This article and the comments on/. are almost exclusively relevant for USA.
1. Nobody else in the world worries about Freedom in the way Americans do - like it was something divine, more important than anything else. What we in the rest of the world think about freedom is simply that we can live our daily lives without too many restrictions and without fear. What I think about the American obsession with Freedom (TM) can be summed up thus: If you're starving, all you can think of is food; if you're thirsting, all you can think of is water - perhaps you guys are really starved of freedom?
2. The internet - it is nice, really useful when it comes to finding information and communicating. I have enjoyed it so far, but I can see more and more reasons why I can't really be bothered with it. It's like TV: initially it was deeply fascinating, then there was things like the news and films; but now it's just wall to wall crap like talk shows, 'reality' TV, films over the same tired, old theme and endless soaps. I have a TV, but I haven't watched it for months. I think the same thing will happen to the internet - those who can get themselves to bother, will use it. Perhaps it will be used for specialised things like VOIP etc.
I think my point here is that laying on restrictions in thick layers will just end up discouraging people from using it; there's no business sense in it. The internet is not something we can't easily live without if that makes more sense.
1. If writing for both UNIX and Windows - and/or possibly other systems, do the development on UNIX. The reason for this is simply that if you develop on Windows, you will all the time be pushed towards using non-portable features; the development toys, I mean tools, are made that way. Also, the portable parts of the C libs were made on UNIX with that system in mind.
2. Stick to POSIX. The POSIX standard convers almost all the functionality needed for the internals of any application.
3. Separate the GUI from the business end of the application. Use IPC to communicate between the parts.
4. Avoid threads. Threads are the source of some of the hardest errors to debug; plus threads are NOT the same kind of fish on all platform, even when they are called 'POSIC threads'.
Size and scalability aren't the only reasons for using Oracle. Oracle has a lot of features that you don't find in any free database, as far as I know. Oracle's SQL, for example, is VERY powerful. You may think that a 'select' is just a 'select', but try to compare them. There are many other features in Oracle that can come in handy even for small databases, like database links and the several kinds of indexing etc.
I have been on the lookout for a free-ish RDBMS that I could develop against for a long time, but I always come up against limitations that I can't live with and that I don't have to live with Oracle. I say, this is fantastic news.
What I'm getting at is the way a number of important SW projects seem to be run increasingly by people who are no longer interested in listening to what people want, but instead pursue their own pink clouds and visions about what would be 'great' or 'cool'. Fortunately this hasn't hit the kernel as such, but I think there is a clear trend.
I think the problem is that some of the big, central projects, like GNOME, Mozilla and others have reached a stage where they are no longer really open and approachable to outsiders. In many cases there's a feeling that they see themselves as 'the holy church of...' who are infallible in their wisdom.
It's not all doom and gloom - there are many projects where the developer group has kept an open mind. But it requires an ongoing effort to stay that way. We should learn a lesson from Microsoft: In the very beginning they won the hearts and minds of a lot of people, not because their products were outstanding, but because people saw them as something great, something that enabled you to get close to the computer, and from that a lot of great SW was created. Then they got greedy and thought they were the infallible 'Church of PCdom', and a lot of people lost all respect and trust in the company. Now they try to win it back, and perhaps they can in time, who knows.
But if we blindly follow in their footsteps and commit their errors of hubris, we deserve our defeat.
And now, I'm sure we'll se a long, stupid flamewar along the lines of 'Guns don't kill people, people do'.
Firstly, children should be protected - that anybody can even appear to reject that thought is deeply worrying. Protecting offspring is so fundamental to the survival of most species, that only the most primitive animals don't do it.
Secondly, as for who should protect our children, I think this is the responsibility of all - the parents, obviously, but society as well, and not just 'the government' (as in public services), but all ordinary people. We all have a duty to protect all children.
Finally, trying to deny that what you do in a computer game will influence what you become as a person, can only be the result of massive ignorance. Playing in any form is the natural way of learning about life, by simulating real-life situations in a safe setting. If you play computer games you will learn whatever is 'the spirit' of the game. A game that is constructed in such a way that you have to kill without a shred of remorse in order to succeed in the game, will influence your personality in the direction of accepting that kind of behaviour as part of what you are as a person. As an adult, perhaps you can keep your 'game-personality' apart from your 'real-life personality', but as I said, children form their personality from playing games. It makes perfect sense to me that there should be restrictions on violent games, and that it should be enforced by the authorities.
And, just to return briefly to the 'Guns don't kill...' - that people don't just dismiss that notion out of hand strikes me as being self-deluding - guns are made for killing. Yes, you can say 'I only have it for self-defence', but that only works because 1) its purpose it to kill and 2) you are willing to do so. By that same sort of argument you could say 'Cocaine/heroin/whatever doesn't destroy lives - its people that use these things that destroy themselves'; yeah right. Guns kill - that's their purpose.
I remember this feeling - long, long ago. My conclusion is that you should leave as soon as you find a better job - always.
The thing about loyalty (as well as trust, respect, etc etc) is that it should be earned. We all know the expression 'command respect' - what a load of nonsense. You can't order people to respect you, you have to earn it by giving respect - being worthy of respect or 'respectable' if you like. The same goes for loyalty: it has to be earned. Is the company loyal to you? No? Then you don't owe them any loyalty beyond what the contract says you are paid for.
Some have voiced the opinion that (most) companies display the characteristics of a psychopath: they will shamelessly and without remorse manipulate and exploit their customers and employees, and they will dump you when you no longer seem to be of use.
Just imagine having paid for things you don't know about just by standing in the wrong place;-)
Re:Often programmers know very little...
on
Flash, Meet Sparkle
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The weaknesses in your arguments are:
1. Programmers in general are not like workers on an assembly line. Doing the same over and over - specialisation - will bore most of us out of our minds. This will cause morale to plummet.
2. A company where a GUI programmer can only do that one thing, will have problems when they need him to do something else. In the current world we can't count on being able to just produce the same thing for years.
I have yet to work in a company (or even hear about one) where the MIS are not incompetent, footdragging anal-retentives; what planet is this article referring to?
No, the biggest security risk in any company is the use of Outlook, Word, and Windows.
Windows, with its tendency to default to executing things and hiding information from the user, so the average user doesn't always have a chance to know that they are executing code.
Word, with its builtin BASIC interpreter; I should think that would be obvious.
Outlook - need I say more?
I use Linux with Firefox and Thunderbird; I've even turned off HTML viewing in Firefox. I haven't been bothered with anything like viruses ever. Not once - but our Windows users are constantly under attack, and even though they constantly upgrade their virus filters, they still get infected.
Then go for a sysplex of IBM System z9(TM) 109's maxed out with RAM and disk; install VM at the bottom and zLinux on top. As for tools I'd say xterm, vi and make. Oh, you said Java - in that case you may want a bigger machine.
As far as I can tell, this is more or less what we have been used to in Denmark for most of my life; I have had a 'CPR number' (CPR = 'Central Person Register') for at least 35 years, if not longer. The system has its ups and downs; yes, the state can always find you and they can and will use it against you; though when I say 'the state' I mean the kind of people that work in the state bureaucracy. Not always the kind of people I would choose to trust, but then I don't have to, since I don't get the choice.
On the positive side it is more comfortable and safe in many ways. The hospitals can always find all your medical records, etc etc. There are situation where you will be glad that you can always be found.
But, all in all, I don't like it. Take social security - if I have an accident and can't work, the state will know, and I will get as much help as possible to get on with my life, and even a pension - that is definitely very good. On the other hand, if I then after a while find that I can earn a little to supply my income, the state will automatically cut your pension accordingly - this is bad, because it means that I'll think 'Why should I bother?'
Of course some will say that this is not because the state has a file on you, but the truth is that it enables the more anal-retentive of the state's beancounters (ie the majority) to take your money away if you are too alive, in effect knocking you down. The only (legal) way to counter this kind of shite is to change the laws - and as a result the Danish social laws are now incredibly complex - and tend to change very often as well.
I think the debate about whether patents are stifling innovation or not misses an important point: that most inventions don't happen because an inventor suddenly invents a brilliant new gadget. The real way most things are invented is when somebody has a problem and solves it; and most often the person doesn't even think of it as anything special, because it isn't in that situation - it's just a handy solution to a problem, so he/she could get on with the job at hand. Later, perhaps, somebody combines a number of these solutions and it turns out to be a great idea.
I think people who are just 'inventors' are likely to be some sort of pathological phenomenon; a kind of obsessive tinkerers, perhaps.
As for patents - they certainly make it difficult for others to make money from their good ideas, and I have no doubt that at some point it will become too cumbersome; then it will change. But since people will always run in to new problems and look for solutions, innovation will happen.
Perhaps when it becomes clear enough that the patent system, with all the mindlessly stupid patents for trivial non-inventions, simply doesn't work, perhaps then will people begin to 'anti-patent' their inventions by immediately laying them out in the public domain; that way you at least ensure that nobody else can shut you out from making a fair earning from your good ideas.
The thing about working in a centralised system is that they can seriously get their act together and do things. The western world is ripe with examples of what happens when you work in a free market and have to find a consesus, ideally through competing in the said market.
Look at the old Soviet Union; yes, they were governed by spectacularly stupid men, but bigods they could get their act together and DO things on a huge scale. And the Chinese can too, plus they are seriously clever. If they want to go to the Moon or Mars and establish a colony, then that is what they will, I'm sure. And they will probably get there before Bush & Co. can get their brains into first gear.
It's hard to disagree with what you say as such - legislators should think before they act, as should we all, and we shouldn't lose our heads over terrorism, which is merely a sort of 'discount warfare'. But what makes you think that Blair and his government haven't thought these things through? They are very well educated and thoughtful people - something I find very disturbing, because it means they are taking away our freedom on purpose.
However, this aside I think people in general are missing the point completely. To illustrate: in recent years two remarkable event have taken place in USA, 1) the bombings in New York, and 2) the hurricane Katrina. To take Katrina first - why was it so bad? One side is of course that it was a bad storm etc, but the other side is that a city was deliberately placed in harms way (yes, there were good reasons and so on, but never the less) and those who should have taken care of the necessary precautions, didn't.
OK, so one can say that it may have made sense to place the city there; perhaps it was a calculated risk. Perhaps not building appropriate defences was also a calculated risk; how much did the people with the responsibility lose, personally?
When we look at '9/11' the same holds true: USA have for many years pursued a foreign policy that placed the country smack in the middle of of the field of vision of anyone in the world with a huge grudge. And again the ones supposed to be in charge couldn't get the finger, could they? But the thing is, in this, that you didn't have to put yourselves on the enemy's radar, or indeed to have any enemies.
There's a story that quite like - you probably know it already:
There was a kungfu master who had three students; they had learned all they could and were about to go out in the world and apply themselves to life, and the master said:
'Imagine that you are coming to a narrow bridge and on the other side you can see an enemy soldier who is going to cross the bridge. What will you do?'
The first student answered: 'I will meet him in the style of the monkey! I am sure I can defeat him that way.'
The second student said: 'But perhaps this warrior is clever and experienced - I will employ the drunken man's style with its unpredictable movements, and surprise him!'
But the third student's answer was a bit more thoughtful: 'I will first greet him as a friend. Maybe that way I can avoid a fight and still lose an enemy'
This has to be a hoax - or written by somebody who hasn't had a lot of exposure to languages. Try to dip into a few books about the subject - langauges and grammars are much weirder than what you'd think. Translating from Chinese to English is fairly straightforward in that context, and even then there are many examples of things that don't translate easily.
Remember when the first microwave ovens came out? I recall stories about how some people got their internals cooked by leaving the oven door open for too long while it was on; that was before they had a switch to turn it off in the door.
There is no such thing as a 'safe' or 'non-lethal' weapon. This is yet another product of the mindset that created the neutron bomb and the bunker buster: people like us don't matter, we are just some sort of cattle.
Somehow I think this sounds a little bit unlikely. Think about it - how many times have you laughed your head off over stories about sites being blacklisted as 'porn' because they contained supposedly dirty words? I can think of several, like one that talked about wildlife; it contained phrases such as 'a beautiful cock robin' and 'a pair of magnificent tits' (about birds, in case you wonder. Yes, the kind with feathers.)
So, how should this be able to work? It's not as is there is one and only one Chinese character for 'freedom', not to mention 'democracy', and as everybody knows, thre are millions of ways to sneak around that kind of restrictions anyway. I somehow have a hard time imagining the Chinese being as clueless as that.
Also, don't you think it is better to know that you are censored, because the law says so? I mean in America you are being supervised by your own hi-tech version of Gestapo, but you don't know it, and you don't really know by which criteria you are being evaluated. That ought to scare the hell out of you.
We have had this discussion over and over in the past. Somebody should go and tell this bureaucrat to think, listen and learn before he opens his mouth. That way we will saved a nuissance and he won't have yet another reason to be embarrassed.
First of all evolution does not require life to exist, it's simply the phenomenon that if you have a system where two opposite tendencies are at work, such as the tendency for complexity to form and the tendency for these complexities to break down, the complexities that are least likely to break down will survive - that's "survival of the fittest"
Secondly, an organism is simply an aggregation of cells (typically) that work together because it improves their chance of survival, loosely speaking, so one could argue that a tumour is 'an organism'. But even if it isn't, it is still evolving - cancer is not simply that a cell has a mutation and then goes on to form a tumour. It is a whole series of events that start going wrong, and the cells that make up the tumour in the end are the ones that survived by going wrong in just the right way. IOW evolution has happened.
Slashdot Mirror
This article and the comments on /. are almost exclusively relevant for USA.
1. Nobody else in the world worries about Freedom in the way Americans do - like it was something divine, more important than anything else. What we in the rest of the world think about freedom is simply that we can live our daily lives without too many restrictions and without fear. What I think about the American obsession with Freedom (TM) can be summed up thus: If you're starving, all you can think of is food; if you're thirsting, all you can think of is water - perhaps you guys are really starved of freedom?
2. The internet - it is nice, really useful when it comes to finding information and communicating. I have enjoyed it so far, but I can see more and more reasons why I can't really be bothered with it. It's like TV: initially it was deeply fascinating, then there was things like the news and films; but now it's just wall to wall crap like talk shows, 'reality' TV, films over the same tired, old theme and endless soaps. I have a TV, but I haven't watched it for months. I think the same thing will happen to the internet - those who can get themselves to bother, will use it. Perhaps it will be used for specialised things like VOIP etc.
I think my point here is that laying on restrictions in thick layers will just end up discouraging people from using it; there's no business sense in it. The internet is not something we can't easily live without if that makes more sense.
If OSS is socialism, the I'm a socialist. Perhaps Karl Marx was right after all?
1. If writing for both UNIX and Windows - and/or possibly other systems, do the development on UNIX. The reason for this is simply that if you develop on Windows, you will all the time be pushed towards using non-portable features; the development toys, I mean tools, are made that way. Also, the portable parts of the C libs were made on UNIX with that system in mind.
2. Stick to POSIX. The POSIX standard convers almost all the functionality needed for the internals of any application.
3. Separate the GUI from the business end of the application. Use IPC to communicate between the parts.
4. Avoid threads. Threads are the source of some of the hardest errors to debug; plus threads are NOT the same kind of fish on all platform, even when they are called 'POSIC threads'.
No, no, no, what we need is a never ending menu system...
Size and scalability aren't the only reasons for using Oracle. Oracle has a lot of features that you don't find in any free database, as far as I know. Oracle's SQL, for example, is VERY powerful. You may think that a 'select' is just a 'select', but try to compare them. There are many other features in Oracle that can come in handy even for small databases, like database links and the several kinds of indexing etc.
I have been on the lookout for a free-ish RDBMS that I could develop against for a long time, but I always come up against limitations that I can't live with and that I don't have to live with Oracle. I say, this is fantastic news.
- but we can defeat ourselves.
...' who are infallible in their wisdom.
What I'm getting at is the way a number of important SW projects seem to be run increasingly by people who are no longer interested in listening to what people want, but instead pursue their own pink clouds and visions about what would be 'great' or 'cool'. Fortunately this hasn't hit the kernel as such, but I think there is a clear trend.
I think the problem is that some of the big, central projects, like GNOME, Mozilla and others have reached a stage where they are no longer really open and approachable to outsiders. In many cases there's a feeling that they see themselves as 'the holy church of
It's not all doom and gloom - there are many projects where the developer group has kept an open mind. But it requires an ongoing effort to stay that way. We should learn a lesson from Microsoft: In the very beginning they won the hearts and minds of a lot of people, not because their products were outstanding, but because people saw them as something great, something that enabled you to get close to the computer, and from that a lot of great SW was created. Then they got greedy and thought they were the infallible 'Church of PCdom', and a lot of people lost all respect and trust in the company. Now they try to win it back, and perhaps they can in time, who knows.
But if we blindly follow in their footsteps and commit their errors of hubris, we deserve our defeat.
And now, I'm sure we'll se a long, stupid flamewar along the lines of 'Guns don't kill people, people do'.
Firstly, children should be protected - that anybody can even appear to reject that thought is deeply worrying. Protecting offspring is so fundamental to the survival of most species, that only the most primitive animals don't do it.
Secondly, as for who should protect our children, I think this is the responsibility of all - the parents, obviously, but society as well, and not just 'the government' (as in public services), but all ordinary people. We all have a duty to protect all children.
Finally, trying to deny that what you do in a computer game will influence what you become as a person, can only be the result of massive ignorance. Playing in any form is the natural way of learning about life, by simulating real-life situations in a safe setting. If you play computer games you will learn whatever is 'the spirit' of the game. A game that is constructed in such a way that you have to kill without a shred of remorse in order to succeed in the game, will influence your personality in the direction of accepting that kind of behaviour as part of what you are as a person. As an adult, perhaps you can keep your 'game-personality' apart from your 'real-life personality', but as I said, children form their personality from playing games. It makes perfect sense to me that there should be restrictions on violent games, and that it should be enforced by the authorities.
And, just to return briefly to the 'Guns don't kill...' - that people don't just dismiss that notion out of hand strikes me as being self-deluding - guns are made for killing. Yes, you can say 'I only have it for self-defence', but that only works because 1) its purpose it to kill and 2) you are willing to do so. By that same sort of argument you could say 'Cocaine/heroin/whatever doesn't destroy lives - its people that use these things that destroy themselves'; yeah right. Guns kill - that's their purpose.
Indeed, why? When you can learn something useful, like bricklaying, and earn as much or more with less effort?
I remember this feeling - long, long ago. My conclusion is that you should leave as soon as you find a better job - always.
The thing about loyalty (as well as trust, respect, etc etc) is that it should be earned. We all know the expression 'command respect' - what a load of nonsense. You can't order people to respect you, you have to earn it by giving respect - being worthy of respect or 'respectable' if you like. The same goes for loyalty: it has to be earned. Is the company loyal to you? No? Then you don't owe them any loyalty beyond what the contract says you are paid for.
Some have voiced the opinion that (most) companies display the characteristics of a psychopath: they will shamelessly and without remorse manipulate and exploit their customers and employees, and they will dump you when you no longer seem to be of use.
On another note - it always amazed me how ANYBODY can have doubts about evolution; I mean just look at the president.
Just imagine having paid for things you don't know about just by standing in the wrong place ;-)
The weaknesses in your arguments are:
1. Programmers in general are not like workers on an assembly line. Doing the same over and over - specialisation - will bore most of us out of our minds. This will cause morale to plummet.
2. A company where a GUI programmer can only do that one thing, will have problems when they need him to do something else. In the current world we can't count on being able to just produce the same thing for years.
No, specialisation is for narrow minds.
I have yet to work in a company (or even hear about one) where the MIS are not incompetent, footdragging anal-retentives; what planet is this article referring to?
No, the biggest security risk in any company is the use of Outlook, Word, and Windows.
Windows, with its tendency to default to executing things and hiding information from the user, so the average user doesn't always have a chance to know that they are executing code.
Word, with its builtin BASIC interpreter; I should think that would be obvious.
Outlook - need I say more?
I use Linux with Firefox and Thunderbird; I've even turned off HTML viewing in Firefox. I haven't been bothered with anything like viruses ever. Not once - but our Windows users are constantly under attack, and even though they constantly upgrade their virus filters, they still get infected.
Then go for a sysplex of IBM System z9(TM) 109's maxed out with RAM and disk; install VM at the bottom and zLinux on top. As for tools I'd say xterm, vi and make. Oh, you said Java - in that case you may want a bigger machine.
As far as I can tell, this is more or less what we have been used to in Denmark for most of my life; I have had a 'CPR number' (CPR = 'Central Person Register') for at least 35 years, if not longer. The system has its ups and downs; yes, the state can always find you and they can and will use it against you; though when I say 'the state' I mean the kind of people that work in the state bureaucracy. Not always the kind of people I would choose to trust, but then I don't have to, since I don't get the choice.
On the positive side it is more comfortable and safe in many ways. The hospitals can always find all your medical records, etc etc. There are situation where you will be glad that you can always be found.
But, all in all, I don't like it. Take social security - if I have an accident and can't work, the state will know, and I will get as much help as possible to get on with my life, and even a pension - that is definitely very good. On the other hand, if I then after a while find that I can earn a little to supply my income, the state will automatically cut your pension accordingly - this is bad, because it means that I'll think 'Why should I bother?'
Of course some will say that this is not because the state has a file on you, but the truth is that it enables the more anal-retentive of the state's beancounters (ie the majority) to take your money away if you are too alive, in effect knocking you down. The only (legal) way to counter this kind of shite is to change the laws - and as a result the Danish social laws are now incredibly complex - and tend to change very often as well.
Well, not quite, perhaps, but...
I think the debate about whether patents are stifling innovation or not misses an important point: that most inventions don't happen because an inventor suddenly invents a brilliant new gadget. The real way most things are invented is when somebody has a problem and solves it; and most often the person doesn't even think of it as anything special, because it isn't in that situation - it's just a handy solution to a problem, so he/she could get on with the job at hand. Later, perhaps, somebody combines a number of these solutions and it turns out to be a great idea.
I think people who are just 'inventors' are likely to be some sort of pathological phenomenon; a kind of obsessive tinkerers, perhaps.
As for patents - they certainly make it difficult for others to make money from their good ideas, and I have no doubt that at some point it will become too cumbersome; then it will change. But since people will always run in to new problems and look for solutions, innovation will happen.
Perhaps when it becomes clear enough that the patent system, with all the mindlessly stupid patents for trivial non-inventions, simply doesn't work, perhaps then will people begin to 'anti-patent' their inventions by immediately laying them out in the public domain; that way you at least ensure that nobody else can shut you out from making a fair earning from your good ideas.
Did you read my post? I was trying to say something positive about China, in case you hadn't noticed.
As for having been there - I own a house there.
The thing about working in a centralised system is that they can seriously get their act together and do things. The western world is ripe with examples of what happens when you work in a free market and have to find a consesus, ideally through competing in the said market.
Look at the old Soviet Union; yes, they were governed by spectacularly stupid men, but bigods they could get their act together and DO things on a huge scale. And the Chinese can too, plus they are seriously clever. If they want to go to the Moon or Mars and establish a colony, then that is what they will, I'm sure. And they will probably get there before Bush & Co. can get their brains into first gear.
It's hard to disagree with what you say as such - legislators should think before they act, as should we all, and we shouldn't lose our heads over terrorism, which is merely a sort of 'discount warfare'. But what makes you think that Blair and his government haven't thought these things through? They are very well educated and thoughtful people - something I find very disturbing, because it means they are taking away our freedom on purpose.
However, this aside I think people in general are missing the point completely. To illustrate: in recent years two remarkable event have taken place in USA, 1) the bombings in New York, and 2) the hurricane Katrina. To take Katrina first - why was it so bad? One side is of course that it was a bad storm etc, but the other side is that a city was deliberately placed in harms way (yes, there were good reasons and so on, but never the less) and those who should have taken care of the necessary precautions, didn't.
OK, so one can say that it may have made sense to place the city there; perhaps it was a calculated risk. Perhaps not building appropriate defences was also a calculated risk; how much did the people with the responsibility lose, personally?
When we look at '9/11' the same holds true: USA have for many years pursued a foreign policy that placed the country smack in the middle of of the field of vision of anyone in the world with a huge grudge. And again the ones supposed to be in charge couldn't get the finger, could they? But the thing is, in this, that you didn't have to put yourselves on the enemy's radar, or indeed to have any enemies.
There's a story that quite like - you probably know it already:
There was a kungfu master who had three students; they had learned all they could and were about to go out in the world and apply themselves to life, and the master said:
'Imagine that you are coming to a narrow bridge and on the other side you can see an enemy soldier who is going to cross the bridge. What will you do?'
The first student answered: 'I will meet him in the style of the monkey! I am sure I can defeat him that way.'
The second student said: 'But perhaps this warrior is clever and experienced - I will employ the drunken man's style with its unpredictable movements, and surprise him!'
But the third student's answer was a bit more thoughtful: 'I will first greet him as a friend. Maybe that way I can avoid a fight and still lose an enemy'
This has to be a hoax - or written by somebody who hasn't had a lot of exposure to languages. Try to dip into a few books about the subject - langauges and grammars are much weirder than what you'd think. Translating from Chinese to English is fairly straightforward in that context, and even then there are many examples of things that don't translate easily.
t ml)
But have a look at eg. a language called Piraha, here's a link to what Daniel L. Everett has to say: (http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/Info/staff/DE/DEHome.h
Or read something about Papuan languages (spoken in Papua New Guinea) - there are some that are seriously different.
The answer: Anyone cought in that beam.
Remember when the first microwave ovens came out? I recall stories about how some people got their internals cooked by leaving the oven door open for too long while it was on; that was before they had a switch to turn it off in the door.
There is no such thing as a 'safe' or 'non-lethal' weapon. This is yet another product of the mindset that created the neutron bomb and the bunker buster: people like us don't matter, we are just some sort of cattle.
Suudenly I will no longer be able to enjoy playing a guitar!! All is lost!! Or not.
Somehow I think this sounds a little bit unlikely. Think about it - how many times have you laughed your head off over stories about sites being blacklisted as 'porn' because they contained supposedly dirty words? I can think of several, like one that talked about wildlife; it contained phrases such as 'a beautiful cock robin' and 'a pair of magnificent tits' (about birds, in case you wonder. Yes, the kind with feathers.)
So, how should this be able to work? It's not as is there is one and only one Chinese character for 'freedom', not to mention 'democracy', and as everybody knows, thre are millions of ways to sneak around that kind of restrictions anyway. I somehow have a hard time imagining the Chinese being as clueless as that.
Also, don't you think it is better to know that you are censored, because the law says so? I mean in America you are being supervised by your own hi-tech version of Gestapo, but you don't know it, and you don't really know by which criteria you are being evaluated. That ought to scare the hell out of you.
We have had this discussion over and over in the past. Somebody should go and tell this bureaucrat to think, listen and learn before he opens his mouth. That way we will saved a nuissance and he won't have yet another reason to be embarrassed.
That is manifestly wrong.
First of all evolution does not require life to exist, it's simply the phenomenon that if you have a system where two opposite tendencies are at work, such as the tendency for complexity to form and the tendency for these complexities to break down, the complexities that are least likely to break down will survive - that's "survival of the fittest"
Secondly, an organism is simply an aggregation of cells (typically) that work together because it improves their chance of survival, loosely speaking, so one could argue that a tumour is 'an organism'. But even if it isn't, it is still evolving - cancer is not simply that a cell has a mutation and then goes on to form a tumour. It is a whole series of events that start going wrong, and the cells that make up the tumour in the end are the ones that survived by going wrong in just the right way. IOW evolution has happened.