A common mistake made by "conservatives" who never got past Econ 101. An economy is not a zero sum game - but finance is. For there to be a credit, there must be a debt. Ever heard of banking? Also, there are certain resources that are finite or near finite (like real estate for instance), as well as certain resources that have an inelastic demand curve (like health care).
India and Korea do not have "free market economies" - both of them are typical of western style centralized capitalism - where the state subsidizes industry.
The main thing I don't get about the "third world debt issues" is this - Western banks lent money to dictators, who used the money for themselves, but these Western banks expect the people of the country to pay them back? Sounds like they made bad loans.
And isn't the person making the loan supposed to take the RISK?
1. All the money we give out every year to keep most 3rd world countries from colapsing?
That's true - the US does prop up dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Eygpt, Jordan, etc.
2. The constant military help we give countries who need it?
See above. Not to mention the "military help" we're about to give Iraq!
3. A government run by the people for the people? Granted it could be better.
Which people are those? Hell, in the last presidential election, they didn't even bother to count all the votes.
4. Having our women on equal ground with our men in every aspect of our lives?
One of the best things about America, and Europe, and our culture. I think we're way ahead of everyone on this one. Good call.
5. Having most of our diverse religous and ethnic backgrounds get along together?
Well, "get along" might be pushing it. But America is one of the most tolerant and liberal cultures in the world. Now if we can just keep the "conservatives" from destroying it.
6. Having a country where a "common" class person can become the richest person in the world? Granted I don't like Bill Gates.
Bill Gates was a "common" class person? Wasn't he a rich kid that went to Harvard? A few working class folks do win the lottery every year.
7. A country where EVERY child has the ability to get an education?
The schools for poor kids in America are horrible, Europe has us well beat on this one. We need to work harder. Let's show those snotty Europeans - let's triple school funding until we catch up.
8. A country that thoughsands of people are fleeing to every year?
Like Europe? Thousands of people flee to China every year too. Most people flee poor countries to rich countries, wouldn't you?
9. A country that produces enough food to not only feed themselves but a large part of the world?
Our socialist farming system has worked very well. Didn't ADM, supermarket to the world, just get a huge subsidy in the "Farm Bill" this year? Of course, America does not feed the world. Hell, most poor countries are sending us food! (See Haiti, Zimbabwe, (sp?), etc.)
10. A country where people could protest against the government and ANY political official and NOT get shot or have family members killed?
Freedom of speech is one of the things that makes America great. We are well ahead of Europe on this one. Now, let's just keep the "conservatives" from censoring political speech, and we'll be fine.
IMHO, Bill Clinton was a scumbag, but he was loved and cheered all over the world. IMHO, Bush is a scumbag, but he is booed and protested all over the world. I guess that's why he stays at his ranch and plays golf all the time.
The main reason that people around the world hate the US is not envy, its the BOMBS. Remember?
If you believed everything you heard on television after 9/11, you would think that the CIA had no Afghan speakers, had no people on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and had no idea that radical Muslims were planning on hijacking planes and running them into buildings.
Of course, that's all nonsense. The CIA has been involved in Afghanistan and Pakistan since at least the early 1980's, Bush had the Taliban at his ranch that summer, gave them $50 million, and US companies and the government had been planning pipelines and other projects for years.
But it's helpful to give those impressions, to secure more money, and especially, to allow the covert agencies (CIA, NSA, FBI, NRO, NI, AI, etc, etc) a free hand and no oversight.
You just have to really WANT to believe it. You need to HAVE FAITH.
Within 15 minutes of the first attack, we were told that Osama bin whatever was the new subject of the two minute hate. A week later the Wall Street Journal had an article about how former President/Vice President/CIA director George H. W. Bush was working for the Binladen family through the Carlyle Group.
It's fun to believe this is a simple war of good vs. evil, but of course it's much more complicated. The best part is that there is a lot of information in the mainstream press, you just have to pay attention.
Sorry for the rant. Go USA! Kill USAMA BL! USA! USA! USA!
Really good point. Once, I had to write a script to scan through mailboxes to find emails containing some mutant of Melissa. We had another programmer, a sysadmin, and myself. It wasn't even brought up - we all assumed that we must do this AND protect the privacy of the users at the same time. We were careful NOT to read people's email, or in any way infringe on our privacy - we all just took it for granted.
But some manager wants to scan through people's emails to find out what people are saying about him, and we are supposed to HELP him?
Just because something is legal, sure as hell doesn't make it okay.
At work, they "own" everything, they say when you can and cannot go to the bathroom. They tell you when to go and when to leave. They tell you what to wear. They may spy on anything you do. If they give you a computer to take home, they may spy on that as well. Same with a phone. They can tell you what to say or what not to say.
If you don't like it, you can go to another company that will do the same thing. We call that FREEDOM.
Remember your last paycheck, when they took all those taxes out? Some of those taxes probably went to your employer, if you work in fincance, airlines, manufacturing, advertizing, defense, technology, etc. The computers that those companies bought with your taxes, that's their property.
Tacitus, Seutonius, and Pliny mentions people who call themselves Christians talking about a person named Jesus, a person who none of those Christians had ever met.
What does that prove? If you take those works as reliable, they prove that there were people called Christians who believed in a person named Jesus.
Arrg! When some person can explain Mithra, James the Brother of Jesus, and Esebius to me, I might start to take the Bible as more than sometimes entertaining fantasy. Really, do any of you people have any idea who actually composed that book you're thumping?
The Bible was scrutinized in Europe during the sixteenth century, and it was found to be a collection of myths, mistranslations, recycled stories, and supernatural fantasy.
I guess in a thousand years, people will "have faith" that Luke Skywalker did in fact exist, and that Star Wars is the inspired word of Yoda.
Heh, inspired means Yoda-breathed, of course.
How did you do such a good job
on
Ask Larry Wall
·
· Score: 0, Insightful
of making your daughter? She's stunning. Can I date her? I went to New Life Church too, but it was in DC.
Works easily. We have been using first Tomcat/JBoss, now Jetty/JBoss, for over a year in production. It's fast, stable, and totally free.
Never had any problems deploying ear files built in Sun's RI to JBoss - no changes necessary. We're using 2.7, and we've got 3.0 in a testing environment right now, which we will probably move to - hot deploying new databases is very nice.
JBoss is more than just EJBs - connection pooling, naming services, messaging - it's a full J2EE stack.
Microsoft lobbies the government all the time to buy it's software, so does Sun, so does Novell, so does everyone.
Microsoft and the rest try to get contracts that FORCE government to use their products - what about CHOICE then?
Seems to me, that the government I'm paying for should not buy overpriced software without the source, and rely on a private company who could go bankrupt, get bought by another country/business, etc.
If the government uses all open source, especially GPL, there will NEVER be those problems - the government can continue to use and update the software forever.
Sounds to me like some companys might be about to lose some fat government contracts... boo #$%^ hoo! Microsoft (and the rest) don't have the RIGHT to live off of government contracts. The superiority (in terms of cost alone) of open source being used in government is OBVIOUS.
Imagine most of the government workers using $0 per station linux boxes instead of $$XX per station Windows - sounds like good business to me. Hell, maybe we could even get a tax break because of it.
A company I used to work for had a FULL TIME position in the public relations department that monitored public forums (like slashdot) regarding the company's products, and to disseminate, sometimes anonymously, pro-company views.
Microsoft would be STUPID not to do this on slashdot, and I don't think that Microsoft is run by stupid people.
Obviously, the CIA is so underfunded and burdened by regulations that it was unable, despite it's best efforts, to prevent 9-11.
The solution is clear - increase the CIA's budget and remove any "regulatory obstacles" so they can prevent another 9-11. Take the gloves off the CIA, so they can do their job. Maybe a blanket exception to the Constitution would help.
And anyone who doesn't like it obviously is a terrorist lover. Why do they hate America so much?
Let's see, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley,Citigroup, and Bank of America made millions in the dot-com boom. A handful of techie types did too. The only people left high and dry were the suckers, as usual.
You are right about that - it's been known for a long time - a wounded person is more of a drain on the enemies resources than a dead corpse.
Since war is hell anyway, and civilians die, it makes perfect sense to develop weapons that leave lots of living, but injured people.
Maybe when this laser gets a little more advanced, they could use it to slice of the limbs of small children - this will surely be a drain on the enemies resources, and prevent future enemies.
It also makes sense to target women - if you kill enough women, the enemy population will decrease quicker than if you just kill a bunch of men.
Or add the two ideas together - just injure and cripple the woman, leave them alive, so they drain the resources of the enemies, but injured enough that they can't have children. That's good war, baby!
"The fact is, the US -could- wipe out the west bank. The US -could- wipe out Iraq. The US -could- randomly start throwing nukes around the globe. But, once again, the fact is, it -hasn't-... so stop making it look like some kind of villain."
The US could wipe out the West Bank, but instead it provides Israel with the money, weapons, and diplomatic cover to do it slowly, instead of with a nuke.
The US could randomly throw around nukes, but as far as I know, the U.S. has only nuked two cities full of men, women, and children. Usually, the U.S. uses conventional bombs, like in Afghanistan, Lybia, Iraq, Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea, etc.
I can't make the U.S. government look like a villan. Perhaps you should look at the facts and judge for yourself. Or perhaps, you could just ignore the facts, and put your head back in the sand. That might be more convienient!
Thanks! I thought it was quite a tirade myself. You will probably enjoy it more if you look up the word "irony".
The funny part is that you point out how other weapons are much better at harming child workers and mass killing of civilians than the laser. That's priceless.
The link is to a report called "A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal" by Ramsey Clark, former United States Attorney General.
This is great news! Now the U.S. will be unstoppable! First, we should invade Iraq and take all of the oil. The last time, when there was a multi-mile long traffic jam of people escaping from Kuwait, we bombed the cars in front of the line, and the back of the line, to prevent escape. Then we bombed the hell out all the people in between. You should see the pictures of the charred corpses!
Kewl!
Now all we'll have to do is zap the front and back with the lasers!
I imagine we could also help out Israel and depopulate the West Bank - or at least blind them all. We could start by blinding the children at a young age. I mean, how many blind kids will grow up to be terrorists? Most likely just beggars.
I can't wait for the handheld version. Imagine in China, when some little Chinese girl isn't making my Nikes fast enough - ZAP, there goes your eyes, you little commie beeatch!
Go U.S. Space Command!
If you think about it, this just goes to show that the US is the best country in the world.
Before we were just suspicious that US covert operations were behind Fulan Gong, now it seems likely.
"The human rights and democracy centre said an antenna with a diameter of 3m could disrupt reception for hundreds of kilometres."
When the "Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy" is being sourced for broadcast disruption capabilities, it makes you wonder exactly what this organization does!
I imagine the Chinese Communist Party bigwigs are choking on their rage. Nothing is funnier than scorned authoritarians (at least when you are out of their reach, like me).
Falun Gong hijacks Chinese TV Catherine Armitage JUNE 29, 2002 MILLIONS of Chinese television viewers got a shock this week when Falun Gong propaganda was beamed into their living rooms as members of the banned sect hijacked one of China's main television satellites.
ADVERTISEMENT
And in Beijing, surprised residents answered their phones this month to find a recorded Falun Gong message, up to five minutes long, attacking the Government's anti-Falun Gong claims point by point.
The hacking incidents highlight Falun Gong's sophistication and audacity as the group attempts to fight back in China and overseas.
The satellite broadcast, in which a banner reading "Falun Gong is good" replaced normal TV viewing in Shandong province on Sunday night and again in prime time on Tuesday, is among the group's most daring moves since it was banned in 1999.
Chinese security sources told The South China Morning Post that most of China Central Television's 10 channels, and another 10 provincial channels sharing the Sinosat-1 satellite, were interrupted on Sunday night.
The Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, based in Hong Kong, said the Falun Gong banner appeared on TV screens in Yantai city, Shandong and Laiyang county twice last week, in some cases for up to 15 minutes. The centre said it had confirmed the incidents with local security authorities and television stations.
A spokesman for the Yantai security office in charge of dealing with Falun Gong said it had received complaints from the public. "They said a blurred image appeared on their screens for between 10 and 20 seconds," an official said.
A news blackout was enforced on the mainland and security officials and TV stations denied all knowledge of the incidents yesterday.
Hong Kong media said Vice-President Li Lanqing, responsible for the mainland media, had ordered an investigation into the hacking. After the Falun Gong broadcast, millions of TV sets in remote and rural areas went black as the authorities tried to trace the source of the interruption.
Officials are reportedly perplexed as to how Falun Gong had the knowledge and equipment needed to intercept a satellite broadcast. There was speculation sect followers had equipped a vehicle to avoid notice.
The human rights and democracy centre said an antenna with a diameter of 3m could disrupt reception for hundreds of kilometres.
Similar incidents occurred in January in Chonqing, Sichuan province, in March in Jilin province where Falun Gong leader Li Hongzhi was born and in Harbin in April. In these cases the targets were cable TV stations. More than 20 Falun Gong members were arrested over the March hacking and face up to 15 years in jail if convicted.
Falun Gong's recorded telephone message - sent to an unknown number of Beijing residents, and probably further - claimed the Government had fabricated the incident in which three Falun Gong supporters set themselves alight in Tiananmen Square in January 2001.
The recording also said sect followers were beaten and tortured in prison, and invited listeners to follow prompts to hear more information or Falun Gong songs.
I wonder if apartment building and neighborhoods could run ethernet or wireless to each other?
Imagine an apartment building with 20 apartments. Install ethernet into each apartment, run a gateway with NAT, and share a T1/T3/OCX.
Assuming you could get a big enough pipe and pay your expenses for $1000/month, that would be $50 per apartment, roughly the cost DSL or cable is now.
And of course, to sweeten the deal, you could set up a cheap box to provide free email, websites, etc.
I can't see how "competition" from one or more corporations will help. The corporations will have interests in common to restrict our use of the network in some way, so most of them will. And I can't see more than a handful of providers in a given area, at least not in the next few years.
What about regulation? We would have to lobby the government, while the corporations are lobbying too - with more money and more access. And even if we were to win, they will still be there, week after week every year, lobbying to change the regulations in their favor.
I don't see any other solution besides owning the network ourselves. Maybe each user could have an equal share, and delegate responsibilities to the engineers who already design and build the network? Right now, the engineers answer to the management of the corporations, but maybe we could get them to answer to the users directly instead. That sounds reasonably democratic.
Perhaps the only way to guarantee the freedom to use the network the way we want to is to own the network ourselves.
As long as some group of corporations owns the network, they will place whatever restrictions they expect will bring in more money for them. As more uses of the network are discovered, they will automatically be considered "unacceptable use" until they can figure out how to restrict it to their advantage.
So, is it possible for the users to own and control the network?
Slashdot Mirror
A common mistake made by "conservatives" who never got past Econ 101. An economy is not a zero sum game - but finance is. For there to be a credit, there must be a debt. Ever heard of banking? Also, there are certain resources that are finite or near finite (like real estate for instance), as well as certain resources that have an inelastic demand curve (like health care).
India and Korea do not have "free market economies" - both of them are typical of western style centralized capitalism - where the state subsidizes industry.
The main thing I don't get about the "third world debt issues" is this - Western banks lent money to dictators, who used the money for themselves, but these Western banks expect the people of the country to pay them back? Sounds like they made bad loans.
And isn't the person making the loan supposed to take the RISK?
1. All the money we give out every year to keep most 3rd world countries from colapsing?
That's true - the US does prop up dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Eygpt, Jordan, etc.
2. The constant military help we give countries who need it?
See above. Not to mention the "military help" we're about to give Iraq!
3. A government run by the people for the people? Granted it could be better.
Which people are those? Hell, in the last presidential election, they didn't even bother to count all the votes.
4. Having our women on equal ground with our men in every aspect of our lives?
One of the best things about America, and Europe, and our culture. I think we're way ahead of everyone on this one. Good call.
5. Having most of our diverse religous and ethnic backgrounds get along together?
Well, "get along" might be pushing it. But America is one of the most tolerant and liberal cultures in the world. Now if we can just keep the "conservatives" from destroying it.
6. Having a country where a "common" class person can become the richest person in the world? Granted I don't like Bill Gates.
Bill Gates was a "common" class person? Wasn't he a rich kid that went to Harvard? A few working class folks do win the lottery every year.
7. A country where EVERY child has the ability to get an education?
The schools for poor kids in America are horrible, Europe has us well beat on this one. We need to work harder. Let's show those snotty Europeans - let's triple school funding until we catch up.
8. A country that thoughsands of people are fleeing to every year?
Like Europe? Thousands of people flee to China every year too. Most people flee poor countries to rich countries, wouldn't you?
9. A country that produces enough food to not only feed themselves but a large part of the world?
Our socialist farming system has worked very well. Didn't ADM, supermarket to the world, just get a huge subsidy in the "Farm Bill" this year? Of course, America does not feed the world. Hell, most poor countries are sending us food! (See Haiti, Zimbabwe, (sp?), etc.)
10. A country where people could protest against the government and ANY political official and NOT get shot or have family members killed?
Freedom of speech is one of the things that makes America great. We are well ahead of Europe on this one. Now, let's just keep the "conservatives" from censoring political speech, and we'll be fine.
IMHO, Bill Clinton was a scumbag, but he was loved and cheered all over the world. IMHO, Bush is a scumbag, but he is booed and protested all over the world. I guess that's why he stays at his ranch and plays golf all the time.
The main reason that people around the world hate the US is not envy, its the BOMBS. Remember?
If you believed everything you heard on television after 9/11, you would think that the CIA had no Afghan speakers, had no people on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and had no idea that radical Muslims were planning on hijacking planes and running them into buildings.
Of course, that's all nonsense. The CIA has been involved in Afghanistan and Pakistan since at least the early 1980's, Bush had the Taliban at his ranch that summer, gave them $50 million, and US companies and the government had been planning pipelines and other projects for years.
But it's helpful to give those impressions, to secure more money, and especially, to allow the covert agencies (CIA, NSA, FBI, NRO, NI, AI, etc, etc) a free hand and no oversight.
You just have to really WANT to believe it. You need to HAVE FAITH.
Within 15 minutes of the first attack, we were told that Osama bin whatever was the new subject of the two minute hate. A week later the Wall Street Journal had an article about how former President/Vice President/CIA director George H. W. Bush was working for the Binladen family through the Carlyle Group.
It's fun to believe this is a simple war of good vs. evil, but of course it's much more complicated. The best part is that there is a lot of information in the mainstream press, you just have to pay attention.
Sorry for the rant. Go USA! Kill USAMA BL! USA! USA! USA!
Really good point. Once, I had to write a script to scan through mailboxes to find emails containing some mutant of Melissa. We had another programmer, a sysadmin, and myself. It wasn't even brought up - we all assumed that we must do this AND protect the privacy of the users at the same time. We were careful NOT to read people's email, or in any way infringe on our privacy - we all just took it for granted.
But some manager wants to scan through people's emails to find out what people are saying about him, and we are supposed to HELP him?
Just because something is legal, sure as hell doesn't make it okay.
At work, they "own" everything, they say when you can and cannot go to the bathroom. They tell you when to go and when to leave. They tell you what to wear. They may spy on anything you do. If they give you a computer to take home, they may spy on that as well. Same with a phone. They can tell you what to say or what not to say.
If you don't like it, you can go to another company that will do the same thing. We call that FREEDOM.
Remember your last paycheck, when they took all those taxes out? Some of those taxes probably went to your employer, if you work in fincance, airlines, manufacturing, advertizing, defense, technology, etc. The computers that those companies bought with your taxes, that's their property.
We call that CAPITALISM.
What about a telecommunication and computer workers union? Not a trade union, but an industrial union?
http://www.iww.org/iu560/
Tacitus, Seutonius, and Pliny mentions people who call themselves Christians talking about a person named Jesus, a person who none of those Christians had ever met.
What does that prove? If you take those works as reliable, they prove that there were people called Christians who believed in a person named Jesus.
Proof that Jesus existed? None.
Arrg! When some person can explain Mithra, James the Brother of Jesus, and Esebius to me, I might start to take the Bible as more than sometimes entertaining fantasy. Really, do any of you people have any idea who actually composed that book you're thumping?
The Bible was scrutinized in Europe during the sixteenth century, and it was found to be a collection of myths, mistranslations, recycled stories, and supernatural fantasy.
I guess in a thousand years, people will "have faith" that Luke Skywalker did in fact exist, and that Star Wars is the inspired word of Yoda.
Heh, inspired means Yoda-breathed, of course.
of making your daughter? She's stunning. Can I date her? I went to New Life Church too, but it was in DC.
Works easily. We have been using first Tomcat/JBoss, now Jetty/JBoss, for over a year in production. It's fast, stable, and totally free.
Never had any problems deploying ear files built in Sun's RI to JBoss - no changes necessary. We're using 2.7, and we've got 3.0 in a testing environment right now, which we will probably move to - hot deploying new databases is very nice.
JBoss is more than just EJBs - connection pooling, naming services, messaging - it's a full J2EE stack.
Microsoft and the rest try to get contracts that FORCE government to use their products - what about CHOICE then?
Seems to me, that the government I'm paying for should not buy overpriced software without the source, and rely on a private company who could go bankrupt, get bought by another country/business, etc.
If the government uses all open source, especially GPL, there will NEVER be those problems - the government can continue to use and update the software forever.
Sounds to me like some companys might be about to lose some fat government contracts ... boo #$%^ hoo! Microsoft (and the rest) don't have the RIGHT to live off of government contracts. The superiority (in terms of cost alone) of open source being used in government is OBVIOUS.
Imagine most of the government workers using $0 per station linux boxes instead of $$XX per station Windows - sounds like good business to me. Hell, maybe we could even get a tax break because of it.
Microsoft would be STUPID not to do this on slashdot, and I don't think that Microsoft is run by stupid people.
Sure, and use a little bit of Micrsoft code in your program, and you're all free and clear? Please.
Obviously, the CIA is so underfunded and burdened by regulations that it was unable, despite it's best efforts, to prevent 9-11. The solution is clear - increase the CIA's budget and remove any "regulatory obstacles" so they can prevent another 9-11. Take the gloves off the CIA, so they can do their job. Maybe a blanket exception to the Constitution would help. And anyone who doesn't like it obviously is a terrorist lover. Why do they hate America so much?
Let's see, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley,Citigroup, and Bank of America made millions in the dot-com boom. A handful of techie types did too. The only people left high and dry were the suckers, as usual.
You are right about that - it's been known for a long time - a wounded person is more of a drain on the enemies resources than a dead corpse.
Since war is hell anyway, and civilians die, it makes perfect sense to develop weapons that leave lots of living, but injured people.
Maybe when this laser gets a little more advanced, they could use it to slice of the limbs of small children - this will surely be a drain on the enemies resources, and prevent future enemies.
It also makes sense to target women - if you kill enough women, the enemy population will decrease quicker than if you just kill a bunch of men.
Or add the two ideas together - just injure and cripple the woman, leave them alive, so they drain the resources of the enemies, but injured enough that they can't have children. That's good war, baby!
The US could wipe out the West Bank, but instead it provides Israel with the money, weapons, and diplomatic cover to do it slowly, instead of with a nuke.
The US could randomly throw around nukes, but as far as I know, the U.S. has only nuked two cities full of men, women, and children. Usually, the U.S. uses conventional bombs, like in Afghanistan, Lybia, Iraq, Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea, etc.
I can't make the U.S. government look like a villan. Perhaps you should look at the facts and judge for yourself. Or perhaps, you could just ignore the facts, and put your head back in the sand. That might be more convienient!
The funny part is that you point out how other weapons are much better at harming child workers and mass killing of civilians than the laser. That's priceless.
The link is to a report called "A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal" by Ramsey Clark, former United States Attorney General.
I imagine we could also help out Israel and depopulate the West Bank - or at least blind them all. We could start by blinding the children at a young age. I mean, how many blind kids will grow up to be terrorists? Most likely just beggars.
I can't wait for the handheld version. Imagine in China, when some little Chinese girl isn't making my Nikes fast enough - ZAP, there goes your eyes, you little commie beeatch!
Go U.S. Space Command! If you think about it, this just goes to show that the US is the best country in the world.
You mean like Nike? GE? Coca-Cola? It's western (US and Europe) companies that are doing that.
"The human rights and democracy centre said an antenna with a diameter of 3m could disrupt reception for hundreds of kilometres."
When the "Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy" is being sourced for broadcast disruption capabilities, it makes you wonder exactly what this organization does!
I imagine the Chinese Communist Party bigwigs are choking on their rage. Nothing is funnier than scorned authoritarians (at least when you are out of their reach, like me).
, 46 00187%5E15322%5E%5Enbv%5E15306,00.html
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204
Falun Gong hijacks Chinese TV
Catherine Armitage
JUNE 29, 2002 MILLIONS of Chinese television viewers got a shock this week when Falun Gong propaganda was beamed into their living rooms as members of the banned sect hijacked one of China's main television satellites.
ADVERTISEMENT
And in Beijing, surprised residents answered their phones this month to find a recorded Falun Gong message, up to five minutes long, attacking the Government's anti-Falun Gong claims point by point.
The hacking incidents highlight Falun Gong's sophistication and audacity as the group attempts to fight back in China and overseas.
The satellite broadcast, in which a banner reading "Falun Gong is good" replaced normal TV viewing in Shandong province on Sunday night and again in prime time on Tuesday, is among the group's most daring moves since it was banned in 1999.
Chinese security sources told The South China Morning Post that most of China Central Television's 10 channels, and another 10 provincial channels sharing the Sinosat-1 satellite, were interrupted on Sunday night.
The Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, based in Hong Kong, said the Falun Gong banner appeared on TV screens in Yantai city, Shandong and Laiyang county twice last week, in some cases for up to 15 minutes. The centre said it had confirmed the incidents with local security authorities and television stations.
A spokesman for the Yantai security office in charge of dealing with Falun Gong said it had received complaints from the public. "They said a blurred image appeared on their screens for between 10 and 20 seconds," an official said.
A news blackout was enforced on the mainland and security officials and TV stations denied all knowledge of the incidents yesterday.
Hong Kong media said Vice-President Li Lanqing, responsible for the mainland media, had ordered an investigation into the hacking. After the Falun Gong broadcast, millions of TV sets in remote and rural areas went black as the authorities tried to trace the source of the interruption.
Officials are reportedly perplexed as to how Falun Gong had the knowledge and equipment needed to intercept a satellite broadcast. There was speculation sect followers had equipped a vehicle to avoid notice.
The human rights and democracy centre said an antenna with a diameter of 3m could disrupt reception for hundreds of kilometres.
Similar incidents occurred in January in Chonqing, Sichuan province, in March in Jilin province where Falun Gong leader Li Hongzhi was born and in Harbin in April. In these cases the targets were cable TV stations. More than 20 Falun Gong members were arrested over the March hacking and face up to 15 years in jail if convicted.
Falun Gong's recorded telephone message - sent to an unknown number of Beijing residents, and probably further - claimed the Government had fabricated the incident in which three Falun Gong supporters set themselves alight in Tiananmen Square in January 2001.
The recording also said sect followers were beaten and tortured in prison, and invited listeners to follow prompts to hear more information or Falun Gong songs.
I wonder if apartment building and neighborhoods could run ethernet or wireless to each other? Imagine an apartment building with 20 apartments. Install ethernet into each apartment, run a gateway with NAT, and share a T1/T3/OCX. Assuming you could get a big enough pipe and pay your expenses for $1000/month, that would be $50 per apartment, roughly the cost DSL or cable is now. And of course, to sweeten the deal, you could set up a cheap box to provide free email, websites, etc.
Sound feasible?
I can't see how "competition" from one or more corporations will help. The corporations will have interests in common to restrict our use of the network in some way, so most of them will. And I can't see more than a handful of providers in a given area, at least not in the next few years.
What about regulation? We would have to lobby the government, while the corporations are lobbying too - with more money and more access. And even if we were to win, they will still be there, week after week every year, lobbying to change the regulations in their favor.
I don't see any other solution besides owning the network ourselves. Maybe each user could have an equal share, and delegate responsibilities to the engineers who already design and build the network? Right now, the engineers answer to the management of the corporations, but maybe we could get them to answer to the users directly instead. That sounds reasonably democratic.
As long as some group of corporations owns the network, they will place whatever restrictions they expect will bring in more money for them. As more uses of the network are discovered, they will automatically be considered "unacceptable use" until they can figure out how to restrict it to their advantage.
So, is it possible for the users to own and control the network?
If you click on the banner ad next to the article, you get a page titled "Gifts for Grads" from CNet, selling, among other things, handhelds.
Hey, Steve Jobs, I've been thinking about writing an article on why kids need a iPod for Music class. I'll need sponsorship, of course!