Have you actually used Mac OS X? If you're not a Unix geek, it works very much like Mac OS 9, except applications multitask much better and the OS doesn't crash.
My impressions of OSX 10.0.2 on a G4 Cube 500MHz/512MB:
DVD player doesn't work:(
Carbon apps have cool candylike interface stuff, but seem slower than I've come to expect from Linux..
Cocoa apps (like OmniWeb, which I'm using for this) ROCK, speed/thread/latency wise.
M$IE is particularly crufty, doesn't use the new OSX UI paradigm (Preferences in the 'Application' menu for starters) and is hella buggy
NetInfo Manager is a fscking pain to use. Imagine **HAVING** to use Linuxconf, except that it's a registry now. Apple really needs to incorporate a better tool with lots of predefined behaviors (like 'add new host to host table', 'NFS mount to file table', etc) to a nice admin app.
ld, ranlib, et al. are cute and strange, and they don't play nice with stuff like openssl/openssh portable. Also, Apple refers to its os as 'Darwin' while many code pkgs still use 'Rhapsody'..
junkbuster required 2 changes to build (repointing a header file to sys/header) and it works fine
they forgot a/dev/random.. D'Oh!!!
Appletalk is borken, badly borken. NFS seems to work, but getting it to automount is a colossal PITA
Classic works, but is really unfun. I hate having to load it, use all that RAM for it, etc. But I can run Nutscrape in it. What I really want is a 'never run classic' clicky box in the system prefs.
the default mail app for OSX is absolute and utter SHITE. I'd use Netscape if I didn't have to wait for classic to load:((( Let's put it this way: my IMAP server is also my shell account, so my IMAP folder list includes EVERY FSCKNG FOLDER AND FILE IN MY ACCOUNT!! Netscape and OE behave correctly. No builtin SSL for IMAP or SMTP. Rules configuration is awful. Message count (biff) is flaky. Working with subfolders on IMAP is ponderous. Horrible horrible app, totally not ready for power user use.
Napster is carbon, just in time for it to be totally useless
iTunes continues to dazzle me.. The iTunes interface is what Apple is all about.. I have SoundJam, even paid for it. I use iTunes. Though their CDDB support is kinda sucks and I can't repoint it to FreeDB:p
AIM beta is decent
THE FINDER IS CARBON, NOT COCOA!! This means, primarily, that scrolling thru the finder doesn't detect your wheelmouse (which btw is natively supported under cocoa apps, though the middle mouse click is mysteriously unrecognized:ppp).
Carbon: there is VM separation between apps, but the app is not really multitasking/multithreading internally, so for instance you have 10-15 M$IE windows open and you hit download. The DL manager pops up and guess what? ALL YOUR IE WINDOWS FREEZE. Everything I've seen carbon is like this: the app has its own space and doesn't affect other apps, but it hasn't gained an iota of real multitasking ability.
Cocoa apps, OTOH, seem very responsive, fairly granular, and OmniWeb is very nice. Too bad it's got some stability issues and bugs... If it were fixed I'd actually pay!
Rebooting is optional. Wow, I never thought I'd ever say that about an Apple product.
Where is the cocoa FE/mach backend Fizzilla? I know it's being worked on, but meesa wanna download. Oh, btw, with working imap/smtp over ssl in the mail client please:)
I like OSX, I think it's pretty cool and it shows a lot of potential once carbon (and cocoa!!!) apps show up. I would not, however, put it on my mom's iMac. That will not happen until there is NO NEED for a shell window, which is not yet true.
Hate to break it to you, but Visicalc was not a M$ product. M$, at the time, was only really doing languages.
Visicalc was a VisiCorp product. I remember, because I did my comic book collection in it on my 80 character Franklin 1200 with built-in shift-key modification and dual floppy...
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Re:Single greatest threat to the ASP model:
on
When ASPs Go Under
·
· Score: 1
That'll do, but even less dramatic: how about outsourcing your mail, then expecting your users to push and pull 50MB attachments over a T1 that is already at 100%?
It's much more fun to blame somebody for something that was 100% in their control, rather than wait for some freak accident to expose bad planning... And fucked if my options were ever worth anything near enough to make any concern on my part greater than my mordant curiosity in watching this incompetence spiral spin hilariously down...
In the immortal words of Bob Terwilliger:
"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
... simply require that all terms of bids be sealed behind NDAs. It's a buyer's market in IT now, and I doubt a biz manager is going to jeopardize their channel for a fossil watch..
Interesting links. To pick a nit: A republic is not necessarily a democracy.. When voting privileges are limited to a particular class, race or party and denied to the populace at large, as in republican Rome it's better than outright feudalism or totalitarianism, but the key to modern civilization is individual freedom. Restrictions to individual freedom need to come from consensus driven decisions made through open debate and decision-making processes, whether from pragmatic concerns (you can't use CFCs because we'll all burn) or moral concerns (you can't kill other people because it's evil).
Still, it's a shame that, like Weimar, democracy fell victim to despotic convenience in China before people had a chance to actually taste true freedom..
... Just remember to stick up for yourself. Lots of folks I know in I(S|T) generate self-esteem from work, and employers are more than happy to take advantage of that by working people harder and feeding their self-worth. This is unhealthy in the long run, and actually bad for you.
You should both give and demand respect from your employer, and if are OK with the work by all means do it, but don't get so wrapped up in it that you lose focus on the most important thing in your life: YOU. Self-preservation is important not only for your own sanity, but for the people around you. Nobody likes to have to deal with an overworked jerk, so don't be one;)
... and while I found myself typing as fast or faster than I did with a normal kybd, I ended up chucking it for a few reasons.
The trackpad is HORRIBLE!!! This keyboard, more than any, really needs a touchpoint. The whole point is to NOT extend your wrists, and moving to the trackpad always had me looking down at it and throwing off my typing. I ended up just buying a M$ mouse and not connecting the trackpad.
The keyboard itself is pretty tough, but the fastener to the armrests was lame (part bad fastener design, part flimsy armrest), and one of the "keypads" fell off after about 3 weeks. The hole it was bolted into had stripped and I needed to buy a nut/bolt combo to refasten it. Oh, also the palmrests were pretty shoddily glued on, and they fell off after about 3 weeks of constant use.
Its mounting location means you often cannot push your chair under your desk. In a space-constrained office, this is murder.
Obviously, you have to type everything into your computer or get out of your chair and let someone else hunt-and-peck. Not necessarily a bad thing (nor insurmountable once USB was solidified) but quite inconvenient at times.
It has some complex internal macro capability, which ended up freaking out on me at one point, and I could not get the kybd to reset satisfactorily. I was using it under Linux only at that point, and they didn't have linux support for the macros.
It wasn't available in USB at that point, and now that I'm a USB nerd (Linux/Mac component sharing) I find that to be sadly limiting. I bet a USB kybd/mouse would work on one of the new USB Sun workstations, though I would still want my Type 5..
It's a really cool kybd, but there are some pretty big caveats IMHO and I would definitely not recommend it except in very particular circumstances..
HTH, HAND... (omigod, Tube Tunes strikes again.. The Punky Brewster theme just popped up in iTunes...:ppp)
please give some arguments on why 'Democracy' (with a capital D) is in your opinion 'the greatest form of government on Earth'.
Depends on your criteria. Mine are:
what form of government provides the environment for the most innovation (pre-M$ context)?
what form of government provides the basis for individual (e.g. MY) prosperity?
what form of government protects my freedom to think and believe and speak my mind as I see fit, an it harm none?
what form of government offers an example where people will fight and die of their own freewill, rather than for the whim of their masters?
what form of government provides a net inflow of new citizens rather than a drain? When people vote with their feet, which countries win and which lose?
In the short run, Democracy is not as "efficient" as a martial-law style dictatorship. It isn't as "exciting" as a government led by a single charismatic leader. However, the 20th history shows what happens when a polis succumbs to the efficiency of martial government and the exciting governing style of popular despots.
Democracy, in other words, is in theory open-source governance, where the laws are determined not by fiat or whim, but rather by open peer review and popular vote (or, in our case, popular vote by proxy). The problems that we have, by and large, stem from the failure to live up to true democratic principles of transparency and equal opportunity in government. While we may get exasperated by the petty selfish regionalism we find in Congress (pork-barrelism, self-interest, self-aggrandisement), this is a good problem to have. It means we've gotten to the point that we can start sweating the small stuff and fixing some of the core issues we have domestically, rather than having to focus outwards.
I fear that China will provide fodder for another cold war, and that will pull our focus away from fixing domestic issues. The media age has made us impatient, but it hasn't made us any more flexible, so we still need time to change but we don't want to wait for it. Granted, some of our greatest technological and industrial achievements came because of war research and production, but military spending is ultimately a wasteful way of doing research.
Please, just read some history. Get informed. What I think you'll find is that, for all its failures, the American system is worth fixing. It's like being a sysadmin: the only time you ever hear from people is when there's something broken. You never get a 'thank you' even if your baseline is extraordinarly high. There are things that need to be fixed, and I fear that our culture is too immature, insecure, and childishly selfish to engage in the frank and honest debate that may actually lead to positive change.
Yep, but then again they risked their lives and families to escape Communism to get here.
Put it this way, even in a democratic republic like the USA, there are people who hate it. There are folk on the street who can tell you horror stories.
The flaw in your logic here is that you assume silence equals consent. That is a common fallacy.
Indeed theres a whole bunch of people from the late 19th century who couldn't stand capitalism any longer that they rose up in arms.
And you've seen where that's gotten them, right? You are naive.. The only violent revolution that has worked, EVER was the American revolution. That revolution brought an escape from "tyranny" (which quite frankly wasn't nearly as bad as what many modern 'revolutions' got their populations INTO) and the form of government it spawned has survived for over 200 years. All other revolutions have failed, both practically AND ideologically (unless you believe that Marx intended Communist citizens to be obedient automatons, which I never actually saw when I read Das Kapital).
All I'm asking you to do is consider the posibility that things are not as bad as they appear.
That's like saying (and yes, I may be invoking Godwin's law, but it needs to be done) that you need to visit a Nazi death camp to know that they were "as bad as they appear". Reading the historical evidence over the course of decades is good enough for me.
The kind of pusillanimous moral relativism you post is obscene and smacks of a painfully naive lack of historical/social understanding, which is the hallmark of modern wishy-washy "higher" education. Read some P.J. O'Rourke and grow some fucking balls (metaphysically speaking)..
In reality, the xenophobia of such regimes in what we now call China is measured in millenia (look to the "Great Wall").
Ironically, for thousands of years, China has historically "fought off" conquerors by absorbing them and inculcating Chinese philosophy/language/science in them.. The khans went from conquerors to nomenklatura over a course of years.. Now it's the western democracies (most influential being the US) which is poised to (over the next few years/decades) use similar tactics!
maybe, just maybe, there are a lot of happy communists and maybe they are all smart and have willfully chosen to be restricted for the betterment of their society.
Anyone calling themselves happy communists are either deluded, corrupted, or retarded. There is no such thing, there has never been such a thing, at least in the 'real' world (where livings are earned by productive labor rather than by fellowship).
Socialism or socialist forms (such as socialized medicine, housing, transportation) might possibly be another story, when chosen freely by a democratic society. But Communism (which is Socialism the economic system applied to a Political system) has been thoroughly, comprehensively, and resoundingly repudiated as a desirable form of government, ironically consigned to the very rubbish heap of history it predicted for Capitalism.
I only wish more slashdotters could pull their eyes away from their monitors and read a bit of history now and then. Even populist histories like Paul Johnson's Modern Times, Intellectuals, or The Birth of the Modern World Society 1815-1830 (which is quite interesting, one of its main themes is the beginning of the diversion of art and science), or David Halberstam's The Fifties would improve on what is a sad absence of history:p.
The Chinese are quite nationalistic, and for the most part feel that certain sacrifices (like freedom of information) are necessary for the betterment of China. You need only look at the Great Leap Forward or especially the cultural revolution to see this.
Don't forget also that the USA (and modern national democracy) is less than 300 years old, while Chinese civ goes back 5000 years.. I don't think they're very comfy with the idea of us self-righteous whippersnappers telling them what to do or how to live (even if we are right).. And just add to that the overwhelming sloth and statism (and wisdom:) of Confucian thought, and the tradition of 'face'..
Oh, and don't sweat the kids working in factories. It may appall you (as it did me), but it's all they got until things change.
One thing that these Che Guevara t-shirt wearin charge-card college commies do not realize is that an economy (or society) needs to start SOMEWHERE, and that change takes TIME.
The child worker today will one day have children, and the won't want their children to work as hard as they did. This forms the beginning of real social change. During the Industrial Revolution, many children worked for pittances in horrible conditions in the US and UK. Their parents encouraged to do so. We (the industrial Democracies) learned that children shouldn't have to do that. So the 3rd world chooses not to learn from our lesson, or they aren't yet rich enough to do so. Sometimes, people have to learn the hard way: it's like how you value something you earn or fight for more than something you are given. We offer the world our example and our results, and let them make their own choices (or rather, we should, though we tend to meddle too much:p)
Chinese communism is still ruled by hardline octogenarians which will, like Castro, die one day soon (hopefully). We have yet to see any new political thought from China since, what, the mid-fifties?
Socialism within a true democratic framework is possible, and even (IMHO) desirable in certain areas, but keeping the kind of consensus required to make it work is extremely difficult and IMHO possibly only possible in small, homogenous countries (until people can see through race to remember that we all came from Homo Erectus or even C. Elegans)..
This can be seen in all levels of the culture of both countrys. Whats worse: they are both going be right or one will destroy the other so that it will prevail.
As a purely Orwell-snob point, the basic premise of geopolitics within 1984 was the stasis of each (Eurasia, Eastasia or Oceania) nation's sphere of influence. The point was that since each nation could annihilate the other, no nation could conquer any other even when teaming up with a second against the third. Therefore all military action was essentially planned attrition at the fringes of the empires and within the small pockets of unconquered territory. The war was merely to drain national will and wealth away to the point where each ideology could easily hold sway over the populace.
A weak and ignorant people is easy to suppress and bamboozle when the government has wealth and knowledge. And when knowledge is malleable because 'he who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past', common ground for revolution becomes impossible.
Sorry to get all longwinded, but 1984 has formed a key part of my worldview since I first read it at age 8 or 9.. Every time I reread it I look around to see if I've lost anything.
That's a bunch of crap. There is no way you can know what the mainland Chinese people want, since there's no free way for them to express their desire!
The only argument I can fathom would be "they don't know what they're missing", only because in all of recorded Chinese history (and there's thousands of years worth of the stuff) IIRC there has never been a democratically-based government.
Hell, come to think of it, let them suffer under the yoke of despotism. Despotism historically (at least in Civ) has been more inefficient than Democracy, and if 1.2 billion people finally gained an incentive to be truly productive and efficient (and this includes freedom from excessive corruption and cronyism, and a relatively level field of opportunity), us roundeyes would be FUCKED.. (As would the environment from about 600 million new cars:p)
I know that we all like to comment on foriegn governments, and how much they suck... but if China were that bad a place to live, I think all the people would move out.
Uh, they ARE trying.. Paying thousands per head to be crammed into tramp steamers run by Tongs to go to America, where they end up either in indentured servitude to pay for the passage or in some INS holding pen waiting to be deported.
If the US opened its gates wide to Chinese immigration (instead of keeping them sealed tight as hell), even having to cross thousands of miles of open ocean, you would see millions applying for citizenship within a year.
Democracy is that good. If you doubt it, try living with censorship yourself for awhile. And not just the petty bullshit "censorship" in the U$A.. Hell, just try a brief stint in Singapore and see if you don't get caned.
To mangle Churchill, "Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised by man, except for all the other ones."
The USA may not be the greatest nation on Earth, but Democracy is the greatest form of government on Earth, and the USA does have the potential to be the greatest nation.. If only social change were as easy as recompiling a tweaked source file (but then, who writes the compilers?)..
One of the simplest security practices is to turn off SSID identification broadcast at the base station. Then the wireless user has to know the name of the network in order to connect.
Yep, I do this on my home AirPort.. Pretty easy.
Unfortunately, this quickly becomes a gigantic pain in the ass for the admins of the network, because who wants to go through and change the SSID every time you add a new wireless base? It's really practical only for small organizations.
Changing it when adding wireless bases? Sheeit, that's easy. Changing it everytime you have layoffs, now THAT is sucks....
Slashdot Mirror
Hehe, play a QT movie then shrink it to the dock.. It keeps playing! Chromasweet!
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
then why not, if I might ask, provide a binary-only module for XAnim? Even if you have to download it from Apple or Sorensen directly?
XAnim is modular now, and can use binary-only shared libs.
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
My impressions of OSX 10.0.2 on a G4 Cube 500MHz/512MB:
I like OSX, I think it's pretty cool and it shows a lot of potential once carbon (and cocoa!!!) apps show up. I would not, however, put it on my mom's iMac. That will not happen until there is NO NEED for a shell window, which is not yet true.
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Hate to break it to you, but Visicalc was not a M$ product. M$, at the time, was only really doing languages.
Visicalc was a VisiCorp product. I remember, because I did my comic book collection in it on my 80 character Franklin 1200 with built-in shift-key modification and dual floppy...
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
That'll do, but even less dramatic: how about outsourcing your mail, then expecting your users to push and pull 50MB attachments over a T1 that is already at 100%?
It's much more fun to blame somebody for something that was 100% in their control, rather than wait for some freak accident to expose bad planning... And fucked if my options were ever worth anything near enough to make any concern on my part greater than my mordant curiosity in watching this incompetence spiral spin hilariously down...
In the immortal words of Bob Terwilliger:
"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
as an aside, ksh is the default shell in AIX. In fact, at least thru 4.3 sh was a symlink to ksh.
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Check this out... But I don't think it's available sealed against liquid "spills"..
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
... simply require that all terms of bids be sealed behind NDAs. It's a buyer's market in IT now, and I doubt a biz manager is going to jeopardize their channel for a fossil watch..
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Interesting links. To pick a nit: A republic is not necessarily a democracy.. When voting privileges are limited to a particular class, race or party and denied to the populace at large, as in republican Rome it's better than outright feudalism or totalitarianism, but the key to modern civilization is individual freedom. Restrictions to individual freedom need to come from consensus driven decisions made through open debate and decision-making processes, whether from pragmatic concerns (you can't use CFCs because we'll all burn) or moral concerns (you can't kill other people because it's evil).
Still, it's a shame that, like Weimar, democracy fell victim to despotic convenience in China before people had a chance to actually taste true freedom..
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
... Just remember to stick up for yourself. Lots of folks I know in I(S|T) generate self-esteem from work, and employers are more than happy to take advantage of that by working people harder and feeding their self-worth. This is unhealthy in the long run, and actually bad for you.
;)
You should both give and demand respect from your employer, and if are OK with the work by all means do it, but don't get so wrapped up in it that you lose focus on the most important thing in your life: YOU. Self-preservation is important not only for your own sanity, but for the people around you. Nobody likes to have to deal with an overworked jerk, so don't be one
Context is everything...
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
It's a really cool kybd, but there are some pretty big caveats IMHO and I would definitely not recommend it except in very particular circumstances..
HTH, HAND... (omigod, Tube Tunes strikes again.. The Punky Brewster theme just popped up in iTunes...
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Interesting, but what happens when it becomes self-aware?
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Depends on your criteria. Mine are:
In the short run, Democracy is not as "efficient" as a martial-law style dictatorship. It isn't as "exciting" as a government led by a single charismatic leader. However, the 20th history shows what happens when a polis succumbs to the efficiency of martial government and the exciting governing style of popular despots.
Democracy, in other words, is in theory open-source governance, where the laws are determined not by fiat or whim, but rather by open peer review and popular vote (or, in our case, popular vote by proxy). The problems that we have, by and large, stem from the failure to live up to true democratic principles of transparency and equal opportunity in government. While we may get exasperated by the petty selfish regionalism we find in Congress (pork-barrelism, self-interest, self-aggrandisement), this is a good problem to have. It means we've gotten to the point that we can start sweating the small stuff and fixing some of the core issues we have domestically, rather than having to focus outwards.
I fear that China will provide fodder for another cold war, and that will pull our focus away from fixing domestic issues. The media age has made us impatient, but it hasn't made us any more flexible, so we still need time to change but we don't want to wait for it. Granted, some of our greatest technological and industrial achievements came because of war research and production, but military spending is ultimately a wasteful way of doing research.
Please, just read some history. Get informed. What I think you'll find is that, for all its failures, the American system is worth fixing. It's like being a sysadmin: the only time you ever hear from people is when there's something broken. You never get a 'thank you' even if your baseline is extraordinarly high. There are things that need to be fixed, and I fear that our culture is too immature, insecure, and childishly selfish to engage in the frank and honest debate that may actually lead to positive change.
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
talked to chinese people
Yep, but then again they risked their lives and families to escape Communism to get here.
Put it this way, even in a democratic republic like the USA, there are people who hate it. There are folk on the street who can tell you horror stories.
The flaw in your logic here is that you assume silence equals consent. That is a common fallacy.
Indeed theres a whole bunch of people from the late 19th century who couldn't stand capitalism any longer that they rose up in arms.
And you've seen where that's gotten them, right? You are naive.. The only violent revolution that has worked, EVER was the American revolution. That revolution brought an escape from "tyranny" (which quite frankly wasn't nearly as bad as what many modern 'revolutions' got their populations INTO) and the form of government it spawned has survived for over 200 years. All other revolutions have failed, both practically AND ideologically (unless you believe that Marx intended Communist citizens to be obedient automatons, which I never actually saw when I read Das Kapital).
All I'm asking you to do is consider the posibility that things are not as bad as they appear.
That's like saying (and yes, I may be invoking Godwin's law, but it needs to be done) that you need to visit a Nazi death camp to know that they were "as bad as they appear". Reading the historical evidence over the course of decades is good enough for me.
The kind of pusillanimous moral relativism you post is obscene and smacks of a painfully naive lack of historical/social understanding, which is the hallmark of modern wishy-washy "higher" education. Read some P.J. O'Rourke and grow some fucking balls (metaphysically speaking)..
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
In reality, the xenophobia of such regimes in what we now call China is measured in millenia (look to the "Great Wall").
Ironically, for thousands of years, China has historically "fought off" conquerors by absorbing them and inculcating Chinese philosophy/language/science in them.. The khans went from conquerors to nomenklatura over a course of years.. Now it's the western democracies (most influential being the US) which is poised to (over the next few years/decades) use similar tactics!
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
maybe, just maybe, there are a lot of happy communists and maybe they are all smart and have willfully chosen to be restricted for the betterment of their society.
:p.
Anyone calling themselves happy communists are either deluded, corrupted, or retarded. There is no such thing, there has never been such a thing, at least in the 'real' world (where livings are earned by productive labor rather than by fellowship).
Socialism or socialist forms (such as socialized medicine, housing, transportation) might possibly be another story, when chosen freely by a democratic society. But Communism (which is Socialism the economic system applied to a Political system) has been thoroughly, comprehensively, and resoundingly repudiated as a desirable form of government, ironically consigned to the very rubbish heap of history it predicted for Capitalism.
I only wish more slashdotters could pull their eyes away from their monitors and read a bit of history now and then. Even populist histories like Paul Johnson's Modern Times, Intellectuals, or The Birth of the Modern World Society 1815-1830 (which is quite interesting, one of its main themes is the beginning of the diversion of art and science), or David Halberstam's The Fifties would improve on what is a sad absence of history
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
The Chinese are quite nationalistic, and for the most part feel that certain sacrifices (like freedom of information) are necessary for the betterment of China. You need only look at the Great Leap Forward or especially the cultural revolution to see this.
:) of Confucian thought, and the tradition of 'face'..
Don't forget also that the USA (and modern national democracy) is less than 300 years old, while Chinese civ goes back 5000 years.. I don't think they're very comfy with the idea of us self-righteous whippersnappers telling them what to do or how to live (even if we are right).. And just add to that the overwhelming sloth and statism (and wisdom
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Oh, and don't sweat the kids working in factories. It may appall you (as it did me), but it's all they got until things change.
:p)
One thing that these Che Guevara t-shirt wearin charge-card college commies do not realize is that an economy (or society) needs to start SOMEWHERE, and that change takes TIME.
The child worker today will one day have children, and the won't want their children to work as hard as they did. This forms the beginning of real social change. During the Industrial Revolution, many children worked for pittances in horrible conditions in the US and UK. Their parents encouraged to do so. We (the industrial Democracies) learned that children shouldn't have to do that. So the 3rd world chooses not to learn from our lesson, or they aren't yet rich enough to do so. Sometimes, people have to learn the hard way: it's like how you value something you earn or fight for more than something you are given. We offer the world our example and our results, and let them make their own choices (or rather, we should, though we tend to meddle too much
Chinese communism is still ruled by hardline octogenarians which will, like Castro, die one day soon (hopefully). We have yet to see any new political thought from China since, what, the mid-fifties?
Socialism within a true democratic framework is possible, and even (IMHO) desirable in certain areas, but keeping the kind of consensus required to make it work is extremely difficult and IMHO possibly only possible in small, homogenous countries (until people can see through race to remember that we all came from Homo Erectus or even C. Elegans)..
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
This can be seen in all levels of the culture of both countrys. Whats worse: they are both going be right or one will destroy the other so that it will prevail.
As a purely Orwell-snob point, the basic premise of geopolitics within 1984 was the stasis of each (Eurasia, Eastasia or Oceania) nation's sphere of influence. The point was that since each nation could annihilate the other, no nation could conquer any other even when teaming up with a second against the third. Therefore all military action was essentially planned attrition at the fringes of the empires and within the small pockets of unconquered territory. The war was merely to drain national will and wealth away to the point where each ideology could easily hold sway over the populace.
A weak and ignorant people is easy to suppress and bamboozle when the government has wealth and knowledge. And when knowledge is malleable because 'he who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past', common ground for revolution becomes impossible.
Sorry to get all longwinded, but 1984 has formed a key part of my worldview since I first read it at age 8 or 9.. Every time I reread it I look around to see if I've lost anything.
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
That's a bunch of crap. There is no way you can know what the mainland Chinese people want, since there's no free way for them to express their desire!
:p)
The only argument I can fathom would be "they don't know what they're missing", only because in all of recorded Chinese history (and there's thousands of years worth of the stuff) IIRC there has never been a democratically-based government.
Hell, come to think of it, let them suffer under the yoke of despotism. Despotism historically (at least in Civ) has been more inefficient than Democracy, and if 1.2 billion people finally gained an incentive to be truly productive and efficient (and this includes freedom from excessive corruption and cronyism, and a relatively level field of opportunity), us roundeyes would be FUCKED.. (As would the environment from about 600 million new cars
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
I know that we all like to comment on foriegn governments, and how much they suck... but if China were that bad a place to live, I think all the people would move out.
Uh, they ARE trying.. Paying thousands per head to be crammed into tramp steamers run by Tongs to go to America, where they end up either in indentured servitude to pay for the passage or in some INS holding pen waiting to be deported.
If the US opened its gates wide to Chinese immigration (instead of keeping them sealed tight as hell), even having to cross thousands of miles of open ocean, you would see millions applying for citizenship within a year.
Democracy is that good. If you doubt it, try living with censorship yourself for awhile. And not just the petty bullshit "censorship" in the U$A.. Hell, just try a brief stint in Singapore and see if you don't get caned.
To mangle Churchill, "Democracy is the worst form of government ever devised by man, except for all the other ones."
The USA may not be the greatest nation on Earth, but Democracy is the greatest form of government on Earth, and the USA does have the potential to be the greatest nation.. If only social change were as easy as recompiling a tweaked source file (but then, who writes the compilers?)..
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
I'll hold off until that (or at least until the current patch for 2.4.3 is tested)...
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
Stay Alert!
Trust No One!
Keep Your Laser Handy!
Otis-U-WLD-4, Alpha Complex
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
what really excites me the most is the prospect of cloning only parts of animals for food.
Why stop at animals?
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
One of the simplest security practices is to turn off SSID identification broadcast at the base station. Then the wireless user has to know the name of the network in order to connect.
Yep, I do this on my home AirPort.. Pretty easy.
Unfortunately, this quickly becomes a gigantic pain in the ass for the admins of the network, because who wants to go through and change the SSID every time you add a new wireless base? It's really practical only for small organizations.
Changing it when adding wireless bases? Sheeit, that's easy. Changing it everytime you have layoffs, now THAT is sucks....
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)