down only on cafes, not on home users, where presumably, there are parents who will exercise the requisite discipline/enlightenment.
Misusing public computer services is probably as punishable as any other hacker/cracker act.
Internet cafes in China are privately owned, just like cafes elsewhere in the world. Also, with the foot traffic going in and out of these cafes, how can you tell which user redirected the browser to a proxy?
There have been times when I used one of these cafes, only to find that my browser had been directed to a proxy already. Whether it was set by management or a previous user will be impossible to prove.
Do all "ISPs" in China hang off of one common backbone that goes through Chinese government routers?
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Mostly. There are four main networks in China (as of 1997).
Chinanet: Main network with something like 90% of all retail customers. Government controlled, institutes filters by IP address at the main gateways to the rest of the world. The bulk of their traffic is routed through pipes (>80Mps) through Shanghai and Beijing. These pipes connect to somewhere in San Francisco. Leads to wierd situations where looking at a site in Hong Kong routes traffic Beijing->San Francisco->Hong Kong and back.
Golden Bridge or something like that: Smaller, competing network, with mostly business clientele. Controlled by another govt ministry. Bulk of their traffic is also routed through single pipe to US. Filtering type unknown.
Academic Networks: Two networks, the original physics research network and the more extensive educational network that links most of the major universities. Filtering type unknown. These network have much more varied connections, including 10Mbps to Hong Kong, 128kbps satellite links to European universities, etc.
These four networks are separate entities, run by different groups. There is some peering between them.
For all intents and purposes, when we talk about internet for the masses in China, we talk about Chinanet. All other ISPs connect to Chinanet and because of the high level router IP blocking, it is possible to block off access to well known sites (CNN, NYT, etc). Last time I checked, proxies and obscure sites were easily accessible though.
Two ways in which the transmission time and length affect bandwidth (in very vague terms. I don't have the exact specifics off the top of my head.)
One, the transmission protocol may use collision detection, which requires that a transmitting station detect that another station is transmitting at the same time it is and both stations stop transmitting the now hopelessly garbled messages. The higher the transmission speed (higher bandwidth), the less time for a signal to propagate across to all the stations. The 250 ft limit on the Ethernet 100Mbps protocol is limited because the electrical signal cannot travel much further than that in 1/100,000,000 of a second.
Second, a signal gets distorted the further you send it over a wire. A signal which you might send with clearly defined edges (like a set of stairs) becomes rounded and flat (like sine waves) the further it gets transmitted. This makes it hard to tell whether that rise/drop in signal is meant for one bit or two or more. The faster your transmission rate, the less distortion/attenuation you can afford.
I'm sure there are lots of other reasons which I've forgotten. Suffice to say, wire length will always affect the speed you can transmit at. There are other tricks to speed this up, like putting in repeaters that interpret, clean up and retransmit a clean signal, but you obviously can't put that between a telephone office and your home.
I see references in various/. articles to speeds such as 128k for DSL connections, to me that seems discustingly slow. Here in British Columbia, Canada a speed of 2-4Mbps for a DSL line (ranging from ~$40-100/month) is the norm, and is easily available in all the major centres
I believe you're confusing 128KBytes per second with 128Kbits per second. Big difference. 128KBps is 128*8 = 1 Mbps, which isn't THAT far off from the Canadian numbers. Note that a T1 is 1.5Mbps
DSL speeds are physically limited by the length of the wiring from your home to the DSL provider's modem. The further away you are, the longer it takes for the signal to propagate and the greater the signal degradation. Using Ethernet cabling as an example (I don't have DSL numbers handy) if you used 10Mbps Ethernet, you could have 2,500 feet between the computers linked together. If you boosted the speed to 100Mbps, your computers could then only be 250 ft apart.
I live in the Boston, USA area and regularly get 1.5Mbps from both cable and DSL. It is possible to get higher DSL speeds (up to a theoretical 7Mbps) if you pay more and are conveniently located very close to a box.
However, most companies here advertise 1.5Mbps because that is the speed they can get to most consumers. It makes for much easier billing and logistics (you know, those non-technical limitations.) If you want higher speeds, be prepared to pay through the nose for it.
You don't have to buy Transmeta using cold hard cash. A pure-stock purchase is possible (though that starts moving more towards a merger,) or a stock/cash hybrid.
I don't have the exact figures off the top of my head anymore but sometime around 97 or so, China's main internet links to the rest of the world were two 45Mbps links, one from Beijing and one from Shanghai. Almost all outgoing traffic went through these two pipes and were filtered by the ISP in charge. There were a few other small links, like 1.5 Mbps or 128kbps, but these were usually owned by a university or government organization and traffic was rarely routed through them. The general populace used those two main pipes out of China and it sure got congested during peak hours.
Since then, I'm sure more bandwidth has been added but it is still all under the control of the (government controlled) ISPs. At these chokepoints, you can implement all the firewalling and filtering you care for.
*grumble* This post and all its replies were filled with IANAM disclaimers. Anyway, I AM a Malaysian (living in the US atm) and I thought I'd chip in my two cents.
In terms of infrastructure, schools and the like, Malaysia isn't all that far behind even places like the US. Just about everyone has access to education up to the secondary (high school) level. Granted, some areas may not have the best teachers, but there are places like that in the rural US too. The amenities expected in the US such as roads, telephones, internet, etc, all exist in M'sia and I don't feel their loss when I spend time there. Some things are even better than the US, like the bleeping wireless phone network. 10 miles out of Boston and I can't get reception on my phone?
What most foreigners don't know is that M'sia is doing its best to push forward into the information age, the same way the Japanese pushed themselves into heavy industry a while back. The Multimedia Super Corridor mentioned in the CNN article is an ongoing effort with the full weight of the government behind it to build a Silicon Valley in that region of the world. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being poured into that area and there are quite a few companies already operating out of that area. With that much emphasis on IT and that much money pouring in, it's not unexpected that there would be some change to try to bring the not so fortunate parts of the country up to speed.
Having said my piece, yeah, that article looks like buzzword compliance. Notice this line from the article:
Khairuddin said Unimas would apply to the government's IT council for the 1.5 million ringgit it needed for the Internet boat project.
They don't even have funding yet. I'll bet it's some ambitious dean out to get a little publicity for himself. We get those types in Malaysia too:)
So the only question in my mind is, who will be the next Japan?
Who says it has to be a country? It may be just a development process, one that we happen to know and love well (hint, hint). After all, haven't a few products produced by that process beaten the tar out of buggy products produced by a certain unnamed company?
Instead of giving foreign workers H1Bs, which bind them to a company, why not give them green cards? That way, they don't have to worry about working for slave wages and companies will have to pay prevailing wage. Competition for jobs will be based on capability then, not nationality.
There's actually a petition going around supporting this, signed by luminaries including non other than Linus Torvalds himself. You can find the link at:www.immigrationreform.com.
Then again, why would the US want to import the smartest and brightest of the world's talent?
it has the phrase "Must be eligible to work in the US" that is pretty much a code phrase for "We're looking for someone born outside the US who will work for whatever scraps fall off the table.
Are you kidding? That code phrase, if you talk to job hunters and recruiters, usually means green card holders or US citizens. That is the very opposite of H1Bs and other temporary workers. That phrase was rarely used until mid-99, when it started becoming more common. Today, up to half the jobs advertised have this. The growing demand for US permanent residents or citizens has boomed largely because INS has fallen so behind in issuing H1Bs that companies can no longer afford to hire and wait 6 months for H1B employees.
One problem I have with this article is the fact that it is using 1996 data. People from that period know that even back in 1996, the economy wasn't that great and finding jobs was hard. Also, the idea back then was that the quick path to riches was through the old MBA route. The only people in CS back then were the people who really, really loved the field.
Things are so very different today. The MBA is out, tech is in. Enrollments are up I'm sure, because my own college is operating beyond normal capacity (lots of part-time instructors). All the money seekers are in CS, so 2000 data is very different form 1996. Starting salaries for many college graduates I know are 60k+. This is in contrast to 1997 (when I last graduated) where the lucky ones were the ones who got ~40k salaries.
From my own experience, finding good people here (Boston, USA) is tough, especially if you're a small company. I've worked with companies that had 50% vacancies because they couldn't find people. They aren't even trying to hire college graduates now... they will grab anyone who can produce code. They have products they want to get to market but can't, because they don't have to people. Maybe Intel and Microsoft don't have as much of a problem but I can guarantee you that small companies here are hurting because of the shortage.
Sadest part is that they are looking for people with the 'older' skills. C, C++, HTML and basic HTTP understanding would often go far in some of these places. They are willing to train. There just aren't enough good people to go around.
It proves open-source nay-sayers correct. Those people who say that open-source projects only lead toward fragmentation and dissent: they are absolutely right.
Open source means that people have the freedom of choice. If they want to work together on the same thing, fine and well. If they don't for any reason (personalities, technical, ideology, etc,) they are free to try on their own and the world judges them on their results. I believe that's the entire idea of capitalism too, right?
Now what would happen if everyone were forced to work on the same project? Sooner or later, egos and personalities would clash. I'd bet good money that before too long, the infighting among them would destroy the project. The current system gives people elbow room to move if problems show up.
Besides, next time the nay-sayers come around, point out the Linux/BSD fragmentation. Did it produce two crappy OSes? No, it produced two very good OSes which have their own niches. Did the MySQL/Postgres competition produce two crappy databases? Nope, once again, we've got two great products which are excellent in their respective domains.
Actually, I found Roblimo's response to contain a rather interesting problem for MS:
... which we allow them to post on Slashdot as freely as Microsoft allows user-generated content to be sent through Hotmail and through chat facilities and discussion groups hosted on MSN.com servers...
On one hand, MS happens to dislike the spread of this information around. On the other hand, it would be impossible for MSN if people started posting possibly copyrighted stuff on the MSN servers and poor, harried MSN admins had to run around deleting every single illegal post.
<Ponder>I mean, can you imagine what would if people started posting all the "illegal" stuff all over MSN servers (DeCSS, Kerberos clippings, etc)? </Ponder>
The DMCA was meant to benefit software houses at the expense of personal and ISP freedom. Wonder what happens when the entity is both?
I'm not ashamed I fucked my (29 year old) girlfriend last night, should I do it in the streets now?
Actually, doing it in the streets is probably illegal in most states:)
Seriously though, no one ever said that the Internet is a private, anonymous place. If you're going to use it, use it the same way you would behave in public. If you have to scratch your crotch, do it discreetly.:) If you want to get stuff that you would rather not have other people know, wear shades or something (i.e. get an anonymizer) and go to places where you're sure you won't be tracked. Otherwise, it's your own fault, just like if you were buying a naughty magazine and your local Parish priest/Rabbi walked by and caught you paying for it.
The presumption of innocence still holds, because for anything to happen, the authorities would still have to build a solid case, haul that person into court and prove to the judge/jury (who are presuming the person is innocent) that said person is a pedophile.
It seems they think they're fighting some sort of actual crusade this way.
In a sense they are. Pedophiles are so hated and hunted that just logging the IPs should be enough to scare the vast majority of them off the main net. Of course someone will try to use those IP nums to hunt these people down (ye old FBI) and chances are, they will actually find these people. I happen to like the benefits of this approach.
It does disturb me a little that it is possible to keep tabs on people this way, but in the end, accountability for one's actions is a good thing. It's been said many times by others: if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of. Accountability is good, unless you're an anarchist:)
We have the possibility of losing a little privacy this way, but face it: no big corporation is going to be able to make much use of this information. Only law-enforcement types can. The main reason is because it is too much bother to do so... most of us have dynamic IPs (even my DSL link) and the only way to get the information on the person at that IP at that moment is with the cooperation of the ISP. Can you imagine your local ISP bending over backwards to help out double-click on this? I don't think so.
Hmmm... then again, AOL could do something, if they aren't already...
The great thing about XUnit (for example) is that there is an implementation for each language (even VB)
And everytime you want to upgrade the code or do a bugfix, you have to write, debug and synchronize x sets of code. It's a nice idea but personally, I'd rather have that army of coders do something else...
Besides, learning a language isn't that hard, especially one like python. Most techies know more than one language anyway and learning more has never hurt one's resume:)
The stock market may have recovered everything within a year. The economy didn't.
Stock market crashes tend to trigger a sudden conservatism, tendency to save and unwillingness to spend further, which basically slows the economy. After black monday, the US technically remained in a recession till around 1992.
Likewise, after the crash of 29, the stock market recovered within a few years. The rest of the economy didn't until pretty much after World War II.
I do not see in the future hardware's internal structure becoming dynamic
Another interesting quotation picked up from a book I read yesterday:
think of hardware as a highly rigid and optimized form of software
Software can emulate hardware. Even from the early days of computing, using software to emulate hardware was a commonly accepted practise. That's how software for the early computers were built before the hardware was ready - emulate the hardware on a pre-existing computer. It was much slower, but hey, it worked.
Software on the other hand, can be pretty dynamic. Code-morphing found in the Transmeta chips is one example. Java's Hotspot technology is similar. Genetic algorithms are also starting to get really interesting.
I don't think it will really take centuries for us to mimic the human brain. It has always been the case that it is hard to come up with something original, easy to copy something and make it better. I suspect that the new "homo superior" will not be a radical creation from scratch but more something based on a pre-existing model, tweaked to make it "better".
Re:Is Censorship/control ALWAYS bad?
on
China and the MPA
·
· Score: 2
Funny. Don't recall making any of those assertions. However, your post does point out hat I didn't clarify a few things.
I would ask the poster: what measures do you recommend for stopping these examples of hysteria? It sounds to me like the best recipe is creating a society where people are encouraged to think for themselves.
I would recommend education. Ultimately, I would want a society where everyone HAS to learn, has to grow, has to think. I'm a strong believer in sinking resources into education and encouraging critical thinking.
However, such development takes time, decades even. A population that has not yet reached that level of maturity is vulnerable throughout that entire time. That is why I feel that censorship is sometimes a necessary evil, a stopgap measure until the population has reached the maturity required. I do not advocate permanent censorship:)
As an analogy, think of raising a child. Yes, you sink huge amounts of time and effort educating the child. However, neither do you allow the little tyke unrestricted freedom and access, because he might go walk on a freeway, stick his finger in an electric outlet or something of the sort. Are you not taking away his freedom? Are you not taking away his rights? Yes. But only for as long as necessary.
Freedom is fantastic. Human rights are awesome. However, blindly asserting that it is appropriate at any stage, any time, any person... is irresponsible. Wisdom is knowing when to apply the right concepts at the right time. For a final thought - look at the development of countries in Asia. Compare the development of "true democracies" in the American sense vs. the "democratic dictatorships". You will find that on average, it was the "less free" nations that developed the best. There are notable exceptions of course.
In summary: To each when they are truly ready for it, and only then. Full democracy and freedom are appropriate for societies that have matured enough to support it.
Disclaimer: Deals more with the govt censorship issue than the MPAA. I happen to hold the personal opinion that the MPAA is just trying to find a way to gouge the average consumer more:)
Summary: Not all censorship is bad. Take a chill pill
That felt like a highly inflammatory article, which painted everything with a huge, broad brush. Ok, so we know that Jon Katz feels that censorship, big government and big organizations of any kind are bad. But is that always true? The average American judges based on what they see around them, which is not necessarily true around the world. Education levels, gullibility, etc, vary. Are there places where SOME controls might not be bad? A couple of examples:
In Malaysia, a couple of years ago, someone started circulating on the Internet that some Indonesians were going to run riot in the streets, were stocking up on knives, weapons, etc. Everyone was advised to go home and hide. This email circulated through mass forwardings in less than a day. The net result - the capital city of Kuala Lumpur suffered immense productivity losses as people panicked, the more gullible went home and hours were spent forwarding mail, calling people, etc. The rumors were later found to be totally unfounded and just a lunch break joke
On 9-9-99 in Indonesia, some doomsday rumors started getting spread, just because the date was a fun date. It resulted in the streets of Jakarta being almost totally deserted as people stayed home in fear. Same productivity losses as above.
These are anecdotes which I know through personal experience or through friends who were actually there. I'm very sure that most non-first world country people have heard these and could contribute some even funnier/sadder stories. Or even people in developed countries.
Truth is, in any country where education isn't sufficiently high and skepticism isn't strongly in place, the free flow of information can hurt much more than it can help. Censorship to most governments is less about keeping total control over their citizens than it is about keeping out false information, information that can lead to totally irrational and damaging actions. For instance, a funny facet of politics in M'sia are the "poison pen" campaigns, when unsigned letters are circulated about a particular political candidate. These letters contain some absolutely unbelievable accusations. It doesn't matter that the average, well-educated voter would dismiss this out of hand. It just needs to hit the more gullible ones who will believe it and the candidate's reputation is ruined... for no reason.
The US has plenty of such safeguards too. It's just not called censorship here, even though it is the control of information. Think "Truth in Advertising", or FDA approval for health claims.
Personally, I think that as a population matures, people get more skeptical and you can trust the general population to decide for themselves what is right and what isn't. However, in a developing world, a little more control and protection may be a better idea. Something along the lines of Plato's Philosopher King ideals... only when you are truly "educated" can you make better decisions. Also akin to the parent/child relationship, where the parent must guide the child until he's ready to make his own decisions.
Not really. Last time I was there (last year) I could pretty much get any content I wanted. There are tons of proxies and resourceful people always find new ways to get whatever information they want. For that matter, I once walked into one of the cyber cafes there and by default, they were already configured to go through proxies.
I used the same proxy for the 2 years I was there without it ever being blocked. I don't think they're quite that vigilant.
The gov't blocks using IP numbers I believe, since I could always resolve URLs but not connect to them. That makes it really difficult to block things if you constantly move your site around. It was only really useful for blocking the big, well-known sites like cnn.com or WSJ. Course, things might have changed since the Falungong stuff.
AOL's not allowed into China, nor is any other ISP. China tightly controls Internet access in there and there are only two main competing ISPs, both run by government ministries. All the other sub-ISPs have to link to the two main boys.
It'll be a few years before a giant ISP rises in China to challenge AOL. That's assuming AOL doesn't eventually find a way to get into the country before then.
Of course, after the WTO, there's the chance that AOL could get into China as an ICP instead, providing content instead of access. That'd be a a smart way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
In China you have to be licensed to just use the Internet.
Huh? Last time I used the internet in China, I walked into an ISP office, filled up a form, paid cash and was online in 24 hours.
Unless you can point to where you got that statement, you are the one making up the facts.
When will countries finally realize that hiding information only makes people want to find it more? Of course, if they were absolutely positive that their citizens were happy they would have nothing to fear.
Not really. It depends on how used the society is to crackpot views, rumors and plains lies. Long time users of the internet are used to this. A society that is just emerging from authoritarian rule, used to seeing only one side of things, are not used to this and are easily taken advantage of.
A non-internet example would be pyramid schemes. The average US/European/developed country person is wary of these things and rarely taken in, though the occassional sucker exists. On the other hand, it has brought down an entire country's financial system. (East European, forgot name.)
An internet example would be Malaysia, when some idiot office worker sent out an email saying there would be a riot. Thousands of forwards ensued and next thing you knew, half the office workers stayed home fearing the riot. How many millions of dollars of productivity was lost that day? If this can happen in M'sia (highly educated, 97%+ literate, etc,) can it not happen elsewhere?
We focus so much on the internet as a place of freedom that we sometimes forget that there really is a dark underbelly to it. We forget that hatred sites, anarchy sites and just plain misinformation is scattered through it. Until a population matures, there will be a lot of hiccups coming from this unchecked flow of information. Do you blame a government from trying to at least slow down this flow?
Note also that the government is trying to crack down only on cafes, not on home users, where presumably, there are parents who will exercise the requisite discipline/enlightenment.
Misusing public computer services is probably as punishable as any other hacker/cracker act.
Internet cafes in China are privately owned, just like cafes elsewhere in the world. Also, with the foot traffic going in and out of these cafes, how can you tell which user redirected the browser to a proxy?
There have been times when I used one of these cafes, only to find that my browser had been directed to a proxy already. Whether it was set by management or a previous user will be impossible to prove.
Do all "ISPs" in China hang off of one common backbone that goes through Chinese government routers?
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Mostly. There are four main networks in China (as of 1997).
Chinanet: Main network with something like 90% of all retail customers. Government controlled, institutes filters by IP address at the main gateways to the rest of the world. The bulk of their traffic is routed through pipes (>80Mps) through Shanghai and Beijing. These pipes connect to somewhere in San Francisco. Leads to wierd situations where looking at a site in Hong Kong routes traffic Beijing->San Francisco->Hong Kong and back.
Golden Bridge or something like that: Smaller, competing network, with mostly business clientele. Controlled by another govt ministry. Bulk of their traffic is also routed through single pipe to US. Filtering type unknown.
Academic Networks: Two networks, the original physics research network and the more extensive educational network that links most of the major universities. Filtering type unknown. These network have much more varied connections, including 10Mbps to Hong Kong, 128kbps satellite links to European universities, etc.
These four networks are separate entities, run by different groups. There is some peering between them.
For all intents and purposes, when we talk about internet for the masses in China, we talk about Chinanet. All other ISPs connect to Chinanet and because of the high level router IP blocking, it is possible to block off access to well known sites (CNN, NYT, etc). Last time I checked, proxies and obscure sites were easily accessible though.
Two ways in which the transmission time and length affect bandwidth (in very vague terms. I don't have the exact specifics off the top of my head.)
One, the transmission protocol may use collision detection, which requires that a transmitting station detect that another station is transmitting at the same time it is and both stations stop transmitting the now hopelessly garbled messages. The higher the transmission speed (higher bandwidth), the less time for a signal to propagate across to all the stations. The 250 ft limit on the Ethernet 100Mbps protocol is limited because the electrical signal cannot travel much further than that in 1/100,000,000 of a second.
Second, a signal gets distorted the further you send it over a wire. A signal which you might send with clearly defined edges (like a set of stairs) becomes rounded and flat (like sine waves) the further it gets transmitted. This makes it hard to tell whether that rise/drop in signal is meant for one bit or two or more. The faster your transmission rate, the less distortion/attenuation you can afford.
I'm sure there are lots of other reasons which I've forgotten. Suffice to say, wire length will always affect the speed you can transmit at. There are other tricks to speed this up, like putting in repeaters that interpret, clean up and retransmit a clean signal, but you obviously can't put that between a telephone office and your home.
I see references in various /. articles to speeds such as 128k for DSL connections, to me that seems discustingly slow. Here in British Columbia, Canada a speed of 2-4Mbps for a DSL line (ranging from ~$40-100/month) is the norm, and is easily available in all the major centres
I believe you're confusing 128KBytes per second with 128Kbits per second. Big difference. 128KBps is 128*8 = 1 Mbps, which isn't THAT far off from the Canadian numbers. Note that a T1 is 1.5Mbps
DSL speeds are physically limited by the length of the wiring from your home to the DSL provider's modem. The further away you are, the longer it takes for the signal to propagate and the greater the signal degradation. Using Ethernet cabling as an example (I don't have DSL numbers handy) if you used 10Mbps Ethernet, you could have 2,500 feet between the computers linked together. If you boosted the speed to 100Mbps, your computers could then only be 250 ft apart.
I live in the Boston, USA area and regularly get 1.5Mbps from both cable and DSL. It is possible to get higher DSL speeds (up to a theoretical 7Mbps) if you pay more and are conveniently located very close to a box.
However, most companies here advertise 1.5Mbps because that is the speed they can get to most consumers. It makes for much easier billing and logistics (you know, those non-technical limitations.) If you want higher speeds, be prepared to pay through the nose for it.
You don't have to buy Transmeta using cold hard cash. A pure-stock purchase is possible (though that starts moving more towards a merger,) or a stock/cash hybrid.
I don't have the exact figures off the top of my head anymore but sometime around 97 or so, China's main internet links to the rest of the world were two 45Mbps links, one from Beijing and one from Shanghai. Almost all outgoing traffic went through these two pipes and were filtered by the ISP in charge. There were a few other small links, like 1.5 Mbps or 128kbps, but these were usually owned by a university or government organization and traffic was rarely routed through them. The general populace used those two main pipes out of China and it sure got congested during peak hours.
Since then, I'm sure more bandwidth has been added but it is still all under the control of the (government controlled) ISPs. At these chokepoints, you can implement all the firewalling and filtering you care for.
*grumble* This post and all its replies were filled with IANAM disclaimers. Anyway, I AM a Malaysian (living in the US atm) and I thought I'd chip in my two cents.
:)
In terms of infrastructure, schools and the like, Malaysia isn't all that far behind even places like the US. Just about everyone has access to education up to the secondary (high school) level. Granted, some areas may not have the best teachers, but there are places like that in the rural US too. The amenities expected in the US such as roads, telephones, internet, etc, all exist in M'sia and I don't feel their loss when I spend time there. Some things are even better than the US, like the bleeping wireless phone network. 10 miles out of Boston and I can't get reception on my phone?
What most foreigners don't know is that M'sia is doing its best to push forward into the information age, the same way the Japanese pushed themselves into heavy industry a while back. The Multimedia Super Corridor mentioned in the CNN article is an ongoing effort with the full weight of the government behind it to build a Silicon Valley in that region of the world. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being poured into that area and there are quite a few companies already operating out of that area. With that much emphasis on IT and that much money pouring in, it's not unexpected that there would be some change to try to bring the not so fortunate parts of the country up to speed.
Having said my piece, yeah, that article looks like buzzword compliance. Notice this line from the article:
Khairuddin said Unimas would apply to the government's IT council for the 1.5 million ringgit it needed for the Internet boat project.
They don't even have funding yet. I'll bet it's some ambitious dean out to get a little publicity for himself. We get those types in Malaysia too
So the only question in my mind is, who will be the next Japan?
Who says it has to be a country? It may be just a development process, one that we happen to know and love well (hint, hint). After all, haven't a few products produced by that process beaten the tar out of buggy products produced by a certain unnamed company?
Then again, it might be something else too :)
Instead of giving foreign workers H1Bs, which bind them to a company, why not give them green cards? That way, they don't have to worry about working for slave wages and companies will have to pay prevailing wage. Competition for jobs will be based on capability then, not nationality.
There's actually a petition going around supporting this, signed by luminaries including non other than Linus Torvalds himself. You can find the link at:www.immigrationreform.com.
Then again, why would the US want to import the smartest and brightest of the world's talent?
it has the phrase "Must be eligible to work in the US" that is pretty much a code phrase for "We're looking for someone born outside the US who will work for whatever scraps fall off the table.
Are you kidding? That code phrase, if you talk to job hunters and recruiters, usually means green card holders or US citizens. That is the very opposite of H1Bs and other temporary workers. That phrase was rarely used until mid-99, when it started becoming more common. Today, up to half the jobs advertised have this. The growing demand for US permanent residents or citizens has boomed largely because INS has fallen so behind in issuing H1Bs that companies can no longer afford to hire and wait 6 months for H1B employees.
One problem I have with this article is the fact that it is using 1996 data. People from that period know that even back in 1996, the economy wasn't that great and finding jobs was hard. Also, the idea back then was that the quick path to riches was through the old MBA route. The only people in CS back then were the people who really, really loved the field.
... they will grab anyone who can produce code. They have products they want to get to market but can't, because they don't have to people. Maybe Intel and Microsoft don't have as much of a problem but I can guarantee you that small companies here are hurting because of the shortage.
Things are so very different today. The MBA is out, tech is in. Enrollments are up I'm sure, because my own college is operating beyond normal capacity (lots of part-time instructors). All the money seekers are in CS, so 2000 data is very different form 1996. Starting salaries for many college graduates I know are 60k+. This is in contrast to 1997 (when I last graduated) where the lucky ones were the ones who got ~40k salaries.
From my own experience, finding good people here (Boston, USA) is tough, especially if you're a small company. I've worked with companies that had 50% vacancies because they couldn't find people. They aren't even trying to hire college graduates now
Sadest part is that they are looking for people with the 'older' skills. C, C++, HTML and basic HTTP understanding would often go far in some of these places. They are willing to train. There just aren't enough good people to go around.
It proves open-source nay-sayers correct. Those people who say that open-source projects only lead toward fragmentation and dissent: they are absolutely right.
Open source means that people have the freedom of choice. If they want to work together on the same thing, fine and well. If they don't for any reason (personalities, technical, ideology, etc,) they are free to try on their own and the world judges them on their results. I believe that's the entire idea of capitalism too, right?
Now what would happen if everyone were forced to work on the same project? Sooner or later, egos and personalities would clash. I'd bet good money that before too long, the infighting among them would destroy the project. The current system gives people elbow room to move if problems show up.
Besides, next time the nay-sayers come around, point out the Linux/BSD fragmentation. Did it produce two crappy OSes? No, it produced two very good OSes which have their own niches. Did the MySQL/Postgres competition produce two crappy databases? Nope, once again, we've got two great products which are excellent in their respective domains.
Roblimo's response was somewhat puzzling.
Actually, I found Roblimo's response to contain a rather interesting problem for MS:
On one hand, MS happens to dislike the spread of this information around. On the other hand, it would be impossible for MSN if people started posting possibly copyrighted stuff on the MSN servers and poor, harried MSN admins had to run around deleting every single illegal post.
<Ponder>I mean, can you imagine what would if people started posting all the "illegal" stuff all over MSN servers (DeCSS, Kerberos clippings, etc)? </Ponder>
The DMCA was meant to benefit software houses at the expense of personal and ISP freedom. Wonder what happens when the entity is both?
I'm not ashamed I fucked my (29 year old) girlfriend last night, should I do it in the streets now?
Actually, doing it in the streets is probably illegal in most states :)
Seriously though, no one ever said that the Internet is a private, anonymous place. If you're going to use it, use it the same way you would behave in public. If you have to scratch your crotch, do it discreetly. :) If you want to get stuff that you would rather not have other people know, wear shades or something (i.e. get an anonymizer) and go to places where you're sure you won't be tracked. Otherwise, it's your own fault, just like if you were buying a naughty magazine and your local Parish priest/Rabbi walked by and caught you paying for it.
The presumption of innocence still holds, because for anything to happen, the authorities would still have to build a solid case, haul that person into court and prove to the judge/jury (who are presuming the person is innocent) that said person is a pedophile.
It seems they think they're fighting some sort of actual crusade this way.
In a sense they are. Pedophiles are so hated and hunted that just logging the IPs should be enough to scare the vast majority of them off the main net. Of course someone will try to use those IP nums to hunt these people down (ye old FBI) and chances are, they will actually find these people. I happen to like the benefits of this approach.
It does disturb me a little that it is possible to keep tabs on people this way, but in the end, accountability for one's actions is a good thing. It's been said many times by others: if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of. Accountability is good, unless you're an anarchist :)
We have the possibility of losing a little privacy this way, but face it: no big corporation is going to be able to make much use of this information. Only law-enforcement types can. The main reason is because it is too much bother to do so ... most of us have dynamic IPs (even my DSL link) and the only way to get the information on the person at that IP at that moment is with the cooperation of the ISP. Can you imagine your local ISP bending over backwards to help out double-click on this? I don't think so.
Hmmm ... then again, AOL could do something, if they aren't already ...
The great thing about XUnit (for example) is that there is an implementation for each language (even VB)
And everytime you want to upgrade the code or do a bugfix, you have to write, debug and synchronize x sets of code. It's a nice idea but personally, I'd rather have that army of coders do something else ...
Besides, learning a language isn't that hard, especially one like python. Most techies know more than one language anyway and learning more has never hurt one's resume :)
The stock market may have recovered everything within a year. The economy didn't.
Stock market crashes tend to trigger a sudden conservatism, tendency to save and unwillingness to spend further, which basically slows the economy. After black monday, the US technically remained in a recession till around 1992.
Likewise, after the crash of 29, the stock market recovered within a few years. The rest of the economy didn't until pretty much after World War II.
I do not see in the future hardware's internal structure becoming dynamic
Another interesting quotation picked up from a book I read yesterday:
think of hardware as a highly rigid and optimized form of software
Software can emulate hardware. Even from the early days of computing, using software to emulate hardware was a commonly accepted practise. That's how software for the early computers were built before the hardware was ready - emulate the hardware on a pre-existing computer. It was much slower, but hey, it worked.
Software on the other hand, can be pretty dynamic. Code-morphing found in the Transmeta chips is one example. Java's Hotspot technology is similar. Genetic algorithms are also starting to get really interesting.
I don't think it will really take centuries for us to mimic the human brain. It has always been the case that it is hard to come up with something original, easy to copy something and make it better. I suspect that the new "homo superior" will not be a radical creation from scratch but more something based on a pre-existing model, tweaked to make it "better".
Funny. Don't recall making any of those assertions. However, your post does point out hat I didn't clarify a few things.
I would ask the poster: what measures do you recommend for stopping these examples of hysteria? It sounds to me like the best recipe is creating a society where people are encouraged to think for themselves.
I would recommend education. Ultimately, I would want a society where everyone HAS to learn, has to grow, has to think. I'm a strong believer in sinking resources into education and encouraging critical thinking.
However, such development takes time, decades even. A population that has not yet reached that level of maturity is vulnerable throughout that entire time. That is why I feel that censorship is sometimes a necessary evil, a stopgap measure until the population has reached the maturity required. I do not advocate permanent censorship :)
As an analogy, think of raising a child. Yes, you sink huge amounts of time and effort educating the child. However, neither do you allow the little tyke unrestricted freedom and access, because he might go walk on a freeway, stick his finger in an electric outlet or something of the sort. Are you not taking away his freedom? Are you not taking away his rights? Yes. But only for as long as necessary.
Freedom is fantastic. Human rights are awesome. However, blindly asserting that it is appropriate at any stage, any time, any person ... is irresponsible. Wisdom is knowing when to apply the right concepts at the right time. For a final thought - look at the development of countries in Asia. Compare the development of "true democracies" in the American sense vs. the "democratic dictatorships". You will find that on average, it was the "less free" nations that developed the best. There are notable exceptions of course.
In summary: To each when they are truly ready for it, and only then. Full democracy and freedom are appropriate for societies that have matured enough to support it.Disclaimer: Deals more with the govt censorship issue than the MPAA. I happen to hold the personal opinion that the MPAA is just trying to find a way to gouge the average consumer more :)
Summary: Not all censorship is bad. Take a chill pill
That felt like a highly inflammatory article, which painted everything with a huge, broad brush. Ok, so we know that Jon Katz feels that censorship, big government and big organizations of any kind are bad. But is that always true? The average American judges based on what they see around them, which is not necessarily true around the world. Education levels, gullibility, etc, vary. Are there places where SOME controls might not be bad? A couple of examples:
These are anecdotes which I know through personal experience or through friends who were actually there. I'm very sure that most non-first world country people have heard these and could contribute some even funnier/sadder stories. Or even people in developed countries.
Truth is, in any country where education isn't sufficiently high and skepticism isn't strongly in place, the free flow of information can hurt much more than it can help. Censorship to most governments is less about keeping total control over their citizens than it is about keeping out false information, information that can lead to totally irrational and damaging actions. For instance, a funny facet of politics in M'sia are the "poison pen" campaigns, when unsigned letters are circulated about a particular political candidate. These letters contain some absolutely unbelievable accusations. It doesn't matter that the average, well-educated voter would dismiss this out of hand. It just needs to hit the more gullible ones who will believe it and the candidate's reputation is ruined ... for no reason.
The US has plenty of such safeguards too. It's just not called censorship here, even though it is the control of information. Think "Truth in Advertising", or FDA approval for health claims.
Personally, I think that as a population matures, people get more skeptical and you can trust the general population to decide for themselves what is right and what isn't. However, in a developing world, a little more control and protection may be a better idea. Something along the lines of Plato's Philosopher King ideals ... only when you are truly "educated" can you make better decisions. Also akin to the parent/child relationship, where the parent must guide the child until he's ready to make his own decisions.
Think Microsoft.
Then tell me that "bugginess" doesn't catch up to you. It just takes a while.
Not really. Last time I was there (last year) I could pretty much get any content I wanted. There are tons of proxies and resourceful people always find new ways to get whatever information they want. For that matter, I once walked into one of the cyber cafes there and by default, they were already configured to go through proxies.
I used the same proxy for the 2 years I was there without it ever being blocked. I don't think they're quite that vigilant.
The gov't blocks using IP numbers I believe, since I could always resolve URLs but not connect to them. That makes it really difficult to block things if you constantly move your site around. It was only really useful for blocking the big, well-known sites like cnn.com or WSJ. Course, things might have changed since the Falungong stuff.
It's going to hurt AOL badly
AOL's not allowed into China, nor is any other ISP. China tightly controls Internet access in there and there are only two main competing ISPs, both run by government ministries. All the other sub-ISPs have to link to the two main boys.
It'll be a few years before a giant ISP rises in China to challenge AOL. That's assuming AOL doesn't eventually find a way to get into the country before then.
Of course, after the WTO, there's the chance that AOL could get into China as an ICP instead, providing content instead of access. That'd be a a smart way to go.