Freezing fish expands the water in the fish's cells, causing the cell walls to burst. This totally ruins the taste and texture of sushi. If you can eat that crap, fine, but don't call it sushi, call it tasteless mushy non-fresh fish. Actually, throwing it on the grill would be an option to salvage the situation. Sushi must be fresh, otherwise it's not sushi. Leave it to Americans to adopt another culture's food and then regulate and mutilate it until it no longer resembles the original.
I've done the same thing myself, a database of venues that was then published. Listings are not easy and keeping them current is a constant struggle. I tell you what, after I did all that work tracking down names, addresses, verifying the info, removing venues that closed, adding new ones, I don't want anyone taking my hard work and applying it to their product. Fuck them, they can pay me. A lot. Would it be nice if everyone cooperated and shared and it was caring time all day long? Sure. Is it going to happen? No.
You're not thinking about what would benefit the businesses. You're thinking about a scenario that would benefit you. Pretty selfish for a guy advocating communalism and cooperation over the survival of the fittest.
Great idea. So instead of letting them fight it out by trying to top each other with features, they can spend all of their time squabbling due to different design philosophies and politics.
The technology is immature, of course it's rather worthless in its present state. Of what use is a 3-year-old?
I'd blame the author for a crappy book. I've already read Heart of Darkness, do I really need to read it again "in space"? And executed by a lesser author? I wish I had been born 40 years before I was, so I could have been part of a culture that actually created new things instead of looking to the past and imitating it endlessly.
Bah. Makes no difference. Last time I was in the States, I thought it would be a hoot to view the Chinese Wikipedia page for the 6/4 incident, save it to a file, and show it to everyone I know in China.
You would have thought that Nixon had come down from the clouds to deliver wisdom. Every person I showed it to (save one) immediately rejected it on the grounds that it could never have happened. It was like selling holocaust denial to a crowd of sophisticated New Yorkers. And I'm not talking about ignorant peasants, I'm talking about Ph.D.'s from highly respected Chinese universities.
The Chinese government considers the United States to be The Main Enemy. Go ahead and laugh, and then go do some google searches on the term in Chinese. Oh, you're an ignorant monolingual Westerner...surely this excuses you from any kind of informed opinion.
Uh....I am very truly, in my heart, pro-China. Anti-PRC bias? Where the F did that come from? This has nothing to do with the Chinese government. I have personally witnessed more than one genuine act of kindness on the part of the Chinese people. This is when no cameras are running, nobody is watching, and people can really be who they truly are. I say to you sir, I have seen it, repeatedly, with my own fucking eyes. It has, more than once, moved me to tears. People who have nothing, FUCKING NOTHING (poor people in China don't have Xbox, they don't have internet, they get no food stamps or unions or welfare or anything, heck they don't even have flatscreen TVs, they are poor) have demonstrated that they are for real. It's like getting a flat tire in Cow's Asshole, Oklahoma and then being amazed that the people who live there actually help you to find a replacement, even though you have some custom euro-tire that nobody stocks.
How would you behave, when no cameras are there, and some trailer park trash (substitute any other person that your culture considers despicable, just shooting in the dark here) comes up to you and asks for a quarter so he can make a pay phone call?
I repeat: the 50-cent gang are real. The Chinese IT militia are real. I used to wonder how the nutballs in "Downfall" could so easily ignore the reality that was bearing down on them. With ignorant attitudes like yours, unfortunately, have led me to a greater understanding of the word "hubris" (again, I speak the word "ignorant" with no rancor, it is truly a lack of education that leads to such staggeringly unenlightened points of view.)
you feel like you need to criticize anyone pointing out a flaw in any argument that criticizes China Indeed, this is the mission of the 50-cent gang. I am in opposition to them, as was the entire point of my original post. Is this an example of projecting one's unacceptable thoughts onto another?
Both sides? What's the other side? What, you need to fake evidence to find something wrong with the Chinese government?
I suppose you missed the links to the BBC and Wikipedia articles in my post. I tried to use what typical Westerners would consider the most authoritative sources available, and still I get outright rejection and disbelief. Just because something doesn't fit your value or belief system is no reason to reject hard cold facts.
The real tragedy of the 50-cent gang is that nowadays, it has so poisoned the atmosphere online that any defense of China is considered astroturfing. In my own way, I am quite pro-China since I live here and see with my own eyes. I see local people reject such ideas the exact same way - they could never have massacred all those protesters on 6/4/1989. It's sad that educated people can have the same reactions to "wrong" ideas as ignorant peasants (and I use "ignorant" without rancor, these people had no choice in the matter).
I clicked on both links and got a blank page in my web browser. Here's a tester although I don't know why Hong Kong is listed - it's not behind the GFW.
Troll? Who the F modded me as troll? From the FAQ:
Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting. The real goal here is to find the juicy good stuff and let others read it. Do not promote personal agendas. Do not let your opinions factor in. Try to be impartial about this. Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down. Likewise, agreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it up. The goal here is to share ideas. To sift through the haystack and find needles.
Excuse me sir, are you a member of the 50 cent gang? This isn't anything to do with the rapper, but rather refers to pro-China internet commenters. For the three of you out there who have never heard of this, allow me to introduce:
50 Cent Party is the name for paid[1] astroturfing bloggers operating since 2005 from People's Republic of China, whose role is posting comments favorable towards the government policies to skew the public opinion on various Internet message boards. They are named by the 50 Chinese cents, or 5 mao, they are paid per such post
If you're not convinced and think this must be some sort of Fox News conspiracy (ooo, a different point of view, ignore it!) I provide a link to that paragon of correctness the BBC to explain it in simple terms that you can understand.
China is using an increasing number of paid "internet commentators" in a sophisticated attempt to control public opinion. These commentators are used by government departments to scour the internet for bad news - and then negate it.
Please note that these are not actually pro-China commenters, but merely anti-anti-China commenters. Indeed I don't see anything pro-China in your post. You've even Americanized it by attempting to tie it to Fox News, something that Americans will understand on a cultural level, rather than something baffling like attempting to tie it to those perfidious seperatists in Tibet or Xinjiang.
Information warfare militia in China do exist. It's like this: young men like to hack. They also like to belong to something larger than themselves, and China is pretty darn big. The USA is China's Main Enemy and is a natural target for any attack. They go looking for the biggest target they can find, and sometimes they get something worthwhile. Someone's dad is a major in the PLA, and they hand the documents off to him, and later a quiet "attaboy" comes down the channel with a request to send anything else they might find during their travels. They're basically like any irregular force - mainly useful in keeping the enemy busy with dealing with low-level annoyances, or occupying territory. There were American citizens who tried to hack the Iraqi defense system during the 1991 war (hi Par!) even though that was the last thing on Schwartzkopf's mind. They mostly failed due to the lack of computers in Iraq or anything worthwhile to hack.
If you're not in the 50-cent gang, I apologize for calling you out. Although, it sure sucks when you're on the same side of the argument with totalitarian thugs. At least they're getting paid, they're doing it as a job. What are you getting out of it?
The point is to get people angry and accomplish positive change. I have a problem with you criticizing a very valid tactic used daily by working journalists. Who the hell are you to judge? You can't do that by dryly reporting a mind-numbingly boring story in didactic terms. You do that by "taking an angle" on the story, and making it relevant to people's lives.
Zheng He was on a mission to make the barbarians pay tribute to the center of the universe, the Chinese emperor. I'm not sure such things are a good idea. Moreover, the emperor squandered treasure on the useless fleets that would have better been spent on things like flood control and grain for starving peasants after there was no flood control and the rivers destroyed everything. The Chinese have an expression, "to eat bitterness" which means that you're a peasant who's totally screwed in life and not going anywhere. This expression is thousands of years old.
China is just getting back to it's historical place as #1 in the world. They never were #1 in the world, they were #1 in China. They simply don't care about the rest of the world, everyone who is not Chinese and one of God's chosen people is a barbarian. Even referring to China as a single nation is disingenuous.
Well, this is probably the most ignorant comment I've seen in a thread absolutely chock full of them. Where the F is India in your little calculation? Brazil? Moreover, a single Westerner has the buying power of many Chinese.
In the words of the immortal Inigo Montoya: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." In America, treason is:
Making war against the United States
Giving aid and comfort to the enemy
That's it. It doesn't appear to say anything about exporting entertainment products. Oh wait, let me guess, you were just making an ignorant, wrong comment in order to be the biggest jerk possible to your fellow Americans. You know fuck-all about freedom and treason (and probably software development, too.)
Yearning to be free?!? Where did that idea come from? Chinese people aren't "yearning" for anything. As a matter of fact, they are intensely grateful to their government for making the present prosperity possible. It's better in China today than it has been at any time in their 5000 years of history, and it's only improving. It's a damn sight better than the Mao years when he murdered tens of millions and the lucky ones merely froze in unheated factories and classrooms. Oh, maybe they should go back to Chiang Kai-Shek and the warlords? Let's see...Empress Cixi? Nope, unmitigated disaster there, too. Unequal treaties, Opium wars, should I keep going back? The government could decree that every citizen gets a boot to the head daily from the security guards at every community entrance, and they'd still proclaim loudly that China is better off than it has ever been - and they'd be right. And the reason is the government. If the government wanted, the entire nation would still be living in poverty. 1.3 billion starving poor: the Chinese called it "1949-1976".
"One of the things I have always found troubling about Westerners doing business in emerging market countries is that they sometimes take an almost perverse pride in discussing payoffs to government officials. It is as though their having paid a bribe is a symbol of their international sophistication and insider knowledge. Yet, countless times when I am told of the bribe, I know the very same thing could almost certainly have been accomplished without a bribe." --Source
I suppose y'all should have figured it out by now, but if not I'll spell it out and use small words. The Chinese government loves to pass new laws and announce new strategies. There is usually great fanfare, the press bleating like the contemptible sheep they are (the Chinese state-controlled press bleats too) and great discussions on the net as millions of electrons give their last and break up into neutrinos and photons. Then, six months later, nobody has heard of the act or law or whatever, because it's not enforced. This is the "secret" (pretty freaking obvious) of the Chinese government.
They want you to be in violation of something. With all the legislation, it is impossible to comply with every single law without driving yourself out of business. Everyone knows it, and the Chinese government (at central, provincial, city, and district levels, which are all different and have little relation with each other) knows it too. They like knowing that they can shut you down at any time, but are usually content to let things go as long as you play ball. This kind of ball-play can be laissez faire for years or it can be an "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it further" kind of situation. You really have no way of knowing how it will turn out, and the government likes it like that. This is why it's so important to have buddies in government who can warn you of upcoming problems or give you some lamb's blood to mark yourself so the inspectors pass you over. I had one high muckety-muck vice-director of the municipal propaganda ministry hold my product in his hand as if he were weighing it, and said it was about 80% legal. I couldn't puzzle it out, either it's legal or illegal, how can legality be a percentage, and a guess at that! Later I got it...I felt pretty dumb. It was obvious, only my cultural blinders kept me from seeing it.
And to those of you who are already hitting "reply" to say "durr, just like my country only my country is much worse", do you have a ministry of culture whose job it is to enhance socialist values? With lawyers and truncheons if necessary? You can joke all you like about capitalism taking over but there are plenty of true-believer Mao-worshipping socialists in the government.
Actually, 50 years ago, there was this idea in America that everyone (and I mean everyone) should be able to share in the advances of our society. Look how things have changed: what are the attitudes towards residents of rural regions today? Is there a feeling that they should share in anything?
I'm not sure that calling African-American Southerners "idiots" is entirely appropriate in any situation. People make math errors all the time, especially those raised in ill-funded school systems. I think a little tolerance is in order.
Exactly what I said - Drupal is a great base to start hacking from, if you don't mind investing your time or money (and time is money). Me, I wanted a fully-featured CMS but I had no idea about the modules, or that so many of them break each other. There are just a vast number of modules and there are far too many combinations to test all of them. When you add a spam blocker (lots of robots know Drupal, an unfortunate drawback of popularity) your TinyMCE module breaks. Or when you add MIME capabilities and now for some unexplainable reason the front page won't render correctly. Never heard of that aquia fork or whatever, that's another "problem" with Drupal, there are so many forks, add-ons, and total conversions that you have no idea which ones are worth it, and the only way to find out is to invest hours of frustrating effort finding out. It's even something that they address on their website: How will Acquia keep up with the rapid evolution of Drupal core and modules? because their potential customers are suspicious and have been burned before.
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Freezing fish expands the water in the fish's cells, causing the cell walls to burst. This totally ruins the taste and texture of sushi. If you can eat that crap, fine, but don't call it sushi, call it tasteless mushy non-fresh fish. Actually, throwing it on the grill would be an option to salvage the situation. Sushi must be fresh, otherwise it's not sushi. Leave it to Americans to adopt another culture's food and then regulate and mutilate it until it no longer resembles the original.
You're not thinking about what would benefit the businesses. You're thinking about a scenario that would benefit you. Pretty selfish for a guy advocating communalism and cooperation over the survival of the fittest.
The technology is immature, of course it's rather worthless in its present state. Of what use is a 3-year-old?
I'd blame the author for a crappy book. I've already read Heart of Darkness, do I really need to read it again "in space"? And executed by a lesser author? I wish I had been born 40 years before I was, so I could have been part of a culture that actually created new things instead of looking to the past and imitating it endlessly.
You would have thought that Nixon had come down from the clouds to deliver wisdom. Every person I showed it to (save one) immediately rejected it on the grounds that it could never have happened. It was like selling holocaust denial to a crowd of sophisticated New Yorkers. And I'm not talking about ignorant peasants, I'm talking about Ph.D.'s from highly respected Chinese universities.
The Chinese government considers the United States to be The Main Enemy. Go ahead and laugh, and then go do some google searches on the term in Chinese. Oh, you're an ignorant monolingual Westerner...surely this excuses you from any kind of informed opinion.
How would you behave, when no cameras are there, and some trailer park trash (substitute any other person that your culture considers despicable, just shooting in the dark here) comes up to you and asks for a quarter so he can make a pay phone call?
I repeat: the 50-cent gang are real. The Chinese IT militia are real. I used to wonder how the nutballs in "Downfall" could so easily ignore the reality that was bearing down on them. With ignorant attitudes like yours, unfortunately, have led me to a greater understanding of the word "hubris" (again, I speak the word "ignorant" with no rancor, it is truly a lack of education that leads to such staggeringly unenlightened points of view.)
you feel like you need to criticize anyone pointing out a flaw in any argument that criticizes China
Indeed, this is the mission of the 50-cent gang. I am in opposition to them, as was the entire point of my original post. Is this an example of projecting one's unacceptable thoughts onto another?
I suppose you missed the links to the BBC and Wikipedia articles in my post. I tried to use what typical Westerners would consider the most authoritative sources available, and still I get outright rejection and disbelief. Just because something doesn't fit your value or belief system is no reason to reject hard cold facts.
The real tragedy of the 50-cent gang is that nowadays, it has so poisoned the atmosphere online that any defense of China is considered astroturfing. In my own way, I am quite pro-China since I live here and see with my own eyes. I see local people reject such ideas the exact same way - they could never have massacred all those protesters on 6/4/1989. It's sad that educated people can have the same reactions to "wrong" ideas as ignorant peasants (and I use "ignorant" without rancor, these people had no choice in the matter).
The 50-cent gang really exists. Chinese militia hackers really exist. Misusing a system and name-calling won't change that.
I clicked on both links and got a blank page in my web browser. Here's a tester although I don't know why Hong Kong is listed - it's not behind the GFW.
Censoring for political content is worlds apart from only allowing Latin characters on an English-language website.
Oh, that wasn't what you were talking about? You just wanted to gloat over the deaths of human beings that you consider stupid? That's sick, man.
If you're not convinced and think this must be some sort of Fox News conspiracy (ooo, a different point of view, ignore it!) I provide a link to that paragon of correctness the BBC to explain it in simple terms that you can understand.
Please note that these are not actually pro-China commenters, but merely anti-anti-China commenters. Indeed I don't see anything pro-China in your post. You've even Americanized it by attempting to tie it to Fox News, something that Americans will understand on a cultural level, rather than something baffling like attempting to tie it to those perfidious seperatists in Tibet or Xinjiang.
Information warfare militia in China do exist. It's like this: young men like to hack. They also like to belong to something larger than themselves, and China is pretty darn big. The USA is China's Main Enemy and is a natural target for any attack. They go looking for the biggest target they can find, and sometimes they get something worthwhile. Someone's dad is a major in the PLA, and they hand the documents off to him, and later a quiet "attaboy" comes down the channel with a request to send anything else they might find during their travels. They're basically like any irregular force - mainly useful in keeping the enemy busy with dealing with low-level annoyances, or occupying territory. There were American citizens who tried to hack the Iraqi defense system during the 1991 war (hi Par!) even though that was the last thing on Schwartzkopf's mind. They mostly failed due to the lack of computers in Iraq or anything worthwhile to hack.
If you're not in the 50-cent gang, I apologize for calling you out. Although, it sure sucks when you're on the same side of the argument with totalitarian thugs. At least they're getting paid, they're doing it as a job. What are you getting out of it?
The point is to get people angry and accomplish positive change. I have a problem with you criticizing a very valid tactic used daily by working journalists. Who the hell are you to judge? You can't do that by dryly reporting a mind-numbingly boring story in didactic terms. You do that by "taking an angle" on the story, and making it relevant to people's lives.
Yearning for freedom is a Western cultural concept. Asian cultures, in general, yearn for indolence instead.
China is just getting back to it's historical place as #1 in the world.
They never were #1 in the world, they were #1 in China. They simply don't care about the rest of the world, everyone who is not Chinese and one of God's chosen people is a barbarian. Even referring to China as a single nation is disingenuous.
Well, this is probably the most ignorant comment I've seen in a thread absolutely chock full of them. Where the F is India in your little calculation? Brazil? Moreover, a single Westerner has the buying power of many Chinese.
That's it. It doesn't appear to say anything about exporting entertainment products. Oh wait, let me guess, you were just making an ignorant, wrong comment in order to be the biggest jerk possible to your fellow Americans. You know fuck-all about freedom and treason (and probably software development, too.)
Yearning to be free?!? Where did that idea come from? Chinese people aren't "yearning" for anything. As a matter of fact, they are intensely grateful to their government for making the present prosperity possible. It's better in China today than it has been at any time in their 5000 years of history, and it's only improving. It's a damn sight better than the Mao years when he murdered tens of millions and the lucky ones merely froze in unheated factories and classrooms. Oh, maybe they should go back to Chiang Kai-Shek and the warlords? Let's see...Empress Cixi? Nope, unmitigated disaster there, too. Unequal treaties, Opium wars, should I keep going back? The government could decree that every citizen gets a boot to the head daily from the security guards at every community entrance, and they'd still proclaim loudly that China is better off than it has ever been - and they'd be right. And the reason is the government. If the government wanted, the entire nation would still be living in poverty. 1.3 billion starving poor: the Chinese called it "1949-1976".
"One of the things I have always found troubling about Westerners doing business in emerging market countries is that they sometimes take an almost perverse pride in discussing payoffs to government officials. It is as though their having paid a bribe is a symbol of their international sophistication and insider knowledge. Yet, countless times when I am told of the bribe, I know the very same thing could almost certainly have been accomplished without a bribe." --Source
They want you to be in violation of something. With all the legislation, it is impossible to comply with every single law without driving yourself out of business. Everyone knows it, and the Chinese government (at central, provincial, city, and district levels, which are all different and have little relation with each other) knows it too. They like knowing that they can shut you down at any time, but are usually content to let things go as long as you play ball. This kind of ball-play can be laissez faire for years or it can be an "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it further" kind of situation. You really have no way of knowing how it will turn out, and the government likes it like that. This is why it's so important to have buddies in government who can warn you of upcoming problems or give you some lamb's blood to mark yourself so the inspectors pass you over. I had one high muckety-muck vice-director of the municipal propaganda ministry hold my product in his hand as if he were weighing it, and said it was about 80% legal. I couldn't puzzle it out, either it's legal or illegal, how can legality be a percentage, and a guess at that! Later I got it...I felt pretty dumb. It was obvious, only my cultural blinders kept me from seeing it.
And to those of you who are already hitting "reply" to say "durr, just like my country only my country is much worse", do you have a ministry of culture whose job it is to enhance socialist values? With lawyers and truncheons if necessary? You can joke all you like about capitalism taking over but there are plenty of true-believer Mao-worshipping socialists in the government.
Actually, 50 years ago, there was this idea in America that everyone (and I mean everyone) should be able to share in the advances of our society. Look how things have changed: what are the attitudes towards residents of rural regions today? Is there a feeling that they should share in anything?
I'm not sure that calling African-American Southerners "idiots" is entirely appropriate in any situation. People make math errors all the time, especially those raised in ill-funded school systems. I think a little tolerance is in order.
Exactly what I said - Drupal is a great base to start hacking from, if you don't mind investing your time or money (and time is money). Me, I wanted a fully-featured CMS but I had no idea about the modules, or that so many of them break each other. There are just a vast number of modules and there are far too many combinations to test all of them. When you add a spam blocker (lots of robots know Drupal, an unfortunate drawback of popularity) your TinyMCE module breaks. Or when you add MIME capabilities and now for some unexplainable reason the front page won't render correctly. Never heard of that aquia fork or whatever, that's another "problem" with Drupal, there are so many forks, add-ons, and total conversions that you have no idea which ones are worth it, and the only way to find out is to invest hours of frustrating effort finding out. It's even something that they address on their website: How will Acquia keep up with the rapid evolution of Drupal core and modules? because their potential customers are suspicious and have been burned before.