If such an investigation finds no hidden counter-claims, then we will know for a fact that the claims of stifling are overblown.
True - and I for one welcome any investigation of this nature. However, one has also to think about the possible motives behind what people do. I find it hard to imagine any likely motives for wanting to stifle the sceptics if they have some real results to show. Most of the reasoning one hears is more or less along the lines of 'the big conspiracy'; but why should there be a conpiracy? Who stands to actually gain from such a thing? This is the same sort of tactics we've seen from the creationists and it seems just as pathetic. On the other hand, it is very easy to see who has something to gain from stifling any research that would suggest that we have to stop wasting fossil fuels.
Brilliant. But you don't win freedom or anything else by hiding somewhere and spreading nonsense on the internet. If you want things to change, the way forward it to go out there and take the risks. The ones who don't have the courage very rarely have anything real to say. Look at our own history in the West: it is littered with examples of who changes were brought about because of the struggle of those who had vision and courage. The same thing is happening in China, and not at all slowly when you compare to how things went in Europe. Just look at what has happened in the last 20 years; did people in eg. UK ever go through such enormous changes in so short a time?
It's all very well fiddling around with those things, but when they talk about 'better apples' they simply mean apples that will sell better, keep better during transport, require less to grow etc. This is why you can hardly find a good apple in a supermarket - they tend to be hard (so they don't bruise too easily), not too aromatic (since that attracts insects) and shiny so people notice them. Unfortunately they are not very good to eat - leathery flesh and little taste is what you mostly get. All the good, old-fashioned varieties tend to be comparatively floury, aromatic and not incredibly shiny.
I don't think it does. Lack of ethical standards and concern for other people - business partners included - may give a short term advantage, but business is very much about trust: the trust of your customers, shareholders, employees and business partners. As much as our society nowadays is dominated by braindead consumerism, where people will buy anything if it is cheap and shiny, I think you would only buy a crappy product from a untrustworthy company once; even Microsoft wouldn't have survived if they hadn't at least to some extent delivered what people wanted and been minimally reliable, even if it is only 'thieves' honour'.
There are in fact a growing number of companies, especially in Europe, who have found that a good ethical record makes very good business sense. Because:
- when you treat your employees well, they are more willing to go all out for the comapny and generally produce better quality - when you treat the competition fairly you win respect; and in the real world competitors are often business partners as well - when you treat your customers well, they come back next time - when you show social responsibility, it improves your image
No consensus? What utter nonsense is this? Something like 90+ % of those who actually know about these things agree that climate change is happening and that our burning of fossil fuels is the cause. That constitutes consensus to me and most of the rest of the people in the world.
So you feel you need lots of energy? For what? Continuing you wasteful, sedentary lifestyle - that is slowly killing you? Well OK; if you think that is a worthy way to spend the world's resources. But fusion is not the way forward - I read an article only yesterday (sorry, no link) about a study that concluded that we could cover the entire world's energy needs with very low-tech generators: basically a big mirror that heats the boiler of a turbine. We would need to cover ~2% of the world's deserts with these generators. The report suggests a number of ways to make it financially viable.
So why don't we do this already (well, we do, actually, but only on a small scale)? Because somebody stands to lose a lot of money is we go that way, that's why.
Right and wrong, and in particular the question of how hard something should be punished varies a lot across the globe. Just take Singapore, where rumour has it that if you spit on the street, you will be arrested and given a very heavy fine. I think most would agree that spitting is not the most charming thing to do, but criminal prosecutions? Anyway, if you live in a country you can be expected to KNOW the laws and follow them, and you ought to know HOW different transgressions are regarded. So perhaps in China people in general regard pornography as something very bad? Or perhaps they feel that these persons not only broke the laws, but did so in a particularly obnoxious way that warranted the harsh punishment? I don't know, because the article hasn't told us anything about it; all we have to go on is our own background, which may not be appropriate.
Apart from that, pornography is not simply a question of looking at erotic art; the lunatic fringe in the world of porn deals with some extreme things, including child pornography, violent sex (not just your usual discipline and bondage), exploitation of those who are weak, etc. Sometimes drugs, prostitution and other crimes are involved. Again, we haven't been told about it - we don't know what was involved in this case.
But lifetime seems over the top, and despite what the more reactionary part of the western press reports, the Chinese courts aren't generally much more heavyhanded than they need to be; so I suspect they have found some pretty nasty things going on. It wouldn't necessarily be reported to the press - the Chinese may well have thought that the details were too grisly to report.
I think, on a deeper level, that this question misses the target somewhat; but I recognise that there is something about it in real life. The thing is, technically gifted people are quite often socially inept, and good management is very much about people skills. Let's face it, the 'actual work' that most managers do is something most people with any knowledge about Excel and Word would be able to handle.
However, a good manager knows that these things are not what he is there for. The most important task a manager has is LEADING people, ie. he has to be able to motivate, build morale, make things happen. In my view the following are essential traits:
- Trust: he must be able to create an atmosphere of trust. IOW, he must be trusted by his employees, and perhaps more importantly, he must be able to trust his employees. Thus, you don't betray people, and you always expect people to do their best - even if they miss their deadlines, you don't start from the assumption that they were lazy or stupid.
- Fairness: He must be fair in all his dealings. Rewards and punishments must be appropriate and prompt. This means that you don't dangle a carrot in front of people for ages - you give rewards immediately when an employee has done something good. Same thing with punishment - if somebody screws up or is lazy or something, you don't save it up, you wallop him there and then, and then you move on and let the sinner know (and feel) that as far as you are concerned that is all there is to it. It is rarely reasonable to turn back to past problems at review time.
- Appreciation: It is important that employees know they are valued. The workers, to put it that way, are the ones who produce the goods that the whole company benefits from. The CEOs, presidents, administrators, managers, sales people etc depend on the production team to do a good job, and that is worth bearing in mind, so show them respect. This also implies that you never give a salary increase less that the inflation rate every year! It may seem like a small thing, but if a person's salary doesn't at least follow inflation, it means that his real income is falling; and that tells any moderately bright person that he is not worth his upkeep. The result: that person will not be likely to show much loyalty and team spirit.
This is what a good manager is about, IMO. I think technical people are able to do that, but perhaps we have one handicap: we are often not too interested in person to person interaction.
It's an unusual situation and one can't, perhaps, blame Microsoft for just assuming that it was OK. On the other hand, I think we all need to think about other cultures with respect and to learn about their sensitivities before we just plunge into whatever we are about. This is particularly true for Americans, I think, and even more so for gig American companies. Americans have for ages been used to think that whatever they do in the world is OK, eveerybody will understand what is intended; and while many choose to tolerate it and laugh at the more grotesque howlers our American friends present us with, there are not a small number of people who feel that the looming presence of the American elephant-in-a-china-shop is too much.
And while most people in the world don't feel their language is anything special, there are cultures to which their native language is sacred; perhaps these people feel that way. Or perhaps they resent just being taken for granted by the white man's big, greedy corporations all the time. They have lot of reason to think way: illegal logging and mining on their land, drug runners, etc etc. Plus, historically they have been persecuted by white settlers, who regarded them as little more than animals you could kill for sport.
What it means is that your illusion of the free market is broken, simply. If you start out with a market with no restrictions at all, you will most likely get a few companies that are immensely powerful. These companies will use their power to keep others out, thus creating a non-free market.
Morale: The free market is at best an unstable and short-lived artifact. Besides, I don't think anybody actually want a *free* market - what most want is a *fair* marketplace; one where everybody has equal opportunities, so that if you are clever and hardworking, you can achieve financial success. But this requires some sort of regulation - ie. government intervention in most cases. Legislation is, after all, a form of government intervention.
Apart from that, the EU Commission is not a government of a country - the EU is not a state or nation in any sense. It is 'a supranational and intergovernmental union of 25 independent, democratic member states' - to quote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU
A quick look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnsworth-Hirsch_Fus or reveals that this is a fairly simply, but clever experiment. He is a bright kid, and one day he'll most likely become a physicist. Or perhaps not - whereas the device is simple enough to build, I haven't been able to find a place to buy deuterium, unless you want to talk to a guy called Al (last name of 'Qaeda').
To me it seems to be a mostly American problem. Not that politicians in Europe are saints, but the deeprooted mistrust and sometimes even contempt towards all politicians you have in the US is not common in most European countries, as far as I know. Several of the Amercan readers have already commented on how expensive it is to become a politician, let alone campaigning; I think I can see why the situation is so bad in America.
Compare to my own country: Denmark. To become a politician you simply take part in the debate, basically. If you have something to say that people want to listen to, you are well on the way, first on a local level, later perhaps nationally. We have a lot of controls in place to try to ensure that political parties are not heavily funded by commercial interests; during elections each political group is allotted a certain amount of time on tv to air their views - and it is not possible to buy more time. Etc etc.
That is one reason why politicians in Denmark are generally well respected. The other, I think, is that it is considered very bad form to attack other politicians personally. Politics is about your ideals and what you stand for, what goals you will work for when you are elected.
The problems in America, if I may comment on that - I mean, you guys really hate it when outsiders give an opinion about American affairs, but you seem to consider it your divine right to throw around opinions about everybody else, don't you? Anyway, I can see at least two big problems:
1. Your political system lends itself to corruption very easily - is there any limit to how much a party can receive from businesses and churches? Is there any limit to how much air time and advertising a party can buy? How about restrictions on what can be said in a campaign - such as minimal standards for thruthfulness and relevance? Money and religion have far too much influence on politics in USA - therefore the interests of commmon people are not represented.
2. Voter education. You have been educated to believe far too much in authority - the military, the church, patriotism; and you demand that everything should be entertainment. So politics becomes a form of showbiz, where the actors try to pose as big authorities: 'war veterans', 'regular churchgoers', 'big patriots'. But of course you all know they have their filthy little secrets and it's just a lame show anyway.
I think you need to learn to respect yourselves and take politics serious. It is YOUR country, after all, it doesn't just belong to the 2% who are either filthy rich or belong to some odious church (funny how those two often go together).
Why does America want to explore the Moon? It seems stupid when China is already going to do it - there is no need for America to go there. Or something like that. At least, that is the agument we always hear when there is talk about China, Europe or Russia wanting to do something the Americans already do, such as having their own gps, astronauts etc. Except it's the other way around, of course.
And they call us pirates? A decent, fairly honest, average person or a dishonest, greedy juggernaut of a company - who would you rather deal with, legalities or not? I know who I wouldn't want to turn my back on.
This is simply stupid. Is this supposed to be better than simply taking the issue seriously and stop dumping megatons of CO2 in the atmosphere each year? Is this the kind of harebrained scheme the climate-reactionaries seem to prefer rather than doing the obvious thing. Yes, I call then 'reactionary' instead of 'sceptical' because the word 'sceptical' implies that you have thought about things and still don't feel convinced, whereas 'reactionary' means that you have closed your eyes and ears and simply use your brain to think up any excuse for not accepting reality.
Yes, yes, I know, this is probably not thought up by one of the climate-reactionaries - since it actually seems to accept that our climate is actually changing, but it is none the less something along the same line of thought: anything to avoid having to address the real problem, because it might cost us money in the short term; never mind what happens in the future or to other people.
Have a look at this article - http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1 956569.ece. It's just an article imagining headlines at points in the future, and they are not all that unlikely either. It is not nice things that await us, even if you don't go with the worst possible scenario; so why do we resist doing what we all know we have to do in order to avoid the problems?
You certainly know a lot about Hussein, all of a sudden; and about psychopathy as well. Marvellous. May I suggest you read a little about both subjects? Not just in a lads' magazine, but a reputable source.
Hussein rose to power with the help of the US government; he may or may not have killed on a whim and whatever, but he came to power because of American policy in the Middle East.
As for psychopaths - yes, they may be superficially charming, but they are not generally good planners; in fact they are notorious for being impulsive and reckless, unable to think ahead. They often seem to simply lack the something that stops normal humans from acting antisocially. One could argue that psychopaths are no truly evil - they do what they believe is right, since they lack the instincts that would stop a normal person. To be evil you have to know that what you are doing is wrong, but you still choose to do it.
I think Hussein is a normal person - which is why he is evil. The truly evil person will excuse his actions with references to 'higher causes'; such as 'war against terror' or bringing 'democracy and freedom' to where ever. Hussein is no psychopath - he is a stark reminder of what evil a normal person is capable of. This is no different from American soldiers torturing prisoners for fun. We can all go that way - so be careful about what choices you make in life.
Instead of reiterating the same ground prejudices, perhaps one should take a step back and look at thing in a wider perspective.
Firstly, a number of studies claim that 'China's Internet-filtering regime is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world'. The researchers involved are probably honest and reliable people, or mostly; I have no reason to suspect that they aren't. But, as with everything that issues a strong opinion about anything, one has to assess it carefully. We get their conclusion; would somebody else reach the same conclusion from the data they have collected? I don't know, I haven't seen their data. I am sure if the study is scientifically sound, I can get to see the full data. Perhaps what they have in their data is simply that there's a number of web sites that they couldn't reach from inside China, whatever the explanation may be - in that case it is not right to conclude that 'there must be censorship going on'. As an example, my own website (which is a mere empty shell) can't be reached from China for some reason; annoying, because I would have liked to use it to make some of my holiday photos available to my friends, but hardly a case of censorship.
What I am saying here is: just because some people have presented a conclusion it doesn't mean that they are right. It is ultimately always your own responsibility to gain insight and reach you own conclusion.
Secondly, is it possible that what this guy says could be true? I can't honestly say that it can't. Think about it - filtering, for one thing, isn't only happening in China, we do it too. I am sure everybody (or most) can see the sense in trying to filter out childporn, scams and terrorism if it is at all possible. Is that 'oppression of freedom'? Of course it is, but it is also right in many people's view, even most of those that believe in democracy and freedom of speech. So it is just a matter of which subjects you want to oppress; a question of culture more than anything else.
And don't we in the west have policeforces that are busy chasing down what they see as potentially dangerous thoughts? Like, eg. if you are devout muslim that automatically makes you just that little bit more suspicious. So in China they tend to suspect people who talk about certain things that they believe are characteristic of the groups they have identified (rightly or wrongly) as being troublemakers. Such as the word 'democracy' - this is not a Chinese word. Of course the Chinese, like anybody else, want to have influence on their own lives and their government, but I am not sure they necessarily think of this as 'democracy'. 'Democracy' is an idea that has come from the outside and which has been used by western powers as signifying something more or less like American style charlatan politicians, unbridled capitalism and imperialism; or that is how it has looked to the Chinese. You can't blame them for not trusting us; not after the Opium Wars, and the whole debacle that was western and Japanese involvement in China in the first half of the 20'th century.
All in all, try to think independently, make up your own minds rather than letting some pundits tell you what to think. Maybe when you have acquired some genuine insight you will still reach the same conclusion; or maybe not.
What a strange place America is. 'Conservative' used to simply mean that you didn't jump on any ne wband-wagon that came along; that you like to preserve things more or less as they are. I am a deeply conservative person; I am also convinced that communism is a better way - something that I suspect most Americans would consider a contradiction in terms. But that is because you are used to the screwed up world of American politics, where 'conservative' means that you are ultra-reactionary, against anything that might not allow big companies and fundamentalist churches free reins to do whatever they see fit for their purpose.
Will it ever be possible to communicate directly and freely between Americans and the rest of the world? I mean without having to translate everything to American terminology?
You paid for a development setup? The company I work for has never paid for any of its developer Oracle installations - and that is on Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, z/OS etc etc. The fact that developer licenses are free is one of the major attractions of Oracle, at least from a developer's viewpoint.
So we will finally have 'ubermenschen' and 'untermenschen'? And the men will have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises, while the women will have lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features? And everybody will be sort of coffee-coloured?
I don't think so. First off, this seems to assume that everybody thinks those features are attractive. Not all women are attracted to men that look like a gay bodybuilder's dream; and not all men prefer women with 'hairless skin and large eyes'. I, for example, find women with body hair very sexy - but that is an aside. Survival in an evolutionary sense is not just a question of superficial features like looks - these things tend to be overruled by more basic traits like ability to adapt to the changing environment. I think the way an animal looks only evolves to an extreme when the environment is sufficiently stable; being very tall and having a huge dick may be an advantage when it comes to impressing others, but a big body needs more energy and is more vulnerable (eg. if a mouse falls down 6 feet if will probably just walk away; if an elephant falls the same distance, it will probably die). Also, a big penis will be more likely to get caught in uncomfortable ways...
Secondly, speciation requires isolation in one way or another. If society becomes more technologically advanced etc, then we will get less isolated, not more, which is why he assumes we'll all be coffee-coloured - this is BTW another false conclusion: skincolour is very variable, and it seems likely that people who live in areas with strong sun all year will tend to develop dark skin, whereas people in the far north and south will tend to be paler. My guess is that there will always be 'black' people and 'white' people, which in my opinion is a very good thing; diversity is good.
I strongly suspect that Oliver Curry is simply living in an ivory tower, dreaming about what he thinks is the ideal human. He seems to have started with the conclusion and deducted the arguments for why it will have to be that way.
Now for some of the usual comments people tend to spew out:
Correlation is not causation
This is true - but correlation indicates that there MAY BE a causation. Thus, when things are strongly correlated and there are other reasons to suspect a causal connection, it is well worth researching further.
Increased awareness
Perhaps 'increased awareness' of autism means that we discover more cases that were not previously recognised? Perhaps, but I don't think it is very likely. Full-blown autism is not something you overlook. It is a serious disorder that in most cases means lifelong disability, and it is unlike any other psychiatric disorder. The increased awareness, I suspect, mostly means that now we spot more of the milder cases, but it is not my impression that this is what this research is about.
So why is it that people on this list are hostile to the idea that maybe TV can contribute to the emergence of autism? My guess is that this is because people on the list tend to be heavy consumers of passive entertainment, like TV and computer games; you don't want to hear that it may be bad for you.
If you have read the article I referred to above, you will know that autism probably has a lot to do with the development of 'mirror neurons' in the brain; a neural system that makes us able to imitate what other people do. Like all neural systems, the mirror neurons need to be trained, and TV is probably not a very good role model for that, at least not if you are already weak in this area. So it is actually quite reasonable to suspect that watching too much TV at an early age may contribute to the development of autism.
The big worrying thing I see here is not the question of whether 'freedom of speech' is more important than treating each other decently. What really worries me is this revenge industry: the business of making money on people taking out their grievances on each other. You use civil lawsuits to kick other people with in the hope that you can wring every last dime out of them; never mind that they are fellow human beings and that you could have reached a common understanding quite easily, had you tried. This is supposed to be the country in the world where most people think of themselves as 'deeply religious'.
But it is also becoming what vi was never really intended to be IMO. What makes vi such a great editor is a number of factors, such as:
- it is small - it does a lot of things that are useful for editing source files - it is very economical with bandwidth etc - all commands map to keys that are found on all terminal keyboards
If I should say anything against vim it would be that it can do too many things that are only eye candy or 'cool features'. Fortunately you can turn them off, which I always do. If you develop on several different UNIXes (and other OSes with UNIX like environments) getting used to all the extra features in vim can be a real pain, when you have to work with the classic form of vi.
Yes, I can see that this sort of thing goes on in the US.
- or UK for that matter. What I was criticising was the way you and many people in the west, especially the US, blithely assume that anything done by the Chinese government must by necessity be evil, whereas 'we' of course aren't like that. The reality simply isn't that way; the Chinese government are doing what they think is the best compromise, weighing up political goals, the physical and social reality in the country and what they perceive to be the wishes of the population as a whole. I believe you can see this evidenced in the way China is developing towards being a fully modern society, and I believe that over time they will tend to remove restrictions rather than increasing them. As opposed to what is happening here.
To be quite honest, I don't really think much of your supposed freedoms. Yes, the American constitution as well as the different European laws give people certain guarantees; but as we can see in the US, they are very easily eroded to mean next to nothing. Put on top of that the particular American problems, like most newsmedia apparently being owned and run by paranoid, rightwing extremists and the government being run by the megacorporations and lobbies (none of which have been democratically elected), and I think we have a cocktail that doesn't bode well for the future of 'liberty'.
Apart from that, what use does one have for freedom of religion or speech, when you can hardly feed your family? Ask one of the increasing number of desperately poor in USA whether they would rather have 'freedom' or a decent job, so they don't have to see their children grow up in a squalid slum. That sort of liberty is luxury to many people in the world: something that is simply not relevant.
I don't say that this Chinese law is only good; but I can easily see why it is being implemented. China is a vast country with significantly less infrastructure than America or Europe, and the government has less control over all parts of the nation than what we are used to in the west. If malicious outside influences (like eg. American missionaries) are allowed to operate freely, there is a very real risk the country could descend into civil war, IMO, and I can't see that a responsible government can allow that.
Just to round it off, a large segment of the Chinese population actually feel that their government are too liberal and soft. And even though people in the west tend to see Mao Zedong as simply an evil dictator who dragged China through one disaster after the other, many Chinese see him as the great liberator, who united and modernised the country and gave the ordinary Chinese (the workers and peasants) self-respect and national pride. Before him China was a backward country constantly overrun by foreign powers: Britain, Japan etc; now China is beginning to be a modern nation and already look like the superpower of the future.
You are quoting selectively and with a clear bias - in the hope, I think, that you can score some points with the big majority of/. readers who will never read the article. So to balance your quotes a bit, here are some more:
... news and information released in China by foreign news agencies shall not contain any of the following that serves to:...
-- undermine China's national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity;
-- endanger China's national security, reputation and interests;
-- violate China's religious policies or preach evil cults or superstition;
-- incite hatred and discrimination......
And so forth; read the article in full. Now, which part of the above is horribly bad and oppressive?
Can't you see that it is exactly this kind of brainwashed tunnelvision that constantly undermines America's standing in the world? The US has some higly dubious laws, policies and practices; but we are all supposed to give you the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, no matter what a country like China does, they are always guilty. So, to take an example, in China you are not allowed to incite hatred and discrimination - this, I take it, is interpreted in the US as 'horrible suppression of a fundamental freedom' rather than 'protection of vulnerable minorities'.
And I think I'm actually being kind here, calling the average American biased. The alternative would be to take you serious and believe that you are cold, selfish and uncaring.
Slashdot Mirror
If such an investigation finds no hidden counter-claims, then we will know for a fact that the claims of stifling are overblown.
True - and I for one welcome any investigation of this nature. However, one has also to think about the possible motives behind what people do. I find it hard to imagine any likely motives for wanting to stifle the sceptics if they have some real results to show. Most of the reasoning one hears is more or less along the lines of 'the big conspiracy'; but why should there be a conpiracy? Who stands to actually gain from such a thing? This is the same sort of tactics we've seen from the creationists and it seems just as pathetic. On the other hand, it is very easy to see who has something to gain from stifling any research that would suggest that we have to stop wasting fossil fuels.
Brilliant. But you don't win freedom or anything else by hiding somewhere and spreading nonsense on the internet. If you want things to change, the way forward it to go out there and take the risks. The ones who don't have the courage very rarely have anything real to say. Look at our own history in the West: it is littered with examples of who changes were brought about because of the struggle of those who had vision and courage. The same thing is happening in China, and not at all slowly when you compare to how things went in Europe. Just look at what has happened in the last 20 years; did people in eg. UK ever go through such enormous changes in so short a time?
It's all very well fiddling around with those things, but when they talk about 'better apples' they simply mean apples that will sell better, keep better during transport, require less to grow etc. This is why you can hardly find a good apple in a supermarket - they tend to be hard (so they don't bruise too easily), not too aromatic (since that attracts insects) and shiny so people notice them. Unfortunately they are not very good to eat - leathery flesh and little taste is what you mostly get. All the good, old-fashioned varieties tend to be comparatively floury, aromatic and not incredibly shiny.
I don't think it does. Lack of ethical standards and concern for other people - business partners included - may give a short term advantage, but business is very much about trust: the trust of your customers, shareholders, employees and business partners. As much as our society nowadays is dominated by braindead consumerism, where people will buy anything if it is cheap and shiny, I think you would only buy a crappy product from a untrustworthy company once; even Microsoft wouldn't have survived if they hadn't at least to some extent delivered what people wanted and been minimally reliable, even if it is only 'thieves' honour'.
There are in fact a growing number of companies, especially in Europe, who have found that a good ethical record makes very good business sense. Because:
- when you treat your employees well, they are more willing to go all out for the comapny and generally produce better quality
- when you treat the competition fairly you win respect; and in the real world competitors are often business partners as well
- when you treat your customers well, they come back next time
- when you show social responsibility, it improves your image
- and so on and on.
No consensus? What utter nonsense is this? Something like 90+ % of those who actually know about these things agree that climate change is happening and that our burning of fossil fuels is the cause. That constitutes consensus to me and most of the rest of the people in the world.
So you feel you need lots of energy? For what? Continuing you wasteful, sedentary lifestyle - that is slowly killing you? Well OK; if you think that is a worthy way to spend the world's resources. But fusion is not the way forward - I read an article only yesterday (sorry, no link) about a study that concluded that we could cover the entire world's energy needs with very low-tech generators: basically a big mirror that heats the boiler of a turbine. We would need to cover ~2% of the world's deserts with these generators. The report suggests a number of ways to make it financially viable.
So why don't we do this already (well, we do, actually, but only on a small scale)? Because somebody stands to lose a lot of money is we go that way, that's why.
Right and wrong, and in particular the question of how hard something should be punished varies a lot across the globe. Just take Singapore, where rumour has it that if you spit on the street, you will be arrested and given a very heavy fine. I think most would agree that spitting is not the most charming thing to do, but criminal prosecutions? Anyway, if you live in a country you can be expected to KNOW the laws and follow them, and you ought to know HOW different transgressions are regarded. So perhaps in China people in general regard pornography as something very bad? Or perhaps they feel that these persons not only broke the laws, but did so in a particularly obnoxious way that warranted the harsh punishment? I don't know, because the article hasn't told us anything about it; all we have to go on is our own background, which may not be appropriate.
Apart from that, pornography is not simply a question of looking at erotic art; the lunatic fringe in the world of porn deals with some extreme things, including child pornography, violent sex (not just your usual discipline and bondage), exploitation of those who are weak, etc. Sometimes drugs, prostitution and other crimes are involved. Again, we haven't been told about it - we don't know what was involved in this case.
But lifetime seems over the top, and despite what the more reactionary part of the western press reports, the Chinese courts aren't generally much more heavyhanded than they need to be; so I suspect they have found some pretty nasty things going on. It wouldn't necessarily be reported to the press - the Chinese may well have thought that the details were too grisly to report.
I think, on a deeper level, that this question misses the target somewhat; but I recognise that there is something about it in real life. The thing is, technically gifted people are quite often socially inept, and good management is very much about people skills. Let's face it, the 'actual work' that most managers do is something most people with any knowledge about Excel and Word would be able to handle.
However, a good manager knows that these things are not what he is there for. The most important task a manager has is LEADING people, ie. he has to be able to motivate, build morale, make things happen. In my view the following are essential traits:
- Trust: he must be able to create an atmosphere of trust. IOW, he must be trusted by his employees, and perhaps more importantly, he must be able to trust his employees. Thus, you don't betray people, and you always expect people to do their best - even if they miss their deadlines, you don't start from the assumption that they were lazy or stupid.
- Fairness: He must be fair in all his dealings. Rewards and punishments must be appropriate and prompt. This means that you don't dangle a carrot in front of people for ages - you give rewards immediately when an employee has done something good. Same thing with punishment - if somebody screws up or is lazy or something, you don't save it up, you wallop him there and then, and then you move on and let the sinner know (and feel) that as far as you are concerned that is all there is to it. It is rarely reasonable to turn back to past problems at review time.
- Appreciation: It is important that employees know they are valued. The workers, to put it that way, are the ones who produce the goods that the whole company benefits from. The CEOs, presidents, administrators, managers, sales people etc depend on the production team to do a good job, and that is worth bearing in mind, so show them respect. This also implies that you never give a salary increase less that the inflation rate every year! It may seem like a small thing, but if a person's salary doesn't at least follow inflation, it means that his real income is falling; and that tells any moderately bright person that he is not worth his upkeep. The result: that person will not be likely to show much loyalty and team spirit.
This is what a good manager is about, IMO. I think technical people are able to do that, but perhaps we have one handicap: we are often not too interested in person to person interaction.
It's an unusual situation and one can't, perhaps, blame Microsoft for just assuming that it was OK. On the other hand, I think we all need to think about other cultures with respect and to learn about their sensitivities before we just plunge into whatever we are about. This is particularly true for Americans, I think, and even more so for gig American companies. Americans have for ages been used to think that whatever they do in the world is OK, eveerybody will understand what is intended; and while many choose to tolerate it and laugh at the more grotesque howlers our American friends present us with, there are not a small number of people who feel that the looming presence of the American elephant-in-a-china-shop is too much.
And while most people in the world don't feel their language is anything special, there are cultures to which their native language is sacred; perhaps these people feel that way. Or perhaps they resent just being taken for granted by the white man's big, greedy corporations all the time. They have lot of reason to think way: illegal logging and mining on their land, drug runners, etc etc. Plus, historically they have been persecuted by white settlers, who regarded them as little more than animals you could kill for sport.
What it means is that your illusion of the free market is broken, simply. If you start out with a market with no restrictions at all, you will most likely get a few companies that are immensely powerful. These companies will use their power to keep others out, thus creating a non-free market.
Morale: The free market is at best an unstable and short-lived artifact. Besides, I don't think anybody actually want a *free* market - what most want is a *fair* marketplace; one where everybody has equal opportunities, so that if you are clever and hardworking, you can achieve financial success. But this requires some sort of regulation - ie. government intervention in most cases. Legislation is, after all, a form of government intervention.
Apart from that, the EU Commission is not a government of a country - the EU is not a state or nation in any sense. It is 'a supranational and intergovernmental union of 25 independent, democratic member states' - to quote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU
A quick look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnsworth-Hirsch_Fus or reveals that this is a fairly simply, but clever experiment. He is a bright kid, and one day he'll most likely become a physicist. Or perhaps not - whereas the device is simple enough to build, I haven't been able to find a place to buy deuterium, unless you want to talk to a guy called Al (last name of 'Qaeda').
This eerily reminds of the guy who pissed himself to keep warm.
To me it seems to be a mostly American problem. Not that politicians in Europe are saints, but the deeprooted mistrust and sometimes even contempt towards all politicians you have in the US is not common in most European countries, as far as I know. Several of the Amercan readers have already commented on how expensive it is to become a politician, let alone campaigning; I think I can see why the situation is so bad in America.
Compare to my own country: Denmark. To become a politician you simply take part in the debate, basically. If you have something to say that people want to listen to, you are well on the way, first on a local level, later perhaps nationally. We have a lot of controls in place to try to ensure that political parties are not heavily funded by commercial interests; during elections each political group is allotted a certain amount of time on tv to air their views - and it is not possible to buy more time. Etc etc.
That is one reason why politicians in Denmark are generally well respected. The other, I think, is that it is considered very bad form to attack other politicians personally. Politics is about your ideals and what you stand for, what goals you will work for when you are elected.
The problems in America, if I may comment on that - I mean, you guys really hate it when outsiders give an opinion about American affairs, but you seem to consider it your divine right to throw around opinions about everybody else, don't you? Anyway, I can see at least two big problems:
1. Your political system lends itself to corruption very easily - is there any limit to how much a party can receive from businesses and churches? Is there any limit to how much air time and advertising a party can buy? How about restrictions on what can be said in a campaign - such as minimal standards for thruthfulness and relevance? Money and religion have far too much influence on politics in USA - therefore the interests of commmon people are not represented.
2. Voter education. You have been educated to believe far too much in authority - the military, the church, patriotism; and you demand that everything should be entertainment. So politics becomes a form of showbiz, where the actors try to pose as big authorities: 'war veterans', 'regular churchgoers', 'big patriots'. But of course you all know they have their filthy little secrets and it's just a lame show anyway.
I think you need to learn to respect yourselves and take politics serious. It is YOUR country, after all, it doesn't just belong to the 2% who are either filthy rich or belong to some odious church (funny how those two often go together).
Why does America want to explore the Moon? It seems stupid when China is already going to do it - there is no need for America to go there. Or something like that. At least, that is the agument we always hear when there is talk about China, Europe or Russia wanting to do something the Americans already do, such as having their own gps, astronauts etc. Except it's the other way around, of course.
And they call us pirates? A decent, fairly honest, average person or a dishonest, greedy juggernaut of a company - who would you rather deal with, legalities or not? I know who I wouldn't want to turn my back on.
This is simply stupid. Is this supposed to be better than simply taking the issue seriously and stop dumping megatons of CO2 in the atmosphere each year? Is this the kind of harebrained scheme the climate-reactionaries seem to prefer rather than doing the obvious thing. Yes, I call then 'reactionary' instead of 'sceptical' because the word 'sceptical' implies that you have thought about things and still don't feel convinced, whereas 'reactionary' means that you have closed your eyes and ears and simply use your brain to think up any excuse for not accepting reality.
1 956569.ece. It's just an article imagining headlines at points in the future, and they are not all that unlikely either. It is not nice things that await us, even if you don't go with the worst possible scenario; so why do we resist doing what we all know we have to do in order to avoid the problems?
Yes, yes, I know, this is probably not thought up by one of the climate-reactionaries - since it actually seems to accept that our climate is actually changing, but it is none the less something along the same line of thought: anything to avoid having to address the real problem, because it might cost us money in the short term; never mind what happens in the future or to other people.
Have a look at this article - http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article
You certainly know a lot about Hussein, all of a sudden; and about psychopathy as well. Marvellous. May I suggest you read a little about both subjects? Not just in a lads' magazine, but a reputable source.
Hussein rose to power with the help of the US government; he may or may not have killed on a whim and whatever, but he came to power because of American policy in the Middle East.
As for psychopaths - yes, they may be superficially charming, but they are not generally good planners; in fact they are notorious for being impulsive and reckless, unable to think ahead. They often seem to simply lack the something that stops normal humans from acting antisocially. One could argue that psychopaths are no truly evil - they do what they believe is right, since they lack the instincts that would stop a normal person. To be evil you have to know that what you are doing is wrong, but you still choose to do it.
I think Hussein is a normal person - which is why he is evil. The truly evil person will excuse his actions with references to 'higher causes'; such as 'war against terror' or bringing 'democracy and freedom' to where ever. Hussein is no psychopath - he is a stark reminder of what evil a normal person is capable of. This is no different from American soldiers torturing prisoners for fun. We can all go that way - so be careful about what choices you make in life.
Instead of reiterating the same ground prejudices, perhaps one should take a step back and look at thing in a wider perspective.
Firstly, a number of studies claim that 'China's Internet-filtering regime is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world'. The researchers involved are probably honest and reliable people, or mostly; I have no reason to suspect that they aren't. But, as with everything that issues a strong opinion about anything, one has to assess it carefully. We get their conclusion; would somebody else reach the same conclusion from the data they have collected? I don't know, I haven't seen their data. I am sure if the study is scientifically sound, I can get to see the full data. Perhaps what they have in their data is simply that there's a number of web sites that they couldn't reach from inside China, whatever the explanation may be - in that case it is not right to conclude that 'there must be censorship going on'. As an example, my own website (which is a mere empty shell) can't be reached from China for some reason; annoying, because I would have liked to use it to make some of my holiday photos available to my friends, but hardly a case of censorship.
What I am saying here is: just because some people have presented a conclusion it doesn't mean that they are right. It is ultimately always your own responsibility to gain insight and reach you own conclusion.
Secondly, is it possible that what this guy says could be true? I can't honestly say that it can't. Think about it - filtering, for one thing, isn't only happening in China, we do it too. I am sure everybody (or most) can see the sense in trying to filter out childporn, scams and terrorism if it is at all possible. Is that 'oppression of freedom'? Of course it is, but it is also right in many people's view, even most of those that believe in democracy and freedom of speech. So it is just a matter of which subjects you want to oppress; a question of culture more than anything else.
And don't we in the west have policeforces that are busy chasing down what they see as potentially dangerous thoughts? Like, eg. if you are devout muslim that automatically makes you just that little bit more suspicious. So in China they tend to suspect people who talk about certain things that they believe are characteristic of the groups they have identified (rightly or wrongly) as being troublemakers. Such as the word 'democracy' - this is not a Chinese word. Of course the Chinese, like anybody else, want to have influence on their own lives and their government, but I am not sure they necessarily think of this as 'democracy'. 'Democracy' is an idea that has come from the outside and which has been used by western powers as signifying something more or less like American style charlatan politicians, unbridled capitalism and imperialism; or that is how it has looked to the Chinese. You can't blame them for not trusting us; not after the Opium Wars, and the whole debacle that was western and Japanese involvement in China in the first half of the 20'th century.
All in all, try to think independently, make up your own minds rather than letting some pundits tell you what to think. Maybe when you have acquired some genuine insight you will still reach the same conclusion; or maybe not.
What a strange place America is. 'Conservative' used to simply mean that you didn't jump on any ne wband-wagon that came along; that you like to preserve things more or less as they are. I am a deeply conservative person; I am also convinced that communism is a better way - something that I suspect most Americans would consider a contradiction in terms. But that is because you are used to the screwed up world of American politics, where 'conservative' means that you are ultra-reactionary, against anything that might not allow big companies and fundamentalist churches free reins to do whatever they see fit for their purpose.
Will it ever be possible to communicate directly and freely between Americans and the rest of the world? I mean without having to translate everything to American terminology?
You paid for a development setup? The company I work for has never paid for any of its developer Oracle installations - and that is on Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, z/OS etc etc. The fact that developer licenses are free is one of the major attractions of Oracle, at least from a developer's viewpoint.
So we will finally have 'ubermenschen' and 'untermenschen'? And the men will have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises, while the women will have lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features? And everybody will be sort of coffee-coloured?
I don't think so. First off, this seems to assume that everybody thinks those features are attractive. Not all women are attracted to men that look like a gay bodybuilder's dream; and not all men prefer women with 'hairless skin and large eyes'. I, for example, find women with body hair very sexy - but that is an aside. Survival in an evolutionary sense is not just a question of superficial features like looks - these things tend to be overruled by more basic traits like ability to adapt to the changing environment. I think the way an animal looks only evolves to an extreme when the environment is sufficiently stable; being very tall and having a huge dick may be an advantage when it comes to impressing others, but a big body needs more energy and is more vulnerable (eg. if a mouse falls down 6 feet if will probably just walk away; if an elephant falls the same distance, it will probably die). Also, a big penis will be more likely to get caught in uncomfortable ways...
Secondly, speciation requires isolation in one way or another. If society becomes more technologically advanced etc, then we will get less isolated, not more, which is why he assumes we'll all be coffee-coloured - this is BTW another false conclusion: skincolour is very variable, and it seems likely that people who live in areas with strong sun all year will tend to develop dark skin, whereas people in the far north and south will tend to be paler. My guess is that there will always be 'black' people and 'white' people, which in my opinion is a very good thing; diversity is good.
I strongly suspect that Oliver Curry is simply living in an ivory tower, dreaming about what he thinks is the ideal human. He seems to have started with the conclusion and deducted the arguments for why it will have to be that way.
Before anybody starts jeering stupidly and making wise about this subject, perhaps people should read this article from Scientific American: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colI D=1&articleID=000B7F38-893D-152E-88E283414B7F0000
Now for some of the usual comments people tend to spew out:
Correlation is not causation
This is true - but correlation indicates that there MAY BE a causation. Thus, when things are strongly correlated and there are other reasons to suspect a causal connection, it is well worth researching further.
Increased awareness
Perhaps 'increased awareness' of autism means that we discover more cases that were not previously recognised? Perhaps, but I don't think it is very likely. Full-blown autism is not something you overlook. It is a serious disorder that in most cases means lifelong disability, and it is unlike any other psychiatric disorder. The increased awareness, I suspect, mostly means that now we spot more of the milder cases, but it is not my impression that this is what this research is about.
So why is it that people on this list are hostile to the idea that maybe TV can contribute to the emergence of autism? My guess is that this is because people on the list tend to be heavy consumers of passive entertainment, like TV and computer games; you don't want to hear that it may be bad for you.
If you have read the article I referred to above, you will know that autism probably has a lot to do with the development of 'mirror neurons' in the brain; a neural system that makes us able to imitate what other people do. Like all neural systems, the mirror neurons need to be trained, and TV is probably not a very good role model for that, at least not if you are already weak in this area. So it is actually quite reasonable to suspect that watching too much TV at an early age may contribute to the development of autism.
The big worrying thing I see here is not the question of whether 'freedom of speech' is more important than treating each other decently. What really worries me is this revenge industry: the business of making money on people taking out their grievances on each other. You use civil lawsuits to kick other people with in the hope that you can wring every last dime out of them; never mind that they are fellow human beings and that you could have reached a common understanding quite easily, had you tried. This is supposed to be the country in the world where most people think of themselves as 'deeply religious'.
But it is also becoming what vi was never really intended to be IMO. What makes vi such a great editor is a number of factors, such as:
- it is small
- it does a lot of things that are useful for editing source files
- it is very economical with bandwidth etc
- all commands map to keys that are found on all terminal keyboards
If I should say anything against vim it would be that it can do too many things that are only eye candy or 'cool features'. Fortunately you can turn them off, which I always do. If you develop on several different UNIXes (and other OSes with UNIX like environments) getting used to all the extra features in vim can be a real pain, when you have to work with the classic form of vi.
Yes, I can see that this sort of thing goes on in the US.
- or UK for that matter. What I was criticising was the way you and many people in the west, especially the US, blithely assume that anything done by the Chinese government must by necessity be evil, whereas 'we' of course aren't like that. The reality simply isn't that way; the Chinese government are doing what they think is the best compromise, weighing up political goals, the physical and social reality in the country and what they perceive to be the wishes of the population as a whole. I believe you can see this evidenced in the way China is developing towards being a fully modern society, and I believe that over time they will tend to remove restrictions rather than increasing them. As opposed to what is happening here.
To be quite honest, I don't really think much of your supposed freedoms. Yes, the American constitution as well as the different European laws give people certain guarantees; but as we can see in the US, they are very easily eroded to mean next to nothing. Put on top of that the particular American problems, like most newsmedia apparently being owned and run by paranoid, rightwing extremists and the government being run by the megacorporations and lobbies (none of which have been democratically elected), and I think we have a cocktail that doesn't bode well for the future of 'liberty'.
Apart from that, what use does one have for freedom of religion or speech, when you can hardly feed your family? Ask one of the increasing number of desperately poor in USA whether they would rather have 'freedom' or a decent job, so they don't have to see their children grow up in a squalid slum. That sort of liberty is luxury to many people in the world: something that is simply not relevant.
I don't say that this Chinese law is only good; but I can easily see why it is being implemented. China is a vast country with significantly less infrastructure than America or Europe, and the government has less control over all parts of the nation than what we are used to in the west. If malicious outside influences (like eg. American missionaries) are allowed to operate freely, there is a very real risk the country could descend into civil war, IMO, and I can't see that a responsible government can allow that.
Just to round it off, a large segment of the Chinese population actually feel that their government are too liberal and soft. And even though people in the west tend to see Mao Zedong as simply an evil dictator who dragged China through one disaster after the other, many Chinese see him as the great liberator, who united and modernised the country and gave the ordinary Chinese (the workers and peasants) self-respect and national pride. Before him China was a backward country constantly overrun by foreign powers: Britain, Japan etc; now China is beginning to be a modern nation and already look like the superpower of the future.
You are quoting selectively and with a clear bias - in the hope, I think, that you can score some points with the big majority of /. readers who will never read the article. So to balance your quotes a bit, here are some more:
... news and information released in China by foreign news agencies shall not contain any of the following that serves to: ...
... ...
-- undermine China's national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity;
-- endanger China's national security, reputation and interests;
-- violate China's religious policies or preach evil cults or superstition;
-- incite hatred and discrimination
And so forth; read the article in full. Now, which part of the above is horribly bad and oppressive?
Can't you see that it is exactly this kind of brainwashed tunnelvision that constantly undermines America's standing in the world? The US has some higly dubious laws, policies and practices; but we are all supposed to give you the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, no matter what a country like China does, they are always guilty. So, to take an example, in China you are not allowed to incite hatred and discrimination - this, I take it, is interpreted in the US as 'horrible suppression of a fundamental freedom' rather than 'protection of vulnerable minorities'.
And I think I'm actually being kind here, calling the average American biased. The alternative would be to take you serious and believe that you are cold, selfish and uncaring.