The e-mail from my company states that the mourning will begin at 2:28 today. Indeed, I've gone to the sites I mentioned in my earlier post and in fact they have blocked the ability to search. You can only watch stuff on the front page. That, is fucking scary. From the e-mail I received from my company: all organizations and foreign embassies in China will lower the flags; all entertaining activities will stop; sirens of automobiles, trains and ships will be on. As another poster mentioned, Youtube was already "harmonized".
When this idiocy stops, go to www.youku.com. Even if you can't read Chinese, you can easily see the search bar at the top. Just type "Lost" and work out which episode you need. It's usually up by Saturday morning our time.
I'm in China, have been for a few years. I can confirm that there doesn't seem to be much shutting down of websites. I can still go to the websites I normally go to view the latest episodes of Lost (hosted inside China, they stream rather well). As far as television, last night (Sunday night Shanghai time) I was watching the only not completely state run English station. The content was complete shit, but not earthquake related. I don't watch Chinese language stuff as it is shit propaganda or shit period soap operas or a cheap knock of "The Price is Right". Can still access all the websites I normally do, except for wikipedia, which is always hit or miss. Will keep things updated as I can.
I'm living in China currently, have been since March 2006. I also lived here in early 2001 for 4 months. From my average user standpoint, back then many sites seemed to be blacklisted, the NYTimes, CNN, BBC, and pretty much anything where you might get some real news. Needless to say, I was able to access USA Today. Now, the list is much shorter. Wikipedia can be hit or miss, but has been on for the last 3 or 4 months without interruption. The only thing that I might try to access is anything at news.bbc.co.uk. Oddly enough, I have no problem getting to anything on the BBC that isn't under that domain.
Long story short, things seem to be more lax now, and it's my understanding that hotels and apartment complexes with high foreigner densities (mine is not one of them, we're the only foreigners in our complex), have even fewer restrictions. Skype is fine (although PSTN connections can suck) and China Telecom blocks any thing like Gizmo Project that use whatever port SIP phone uses (evidently Skype has a VOIP license, but none of the others do, although the government is set to approve more I think). Just my two jiao
I may be wrong, but isn't the change to "digital" and not necessarily "HD". I.E., the content could still only be SD quality but it will be delivered in a digital signal. Therefore, HD's changing standards aren't such a big deal, but again I could be misunderstanding the whole switch.
If only that were true. Unfortunately, companies, corporations anyway, do have the same rights as individuals in the United States. I tend to lean pretty hard to the right in most things political, but this fact has to change before companies do rule the world (even more than they do now).
Actually, I think most American's would refer to a one off event as a "holiday" as well. We also take Mondays off if a national holiday falls on the weekend (at least government agencies do). Now, if it's Christmas time and you have a week off and you go somewhere fun and exciting it would be referred to as a vacation, but Christmas itself is called a holiday. Another example. Independence Day (July 4th) is a holiday that for most school children comes during their summer vacation as opposed to their summer holiday. Hope this clears things up.
While I knew what philanthropy meant all along, I chose to show my ignorance of English grammar by typing "American's" when clearly it should have read "Americans". Oh well.
If this is an attempt to mock American's for being ignorant of a particular word used in the English language, fine. However, in terms of giving to charity Americans are a very generous people. Read a report on (global) philanthropy http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id =S')8H*P!3'%200%204%0A Or, if you're in America but don't have online access to the Economist, why not go to your local public library which may well have been funded by Andrew Carnegie and read it there?
I'm guessing that their answers were wrong because they were confused by your use of the word procentage. Perhaps you would have received more correct answers if you had asked for percentage(s).
It's important to remember that the WTO has the ability to use economics to enforce compliance with its rules. If you choose to break the rules, other countries are often allowed to retaliate (economically speaking) thus harming your own economy which you are trying to protect.
Now, in regards to other issues (assuming you are referring to Iraq and other UN related issues) there is no real enforcement capabilities. The UN says you shouldn't do something and you may get bad press, but the UN sure isn't going to do anything about your non-compliance. How many strongly worded letters did Hussein get? Did they change what he was doing? It's all about the money and the WTO can affect that, the UN cannot.
I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. The members of the electoral college are under no Federal laws in regards to how they vote, but states can makes laws to govern how the electors are selected and how they vote. As such, it is possible that in some states they could split their vote (I believe Colorado had a referendum on this this year), but I believe that most states have laws requiring the electors to vote for the candidate receiving the most popular votes in that state. Again, I could be wrong, it's been a while since h.s. civics.
I'm decidedly a Mac fanboy. I love using my Mac, and love that my shares in Apple have doubled from their purchase price. However, and not being a developer I could be wrong here, I thought it was often more difficult to develop Macintosh applications because more of the API's are hidden away and not for developers to see (relative to Windows). Again, I could be wrong, but I just figured that while Macs may be harder to develop for, it makes the end product easier to use.
When I went to see "The Matrix" the buy behind me asked if I would move down a seat so that his wife wouldn't be blocked by my head. Being the nice guy that I am, I agreed. No problem. Of course, about half way in he gets a call on his cell and doesn't just hang it up, but conducts a conversation. To show my distaste for his shenanigans, I moved back to my original seat and presumably blocked his wife's view. Was I punishing the wrong person? No, because we all know a wife make a husband do anything she wants, and had she said hang up, he would have.
Couldn't Apple, if it wanted, put something in the encoded AAC (say, something in a proprietary extra ID3 tag) that the iPod needs to see in order to play a file? In this way, Apple could use the industry standard DRM, we'll call it YerFukt, and when the iPod saw a YerFukt wrapped song it would automatically check for this extra ID3 tag, no tag, no play.
It may sound like I'm splitting hairs, but to me it seems like Apple could get around having to go standard. It's kind of like the fact that most of the stuff in my iBook is industry standard, ie the hd, the RAM, Firwire, etc, but I can't run OS X if the proprietary ROM isn't there
I used to work for Circuit City in 2002, back when they were still on commission. We would return pretty much anything that might have been bought at the store, receipt or not. Granted, we were in fierce competition with a freshly opened Best Buy across the street. At times we all felt a bit pressured to push the warranty, but most salesmen were truly interested in serving the customer because you wanted those people to come back and ask for you. Things may have changed, but I recently screwed up an online order from CC but had a hassle free return of the item.
As one poster already stated, the only monopoly here would be the record label that is probably part of the RIAA (in the US anyway and its equivalents in other countries). The entire DRM debate would be avoided if the labels would stop forcing Apple, Real, Napster etc to use DRM. Hell if Real could sell their AAC songs without DRM they would automatically be compatible with the iPod. The labels have some extremely curious views here
I spent a week in Korea last year visiting a friend. One of the best uses of broadband were the online music services. Every bar we went to had a computer hooked up to the sound system that gave you access to a massive amount of music. Plus, it was free (to the bar customer, I'm sure the service itself costs something). The cherry on top was that my friend was chummy with most of the barkeeps so we got to control the tunes. Very important for a music snob like myself. Beats the pants off juke boxes jammed with total prog rock crap.
How could the parent be modded troll? His "Full Metal Jacket" reference (or is that a standard Marine Corps statement?) is absolutely brilliant and should be rewarded with +1 Funnies and +1 underrateds. As for me, I'm prepared to be modded down mercilessly to fight for what I feel is right, so let it begin.
*The 60gb hds are actually for the iMac G5's that will float on a cushion of air and have a hockey puck base which can make any flat surface into an air hockey table. Who says we Mac users don't get any of the good games? I love air hockey.
If you want to put streamed stuff on your MD why not just hook the audio out from your computer to your MD. If you have one of those Xitel things that Sony shipped with MDs circa 2001, no loss of quality because you're going through USB. Even if you have to go analog, you aren't going to lose that much quality. If you have a Mac, get Audio Hijack and you can record from any program that produces a sound on your computer. But if you have a Mac you can't use Napster or Rhapsody.
Of course, there is the chance you were trying to use some wit to mock the MD technology, in which case I am a fucktard, but my post is still a valid way to get streamed content onto your MD.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, in America, Romney is correct:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
It stinks, big time, but he's not wrong in a legal sense.
Update:
The e-mail from my company states that the mourning will begin at 2:28 today. Indeed, I've gone to the sites I mentioned in my earlier post and in fact they have blocked the ability to search. You can only watch stuff on the front page. That, is fucking scary. From the e-mail I received from my company: all organizations and foreign embassies in China will lower the
flags; all entertaining activities will stop; sirens of automobiles, trains and ships will be on. As another poster mentioned, Youtube was already "harmonized".
When this idiocy stops, go to www.youku.com. Even if you can't read Chinese, you can easily see the search bar at the top. Just type "Lost" and work out which episode you need. It's usually up by Saturday morning our time.
I'm in China, have been for a few years. I can confirm that there doesn't seem to be much shutting down of websites. I can still go to the websites I normally go to view the latest episodes of Lost (hosted inside China, they stream rather well). As far as television, last night (Sunday night Shanghai time) I was watching the only not completely state run English station. The content was complete shit, but not earthquake related. I don't watch Chinese language stuff as it is shit propaganda or shit period soap operas or a cheap knock of "The Price is Right". Can still access all the websites I normally do, except for wikipedia, which is always hit or miss. Will keep things updated as I can.
I'm living in China currently, have been since March 2006. I also lived here in early 2001 for 4 months. From my average user standpoint, back then many sites seemed to be blacklisted, the NYTimes, CNN, BBC, and pretty much anything where you might get some real news. Needless to say, I was able to access USA Today. Now, the list is much shorter. Wikipedia can be hit or miss, but has been on for the last 3 or 4 months without interruption. The only thing that I might try to access is anything at news.bbc.co.uk. Oddly enough, I have no problem getting to anything on the BBC that isn't under that domain.
Long story short, things seem to be more lax now, and it's my understanding that hotels and apartment complexes with high foreigner densities (mine is not one of them, we're the only foreigners in our complex), have even fewer restrictions. Skype is fine (although PSTN connections can suck) and China Telecom blocks any thing like Gizmo Project that use whatever port SIP phone uses (evidently Skype has a VOIP license, but none of the others do, although the government is set to approve more I think). Just my two jiao
I may be wrong, but isn't the change to "digital" and not necessarily "HD". I.E., the content could still only be SD quality but it will be delivered in a digital signal. Therefore, HD's changing standards aren't such a big deal, but again I could be misunderstanding the whole switch.
If only that were true. Unfortunately, companies, corporations anyway, do have the same rights as individuals in the United States. I tend to lean pretty hard to the right in most things political, but this fact has to change before companies do rule the world (even more than they do now).
Check out this interview
Companies do have the same rights as people
Actually, I think most American's would refer to a one off event as a "holiday" as well. We also take Mondays off if a national holiday falls on the weekend (at least government agencies do). Now, if it's Christmas time and you have a week off and you go somewhere fun and exciting it would be referred to as a vacation, but Christmas itself is called a holiday. Another example. Independence Day (July 4th) is a holiday that for most school children comes during their summer vacation as opposed to their summer holiday. Hope this clears things up.
I'm sure you're aware of the irony in your post.
While I knew what philanthropy meant all along, I chose to show my ignorance of English grammar by typing "American's" when clearly it should have read "Americans". Oh well.
If this is an attempt to mock American's for being ignorant of a particular word used in the English language, fine. However, in terms of giving to charity Americans are a very generous people. Read a report on (global) philanthropy http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id =S')8H*P!3'%200%204%0A Or, if you're in America but don't have online access to the Economist, why not go to your local public library which may well have been funded by Andrew Carnegie and read it there?
I'm guessing that their answers were wrong because they were confused by your use of the word procentage. Perhaps you would have received more correct answers if you had asked for percentage(s).
It's important to remember that the WTO has the ability to use economics to enforce compliance with its rules. If you choose to break the rules, other countries are often allowed to retaliate (economically speaking) thus harming your own economy which you are trying to protect.
Now, in regards to other issues (assuming you are referring to Iraq and other UN related issues) there is no real enforcement capabilities. The UN says you shouldn't do something and you may get bad press, but the UN sure isn't going to do anything about your non-compliance. How many strongly worded letters did Hussein get? Did they change what he was doing? It's all about the money and the WTO can affect that, the UN cannot.
I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. The members of the electoral college are under no Federal laws in regards to how they vote, but states can makes laws to govern how the electors are selected and how they vote. As such, it is possible that in some states they could split their vote (I believe Colorado had a referendum on this this year), but I believe that most states have laws requiring the electors to vote for the candidate receiving the most popular votes in that state. Again, I could be wrong, it's been a while since h.s. civics.
Given the monkey boy video, I think that Balmer is certainly an "Excitable Boy". And the grandparent is right, Warren Zevon, you are missed.
I'm decidedly a Mac fanboy. I love using my Mac, and love that my shares in Apple have doubled from their purchase price. However, and not being a developer I could be wrong here, I thought it was often more difficult to develop Macintosh applications because more of the API's are hidden away and not for developers to see (relative to Windows). Again, I could be wrong, but I just figured that while Macs may be harder to develop for, it makes the end product easier to use.
When I went to see "The Matrix" the buy behind me asked if I would move down a seat so that his wife wouldn't be blocked by my head. Being the nice guy that I am, I agreed. No problem. Of course, about half way in he gets a call on his cell and doesn't just hang it up, but conducts a conversation. To show my distaste for his shenanigans, I moved back to my original seat and presumably blocked his wife's view. Was I punishing the wrong person? No, because we all know a wife make a husband do anything she wants, and had she said hang up, he would have.
It may sound like I'm splitting hairs, but to me it seems like Apple could get around having to go standard. It's kind of like the fact that most of the stuff in my iBook is industry standard, ie the hd, the RAM, Firwire, etc, but I can't run OS X if the proprietary ROM isn't there
I used to work for Circuit City in 2002, back when they were still on commission. We would return pretty much anything that might have been bought at the store, receipt or not. Granted, we were in fierce competition with a freshly opened Best Buy across the street. At times we all felt a bit pressured to push the warranty, but most salesmen were truly interested in serving the customer because you wanted those people to come back and ask for you. Things may have changed, but I recently screwed up an online order from CC but had a hassle free return of the item.
As one poster already stated, the only monopoly here would be the record label that is probably part of the RIAA (in the US anyway and its equivalents in other countries). The entire DRM debate would be avoided if the labels would stop forcing Apple, Real, Napster etc to use DRM. Hell if Real could sell their AAC songs without DRM they would automatically be compatible with the iPod. The labels have some extremely curious views here
Granted, if you're just someone who doesn't innovate, just copies other ideas, then you don't want software patents.
But Microsoft seems to be all for software patents.
I spent a week in Korea last year visiting a friend. One of the best uses of broadband were the online music services. Every bar we went to had a computer hooked up to the sound system that gave you access to a massive amount of music. Plus, it was free (to the bar customer, I'm sure the service itself costs something). The cherry on top was that my friend was chummy with most of the barkeeps so we got to control the tunes. Very important for a music snob like myself. Beats the pants off juke boxes jammed with total prog rock crap.
How could the parent be modded troll? His "Full Metal Jacket" reference (or is that a standard Marine Corps statement?) is absolutely brilliant and should be rewarded with +1 Funnies and +1 underrateds. As for me, I'm prepared to be modded down mercilessly to fight for what I feel is right, so let it begin.
*The 60gb hds are actually for the iMac G5's that will float on a cushion of air and have a hockey puck base which can make any flat surface into an air hockey table. Who says we Mac users don't get any of the good games? I love air hockey.
*Pure conjecture
Of course, there is the chance you were trying to use some wit to mock the MD technology, in which case I am a fucktard, but my post is still a valid way to get streamed content onto your MD.
I'd take half the salary of the lowest paid reporter if I could sit on my ass and make up the news like Jayson Blair did.