It seems the NSA is into turning fiction into fact - so don't give them any ideas
You and I may think that as long as we do not give them any idea it's fine.
But you and I do not know that by deciding NOT to give them any idea, it is already another IMPORTANT idea that we are giving to the NSA (and all other BIG BROTHERS)
Remember, to those who know how to play this game - Silence is an answer, non-cooperation is an action, and not-giving-any-idea by itself is a very useful idea.
We are already fucked no matter how you look at it.
The technology that we have (and the more advanced versions of technology that the BIG BROTHERS get to play with) today already enables 24/7/365 tracking - and the way we laid out our "rules and regulation" we have already submitted EVERYTHING THAT IS RELATED TO US (our name, our address, our car registration number, our HAM radio identification, our spouse' identity, the identity of our children, our education, the subjects that we took in the schools, and so on) to the authority (aka BIG BROTHERS).
They know us better than we know ourselves.
They know us so well that they can actually predict what we most probably going to do and/or going to be next week/month/year, while most of us do not even know what we are going to do next weekend.
No matter if you are an idiot or a tin-foil hatter, you gotta understand that there is only so much you can do.
The world we live in a FREE WORLD for the Big Brothers (commercial or otherwise) to do whatever they want with us.
Even if you only use cash / bitcoin to do purchases, they _still_ can find ways to "understand" you.
I may sound like a defeatist, I may sound as if I have given up. I am not.
I am a realist, though.
No matter what step (or steps) I take to minimize my exposure, they know who I am, where I am, with whom I am, my favorite watering hole, the usual kind of food I take, my regular schedule, and so on...
In one of my previous posts (some moons ago) I mentioned that we need to keep alert 24/7, and someone replied that if I keep on doing that I'm going to go bonker.
Perhaps I have already gone bonker, but then, that's what Big Brothers want anyway.
My company used to have 4 offices in India. Now we have only one.
Why ?
It's not that we don't like to do business with the Indians, it's the government that we can't deal with.
They are worse than the Mafioso.
They can turn the rules around overnight and demand the ransom, and they can do it in a totally legal manner.
The longer the Indian government behaving like this the worse their reputation gonna be - and the less the multinationals will be willing to invest in India.
Of the people that I know many of them are Muslims.
Many of them are very bright, except for one thing - you just can NOT discuss religion (or faith) thing with them.
Unlike the Buddhists or Christians or Jews where you can have civil discussion, or even debates on matter pertaining to whether if there is a "God" or matter such as "If the different religion worship the same God" or the very act of suicide bombing killing the innocent can be call "a service to God"... you just can't have such discussion with the Muslims.
My background being from a Communist country (during the time I left China it was VERY ANTI-RELIGION) I can see the point from *both* the anti-religion standpoint and from the "God is my savior" standpoint.
I can have civil discussion with the Jews, with the Buddhists, with the Hindus, and with the Christians, in matters that I outlined above, but so far, the Muslims just can't discuss it civilly.
For them, anything that "threaten" and/or "weaken" their "belief in Allah" is "blasphemous" --- and in the discussion, I certainly never even have the thought of "weaken their faith" at all, but the Muslims just don't take it kindly if anyone DARE to question their religion.
That is why I say, if those two scientists are REALLY SO CONCERN of the negative effect religion might do to human civilization, they should stop proselytizing in the street of Los Angeles or Sydney.
They should go to Saudi Arabia, or Yemen or Egypt or Tunisia or Iran, and try to make their point across to the Muslims.
Anything short of that they are preaching to the choir.
Why don't they take their tour into the Middle East, maybe to countries such as Yemen or Saudi Arabia or Egypt ?
I'll like to see how successful they are in convincing the Muslims.
Stop telling the non-Muslims how defective religion is - most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Apparently that economist, Mr. Paul Collier, doesn't even have any braincell to think.
From the TFA:
Collier argues that there are also downsides to the tech giants' plans to shift more bright, young, enterprising people from the poorest countries to the richest
MOST of those young, bright and enterprising people from the POOREST COUNTRIES won't get ANY chance to tap on their potential in their own country, and I am speaking as someone who had been through exactly that scenario.
When I came out of China, back in the early 1970's, China was in a VERY TERRIBLE STATE.
Millions of ordinary citizens had died of hunger.
Social upheaval were everywhere - goons waving that little red book were ransacking/looting people's houses they accused of "anti-revolutionary".
If I WERE to stay in China, I had only two choices: Either joined those goons in doing all the WRONG THINGS they had been doing, or to stay absolutely low key, go into a remote village somewhere, and work as a farm hand.
But I got out of China and ended up in America.
In America, I got to further my education (I already had high school education back in China), I got to learn many things from many very brainy people who came to America from all over the world, I got the chance to participate in the American dream, I got to start my own companies, I got to sell my companies for huge profit and re-invest the monies into even more startups.
I could NEVER do any of that had I stuck in China.
Nowadays I am helping many young, bright and very enterprising people in poor countries in Asia, Africa and South America, by either inviting them to become my co-workers in the companies that I own (full or part), or I invest in their startups.
That Mr. Paul Collier is nothing but a talking head.
Most of the poor countries in the world simply do not have the infrastructure to allow those young, bright and enterprising people to do what they can do.
Most of the governments in those poor countries are mired in unbelievably mountains of bureaucratic red tapes, red tapes that do nothing but making the lives of their own citizens even that much more miserable.
I came from one of those poor countries, I know what was/is happening.
I am not saying that Bill Gates and/or Mark Zuckerberg are right to do whatever they do, but at least they are offering many young, bright and enterprising people from poor countries A CHANCE TO PROVE THEIR WORTH TO THE WORLD, and also to themselves.
As for Mr. Paul Collier, other than being a talking head, what did/does he do to help out those young, bright and enterprising people in the poorest countries in the world ?
Can I at least ask for some other numbers, such as the number of bird kills resulting from pollutants dumped out by the big coal fired plants in Ohio?
Are you trying to argue that it's better to kill some birds using windmills than killing some birds via the smokestacks ?
When we burn fossil fuel, we increase the amount of C02 level in the atmosphere, triggering what is called by many "Global Warming".
When we don't want to burn fossil fuel, and turn to Nuke, we end up having radioactive waste that can last very very long time.
And when we turn to the wind, the birds (including the eagles) ending up having to pay.
A much more simple way is to cut down on our wasteful lifestyle.
Do we need to turn our home into a greenhouse every winter ?
Do we need to turn the same house into an igloo every summer ?
We don't, do we ? But I have been to people's office / home in winter / summertime and boy, they sure feel like greenhouse / igloo.
And to those "electric car" fanbois, listen up.
Do we really need electric "CAR" ?
I mean, do we need a VERY HEAVY VEHICLE, even if they are electrically driven, to get us from point A to point B ?
Look at the weight of the electric cars. They are NOT THAT MUCH DIFFERENT from the fossil-fuel cars, weighting more than 1 ton.
What is the average weight of a human being ? 50/60 kilo?
Why do we need something that weight A FUCKING TON to deliver something that weight 50/60 ton ?
If you ever talk to people in the packaging industry they would tell you that the concept of having the packaging material weighting MUCH HEAVIER than the goods in it is ridiculous.
But that is what we had been doing, ever since cars (the fossil type) started rolling out of the factories.
Isn't it time for us to demand the electric car vehicle manufacturer to TOTALLY RE-DESIGN the electric cars, so that it won't weight so much ?
Less weight means less need for energy to get it going, which translates to, longer lasting battery per charge.
If we are to change towards a new thing, why do we need to stick to the old concept of clumsy cars ??
It also tells us about the way our politicians wants us to go - go in public transportation, don't think for yourself
Oooh, a chill suddenly springs up my spine...
For the past decade or so I've been very puzzled by the decision of the Ministry of Education of Great Britain in teaching their students how to use Microsoft Words and Microsoft Powerpoint, instead of teaching them how to code...
Now I KNOW WHY !!
The motive is none other than to DUMB DOWN THE ENTIRE GENERATION OF PEOPLE so to make them that much more easily controllable !!
Just when you thought school is supposed to be the place to kids get educated...
It was also supposed to have lazy/dynamic/late-binding expressions (i.e. lazy_int a = b + c;), but it turns out you only very rarely have any use for that type of expressions. At the time, there were also far superiour C++ frameworks being developed which could do these things as a side effect of supporting more useful programming models.
This RP thing doesn't really seem to do anything more than that.
Bank of America is always looking for new ways to screw over their "customers", be it through fees, lying, or trying to steal their (paid off) houses through foreclosure (and blaming it on "computer error" when caught). They're probably drooling like hungry dogs over all the ways they can fleece people with Bitcoin...
I'm afraid that Bank of America is not the ONLY bank which screws their customers.
In fact, I have yet to find a bank which has failed to screw their customers.
"Reagan and Thatcher supported Apartheid", please do some research, preferably not on wikipedia, and revert.
Did they support the apartheid government?
In the Syria conflict USA/France/Britain support the "rebels" who fight against the Assad regime. Those "rebels" happened to include the Al Queda terrorists.
In conclusion, perusing your own analogy, what USA, France and England are doing is to give their support to Al Queda and all the jihadist terrorists
... when he stepped out of the jail cell are very grateful of what he has done, not only to South Africa, but to all mankind.
Mandela, ~ unlike all other hypocritical politicians all around the world, ~ is a dude who was TRUE TO HIS WORDS.
No, I am not an African. I ain't a white, either.
As a human being, I appreciate what Mandela has achieved, and sincerely hope that the politicians (present and future, no matter where they are) can stop lying so much and start learning something from Mandela.
Used to that anything with the Microsoft (c) brand on it, no matter if it's the OS or mouse or keyboard or office suite, they are guaranteed to sell like hotcakes.
No more.
With one fumble after another, with more and more alternatives to Microsoft's products (of which many of them are free), Microsoft is running out of cash cows.
Right now they are so desperate that they are trying to milk Windows 8 as much while the going is still good.
China's plan is NOT sending man to moon until AFTER 2035
By then, if everything has gone according to plan, China would have a full fetch space station in the orbit which has the capability of assembling rockets (which are sent up part by part) and then launch them into whichever destination they are supposed to go to (be it moon or mars or beyond)
That is why China is not, and does not yet have any plan to build a rocket as powerful as the Saturn V rocket
I've once read an article by a guy who managed to escape a dictatorship
I escaped from the dictatorship of the CCP, I have experienced dictatorship first hand.
I do not like what the government of the United States is doing, but in this case, we gotta look WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING
That plaintiff, Dr. Rahimah Ibrahim, from Malaysia, is a SUPPORTER of a racist and fascist regime of Malaysia.
She is an avid supporter of UMNO - a RACIST ORGANIZATION which is still practicing APARTHEID in the country that it rules over (Malaysia, in this case).
UMNO is also an Islamic organization that actively supports GLOBAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM.
Through the support of UMNO, the jihadists in the southern Thailand and in southern Philippines got their training inside Malaysia.
It was the Malaysian army which taught those jihadists the bomb making techniques, and taught them how to carry out terrorist attacks.
For that purpose, UMNO actually set up a secret military base inside the thick jungle in Borneo and many batches of terrorists were trained.
UMNO not only provide training to those jihadist terrorists but also provide monetary / intelligent support, as well as supply them with weapons and explosives.
All these have already been very well documented by many parties, including the United Nations.
In other words, the "victim" in this case isn't as "innocent" as she claims to be.
She is an active player in an organization which supports the global jihadist movement.
I do not know why the US government puts her on the no-fly-list, but that Dr. Rahimah Ibrahim certainly isn't an innocent party to begin with.
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Dr. Adam Smith, 1776
"Lobbying" and "monopoly" are not "capitalism". Even Smith recognized that a capitalist economy must have a reasonable body of antitrust laws to keep everybody "playing within the rules".
Adam Smith believed in "an invisible hand", ie, the marketplace, that has the ability to regain sanity after a period of insanity, through the force of the combined participation of each and every participant (whether it be consumer / banker / manufacturer / miner / farmer).
On the other hand, Washington D.C. (no matter it be Democrats or Republicans) believes in their own version of "invisible hand".
The invisible hand those politiscums believe in is "BIG BROTHERHOOD", or in other words, an entity which OVERSEES everything that is happening, no matter it happened in the public sphere or otherwise.
That is why we have all the illegal spying on the American citizens by none other than the American government.
I am an American citizen, and have been an American citizen for almost four decades, and I am sad to say that the country which I signed up on, back then, was very different from the country which I am looking at, today.
In Korea the "women servant / male master" culture is still very much alive.
Your family may be one of those who decide to adopt the Western way of thought (gender equality and all that) but most of the Koreans that I know (and yes, I do go to Korea often and do speak Korean ~I am part Korean, for crying out loud~) still subscribe to that ancient culture.
As for the Korean Drama and K-pop, no, I do not waste my time watching or listening to those garbage. Sorry to say that, even when I am part Korean (1/16th of my genes), I gotta say most modern Korean movies/songs are not even worth mentioning.
Did I say they "stop forcing students from memorizing" ?
Did I ?
I said, ~ and please read carefully, ~ that there has been a great deal of improvements on the way of teaching in many of the East Asian countries, especially those that have majority "Yellow-skin folks" such as Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, China.
If the senator thinks that "break" = "brake", we should send him the "Gimme a brake" email to remind him that as a role model (albeit a very crummy one) to the young people, at the very least he should be able to discern "break" from "brake".
Now... can someone gimme that senator's email address ?
Since you mentioned that you are an American expat working in Singapore, it won't be too far fetch to say that you are NOT the only "expat" working in the firm.
You are surrounded by colleagues who are NOT from Singapore - and many of them are from neighboring countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Vietnam and Malaysia.
Those colleagues are yours might be ethnic Chinese, but if they came from Indonesia or Malaysia or the Philippines, they were taught in school systems that, as I outlined in my original message regarding countries with "brown skin folks", are in really terrible state.
Coupled with the religion problem - Malaysia and Indonesia being majority of the people are of the Islamic faith, their school curricula were/are routinely tempered with by the authority, for "religious reason" (to dumb down the students instead of making them brighter) so that when they grow up they wouldn't know how to question the authority.
I have companies set up in that region as well and I have co-workers from those places. I know the way they think (very narrow) and their timidity (never question authority) seriously damn down their real potential.
They are products of the environment they grew up in - like me, I grew up in China, but luckily for me, I escaped China when I was still in my teens and got the chance to learn from both the East and the West.
If you're an expat working in Singapore you are in your 30's, or older.
Assuming your colleagues are almost at your same age group, their years spent in their Primary and Secondary schooling were in the 1980's, 1990's and/or early 2000's.
The schools, even in Singapore, at that time, still operated under the "teacher talks, students listen" mode. Student/teacher interactions were still very much discouraged.
The real change didn't come until mid 2000's, where many Western techniques were "borrowed" (such as those from Ed Bono, and actually the Singaporean government invited Mr. Bono to Singapore many times to help them implement the creativity improvement program).
Schools in Singapore, in Hong Kong, in Tokyo are very much different from schools 20 years ago.
Hands on experimentations are very much the norm nowadays.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems the NSA is into turning fiction into fact - so don't give them any ideas
You and I may think that as long as we do not give them any idea it's fine.
But you and I do not know that by deciding NOT to give them any idea, it is already another IMPORTANT idea that we are giving to the NSA (and all other BIG BROTHERS)
Remember, to those who know how to play this game - Silence is an answer, non-cooperation is an action, and not-giving-any-idea by itself is a very useful idea.
You're fucked!
We are already fucked no matter how you look at it.
The technology that we have (and the more advanced versions of technology that the BIG BROTHERS get to play with) today already enables 24/7/365 tracking - and the way we laid out our "rules and regulation" we have already submitted EVERYTHING THAT IS RELATED TO US (our name, our address, our car registration number, our HAM radio identification, our spouse' identity, the identity of our children, our education, the subjects that we took in the schools, and so on) to the authority (aka BIG BROTHERS).
They know us better than we know ourselves.
They know us so well that they can actually predict what we most probably going to do and/or going to be next week/month/year, while most of us do not even know what we are going to do next weekend.
Dear NSA,
You not only cost us our privacy, the privacy that we treasure so much.
Now you cost us a good book !
What else are you going to cost us, NSA ??
We do need to understand this --- tracking can NOT be totally eliminated.
Cookie tracking is but one of the various ways they use to track us. The report @ http://truththeory.com/2013/12/10/how-to-see-what-government-agency-is-spying-on-your-phone/ tells us about another way (they hack the prepaid phones and track the unique IPs).
No matter if you are an idiot or a tin-foil hatter, you gotta understand that there is only so much you can do.
The world we live in a FREE WORLD for the Big Brothers (commercial or otherwise) to do whatever they want with us.
Even if you only use cash / bitcoin to do purchases, they _still_ can find ways to "understand" you.
I may sound like a defeatist, I may sound as if I have given up. I am not.
I am a realist, though.
No matter what step (or steps) I take to minimize my exposure, they know who I am, where I am, with whom I am, my favorite watering hole, the usual kind of food I take, my regular schedule, and so on...
In one of my previous posts (some moons ago) I mentioned that we need to keep alert 24/7, and someone replied that if I keep on doing that I'm going to go bonker.
Perhaps I have already gone bonker, but then, that's what Big Brothers want anyway.
... it seems a lot more like a shakedown ...
My company used to have 4 offices in India. Now we have only one.
Why ?
It's not that we don't like to do business with the Indians, it's the government that we can't deal with.
They are worse than the Mafioso.
They can turn the rules around overnight and demand the ransom, and they can do it in a totally legal manner.
The longer the Indian government behaving like this the worse their reputation gonna be - and the less the multinationals will be willing to invest in India.
And how many Muslims do you know?
In the thousands ?
And I am not kidding.
Of the people that I know many of them are Muslims.
Many of them are very bright, except for one thing - you just can NOT discuss religion (or faith) thing with them.
Unlike the Buddhists or Christians or Jews where you can have civil discussion, or even debates on matter pertaining to whether if there is a "God" or matter such as "If the different religion worship the same God" or the very act of suicide bombing killing the innocent can be call "a service to God" ... you just can't have such discussion with the Muslims.
My background being from a Communist country (during the time I left China it was VERY ANTI-RELIGION) I can see the point from *both* the anti-religion standpoint and from the "God is my savior" standpoint.
I can have civil discussion with the Jews, with the Buddhists, with the Hindus, and with the Christians, in matters that I outlined above, but so far, the Muslims just can't discuss it civilly.
For them, anything that "threaten" and/or "weaken" their "belief in Allah" is "blasphemous" --- and in the discussion, I certainly never even have the thought of "weaken their faith" at all, but the Muslims just don't take it kindly if anyone DARE to question their religion.
That is why I say, if those two scientists are REALLY SO CONCERN of the negative effect religion might do to human civilization, they should stop proselytizing in the street of Los Angeles or Sydney.
They should go to Saudi Arabia, or Yemen or Egypt or Tunisia or Iran, and try to make their point across to the Muslims.
Anything short of that they are preaching to the choir.
Why don't they take their tour into the Middle East, maybe to countries such as Yemen or Saudi Arabia or Egypt ?
I'll like to see how successful they are in convincing the Muslims.
Stop telling the non-Muslims how defective religion is - most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Not so for the Muslims.
Disclaimer: I am not the author of the following pdf
http://iphome.hhi.de/marpe/download/Performance_HEVC_VP9_X264_PCS_2013_preprint.pdf
According to the above pdf
"x264 encoder achieves an average gain of 6.2% in terms of BD-BR savings compared to VP9
Consider the interests of the would-be reformer
Apparently that economist, Mr. Paul Collier, doesn't even have any braincell to think.
From the TFA:
Collier argues that there are also downsides to the tech giants' plans to shift more bright, young, enterprising people from the poorest countries to the richest
MOST of those young, bright and enterprising people from the POOREST COUNTRIES won't get ANY chance to tap on their potential in their own country, and I am speaking as someone who had been through exactly that scenario.
When I came out of China, back in the early 1970's, China was in a VERY TERRIBLE STATE.
Millions of ordinary citizens had died of hunger.
Social upheaval were everywhere - goons waving that little red book were ransacking/looting people's houses they accused of "anti-revolutionary".
If I WERE to stay in China, I had only two choices: Either joined those goons in doing all the WRONG THINGS they had been doing, or to stay absolutely low key, go into a remote village somewhere, and work as a farm hand.
But I got out of China and ended up in America.
In America, I got to further my education (I already had high school education back in China), I got to learn many things from many very brainy people who came to America from all over the world, I got the chance to participate in the American dream, I got to start my own companies, I got to sell my companies for huge profit and re-invest the monies into even more startups.
I could NEVER do any of that had I stuck in China.
Nowadays I am helping many young, bright and very enterprising people in poor countries in Asia, Africa and South America, by either inviting them to become my co-workers in the companies that I own (full or part), or I invest in their startups.
That Mr. Paul Collier is nothing but a talking head.
Most of the poor countries in the world simply do not have the infrastructure to allow those young, bright and enterprising people to do what they can do.
Most of the governments in those poor countries are mired in unbelievably mountains of bureaucratic red tapes, red tapes that do nothing but making the lives of their own citizens even that much more miserable.
I came from one of those poor countries, I know what was/is happening.
I am not saying that Bill Gates and/or Mark Zuckerberg are right to do whatever they do, but at least they are offering many young, bright and enterprising people from poor countries A CHANCE TO PROVE THEIR WORTH TO THE WORLD, and also to themselves.
As for Mr. Paul Collier, other than being a talking head, what did/does he do to help out those young, bright and enterprising people in the poorest countries in the world ?
Can I at least ask for some other numbers, such as the number of bird kills resulting from pollutants dumped out by the big coal fired plants in Ohio?
Are you trying to argue that it's better to kill some birds using windmills than killing some birds via the smokestacks ?
When we burn fossil fuel, we increase the amount of C02 level in the atmosphere, triggering what is called by many "Global Warming".
When we don't want to burn fossil fuel, and turn to Nuke, we end up having radioactive waste that can last very very long time.
And when we turn to the wind, the birds (including the eagles) ending up having to pay.
A much more simple way is to cut down on our wasteful lifestyle.
Do we need to turn our home into a greenhouse every winter ?
Do we need to turn the same house into an igloo every summer ?
We don't, do we ? But I have been to people's office / home in winter / summertime and boy, they sure feel like greenhouse / igloo.
And to those "electric car" fanbois, listen up.
Do we really need electric "CAR" ?
I mean, do we need a VERY HEAVY VEHICLE, even if they are electrically driven, to get us from point A to point B ?
Look at the weight of the electric cars. They are NOT THAT MUCH DIFFERENT from the fossil-fuel cars, weighting more than 1 ton.
What is the average weight of a human being ? 50/60 kilo?
Why do we need something that weight A FUCKING TON to deliver something that weight 50/60 ton ?
If you ever talk to people in the packaging industry they would tell you that the concept of having the packaging material weighting MUCH HEAVIER than the goods in it is ridiculous.
But that is what we had been doing, ever since cars (the fossil type) started rolling out of the factories.
Isn't it time for us to demand the electric car vehicle manufacturer to TOTALLY RE-DESIGN the electric cars, so that it won't weight so much ?
Less weight means less need for energy to get it going, which translates to, longer lasting battery per charge.
If we are to change towards a new thing, why do we need to stick to the old concept of clumsy cars ??
It also tells us about the way our politicians wants us to go - go in public transportation, don't think for yourself
Oooh, a chill suddenly springs up my spine ...
For the past decade or so I've been very puzzled by the decision of the Ministry of Education of Great Britain in teaching their students how to use Microsoft Words and Microsoft Powerpoint, instead of teaching them how to code...
Now I KNOW WHY !!
The motive is none other than to DUMB DOWN THE ENTIRE GENERATION OF PEOPLE so to make them that much more easily controllable !!
Just when you thought school is supposed to be the place to kids get educated ...
Many thanks for the enlightenment !!!
I remember experimenting with a C++ framework that would work somewhat similar. Lazy evaluation and such. http://sourceforge.net/projects/ditto
MUCHO KUDOS FOR THE LINK, my man !
It was also supposed to have lazy/dynamic/late-binding expressions (i.e. lazy_int a = b + c;), but it turns out you only very rarely have any use for that type of expressions. At the time, there were also far superiour C++ frameworks being developed which could do these things as a side effect of supporting more useful programming models.
This RP thing doesn't really seem to do anything more than that.
Looks like this weekend I'll be fully occupied
I need to know more about all this !
Thanks again, man !!
Bank of America is always looking for new ways to screw over their "customers", be it through fees, lying, or trying to steal their (paid off) houses through foreclosure (and blaming it on "computer error" when caught). They're probably drooling like hungry dogs over all the ways they can fleece people with Bitcoin...
I'm afraid that Bank of America is not the ONLY bank which screws their customers.
In fact, I have yet to find a bank which has failed to screw their customers.
"Reagan and Thatcher supported Apartheid", please do some research, preferably not on wikipedia, and revert.
Did they support the apartheid government?
In the Syria conflict USA/France/Britain support the "rebels" who fight against the Assad regime. Those "rebels" happened to include the Al Queda terrorists.
In conclusion, perusing your own analogy, what USA, France and England are doing is to give their support to Al Queda and all the jihadist terrorists
What is YOUR answer to that ?
... when he stepped out of the jail cell are very grateful of what he has done, not only to South Africa, but to all mankind.
Mandela, ~ unlike all other hypocritical politicians all around the world, ~ is a dude who was TRUE TO HIS WORDS.
No, I am not an African. I ain't a white, either.
As a human being, I appreciate what Mandela has achieved, and sincerely hope that the politicians (present and future, no matter where they are) can stop lying so much and start learning something from Mandela.
I thought Intel, Samsung and TSMC claim that the upcoming 350mm wafer going to bring along another round of cost saving.
Are they telling the truth, or are they blowing smoke ?
Used to that Microsoft can sell anything.
Used to that anything with the Microsoft (c) brand on it, no matter if it's the OS or mouse or keyboard or office suite, they are guaranteed to sell like hotcakes.
No more.
With one fumble after another, with more and more alternatives to Microsoft's products (of which many of them are free), Microsoft is running out of cash cows.
Right now they are so desperate that they are trying to milk Windows 8 as much while the going is still good.
China's plan is NOT sending man to moon until AFTER 2035
By then, if everything has gone according to plan, China would have a full fetch space station in the orbit which has the capability of assembling rockets (which are sent up part by part) and then launch them into whichever destination they are supposed to go to (be it moon or mars or beyond)
That is why China is not, and does not yet have any plan to build a rocket as powerful as the Saturn V rocket
I've once read an article by a guy who managed to escape a dictatorship
I escaped from the dictatorship of the CCP, I have experienced dictatorship first hand.
I do not like what the government of the United States is doing, but in this case, we gotta look WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING
That plaintiff, Dr. Rahimah Ibrahim, from Malaysia, is a SUPPORTER of a racist and fascist regime of Malaysia.
She is an avid supporter of UMNO - a RACIST ORGANIZATION which is still practicing APARTHEID in the country that it rules over (Malaysia, in this case).
UMNO is also an Islamic organization that actively supports GLOBAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM.
Through the support of UMNO, the jihadists in the southern Thailand and in southern Philippines got their training inside Malaysia.
It was the Malaysian army which taught those jihadists the bomb making techniques, and taught them how to carry out terrorist attacks.
For that purpose, UMNO actually set up a secret military base inside the thick jungle in Borneo and many batches of terrorists were trained.
UMNO not only provide training to those jihadist terrorists but also provide monetary / intelligent support, as well as supply them with weapons and explosives.
All these have already been very well documented by many parties, including the United Nations.
In other words, the "victim" in this case isn't as "innocent" as she claims to be.
She is an active player in an organization which supports the global jihadist movement.
I do not know why the US government puts her on the no-fly-list, but that Dr. Rahimah Ibrahim certainly isn't an innocent party to begin with.
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Dr. Adam Smith, 1776
"Lobbying" and "monopoly" are not "capitalism". Even Smith recognized that a capitalist economy must have a reasonable body of antitrust laws to keep everybody "playing within the rules".
Adam Smith believed in "an invisible hand", ie, the marketplace, that has the ability to regain sanity after a period of insanity, through the force of the combined participation of each and every participant (whether it be consumer / banker / manufacturer / miner / farmer).
On the other hand, Washington D.C. (no matter it be Democrats or Republicans) believes in their own version of "invisible hand".
The invisible hand those politiscums believe in is "BIG BROTHERHOOD", or in other words, an entity which OVERSEES everything that is happening, no matter it happened in the public sphere or otherwise.
That is why we have all the illegal spying on the American citizens by none other than the American government.
I am an American citizen, and have been an American citizen for almost four decades, and I am sad to say that the country which I signed up on, back then, was very different from the country which I am looking at, today.
Nice try.
In Korea the "women servant / male master" culture is still very much alive.
Your family may be one of those who decide to adopt the Western way of thought (gender equality and all that) but most of the Koreans that I know (and yes, I do go to Korea often and do speak Korean ~I am part Korean, for crying out loud~) still subscribe to that ancient culture.
As for the Korean Drama and K-pop, no, I do not waste my time watching or listening to those garbage. Sorry to say that, even when I am part Korean (1/16th of my genes), I gotta say most modern Korean movies/songs are not even worth mentioning.
Did I say they "stop forcing students from memorizing" ?
Did I ?
I said, ~ and please read carefully, ~ that there has been a great deal of improvements on the way of teaching in many of the East Asian countries, especially those that have majority "Yellow-skin folks" such as Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, China.
If the senator thinks that "break" = "brake", we should send him the "Gimme a brake" email to remind him that as a role model (albeit a very crummy one) to the young people, at the very least he should be able to discern "break" from "brake".
Now ... can someone gimme that senator's email address ?
Since you mentioned that you are an American expat working in Singapore, it won't be too far fetch to say that you are NOT the only "expat" working in the firm.
You are surrounded by colleagues who are NOT from Singapore - and many of them are from neighboring countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Vietnam and Malaysia.
Those colleagues are yours might be ethnic Chinese, but if they came from Indonesia or Malaysia or the Philippines, they were taught in school systems that, as I outlined in my original message regarding countries with "brown skin folks", are in really terrible state.
Coupled with the religion problem - Malaysia and Indonesia being majority of the people are of the Islamic faith, their school curricula were/are routinely tempered with by the authority, for "religious reason" (to dumb down the students instead of making them brighter) so that when they grow up they wouldn't know how to question the authority.
I have companies set up in that region as well and I have co-workers from those places. I know the way they think (very narrow) and their timidity (never question authority) seriously damn down their real potential.
They are products of the environment they grew up in - like me, I grew up in China, but luckily for me, I escaped China when I was still in my teens and got the chance to learn from both the East and the West.
If you're an expat working in Singapore you are in your 30's, or older.
Assuming your colleagues are almost at your same age group, their years spent in their Primary and Secondary schooling were in the 1980's, 1990's and/or early 2000's.
The schools, even in Singapore, at that time, still operated under the "teacher talks, students listen" mode. Student/teacher interactions were still very much discouraged.
The real change didn't come until mid 2000's, where many Western techniques were "borrowed" (such as those from Ed Bono, and actually the Singaporean government invited Mr. Bono to Singapore many times to help them implement the creativity improvement program).
Schools in Singapore, in Hong Kong, in Tokyo are very much different from schools 20 years ago.
Hands on experimentations are very much the norm nowadays.