Like executing drug "mules" for carrying a few grams of drugs.
I was once chatting with this Narcotics Bureau officer on this. The way he put it, if you are out drinking in one of Singapore's many pubs, make sure you finish your drink before you leave the table and go to the, say, toilet. Apparently, there have been cases where folks have had their drinks spiked with some marijuana, only to be caught in a Narcotics Bureau raid, who, incidentally, were tipped off minutes before.
This basically tells me three things:-
a) Despite draconian laws, and sterile reporting, drugs are freely available on Singapore's streets.
b) A draconian law, like a loaded gun, is inherently indiscriminate in choosing its victims.
c) If a girl in a bar says no to my offer of a drink, I can blame the law.
The way I see it, it's less of a censorship thing out here, and more of legalising good taste.
For instance, while there's exactly one local, highly censored, government-oriented, 'mainstream' newspaper published here, you can, as a matter of fact, get most international newspapers if you search hard enough. One rather unfortunate irony being that all local magazines are of the fluffy kind (Maxim Singapore, FHM Singapore etc); you'd actually have to buy international news-magazines for current news and analysis. In essence, you can get international news even outside the Internet.
Problems come when you start discussing Singaporean affairs. Open criticism of the government is governed by the so-called OB (Out of Bound) Markers; as long as your discussion falls within these, government-defined, but wholly vague, boundaries, the government doesn't mind with what you say. The moment you step out of this comfort zone (a local analyst compared it to being inside an air-conditioned room), and say, analyse Singapore's exact GDP growth figures last quarter, the government cracks down upon you hard. The trick, apparently, is to mouth your concerns in semi-legitimate, but wholly vague, sentences, and to be sure, the local newspaper is full of such columns and letters lately. Which is why I've come to believe that the Singaporean attitude towards censorship is more or less governed by taste now; as long as you limit yourself by not directly pointing fingers (or economic figures, apparently, those are official secrets), and do it in a polite, non-sarcastic, academically detached sort of a way, you're cool.
As for Singapore being uncorrupt, well, I suppose it's just me being cynical, but trust me, there's no place in the world where things can't be twisted for a price. Just that, you'd probably have to tap in real high; unlike most other countries in the region, you don't really have to go out of your way to get "normal" things done. But if you are, say, an international bank, and have found a certain white-collar crime committed in your name, the government can work out an exit plan for you, to the point that it can find scapegoats and stuff to keep you and your money in the economy, as long as you promise to approach it before the international media finds out about it.
Just to end this rant by stroking bi-partisan flames,;-), was rather interesting to hear Singapore's first PM, Lee Kuan Yew, praise George W Bush as an example of effective leader. Just to tell you where gov.sg falls in an American ideological spectrum, although I should menion that the ruling party, the PAP has been famously non-ideological for most of its history; for instance, we've got a world-class public healthcare system, but it is not entirely subsidised.
Ironically enough, though, the Army apparently recognises the religion and race of its Servicemen. Muslims (I don't know if it is 'Malay' only), for instance, aren't put in some forward positions, as a matter of policy.
I think most Americans read too much into the 'system' bit in 'caste system'. Essentially, it mostly boils down to individual communities discriminating against each other, with the unfortunate effect of some communities concentrating wealth and power for centuries. This is inherently similar to your average bubba discriminating against, for instance, German or Irish immigrants, or against African Americans, because they dont speak, or look, like he does.
If we're bringing out Constitutions in this regard, then we're pretty much on par; our Constitution, taking liberal inspiration from yours I must add, also declares that all Indians are equal.
I had the same problem as you for sometime. The resolution I've found was to jot down some very select keywords only from the lecture; I am, in effect, making a list of things to read in the textbook after I'm done with the lecture. Essentially, you're making a quasi-to-do list for yourself while you're reading your textbook; having such a list, I've found, boosts concentration levels a few notches.
Of course, you could do the other way as well; you could skim through the textbook (and I stress, skim, not read), make a list of concepts you've found from a cursory glance, and tick each one off as and when the lecturer goes through them. Basically, you want to reduce all writing to supplement your thought processes, not overwhelm them.
Two of my flatmates discuss (mathematical) functions all the time, especially when they're drunk. One dude apparently almost flunked math at school, while the other was his school's topper, so I suppose they do compliment each other.
In my previous company, we had an SOP for clients who demand AJAX. We show them our prototype-isque web-app with AJAX and tell them, look while we can do this, we will nevertheless need another extra X man-days to incorporate it into your deliverable, are you sure you want to pay $Y more for snazzier textboxes?
In our experience, exactly one of the five clients how initially demanded AJAX in a two month period actually required us to do it.
This incompetency extends itself to real-life packaging as well, apparently. Consider the curious disclosure at the bottom of the page that two CD's had copy-protection marked on their package, but didn't actually have it on disk.
Although not domain names, but it's quite easy to encounter URL's with international characters, on Wikipedia, for example. Quite a bitch, really, sharing such links over GAIM, which consistently screws up any and every international character, at least on Windows.
Yup, particularly given that Google News India exclusively features English-language resources from India, and not a single Indian language resource. This is as opposed to the Google experience in China or Hong Kong or Taiwan.
Still, I'll go with the GP's point. I'm based in South East Asia, and I made a quick survey of all US-based sites I frequent. He's right; except for community websites such as this one, most big sites (Yahoo, Google, Amazon etc) provide local variants as well, although not necessarily Indian or Chinese in every case.
There was a big ruckus in this part of the world as well by the MIT Media Lab. This was a rather novel attempt at outsourcing research; perhaps the Media Lab didn't know that it is usually the outsourcer who pays up, not the outsourcee.
While a lot of comments have rightly pointed out that most of this is hype by the American press, I do, however, think, that most posters here are missing the real fear here in South East Asia; during SARS, for instance, we've had a major downturn here in Singapore because of a sudden fall in tourist arrivals.
So the issue here is not just the pandemic, but the panic it creates.
The ban was never on gum consumption, merely on chewing gum sale, and even at that, "medicinal" chewing gum (aka "Wrigley's") is allowed. Basically, as long as the stuff doesn't muck up the sliding doors on our MRT system if you accidentally place eaten gum between them, we're cool with any gum.
Something that happens automatically, but on whose mechanism the speaker doesn't want to elaborate, either because it is trivially obvious, or exasperatingly complex.
This keeps coming up every now and then during a discussion on IPR, but it's a long observed fact that countries that are trying to beat the technology cycle often used to reduce IPR protection on goods (the Asian "Tiger" economies as one example, India's hitherto drug regime for another). Note that I said "reduce"; IPR laws in the 50's or so were, for the most part, uniform across the world, thanks to colonalism.
All that has changed with new WTO/TRIPS/etc agreements; we're now more or less back to being uniform on IPR laws throughout the world. Still won't stop your average factory in Shenzhen ripping off a Tag Huer watch, for example, but still.
Indeed. Just back from Bangkok and, looking at, for instance, the authentic-feeling copies of Swiss-branded chronometers, there, I couldn't help wonder how the Chinese/Taiwanese could come with such perfect reproductions of products originally designed and made elsewhere.
I suppose I know now; it's coz they manufacture them.
We had numbers out in the Bay of Bengal until this year. Starting this season, for easier record-keeping purposes apparently, all our cyclones will be named after abstract, gender-unspecific entities in four or five prominent languages spoken around the Rim.
Unfortunately though, the names don't seem to have been tested for inter-cultural ironies. The name of the latest cyclone to hit India, Pyaar, for instance, was named in Burmese to mean 'flattened', but in Hindi, the same word means 'love'. We've just been flattened by love from the Bay of Bengal, you might say.
I know google is all about searching... but sometimes sorting is more intuitive and effecient - especially when there are a boatload of search results... how about providing the ability to sort email based on certain fields?
We voted unanimously as a board in April 2005 to move historical materials such as Eric Raymond's "the Halloween Documents" and Michael Tiemann's "A Case for Open Source" to the authors' sites for maintenance and to re-focus our efforts on increasing professionalism and credibility for both OSI and for open source worldwide.
HAHAHAHAHA! Got to give it to you guys, that's one heck of a way to spin things.:-D
Slashdot Mirror
This basically tells me three things:-
a) Despite draconian laws, and sterile reporting, drugs are freely available on Singapore's streets.
b) A draconian law, like a loaded gun, is inherently indiscriminate in choosing its victims.
c) If a girl in a bar says no to my offer of a drink, I can blame the law.
For instance, while there's exactly one local, highly censored, government-oriented, 'mainstream' newspaper published here, you can, as a matter of fact, get most international newspapers if you search hard enough. One rather unfortunate irony being that all local magazines are of the fluffy kind (Maxim Singapore, FHM Singapore etc); you'd actually have to buy international news-magazines for current news and analysis. In essence, you can get international news even outside the Internet.
Problems come when you start discussing Singaporean affairs. Open criticism of the government is governed by the so-called OB (Out of Bound) Markers; as long as your discussion falls within these, government-defined, but wholly vague, boundaries, the government doesn't mind with what you say. The moment you step out of this comfort zone (a local analyst compared it to being inside an air-conditioned room), and say, analyse Singapore's exact GDP growth figures last quarter, the government cracks down upon you hard. The trick, apparently, is to mouth your concerns in semi-legitimate, but wholly vague, sentences, and to be sure, the local newspaper is full of such columns and letters lately. Which is why I've come to believe that the Singaporean attitude towards censorship is more or less governed by taste now; as long as you limit yourself by not directly pointing fingers (or economic figures, apparently, those are official secrets), and do it in a polite, non-sarcastic, academically detached sort of a way, you're cool.
As for Singapore being uncorrupt, well, I suppose it's just me being cynical, but trust me, there's no place in the world where things can't be twisted for a price. Just that, you'd probably have to tap in real high; unlike most other countries in the region, you don't really have to go out of your way to get "normal" things done. But if you are, say, an international bank, and have found a certain white-collar crime committed in your name, the government can work out an exit plan for you, to the point that it can find scapegoats and stuff to keep you and your money in the economy, as long as you promise to approach it before the international media finds out about it.
Just to end this rant by stroking bi-partisan flames, ;-), was rather interesting to hear Singapore's first PM, Lee Kuan Yew, praise George W Bush as an example of effective leader. Just to tell you where gov.sg falls in an American ideological spectrum, although I should menion that the ruling party, the PAP has been famously non-ideological for most of its history; for instance, we've got a world-class public healthcare system, but it is not entirely subsidised.
(Singapore resident for five years now)
Ironically enough, though, the Army apparently recognises the religion and race of its Servicemen. Muslims (I don't know if it is 'Malay' only), for instance, aren't put in some forward positions, as a matter of policy.
No seriously. Mumbai is the only megalopolis in the world with a leopard problem.
If we're bringing out Constitutions in this regard, then we're pretty much on par; our Constitution, taking liberal inspiration from yours I must add, also declares that all Indians are equal.
Of course, you could do the other way as well; you could skim through the textbook (and I stress, skim, not read), make a list of concepts you've found from a cursory glance, and tick each one off as and when the lecturer goes through them. Basically, you want to reduce all writing to supplement your thought processes, not overwhelm them.
Two of my flatmates discuss (mathematical) functions all the time, especially when they're drunk. One dude apparently almost flunked math at school, while the other was his school's topper, so I suppose they do compliment each other.
In our experience, exactly one of the five clients how initially demanded AJAX in a two month period actually required us to do it.
This incompetency extends itself to real-life packaging as well, apparently. Consider the curious disclosure at the bottom of the page that two CD's had copy-protection marked on their package, but didn't actually have it on disk.
A distinction well made.
Although not domain names, but it's quite easy to encounter URL's with international characters, on Wikipedia, for example. Quite a bitch, really, sharing such links over GAIM, which consistently screws up any and every international character, at least on Windows.
Still, I'll go with the GP's point. I'm based in South East Asia, and I made a quick survey of all US-based sites I frequent. He's right; except for community websites such as this one, most big sites (Yahoo, Google, Amazon etc) provide local variants as well, although not necessarily Indian or Chinese in every case.
There was a big ruckus in this part of the world as well by the MIT Media Lab. This was a rather novel attempt at outsourcing research; perhaps the Media Lab didn't know that it is usually the outsourcer who pays up, not the outsourcee.
So the issue here is not just the pandemic, but the panic it creates.
The ban was never on gum consumption, merely on chewing gum sale, and even at that, "medicinal" chewing gum (aka "Wrigley's") is allowed. Basically, as long as the stuff doesn't muck up the sliding doors on our MRT system if you accidentally place eaten gum between them, we're cool with any gum.
Lemmy Caution you that you could be charged with impersonation.
So says Bhima Pandava!
Something that happens automatically, but on whose mechanism the speaker doesn't want to elaborate, either because it is trivially obvious, or exasperatingly complex.
I believe it's a world record or something.
All that has changed with new WTO/TRIPS/etc agreements; we're now more or less back to being uniform on IPR laws throughout the world. Still won't stop your average factory in Shenzhen ripping off a Tag Huer watch, for example, but still.
I suppose I know now; it's coz they manufacture them.
I have a slightly earlier-version Nokia 6680. While night-time pics are, of course, grainy, for regular shots, I'm not complaining at all.
Unfortunately though, the names don't seem to have been tested for inter-cultural ironies. The name of the latest cyclone to hit India, Pyaar, for instance, was named in Burmese to mean 'flattened', but in Hindi, the same word means 'love'. We've just been flattened by love from the Bay of Bengal, you might say.