Maybe you're right. You remind me of the crazy Chinese "Patriots"... I'm usually the person who tries to debunk false myths and false attacks on the Chinese government (there's lots of misunderstanding, both ways), but the recent surge of Chinese "nationalism" really worries me... It sounds exactly like what you're describing...
Scary:(
Here's some rather politically incorrect crazy thoughts: I understand that the majority view is that freedom and democracy are to some extent established to prevent rogue states. But what if the population, as you've said, got arrogant and overconfident, and felt necessary to brutally push other countries around?
If say China finally becomes a superpower (instead of the next one), and China becomes fully democratic. The Chinese "Patriots" might actually vote in a government bent to invade Taiwan (and who knows what else). I bet if you find a politician manipulative enough it's not hard to do it. In this case would democracy actually offer no substantial advantage over an authoritarian government? (I'm not saying China shouldn't democratize, this is just some random thought that happened to come to my mind)
(btw, sorry for the heavy China politics, mod me offtopic if you will:-/)
In short,.hk has about 160K registered domains. More than half of them are under the schemes which require business registrations (see GP).
I'm having trouble thinking that around 50% of the domains which are open to the public (anybody in the world) are dangerous... I haven't come across a single one which seemed shady... (and I own a.hk site too)
Well, I'm not in the security trade, so I'm nowhere authoritative. But I've never heard of any hackers or any culture of cybercrime in my circles, and the culture here is pretty apathetic to people with actual technical skills...
Sometimes when I hear these stories, I wonder whether it's the gullibility of Americans (nothing personal against you...), or gullibility of *humans* in general.
I'd also like to say that the general.hk registrations have opened up only around 4 years ago, and last I checked the total number of registrations were at most around hundreds of thousands (too lazy to find out where to check now). So if anything the 19% of problematic sites might simply be due to relatively low number of registered domains. Even then I don't really recall 1 of 5 sites being shady ones...
Anyway this story really surprises me...:-/
(Do I actually know you? Your name sounds extremely familiar... Must have heard your name from HKOI newsgroup gossip... I bet you're from DBS?;-p)
Well, not that I like her (I am not even an American, so basically the whole issue doesn't directly concern me) but it seems that most likely it's not mere greed, but a refusal to admit defeat.
For an ambitious person like Hillary, it should be pretty tough (mentally, egoistically) for her to admit defeat, particularly as she thought the nomination was in her firm grasp since last year.
Of course, my impression was that she does look like the kind of person who's in the race just for the power instead of a more noble goal... but I'm not into American politics so what do I know...:-/
I myself am not responsible for the 50% of the population that do not vote. Well strictly speaking you are like 0.00001% (don't nit pick me on the number of zeros) responsible.
I don't know whether the press in USA is really worse than the rest of the world, but it's my impression that the rest of the world felt that the Iraqi war was stupid right at the beginning... (at least the UN felt so...)
Wasn't it blindingly obvious even back then? Or what magic did the press do?
Hmm, originally I sought to find the relevant sources to show that inciting commission of an offense is illegal. But then most sources I've found are related to UK law.
I have no idea how to look into detailed similar provisions in the USA, and it seems I wouldn't be able to find any, so I'll give you the benefit of doubt.
Most people calling themselves "Chinese" without qualifications (e.g. not "Chinese American", etc) at least understands the official spoken language called "Putonghua" (essentially "Mandarin").
So you can't go wrong with learning Mandarin. In school they officially have to use Mandarin, so anybody who's gone through school should be able to understand you, although a number of people still speak with influence of their local dialect.
Indeed. I'll extend your argument a bit more.
China is a huge country with a huge population, and implementing something like what Ms Klein describes would require just over 3 persons to watch every ordinary Chinese; it can't be done, not even in the US, certainly not in a country that still hasn't quite got all the resources it needs for just the basic needs. Total population in China is roughly 1/5 world population. So if 3 people were required to watch over an ordinary Chinese, you'd almost need the WHOLE WORLD watching over China. Wow. I'd love the attention;-p
But I can see from your comments that you obviously think this is true; have you even thought about how Ms Klein can know exactly what the Chinese government is going to do and what they intend? Is she an insider? Does she take part in planning meetings without them noticing? This has nothing to do with the real world, let alone Communism, but Ms Klein has realised that her stories sell for a better price if they are spiced with this kind of nonsensical prejudice that everybody knows can't be verified, but everyone wants to believe in. How could they know what the Chinese government is up to? Without being an insider? Easy. Here's the commonly accepted logic around here...:
1. Chinese Communists are evil 2. Evil governments work just like 1984 3. Hence, Chinese Communists are implementing 1984
It's heartbreaking how the least enlightened people end up running so many countries, and that goes for China present and past, too. The guys at the top these days are pretty competent.
Mao was a charismatic leader who's probably much better leading troops than governing a country. There's no doubt that however you hold him as a person, he did blunder quite a bit with his economic policies. The leaders today are better. The economy is growing, people are *generally* getting richer, and say what you will about China's human rights situation, it's *slowly* getting better, and at least not getting worse. Then look around and see many other countries regressing, and given the complexities of running the world's largest (most populous) country, I'd say that they can't be too incompetent.
Somehow you seem to be losing your bet. I don't live in mainland China, and never really investigated book stores much, so I won't comment on that.
However, the you seem to have a disillusion of the importance of a single book. Is 1984 the only book that teaches the importance of free information, free speech and free thinking? No. Is 1984 the only way to teach people to be wary of government surveillance, oppressive techniques, and totalitarian control? No. Is Orwell the only person who has the insight to be wary of these things? No.
Sun Yat-sen's status in China is basically equivalent to that of George Washington in USA. A mere translator compared with him? heh. I mean, if I had the time I could easily translate 1984 into Chinese... are you going to build me a statue in your nearest Chinatown?
Besides, a nit pick: no written text is translated to "Mandarin". Written Chinese is rather "standardized", whereas spoken Chinese has numerous dialects. It happens that the standard spoken dialect (officially called "Putonghua", which is basically "Mandarin"), is rather close to the written language, but it's not exactly the same thing. The correct way to put it would be simply "translated to Chinese".
The most insightful thing you guys could say is to quote a cautionary tale? Repeatedly?
Really, I don't see why the compulsive obsession with 1984. I feel it has almost attained a cult status here...
The quote isn't even right. These days in China you couldn't control information. Yes there is censorship, but with extensive communication systems there, eg. Internet, many people having mobile phones, etc. Imagine controlling the information of more than a billion people. Did you know much information about the recent earthquake in China came from Chinese users posting on Twitter? Those information got out quicker than many traditional journalist sources. You really can't control sht. As I've said, the Chinese government aren't Gods.
Wake up. This surveillance system is no good thing, but it's not 1984. If anything, with 1.3B people and a vast geographic area, China is one of the hardest country to implement TOTAL control. A high level of control had always been present in China, but total control? You'd have better luck with places like North Korea.
Of course, you may still live in your fantasy world and BELIEVE that China is Orwellian. But am I the only one who expects a bit more from fellow slashdotters who claim a certain level of intelligence?
And how about that Falun Gong? They sure are enjoying their freedom of speech, the problem is that they were dumb enough to actually try it. The Falun Gong are (at least currently) openly advocating the *overthrow* of the Chinese Communist Party. Which corroborates the GP's claims that "unless you're trying to overthrow the government criticisms are tolerated to some extent"
You can't have just a little freedom of speech. If it's restricted even a little bit, it isn't free. Then no place in the world has freedom of speech.
Hate speech? Calling fire in a crowded room? Slander? Inciting commission of offense? (eg. hey let's kill that guy) Providing vocal support for terrorist groups?
Of course, the restrictions in China are more severe than in many western democratic countries, but if you're going that far to say that ANY restriction to speech implies a lack of free speech, then no country in the world has free speech in your definition... thus the definition is not helpful.
I've been using GNOME for years, and they really lacked options when GNOME2 began, but things generally got better (very) gradually, and these days the options I see are usually the options I want changed. So I'm curious (definitely not here to start a flamewar;-p)... what options are you talking about which can't be changed?
When you live in a place where censorship is the norm, and EVERYBODY (not only the government... everybody) is organized in a top-down, authoritarian manner, their definition of "nice" may not be the same as yours.
I could perfectly believe that most Chinese officials in charge of the Olympics thought that they were doing their "nicest"... it's just that their "nice" isn't the same as the "nice" commonly accepted around the world.
They *are* "more" foreigner friendly. About two decades ago they used to require visitors to surrender their passports for the duration of their stay or something.
Not that they're "nice" to foreigners these days, but it's not exactly wrong to say that they have "improved" a bit...
It's sickening that our soldiers are held to a standard higher than any other military in the history of the human race, while the terrorist enemy is held to no standard. It is sickening that you compare the value the lives of enemy soldiers vs. "civilians". Iraqi soldiers are humans too. (Heck even American soldiers are) And due to some guy's orders thousands of lives were killed, without good reason.
Of course, in an unavoidable war (eg. when another country *actually* invades your country), you can't really do much better than avoiding civilian casualties. But when one is waging a war which is pointless for everybody (except maybe for the oil companies and the contractors) every non-civilian death is also unnecessary, and wrong.
I'm willing to wager that in 1911, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who could publicly say that man would walk on the moon within the lifetimes of most infants born that year - at least not without getting labeled a crackpot. The tech simply wasn't there (as you've pointed out about today's tech). Actually the tech was there in 1911... all that was needed to get to the moon was basically Newtonian physics, which had been around for like a few centuries... Yet we still don't know even in theory how to create a sustainable environment on another planet. I recall reading about an experiment in which they built an ecosystem in a dome and put some people in it. It didn't turn out too well. And as another poster had mentioned, Antarctica is easier, and we still haven't colonized it yet...
And notice I didn't say the lifetimes of infants born this year... I said "our" lifetimes...:)
If they allowed large groups of people to colonize, these people might get some crazy idea that they should govern themselves or something! I think that this is one factor playing into the disinterest for manned spaceflight among those who desire more government control in peoples' lives. Even just the hopes and dreams of one day peoples' children or even great-great-grandchildren might be able to slip the yoke of government control can be enough to seriously impede their plans to increase their grip over the populace. I got karma to burn, so I'd speak from my heart and say that this sounds like what you'd see in a sci-fi movie. And if you're serious about this, you must be on crack or something.
Why? Because the tech required to colonize another planet is simply not there, and I could bet it won't be within our lifetimes. Politicians are actually rather short sighted, particularly the more selfish breed who wants their power for control instead of serving the people. Great-great-grandchildren? You're giving them too much credit on foresight.
The simple fact is, if you kill off manned missions we'll pretty much never send a man to Mars, or colonize much (or at all) beyond the planet. What's the point? Of course it's cool and all, but what's the point of spending billions to *maybe* send a man to Mars (and probably not being able to take him back)? Because it's just... cool?
And colonizing another planet is simply not possible in the foreseeable future. You might as well start with Antarctica first.
Too much sci-fi. Next we'll be yearning for funding of the Flying Cars Research Institute.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe you're right. You remind me of the crazy Chinese "Patriots"... I'm usually the person who tries to debunk false myths and false attacks on the Chinese government (there's lots of misunderstanding, both ways), but the recent surge of Chinese "nationalism" really worries me... It sounds exactly like what you're describing...
:(
:-/)
Scary
Here's some rather politically incorrect crazy thoughts: I understand that the majority view is that freedom and democracy are to some extent established to prevent rogue states. But what if the population, as you've said, got arrogant and overconfident, and felt necessary to brutally push other countries around?
If say China finally becomes a superpower (instead of the next one), and China becomes fully democratic. The Chinese "Patriots" might actually vote in a government bent to invade Taiwan (and who knows what else). I bet if you find a politician manipulative enough it's not hard to do it. In this case would democracy actually offer no substantial advantage over an authoritarian government? (I'm not saying China shouldn't democratize, this is just some random thought that happened to come to my mind)
(btw, sorry for the heavy China politics, mod me offtopic if you will
OK, here's the statistics:
.hk has about 160K registered domains. More than half of them are under the schemes which require business registrations (see GP).
.hk site too)
https://www.hkdnr.hk/aboutHK/statistics.jsp
In short,
I'm having trouble thinking that around 50% of the domains which are open to the public (anybody in the world) are dangerous... I haven't come across a single one which seemed shady... (and I own a
Weird....
Well, I'm not in the security trade, so I'm nowhere authoritative. But I've never heard of any hackers or any culture of cybercrime in my circles, and the culture here is pretty apathetic to people with actual technical skills...
I don't know, it really doesn't sound likely.
Sounds bleak :-(
Sometimes when I hear these stories, I wonder whether it's the gullibility of Americans (nothing personal against you...), or gullibility of *humans* in general.
Hi. I'm in Hong Kong too.
.hk registrations have opened up only around 4 years ago, and last I checked the total number of registrations were at most around hundreds of thousands (too lazy to find out where to check now). So if anything the 19% of problematic sites might simply be due to relatively low number of registered domains. Even then I don't really recall 1 of 5 sites being shady ones...
:-/
;-p)
I'd also like to say that the general
Anyway this story really surprises me...
(Do I actually know you? Your name sounds extremely familiar... Must have heard your name from HKOI newsgroup gossip... I bet you're from DBS?
Well, not that I like her (I am not even an American, so basically the whole issue doesn't directly concern me) but it seems that most likely it's not mere greed, but a refusal to admit defeat.
:-/
For an ambitious person like Hillary, it should be pretty tough (mentally, egoistically) for her to admit defeat, particularly as she thought the nomination was in her firm grasp since last year.
Of course, my impression was that she does look like the kind of person who's in the race just for the power instead of a more noble goal... but I'm not into American politics so what do I know...
I don't know whether the press in USA is really worse than the rest of the world, but it's my impression that the rest of the world felt that the Iraqi war was stupid right at the beginning... (at least the UN felt so...)
Wasn't it blindingly obvious even back then? Or what magic did the press do?
Hmm, originally I sought to find the relevant sources to show that inciting commission of an offense is illegal. But then most sources I've found are related to UK law.
I have no idea how to look into detailed similar provisions in the USA, and it seems I wouldn't be able to find any, so I'll give you the benefit of doubt.
Not getting yourself arrested does not mean they are legal.
Most people calling themselves "Chinese" without qualifications (e.g. not "Chinese American", etc) at least understands the official spoken language called "Putonghua" (essentially "Mandarin").
So you can't go wrong with learning Mandarin. In school they officially have to use Mandarin, so anybody who's gone through school should be able to understand you, although a number of people still speak with influence of their local dialect.
1. Chinese Communists are evil
2. Evil governments work just like 1984
3. Hence, Chinese Communists are implementing 1984
Mao was a charismatic leader who's probably much better leading troops than governing a country. There's no doubt that however you hold him as a person, he did blunder quite a bit with his economic policies. The leaders today are better. The economy is growing, people are *generally* getting richer, and say what you will about China's human rights situation, it's *slowly* getting better, and at least not getting worse. Then look around and see many other countries regressing, and given the complexities of running the world's largest (most populous) country, I'd say that they can't be too incompetent.
Somehow you seem to be losing your bet. I don't live in mainland China, and never really investigated book stores much, so I won't comment on that.
However, the you seem to have a disillusion of the importance of a single book. Is 1984 the only book that teaches the importance of free information, free speech and free thinking? No. Is 1984 the only way to teach people to be wary of government surveillance, oppressive techniques, and totalitarian control? No. Is Orwell the only person who has the insight to be wary of these things? No.
Sun Yat-sen's status in China is basically equivalent to that of George Washington in USA. A mere translator compared with him? heh. I mean, if I had the time I could easily translate 1984 into Chinese... are you going to build me a statue in your nearest Chinatown?
Besides, a nit pick: no written text is translated to "Mandarin". Written Chinese is rather "standardized", whereas spoken Chinese has numerous dialects. It happens that the standard spoken dialect (officially called "Putonghua", which is basically "Mandarin"), is rather close to the written language, but it's not exactly the same thing. The correct way to put it would be simply "translated to Chinese".
The most insightful thing you guys could say is to quote a cautionary tale? Repeatedly?
Really, I don't see why the compulsive obsession with 1984. I feel it has almost attained a cult status here...
The quote isn't even right. These days in China you couldn't control information. Yes there is censorship, but with extensive communication systems there, eg. Internet, many people having mobile phones, etc. Imagine controlling the information of more than a billion people. Did you know much information about the recent earthquake in China came from Chinese users posting on Twitter? Those information got out quicker than many traditional journalist sources. You really can't control sht. As I've said, the Chinese government aren't Gods.
Wake up. This surveillance system is no good thing, but it's not 1984. If anything, with 1.3B people and a vast geographic area, China is one of the hardest country to implement TOTAL control. A high level of control had always been present in China, but total control? You'd have better luck with places like North Korea.
Of course, you may still live in your fantasy world and BELIEVE that China is Orwellian. But am I the only one who expects a bit more from fellow slashdotters who claim a certain level of intelligence?
Hate speech?
Calling fire in a crowded room?
Slander?
Inciting commission of offense? (eg. hey let's kill that guy)
Providing vocal support for terrorist groups?
Of course, the restrictions in China are more severe than in many western democratic countries, but if you're going that far to say that ANY restriction to speech implies a lack of free speech, then no country in the world has free speech in your definition... thus the definition is not helpful.
Am I the only one who instantly thought of this?
Any examples?
;-p)... what options are you talking about which can't be changed?
I've been using GNOME for years, and they really lacked options when GNOME2 began, but things generally got better (very) gradually, and these days the options I see are usually the options I want changed. So I'm curious (definitely not here to start a flamewar
http://www.cracked.com/article_16270_six-degrees-paris-hilton-global-reach-one-vagina.html
Confession: I saw that from Digg.
When you live in a place where censorship is the norm, and EVERYBODY (not only the government... everybody) is organized in a top-down, authoritarian manner, their definition of "nice" may not be the same as yours.
I could perfectly believe that most Chinese officials in charge of the Olympics thought that they were doing their "nicest"... it's just that their "nice" isn't the same as the "nice" commonly accepted around the world.
They *are* "more" foreigner friendly. About two decades ago they used to require visitors to surrender their passports for the duration of their stay or something.
Not that they're "nice" to foreigners these days, but it's not exactly wrong to say that they have "improved" a bit...
Of course, in an unavoidable war (eg. when another country *actually* invades your country), you can't really do much better than avoiding civilian casualties. But when one is waging a war which is pointless for everybody (except maybe for the oil companies and the contractors) every non-civilian death is also unnecessary, and wrong.
And notice I didn't say the lifetimes of infants born this year... I said "our" lifetimes...
Why? Because the tech required to colonize another planet is simply not there, and I could bet it won't be within our lifetimes. Politicians are actually rather short sighted, particularly the more selfish breed who wants their power for control instead of serving the people. Great-great-grandchildren? You're giving them too much credit on foresight.
And colonizing another planet is simply not possible in the foreseeable future. You might as well start with Antarctica first.
Too much sci-fi. Next we'll be yearning for funding of the Flying Cars Research Institute.