China does indeed block porn out due to moral concerns. Socialist morality is real and predates the people's revolution. I know tons of Chinese people and precisely two religious folk. It's funny, the most isolated (from the rest of China) and outward-facing city, Wenzhou, has more Christians than just about any other place I've seen. It's also funny that you can use Christians because they're so blinkeredly honest. A businessman friend of mine swears by (Chinese) Christian accountants. He would never anyone else for the position because Christians have this goofy moral code that says they shouldn't steal and lie like the rest of the population of China.
China did tear down temples and persecute monks relentlessly. The real Shaolin monastery was destroyed. Any temple you see has been rebuilt since the 80s. The Tibetans in particular suffered from atheist persecution when their theocratic state was conquered. The Falun Gong might be a crazy cult but they fulfilled a need, a great spiritual hunger that was going unsatisfied.
Disagreement is different from lack of knowledge. Calling somebody ignorant just because it disagrees with your worldview is wrong. Stop doing it.
Yeah, I noticed this recently. I popped in the name of my favorite porn sample aggregator and it loaded, as did all the sites it linked to. Later, I tried to go to youtube - blocked! It turns out my VPN was off the whole time and I hadn't noticed. These porno sites were all blocked before. I don't believe it's de jure illegal to access porn sites, but it is illegal to host them for sure. Online porn is one of the things that the Chinese mafia does in its IT divisions.
What China needs is to produce its own domestic porn. There is no shortage of women ready and willing to do whatever is required. They have Taiwanese and HK porn but it sucks (ask for "yellow DVD/huang1 de DVD" at your friendly neighborhood DVD shop). To many mainland Chinese, the only context they see white women in is pornos or mainstream media. This distorts their viewpoint of all white women. A couple of my friends get harassed all the time because they have blonde hair and nice chests. Everyone assumes they're prostitutes because they look like the women that the Chinese see in pornos. Come on, how many of you immediately think of "kung fu" (or worse, "karate") when you see a Chinese person? Associations are there and they are real.
Careful, you are treading on dangerous ground. Population expansion not occurring in Western countries, only in Third World nations. The conclusion you are leading up to is highly offensive racism.
Funny, back when I used to work in toll fraud at one of the Big Three, we regularly had overseas calls in the $3-4 range per minute. A popular destination was Vanuatu along with some other Pacific islands, easily the most expensive of them all. I never really understood porn over voice. Any time I saw the country codes for Pacific islands, I blocked them immediately. Another popular destination for toll fraud was 809, which was part of NANPA but still counted as overseas (Caribbean islands) and thus ran up big charges quickly. The most expensive fee per minute I ever saw was a puzzling destination of INMARSAT. What kind of country is that, I thought to myself as I dialed the number to check what it was. Seaman Mumble picked up the call, it was the bridge of a Navy destroyer! INMARSAT was/is a satellite communications provider for ships at sea. $5.50 per minute, the highest I ever saw.
The point of this rambling post is that toll fraud seems much cheaper these days. Fifty cents a minute to Antarctica seems like nothing compared to rates back in the day.
Comparable to having sex on a boat. It's fucking close to water. European person: What's up with this barley water? 241 thumbs up.
What the rest of the world knows as water. I thought I asked for a beer, not a dasani. 179 thumbs up.
Dog piss and fairy sauce. The crappiest beer ever. Australian and european beer is the best! yuck taste this crap. its called american beer...
no thanks! 144 thumbs up.
Huffington Post: "The 9 Countries With The Worst Beer In The World". Guess who comes in at #1, as voted by a diverse range of the world's population? Do we really need any more [citations] and footnotes?
The reason for this is back in 1920 our government had the bright idea to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, improve health and hygiene, and reduce the tax burden on poorhouses and prisons by making alcohol illegal to produce, consume, transport, buy, or sell. Prohibition. All distilleries and breweries were shut down and their inventory destroyed (except for a few that were crafty enough to slip under the government's radar). When these breweries were closed down, most of them permanently, their progress in the field of crafting tasty beer was stopped and forgotten. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was making beer like they had been for the past 500 years. Eventually, in 1933, prohibition was lifted and production of alcohol started with a clean slate. This is why American beer sucks: because there is no history, not as much trial-and-error time to get it right as everyone else had. And we haven't even broached the subject of Canadian beer, either, so STFU.
700 years ago, you either believed in the bible or you were burned at the stake. 70 years ago in Germany or the Soviet Union, you "believed" in Hitler or Stalin respectively, or you were sent to the concentration camp. 7 years ago, you went "hoo-rah!" with invading Iraq, or you were person non grata some places.
Nice false moral equivalence. From the rest of your post, it sounds like you have serious issues that require you to make moral equivalences. What could those be?
Why would anyone need to be "in the closet" about anything? This implies discrimination and penalties for the way you think. Scientists should be above such petty things. Science is purely objective, why do the personalities of those who practice it matter? Reproducible results are all that matter.
If there is a discrimination problem, what should be done about it? The usual answer is education, but scientists are already educated. I was often taught that education was an effective remedy for small-mindedness, and the uneducated are far more inclined to be closed-minded. Come to think of it, it was educated people who told me that.
Many unions are mafia-controlled, especially in the northeast. It's a sad fact of life. Deal with it.
Funny, from my diverse perspective, destruction, oppression, and authoritarianism are left-wing ideals. What is the leftist position on the creativity allowed by free enterprise?
I love how "geographically aware" applications will happily direct me to Japan or Taiwan when the link from America is far faster. Why the hell should something route me to Japan when I start from Thailand? Or route to Taiwan from China? WTF? I suppose in some people's tiny minds, this makes sense, but in reality the USA link is usually much faster.
They are not artists, they are craftsmen. There is no creativity in fixing a leaky toilet. A plumber cannot speak with authority on interesting subjects while an artist certainly can.
Yes it does. Mouth-breathers don't get into universities, most of them know better than to even apply. The vast majority of morons want nothing more from life than to drink alcohol among people who think like they do and practice their comfortable bigotry together. They are not aware that seeking diversity is the best thing in life - far from it, they actually feel better in homogeneous groups. Some people are just smarter than others, and universities are where such people are naturally congregated. Let me guess, you feel slighted because you're in an area slighted by the survey? It's a survey, it's objective, you're only feeling slighted because you're engaging in projection.
I dare anyone to name something as emotionally satisfying as facing a seemingly insurmountable problem...and then finding a solution.
In a nutshell, this is exactly what's wrong with the United States circa 2010. This is a ridiculously dominionist viewpoint, common among the Christian Right. In a politico-religious context, dominionism is the tendency among some conservative politically-active Christians to seek influence or control over secular civil government through political action. The goal is either a nation governed by Christians, or a nation governed by a conservative Christian understanding of biblical law.
So guess what, fuck you and your polluting cars. Fuck you and your idea that anyone who doesn't share your viewpoint is an "insurmountable problem". As far as your idea of a "solution" goes, let's just hope it's not the "final" variety.
Oh that is so racist I don't even know where to start. Can we please not place left-wing baiting tropes before the masses? It shows an appalling lack of class consciousness.
What's more important? You can have internet or the endangered Mount Graham Red Squirrels can have an environment free of redneck construction workers fucking everything up? You think maybe those laws exist for a reason?
Obama: Gov't in charge of oil disaster response
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama defensively and sometimes testily insisted on Thursday that his administration, not oil giant BP, was calling the shots in responding to the worst oil spill in the nation's history.
"I take responsibility. It is my job to make sure this thing is shut down," Obama declared at a news conference in the East Room of the White House. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill dominated the hour-long session.
Whew...I was getting worried about this one. But, it looks like we can chalk up another victory for Obama and his environmental record. This incident should put a stop to offshore drilling, which is good. The price of gasoline should go up to eight dollars a gallon, that should keep people from wasting it.
Like I said, good idea in theory, total bullshit in practice. Unless you're willing to ally yourself with theists who actually believe bullshit like this:
"Rebecca Turner is a successful online entrepreneur who created a website to teach people about lucid dreaming, aptly named World of Lucid Dreaming. She's been a regular participant in our discussion forums. After watching her openly share eBusiness tips with other forum members over a period of months, I asked her if I could interview her for my blog, so she can share what she's learned with many more people. Rebecca used Site Build It! to create her website. Since many people are curious about what kind of real-world results can be achieved with Site Build It!, I asked her if she'd be willing to share specific traffic and income figures from her business' first year online, and thankfully she agreed. I think you'll find her results encouraging. If you aren't familiar with lucid dreaming, a lucid dream is a dream where you become consciously aware that you're dreaming. With practice you can learn to do all sorts of amazing things in lucid dreams -- fly like Superman, wield a light saber, jump around like Trinity in The Matrix, create dream characters out of thin air, move objects by thought, defeat the Kobayashi Maru, and lots more. Erin and I are both experienced lucid dreamers."
You can understand how you are allying yourself with the worst sort of "believer". Come on...Kobayashi Maru? WTF? How can educated folk actually believe in this sort of transparent bullshit? This deserves the worst kind of derision and disrespect that we, as a culture, can dish out. But nooooo....let's all sign up for "Site Build It!" through the affiliate link! Then let's go to church! Praise Hermes!
It's more like, "judge a man by the company he keeps". Or as They Might Be Giants said, "This is where the party ends, I can't stand here listening to you and your racist friend. I know politics bore you, but I feel like a hypocrite talking to you and your racist friend." As soon as you take this position, you're in bed with the worst kind of theistic believer, and that simply cannot be good, ever.
"Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of Teabaggers doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit."
What this article is talking about is "lucid dreaming", or being able to control your dreams. While this sounds like a good idea in theory, in practice it is dominated by the worst sort of idiots. It is directly tied to Shamanism, out-of-body experience, and other ridiculous theistic tropes that have long been discredited in our scientific atheist world. "Amazing Lucid Dreaming Kit! Mind Blowing Results. 29 FREE Lucid Dreaming mp3 Audios. New Technology Combines Binaural Frequencies, Hypnosis and Subliminals." Does this sound like something that an educated person would have anything to do with? HELL NO! But here it is, presented as acceptable, on the front page of slashdot. Sad...sad.
Theft? Nobody has been deprived of anything, IP is intangible. These designers are still free to sell whatever they want, to whomever will buy it. Honestly, would Old Navy shoppers really be in the market for a thousand dollar dress that could only be worn once?
And you might want to tone down that "Obviously you haven't heard of *obscure reference*." No, we haven't, and you could consider explaining it instead of telling us how whatever it is makes you sympathetic to megacorps enforcing IP laws. I doubt you'll get a lot of sympathy for that, although I'm sure that wasn't your goal, withering contempt for anyone who's not in "your industry" seemed to be the goal.
Slashdot Mirror
China does indeed block porn out due to moral concerns. Socialist morality is real and predates the people's revolution. I know tons of Chinese people and precisely two religious folk. It's funny, the most isolated (from the rest of China) and outward-facing city, Wenzhou, has more Christians than just about any other place I've seen. It's also funny that you can use Christians because they're so blinkeredly honest. A businessman friend of mine swears by (Chinese) Christian accountants. He would never anyone else for the position because Christians have this goofy moral code that says they shouldn't steal and lie like the rest of the population of China.
China did tear down temples and persecute monks relentlessly. The real Shaolin monastery was destroyed. Any temple you see has been rebuilt since the 80s. The Tibetans in particular suffered from atheist persecution when their theocratic state was conquered. The Falun Gong might be a crazy cult but they fulfilled a need, a great spiritual hunger that was going unsatisfied.
Disagreement is different from lack of knowledge. Calling somebody ignorant just because it disagrees with your worldview is wrong. Stop doing it.
Yeah, I noticed this recently. I popped in the name of my favorite porn sample aggregator and it loaded, as did all the sites it linked to. Later, I tried to go to youtube - blocked! It turns out my VPN was off the whole time and I hadn't noticed. These porno sites were all blocked before. I don't believe it's de jure illegal to access porn sites, but it is illegal to host them for sure. Online porn is one of the things that the Chinese mafia does in its IT divisions.
What China needs is to produce its own domestic porn. There is no shortage of women ready and willing to do whatever is required. They have Taiwanese and HK porn but it sucks (ask for "yellow DVD/huang1 de DVD" at your friendly neighborhood DVD shop). To many mainland Chinese, the only context they see white women in is pornos or mainstream media. This distorts their viewpoint of all white women. A couple of my friends get harassed all the time because they have blonde hair and nice chests. Everyone assumes they're prostitutes because they look like the women that the Chinese see in pornos. Come on, how many of you immediately think of "kung fu" (or worse, "karate") when you see a Chinese person? Associations are there and they are real.
Careful, you are treading on dangerous ground. Population expansion not occurring in Western countries, only in Third World nations. The conclusion you are leading up to is highly offensive racism.
Q: Why is starting a comment in the Subject: line incredibly irritating?
The point of this rambling post is that toll fraud seems much cheaper these days. Fifty cents a minute to Antarctica seems like nothing compared to rates back in the day.
American beer defined at urbandictionary.com:
Comparable to having sex on a boat. It's fucking close to water.
European person: What's up with this barley water? 241 thumbs up.
What the rest of the world knows as water.
I thought I asked for a beer, not a dasani. 179 thumbs up.
Dog piss and fairy sauce. The crappiest beer ever. Australian and european beer is the best!
yuck taste this crap. its called american beer...
no thanks! 144 thumbs up.
Huffington Post: "The 9 Countries With The Worst Beer In The World". Guess who comes in at #1, as voted by a diverse range of the world's population? Do we really need any more [citations] and footnotes?
The reason for this is back in 1920 our government had the bright idea to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, improve health and hygiene, and reduce the tax burden on poorhouses and prisons by making alcohol illegal to produce, consume, transport, buy, or sell. Prohibition. All distilleries and breweries were shut down and their inventory destroyed (except for a few that were crafty enough to slip under the government's radar). When these breweries were closed down, most of them permanently, their progress in the field of crafting tasty beer was stopped and forgotten. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was making beer like they had been for the past 500 years. Eventually, in 1933, prohibition was lifted and production of alcohol started with a clean slate. This is why American beer sucks: because there is no history, not as much trial-and-error time to get it right as everyone else had. And we haven't even broached the subject of Canadian beer, either, so STFU.
Nice false moral equivalence. From the rest of your post, it sounds like you have serious issues that require you to make moral equivalences. What could those be?
Why would anyone need to be "in the closet" about anything? This implies discrimination and penalties for the way you think. Scientists should be above such petty things. Science is purely objective, why do the personalities of those who practice it matter? Reproducible results are all that matter.
If there is a discrimination problem, what should be done about it? The usual answer is education, but scientists are already educated. I was often taught that education was an effective remedy for small-mindedness, and the uneducated are far more inclined to be closed-minded. Come to think of it, it was educated people who told me that.
Many unions are mafia-controlled, especially in the northeast. It's a sad fact of life. Deal with it.
Funny, from my diverse perspective, destruction, oppression, and authoritarianism are left-wing ideals. What is the leftist position on the creativity allowed by free enterprise?
I love how "geographically aware" applications will happily direct me to Japan or Taiwan when the link from America is far faster. Why the hell should something route me to Japan when I start from Thailand? Or route to Taiwan from China? WTF? I suppose in some people's tiny minds, this makes sense, but in reality the USA link is usually much faster.
They are not artists, they are craftsmen. There is no creativity in fixing a leaky toilet. A plumber cannot speak with authority on interesting subjects while an artist certainly can.
Yes it does. Mouth-breathers don't get into universities, most of them know better than to even apply. The vast majority of morons want nothing more from life than to drink alcohol among people who think like they do and practice their comfortable bigotry together. They are not aware that seeking diversity is the best thing in life - far from it, they actually feel better in homogeneous groups. Some people are just smarter than others, and universities are where such people are naturally congregated. Let me guess, you feel slighted because you're in an area slighted by the survey? It's a survey, it's objective, you're only feeling slighted because you're engaging in projection.
There's a difference between Unions and Mafia now? Hunh. I learn something new every day...
I dare anyone to name something as emotionally satisfying as facing a seemingly insurmountable problem...and then finding a solution.
In a nutshell, this is exactly what's wrong with the United States circa 2010. This is a ridiculously dominionist viewpoint, common among the Christian Right. In a politico-religious context, dominionism is the tendency among some conservative politically-active Christians to seek influence or control over secular civil government through political action. The goal is either a nation governed by Christians, or a nation governed by a conservative Christian understanding of biblical law.
So guess what, fuck you and your polluting cars. Fuck you and your idea that anyone who doesn't share your viewpoint is an "insurmountable problem". As far as your idea of a "solution" goes, let's just hope it's not the "final" variety.
Oh that is so racist I don't even know where to start. Can we please not place left-wing baiting tropes before the masses? It shows an appalling lack of class consciousness.
What's more important? You can have internet or the endangered Mount Graham Red Squirrels can have an environment free of redneck construction workers fucking everything up? You think maybe those laws exist for a reason?
Obama: Gov't in charge of oil disaster response
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama defensively and sometimes testily insisted on Thursday that his administration, not oil giant BP, was calling the shots in responding to the worst oil spill in the nation's history.
"I take responsibility. It is my job to make sure this thing is shut down," Obama declared at a news conference in the East Room of the White House. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill dominated the hour-long session.
You're too old to be reading Wired. You're not their target customer.
Criminals are stupid and will actually do things like present their real IDs. Prisons aren't full of masterminds, you know.
Whew...I was getting worried about this one. But, it looks like we can chalk up another victory for Obama and his environmental record. This incident should put a stop to offshore drilling, which is good. The price of gasoline should go up to eight dollars a gallon, that should keep people from wasting it.
"Rebecca Turner is a successful online entrepreneur who created a website to teach people about lucid dreaming, aptly named World of Lucid Dreaming. She's been a regular participant in our discussion forums. After watching her openly share eBusiness tips with other forum members over a period of months, I asked her if I could interview her for my blog, so she can share what she's learned with many more people.
Rebecca used Site Build It! to create her website. Since many people are curious about what kind of real-world results can be achieved with Site Build It!, I asked her if she'd be willing to share specific traffic and income figures from her business' first year online, and thankfully she agreed. I think you'll find her results encouraging.
If you aren't familiar with lucid dreaming, a lucid dream is a dream where you become consciously aware that you're dreaming. With practice you can learn to do all sorts of amazing things in lucid dreams -- fly like Superman, wield a light saber, jump around like Trinity in The Matrix, create dream characters out of thin air, move objects by thought, defeat the Kobayashi Maru, and lots more. Erin and I are both experienced lucid dreamers."
You can understand how you are allying yourself with the worst sort of "believer". Come on...Kobayashi Maru? WTF? How can educated folk actually believe in this sort of transparent bullshit? This deserves the worst kind of derision and disrespect that we, as a culture, can dish out. But nooooo....let's all sign up for "Site Build It!" through the affiliate link! Then let's go to church! Praise Hermes!
It's more like, "judge a man by the company he keeps". Or as They Might Be Giants said, "This is where the party ends, I can't stand here listening to you and your racist friend. I know politics bore you, but I feel like a hypocrite talking to you and your racist friend." As soon as you take this position, you're in bed with the worst kind of theistic believer, and that simply cannot be good, ever.
"Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of Teabaggers doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit."
You see how fucking stupid you sound right now?
What this article is talking about is "lucid dreaming", or being able to control your dreams. While this sounds like a good idea in theory, in practice it is dominated by the worst sort of idiots. It is directly tied to Shamanism, out-of-body experience, and other ridiculous theistic tropes that have long been discredited in our scientific atheist world. "Amazing Lucid Dreaming Kit! Mind Blowing Results. 29 FREE Lucid Dreaming mp3 Audios. New Technology Combines Binaural Frequencies, Hypnosis and Subliminals." Does this sound like something that an educated person would have anything to do with? HELL NO! But here it is, presented as acceptable, on the front page of slashdot. Sad...sad.
And you might want to tone down that "Obviously you haven't heard of *obscure reference*." No, we haven't, and you could consider explaining it instead of telling us how whatever it is makes you sympathetic to megacorps enforcing IP laws. I doubt you'll get a lot of sympathy for that, although I'm sure that wasn't your goal, withering contempt for anyone who's not in "your industry" seemed to be the goal.