Also worthwhile is the drop in quality in consumer goods. Even back in 1999, it wasn't uncommon to send a hard drive in for repairs instead of just buying a new one. When labor is $75/hr and parts only come from the authorized ($$$) dealer, you just throw away anything that breaks, and a lot of stuff breaks.
I remember visiting Japan for the first time in 1999. Of course I wandered in to a video game arcade to check out the scene. I laughed at the poor Japanese and their imitative video games - look, that guy is just touching the controls in the exact way that the machine tells him to! What a retarded game! It's no game at all, he's just mindlessly copying what the machine tells him to do in exact sequence...no more "fun" than working on an assembly line. A children's game, really...we had the same thing called Simple Simon when I was a kid...these Japanese video games even have the same four colors. I mean, there could at least be a dozen colors or something, make it difficult. And the controller shaped like a guitar? Oh man, how pathetic: if you're going to be cool and play the guitar, be cool and learn the goddamn instrument, it ain't that hard. Only Japanese people, with their tolerance of tedium and their relentless drive to copy, could possibly "enjoy" such a "game".
This Christmas, I'm passed out from wine, and when I vaguely become aware, I hear these overplayed classic rock tunes accompanied by clicking. I go out, and sure enough, three family members are staring at the TV, imitating the colors on the screen, each lost in his own world with no communication. Just this eerie clicking, accompanied by this sound that I identified from when I was in marching band and the drummers had practice pads. There is no talking, no rocking out, no jumping around the room flailing at an ax like Eddie Van Halen on coke. Their faces are stone masks of concentration. The song finishes, and my family grins at each other, "Wow, we sure had a fun time interacting. What a great game that brings us together!"
Shows you how much I know. I also thought "Magic: the Gathering" was a stupid game because it was so wildly unbalanced. Who would want to play that, a game where you can win not by superior skill or even dumb luck, but simply by spending more money than your opponent?
You'd think a commenter in the science section would understand something like buoyancy. But evidently not! Subs sink, durrrr...let's all go watch CNN now.
The Associated Press are scientists now? Oy vey, what is the world coming to when commenters on science.slashdot.org quote the media as an authoritative source?
Can we please stop with the constant flow of unreasoning right-wing hatred of the French on slashdot? We get it, surrender monkeys. You don't have to throw it in to totally unrelated discussions about other European nations. Kthx.
So, how many online forums were there 50 years ago for people to write upon? Dumb people have always been dumb. It's just that the internet lets you see them when before, nobody was even aware of their existence. In addition, judging from their writing, 50 years ago most writers felt themselves to be part of the same society as everyone else. Can you say that about our "the literate will not" friend above?
Nope. Try it, take an egg from the refrigerator and grip it like a baseball. Try to crush it. It won't work. It's an old science trick from the sort of fellow who used to visit middle schools.
It is almost impossible to smash an egg by grasping it. This dissipates the crushing force over the entire surface of the egg. Try it yourself, you can't crush an egg in your hand no matter how hard you squeeze. Where was the well-educated, erudite journalist on this one, exposing this hoary old "Newton's Apple" gimmick to the world? Oh wait, the linked article is a press release passed off as an article, and slashdot is just a blog not a news source.
A lot of what you read in newspapers is press releases and other advertising. I remember when I had a temp job as a college student at some government agency...someone told me to fax two pages to a list of phone numbers. Imagine my surprise when, the next day, what I faxed appeared IN THE NEWSPAPER VERBATIM. Nobody called to check, I was sitting right next to the phone number at the bottom of the press release. This is when I learned 20 years before Jayson Blair that nobody checks what appears in the papers. I mean, hell, assembly line workers get their work checked for quality using world-approved systems, but journalism is exempt.
Feeling defensive, eh? Thanks for informing everyone you're "literate" and therefore better than those filthy ordinary people. Pick up a newspaper, and tell me how much writing would actually be *improved* with a machine writer, eh? Writing isn't sacred, it's just another occupation like woodchopping or running the cash register at the 7-11.
Medicine has effects on disease. Alternative medicine is called "dietary supplements" or "nutritional supplements" to avoid the extensive testing that real medicine must go through.
That's the whole idea behind LED lights: if a single bulb blows, you don't lose the whole traffic light. The power of the swarm. As long as, say, 25% of the LEDs are still there, you can still see the color. Unless a light is brand new, there will always be some LEDs not lit. The days of the perfectly illuminated, perfectly round traffic light are over, and everyone will just have to get used to it.
Possibly, if Google was blocked, it would piss enough people off to lower the people's opinion of the government and possibly effect change.
OK, let me get this straight, just so I understand. You're saying that if the Chinese government blocked Google, the Chinese people would be enraged? Sufficiently enraged to rise up and overthrow the government? Are you deranged, man? Or are you just totally unaware there's a world outside of Google, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter? Honestly, where did this attitude come from?
PS: Chinese people use baidu.com anyway! PPS: the word you're looking for is "affect".
There are plenty of examples of democracies getting it wrong. Just look at the California gay marriage bill that passed last year, or the various EU plans that were shot down by voters. Thank goodness there are ways around those.
Voting is pure gambling, there is no guarantee of a positive outcome. Any sort of referendum is just a roll of the dice and you hope the voters will get it right, but frequently they get it wrong. Simply saying "the voters have spoken" is childish and not at all fashionable among the intelligentsia these days. You need a solid core of well-educated people to ensure that society makes the correct decisions, otherwise you'll end up with a racist hate-state.
Some guy gets fed up with facebook and states, as his last update, that he has better things to do with his life. How many thousand times did that happen every day in 2009?
PS after the initial escape, authorities don't really pursue fugitives that hard. They'll hit the system sooner or later, and when they do the long arm of the law will reach in and grab them. Living the rest of your life off the grid sounds cool, but in actuality it sucks. Most modern people won't stand for it and prefer a modern prison to a pre-modern lifestyle.
Well, what do you expect? That is the state of creatives in the year 2010. They honestly can not think of anything new, and only plunder the past for its riches. Can you imagine a cultural and artistic flowering like the 60s in our current age? Hell, even establishment stooges like Perry Como or Frank Sinatra seem like cutting-edge innovators compared to Lady Gaga or Alicia Keys.
"Who the fuck at the Chinese?" Sorry, I don't understand? This isn't about China judging America - who was talking about that? Nobody is talking about China judging America but you. And frankly, a Westerner judging an Asian culture sounds awfully imperialistic and colonialist. Other cultures are not bad or good, they are only different. There is no right or wrong, merely different points of view.
Still waiting for some evidence to back up the "USA are ultimate prudes" remark.
Internet pornography is certainly a foreign influence. Silk prints, only affordable by the well-off, hardly constitute a societal ill. The only domestic pr0n that exists in China as far as I can tell is mafia-produced (KTV girls) or homemade (Kappa girl).
Hmm. You're coming at this from the wrong viewpoint. Regulation of socialist morality and the regulation of crimethink are under the reguation of different ministries, you see. The bureaucrats that block porn because it is degrading are not the same bureaucrats that block facebook because it allows people to organize. You have to think like they do. The Chinese government is actually not all-powerful.
USA the ultimate prudes?!?! Whaaaaaaaat? Where the F did that one come from? The USA has one of the most liberal sexual attitudes this side of Amsterdam. Legal nude beaches, legal pornography on satellite TV, 100% unrestricted internet including all the dark parts (and internet porn can get really really dark), as well as unrestricted travel and emigration for those who find America a cesspool of good morals. Hell, all you have to do is go south of the border, you'll find no shortage of men who won't marry anyone but a proven virgin. Go to other continents and you'll find mothers who proudly display bloody sheets to the entire neighborhood after her son's wedding night, to applause and general approval from the audience.
It doesn't break down society as far as you can tell? Well, thanks for that blinding insight! Surely, sir, your opinion is universal and speaks for all mankind. Actually, pornography degrades the human spirit. If you don't think so, there are billions of humans who think exactly this way. Pornography takes a sacred act and makes it profane. China has already developed the infrastructure necessary to block damaging internet content - this is just one implementation. Sure, there will always be stag movies or black-market DVDs. However, free easy porn is something that China has decided is harmful. Who the fuck are you to judge China?
China (and the rest of the world to a lesser extent) is slowly moving away from the "default accept" ideology of the free, open internet and towards a network where only approved devices can connect. Slashbots will rave and foam at the mouth about that "censorship is interpreted as damage" meme but it's sadly out of date. The Chinese can and will control what filth reaches their people. Sure, VPNs will be there...for a while at least...but the average Zhou won't bother with it.
It's hard for a lot of bicoastal Americans to understand - and even more difficult for transnational progressivist Europeans - but the Chinese people really do love their country. And their country has one government, which is the best government China has ever had. Ever since Deng Xiaoping ditched university Marxism and took the Communist Party on the capitalist road ("socialism is not poverty / to get rich is glorious") life has only gotten better in China. For all the bad press the Chinese government gets, they really are trying to do right, by their own standards. The problem arises when blinkered Westerners insist on judging China by "universal" standards. In fact, these "universal standards" have their roots in the Enlightenment...which China didn't have.
Aaah, kinda lost my point there. Anyhow, I'm no panda hugger but you simply have to put yourself in their shoes. A mere seventeen years ago socialism couldn't even provide clean drinking water and now China is the world's largest market for Rolls-Royce automobiles. This doesn't mean that the Communist Party of China will be relinquishing power anytime soon, though. They still maintain control over the economy via the allocation and issuance of business licenses and the denial of debilitating foreign influences, such as pornography.
Yes. Go to any DVD shop and ask for "huang de DVD" (yellow DVD, in Chinese yellow means porno, think "blue movies"). They have them behind the counter. They're not that great, mostly Hong Kong and Taiwan actresses. Pretty generic scenes. Funny though, all the male pornstars have small cocks.
Slashdot Mirror
Cheap, fast, good. Pick any two.
Also worthwhile is the drop in quality in consumer goods. Even back in 1999, it wasn't uncommon to send a hard drive in for repairs instead of just buying a new one. When labor is $75/hr and parts only come from the authorized ($$$) dealer, you just throw away anything that breaks, and a lot of stuff breaks.
I remember visiting Japan for the first time in 1999. Of course I wandered in to a video game arcade to check out the scene. I laughed at the poor Japanese and their imitative video games - look, that guy is just touching the controls in the exact way that the machine tells him to! What a retarded game! It's no game at all, he's just mindlessly copying what the machine tells him to do in exact sequence...no more "fun" than working on an assembly line. A children's game, really...we had the same thing called Simple Simon when I was a kid...these Japanese video games even have the same four colors. I mean, there could at least be a dozen colors or something, make it difficult. And the controller shaped like a guitar? Oh man, how pathetic: if you're going to be cool and play the guitar, be cool and learn the goddamn instrument, it ain't that hard. Only Japanese people, with their tolerance of tedium and their relentless drive to copy, could possibly "enjoy" such a "game".
This Christmas, I'm passed out from wine, and when I vaguely become aware, I hear these overplayed classic rock tunes accompanied by clicking. I go out, and sure enough, three family members are staring at the TV, imitating the colors on the screen, each lost in his own world with no communication. Just this eerie clicking, accompanied by this sound that I identified from when I was in marching band and the drummers had practice pads. There is no talking, no rocking out, no jumping around the room flailing at an ax like Eddie Van Halen on coke. Their faces are stone masks of concentration. The song finishes, and my family grins at each other, "Wow, we sure had a fun time interacting. What a great game that brings us together!"
Shows you how much I know. I also thought "Magic: the Gathering" was a stupid game because it was so wildly unbalanced. Who would want to play that, a game where you can win not by superior skill or even dumb luck, but simply by spending more money than your opponent?
You'd think a commenter in the science section would understand something like buoyancy. But evidently not! Subs sink, durrrr...let's all go watch CNN now.
The Associated Press are scientists now? Oy vey, what is the world coming to when commenters on science.slashdot.org quote the media as an authoritative source?
Can we please stop with the constant flow of unreasoning right-wing hatred of the French on slashdot? We get it, surrender monkeys. You don't have to throw it in to totally unrelated discussions about other European nations. Kthx.
So, how many online forums were there 50 years ago for people to write upon? Dumb people have always been dumb. It's just that the internet lets you see them when before, nobody was even aware of their existence. In addition, judging from their writing, 50 years ago most writers felt themselves to be part of the same society as everyone else. Can you say that about our "the literate will not" friend above?
Nope. Try it, take an egg from the refrigerator and grip it like a baseball. Try to crush it. It won't work. It's an old science trick from the sort of fellow who used to visit middle schools.
It is almost impossible to smash an egg by grasping it. This dissipates the crushing force over the entire surface of the egg. Try it yourself, you can't crush an egg in your hand no matter how hard you squeeze. Where was the well-educated, erudite journalist on this one, exposing this hoary old "Newton's Apple" gimmick to the world? Oh wait, the linked article is a press release passed off as an article, and slashdot is just a blog not a news source.
A lot of what you read in newspapers is press releases and other advertising. I remember when I had a temp job as a college student at some government agency...someone told me to fax two pages to a list of phone numbers. Imagine my surprise when, the next day, what I faxed appeared IN THE NEWSPAPER VERBATIM. Nobody called to check, I was sitting right next to the phone number at the bottom of the press release. This is when I learned 20 years before Jayson Blair that nobody checks what appears in the papers. I mean, hell, assembly line workers get their work checked for quality using world-approved systems, but journalism is exempt.
Feeling defensive, eh? Thanks for informing everyone you're "literate" and therefore better than those filthy ordinary people. Pick up a newspaper, and tell me how much writing would actually be *improved* with a machine writer, eh? Writing isn't sacred, it's just another occupation like woodchopping or running the cash register at the 7-11.
Medicine has effects on disease. Alternative medicine is called "dietary supplements" or "nutritional supplements" to avoid the extensive testing that real medicine must go through.
That's the whole idea behind LED lights: if a single bulb blows, you don't lose the whole traffic light. The power of the swarm. As long as, say, 25% of the LEDs are still there, you can still see the color. Unless a light is brand new, there will always be some LEDs not lit. The days of the perfectly illuminated, perfectly round traffic light are over, and everyone will just have to get used to it.
Possibly, if Google was blocked, it would piss enough people off to lower the people's opinion of the government and possibly effect change.
OK, let me get this straight, just so I understand. You're saying that if the Chinese government blocked Google, the Chinese people would be enraged? Sufficiently enraged to rise up and overthrow the government? Are you deranged, man? Or are you just totally unaware there's a world outside of Google, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter? Honestly, where did this attitude come from?
PS: Chinese people use baidu.com anyway!
PPS: the word you're looking for is "affect".
There are plenty of examples of democracies getting it wrong. Just look at the California gay marriage bill that passed last year, or the various EU plans that were shot down by voters. Thank goodness there are ways around those.
Voting is pure gambling, there is no guarantee of a positive outcome. Any sort of referendum is just a roll of the dice and you hope the voters will get it right, but frequently they get it wrong. Simply saying "the voters have spoken" is childish and not at all fashionable among the intelligentsia these days. You need a solid core of well-educated people to ensure that society makes the correct decisions, otherwise you'll end up with a racist hate-state.
For bonus points, figure out why this is so. Extra bonus for figuring out if it's good or bad.
Some guy gets fed up with facebook and states, as his last update, that he has better things to do with his life. How many thousand times did that happen every day in 2009?
PS after the initial escape, authorities don't really pursue fugitives that hard. They'll hit the system sooner or later, and when they do the long arm of the law will reach in and grab them. Living the rest of your life off the grid sounds cool, but in actuality it sucks. Most modern people won't stand for it and prefer a modern prison to a pre-modern lifestyle.
Well, what do you expect? That is the state of creatives in the year 2010. They honestly can not think of anything new, and only plunder the past for its riches. Can you imagine a cultural and artistic flowering like the 60s in our current age? Hell, even establishment stooges like Perry Como or Frank Sinatra seem like cutting-edge innovators compared to Lady Gaga or Alicia Keys.
"Who the fuck at the Chinese?" Sorry, I don't understand? This isn't about China judging America - who was talking about that? Nobody is talking about China judging America but you. And frankly, a Westerner judging an Asian culture sounds awfully imperialistic and colonialist. Other cultures are not bad or good, they are only different. There is no right or wrong, merely different points of view.
Still waiting for some evidence to back up the "USA are ultimate prudes" remark.
Internet pornography is certainly a foreign influence. Silk prints, only affordable by the well-off, hardly constitute a societal ill. The only domestic pr0n that exists in China as far as I can tell is mafia-produced (KTV girls) or homemade (Kappa girl).
Parent post is useless without pics! Links or I call BS! I demand you let (the male readers of) Slashdot decide!
China, Qing dynasty (18th19th c.)
Foreign picture? You lose at the internet.
Hmm. You're coming at this from the wrong viewpoint. Regulation of socialist morality and the regulation of crimethink are under the reguation of different ministries, you see. The bureaucrats that block porn because it is degrading are not the same bureaucrats that block facebook because it allows people to organize. You have to think like they do. The Chinese government is actually not all-powerful.
USA the ultimate prudes?!?! Whaaaaaaaat? Where the F did that one come from? The USA has one of the most liberal sexual attitudes this side of Amsterdam. Legal nude beaches, legal pornography on satellite TV, 100% unrestricted internet including all the dark parts (and internet porn can get really really dark), as well as unrestricted travel and emigration for those who find America a cesspool of good morals. Hell, all you have to do is go south of the border, you'll find no shortage of men who won't marry anyone but a proven virgin. Go to other continents and you'll find mothers who proudly display bloody sheets to the entire neighborhood after her son's wedding night, to applause and general approval from the audience.
It doesn't break down society as far as you can tell? Well, thanks for that blinding insight! Surely, sir, your opinion is universal and speaks for all mankind. Actually, pornography degrades the human spirit. If you don't think so, there are billions of humans who think exactly this way. Pornography takes a sacred act and makes it profane. China has already developed the infrastructure necessary to block damaging internet content - this is just one implementation. Sure, there will always be stag movies or black-market DVDs. However, free easy porn is something that China has decided is harmful. Who the fuck are you to judge China?
China (and the rest of the world to a lesser extent) is slowly moving away from the "default accept" ideology of the free, open internet and towards a network where only approved devices can connect. Slashbots will rave and foam at the mouth about that "censorship is interpreted as damage" meme but it's sadly out of date. The Chinese can and will control what filth reaches their people. Sure, VPNs will be there...for a while at least...but the average Zhou won't bother with it.
It's hard for a lot of bicoastal Americans to understand - and even more difficult for transnational progressivist Europeans - but the Chinese people really do love their country. And their country has one government, which is the best government China has ever had. Ever since Deng Xiaoping ditched university Marxism and took the Communist Party on the capitalist road ("socialism is not poverty / to get rich is glorious") life has only gotten better in China. For all the bad press the Chinese government gets, they really are trying to do right, by their own standards. The problem arises when blinkered Westerners insist on judging China by "universal" standards. In fact, these "universal standards" have their roots in the Enlightenment...which China didn't have.
Aaah, kinda lost my point there. Anyhow, I'm no panda hugger but you simply have to put yourself in their shoes. A mere seventeen years ago socialism couldn't even provide clean drinking water and now China is the world's largest market for Rolls-Royce automobiles. This doesn't mean that the Communist Party of China will be relinquishing power anytime soon, though. They still maintain control over the economy via the allocation and issuance of business licenses and the denial of debilitating foreign influences, such as pornography.
Yes. Go to any DVD shop and ask for "huang de DVD" (yellow DVD, in Chinese yellow means porno, think "blue movies"). They have them behind the counter. They're not that great, mostly Hong Kong and Taiwan actresses. Pretty generic scenes. Funny though, all the male pornstars have small cocks.