Just to say this, Pete, extremely exciting to see a Senate candidate coming down to Slashdot and giving snarky one-liners like the rest of us, instead of saccharine-sweet politically correct answers.
I'm neither from Utah, nor from the US, but rest assured, I'll try and vote for you on Election Day.
Point being, how would you define 'biological' sex? Is it chromosomes, presence (or absence) of specific reproductive organs, an ability to procreate, a certain hormonal ratio, or a certain genetic sequence?
If you say 'chromosomes', then you've answered wrong: 1 in 25,000 people have chromosomes from the 'wrong' sex, and are sexually functional to varying degrees (there was a story on this on NPR two weeks back, 'Story of the Day' for 2006-10-16 according to my podcast subscription). If you say, 'ability to procreate', then, well, all those men taking viagra would disagree with you. If you say genes (not chromosomes, genes), we still haven't figured out the exact sequence have we.
In the absence of a clear biological definition, I'll happily settle for a mix of psychology and physiology as an answer, if only to clarify things for myself. I'm wondering why you find a construct accepted by well-over half a century by social scientists and psychologists unacceptable.
Re:And like feng shui, IT'S BULLSHIT!
on
Slashdot's Vastu
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· Score: 1
Minus all the superstition and religiosity, vaastu is actually a rather interesting art-form; it's basically architectural code handed down across generations. Most traditional houses are based on vaastu. I personally, couldn't care less about vaastu, my parent's house, for example, has a complete and absolute disregard for vaastu principles, but as a traditional art-form, I respect the fact that it's been there for so long.
That said, vaastu for the web? Puhleeeze; it's almost like designing websites based on, I don't know, Greco-Roman architecture or something. Clearly, someone's found out that there's no standards-issuing body for vaastu, and has decided to moneytize the brand for herself.
Nope, in a CLI you type, whereas in X(-Windows?) you click buttons. In TDI, you have multiple pages open at the same time that can be minimised, closed, etc. In MDI, you have multiple windows open at the same time that can be minimised, closed, etc. As far as I can see, no functional difference whatsoever.
I could be wrong here, I'm certainly missing something that seems trivially obvious to you. I'm, in effect, asking you to elaborate on your point: what is this world of difference in user experience and workflow between a TDI browser and an MDI browser? Why is Opera-with-windows different from Opera-with-tabs?
The problem with being the #1 browser in the world is that if they did decide to fix everything all at once, then they break a LOT of websites
You know, I'll be extremely interested to see stats on just how many websites will be 'breaking' because MSIE has decided to implement CSS features it hasn't implemented so far.
But the real problem here isn't web-designers is it, the real problem is compatibility with other Microsoft products. To wit,
(remember, Microsoft has more than one product that works with HTML, CSS, and other web standards, and they have to interoperate too)
He's afraid webpages will start looking different in VS.net 2005 and MSIE 7. To which, my retort would be thus: if you think there's a problem, and that the problem is embedded everywhere, you ought to start somewhere.
So they have to ease some of these things in gradually.
Funny, I missed the part where Mr. Hachamovitch has said that they plan to implement them even in piecemeal. If resources, and not goal, was the problem, you'd see some sort of a roadmap for CSS implementation. Instead, you get empty-sounding weasel words like 'working with the web community', or 'you asked for it' or some crap like that.
Compare that with Mozilla/Opera who can afford to break things on every release
They can't. Read on.
Hell, Linux can break device drivers on every kernel release because there's no financial incentive for them not to do so
Mistake #1: Money is not the only incentive for people; some other social incentives are much more effective than merely money. Read Freakonomics if you want sociological evidence.
Mistake #2: Presuming that Windows doesn't break device drivers with Vista. I don't know the details, but didn't Vista have some issues with backward compatibility with hardware?
The entire IE team was busy with much more important things, like the MSN Toolbar, and specialized changes for individual customers with deep pockets.
To be fair, he said MSN Explorer, an MSN-branded shell over MSIE that was so dumbed down that you couldnt even change the homepage. It, however, had a pretty, animatronic female voice that kept saying 'Good Morning!' for some reason, which my roomie back in college loved.
Yup, you've been saying that MDI != TDI thing over and over again, but beyond appearances, I'm not sure what the difference is between tabs and multiple documents within a single window. What is the functional difference between tabs and multiple child windows, then? As far as I know, there was absolutely no functional enhancement offered at all when Opera started calling its child windows as 'tabs'. (Except that, of course, the windows look prettier, and the new version does that thumbnail thing).
I wouldn't pounce you like others for trying to explain someone else's viewpoint:-), but here's a thought: you fight Differents, folks different from your standard, absolutely, and you fight familiar Differents closer more vehemently than unfamiliar ones. The debate on homosexual marriage has been going on for a decade now; Darfur has just come up on the radar screen. Besides, those poor improverished folk form a small part of the screen while watching CNN or BBC. An Elton John or a Rainbow Coalition march through the town is much much larger, and much more in-your-face.
Now I support RMS thoroughly in this case, going even to the extent of saying that it's absolute nonsense to even suggest that the article was making _any_ valid points about OSS/Software Libre, but I'm sorry, your analogy is totally worthless: the Free Software isn't a beauty contest anymore than the Miss World competition is a philosophy debate. There is absolutely no necessity for anyone to be "soft" on anyone. If you're putting yourself in a leadership position, you expect to draw some significant fire from all sides.
Ultimately, you will have to decide whether you're in it for fame, or whether you'd like to champion certain values.
He's a Microsoft engineer. Obviously his delusions of grandeur are not limited to work.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't he the guy who developed the Hungarian notation (not that developing code-standards should lead to fame, fortune and grandeur, but just sayin')
But if someone dares violate the GPL, those same Slashdotters rise up and demand the heads of everyone involved on a silver platter.
As far as I know, no one went to jail for violating the GPL. But I suppose you already knew that, and were fishing for responses such as this, werent you.
The Indian EVM's were developed in the early 80's, and saw widespread use only twenty years later. Moreover, things aren't an exact comparison here; in India, we have an independent (federal) Election Commission that pretty much takes over the running of the country during election-time. In the US, individual states conduct elections, so there are multiple people making multiple decisions.
And finally, there's the issue of scale here; the reason Indian elections need EVM's, is because, for administrative and security reasons, we spread the elections over an entire month. The US, otoh, has exactly one Election Day every two years.
And oh, then there's this issue of, again, scale: one of my favourite stories about the elections is about this voting center they had in the middle of the Dandakaranya area in 2004. Dandakaranya, for those who don't know, is this thick, impenetrable forest in the middle of the peninsula that's so remote that it's thick with tigers, leopards, Stone-Age tribals and lawless leftist insurgents. Nobody from the local civil administration, you see, hasn't really stepped in there in the last one hundred years.
Except in 2004, that is, when they went in there on an elephant, with a couple of EVM's, an entire battalion of the Central Industrial Special Force and a weird sense of adventure. The total number of eligible voters for this remote voting booth: three. Not surprisingly, all three turned up and voted, if only because they felt sorry for the entire entourage of officers and security personnel who showed up for them. Unfortunately though, the central office countermanded the votes from that booth for a very administrative reason: you see, the percentage of votes cast from this booth showed up as 100%. In Indian elections, a booth with 100% votes cast is seen very suspiciously; surely, the Commission said, there was some rigging going on there.:-)
Anyway, the point I'm making here is, the issue here isn't technological implementation, it's all about trust. In the US, people are led to mistrust big government. In India, we also mistrust big government, but we trust the Election Commission completely. Which is why we trust our EVM's to be fair, and work properly; in the US, because there are so many parties involved, it is impossible to replicate that level of trust.
As it is, I believe that America is exporting its culture at an incredible rate
Just Hollywood. Recently realized that I get my favouritest music (UK, Japan, India), sports (Europe: soccer, F1), tech droolery, even fashion, from outside the US. The American softpower was the primary discourse in the 1990's, but is no longer dominating our airspaces here.
I just saw the listing for India and for Asia, and all I can say is this: these guys don't know what they're talking about.
Without getting into the Muslim-president-Sikh-PM chest-beating, I'd like to point that, even in per capita terms, we're one of the largest media-consuming nations in the world. We've got the largest number of newspapers being published in the world, the world's most-widely read English newspaper (Times of India), and indeed, the newspaper with the largest circulation, per se (Malayala Manorama). In addition, the news channel business is booming with a capital B; in my last trip home, I counted some five news channels in my mother tongue alone. Given that India officially speaks twenty languages not including English, the actual number of news options in print and on the television has become extremely vast now indeed. Bottomline: never a better time to be a journalist in India.
I want you folks to focus on this, before turning to the following piece of analytical genius: Bhutan, with one privately-held newspaper, has apparently greater press freedom than India. Not to knock anything off our peaceful northern neighbours, love the Bhutanese and their pursuit of Gross National Happiness, but to say that an absolute monarchy where you can't publically criticize your king, is freer than a noisy democracy is to stretch credibility quite a bit.
Which is not to say everything's hunky-dory. I'll be the first person to admit th at we've had intermittent issues with censorship lately, all these issues with banning politically-incorrect books, movies and websites seem to be cropping up every now and then, but none of that was mentioned there, was it. Neither were the troubles in the North East, where an insurgent organization threatened newspapers over their usage of a script.
Finally, the map shows Malaysia's situation as "difficult" and India's situation as "noticeable problems", while the rankings list Malaysia higher than India. Really, you don't have to look at our troubles with the media, just read your own website will ya.
In short, the analysis was poor, incomplete, insufficient, not rigorous and completely headlines-oriented; they didn't even mention real problems in India vis-a-vis freedom of speech, while apparently tracking cases that are, frankly, not really representative of the overall situation on the ground.
It's funny how nerds love technology, but are such naysayers when something new and revolutionary comes along.
Nerds aren't naysayers, Slashdotters are. They weren't always like this; they might not realize it themselves, but the core demographic here is aging quite rapidly. Look at it this way:- most of the crowd here in 1999-2000-ish was in university, or just about to graduate. Now they're well entrenched in their careers, and what's worse, have seen dizzying tech-otupian predictions get crushed in a sabre-rattling bust.
Btw, a slight tangent, but with the full weight of five ipod-generations upon me, I hereby nominate this to be the most insightful of all the 1075 posts in that discussion. You haven't understood the ipod in a techno-marketing sense unless you realize why the ipod was different from other mp3 players then. That was it.
Liberal Democracies, or countries that at least try to have them. That probably would have been a better choice of words.
Oh, you wouldn't accuse Singapore of being a liberal democracy.:-) But we're one of the few nations in the world that offers bonuses to couples having babies. East Europe also, if I'm not wrong, has a similar demographical problem; as we all know, those countries haven't been liberal democracies until a decade back.
Nope, the resolution here isn't a Fukuyama-ian hypothesis or a Western-centric Huntington-ian clashes, but pure Freakonomics-ian demographics; note how historically population-rich urban centers such as Angkor Thom (in Cambodia), or Vijayanagara (in India), have had their populations disappear. I'm in a bit of a rush to make the argument fully, but here's the gist:- after reaching a certain zenith, populations start decreasing, simply because they've become much more efficient, if you will, at propagating themselves. It's the end result of improvements in industrial productivity; you 'produce' enough to replace yourselves.
As cultures/people become intigrated into western society they tend to have less children.
I'm not sure why you'd blame western society for this. Korea, Japan and Singapore have exactly the same problem.
In any case, how would you define 'western society'? Would Russia and Brazil count? They certainly speak languages that originated west of my land in a Meractor's projection.
You probably want to follow the link to the guy's homepage. Among other things, he's the Beckerman answering questions in this interview, so I'd like to take him on his word.
Unless you were being ironic, in which case, it's all in good fun.
But is there a different standard, based on the local population? Clearly there are some places in the world where the people are culturally less likey to ignore perceived insults. Should the "don't yell fire" rule be adapted for the locale?
You Americans might find this ironic, but the Indian Constitution, when it was first promulgated in 1950, actually had protection for context-free, free speech (meaning, free speech for free speech's sake without any restrictions whatsoever). The First Amendment, promulgated in 1951, actually introduced some restrictions for public order and such (this is could be said to be ironic from an American viewpoint, coz the American First Amendment does the exact opposite)
Governance in India is often described as a mechanism for minimising the chance of forming mobs. In that sense, as an Indian citizen, I actually don't mind a cursory banning of a pamphlet or a book here and there, but the caveat is this: any such ban must be temporary, limited in scope, and subject to public review later.
The mechanism for Internet regulation falls short in all three respects; as such, there's no way for Indian citizens to know if a website has been blocked for judicio-political reasons, or if the network connection is down. Additionally, there's no possible way for oversight on the banning process; if an Indian national feels that her website has been banned by the Department of Telecommunications, the only possible way she can find out for sure is by filing a Request for Information with the Department. The total processing for such a request might take thirty days at least; clearly, an unsustainable proposition in Internet time. Also, there's no possible way for ask for a review on the said ban, a situation that, must be noted, does not happen in other media such as print or cinema or television [1].
As I was writing this rant up, I finally RTFA-ed, and am glad to note that the author also echoes the same points.:-) But yeah, the point here is this:- at least in an Indian context, there are no grey areas here, merely presumably-well-intended-but-extremely-shoddy policy that is more troublesome than it is useful.
--
[1] - An interesting thought struck me here, but if you think about it, television, currently, is the medium with the least amount of censorship mechanisms in place; while there was supposed to be regulation and oversight over the medium as well, that's currently mired down with competing interests fighting over. Books and movies might be rioted over, banned and (in the case of movies only), censored for good taste, but private television, as things are, is completely unregulated. This is truly an ironic state of affairs for anyone who's lived through Doordarshan's heyday in 1980's and early '90's, when just about everything shown on national television had a political subtext.
Re:Why would you want an RFID blocking wallet??
on
Top Ten Geek Wallets
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· Score: 1
The snoop part is nothing to laugh about if it's in the hands of say a government who wants to know who attended a rally
This is Singapore we're talking about.:-) We've got more cameras than any city other than London. We also outlaw outdoor political demonstrations with more than four people involved, and yup, we aren't afraid to clamp down.
So yeah. Civil society has a lot more to fear in Singapore than compromised ez-link cards. Big Brother is already here, and advertises himself quite freely.
some enterprising individual should be able to bump into you in line, clone your card, and be riding the train on your dime.
Well, it wouldn't be under my dime, seeing as it is that the EZ-link card is not linked to anything else. You "top-up" value into a card upfront; when you pay for a ride, the price of that ride gets debitted from your card.
But yeah. If all that you want to do is to beat fares in the MRT, you don't have to clone cards or anything. There is a very, very low-tech, but highly successful, way of doing it.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, he's been here for four hours already! I don't feel so bad about wasting time on Slashdot anymore. :-D
Just to say this, Pete, extremely exciting to see a Senate candidate coming down to Slashdot and giving snarky one-liners like the rest of us, instead of saccharine-sweet politically correct answers.
I'm neither from Utah, nor from the US, but rest assured, I'll try and vote for you on Election Day.
Point being, how would you define 'biological' sex? Is it chromosomes, presence (or absence) of specific reproductive organs, an ability to procreate, a certain hormonal ratio, or a certain genetic sequence?
If you say 'chromosomes', then you've answered wrong: 1 in 25,000 people have chromosomes from the 'wrong' sex, and are sexually functional to varying degrees (there was a story on this on NPR two weeks back, 'Story of the Day' for 2006-10-16 according to my podcast subscription). If you say, 'ability to procreate', then, well, all those men taking viagra would disagree with you. If you say genes (not chromosomes, genes), we still haven't figured out the exact sequence have we.
In the absence of a clear biological definition, I'll happily settle for a mix of psychology and physiology as an answer, if only to clarify things for myself. I'm wondering why you find a construct accepted by well-over half a century by social scientists and psychologists unacceptable.
Minus all the superstition and religiosity, vaastu is actually a rather interesting art-form; it's basically architectural code handed down across generations. Most traditional houses are based on vaastu. I personally, couldn't care less about vaastu, my parent's house, for example, has a complete and absolute disregard for vaastu principles, but as a traditional art-form, I respect the fact that it's been there for so long.
That said, vaastu for the web? Puhleeeze; it's almost like designing websites based on, I don't know, Greco-Roman architecture or something. Clearly, someone's found out that there's no standards-issuing body for vaastu, and has decided to moneytize the brand for herself.
Nope, in a CLI you type, whereas in X(-Windows?) you click buttons. In TDI, you have multiple pages open at the same time that can be minimised, closed, etc. In MDI, you have multiple windows open at the same time that can be minimised, closed, etc. As far as I can see, no functional difference whatsoever.
I could be wrong here, I'm certainly missing something that seems trivially obvious to you. I'm, in effect, asking you to elaborate on your point: what is this world of difference in user experience and workflow between a TDI browser and an MDI browser? Why is Opera-with-windows different from Opera-with-tabs?
You know, I'll be extremely interested to see stats on just how many websites will be 'breaking' because MSIE has decided to implement CSS features it hasn't implemented so far.
But the real problem here isn't web-designers is it, the real problem is compatibility with other Microsoft products. To wit,
He's afraid webpages will start looking different in VS.net 2005 and MSIE 7. To which, my retort would be thus: if you think there's a problem, and that the problem is embedded everywhere, you ought to start somewhere.
Funny, I missed the part where Mr. Hachamovitch has said that they plan to implement them even in piecemeal. If resources, and not goal, was the problem, you'd see some sort of a roadmap for CSS implementation. Instead, you get empty-sounding weasel words like 'working with the web community', or 'you asked for it' or some crap like that.
They can't. Read on.
Mistake #1: Money is not the only incentive for people; some other social incentives are much more effective than merely money. Read Freakonomics if you want sociological evidence.
Mistake #2: Presuming that Windows doesn't break device drivers with Vista. I don't know the details, but didn't Vista have some issues with backward compatibility with hardware?
To be fair, he said MSN Explorer, an MSN-branded shell over MSIE that was so dumbed down that you couldnt even change the homepage. It, however, had a pretty, animatronic female voice that kept saying 'Good Morning!' for some reason, which my roomie back in college loved.
Yup, you've been saying that MDI != TDI thing over and over again, but beyond appearances, I'm not sure what the difference is between tabs and multiple documents within a single window. What is the functional difference between tabs and multiple child windows, then? As far as I know, there was absolutely no functional enhancement offered at all when Opera started calling its child windows as 'tabs'. (Except that, of course, the windows look prettier, and the new version does that thumbnail thing).
I wouldn't pounce you like others for trying to explain someone else's viewpoint :-), but here's a thought: you fight Differents, folks different from your standard, absolutely, and you fight familiar Differents closer more vehemently than unfamiliar ones. The debate on homosexual marriage has been going on for a decade now; Darfur has just come up on the radar screen. Besides, those poor improverished folk form a small part of the screen while watching CNN or BBC. An Elton John or a Rainbow Coalition march through the town is much much larger, and much more in-your-face.
Now I support RMS thoroughly in this case, going even to the extent of saying that it's absolute nonsense to even suggest that the article was making _any_ valid points about OSS/Software Libre, but I'm sorry, your analogy is totally worthless: the Free Software isn't a beauty contest anymore than the Miss World competition is a philosophy debate. There is absolutely no necessity for anyone to be "soft" on anyone. If you're putting yourself in a leadership position, you expect to draw some significant fire from all sides.
Ultimately, you will have to decide whether you're in it for fame, or whether you'd like to champion certain values.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't he the guy who developed the Hungarian notation (not that developing code-standards should lead to fame, fortune and grandeur, but just sayin')
As far as I know, no one went to jail for violating the GPL. But I suppose you already knew that, and were fishing for responses such as this, werent you.
The Indian EVM's were developed in the early 80's, and saw widespread use only twenty years later. Moreover, things aren't an exact comparison here; in India, we have an independent (federal) Election Commission that pretty much takes over the running of the country during election-time. In the US, individual states conduct elections, so there are multiple people making multiple decisions.
And finally, there's the issue of scale here; the reason Indian elections need EVM's, is because, for administrative and security reasons, we spread the elections over an entire month. The US, otoh, has exactly one Election Day every two years.
And oh, then there's this issue of, again, scale: one of my favourite stories about the elections is about this voting center they had in the middle of the Dandakaranya area in 2004. Dandakaranya, for those who don't know, is this thick, impenetrable forest in the middle of the peninsula that's so remote that it's thick with tigers, leopards, Stone-Age tribals and lawless leftist insurgents. Nobody from the local civil administration, you see, hasn't really stepped in there in the last one hundred years.
Except in 2004, that is, when they went in there on an elephant, with a couple of EVM's, an entire battalion of the Central Industrial Special Force and a weird sense of adventure. The total number of eligible voters for this remote voting booth: three. Not surprisingly, all three turned up and voted, if only because they felt sorry for the entire entourage of officers and security personnel who showed up for them. Unfortunately though, the central office countermanded the votes from that booth for a very administrative reason: you see, the percentage of votes cast from this booth showed up as 100%. In Indian elections, a booth with 100% votes cast is seen very suspiciously; surely, the Commission said, there was some rigging going on there. :-)
Anyway, the point I'm making here is, the issue here isn't technological implementation, it's all about trust. In the US, people are led to mistrust big government. In India, we also mistrust big government, but we trust the Election Commission completely. Which is why we trust our EVM's to be fair, and work properly; in the US, because there are so many parties involved, it is impossible to replicate that level of trust.
8. Australian beer rocks!
9. Your TV shows might be shite, but you guys have a great sense of humour.
10. You guys have the coooooolest set of local fauna anywhere on the planet, except Kanha.
11. You drive on the right side of the road, spell 'colour' normally, and, most important:
12. YOU GUYS ACTUALLY PLAY CRICKET!
Just Hollywood. Recently realized that I get my favouritest music (UK, Japan, India), sports (Europe: soccer, F1), tech droolery, even fashion, from outside the US. The American softpower was the primary discourse in the 1990's, but is no longer dominating our airspaces here.
I just saw the listing for India and for Asia, and all I can say is this: these guys don't know what they're talking about.
Without getting into the Muslim-president-Sikh-PM chest-beating, I'd like to point that, even in per capita terms, we're one of the largest media-consuming nations in the world. We've got the largest number of newspapers being published in the world, the world's most-widely read English newspaper (Times of India), and indeed, the newspaper with the largest circulation, per se (Malayala Manorama). In addition, the news channel business is booming with a capital B; in my last trip home, I counted some five news channels in my mother tongue alone. Given that India officially speaks twenty languages not including English, the actual number of news options in print and on the television has become extremely vast now indeed. Bottomline: never a better time to be a journalist in India.
I want you folks to focus on this, before turning to the following piece of analytical genius: Bhutan, with one privately-held newspaper, has apparently greater press freedom than India. Not to knock anything off our peaceful northern neighbours, love the Bhutanese and their pursuit of Gross National Happiness, but to say that an absolute monarchy where you can't publically criticize your king, is freer than a noisy democracy is to stretch credibility quite a bit.
Which is not to say everything's hunky-dory. I'll be the first person to admit th at we've had intermittent issues with censorship lately, all these issues with banning politically-incorrect books, movies and websites seem to be cropping up every now and then, but none of that was mentioned there, was it. Neither were the troubles in the North East, where an insurgent organization threatened newspapers over their usage of a script.
Finally, the map shows Malaysia's situation as "difficult" and India's situation as "noticeable problems", while the rankings list Malaysia higher than India. Really, you don't have to look at our troubles with the media, just read your own website will ya.
In short, the analysis was poor, incomplete, insufficient, not rigorous and completely headlines-oriented; they didn't even mention real problems in India vis-a-vis freedom of speech, while apparently tracking cases that are, frankly, not really representative of the overall situation on the ground.
Nerds aren't naysayers, Slashdotters are. They weren't always like this; they might not realize it themselves, but the core demographic here is aging quite rapidly. Look at it this way:- most of the crowd here in 1999-2000-ish was in university, or just about to graduate. Now they're well entrenched in their careers, and what's worse, have seen dizzying tech-otupian predictions get crushed in a sabre-rattling bust.
Btw, a slight tangent, but with the full weight of five ipod-generations upon me, I hereby nominate this to be the most insightful of all the 1075 posts in that discussion. You haven't understood the ipod in a techno-marketing sense unless you realize why the ipod was different from other mp3 players then. That was it.
Oh, you wouldn't accuse Singapore of being a liberal democracy. :-) But we're one of the few nations in the world that offers bonuses to couples having babies. East Europe also, if I'm not wrong, has a similar demographical problem; as we all know, those countries haven't been liberal democracies until a decade back.
Nope, the resolution here isn't a Fukuyama-ian hypothesis or a Western-centric Huntington-ian clashes, but pure Freakonomics-ian demographics; note how historically population-rich urban centers such as Angkor Thom (in Cambodia), or Vijayanagara (in India), have had their populations disappear. I'm in a bit of a rush to make the argument fully, but here's the gist:- after reaching a certain zenith, populations start decreasing, simply because they've become much more efficient, if you will, at propagating themselves. It's the end result of improvements in industrial productivity; you 'produce' enough to replace yourselves.
I'm not sure why you'd blame western society for this. Korea, Japan and Singapore have exactly the same problem.
In any case, how would you define 'western society'? Would Russia and Brazil count? They certainly speak languages that originated west of my land in a Meractor's projection.
Unless you were being ironic, in which case, it's all in good fun.
Let's just say we're preparing to corner the entire market there is for knowledge outsourcing! ;-)
"450k ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates
May be if you dropped watching so much porno and picked up a math book instead... :-)
You Americans might find this ironic, but the Indian Constitution, when it was first promulgated in 1950, actually had protection for context-free, free speech (meaning, free speech for free speech's sake without any restrictions whatsoever). The First Amendment, promulgated in 1951, actually introduced some restrictions for public order and such (this is could be said to be ironic from an American viewpoint, coz the American First Amendment does the exact opposite)
Governance in India is often described as a mechanism for minimising the chance of forming mobs. In that sense, as an Indian citizen, I actually don't mind a cursory banning of a pamphlet or a book here and there, but the caveat is this: any such ban must be temporary, limited in scope, and subject to public review later.
The mechanism for Internet regulation falls short in all three respects; as such, there's no way for Indian citizens to know if a website has been blocked for judicio-political reasons, or if the network connection is down. Additionally, there's no possible way for oversight on the banning process; if an Indian national feels that her website has been banned by the Department of Telecommunications, the only possible way she can find out for sure is by filing a Request for Information with the Department. The total processing for such a request might take thirty days at least; clearly, an unsustainable proposition in Internet time. Also, there's no possible way for ask for a review on the said ban, a situation that, must be noted, does not happen in other media such as print or cinema or television [1].
As I was writing this rant up, I finally RTFA-ed, and am glad to note that the author also echoes the same points. :-) But yeah, the point here is this:- at least in an Indian context, there are no grey areas here, merely presumably-well-intended-but-extremely-shoddy policy that is more troublesome than it is useful.
--
[1] - An interesting thought struck me here, but if you think about it, television, currently, is the medium with the least amount of censorship mechanisms in place; while there was supposed to be regulation and oversight over the medium as well, that's currently mired down with competing interests fighting over. Books and movies might be rioted over, banned and (in the case of movies only), censored for good taste, but private television, as things are, is completely unregulated. This is truly an ironic state of affairs for anyone who's lived through Doordarshan's heyday in 1980's and early '90's, when just about everything shown on national television had a political subtext.
This is Singapore we're talking about. :-) We've got more cameras than any city other than London. We also outlaw outdoor political demonstrations with more than four people involved, and yup, we aren't afraid to clamp down.
So yeah. Civil society has a lot more to fear in Singapore than compromised ez-link cards. Big Brother is already here, and advertises himself quite freely.
Well, it wouldn't be under my dime, seeing as it is that the EZ-link card is not linked to anything else. You "top-up" value into a card upfront; when you pay for a ride, the price of that ride gets debitted from your card.
But yeah. If all that you want to do is to beat fares in the MRT, you don't have to clone cards or anything. There is a very, very low-tech, but highly successful, way of doing it. ;-)