'Overpriced' only applies to people who are not willing to pay that much money (duh;-).
Any product that is selling well in a market with competition CANNOT be overpriced, in the market sense.
Overpriced for you - yes Overpriced for me - yes Overpriced for the market - no
Business isn't a charity. Public companies are legally required to price their products/services for maximum shareholder return. They have to find the balance point between raw profit, and how many people will buy at that price (volume). If pricing 80% of the market out makes more profit than selling to 80% of the market at a lower price, tough luck for the poorer 80% of the market. This, of course, assumes a competitive marketplace, which the iPod seems to be in.
Manufacturing capacity is also a factor - if your warehouse is constantly understocked and you cannot increase factory output, it means you are UNDERPRICED: increase the price to re-align demand with maximum supply.
'Overpriced' only occurs if you are making less money at current price/volume than you would by increased volume of sales at a lower price.
You seem to be leaping too far in one go, that's all. Below is speculation by a non-specialist. Grains of salt should be used.:-P
> How did a simple but robust single-cell organism spontaneously "evolve" into a more complex multi-cell organism?
Incomplete cell separation, possibly suddenly making the - now larger - organism less ingestible for other organisms (due to size). This is the only 'spontaneous' major evolution I can imagine, because it happens at such a basic level.
> Why did organisms that reproduced asexually "evolve" into creatures that require a male and female component which is far less efficient?
Via an intermediate stage where both forms of reproduction are possible depending on circumstances. Plenty of lifeforms still carry on like this today. It likely later became an 'advantage' to specialise as two sexes permanently and the hermaphrodite capability was sufficiently lost to be difficult to quickly reclaim even if it later became an advantage again. At least one species of fish has made good progress in backtracking here.
I agree that hermaphroditism is more efficient for animals like us with internal fertilisation (hey, shouldn't an omnipotent god have been able to work that one out in advance if you and I can?) But it may have been a disadvantage with external fertilisation (self-fertilisation and associated in-breeding being more difficult to avoid - coral polyps go to quite an expensive biochemical process to keep their own sperm away from their own eggs, I believe). And it is too-far gone to get back there (again, no big leaps - you need a god - or at least VERY advanced intelligence-directed genetic manipulations - for that sort of thing)
Aside: I have trouble with the idea that a God would create male and female of all higher animals, then only create a man and forget the female of his 'highest' creation until the man complained about it. If he had never intended a complementary sex, why make the first human as a 'man' anyway? An immortal neuter would have been fine and less trouble (a neuter wouldn't complain about an absence of women, either, and the whole sorry saga could have been omnipotently avoided).
> And if one of those spontaneously evolved into something that required a mate, what's the probability that it just happened to bump into another similar organism that also just spontaneously evolved into the opposite gender of this new mutation?
See above. You seem to be hooked on 'spontaneous' evolution, which is probably very convenient for supporting your chosen belief, but at odds with what is generally accepted as likely. There were transitions when both systems would work depending on what was available. Animals don't change over one generation. You would go from hermaphrodite, to some members of the species being better at one role or the other, to specialisation.
Evolution implies gradual change. Sudden change is generally considered a creationist idea.
That doesn't discount the existence of a god that decided to use evolution to achieve an end - heck, if you want true omnipotence, look at setting up the universe's laws of physics to get a planned result billions of years later! Most (all?) Human religions just suffer a lack of true scope, having developed in a time when few people were aware of what was happening beyond their own view of the horizon. If there is a god (and that question is outside of science, as any true scientist will tell you), that god is a lot bigger and more powerful than any human has even dreamed.
Assuming you want a big powerful god! Most people seem to balk if the god becomes too big for human control. And keeping god and the universe small enough that we can still convince ourselves we are the pinnacle of it all, rather than one of possibly many highlights along the way to something even greater.
Ah... assuming said company has competition they want to undercut, most of the saved money will go into making the product/service cheaper. Which in turn means their customers now have more cash at THEIR disposals.
And so on.
The increased sales (not just from competitors' customers, but ALSO from new customers who couldn't afford the old price, but can afford the new) increases sales. Oh gosh: Need more people on the shop floor and in the cubicle farm.
Or their competition gets there first and undercuts them. This is supposed to be a free and competitive market!
Assuming the company has no competition, yes: CEO gets more money in his bank account. Proprietry software is the only place I know where this situation is common.
Even in the latter case, the CEO's money eventually gets spent or invested SOMEWHERE, generating some sort of employment, that employment, then leading to someone else having more money to spend on something else. Money doesn't generally fall into black holes in large quantities. It circulates in the economy (grandmothers burying it in tins in the back yard notwithstanding). Savings in one place pop up as expenses elsewhere.
The trick to life is to make this as efficient as can be so as much of the expenses as possible are on things that make life enjoyable and worthwhile, rather than having to spend it all on boring stuff. Why else bother with it all otherwise?
>...first off, how do you identify it? "Umm yeah I was just doing one-handed investigative work for the police, looking at those pics"
Or try:
"I wanted to download a video by my favorite open-music band and was really pissed off and offended by this junk I got instead. By way of revenge on the person who misled me into wasting my bandwidth downloading this, I am reporting them."
I *really* resent mis-labeled files (do these people get off on the number of hits to their share or something?).
The not mis-labeled stuff - well that's a filter's job.
Just tie it into the honor system already in some P2P systems to help with this problem.
You'd block your ability to reply to 71% of your spam, since it is the reply-site hosting that the 71% figure was talking about.
MY ISP (In Australia) does a pretty good job of filtering spam. I get one or two a day on a address I have been at for several years.
The downside is that at least one of my Chinese friends is unable to email me directly from her usual account. I solved it by setting her up on a Yahoo webmail account in the US.
Or go to Australia or the US and be bored to death on unemployment benefit. At least China is giving me a job.
BTW: I went through your list. Unfortunately, I can't deny any of it, though you have pulled worst-case situations* - yes, there are many toilets as described, but many spotlessly clean ones too. And there is a large minority of perfectly nice middle-class Chinese about. I would even say that amongst the up-coming generation they are a healthy majority (I don't think I'd place the original thread poster in that group, but s/he may just be upset). The last generation got hold of some money after decades of poverty, so an "I'm now the emperor" attitude is probably to be expected. They'll get over it.
And if you want REALLY obnoxious self-superiority, hang out in a foreigners' bar here for a few hours. I'm sometimes embarrassed to be a foreigner.
I'm not sure about the rope instead of iron reinforcing, but it rings true in the context of a small number of very dodgy contractors that usually end up being shot for criminal negligence endangering (or, sadly, taking) lives. A half-constructed building across the road from where I work here in Qingdao half collapsed, and every night the following week the local construction sights were waving huge, long, loud strings of firecrackers off the ends of all their construction cranes.
Bad engineering? Corrupt materials suppliers? Lack of competent safety inspectors? Nah!, must be evil spirits. This will scare 'em off!
No joke!
I do worry about how Olympic athletes will take to air so sulfur-rich you can feel it burning your nasal lining. They may have Beijing cleaned up by then, but only if they start heavily restricting car use in the city (like a lot of Western cities are having to do now), and I don't see that happening.
Chinese always tell me how beautiful Sydney was on the telly in 2000. Well, yes, the bit shown on the telly was. There are parts of Sydney I can't tell from the back of Shenyang (before they started cleaning the place up at an unbelievably impressive rate).
I notice here in Qingdao there are a lot of bus stop shelters made of large tinted glass panels. They have been there for several months and look very nice. Then I wonder how many hours such a thing would last in the West before someone put a brick through it.
-------- * you under-estimated brothels (or maybe I underestimate the number where you come from - I'm from semi-rural Australia), at least in the city centers: many are half-disguised but a colleague once pointed out what to look for from the bus (no I will not tell the slashdot readership - that is one business China does NOT need any more of!). I have trouble believing there is such a great need. Good grief, it's just using someone else's body to masturbate with. Use your hand for cripes sake!
Blocking such rabidly anti-communist sites as 1394ta.org, linux-usb.org and libpng.org. (Taken from the list I feed to my via-open-proxy tunneling setup that easily bypasses their crappy censor -- and eveyone in China with their own computer knows how to do).
You have a point, but authoritarian censorship doesn't teach people anything but how to abstain from thinking for themselves. You need to teach people to decide for themselves what is crap. Doing it for them teaches them nothing. This argument comes up in the west with the 'net nanny' style software pushed off on parents and public libraries too. It is the same idea, and you will find as many supporters as objectors to both approaches.
The thing that strikes me about the Chinese Government's attitude to external criticism is its blatant immaturity. Are their egos really THAT fragile that they can't handle a rag paper taking a few column inches time out from dissing its own government to say nasty things about them? Apparently so. I almost feel sympathy for such people... but not quite.
And all this missile-posturing over Taiwan is just so lower-primary-bully it would be amusing if it wasn't so dangerous. Of course the US stiring up the independence movement to distract people from problems at home when most Tiawanese couldn't give two shits where the line is drawn on the map as long as they are independent in real terms (ie the status quo) and if it keeps the Chinese Govt. happy in their corner of the playground to say they own that set of seats over there but the 3rd-years can sit on them anyway, let them call Taiwan a subject state in exile.
Re: development problems, I think that it is not only that they have different problems but the problems are much more exaggerated by the speed of the progress too.
Controlled advancement is a valid argument, but I think more in economic terms than in information access. Not that the West is much less controled. The control is just at the disemination point rather than at the speech point. Anyone can speak freely, but it is still rather hard to get access to a wide audience. Labeling anyone outside the norm as a tinfoil hat wearer is the usual method. There are enough loonies that it is quite easy to push a few inconveniently outspoken correct types in with them without too much notice. The earlier reply to your post, as an example. Even minor-party politicians serving in office have a real hard time getting press space.
Re: 'Forward'. Yes, there are a few things the West could learn from the East. Unfortunately China is thowing out all their good habits in favor of Western bad habits while ignoring Western good habits. They end up with the worst of both worlds.
A good number of younger mid-level public officials I have spoken with off the record are well aware of the problems mentioned.
One of my colleage foreign teachers here in China came to me complaining her MS-Word documents wouldn't open anymore. I ran some AV software over her system and found just over 100 infections covering around 30 viruses, including 4 backdoors and a mail transport agent.
I can guarentee that just about every computer connected up to the University broadband is similar. The network grinds to a halt from 8am onwards as people come in to work and switch on their office/classroom systems.
I'm working on trying them to get some REAL AV software installed across the campus (instead of the snakeoil one the Universities around here all use because it is cheap). It is a slow process -- they are happy to spend 2millionRMB on a new front gate because they think it will improve the status of the univesity (it's an ugly, tacked-together monolith that doesn't match the other buildings), but spend money on things related to a better teaching/learning environment?? No further comment!
...the upcoming generation of middle-class kids have a larger proportion of decent folks amongst them, so things are getting better.
Re: the littering -- they treat their own country like a big waste--bin and toilet bowl (then expect others to respect their country), I'm not surprised they do the same to other's countries too. I doubt they even think about what theyare doing.
Sadly, this isn't too far off the truth. That's from someone living here the past 5 years.
Keep in mind, also, that the Chinese you see as tourists are the rich ones (the ones living like kings) and they are the REALLY obnoxious ones (with a few exceptions). Having money is the only goal of most people around here and they don't understand or respect anything else. If you are rich enough to own a car (and hence choke the atmosphere for your own grandchildren) over here, you are a mini-emperor and you expect all people on bicycle or foot to clear away from your blaring horn and bow down to your superior wealth. Then you will drive to the zoo for an afternoon of laughter at spitting at the monkeys (the monkeys have learned to spit back, which really is funny). Barbarians with cash -- middle-class Chinese (with a few exceptions).
You want to see an extremely class-stratified society? Here it is!
Of course, 70% of the foreigners living over here make me cringe over their obnoxious attitudes and behaviour too.
Point one - China is also the world leader in solar energy. (As an Australian, I hang my head in shame).
Point two - point one notwithstanding, China gets most of its eletrical power ATM off brown-coal (very high sulfur content) which is why in Beijing you really can feel the air burning the the inside of your nostrils on a bad day.
On the local (ie Chinese) news last night, big stories on several chanels about China's eletrical power shortage, with factories having to only run night shifts, cancel big orders and subsequently lay off workers because they don't have the power to operate their machinery. I don't have exact figures at hand, but I believe well over half the population is yet to be connected to the grid.
Chinese diet is becoming westernised and obesity is starting to become common in the population.
A human-powered bicycle starts to look better again. But mainland Chinese are very physical-effort adverse as breaking a sweat is considered 'workerish'. Really! (This is, of course, a gross generalisation and all of my own Chinese friends here are exceptions).
And all that hard breathing of Beijing (or Shanghai, or any city, really) air probably does more health damage than two packs a day. I doubt it is coincidence that major respitary illnesses come out of this part of the world mostly, what with the pollution, the dense population and everyone spitting like lamas everywhere!
My unit leader was saying the other day that when he was a boy there was spring and autumn (fall) in this region but there isn't anymore. And if you can see Venus on a 'clear' night, you are going well!
A bit ecclectic above, sorry, I'm in a rush to catch the university bus into the city for weekend grocery shopping.
Lucky they didn't say "and so on" which is one thing I have to spend a long long time getting my Chinese English students to stop doing in formal writing.
I dislike Apple more than I dislike Microsoft. Possibly because I have never had a strong attachment to MS, but used to love Apple to bits and there is no fury like a zealot betrayed.
Many Apple products are still very good. But I wouldn't trust the company, and particularly Jobs, any further than I could kick them up a chimney.
Yeah, I get sick of Chinese nationals (I live in China) asking me what I am going to do about President Bush because I'm Australian and they can't tell the difference. True! It is REALLY annoying.
Bad enough living in a place with local mountains and winter sun to the south when I grew up with both to the north! Now I've got East and West inverted!
Slashdot Mirror
> "slow down" by accelerating
I do this all the time. I can also turn the corner by accelerating. In fact it is not possible to slow down or turn a corner in any other way!
Acceleration is a word even more mis-used than 'theory'. It simply means to change speed or direction. Not just 'getting faster'.
'Overpriced' only applies to people who are not willing to pay that much money (duh ;-).
Any product that is selling well in a market with competition CANNOT be overpriced, in the market sense.
Overpriced for you - yes
Overpriced for me - yes
Overpriced for the market - no
Business isn't a charity. Public companies are legally required to price their products/services for maximum shareholder return. They have to find the balance point between raw profit, and how many people will buy at that price (volume). If pricing 80% of the market out makes more profit than selling to 80% of the market at a lower price, tough luck for the poorer 80% of the market. This, of course, assumes a competitive marketplace, which the iPod seems to be in.
Manufacturing capacity is also a factor - if your warehouse is constantly understocked and you cannot increase factory output, it means you are UNDERPRICED: increase the price to re-align demand with maximum supply.
'Overpriced' only occurs if you are making less money at current price/volume than you would by increased volume of sales at a lower price.
You seem to be leaping too far in one go, that's all. Below is speculation by a non-specialist. Grains of salt should be used. :-P
> How did a simple but robust single-cell organism spontaneously "evolve" into a more complex multi-cell organism?
Incomplete cell separation, possibly suddenly making the - now larger - organism less ingestible for other organisms (due to size). This is the only 'spontaneous' major evolution I can imagine, because it happens at such a basic level.
> Why did organisms that reproduced asexually "evolve" into creatures that require a male and female component which is far less efficient?
Via an intermediate stage where both forms of reproduction are possible depending on circumstances. Plenty of lifeforms still carry on like this today. It likely later became an 'advantage' to specialise as two sexes permanently and the hermaphrodite capability was sufficiently lost to be difficult to quickly reclaim even if it later became an advantage again. At least one species of fish has made good progress in backtracking here.
I agree that hermaphroditism is more efficient for animals like us with internal fertilisation (hey, shouldn't an omnipotent god have been able to work that one out in advance if you and I can?) But it may have been a disadvantage with external fertilisation (self-fertilisation and associated in-breeding being more difficult to avoid - coral polyps go to quite an expensive biochemical process to keep their own sperm away from their own eggs, I believe). And it is too-far gone to get back there (again, no big leaps - you need a god - or at least VERY advanced intelligence-directed genetic manipulations - for that sort of thing)
Aside: I have trouble with the idea that a God would create male and female of all higher animals, then only create a man and forget the female of his 'highest' creation until the man complained about it. If he had never intended a complementary sex, why make the first human as a 'man' anyway? An immortal neuter would have been fine and less trouble (a neuter wouldn't complain about an absence of women, either, and the whole sorry saga could have been omnipotently avoided).
> And if one of those spontaneously evolved into something that required a mate, what's the probability that it just happened to bump into another similar organism that also just spontaneously evolved into the opposite gender of this new mutation?
See above. You seem to be hooked on 'spontaneous' evolution, which is probably very convenient for supporting your chosen belief, but at odds with what is generally accepted as likely. There were transitions when both systems would work depending on what was available. Animals don't change over one generation. You would go from hermaphrodite, to some members of the species being better at one role or the other, to specialisation.
Evolution implies gradual change. Sudden change is generally considered a creationist idea.
That doesn't discount the existence of a god that decided to use evolution to achieve an end - heck, if you want true omnipotence, look at setting up the universe's laws of physics to get a planned result billions of years later! Most (all?) Human religions just suffer a lack of true scope, having developed in a time when few people were aware of what was happening beyond their own view of the horizon. If there is a god (and that question is outside of science, as any true scientist will tell you), that god is a lot bigger and more powerful than any human has even dreamed.
Assuming you want a big powerful god! Most people seem to balk if the god becomes too big for human control. And keeping god and the universe small enough that we can still convince ourselves we are the pinnacle of it all, rather than one of possibly many highlights along the way to something even greater.
Ah... assuming said company has competition they want to undercut, most of the saved money will go into making the product/service cheaper. Which in turn means their customers now have more cash at THEIR disposals.
And so on.
The increased sales (not just from competitors' customers, but ALSO from new customers who couldn't afford the old price, but can afford the new) increases sales. Oh gosh: Need more people on the shop floor and in the cubicle farm.
Or their competition gets there first and undercuts them. This is supposed to be a free and competitive market!
Assuming the company has no competition, yes: CEO gets more money in his bank account. Proprietry software is the only place I know where this situation is common.
Even in the latter case, the CEO's money eventually gets spent or invested SOMEWHERE, generating some sort of employment, that employment, then leading to someone else having more money to spend on something else. Money doesn't generally fall into black holes in large quantities. It circulates in the economy (grandmothers burying it in tins in the back yard notwithstanding). Savings in one place pop up as expenses elsewhere.
The trick to life is to make this as efficient as can be so as much of the expenses as possible are on things that make life enjoyable and worthwhile, rather than having to spend it all on boring stuff. Why else bother with it all otherwise?
> ...first off, how do you identify it? "Umm yeah I was just doing one-handed investigative work for the police, looking at those pics"
Or try:
"I wanted to download a video by my favorite open-music band and was really pissed off and offended by this junk I got instead. By way of revenge on the person who misled me into wasting my bandwidth downloading this, I am reporting them."
I *really* resent mis-labeled files (do these people get off on the number of hits to their share or something?).
The not mis-labeled stuff - well that's a filter's job.
Just tie it into the honor system already in some P2P systems to help with this problem.
An AC. ;-)
See them all the time around here!
You'd block your ability to reply to 71% of your spam, since it is the reply-site hosting that the 71% figure was talking about.
MY ISP (In Australia) does a pretty good job of filtering spam. I get one or two a day on a address I have been at for several years.
The downside is that at least one of my Chinese friends is unable to email me directly from her usual account. I solved it by setting her up on a Yahoo webmail account in the US.
Or go to Australia or the US and be bored to death on unemployment benefit. At least China is giving me a job.
BTW: I went through your list. Unfortunately, I can't deny any of it, though you have pulled worst-case situations* - yes, there are many toilets as described, but many spotlessly clean ones too. And there is a large minority of perfectly nice middle-class Chinese about. I would even say that amongst the up-coming generation they are a healthy majority (I don't think I'd place the original thread poster in that group, but s/he may just be upset). The last generation got hold of some money after decades of poverty, so an "I'm now the emperor" attitude is probably to be expected. They'll get over it.
And if you want REALLY obnoxious self-superiority, hang out in a foreigners' bar here for a few hours. I'm sometimes embarrassed to be a foreigner.
I'm not sure about the rope instead of iron reinforcing, but it rings true in the context of a small number of very dodgy contractors that usually end up being shot for criminal negligence endangering (or, sadly, taking) lives. A half-constructed building across the road from where I work here in Qingdao half collapsed, and every night the following week the local construction sights were waving huge, long, loud strings of firecrackers off the ends of all their construction cranes.
Bad engineering? Corrupt materials suppliers? Lack of competent safety inspectors? Nah!, must be evil spirits. This will scare 'em off!
No joke!
I do worry about how Olympic athletes will take to air so sulfur-rich you can feel it burning your nasal lining. They may have Beijing cleaned up by then, but only if they start heavily restricting car use in the city (like a lot of Western cities are having to do now), and I don't see that happening.
Chinese always tell me how beautiful Sydney was on the telly in 2000. Well, yes, the bit shown on the telly was. There are parts of Sydney I can't tell from the back of Shenyang (before they started cleaning the place up at an unbelievably impressive rate).
I notice here in Qingdao there are a lot of bus stop shelters made of large tinted glass panels. They have been there for several months and look very nice. Then I wonder how many hours such a thing would last in the West before someone put a brick through it.
--------
* you under-estimated brothels (or maybe I underestimate the number where you come from - I'm from semi-rural Australia), at least in the city centers: many are half-disguised but a colleague once pointed out what to look for from the bus (no I will not tell the slashdot readership - that is one business China does NOT need any more of!). I have trouble believing there is such a great need. Good grief, it's just using someone else's body to masturbate with. Use your hand for cripes sake!
Tired of working for eight cents a day?
Tough -- just do it!
_...
Actually, I think they are typed by low-grade Western marketers. Now THAT is a group that SHOULD be put into slavery.
Blocking such rabidly anti-communist sites as 1394ta.org, linux-usb.org and libpng.org. (Taken from the list I feed to my via-open-proxy tunneling setup that easily bypasses their crappy censor -- and eveyone in China with their own computer knows how to do).
I was getting a lot in Korean for a while back in '02.
You have a point, but authoritarian censorship doesn't teach people anything but how to abstain from thinking for themselves. You need to teach people to decide for themselves what is crap. Doing it for them teaches them nothing. This argument comes up in the west with the 'net nanny' style software pushed off on parents and public libraries too. It is the same idea, and you will find as many supporters as objectors to both approaches.
The thing that strikes me about the Chinese Government's attitude to external criticism is its blatant immaturity. Are their egos really THAT fragile that they can't handle a rag paper taking a few column inches time out from dissing its own government to say nasty things about them? Apparently so. I almost feel sympathy for such people... but not quite.
And all this missile-posturing over Taiwan is just so lower-primary-bully it would be amusing if it wasn't so dangerous. Of course the US stiring up the independence movement to distract people from problems at home when most Tiawanese couldn't give two shits where the line is drawn on the map as long as they are independent in real terms (ie the status quo) and if it keeps the Chinese Govt. happy in their corner of the playground to say they own that set of seats over there but the 3rd-years can sit on them anyway, let them call Taiwan a subject state in exile.
Re: development problems, I think that it is not only that they have different problems but the problems are much more exaggerated by the speed of the progress too.
Controlled advancement is a valid argument, but I think more in economic terms than in information access. Not that the West is much less controled. The control is just at the disemination point rather than at the speech point. Anyone can speak freely, but it is still rather hard to get access to a wide audience. Labeling anyone outside the norm as a tinfoil hat wearer is the usual method. There are enough loonies that it is quite easy to push a few inconveniently outspoken correct types in with them without too much notice. The earlier reply to your post, as an example. Even minor-party politicians serving in office have a real hard time getting press space.
Re: 'Forward'. Yes, there are a few things the West could learn from the East. Unfortunately China is thowing out all their good habits in favor of Western bad habits while ignoring Western good habits. They end up with the worst of both worlds.
A good number of younger mid-level public officials I have spoken with off the record are well aware of the problems mentioned.
One of my colleage foreign teachers here in China came to me complaining her MS-Word documents wouldn't open anymore. I ran some AV software over her system and found just over 100 infections covering around 30 viruses, including 4 backdoors and a mail transport agent.
I can guarentee that just about every computer connected up to the University broadband is similar. The network grinds to a halt from 8am onwards as people come in to work and switch on their office/classroom systems.
I'm working on trying them to get some REAL AV software installed across the campus (instead of the snakeoil one the Universities around here all use because it is cheap). It is a slow process -- they are happy to spend 2millionRMB on a new front gate because they think it will improve the status of the univesity (it's an ugly, tacked-together monolith that doesn't match the other buildings), but spend money on things related to a better teaching/learning environment?? No further comment!
...the upcoming generation of middle-class kids have a larger proportion of decent folks amongst them, so things are getting better.
Re: the littering -- they treat their own country like a big waste--bin and toilet bowl (then expect others to respect their country), I'm not surprised they do the same to other's countries too. I doubt they even think about what theyare doing.
Sadly, this isn't too far off the truth. That's from someone living here the past 5 years.
Keep in mind, also, that the Chinese you see as tourists are the rich ones (the ones living like kings) and they are the REALLY obnoxious ones (with a few exceptions). Having money is the only goal of most people around here and they don't understand or respect anything else. If you are rich enough to own a car (and hence choke the atmosphere for your own grandchildren) over here, you are a mini-emperor and you expect all people on bicycle or foot to clear away from your blaring horn and bow down to your superior wealth. Then you will drive to the zoo for an afternoon of laughter at spitting at the monkeys (the monkeys have learned to spit back, which really is funny). Barbarians with cash -- middle-class Chinese (with a few exceptions).
You want to see an extremely class-stratified society? Here it is!
Of course, 70% of the foreigners living over here make me cringe over their obnoxious attitudes and behaviour too.
Point one - China is also the world leader in solar energy. (As an Australian, I hang my head in shame).
Point two - point one notwithstanding, China gets most of its eletrical power ATM off brown-coal (very high sulfur content) which is why in Beijing you really can feel the air burning the the inside of your nostrils on a bad day.
On the local (ie Chinese) news last night, big stories on several chanels about China's eletrical power shortage, with factories having to only run night shifts, cancel big orders and subsequently lay off workers because they don't have the power to operate their machinery. I don't have exact figures at hand, but I believe well over half the population is yet to be connected to the grid.
Chinese diet is becoming westernised and obesity is starting to become common in the population.
A human-powered bicycle starts to look better again. But mainland Chinese are very physical-effort adverse as breaking a sweat is considered 'workerish'. Really! (This is, of course, a gross generalisation and all of my own Chinese friends here are exceptions).
And all that hard breathing of Beijing (or Shanghai, or any city, really) air probably does more health damage than two packs a day. I doubt it is coincidence that major respitary illnesses come out of this part of the world mostly, what with the pollution, the dense population and everyone spitting like lamas everywhere!
My unit leader was saying the other day that when he was a boy there was spring and autumn (fall) in this region but there isn't anymore. And if you can see Venus on a 'clear' night, you are going well!
A bit ecclectic above, sorry, I'm in a rush to catch the university bus into the city for weekend grocery shopping.
Lucky they didn't say "and so on" which is one thing I have to spend a long long time getting my Chinese English students to stop doing in formal writing.
I dislike Apple more than I dislike Microsoft. Possibly because I have never had a strong attachment to MS, but used to love Apple to bits and there is no fury like a zealot betrayed.
Many Apple products are still very good. But I wouldn't trust the company, and particularly Jobs, any further than I could kick them up a chimney.
Personal opinion of course.
Yes, we didn't rip them all out, though we came close!
And if you want to make an A5-sized booklet, print it 2-up on A4, appropriately interleaved, staple down the middle and fold.
"OMG! It's full of .... nothing!"
I mean, they KNOW I'm Australian when they ask. Not that they can't visually tell the difference, which I couldn't either.
Yeah, I get sick of Chinese nationals (I live in China) asking me what I am going to do about President Bush because I'm Australian and they can't tell the difference. True! It is REALLY annoying.
I guess they could email them 15% of their code contributions. Maybe every seventh character of the entire code base.
Bad enough living in a place with local mountains and winter sun to the south when I grew up with both to the north! Now I've got East and West inverted!