But they were also kind of dicks about that whole independence thing. So it all evens out.
Former colonies such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand were given full, constitutional independence when they had the infrastructure to support self-governance. American independence was not unanimously supported in the thirteen colonies of the day, however this was suppressed when revolutionaries used their largely French government issued weapons to intimidate, disenfranchise and suppress so called "tories". While no on can claim that America is backward or undeveloped today, the lives of the native Americans, the blacks and the poor all suffered under America's hard line expansionism and slightly regressive social policies during the early nineteenth century. While American political philosophy has evolved to justify that the winners of that war were unquestionably right, as all victors claim to be, it was a complex issue in its day and remains so.
I used to bag out Tim Horten's as well, then I went there and had a meal with coffee and desert for $5 and it wasn't half bad either. I spent two weeks in Canada and must have put on like 3kg between the Tim Horten's donuts, Alberta AAA steaks every day and the side order of poutine, that country is insane.
I know at least two guys on their security team. I would have to agree with you there. One particular guy I remember was tossed out of my university for hacking and snapped right up by their HR. I would suggest attacking pretty much any other bank.
And the award for Most Obvious Joke That Didn't Need to Be Said goes to.... [tearing envelope].... THAT guy!
Oh, come on man. Sure, we were all thinking of the joke, nobody really had to say it for humour value. But think of it like this: this dude is total scum, he tried to frame some other guy as being a pedophile and thus risk ruining his life, relationships, job, whatever. Do we not owe it to the victim to mock the name of the man who wronged him, no matter how obvious and hackneyed this joke may be?
So, for justice, great or otherwise, I think we should all take turns to mock the name of this pathetic man.
The way I see it, why should Apple PR be expected to invest their time in helping this girl with an assignment? Issuing statements requires commitment and non-trival time since it can be quoted, all for something that will be read by a single person. Should Apple reply to every student in her class or just her? When I was in university, we were told that directly contacting the organisation in question will result in a fail, to prevent scores of students simultaneously asking questions and loosing face for the university.
But seriously, if she had any brains, she would have just found out the sales contact used by the university to buy the iPads then asked them, that would have probably got a reply since it actually relates to his own sale.
As for China, I wonder how long it will be until someplace like Australia or Canada decide "Hey that's a good idea" and declare takedown request to be state secrets.
Australia had 200, Canada less than 10. Enjoy your freedom with that.
Times like this I can't help but think of the thousands of Canadian patriots and Indian warriors who fought and died rather than to be conquered by a slave owning and native massacring nation. Wherever truth and liberty truly are, they will be remembered.
Well, I think it is mainly to do with the way video games are developed in the East. Back when Shigeru Miyamoto developed Donkey Kong then Mario, he just did the design, programming and artwork himself and was able to do some great things since he could design and build as he went. However, East Asian companies scale as a linear shape, rather than a parallel shape. Generally, design comes from a central place as a formal set of requirements and it goes to be implemented in the next department. It is very difficult for someone designing a big game to know what will work ahead of time, since the flow is more or less one way. In western companies, design stems from implementation and implementation stems from design, small chunks iterate quickly as implementers tend to have a fair amount of creative freedom as to what they are building. Since this is more difficult for large projects in east Asia, designers tend to stick with what they know can work ahead of time as generally they cannot refine their designs without causing huge backlash from the programming team and project management.
This is based on experience in China, rather than Japan, but as I understand there are many similarities to the systems from people who have worked in both.
Grand Theft Auto is from the United Kingdom (Scotland), Battlefield is Swedish, Company of Heroes is Canadian. Pretty sure the rest are US made though. Though I think the 5/8 figure is more based on liking genres that Japanese are fairly poor at.
The thing is, it is not just the US that they are competing with. From here, I can see 6 American games, 3 British, 1 Canadian, 2 German, 1 Dutch and 3 Japanese. They are comparing themselves with "western" game manufacturers of which maybe half or so are American. All up they are one country compared to almost a billion people and well over half of the world's money, the Japanese are doing quite well considering what they aim to compete with. I think a gamer with different tastes may have more Japanese games than American on their shelf despite America's huge population and economy. However one country taking on the entire "west" is insane. Maybe some day, when Korea and China continue to grow, there will be a valid East vs. West comparison, but today, Japan should be proud of its achievements against other countries.
Battlefield? That's just another generic shooter that is plastered with 'realistic' colors such as brown.
Really? And here I was remembering it as a game that revolutionised team based multiplayer by combining tactics and complexity through vehicles, classes and teamwork, with a "jump in and play" fps presentation. I remember my sheer amazement the first time I played it when I found myself able to scoot around in planes, boats and APCs, cover my friends with a range of different weaponry, all in an immersive, real world setting. It was great to have something with a first person perspective with more to it than just popping round the corner to frag another guy.
Battlefield's sense of purpose and depth over Unreal Tournament/Quake and its sense of accessibility over Tribes made it a very important game in the history of the industry. Too bad about the bugs though.
The thing is that this _is_ a great demonstration of the PS3's versatility or more specifically a hacked PS3's versatility. Just a few months ago, we would have all shrugged this off as something that they could have done under Linux far more easily, but now, it is enough to really pique one's interest. Linux on PS3 was really a great idea, give the people a fair slice of the freeom they want without exposing the platform to piracy. I think it contributed to the PS3's unhacked status for so long, since in general it gave home brew people something to do that didn't involve cracking the DRM, now Linux is gone and the PS3 is hacked.
Though to be honest, I am a little bit sad. Living for a year in China has brought me from the slashdot consensus about piracy to a more conservative position. With the absence of people spending huge amounts on a boxed game, developers must cover costs in other ways, think Farmville. Pay to Play has lead to the creation of some great games in the west and Japan with no other focus than delivering an experience worth the money. Without this system, commercial games really need to be designed around an alternative revenue stream that encourages players to spend as they play, which limits the directions a game can go in immersion and creativity. I still don't think piracy is stealing, but it is not harmless at all, it does reduce the amount of money available to be invested in good, fun games and that harms every single gamer out there.
Bringing this all back to the PS3, I am saddened because there are a few very specialised PS3 game shops in China that sell official copies. XBox360 games however are near universally pirate versions. I am saddened because the reason for this is that the PS3 was until recently uncracked. I fear this will limit the availability of official games even more.
To summarise: I have some sympathetic feelings, but damnit Sony, why did you have to get rid of Linux and give us all a good reason to crack our PS3s?
The first generation played PS2 disks perfectly, the second quite well and subsequent generations not at all. Though honestly, since there are now some very good PS3 titles at cheap prices, it becomes less and less relevant, this is Sony's thinking also I believe.
I have a backwards compatible PS3 and I think I last put a PS2 disk in there maybe two years ago, the scope of the current generation just allows for so much more in a game and my sense of nostalgia is not strong enough to persuade me to turn back. This may be a great place for the homebrew community to shine since frankly I think Sony's engineering efforts would be better spent elsewhere.
Truth is not an absolute defence against libel under UK law (unlike, I believe, the US).
Truth is an ultimate defence for civil libel in England and always has been. Exceptions have been made in some states in the US for when the truth is told with malicious intent. However, there has been no such case in England/Wales under civil libel law where the ruling has dismissed truth as a defence.
The final issue of this case was not Mr Singh's scientific claims, but his claims that the BCA "happily promotes bogus treatments", which was taken by the BCA to mean that they knowingly advertised treatments that they knew to be ineffective. Mr Singh claimed this was not his meaning. The issue with this comment, in that interpretation is that it is difficult to show that you have reasonable basis to believe that the BCA has no faith in its own treatment. In the end, the court took it to mean that simply that the BCA promoted ineffective treatments, something that Mr Singh had reasonable basis for saying.
The law in this case has done its job, it has found Mr Singh not liable for defamation. Defamation laws are there to make people responsible for what they say and they mostly work. The issue here is that the whole system of civil law is so slow and expensive that it becomes prohibitively inconvenient to actually get to the truth. But this goes far beyond libel and to every claim imaginable.
Now you understand how Right-wingers feel at being labeled 'The American Taliban.'
The Taliban is a very large conservative religious and political movement with a twenty year history, I am sure that it has at least a few decent human beings involved. Also, Hermann Georring did not represent the average member of the Nazi party either. Take any sufficiently large political movement and you will find a broad range of people involved, not just evil caricatures, the comparison is fair.
It costs a Chinese person that makes an average wage 3 months of pay.
When you have one hundred million people that make twenty times the median wage or more, suddenly what you can sell to a factory worker becomes a whole lot less interesting. There is absolutely a large enough number of people who _could_ spend this money to make it profitable. The trick however is convincing the consumer to buy a game console when they already are accustomed to playing on their laptop or at an internet cafe. The Chinese buy powerful laptops because it addresses multiple needs at the same time. Socialising, work, multimedia, gaming, music, news and makes all of this portable. Fancy mobiles are also popular, it is quite frequent to see someone doing a menial, low paying job holding a smartphone, simply because it can serve so many roles, it is a good investment. What the Chinese don't like are things that do jobs that their laptop can do, outside of HK, you rarely see stereo systems, game consoles, discreet DVD players and other entertainment goods. Most Chinese would rather just use their money to upgrade their laptop if given the choice.
Either forget the alphabet based systems or the one based upon "complex" glyphs.
These glyphs are actually quite a convenient form to read Chinese in, since the language is pretty much built around them, for example, "tibiwangzi" was translated completely wrongly in this instance (it means "lift pen forget character", not "paper"), this is because even with tone markings, the meaning of this sentence would not be clear to someone who has not heard the phrase before. However, written in characters its meaning is perfectly clear and unambiguous. There is just so many Chinese phrases that must be written in Han characters to make any sense. Especially due to changes between regional dialects.
However, Han characters are not at all convenient to write. With stroke order, shape and direction considered, they are even more complex to write than they look. So, as literacy and demand for literacy in China grew, steps were taken to simplify characters in mainland China, removing or substituting sub-glyphs, removing strokes, simplifying radicals and other measures to make Han characters easier to write, however the characters remained numerous and complex. China even toyed with adopting Latin script and the pinyin spelling system, e.g.: "tibiwangzi". Pinyin can be written extremely quickly, with minimal education, especially with a keyboard.
So what we have is a system that is easy to read and a system that is easy to write. The solution is what we have here, to use a computer to automatically translate from one to the other. This is nothing short of a revolution in the daily life of Chinese. Unlike Latin and Cyrillic which have both had typewriters for over a century, it was the personal computer that put typing into the hands of ordinary Chinese. This has cemented the role of Latin in the daily life of Chinese, since pinyin is by the most popular input method. It has also cemented the place of Han characters as a practical and modern method of communication, something that has been seriously doubted in the past.
In conclusion, 20 years ago, what you said already had some serious traction. Today, not a chance. This effect that is so lamented by conservatives is exactly why both Han characters and pinyin will endure. Today, people can simply forget certain details and get on with their lives. Because of computers, both ways of expressing the Chinese language make life easier on a daily basis and eliminating one is unlikely to get much support.
I am pretty positive most such claims are confined to extending jurisdiction to their own nationals in foreign territory, rather than to foreign nationals in foreign territory. Australian claims of universal jurisdiction for instance relate to war criminals resident in Australia and Australian nationals having sexual relations with persons under 16 in foreign jurisdictions. A notable exception is the UK's puerile arrest warrant for the Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni, which was generally recognised as moronic even by the UK government.
Oh come on, there are far worse people out there in the gene-pool than these idiots. These people are stupid, but they have at least set out to challenge themselves, have an adventure and see the world. So many spend their entire life watching TV, drunk in bars, stoned on the couch or playing farmville and will risk quite little. If we are going to start eliminating ill-prepared hikers from the gene-pool, I would suggest they be on the list somewhere after drunk-drivers and well after coke-pushers and con artists. Society has many problems, but it for the most part is not caused by these hikers.
Since I work at KSC I guess I can provide some insight. The purpose of these new space plans is to reduce the cost of launches. The way you do that is by using a simpler vehicle and less people.
Exactly. I am glad guys at the KSC are thinking about the long term future of space transport rather than wanting to keep maintaining such an expensive vehicle, even though the cost of maintaining it is primarily spent hiring people in the KSC. Efficiency is key to progress, a cheaper way of launching must involve simplification and cuts, if we are ever to get affordable launches for all, we must be prepared to loose a bit of the awe and glamour of the huge space shuttle.
I think it is not that slashdotters dislike football players, otherwise they would be all here ranting, it is just that they probably do not find it all that interesting. It is all just a matter of taste and personal interests which can even change over time. My father is an academic dude, who topped his state in highschool, has two four year degrees, a research masters and is currently working on his PhD. When he was younger he could never stand watching any sport, however when he was forty or so, he realised that professional sport was the only thing he could watch who's ending was not made up by script writers and now it is all he watches.
I have never played American or Canadian football, but rugby is very fun to play apart from the concussions. Last time I played it I was out for a few second, lost 5 minutes of memory and realised I couldn't do it anymore since I was risking far too much compared to what playing the game is worth to me. If you've been taken down by a rough tackle before, I think the risks should be pretty obvious to you, your brain does give some pretty heavy feedback to let you know it's sustained a blow. You just have to make a decision about what you value in your life, some will chose football, some won't. That said, plenty of Rhodes Scholarships have been given to amateur rugby players, so it isn't universally crippling.
a prime minister who got up on national television and told everyone he believes girls should remain virgins till they get married. I mean putting aside the absurdity of this, it comes from a party who previously gave monetary bonuses to people who had kids. Now with the average marriage rate where it is he's suggesting a massive cut in breeding?
Are you really proposing girls getting pregnant out of casual sex as a way of sustaining Australia's population? I have got to say that this is one of the most callous and misogynistic things I have heard on Slashdot.
Pregnancy is physically and emotionally stressful for a woman and requires support, preferably from the man who got her into that state. If you are not married to a woman, you better be damn sure you don't knock her up since it is going to be her, not you that suffers, especially if she is a younger woman who has not had much chance at independent life. It is a man's obligation to wear rubber every time and go to extra effort to make sure it doesn't slip or tear, even to the point of adapting your technique especially in withdrawing and stopping to change condom if it begins to slip. Also, you should roll, rather than stretch it it over the tip to avoid weakening the latex, even though it hurts like hell. It is especially a man's responsibility to use contraception if the woman asks him not to, because generally women only get excited enough to request that at the peak of their cycle where fertilisation is most common. Both pregnancy and abortion are tremendously stressful for a woman and most women will sacrifice their freedom in preference to an abortion anyway, it's probably wise, albeit slightly unrealistic for a woman to remain a virgin until she's got a husband to support her. And yes, I do mean legal marriage, for a woman to want to take on the commitment of having a child without a signed legal agreement in paper puts her into a pretty weak position. You wouldn't take on nine months of work without a legal contract, why should a woman?
This really sounds like you wish to sacrifice a woman's youth and freedom for an increased amount of breeding, I have two sisters in Australia and I am so glad you are emigrating.
Thank god we have an election coming up in the next couple of days and neither liberal nor labor are looking to be clear winners but it looks like the greens are most certainly going to dominate in the senate so these censorship bills are going to get a serious beatdown very soon! Hopefully we won't have to deal with any of this shit ever being implemented.
Right, assuming by "Greens" you mean "Family First" and by "going to get a serious beatdown" you mean "actually be taken seriously and implemented". A clear win for either of the major parties is a blow to anything this stupid.
This is a Category III film, Hong Kong's version of Nc17, just simulated sex, no money shot or actual penetration of any kind. Technically that stuff is illegal in HK.
For what it's worth, these films are not really porn in the conventional sense, they are arousing in parts (such as Amy Yip in the hottub in the first movie) and disgusting in parts (such as the equally beautiful and equally naked Shu Qi draining life energy in the second). Sex and Zen is entertaining, funny, sexy and a bit scary. It has lots of pretty, naked girls but also includes violence, death, mutilation, slavery, witchcraft, abortion, STDs and many other things that you do not want to think about while aroused. Picture a dark comedy full of naked babes and violence.
Slashdot Mirror
Former colonies such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand were given full, constitutional independence when they had the infrastructure to support self-governance. American independence was not unanimously supported in the thirteen colonies of the day, however this was suppressed when revolutionaries used their largely French government issued weapons to intimidate, disenfranchise and suppress so called "tories". While no on can claim that America is backward or undeveloped today, the lives of the native Americans, the blacks and the poor all suffered under America's hard line expansionism and slightly regressive social policies during the early nineteenth century. While American political philosophy has evolved to justify that the winners of that war were unquestionably right, as all victors claim to be, it was a complex issue in its day and remains so.
I used to bag out Tim Horten's as well, then I went there and had a meal with coffee and desert for $5 and it wasn't half bad either. I spent two weeks in Canada and must have put on like 3kg between the Tim Horten's donuts, Alberta AAA steaks every day and the side order of poutine, that country is insane.
I know at least two guys on their security team. I would have to agree with you there. One particular guy I remember was tossed out of my university for hacking and snapped right up by their HR. I would suggest attacking pretty much any other bank.
And the award for Most Obvious Joke That Didn't Need to Be Said goes to.... [tearing envelope].... THAT guy!
Oh, come on man. Sure, we were all thinking of the joke, nobody really had to say it for humour value. But think of it like this: this dude is total scum, he tried to frame some other guy as being a pedophile and thus risk ruining his life, relationships, job, whatever. Do we not owe it to the victim to mock the name of the man who wronged him, no matter how obvious and hackneyed this joke may be?
So, for justice, great or otherwise, I think we should all take turns to mock the name of this pathetic man.
Neil Wiener, more like Kneel and suck Wiener.
The way I see it, why should Apple PR be expected to invest their time in helping this girl with an assignment? Issuing statements requires commitment and non-trival time since it can be quoted, all for something that will be read by a single person. Should Apple reply to every student in her class or just her? When I was in university, we were told that directly contacting the organisation in question will result in a fail, to prevent scores of students simultaneously asking questions and loosing face for the university.
But seriously, if she had any brains, she would have just found out the sales contact used by the university to buy the iPads then asked them, that would have probably got a reply since it actually relates to his own sale.
Australia had 200, Canada less than 10. Enjoy your freedom with that.
Times like this I can't help but think of the thousands of Canadian patriots and Indian warriors who fought and died rather than to be conquered by a slave owning and native massacring nation. Wherever truth and liberty truly are, they will be remembered.
Well, I think it is mainly to do with the way video games are developed in the East. Back when Shigeru Miyamoto developed Donkey Kong then Mario, he just did the design, programming and artwork himself and was able to do some great things since he could design and build as he went. However, East Asian companies scale as a linear shape, rather than a parallel shape. Generally, design comes from a central place as a formal set of requirements and it goes to be implemented in the next department. It is very difficult for someone designing a big game to know what will work ahead of time, since the flow is more or less one way. In western companies, design stems from implementation and implementation stems from design, small chunks iterate quickly as implementers tend to have a fair amount of creative freedom as to what they are building. Since this is more difficult for large projects in east Asia, designers tend to stick with what they know can work ahead of time as generally they cannot refine their designs without causing huge backlash from the programming team and project management.
This is based on experience in China, rather than Japan, but as I understand there are many similarities to the systems from people who have worked in both.
Grand Theft Auto is from the United Kingdom (Scotland), Battlefield is Swedish, Company of Heroes is Canadian. Pretty sure the rest are US made though. Though I think the 5/8 figure is more based on liking genres that Japanese are fairly poor at.
The thing is, it is not just the US that they are competing with. From here, I can see 6 American games, 3 British, 1 Canadian, 2 German, 1 Dutch and 3 Japanese. They are comparing themselves with "western" game manufacturers of which maybe half or so are American. All up they are one country compared to almost a billion people and well over half of the world's money, the Japanese are doing quite well considering what they aim to compete with. I think a gamer with different tastes may have more Japanese games than American on their shelf despite America's huge population and economy. However one country taking on the entire "west" is insane. Maybe some day, when Korea and China continue to grow, there will be a valid East vs. West comparison, but today, Japan should be proud of its achievements against other countries.
Battlefield? That's just another generic shooter that is plastered with 'realistic' colors such as brown.
Really? And here I was remembering it as a game that revolutionised team based multiplayer by combining tactics and complexity through vehicles, classes and teamwork, with a "jump in and play" fps presentation. I remember my sheer amazement the first time I played it when I found myself able to scoot around in planes, boats and APCs, cover my friends with a range of different weaponry, all in an immersive, real world setting. It was great to have something with a first person perspective with more to it than just popping round the corner to frag another guy.
Battlefield's sense of purpose and depth over Unreal Tournament/Quake and its sense of accessibility over Tribes made it a very important game in the history of the industry. Too bad about the bugs though.
The thing is that this _is_ a great demonstration of the PS3's versatility or more specifically a hacked PS3's versatility. Just a few months ago, we would have all shrugged this off as something that they could have done under Linux far more easily, but now, it is enough to really pique one's interest. Linux on PS3 was really a great idea, give the people a fair slice of the freeom they want without exposing the platform to piracy. I think it contributed to the PS3's unhacked status for so long, since in general it gave home brew people something to do that didn't involve cracking the DRM, now Linux is gone and the PS3 is hacked.
Though to be honest, I am a little bit sad. Living for a year in China has brought me from the slashdot consensus about piracy to a more conservative position. With the absence of people spending huge amounts on a boxed game, developers must cover costs in other ways, think Farmville. Pay to Play has lead to the creation of some great games in the west and Japan with no other focus than delivering an experience worth the money. Without this system, commercial games really need to be designed around an alternative revenue stream that encourages players to spend as they play, which limits the directions a game can go in immersion and creativity. I still don't think piracy is stealing, but it is not harmless at all, it does reduce the amount of money available to be invested in good, fun games and that harms every single gamer out there.
Bringing this all back to the PS3, I am saddened because there are a few very specialised PS3 game shops in China that sell official copies. XBox360 games however are near universally pirate versions. I am saddened because the reason for this is that the PS3 was until recently uncracked. I fear this will limit the availability of official games even more.
To summarise: I have some sympathetic feelings, but damnit Sony, why did you have to get rid of Linux and give us all a good reason to crack our PS3s?
The first generation played PS2 disks perfectly, the second quite well and subsequent generations not at all. Though honestly, since there are now some very good PS3 titles at cheap prices, it becomes less and less relevant, this is Sony's thinking also I believe.
I have a backwards compatible PS3 and I think I last put a PS2 disk in there maybe two years ago, the scope of the current generation just allows for so much more in a game and my sense of nostalgia is not strong enough to persuade me to turn back. This may be a great place for the homebrew community to shine since frankly I think Sony's engineering efforts would be better spent elsewhere.
Truth is an ultimate defence for civil libel in England and always has been. Exceptions have been made in some states in the US for when the truth is told with malicious intent. However, there has been no such case in England/Wales under civil libel law where the ruling has dismissed truth as a defence.
The final issue of this case was not Mr Singh's scientific claims, but his claims that the BCA "happily promotes bogus treatments", which was taken by the BCA to mean that they knowingly advertised treatments that they knew to be ineffective. Mr Singh claimed this was not his meaning. The issue with this comment, in that interpretation is that it is difficult to show that you have reasonable basis to believe that the BCA has no faith in its own treatment. In the end, the court took it to mean that simply that the BCA promoted ineffective treatments, something that Mr Singh had reasonable basis for saying.
The law in this case has done its job, it has found Mr Singh not liable for defamation. Defamation laws are there to make people responsible for what they say and they mostly work. The issue here is that the whole system of civil law is so slow and expensive that it becomes prohibitively inconvenient to actually get to the truth. But this goes far beyond libel and to every claim imaginable.
The Taliban is a very large conservative religious and political movement with a twenty year history, I am sure that it has at least a few decent human beings involved. Also, Hermann Georring did not represent the average member of the Nazi party either. Take any sufficiently large political movement and you will find a broad range of people involved, not just evil caricatures, the comparison is fair.
Another expression is: "woosh!"
When you have one hundred million people that make twenty times the median wage or more, suddenly what you can sell to a factory worker becomes a whole lot less interesting. There is absolutely a large enough number of people who _could_ spend this money to make it profitable. The trick however is convincing the consumer to buy a game console when they already are accustomed to playing on their laptop or at an internet cafe. The Chinese buy powerful laptops because it addresses multiple needs at the same time. Socialising, work, multimedia, gaming, music, news and makes all of this portable. Fancy mobiles are also popular, it is quite frequent to see someone doing a menial, low paying job holding a smartphone, simply because it can serve so many roles, it is a good investment. What the Chinese don't like are things that do jobs that their laptop can do, outside of HK, you rarely see stereo systems, game consoles, discreet DVD players and other entertainment goods. Most Chinese would rather just use their money to upgrade their laptop if given the choice.
These glyphs are actually quite a convenient form to read Chinese in, since the language is pretty much built around them, for example, "tibiwangzi" was translated completely wrongly in this instance (it means "lift pen forget character", not "paper"), this is because even with tone markings, the meaning of this sentence would not be clear to someone who has not heard the phrase before. However, written in characters its meaning is perfectly clear and unambiguous. There is just so many Chinese phrases that must be written in Han characters to make any sense. Especially due to changes between regional dialects.
However, Han characters are not at all convenient to write. With stroke order, shape and direction considered, they are even more complex to write than they look. So, as literacy and demand for literacy in China grew, steps were taken to simplify characters in mainland China, removing or substituting sub-glyphs, removing strokes, simplifying radicals and other measures to make Han characters easier to write, however the characters remained numerous and complex. China even toyed with adopting Latin script and the pinyin spelling system, e.g.: "tibiwangzi". Pinyin can be written extremely quickly, with minimal education, especially with a keyboard.
So what we have is a system that is easy to read and a system that is easy to write. The solution is what we have here, to use a computer to automatically translate from one to the other. This is nothing short of a revolution in the daily life of Chinese. Unlike Latin and Cyrillic which have both had typewriters for over a century, it was the personal computer that put typing into the hands of ordinary Chinese. This has cemented the role of Latin in the daily life of Chinese, since pinyin is by the most popular input method. It has also cemented the place of Han characters as a practical and modern method of communication, something that has been seriously doubted in the past.
In conclusion, 20 years ago, what you said already had some serious traction. Today, not a chance. This effect that is so lamented by conservatives is exactly why both Han characters and pinyin will endure. Today, people can simply forget certain details and get on with their lives. Because of computers, both ways of expressing the Chinese language make life easier on a daily basis and eliminating one is unlikely to get much support.
I am pretty positive most such claims are confined to extending jurisdiction to their own nationals in foreign territory, rather than to foreign nationals in foreign territory. Australian claims of universal jurisdiction for instance relate to war criminals resident in Australia and Australian nationals having sexual relations with persons under 16 in foreign jurisdictions. A notable exception is the UK's puerile arrest warrant for the Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni, which was generally recognised as moronic even by the UK government.
Oh come on, there are far worse people out there in the gene-pool than these idiots. These people are stupid, but they have at least set out to challenge themselves, have an adventure and see the world. So many spend their entire life watching TV, drunk in bars, stoned on the couch or playing farmville and will risk quite little. If we are going to start eliminating ill-prepared hikers from the gene-pool, I would suggest they be on the list somewhere after drunk-drivers and well after coke-pushers and con artists. Society has many problems, but it for the most part is not caused by these hikers.
Exactly. I am glad guys at the KSC are thinking about the long term future of space transport rather than wanting to keep maintaining such an expensive vehicle, even though the cost of maintaining it is primarily spent hiring people in the KSC. Efficiency is key to progress, a cheaper way of launching must involve simplification and cuts, if we are ever to get affordable launches for all, we must be prepared to loose a bit of the awe and glamour of the huge space shuttle.
He just missed out "national" before "socialism", honest mistake.
I think it is not that slashdotters dislike football players, otherwise they would be all here ranting, it is just that they probably do not find it all that interesting. It is all just a matter of taste and personal interests which can even change over time. My father is an academic dude, who topped his state in highschool, has two four year degrees, a research masters and is currently working on his PhD. When he was younger he could never stand watching any sport, however when he was forty or so, he realised that professional sport was the only thing he could watch who's ending was not made up by script writers and now it is all he watches.
I have never played American or Canadian football, but rugby is very fun to play apart from the concussions. Last time I played it I was out for a few second, lost 5 minutes of memory and realised I couldn't do it anymore since I was risking far too much compared to what playing the game is worth to me. If you've been taken down by a rough tackle before, I think the risks should be pretty obvious to you, your brain does give some pretty heavy feedback to let you know it's sustained a blow. You just have to make a decision about what you value in your life, some will chose football, some won't. That said, plenty of Rhodes Scholarships have been given to amateur rugby players, so it isn't universally crippling.
Are you really proposing girls getting pregnant out of casual sex as a way of sustaining Australia's population? I have got to say that this is one of the most callous and misogynistic things I have heard on Slashdot.
Pregnancy is physically and emotionally stressful for a woman and requires support, preferably from the man who got her into that state. If you are not married to a woman, you better be damn sure you don't knock her up since it is going to be her, not you that suffers, especially if she is a younger woman who has not had much chance at independent life. It is a man's obligation to wear rubber every time and go to extra effort to make sure it doesn't slip or tear, even to the point of adapting your technique especially in withdrawing and stopping to change condom if it begins to slip. Also, you should roll, rather than stretch it it over the tip to avoid weakening the latex, even though it hurts like hell. It is especially a man's responsibility to use contraception if the woman asks him not to, because generally women only get excited enough to request that at the peak of their cycle where fertilisation is most common. Both pregnancy and abortion are tremendously stressful for a woman and most women will sacrifice their freedom in preference to an abortion anyway, it's probably wise, albeit slightly unrealistic for a woman to remain a virgin until she's got a husband to support her. And yes, I do mean legal marriage, for a woman to want to take on the commitment of having a child without a signed legal agreement in paper puts her into a pretty weak position. You wouldn't take on nine months of work without a legal contract, why should a woman?
This really sounds like you wish to sacrifice a woman's youth and freedom for an increased amount of breeding, I have two sisters in Australia and I am so glad you are emigrating.
Right, assuming by "Greens" you mean "Family First" and by "going to get a serious beatdown" you mean "actually be taken seriously and implemented". A clear win for either of the major parties is a blow to anything this stupid.
This is a Category III film, Hong Kong's version of Nc17, just simulated sex, no money shot or actual penetration of any kind. Technically that stuff is illegal in HK.
For what it's worth, these films are not really porn in the conventional sense, they are arousing in parts (such as Amy Yip in the hottub in the first movie) and disgusting in parts (such as the equally beautiful and equally naked Shu Qi draining life energy in the second). Sex and Zen is entertaining, funny, sexy and a bit scary. It has lots of pretty, naked girls but also includes violence, death, mutilation, slavery, witchcraft, abortion, STDs and many other things that you do not want to think about while aroused. Picture a dark comedy full of naked babes and violence.