For an amazing read look up the BYTE magaxine review of the Lisa. The article takes you on an amazing trip where the writer is trying to describe for the first time so many things we dont even think about.
IIRC he describes the 'pointing device' (mouse) as "about the size of a pack of cigarettes that moves a point on the screen - The screen then uses small pictures of common tasks to represent your actual desk top.
Watching them describe 'the desktop metaphor' when they dont know what it is a crazy reminder of just how fast this all happened...
Have you been outside the 5th ring road? Ive seen factories the likes id never seen in my life. Sprawls of smokestacks just chugging away. Not to mention the fact that DAMN NEAR EVERY RESTAURANT AND MANY HOMES STILL USE COAL.
During the Olympics in 08 they had all the factories shut down for a month prior and seeded the clouds for a week to wash the city and air. Worked wonderfully.
Cars are a problem - and a growing one to say the least - but dont be too quick to discount the manufacturing and a city of 16 million still using coal.
From years of boxing this couldnt be more obvious.
Your hands will fracture, break, bend, and sometimes emulsify... Especially the forefinger middle knuckle and the top pinky knuckle = 'the boxer break.' Over and over.
But each time calcifying over and becoming stronger. After a while you literally have 'hands of stone.'
Now of course my dexterity isnt what it used to be. Typing and fumbling for computer screws reminds me of my favorite pastime often.
Dear god people if you dont know anything about the topic dont post....
China blocked the names of a number of their leaders of late (on Weibo [twitter] and Sina [google]) for a few reasons: 1. There may have been an attempted coup - that accounts for a few names 2. There for sure was the downfall of a major regional leader (Bo Xilai) under very ugly circumstances (right hand man tried to defect to US embassy to avoid being murdered,wife poisoned a spy, etc.) 3. There was a huge NYT article calling out Hu Jintao that was straight propaganda - so much so that they disseminated a chinese language pdf of the article to the general web 4. The old leader Jiang Zhemin has been near death and rumors have swirled. 5. Some other guys kid wrecked a car and killed some people
THESE ARE THE REASONS WHY THOSE NAMES WERE CENSORED. This doesnt portend to any changes. Watch the next few years as freeing China becomes a constant narrative....
I could give the reasons why they have unblocked them now but id rather get out to a party. Try to RTFA and then RSMFAs before posting nonsense.
Nintendo is an ooooooold company. Those same hidden hands that have been there for them when others have had 'supply chain problems' for decades are more useful than some transient body and bad press.
Saudi Arabia is currently flooding the oil market to drive down prices in an attempt to destabilize the economies and governments of Syria and Iran and weaken their broker Russia.
More or less anything else that might be conjured up to explain this precipitous drop (aside from a worldwide recession that is driving down consumption and demand) is just nonsense. This is an odd byproduct of economic warfare. My only question is looking for the bottom so I can maximize returns after this economic war turns into a shooting one.
"What if China goes the DIY route and makes its own ISA or microarchitecture with silicon-level censorship and monitoring, or an always-open backdoor for the Chinese intelligence agencies?"
Then they will have yet again copied the West's products and then rebranded the designs for their own use. As they have been doing for some time now..... China knows for a fact that the US is using backdoors in technology for warfare (see: Iran) and to overthrow governments (see: Arab Spring) - and is not going to long term put itself at risk by using these American technologies that invite 'revolutions of the people' (see: coups).
Net censorship in china is not specifically nationwide. It is done by province. So in Beijing you can read "x" but not in Chongqing and versa vice.
And again most of the censors are just "kids" really. No Older than 30 most of the time. So a bit more tuned in - and prob better at their job than adults would be.
I always heard it was between 5 mao or 1 kuai per post deleted. As there was an attempted coup last week of imagine some kids are getting PAID this week....
If you lived there you'd know this. Everyone in china does.
That is why they are less afraid to post subversive Ideas at times than Americans: their posts will just be deleted by someone making 1RMB a post (15c - an actual figure). As opposed to Americans who I find self censor much more as they know everything they ever type is being specifically cataloged by the NSA.
Funny watching this discussion and last weeks COUP (attempted) gets no mention.
I'm sure the biggest political upheaval in China since the trial of the Gang of Four has little or no signifigant value in this discussion about the actions and motives in any recent actions by said government....
How many open source projects / commercial products are compromised by 3 letter agency insiders? Yeah we can 'look at the source' for some software but I have no pretenses on most anyone being able to find a backdoor left in by the best of the best that MIT / NSA etc have to offer. And with an unlimited budget to boot...
I know if I was in charge id just make sure to get my code into Flash installers, Webkit, MS Office, and a few of the most popular linux packages and call it a day. I mean, what computer worth looking at isnt going to have an office suite, a browser, or flash?
By the looks of Stuxtnet apparently routers are also a good thing to throw backdoors into as well....
Exactly. Blackberry's caving in to the Indian government last year (and Pakistani) to open access to their spy agencies was HUGE news and not debated at conspiracy whatsoever in mainstream press.
Now a year later lumping Nokia and Apple in to the group all of a sudden it is FUD denials and conspiracy..... Child please..... I can read independent news, have a memory longer than 15 minutes, and can combine facts to make logical assumptions.
News: stop insulting my intelligence Slashdot readers: stop jumping to conclusions without at least some of the facts.
I have seen discussions on HARP on Slashdot before - and some interesting comments relating to it that have always stuck with me.
One story was about a grandfather who worked on HARP - said he told stories of having to be taken to the dentist by armed guard and watched while he went under gas in case he started to talk. Then about 3 posts down someone basically tells the same story and ends with his grandfather telling him: "I dont know exactly what we are building, but it ain't for watching the weather, thats for sure."
So before we all go "tin foil hat alert!" this may be more than a case of 'whipping up enemies' and 'passing the buck' - this might be a little glimpse into a world we are rarely told of...
So everyone is assuming Apple isnt going to debut a 7" tablet in January? Or at all in 2012 and will quietly let their marketshare slip away?
The reason the 10" market was trounced by the iPad had a lot to do with the fact that manufacturers couldnt compete with the hardware Apple put together at that price point. While Amazon and Barnes and Noble have nice kit they can sell at a loss assuming they can make it back in their stores - Apple has that same revenue model PLUS actual experience and a rabid user base.
I had an argument with one of the China RIM execs that got thrown off of a plane and arrested last week (boy is he a fun drunk to be around) 3 or 4 years ago. And I told him the same thing:
Me: "Yeah Blackberry is THE business solution at the moment but as an IT guy myself people are already starting to ask how they can get these new fangled iPhones into the business. There is going to be a trickle up effect that you guys sho-."
Him: "What are you an idiot! Apple has NO chance at EVER unseating us. Are you kidding me?! What the hell does a punk like you know?"
And in this manner he carried on and drank long into the night: Blackberry has NOTHING to fear, the iPhone is a toy (just look at the games), and consumers have ZERO effect on business purchases.
And every time I read another death knell for RIM I think of that jackass. If he was one of their global decision makers, and that attitude fit into their corporate culture.... They were lucky to last this long.
From my understanding this breaks the HDMI cable protection, more than anything re-opening 'the analog hole' except with full digital goodness if someone hacks the firmware on a player they can then use the signal freely. Expect many more downloads from 'the usual sources' of HD content....
Will be interesting to see how the industry reacts to this. As all these machines today have upgradeable firmwares and internet connection that wont be able to totally close this break in the hardware spec itself but may cause problems for those seeking to exploit this leak. As we know these companies are more than used to harassing customers for their own interests.
I for one welcome the new freedoms that come with this. Too many devices out now based on the standard for the industry to change overnight - the cat is out of the proverbial bag.
Normally I wouldnt comment on this but as I did this TODAY ill chime in..
I live and work in Beijing and these sort of opportunities come up through the grapevine fairly often - and as weird of a position that it is it somehow makes sense out here. You really have to realize how important 'face' is in China - especially when doing business.
The article is kind of dumb (and of course had been passed around the foreigner community last week to great laughs) but it isnt wrong per se. Having a 'laowai' ('old foreigner') around is good for your social standing. Today I had a client ask to take me out to dinner - which is abnormal - this guy never asks me out to dinner. When I pressed him on the reason he just said 'To introduce you to some friends.' When I arrived tonight I figured it out instantly: I was there to be the token white guy and to give this guy face. To his clients he just became that much more worldly and respectable because he keeps foreigner friends - this man obviously has some connections.
It seems odd and racist (which it is - dont get me wrong) but in a country that probably doesnt even have a word for 'multiculturalism' it works. So tonight I was 'token white friend', I made a couple of good contacts myself, I gave my boss face, and was treated to an amazing dinner where I was marvelled at for my ability to use chopsticks, speak Chinese, and drink 'Chinese white wine.'
Why the hell not? Someone has to make this country open to the outside world and different cultures - daily im doing my part. And for all the times I get harassed for being white I might as well get paid and treated for it on occasion as well.
Sorry is this is just an incoherent rant - but the aforementioned white wine is well on top of me at this point.
I actually find this good news as I was worried there for a minute that Facebook was actually 'getting it' finally and was going to revamp its privacy policies in wake of all of the nasty criticism and high profile people leaving the site. Projects like Diaspora* http://joindiaspora.com/ can hopefully fill in the gaps that Facebook seems oblivious to. I have heard the criticisms that Diaspora* will be only for the technically adept - but I can see companies popping up to fill in the gaps if the market arises.
"The Network Effect" makes FB place incredibly useful and of course power users can wade through everything and get some decent privacy from the service - but I long for the day when that site is clearly in a myspace-esqe death spin as normal users start fleeing for better alternatives. It is the net; everything dies, so it goes. No juggernaut (AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, Napster, Myspace....) has been able to tame it. Facebook will be no different - and all the faster with their current disregard for their userbase.
So if it wasnt set up to make money for the last 5 years - but that time is over - what changes will we see?
Will the growth in cloud / corporate paid users be enough to make the company and quality of the distribution grow ala Red Hat (which some would argue pushed the focus on users to the side for corporate..)?
Or will the money not be enough and will start to put the crunch on Ubuntu - and what end user ramifications would that have?
Apple is perfectly within their rights to not allow programs that will then run arbitrary code on their devices. No court would uphold this and im sure Apples lawyers have already done a preliminary job of putting together a case if this were to happen.
IANAL but it seems pretty airtight that Apple can decide arbitrarily what to run -on their own devices- especially when there are literally millions of phones/platforms that will let you do anything. Did Adobe really think Flash was going to be on top forever? Pretty shortsighted for a tech company if they did. With all the new ossum features in HTML5 why is anyone complaining that Apple is replacing a proprietary format with an open one anyways?
Because US was using twitter as a weapon...?
on
Iran Hacks US Spy Sites
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Among other shady things we have been up to....
China (as well as Iran and Al-Jazeera) accused the US in state newspapers of using twitter to sow discord in Iran by creating accounts and distributing false information to get people whipped up during the protests. They even linked to a few of the particularly shady accounts that dont seem to really be people on the ground but gained thousands of followers by supplying news of people being shot in the street and leaders (falsely) being arrested.
It is no wonder that Iran and China have taken steps to limit the influence that the US can have in domestic affairs by simply creating a twitter troll account.
Information warfare on the web 2.0... Interesting stuff.
In the long run this will also be likely linked to Aspergers Syndrome and other dissociative / personality disorders that we are diagnosing with much greater frequency today in that it reduces peoples interactions with actual human beings (at least vs our 'un-evolved' predecessors) to the point where children are not growing up with a firm grasp of social cues in relation to body language, tone of voice, etc....
Thank Christ I was raised in a time before 4chan....
Slashdot Mirror
For an amazing read look up the BYTE magaxine review of the Lisa. The article takes you on an amazing trip where the writer is trying to describe for the first time so many things we dont even think about.
IIRC he describes the 'pointing device' (mouse) as "about the size of a pack of cigarettes that moves a point on the screen - The screen then uses small pictures of common tasks to represent your actual desk top.
Watching them describe 'the desktop metaphor' when they dont know what it is a crazy reminder of just how fast this all happened...
Relatively speaking?
Have you been outside the 5th ring road? Ive seen factories the likes id never seen in my life. Sprawls of smokestacks just chugging away. Not to mention the fact that DAMN NEAR EVERY RESTAURANT AND MANY HOMES STILL USE COAL.
During the Olympics in 08 they had all the factories shut down for a month prior and seeded the clouds for a week to wash the city and air. Worked wonderfully.
Cars are a problem - and a growing one to say the least - but dont be too quick to discount the manufacturing and a city of 16 million still using coal.
"What goes around, comes around."
Ill go back tomorrow and read this at -1 to see the real discussion....
From years of boxing this couldnt be more obvious.
Your hands will fracture, break, bend, and sometimes emulsify... Especially the forefinger middle knuckle and the top pinky knuckle = 'the boxer break.' Over and over.
But each time calcifying over and becoming stronger. After a while you literally have 'hands of stone.'
Now of course my dexterity isnt what it used to be. Typing and fumbling for computer screws reminds me of my favorite pastime often.
Dear god people if you dont know anything about the topic dont post....
China blocked the names of a number of their leaders of late (on Weibo [twitter] and Sina [google]) for a few reasons:
1. There may have been an attempted coup - that accounts for a few names
2. There for sure was the downfall of a major regional leader (Bo Xilai) under very ugly circumstances (right hand man tried to defect to US embassy to avoid being murdered,wife poisoned a spy, etc.)
3. There was a huge NYT article calling out Hu Jintao that was straight propaganda - so much so that they disseminated a chinese language pdf of the article to the general web
4. The old leader Jiang Zhemin has been near death and rumors have swirled.
5. Some other guys kid wrecked a car and killed some people
THESE ARE THE REASONS WHY THOSE NAMES WERE CENSORED. This doesnt portend to any changes. Watch the next few years as freeing China becomes a constant narrative....
I could give the reasons why they have unblocked them now but id rather get out to a party. Try to RTFA and then RSMFAs before posting nonsense.
You really want to know who set this up?
Find out who scheduled the vote for the same day as the release of the iPhone 5. I think the vote was probably on the docket for awhile. If so...
To whomever made sure these events coincided: Couldn't have been planned better. Well played.
"The answer to all your questions is: Money"
Yakuza.
Nintendo is an ooooooold company. Those same hidden hands that have been there for them when others have had 'supply chain problems' for decades are more useful than some transient body and bad press.
Saudi Arabia is currently flooding the oil market to drive down prices in an attempt to destabilize the economies and governments of Syria and Iran and weaken their broker Russia.
More or less anything else that might be conjured up to explain this precipitous drop (aside from a worldwide recession that is driving down consumption and demand) is just nonsense. This is an odd byproduct of economic warfare. My only question is looking for the bottom so I can maximize returns after this economic war turns into a shooting one.
MIT Girl. Stop.
"What if China goes the DIY route and makes its own ISA or microarchitecture with silicon-level censorship and monitoring, or an always-open backdoor for the Chinese intelligence agencies?"
Then they will have yet again copied the West's products and then rebranded the designs for their own use. As they have been doing for some time now..... China knows for a fact that the US is using backdoors in technology for warfare (see: Iran) and to overthrow governments (see: Arab Spring) - and is not going to long term put itself at risk by using these American technologies that invite 'revolutions of the people' (see: coups).
By the way:
Net censorship in china is not specifically nationwide. It is done by province. So in Beijing you can read "x" but not in Chongqing and versa vice.
And again most of the censors are just "kids" really. No Older than 30 most of the time. So a bit more tuned in - and prob better at their job than adults would be.
I always heard it was between 5 mao or 1 kuai per post deleted. As there was an attempted coup last week of imagine some kids are getting PAID this week....
If you lived there you'd know this. Everyone in china does.
That is why they are less afraid to post subversive Ideas at times than Americans: their posts will just be deleted by someone making 1RMB a post (15c - an actual figure). As opposed to Americans who I find self censor much more as they know everything they ever type is being specifically cataloged by the NSA.
Funny watching this discussion and last weeks COUP (attempted) gets no mention.
I'm sure the biggest political upheaval in China since the trial of the Gang of Four has little or no signifigant value in this discussion about the actions and motives in any recent actions by said government....
That is what I have been wondering.
How many open source projects / commercial products are compromised by 3 letter agency insiders? Yeah we can 'look at the source' for some software but I have no pretenses on most anyone being able to find a backdoor left in by the best of the best that MIT / NSA etc have to offer. And with an unlimited budget to boot...
I know if I was in charge id just make sure to get my code into Flash installers, Webkit, MS Office, and a few of the most popular linux packages and call it a day. I mean, what computer worth looking at isnt going to have an office suite, a browser, or flash?
By the looks of Stuxtnet apparently routers are also a good thing to throw backdoors into as well....
Exactly. Blackberry's caving in to the Indian government last year (and Pakistani) to open access to their spy agencies was HUGE news and not debated at conspiracy whatsoever in mainstream press.
Now a year later lumping Nokia and Apple in to the group all of a sudden it is FUD denials and conspiracy..... Child please..... I can read independent news, have a memory longer than 15 minutes, and can combine facts to make logical assumptions.
News: stop insulting my intelligence
Slashdot readers: stop jumping to conclusions without at least some of the facts.
I have seen discussions on HARP on Slashdot before - and some interesting comments relating to it that have always stuck with me.
One story was about a grandfather who worked on HARP - said he told stories of having to be taken to the dentist by armed guard and watched while he went under gas in case he started to talk. Then about 3 posts down someone basically tells the same story and ends with his grandfather telling him: "I dont know exactly what we are building, but it ain't for watching the weather, thats for sure."
So before we all go "tin foil hat alert!" this may be more than a case of 'whipping up enemies' and 'passing the buck' - this might be a little glimpse into a world we are rarely told of...
So everyone is assuming Apple isnt going to debut a 7" tablet in January? Or at all in 2012 and will quietly let their marketshare slip away?
The reason the 10" market was trounced by the iPad had a lot to do with the fact that manufacturers couldnt compete with the hardware Apple put together at that price point. While Amazon and Barnes and Noble have nice kit they can sell at a loss assuming they can make it back in their stores - Apple has that same revenue model PLUS actual experience and a rabid user base.
I had an argument with one of the China RIM execs that got thrown off of a plane and arrested last week (boy is he a fun drunk to be around) 3 or 4 years ago. And I told him the same thing:
Me: "Yeah Blackberry is THE business solution at the moment but as an IT guy myself people are already starting to ask how they can get these new fangled iPhones into the business. There is going to be a trickle up effect that you guys sho-."
Him: "What are you an idiot! Apple has NO chance at EVER unseating us. Are you kidding me?! What the hell does a punk like you know?"
And in this manner he carried on and drank long into the night: Blackberry has NOTHING to fear, the iPhone is a toy (just look at the games), and consumers have ZERO effect on business purchases.
And every time I read another death knell for RIM I think of that jackass. If he was one of their global decision makers, and that attitude fit into their corporate culture.... They were lucky to last this long.
How will this actually become practical?
From my understanding this breaks the HDMI cable protection, more than anything re-opening 'the analog hole' except with full digital goodness if someone hacks the firmware on a player they can then use the signal freely. Expect many more downloads from 'the usual sources' of HD content....
Will be interesting to see how the industry reacts to this. As all these machines today have upgradeable firmwares and internet connection that wont be able to totally close this break in the hardware spec itself but may cause problems for those seeking to exploit this leak. As we know these companies are more than used to harassing customers for their own interests.
I for one welcome the new freedoms that come with this. Too many devices out now based on the standard for the industry to change overnight - the cat is out of the proverbial bag.
Normally I wouldnt comment on this but as I did this TODAY ill chime in..
I live and work in Beijing and these sort of opportunities come up through the grapevine fairly often - and as weird of a position that it is it somehow makes sense out here. You really have to realize how important 'face' is in China - especially when doing business.
The article is kind of dumb (and of course had been passed around the foreigner community last week to great laughs) but it isnt wrong per se. Having a 'laowai' ('old foreigner') around is good for your social standing. Today I had a client ask to take me out to dinner - which is abnormal - this guy never asks me out to dinner. When I pressed him on the reason he just said 'To introduce you to some friends.' When I arrived tonight I figured it out instantly: I was there to be the token white guy and to give this guy face. To his clients he just became that much more worldly and respectable because he keeps foreigner friends - this man obviously has some connections.
It seems odd and racist (which it is - dont get me wrong) but in a country that probably doesnt even have a word for 'multiculturalism' it works. So tonight I was 'token white friend', I made a couple of good contacts myself, I gave my boss face, and was treated to an amazing dinner where I was marvelled at for my ability to use chopsticks, speak Chinese, and drink 'Chinese white wine.'
Why the hell not? Someone has to make this country open to the outside world and different cultures - daily im doing my part. And for all the times I get harassed for being white I might as well get paid and treated for it on occasion as well.
Sorry is this is just an incoherent rant - but the aforementioned white wine is well on top of me at this point.
I actually find this good news as I was worried there for a minute that Facebook was actually 'getting it' finally and was going to revamp its privacy policies in wake of all of the nasty criticism and high profile people leaving the site. Projects like Diaspora* http://joindiaspora.com/ can hopefully fill in the gaps that Facebook seems oblivious to. I have heard the criticisms that Diaspora* will be only for the technically adept - but I can see companies popping up to fill in the gaps if the market arises.
"The Network Effect" makes FB place incredibly useful and of course power users can wade through everything and get some decent privacy from the service - but I long for the day when that site is clearly in a myspace-esqe death spin as normal users start fleeing for better alternatives. It is the net; everything dies, so it goes. No juggernaut (AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, Napster, Myspace....) has been able to tame it. Facebook will be no different - and all the faster with their current disregard for their userbase.
So if it wasnt set up to make money for the last 5 years - but that time is over - what changes will we see?
Will the growth in cloud / corporate paid users be enough to make the company and quality of the distribution grow ala Red Hat (which some would argue pushed the focus on users to the side for corporate..)?
Or will the money not be enough and will start to put the crunch on Ubuntu - and what end user ramifications would that have?
Sorry nothing but questions here...
Apple is perfectly within their rights to not allow programs that will then run arbitrary code on their devices. No court would uphold this and im sure Apples lawyers have already done a preliminary job of putting together a case if this were to happen.
IANAL but it seems pretty airtight that Apple can decide arbitrarily what to run -on their own devices- especially when there are literally millions of phones/platforms that will let you do anything. Did Adobe really think Flash was going to be on top forever? Pretty shortsighted for a tech company if they did. With all the new ossum features in HTML5 why is anyone complaining that Apple is replacing a proprietary format with an open one anyways?
Among other shady things we have been up to....
China (as well as Iran and Al-Jazeera) accused the US in state newspapers of using twitter to sow discord in Iran by creating accounts and distributing false information to get people whipped up during the protests. They even linked to a few of the particularly shady accounts that dont seem to really be people on the ground but gained thousands of followers by supplying news of people being shot in the street and leaders (falsely) being arrested.
It is no wonder that Iran and China have taken steps to limit the influence that the US can have in domestic affairs by simply creating a twitter troll account.
Information warfare on the web 2.0... Interesting stuff.
In the long run this will also be likely linked to Aspergers Syndrome and other dissociative / personality disorders that we are diagnosing with much greater frequency today in that it reduces peoples interactions with actual human beings (at least vs our 'un-evolved' predecessors) to the point where children are not growing up with a firm grasp of social cues in relation to body language, tone of voice, etc....
Thank Christ I was raised in a time before 4chan....