In short: There is no cure for stupidity. Admire the gullibility of these people -- ignorance is bliss.
For a longer reply: I think some people deliberately (or semi-consciously) shield themselves away from "correct" beliefs, and instead take up various implausible paranormal beliefs just to feel better. Heck, I personally am willing to believe that celestial objects are pushed around by angels if it would make me feel happier (not that I could con myself into this one even if it does make me feel happier)...
No matter how wise and rational one might be, there are always some "weak" spots where one becomes unimaginably "irrational". We are human beings.
This is an exercise of purely logic (not common sense)
*Suppose* somebody really believes (with unmovable "faith") my sarcastic comment above. Now how could you convince him that the scientific method is "better"? You can't do it without assuming he accepts some kind of scientific reasoning. The best thing you can do is hope that he wises up himself.
PS: Well maybe if he accepted some kind of logic, you can try proving that his "God" does not exist on the lines of Russel's paradox. But then as we all know they always try to find some ways to wriggle out of this situation and continue believing what they always believed.
Do you have a better method? Yes of course. By reading the holy books, one can obtain ALL the answers he needs. After all, they are by definition, correct and infallible since it is God's mandate, and God is all-knowing and infallible.
Try to beat that!
--- Note 1: I don't really believe in that. Note 2: Despite Note 1, I somehow feel a similar circularity in the your argument that science does not require faith. I'm not saying science "is a faith", but I wouldn't be so sure that it isn't.... just that as you've said I can't come up with something better.
I always suspect that most people (regardless of nationality, race, etc) are stupid and short-sighted. Maintaining a good system of governance requires constant maintenance and awareness from the people. Too much to ask for if you ask me.
Who really likes to "experiment" with the government? Just give me money, good entertainment, and an easy life. If this "experiment" requires me to digress from enjoying my life to use my brain to think..... sorry.
It's only after a bloody revolution where people actually have an awareness to think about how the government should be kept in control... and no "system" is bulletproof to abuse since checks and safeguards are only as strong as the willingness of people to enforce them.
I understand that most Americans are not as bad as their president or government... but still I can't help wonder why more than half of the Americans voted FOR Bush after the Iraq invasion (after which it became OBVIOUS that WMD was a blatant lie).
Since you cared to expend so many words on an "American's insider view", you might want to shed some light on this issue.
the fact that there are people in charge of FEMA who think it's OK should set alarm bells ringing I think people hoping those in charge will exercise self-restraint already sets alarm bells ringing.
I don't live in the US, so I have no idea of the government structure and what is expected of them. But in a "democratic" country I would think something like this to generate enough public outrage that at least somebody is going to resign.
My impression of American version of "democratic values" is: there is freedom of speech -- to say lame jokes about the president, laugh at scandals like misfiring and hitting somebody's ass, AND disagree with government actions/policies.... yet doing nothing about it. You can choose for your government -- but two options which is a choice for the lesser of two evils... and still half of the population ends up choosing the "wrong" guy. There is a right to bear arms... for recreational purposes like hunting (nevermind the original purpose to pose a constant threat on the government that the last resort of violent revolution if the government gets really out of control.. they have bombs, tanks, air fighters, etc.)
From what I've heard it's not even the "lesser" of two evils... unless you really believe that the "western democratic values" as implemented in Iraq (i.e. corruption, incompetence, violence, suppression, and whatnot) offset the lives lost, families broken, homes devastated...
You guys really believe the invasion was to remove a dictator? Or it was to give Iraqis "freedom"?
At least with the US it will get better over time. It's getting better? I thought it was getting worse. I don't watch news though, so maybe I'm misinformed.
In 10 to 20 years it'll be far better. I didn't know we had prophets reading Slashdot...
I know nothing about anthropology, but I thought the concept that "god" punishes evil and rewards good is a relatively recent concept. Judgment after death is too.
However, I might accept the role of religion for mind control... through another kind of fear -- the priest/shaman/religious leaders/etc. choose the ones to be sacrificed to the gods. You don't want to get on the nerves of those responsible for choosing the sucker to be burnt on the altar.
Today, we don't need God anymore. We have the technology to replace him. More like capitalism, or money.
Yeah but my main point was... you can't expect everybody to have sophisticated servers configured as you do.
The perceived "risk" of email solution providers confiscating your emails is pretty low, and the costs that it takes for an average person to have their own mail servers is just way higher than that risk. That's why (almost) everybody just uses gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc for normal stuff.
Though, I'd personally manage my own mail server instead of using google if my ISP hadn't blocked INCOMING port 25....
Unless you run your own mail server, the email has to be stored *somewhere*. Email (SMTP) isn't designed so that it works well on dynamic ip addresses , and with all the spam problems most ISP's have blocked port 25 for home users. you probably have to get another business line to run the server. Besides, you'll need a (sub)domain too, and not a lot of people have the knowledge to set up that either.
It would be nice if the Internet were much more "P2P" instead of relying on dedicated servers to relay content, but I'm afraid this will have to be the case until another major paradigm shift comes along (uh, web2.0 didn't really do it.)
To quote GP:
Slashdot is full of excuses and rationale why it's not a crime And now your argument is that copyright shouldn't be a crime AT ALL because the punishment is too high? Well if the punishment is too high then reduce it to reasonable levels. It's not a valid argument for "copyright is not well established" (it is, unfortunately we have at least a hundred years of history for copyrights), nor a valid argument for "copyright infringement should not be punished". If you think otherwise you probably need a to take a simple course on introduction to logic.
I probably despise the current "copyright regime" as much as you do, (for freedom of speech, knowledge and information reasons... you aren't decrying copyright so that you can get the next crap movie in BT before its launch... right?) but living in your own bubbles of reality isn't the way to change things for the better. Unfortunately, the "them" camp (eg. RIAA, MPAA, copyright holder corporations, etc.) seems to be living in another opposite-yet-similar bubble of reality, and moreso that they have a greater influence than Slashdot nerds on lawmaking bodies.
First of all IANAL, and I know nothing about US copyright laws (and I'm not living there). A quick search on the 1997 NET Act seems to reveal that for such non-commercial infringement to be criminal, the value of the infringement must be greater than $1000. Your blanket statement that "sharing copyrighted material is a crime" does not hold.
Of course stating that "copyright infringement is not a crime" does not really show the whole picture, but it's just similar to the statement that "drinking (alcohol) is not a crime" -- it depends on circumstances (eg. where and when you drink, what you are doing at that time, etc.). The GP was just pointing out that your statement is wrong, not to claim that copyright infringement acts never amount to a criminal offense.
And unlike the poster above who simply noted that I don't know the difference between a tort and a crime (which I don't, to be fair) you've spread it out into an entire rant. Because that's entirely the point. The RIAA can not CHOOSE to prosecute the defendants under the criminal law because they are not in the business of doing that. And your whole (original) post seems to be based on the premise that somehow it is not right for the RIAA to "prosecute" the defendants under the civil law due to the reduced burden of proof.
I'm not familiar with the rules of evidence, and I definitely don't know how evidence is going to be handled in internet related cases, but I can assure you that at least in the jurisdiction here, a screenshot itself is NOT enough to prove anything, even "on the balance of probabilities". I admit I know nothing about the case in the story, but the second half of your original post seems exactly like those where the posters know nothing about relevant law and yet babble as if they do. I guess the GP was polite not to point this out:)
And to most of our fellow slashdotters (me included), the humming and buzzing of our beloved boxen do quite a bit of polluting too. My main machine is right next to my bed.... so duh. It serves as a personal mini-server for me, so I usually hesitate to turn it off at night...
> as of 10 years ago lots of people born and raised in a British HK were scared to death about the Chinese hand over.
It tells something about the FUD western media have on the Chinese government too actually. I think we've heard enough "after the handover Hong Kong is going go become a communist city! sheesh!! it's going to fall!! run!!" FUD by western media... and then those people go "oh wait..." now. There's a reason people here don't easily fall for such crap now.
Well in fact I think people were scared at the beginning of the talks... (and things got a bit messy in 1989 for obvious reasons), the really paranoid got up and left. But then there was enough soothing during the 1990's that at the time of handover that I'd say the feeling was generally "mixed feelings" or "uncertainty" more than fear. "Scared to death" is a bit of exaggeration really. Last I heard nobody committed suicide at the handover;-p
China is constantly trying to annex bits of surrounding countries, including india, hong kong, mongolia, and I'm sure there's some I'm leaving out. I live and grew up in Hong Kong and I take offense. Are you implying that Britain had the right to rule over Hong Kong? The country that's more or less on the other side of the Earth? and FYI nobody here mentions about independence (hint: we don't want it). The most "activist" people only ask for a greater degree of democracy, and beside drudging that China is too conservative on reforms, don't really have a problem in principle with China being the new boss here.
You may have a point about Tibet, Mongolia etc. I admit that I'm short of facts, so I dunno. But once you mention Hong Kong and I justly dismiss your statements as utter BS. I mean, there's no point in discussing when you don't even have the basic facts right. You may have some of the conclusions correct, by chance. But then it's a waste of time listening to what you have to say.
So shove your ignorance elsewhere. I'm sure you believe Hong Kong is an internationally recognized independent state because we send separate teams to the Olympics too.
Oh and Hong Kong is not, and has never been a country. It's not a matter of political correctness (like Taiwan, you missed that out), it's a matter of fact.
And if I've misunderstood you and you really mean "You say you don't want independence but you really do! China is evil! Nobody wants to be ruled by Chinese! Not even Chinese!", I can tell you to go fsck yourself.
I think for most goods you have it backwards. Stuff for export means stuff that needs to meet import requirements of another country. They are less likely to kill you.
There are many horror stories of domestic goods in China... have you heard of soy sauce made with HAIR? (yes, human HAIR)
Well I haven't tried that brew before, but I'd suspect it's anything but "vastly superior".
For some local fresh produce, I dunno. Maybe that's the case, but then I'm not exactly living in mainland China (I'm living in Hong Kong) so I can't tell. I've been to the mainland for quite a few times, and last I was there everybody cautioned me to look out for cheap stuff because the quality may be so bad that they could be health hazards.
Yes. And, before you ask, I am an American born and raised. And you even pay taxes to the USA federal government?!
According to your logic, you should grab as much money as you can, run out of the country and emigrate to another peace loving country and spend all your money there to punish the US economy...
> The jingoistic Party indoctrination appears to work wonders on Chinese people's critical thinking faculties.
I sure sound like somebody indoctrinated with "Party propaganda". But hate to break it I don't think I am even capable of being indoctrinated.
Um, I have vague impressions of what indoctrination is like (and it basically gives me the chills). However what I see is that your views if taken whole is just the other side of the same coin. What I do believe is that both sides to the story are vastly exaggerated (and in the case of the Chinese media, vastly silenced). What will convince me (and many other Chinese) is a neutral accounts of FACTS, not emotional assertions (eg "history's most murderous dictator Mao Zedong..." [hate to break it to you, the first emperors of every dynasty in China were at least as equally "murderous" as Mao, if not much much "worse", and I'm not quoting this as an excuse for Mao, but as a counterexample to show you how emotionally worked up your statement is])
Well I'll grant you that Tibetans are not Chinese in any way is true.
Now let me respond to a few of your other bolded texts:
Han-Chinese nationalism (which other Qing-ruled "minorities" weren't keen on), which had arisen from the modern concept of nationalism.
Han-Chinese nationalism, as far as I understand it, already existed. The Qing dynasty is generally referred to as "invaders", and their ancestors (the Jin) were basically mortal enemies of the Han people of the Song dynasty.
Death... adds up to over 1,2 million corpses,
Tell me where you're getting that data from. Trusting a "free tibet" zealot on slashdot for "facts" without sources is not advisable. Same way that you won't trust "facts" from a person who thinks Mao is basically a god and never makes mistakes... ever.
Now tell me that Tibet isn't criminally occupied by their historical neighbours and that the Tibetans simply deserve to be wiped out and humiliated as yet another boring sinicized "ethnic song and dance troupe" because a brutal and massively militarized Chinese regime far away in Beijing can't afford to let those people regain their freedom?
Ah... I see the problem now. The Chinese government is too nice. They should have exterminated the Tibetans and the world would have shut up. I mean, since there's no more native Americans the white guys from Europe has taken over and nobody seems to give a damn about that. I mean, the US is full of nice guys who are peaceful and would never even think of invading another country now.
Well apart from this semi-sarcastic comment I'd grant you that... only if your facts are accurate.
Who knows, maybe you really are just a decent youngster who didn't know any better and who is now faced with a choice.
Maybe I am. There's a choice? Uh. The best I might have done (to your favor) is to recognize your claims and cause.
But then I have a clue for you here. If you intend to make a real difference (instead of ranting around and recruiting more ignorant zealots), take some time to learn WHY things are the way it is, and HOW to (practially) make things better. I hope you have the common sense that emotional rants all over the place hardly have any effect except as a channel to vent your frustrations, and most of the "facts" from anti-Chinese (communists) organizations give me the impression that maybe Chinese Communist's propaganda in the 1960's is more closer to the truth.
In short, I don't believe in your facts simply because you state them. Tell me, for example, HOW you got the numbers (and no, a major news agency from a western country is not reliable. If you tried to argue that it were I'd point you to Chinese news agencies and see if you agreed with me...), like did the reporters actually count the corpses there and managed to get out of China alive? Or smuggled some secret document? Or is everything actually from the Chinese government and they funded the free Tib
> We're not imprisoning dissidents and journalists yet
Terrorists. Or lookalikes.
> country we're occupying is at least still free to practice their religion
China has freedom of religion as long as it's not political... there are Christian, Muslim, etc. groups within China. It's just that there's something in the "separation of church and state" that that most western religious groups seem to fail to grasp. Somehow relgious groups seem to be most keen on "fixing" the "problems" in China, through political means and whatnot. Unless freedom of religion means freedom of politics, and then I can tell you that China doesn't even pretend to have "freedom of politics" unless you join the communist party (or if you overthrow them.. that's the problem)
> short of the call to drive the infidels out of the holy land. Contrast with tibet.
That's because the guy was a political threat... some guy who threatens to lead a large chunk of your territory into independence and you'd expect a nice and warm treatment? What if somebody manages to rally California to declare independence from the Federal government? I doubt the USA government is going to say "sure, No problemo, we'll just remove a star from our flag. Good job." bleh.
> even if the situation in USA is getting worse, and the situation in China is getting better
For the sake of argument, let us assume that the above assumption is true. If you're criticizing people on moral grounds, the one who's improving should get the props, and the one who's slacking off should be slapped. It's that simple. Or are you the delusional ones who think that China's human rights issues could be solved by the current leaders simply nodding their heads and say "sure, let's do it!"?
> I'm certainly not buying American until the government allows freedom of speech, assembly, and religion. > Oh wait... they do!
Oh wait. Unless you're Muslim. Or Arab. Or just got some dark skin and speak in funny accents. And yes, China does have freedom of religion -- unless for religions that like to mess with politics (Western, especially US, notions of separation of Church and state is a joke)
And I'm not really sure whether anybody has tried this in the USA, but I'm betting that something bad will happen if you (seriously) openly declare support for Bin Laden, Al'Qaeda. Oh and you're not allowed to swear on public broadcast channels too, and you're not allowed to show a tit. *think of the children!!*
Suck it up. Most societies have their own taboos. There are a lot of "but" qualifications for your so called freedoms. Admittedly as I understand it the USA is still freer than that in China, but an unqualified statement that they "do" have such freedoms (as if they're binary) isn't an accurate representation of the situation either.
> Ascribing moral equality between the governments of China and the USA is an insult to the innocent people executed > and imprisoned by the vile, corrupt government of China.
Could go either way. I'm pretty sure the number of casualties (both US military and Iraqi) in Iraq, Afghanistan (and all the places USA put its nose into) scale up pretty nicely to match to the number of people "executed and imprisoned" by the Chinese government.
Well, to sum it up more fairly, ascribing a moral quality to governments is basically an insult to your common sense. We all like to be the "good guys", but alas that's just not the ways things are...
The view that Taiwan might be a (officially) separate country is relatively recent.
Unless I'm mistaken, not too long ago (around the 1970's), the official stance of the Taiwanese (KMT) government was that Taiwan was only a "temporary" place of residence, and their ultimate goal was to retake China back from the communists. So back then, the PRC and RoC could agree that Taiwan is a part of China (what they really disagreed on was which party should rule it).
However, admittedly Taiwan was never really given much attention by the Chinese until the KMT fled there. It's only famous as a popular place when you're militarily pwned in the mainland and want to flee (when there's a lot of in-fighting, I'd expect that they won't have large navies to conveniently pursue the "exiles" into Taiwan), but really, nobody really gave the island a damn until quite recently. (Before the Qing dynasty, it was basically an island up for grabs)
But for the KMT's occupation, Taiwan *could* have been an independent country, or even a part of Japan. The Taiwanese "natives" don't really consider themselves part of China, but those who originally came from the mainland do. The de-facto political separation of Taiwan from China in the past few decades resulted in the younger generations considering themselves "Taiwanese" instead of "Chinese". It's basically a natural thing. I live and grew up in Hong Kong, and most of us prefer to be referred to as "Hong Kong people" instead of "Chinese" (though the trend seems to reverse the handover -- there's not a lot of hardcore propaganda, as I've said it's mostly a natural thing that people have for their own countries)
So it really depends on who you ask and what you mean by a "separate country". Quite a lot of political stigma there. Fact is, things aren't that clear cut. Examples that you might be able to relate to: Canada was (is?) supposed to be a part of the British Empire, but now it's recognized as a separate country. And is, say, California a sovereign state? (the US Federal govt was supposed to have very little powers...) etc. It's just that until the past 2-3 decades, mainland China was busy shunning the rest of the world and Taiwan trying not to admit defeat on the mainland that the two sides have only been recently started to seriously sort out the matter in a civilized manner (and I suspect that China trying their experiments on Hong Kong before tackling Taiwan played a part in the delay, but that's just ungrounded speculation on my part), and obviously for mainland China to have any say on Taiwan matters, they have to insist that Taiwan is a part of China.
Slashdot Mirror
In short: There is no cure for stupidity.
Admire the gullibility of these people -- ignorance is bliss.
For a longer reply: I think some people deliberately (or semi-consciously) shield themselves away from "correct" beliefs, and instead take up various implausible paranormal beliefs just to feel better. Heck, I personally am willing to believe that celestial objects are pushed around by angels if it would make me feel happier (not that I could con myself into this one even if it does make me feel happier)...
No matter how wise and rational one might be, there are always some "weak" spots where one becomes unimaginably "irrational". We are human beings.
Update:
Ah, I see the circularity in the argument now.
This is an exercise of purely logic (not common sense)
*Suppose* somebody really believes (with unmovable "faith") my sarcastic comment above. Now how could you convince him that the scientific method is "better"? You can't do it without assuming he accepts some kind of scientific reasoning. The best thing you can do is hope that he wises up himself.
PS: Well maybe if he accepted some kind of logic, you can try proving that his "God" does not exist on the lines of Russel's paradox. But then as we all know they always try to find some ways to wriggle out of this situation and continue believing what they always believed.
Try to beat that!
---
Note 1: I don't really believe in that.
Note 2: Despite Note 1, I somehow feel a similar circularity in the your argument that science does not require faith. I'm not saying science "is a faith", but I wouldn't be so sure that it isn't.... just that as you've said I can't come up with something better.
I always suspect that most people (regardless of nationality, race, etc) are stupid and short-sighted. Maintaining a good system of governance requires constant maintenance and awareness from the people. Too much to ask for if you ask me.
Who really likes to "experiment" with the government? Just give me money, good entertainment, and an easy life. If this "experiment" requires me to digress from enjoying my life to use my brain to think..... sorry.
It's only after a bloody revolution where people actually have an awareness to think about how the government should be kept in control... and no "system" is bulletproof to abuse since checks and safeguards are only as strong as the willingness of people to enforce them.
I understand that most Americans are not as bad as their president or government... but still I can't help wonder why more than half of the Americans voted FOR Bush after the Iraq invasion (after which it became OBVIOUS that WMD was a blatant lie).
Since you cared to expend so many words on an "American's insider view", you might want to shed some light on this issue.
I don't live in the US, so I have no idea of the government structure and what is expected of them. But in a "democratic" country I would think something like this to generate enough public outrage that at least somebody is going to resign.
My impression of American version of "democratic values" is: there is freedom of speech -- to say lame jokes about the president, laugh at scandals like misfiring and hitting somebody's ass, AND disagree with government actions/policies.... yet doing nothing about it. You can choose for your government -- but two options which is a choice for the lesser of two evils... and still half of the population ends up choosing the "wrong" guy. There is a right to bear arms... for recreational purposes like hunting (nevermind the original purpose to pose a constant threat on the government that the last resort of violent revolution if the government gets really out of control.. they have bombs, tanks, air fighters, etc.)
From what I've heard it's not even the "lesser" of two evils... unless you really believe that the "western democratic values" as implemented in Iraq (i.e. corruption, incompetence, violence, suppression, and whatnot) offset the lives lost, families broken, homes devastated...
You guys really believe the invasion was to remove a dictator? Or it was to give Iraqis "freedom"?
No. VNC *is* slower than RDP.
VNC polls the windows for updates, instead of event hooks. This alone gives considerable latency that makes it feel slow.
However, I might accept the role of religion for mind control... through another kind of fear -- the priest/shaman/religious leaders/etc. choose the ones to be sacrificed to the gods. You don't want to get on the nerves of those responsible for choosing the sucker to be burnt on the altar. Today, we don't need God anymore. We have the technology to replace him. More like capitalism, or money.
You don't win wars by killing people, you win wars by winning (or killing) hearts.
Either silence people through intimidation, or by establishing some sort of legitimacy so people will not resist you.
Thought that was obvious. You really think wars can be won with tanks? Battles, yes. Wars? No.
Yeah but my main point was... you can't expect everybody to have sophisticated servers configured as you do.
The perceived "risk" of email solution providers confiscating your emails is pretty low, and the costs that it takes for an average person to have their own mail servers is just way higher than that risk. That's why (almost) everybody just uses gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc for normal stuff.
Though, I'd personally manage my own mail server instead of using google if my ISP hadn't blocked INCOMING port 25....
Unless you run your own mail server, the email has to be stored *somewhere*. Email (SMTP) isn't designed so that it works well on dynamic ip addresses , and with all the spam problems most ISP's have blocked port 25 for home users. you probably have to get another business line to run the server. Besides, you'll need a (sub)domain too, and not a lot of people have the knowledge to set up that either.
It would be nice if the Internet were much more "P2P" instead of relying on dedicated servers to relay content, but I'm afraid this will have to be the case until another major paradigm shift comes along (uh, web2.0 didn't really do it.)
To quote GP: Slashdot is full of excuses and rationale why it's not a crime And now your argument is that copyright shouldn't be a crime AT ALL because the punishment is too high? Well if the punishment is too high then reduce it to reasonable levels. It's not a valid argument for "copyright is not well established" (it is, unfortunately we have at least a hundred years of history for copyrights), nor a valid argument for "copyright infringement should not be punished". If you think otherwise you probably need a to take a simple course on introduction to logic.
I probably despise the current "copyright regime" as much as you do, (for freedom of speech, knowledge and information reasons... you aren't decrying copyright so that you can get the next crap movie in BT before its launch... right?) but living in your own bubbles of reality isn't the way to change things for the better. Unfortunately, the "them" camp (eg. RIAA, MPAA, copyright holder corporations, etc.) seems to be living in another opposite-yet-similar bubble of reality, and moreso that they have a greater influence than Slashdot nerds on lawmaking bodies.
First of all IANAL, and I know nothing about US copyright laws (and I'm not living there). A quick search on the 1997 NET Act seems to reveal that for such non-commercial infringement to be criminal, the value of the infringement must be greater than $1000. Your blanket statement that "sharing copyrighted material is a crime" does not hold.
Of course stating that "copyright infringement is not a crime" does not really show the whole picture, but it's just similar to the statement that "drinking (alcohol) is not a crime" -- it depends on circumstances (eg. where and when you drink, what you are doing at that time, etc.). The GP was just pointing out that your statement is wrong, not to claim that copyright infringement acts never amount to a criminal offense. And unlike the poster above who simply noted that I don't know the difference between a tort and a crime (which I don't, to be fair) you've spread it out into an entire rant. Because that's entirely the point. The RIAA can not CHOOSE to prosecute the defendants under the criminal law because they are not in the business of doing that. And your whole (original) post seems to be based on the premise that somehow it is not right for the RIAA to "prosecute" the defendants under the civil law due to the reduced burden of proof.
I'm not familiar with the rules of evidence, and I definitely don't know how evidence is going to be handled in internet related cases, but I can assure you that at least in the jurisdiction here, a screenshot itself is NOT enough to prove anything, even "on the balance of probabilities". I admit I know nothing about the case in the story, but the second half of your original post seems exactly like those where the posters know nothing about relevant law and yet babble as if they do. I guess the GP was polite not to point this out
And to most of our fellow slashdotters (me included), the humming and buzzing of our beloved boxen do quite a bit of polluting too. My main machine is right next to my bed.... so duh. It serves as a personal mini-server for me, so I usually hesitate to turn it off at night...
> as of 10 years ago lots of people born and raised in a British HK were scared to death about the Chinese hand over.
;-p
It tells something about the FUD western media have on the Chinese government too actually. I think we've heard enough "after the handover Hong Kong is going go become a communist city! sheesh!! it's going to fall!! run!!" FUD by western media... and then those people go "oh wait..." now. There's a reason people here don't easily fall for such crap now.
Well in fact I think people were scared at the beginning of the talks... (and things got a bit messy in 1989 for obvious reasons), the really paranoid got up and left. But then there was enough soothing during the 1990's that at the time of handover that I'd say the feeling was generally "mixed feelings" or "uncertainty" more than fear. "Scared to death" is a bit of exaggeration really. Last I heard nobody committed suicide at the handover
You may have a point about Tibet, Mongolia etc. I admit that I'm short of facts, so I dunno. But once you mention Hong Kong and I justly dismiss your statements as utter BS. I mean, there's no point in discussing when you don't even have the basic facts right. You may have some of the conclusions correct, by chance. But then it's a waste of time listening to what you have to say.
So shove your ignorance elsewhere. I'm sure you believe Hong Kong is an internationally recognized independent state because we send separate teams to the Olympics too.
Oh and Hong Kong is not, and has never been a country. It's not a matter of political correctness (like Taiwan, you missed that out), it's a matter of fact.
And if I've misunderstood you and you really mean "You say you don't want independence but you really do! China is evil! Nobody wants to be ruled by Chinese! Not even Chinese!", I can tell you to go fsck yourself.
I think for most goods you have it backwards.
Stuff for export means stuff that needs to meet import requirements of another country.
They are less likely to kill you.
There are many horror stories of domestic goods in China... have you heard of soy sauce made with HAIR? (yes, human HAIR)
Well I haven't tried that brew before, but I'd suspect it's anything but "vastly superior".
For some local fresh produce, I dunno. Maybe that's the case, but then I'm not exactly living in mainland China (I'm living in Hong Kong) so I can't tell. I've been to the mainland for quite a few times, and last I was there everybody cautioned me to look out for cheap stuff because the quality may be so bad that they could be health hazards.
According to your logic, you should grab as much money as you can, run out of the country and emigrate to another peace loving country and spend all your money there to punish the US economy...
> The jingoistic Party indoctrination appears to work wonders on Chinese people's critical thinking faculties.
... adds up to over 1,2 million corpses,
I sure sound like somebody indoctrinated with "Party propaganda". But hate to break it I don't think I am even capable of being indoctrinated.
Um, I have vague impressions of what indoctrination is like (and it basically gives me the chills). However what I see is that your views if taken whole is just the other side of the same coin. What I do believe is that both sides to the story are vastly exaggerated (and in the case of the Chinese media, vastly silenced). What will convince me (and many other Chinese) is a neutral accounts of FACTS, not emotional assertions (eg "history's most murderous dictator Mao Zedong..." [hate to break it to you, the first emperors of every dynasty in China were at least as equally "murderous" as Mao, if not much much "worse", and I'm not quoting this as an excuse for Mao, but as a counterexample to show you how emotionally worked up your statement is])
Well I'll grant you that Tibetans are not Chinese in any way is true.
Now let me respond to a few of your other bolded texts:
Han-Chinese nationalism (which other Qing-ruled "minorities" weren't keen on), which had arisen from the modern concept of nationalism.
Han-Chinese nationalism, as far as I understand it, already existed. The Qing dynasty is generally referred to as "invaders", and their ancestors (the Jin) were basically mortal enemies of the Han people of the Song dynasty.
Death
Tell me where you're getting that data from. Trusting a "free tibet" zealot on slashdot for "facts" without sources is not advisable. Same way that you won't trust "facts" from a person who thinks Mao is basically a god and never makes mistakes... ever.
Now tell me that Tibet isn't criminally occupied by their historical neighbours and that the Tibetans simply deserve to be wiped out and humiliated as yet another boring sinicized "ethnic song and dance troupe" because a brutal and massively militarized Chinese regime far away in Beijing can't afford to let those people regain their freedom?
Ah... I see the problem now. The Chinese government is too nice. They should have exterminated the Tibetans and the world would have shut up. I mean, since there's no more native Americans the white guys from Europe has taken over and nobody seems to give a damn about that. I mean, the US is full of nice guys who are peaceful and would never even think of invading another country now.
Well apart from this semi-sarcastic comment I'd grant you that... only if your facts are accurate.
Who knows, maybe you really are just a decent youngster who didn't know any better and who is now faced with a choice.
Maybe I am. There's a choice? Uh. The best I might have done (to your favor) is to recognize your claims and cause.
But then I have a clue for you here. If you intend to make a real difference (instead of ranting around and recruiting more ignorant zealots), take some time to learn WHY things are the way it is, and HOW to (practially) make things better. I hope you have the common sense that emotional rants all over the place hardly have any effect except as a channel to vent your frustrations, and most of the "facts" from anti-Chinese (communists) organizations give me the impression that maybe Chinese Communist's propaganda in the 1960's is more closer to the truth.
In short, I don't believe in your facts simply because you state them. Tell me, for example, HOW you got the numbers (and no, a major news agency from a western country is not reliable. If you tried to argue that it were I'd point you to Chinese news agencies and see if you agreed with me...), like did the reporters actually count the corpses there and managed to get out of China alive? Or smuggled some secret document? Or is everything actually from the Chinese government and they funded the free Tib
> We're not imprisoning dissidents and journalists yet
Terrorists. Or lookalikes.
> country we're occupying is at least still free to practice their religion
China has freedom of religion as long as it's not political... there are Christian, Muslim, etc. groups within China. It's just that there's something in the "separation of church and state" that that most western religious groups seem to fail to grasp. Somehow relgious groups seem to be most keen on "fixing" the "problems" in China, through political means and whatnot. Unless freedom of religion means freedom of politics, and then I can tell you that China doesn't even pretend to have "freedom of politics" unless you join the communist party (or if you overthrow them.. that's the problem)
> short of the call to drive the infidels out of the holy land. Contrast with tibet.
That's because the guy was a political threat... some guy who threatens to lead a large chunk of your territory into independence and you'd expect a nice and warm treatment? What if somebody manages to rally California to declare independence from the Federal government? I doubt the USA government is going to say "sure, No problemo, we'll just remove a star from our flag. Good job." bleh.
> even if the situation in USA is getting worse, and the situation in China is getting better
For the sake of argument, let us assume that the above assumption is true.
If you're criticizing people on moral grounds, the one who's improving should get the props, and the one who's slacking off should be slapped. It's that simple. Or are you the delusional ones who think that China's human rights issues could be solved by the current leaders simply nodding their heads and say "sure, let's do it!"?
> I'm certainly not buying American until the government allows freedom of speech, assembly, and religion.
> Oh wait... they do!
Oh wait. Unless you're Muslim. Or Arab. Or just got some dark skin and speak in funny accents. And yes, China does have freedom of religion -- unless for religions that like to mess with politics (Western, especially US, notions of separation of Church and state is a joke)
And I'm not really sure whether anybody has tried this in the USA, but I'm betting that something bad will happen if you (seriously) openly declare support for Bin Laden, Al'Qaeda. Oh and you're not allowed to swear on public broadcast channels too, and you're not allowed to show a tit. *think of the children!!*
Suck it up. Most societies have their own taboos. There are a lot of "but" qualifications for your so called freedoms. Admittedly as I understand it the USA is still freer than that in China, but an unqualified statement that they "do" have such freedoms (as if they're binary) isn't an accurate representation of the situation either.
> Ascribing moral equality between the governments of China and the USA is an insult to the innocent people executed
> and imprisoned by the vile, corrupt government of China.
Could go either way. I'm pretty sure the number of casualties (both US military and Iraqi) in Iraq, Afghanistan (and all the places USA put its nose into) scale up pretty nicely to match to the number of people "executed and imprisoned" by the Chinese government.
Well, to sum it up more fairly, ascribing a moral quality to governments is basically an insult to your common sense. We all like to be the "good guys", but alas that's just not the ways things are...
The view that Taiwan might be a (officially) separate country is relatively recent.
Unless I'm mistaken, not too long ago (around the 1970's), the official stance of the Taiwanese (KMT) government was that Taiwan was only a "temporary" place of residence, and their ultimate goal was to retake China back from the communists. So back then, the PRC and RoC could agree that Taiwan is a part of China (what they really disagreed on was which party should rule it).
However, admittedly Taiwan was never really given much attention by the Chinese until the KMT fled there. It's only famous as a popular place when you're militarily pwned in the mainland and want to flee (when there's a lot of in-fighting, I'd expect that they won't have large navies to conveniently pursue the "exiles" into Taiwan), but really, nobody really gave the island a damn until quite recently. (Before the Qing dynasty, it was basically an island up for grabs)
But for the KMT's occupation, Taiwan *could* have been an independent country, or even a part of Japan. The Taiwanese "natives" don't really consider themselves part of China, but those who originally came from the mainland do. The de-facto political separation of Taiwan from China in the past few decades resulted in the younger generations considering themselves "Taiwanese" instead of "Chinese". It's basically a natural thing. I live and grew up in Hong Kong, and most of us prefer to be referred to as "Hong Kong people" instead of "Chinese" (though the trend seems to reverse the handover -- there's not a lot of hardcore propaganda, as I've said it's mostly a natural thing that people have for their own countries)
So it really depends on who you ask and what you mean by a "separate country". Quite a lot of political stigma there. Fact is, things aren't that clear cut. Examples that you might be able to relate to: Canada was (is?) supposed to be a part of the British Empire, but now it's recognized as a separate country. And is, say, California a sovereign state? (the US Federal govt was supposed to have very little powers...) etc. It's just that until the past 2-3 decades, mainland China was busy shunning the rest of the world and Taiwan trying not to admit defeat on the mainland that the two sides have only been recently started to seriously sort out the matter in a civilized manner (and I suspect that China trying their experiments on Hong Kong before tackling Taiwan played a part in the delay, but that's just ungrounded speculation on my part), and obviously for mainland China to have any say on Taiwan matters, they have to insist that Taiwan is a part of China.