Avoiding Products "Made in Taiwan"
on
Buying a New TV?
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· Score: 1
The Taiwanese government has annually paid $2 million to select
lobbying firms that peddle influence in the American government.
An example of a lobbying firm is "Cassidy & Associates", which is
mentioned in "Big
Business Comes to Aid of China". The Taiwanese use lobbying firms
to paint an image of Taiwan that appeals to Americans even though
the image is false.
What is the truth?
Please read "Fire-Breathing
Dragon Burns Americans and Tibetans". In 2000 May, the Department
of Justice identified Taiwan as an intelligence threat. Please read
"Reno
calls Taiwan an intelligence threat". Rules at the
executive branch of the government prohibit the Justice Department and the
FBI from commenting on why Taiwan has been added to the list of
nations that pose a threat to American security. However, we at SlashDot
can easily understand "why" when we see the facts: for example,
the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that the majority of spies who steal
American military technology to give to Beijing actually were born and raised
in Taiwan.
Most Versatile Setup for LCD Television
on
Buying a New TV?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
For maximum flexibility, select the following for your $1000 budget.
The NextVision N6 will convert any HDTV or SDTV signal into
an RGB video signal and an audio signal that can be connected
to a nice LCD monitor and a high-quality stereo, respectively. Furthermore,
the NextVision N6 has a built-in SDTV tuner, so you can
immediately start watching standard NTSC television programs.
While you enjoy your time shopping for this equipment,
please remember that when you buy products made in a particular
country, you indirectly support the value system of that country.
So, please avoid products that are made in China (which includes
Taiwan and Hong Kong). At Amnesty International
and Tibet Online, you can find plenty of reasons to avoid products
"Made in China" (which includes "Made in Taiwan" and "Made in Hong Kong").
If you wish to understand why Maher Hawash did what he did despite having a comfortable life in the United States of America, I suggest that you read "Immigrants: Traitors Among Us".
Many of us, including folks in the SlashDot community,
immediately assumed that Maher "Mike" Hawash was innocent
because we routinely confuse 3 groups of immigrants. We
can characterize them by 3 metrics: wealth upon
entry to the United States of America (USA), educational
level upon entry to the USA, and desire to assimilate.
"3", "2", and "1" means "high", "medium", and "low", respectively. Here,
"wealth" and "education" means the relative wealth and
the relative education that the immigrants had in their
home country (i. e. not the USA). "desire to assimilate"
means accepting and admiring Western values, not merely
wanting to learn English. The
3 groups are the following.
Group 1 has these characteristics: (wealth, education,
desire to assimilate) = (1, 1, 3). Immigrants in this group are
typified by the Japanese and European immigrants who came to the
USA during the early part of the 20th century. They are
mentioned often in discussions of Ellis Island and the Statue
of Liberty. Americans of Japanese ancestry volunteered to
die in World War II in the defense of the USA.
Group 2 has these characteristics: (wealth, education, desire
to assimilate) = (1, 1, 2). Immigrants in this group
are typified by South American immigrants. Most of them
prefer to cling to their own ethnic language: usually Spanish.
They are ambivalent about acquiring Western values. They
create their own community, which is large enough to support
several ethnic-language television stations (e. g. Hispanic
television). At the same time, there are notable exceptions
among these South American immigrants. The Wall Street
Journal, in 2003, reported that several Central-American
immigrants admired the USA so much that they volunteered to
join the American military and fought the tyranical regime of
Saddam Hussein.
Group 3 has these characteristics: (wealth, education, desire
to assimilate) = (3, 3, 1). Immigrants in this group are typified
by Middle Easterners (e. g. Iranians, Palestinians), Chinese,
Indians, and Koreans. They enter the USA by enrolling in
primarily graduate school or secondarily undergraduate school
at the university. They believe that "ethnicity" is determined
by genes and that each "ethnicity" has a natural and normal
culture. They believe that Western culture is only for
"White" people and that Chinese culture (for examply) is only for Chinese
people, where "Chinese" is an ethnicity. These immigrants believe
that Western culture is equal to Chinese culture in quality and
that Western brutality prevented non-Western societies from
prospering. These immigrants insist that their children
learn their "ethnic" language; if their children refuse to learn
their "ethnic" language, then they are supposedly denying their "ethnicity".
These immigrants and their descendents identify strongly with
the country (i. e. not the USA) of their supposed "ethnicity".
The immigrants in this group believe that the American high-technology industry -- and the entire American economy --
would collapse without
the brainpower of immigrants. These immigrants have a proud
view of their own capabilities.
These immigrants believe that the USA needs them far more than
they need the USA.
Group 3 is the group that produces most of the Taiwanese spies
who steal American technology to give to Beijing. Both spies
mentioned in
"Two Men
Arrested for Planning to Smuggle High-Tech Encryption Devices
to China" are born and raised in Taiwan but emigrated to the
USA. Katrina Leung is also from Group 3; she was recently arrested
for giving national security secrets to Beijing. Please read
"FBI
Changing Counterintelligence Tactics". Group 3 is
also the group that produces people like Maher Hawash.
Many of us in the SlashDot community attended college
and obtained a technical degree. More than 50% of our classmates
w
AMD is buying the 80x86 division of National Semiconductor (NSM) in order to obtain the embedded 80x86 technology and employee talent for lowering the power consumption of Opteron and Athlon64. The AMD 80x86 processors have generally run hotter than Intel 80x86 processors. Since AMD is in a brutal competition with Intel for marketshare, AMD must quickly improve its competitive position.
AMD will not use the 80x86 division of NSM to create a 80x86 embedded processor. 80x86 chips fare poorly in the embedded market, which is dominated by ARM.
People who actually understand how operating-system code works should be able to earn a ton of money by shorting the stock of SCO. At some point, we just ask a group of Ph.D. students in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University to write a clean-room version of the disputed code. Problem solved. SCO stock collapses.
Many of the Wall Street analysts hyping up the SCO stock to their clients have no idea about the ease with which the disputed code can be re-written by capable graduate students of computer science. The analysts are fools, and so are their clients.
Let us keep this secret to ourselves, the Slashdotters. We will make a bundle of money. Some of us need downpayments on a new house.
Occasionally, the markets operate in a way that defies the
observations of conventional pundits. Conventional wisdom
says that the primary competitor of the Athlon64 will be the
Deerfield (an Itanium chip). Both are 64-bit chips, and both target the
same desktop market.
However IBM's recent entry, the PPC970, has radically altered
the desktop landscape. The new Apple computers powered with the
PPC970 are genuine workstations sold as desktops. The
ARS Technica
article indicates that the SPEC2000 performance for the
PPC970 is 937 and 1051 for integer applications and floating-point
applications, respectively. The Athlon64 is a weaker version of the server
chip, the Opteron. The PPC970 has about the same performance
as the Opteron. (reference: SPEC
performance list)Hence, the PPC970 is sure to beat Athlon64
across a broad range of applications.
What is particularly interesting about the PPC970 is that it
was designed and built largely without H-1B employees. Both IBM and
HP have a policy of not hiring anyone who does not have American citizenship
or permanent residence unless that applicant has a Ph.D. Clearly, American companies do not need H-1B employees to produce awesome products.
An important unstated question is "How do private persons who support the basic legality of Linux contribute to the 'Open Source Now' Fund?" The vociferousness of the support (for Linux and the open-source movement) indicated by writers in Slashdot articles suggests that tens of thousands of private persons would be happy to contribute $100 in the legal battle against SCO.
The revenue of Sun Microsystems in the quarter ended June 2003 fell sharply from the revenue in the same quarter of 2002. Please read "Sun Earnings Trail Expectations".
The revenue fell far short of Wall Street expectations, and the stock promptly crashed.
Linux brings no value to Sun and actually destroys Sun's profits. Why? For years, Sun has hidden its performance-poor servers behind its Solaris operating system. Sun focused its marketing message on "the whole system" and said that performance is only one part of the system value. Most of that system value outside of simple performance came from Solaris.
Now, with Linux, the Sun salesperson can no longer argue that the operating system has some intrinsic value over the operation system of, say, an IBM machine. The IBM machine and the Sun machine are running the same operating system, Linux. Then, the comparison of the two machines comes down to performance. In other words, the customers will be forced to look at the quality of the basic hardware. In this area, Sun falls woefully short. Look at the results for the ""SPEC benchmark" or the "TPC-C benchmark".
Statistics about female-to-male ratios are excellent hard facts because people who vociferously defend Indian culture while fighting with tooth and nail to stay in the United States of America (USA) cannot simply "talk away" the statistics. If one or two Indian families used infanticide or abortion to rid themselves of baby girls, then their atrocious behavior would not affect national statistics of female-to-male ratios. The only way that the ratio of females to males in India could be so shockingly out of the norm is that the majority of Indians practice infanticide or abortions targetting female fetuses. No amount of "talk manipulation" or "word games" can alter this shocking fact.
The facts are very shocking. Indian culture has a fundamental problem that cannot be solved by technology like the proposed low-bandwidth Internet connection, nuclear missiles, illegally obtained multiprocessor technology, etc. Apologists point to the level of poverty in Indian. However, look at Vietnam. It is even more impoverished than Indian, and most of the Vietnamese are farmers. Guess what? Vietnam has a normal ratio of women to men. The Vietnamese do not have low-bandwidth Internet connections, nuclear missiles, or illegally obtained multiprocessor technology, etc. Yet, the Vietnamese do not practice infanticide or abortions targettng female fetuses.
The observations about Indian culture also apply to Chinese culture. In fact, view statistics about female-to-male ratios at " Populations.com ". Compare the ratios for the United States of America, China, India, Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea. There is an endemic problem in India, China, and South Korea. Technology will not solve this problem. Why? The problem is one of morality.
Joy of joys. The Indians are now wasting millions of dollars
in bringing a low-bandwidth Internet connection into the villages. How can this Internet connection possibly benefit a backward, barbaric village? Why don't the Indians spend their money on more important things like improving their culture?
How does the Internet stop female infanticide or
abortions targetting female fetuses? Attempts at destroying
the female sex are rampant in India.
Backward, possibly even barbaric, societies are characterized
by skewed priorities in spending. The Indians spend
hundreds of millions of dollars on atomic-weapons research.
Witness the recent attempts at building missiles with the
capability of delivering a nuclear warhead. Meanwhile,
the population engages in massive female infanticide or
abortions targetting female fetuses.
Identical comments apply to China. Millions
of dollars are spent on atomic-weapons research and on
sending astronauts into outer space. Meanwhile, the population
engages in massive female infanticide or abortions targetting
female fetuses. Instead of spending millions of dollars
on weapons research, why do the Chinese refuse to spend
those wasted dollars on education programs that improve
their backward culture?
The evidence for this anti-female atrocity is overwhelming. Please read
"Mystery of the
missing women" by the "Toronto Star". The normal male-to-female
birth ratio is 1.05. Japan, Canada, the United States of
America (USA), and even Vietnam have this ratio. By contrast,
India, China, and South Korea have a ratio of 1.15. Further, the
ratio of women to men is, normally, 106. Japan, Canada, the USA,
and even Vietnam have this ratio. By contrast, India,
China, and South Korea have a ratio of about 95.
It really is a big joke to read about how Indians or Chinese are
bringing high technology into remote parts of India or China.
They have their priorities completely backwards. First,
introduce modern culture and modern notions of morality; then,
worry about whether the Indian or Chinese boy can surf the web.
By the way, having a modern notion of morality is unrelated
to the degree of wealth in a nation. Look at impoverished Vietnam. It has a normal ratio of women
to men. Look at wealthy South Korea. It has an abnormal ratio.
The female shortage in China and India is extremely severe. It is so severe
that even the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), in 1999, did a front-page
story on the problem in China. According to the WSJ,
Chinese men kidnap Vietnamese women and force them to be brides.
When they try to escape, the Chinese men cut their Achilles tendon.
One person with one aerosol can of CFCs cannot do much damage to the ozone layer. However, 300 million people, each having 1 aerosol can, can significantly destroy the ozone layer.
What's the population of the globe? 6 billion?
Multiply the polluting effects of 1 person by a factor of 6 billion. 6 billion people would eat all the fish in the oceans, clog the atmosphere with CO2 (worsening a greenhouse effect) from billions of automobiles, etc. Get the picture?
White Terror in Taiwan ended in 1987. The policy that banned the speaking of Taiwanese on the school grounds lasted until 1990 -- recent enough to count as a current event. "ban" means that a Taiwanese student would be beat or slapped by a Chinese for the "crime" of speaking the Taiwanese language on the school grounds.
This policy of emphasizing Chinese nationalism exists throughout China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan. To this day, the Chinese in Taiwan insist, via the Taiwanese constitution, that both Taiwan and Tibet are parts of China. Most of the Chinese spies who steal American military technology to give to Beijing were born and raised in Taiwan.
The perniciousness of Chinese nationalism permeates even science and technology. So, the Chinese have created a new encoding/decoding format for audio and visual data. Again, this has nothing to do with avoiding royalty payments to Western companies. Most Chinese and their businesses simply do not pay royalties for intellectual property. They simply pirate (i. e. steal) what they want. That is why China (which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong) is the piracy capital of the world. About 92% of all software (i. e. computer programs, movies, music, etc.) in China is pirated.
The driving force behind the new coding standard for music and video in China is simply nationalism, which is more correctly labeled "fascism". The Chinese have repeatedly insisted on the first two items in this list.
Chinese version of capitalism
Chinese version of human rights
Chinese version of coding/decoding
The Chinese now insist on the last item in the above list even though most Chinese and their businesses have not, do not now, and will not ever pay royalies on intellectual property. China (which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong) is the piracy capital of the world. Even though DVD's and CD's may have movies or music encoded in a royalty-required encoding format, the Chinese simply do not pay the royalties. They freely pirate the whole DVD or CD.
As for speaking Taiwanese or Mandarin, the tragedy in Taiwan began with the 228 massacre and lasted for 40 years of white terror. If any Taiwanese spoke Taiwanese in the halls of the school or on the schoolyard, the Chinese would beat him and slap him. The Chinese bystanders would not care.
In the United States of America, a child has been free to speak Spanish in the halls of the school or on the schoolyard.
The reason that the Chinese developed a new standard for compressing and de-compressing
audio and video has nothing to do with the quality of a compression standard. It certainly has nothing to do with royalties. Currently, the Chinese are the
#1 pirates of software, music, and movies. China (which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong)
is the piracy capital of the world. Please read "China's
Pirates" and
"China: Imitation Nation".
Most Chinese and their businesses simply do not pay royalties for any kind of
intellectual property. The Chinese just steal what they want.
So, why did the Chinese develop a new compression standard? The reason is fascism,
which is nationalism based on race. Consider the following.
Several years ago, the
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that it would stop using English
at press briefings for foreign journalists even though English is the universal language that the foreign ministries of most countries use to communicate with foreign journalists. The Chinese insisted that foreign journalists learn Mandarin as all future press briefings would be conducted in Mandarin..
The Chinese have repeatedly
said, "We reject decadent Western capitalism. We accept only capitalism with
Chinese characteristics."
Consider Taiwan. Until about 1990, the
Chinese beat and slapped any Taiwanese student who spoke Taiwanese in class.
About 15% of the Taiwanese population considers themselves Taiwanese. The other 85% considers
themselves Chinese. (Imagine the justifiable outrage that good folks in the West would feel if students were slapped for speaking Spanish in schools in Florida.)
The only effective way for the West to combat Chinese fascism is to acknowledge it
and to fight it. Currently, the United States of America (USA) has a policy of giving
China an immigration quota of 60,000, which is divided evenly among Hong Kong, Taiwan,
and mainland China. We should immediately slash that quota down to 20,000, which is
the allotment given to all other countries (like Canada, Japan, etc.) We should
consider reducing that quota even further -- down to 10,000.
Still, since the Chinese claim
that fascism is so wonderful, then there is no reason for them to flee from
China to the USA. Therein, we can justify reducing the immigration quota to zero.
Please read "Fire-Breathing Dragon Burns Americans and Tibetans". The Taiwanese have stated quite clearly that Taiwan is part of China. The Taiwanese have firmly and gladly asserted that Tibet is an integral part of "One China" even while the Chinese are beating and killing Tibetan nuns.
As well, the Taiwanese have invested more than $50 billion into more than 50,000 businesses in mainland China. "Made in Taiwan" does mean "Made in China". Some of those businesses involve stealing American military technology and giving it to Beijing.
The Taiwanese have already told us that they are Chinese.
For a country that is as backward as mainland China, possessing the ability
to make a high-performance 32-bit pipelined microprocessor is a tad surprising.
However, when you think of the intimate relationship between Taiwan and mainland
China, you realize that the technology for the Dragon microprocessor came from Taiwan.
So, things are not that surprising.
Consider the following.
The constitution of the Chinese living in Taiwan supports the integration of both Tibet and Mongolia into mainland China. While Tibetans suffer and die at the hands of the Chinese People's Liberation Army,
the Chinese in Taiwan support integrating Tibet into "One China".
The Chinese son of the chairman of a powerful conglomerate in Taiwan has
joined with the son of Jiang Zemin, the butcher of Tibet, to build an
advanced silicon-wafer factory in Shanghai.
(reference: "Sons
of prominent Chinese team up on chip venture")
Senior Chinese military officials retired from the Taiwanese military
have gone to mainland China and given military secrets about the American
F-16 fighter jet to the Beijing government. (reference:
"Military
secrets on sale to China")
The Wall Street Journal reports that the majority of American spies who steal
sensitive computer and military technology (like microprocessor blueprints) to give to
mainland China are actually born and raised in Taiwan.
Both spies mentioned in
"Two Men Arrested for Planning to Smuggle High-Tech Encryption Devices to
China" are born and raised in Taiwan.
In other words, we Americans should blame ourselves. Why? American
companies, especially those in Silicon Valley, employ hordes of Chinese
from Taiwan. When they are given lucrative opportunities in mainland
China, they will seize those opportunities. Some of those opportunities
involve giving sensitive American technology to Beijing. We did this to ourselves; we made it easy for the Taiwanese to give American technology to Beijing.
This hemorrhaging of technology will continue until we in the United States
of America (USA) wake up. We should treat Taiwan as a province of China.
When we slap punitive sanctions against China, we should also apply those
sanctions against Taiwan. If we do not want to give sensitive technology
to China, then we should not give sensitive technology to Taiwan. Period.
Several companies in Silicon Valley prohibit Chinese nationals from working
on technologies deemed sensitive by the American government. Yet, those
very same companies readily employ Taiwanese nationals to work on the
same sensitive technologies. Folks, let's wake up before the fire-breathing
dragon burns
us Americans along with the Tibetans.
Most of the brands of rechargeable batteries have about the same performance. Rechargeable batteries, like toothpaste, is a commodity product. If you want minimum cost, avoid specialty outlets like Best Buy, RadioShack, etc. Go to Target or Walmart and look in the battery aisle. In fact, if you buy plain-vanilla electronic goods and supplies, then you should always go to Target or Walmart. Never go to a specialty electronics store.
At Target, you will probably find 3 or 4 brands of rechargeable batteries. Since all the brands are about the same in performance, you should select the brand based on country of origin. Remember. When you buy a product, you indirectly support the value system in the country of origin. In other words, avoid "Made in China". You can find enough reasons for avoiding "Made in China" at Amnesty International or Tibet Online . "Made in China" also includes "Made in Taiwan" or "Made in Hong Kong".
"Made in USA", "Made in Japan", or similar Western-country label is usually a safe bet in terms of (1) the quality of the product and (2) the value system in the country of origin. As an example, consider the Energize Rechargeable Batteries.
The primary reason that Linux still has not penetrated the desktop market is the lack of dialup Internet connectivity. Please read "Can Google Save AOL?". AOL has 25.4 million subscribers, of whom most are dialup users. Unfortunately, there is no AOL client that runs on Linux. The AOL client runs only on Windows.
The killer application for desktops is e-mail, and it requires Internet connectivity.
We are talking "mainstream market", not the market for geeks and nerds. The mainstream market is mainly consumers who like the canned, confined, look-and-feel of an AOL client. It does not allow the typical geek to do much, if any, hacking. However, the AOL client is great for the clueless consumer who wants to check e-mail, get today's weather report, find a nice restaurant, etc. You know. Things for people who actually have a life.
That China will soon have the one of the most powerful
supercomputers in the world is ominous. It will enable
the Chinese to accelerate the development of biological weapons,
chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, etc. This supercomputer
will also enable the Chinese to quickly crack encrypted
messages.
The United States of America (USA) must and should beat China in every
technological area. Why? Because our values are superior.
Please read "Kill
and Cull". The Chinese routinely harvest (i. e. cut out with
a knife) organs from prisoners while they are still alive.
Some prisoners are skinned alive in order to sell their skins
to the highest bidder in a black market for organs. Almost
as chilling, Amnesty International reports that the Chinese
routinely rape, torture, and kill Tibetan nuns.
The USA and China are not equivalent societies. Why kind
of society is China?
It is a brutal dictatorship. What kind of society is the USA?
It is a bastion of human rights and democratic values. We
should be very concerned when China beats the USA in any
technological area because when China beats the USA,
China enhances its ability to export its values across the world.
We should not be concerned if Canada or
other society with comparable regard for human rights has a supercomputer that outpowers
an American supercomputer. However, China is different.
Apologists for China are very slick. (Some of the apologists
are employees of the "China's People Daily".) They employ
a strategy of personifying a nation. Please read "Re:I think that Communist China will overtake
US". By personifying a nation, the apologists trick you
into using typical person-to-person social etiquette to support
the brutal dictatorship called "China". So, for example,
we often say, "Sally should just mind her own business if she
does not want other people poking their noses into her business."
The apologists hijack this social etiquette and apply it in
personifying a nation. The apologists say, "The USA should
'just mind its own business' if it does not want other nations
poking their noses into American business." Slick. Very slick.
Allow me to conclude by emphasizing that the majority of
apologists for China are ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and
China. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reports that the majority
of spies stealing computer and other critical technology
for mainland China actually were born and raised in Taiwan.
Please read "Two
Men Arrested for Planning to Smuggle High-Tech Encryption Devices to China".
Most (but not all) Chinese immigrants in the USA insist that
American society is equivalent to Chinese society. Their attitude
is shockingly different from the Russians who immigrated to
the USA during the Soviet era. The Russian immigrants viewed the USA as
being superior to the Soviet Union and hoped that the USA
would force the Soviet Union to reform. The Russian immigrants would be
alarmed when a Soviet supercomputer outpowered the best
American supercomputer.
By contrast, the Chinese immigrants feel that a Chinese supercomputer
challenging the best American supercomputer is a wonderful
thing.
The black market for organs already exists. Please read
"Kill
and cull: China rejects doctor's testimony". This article gives
a chilling description of how Chinese "doctors" harvest organs
from prisoners while they are still alive. These organs then
go to wealthy customers in a growing black market.
The primary reason for hunting whales is food. Many Japanese consider whale meat to be a delicacy. Currently, the Japanese government circumvents the ban on whale hunting by claiming that it needs to catch and slaughter a few whales per year for research.
Once the government agency catches and dissects a whale for this supposed research, it sells the whale meat to select restaraunts. The meat is expensive and garners a hefty profit.
Here is another example of why human overpopulation is a problem. We simply cannot allow a free-for-all to hunt whales for food. Whales are far less numerous than many varieties of fish and would soon be extinct if people ate enough whale meat to satiate their appetites. Actually, many varieties of fish are on the verge of extinction due to over-trawling.
The outlook for mankind is rather gloomy. Once the Chinese population achieves the same purchasing power as the Western population, many varieties of sea life will simply be eated out of extinction. Unlike the Japanese, the Chinese are far more insistent on their "right" to have what they simply "want". The whales and other marine life are simply no match for 1 billion mouths -- 1 billion selfish mouths.
The SCO lawsuit is much ado about nothing at all. The only entity that might be hurt by the SCO lawsuit is IBM.
As for the alleged code that was stolen from SCO UNIX, let's assume that it is stolen. It won't terminate Linux and won't force anyone to enter into SCO's licensing scheme. Just about any self-respecting Ph.D. student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University could easily write a clean-room verion that duplicates the functionality of the stolen code. Then, we replace the stolen code wtih the clean-room version.
We could entice the Ph.D. student to do our bidding by promising that he'll be set up with a blonde girlfriend if he finishes the code quickly.
The official overseas website for TRON is a good resource for understanding TRON. TRON splashed into the US technical journals in the mid 1980s and appeared as a specification for a new 32-bit microprocessor. Dr. Sakamura wrote an article in an old issue of IEEE Micros and details the full architecture of the processor. It is closely related to the 68000 by Motorola.
Unfortunately, Mr. Sakamura was not aware of key developments in microprocessor development in the USA. Just at the moment that he had announced the new TRON instruction set architecture (ISA), microprocessor development in the USA was undergoing a revolution. Numerous studies in academia were published on how compilers and programmers actually used instructions. The computer-engineering community reached a consensus that complex addressing modes should not be implemented in the hardware. This conclusion was backed by the quantitive statistical measurements of actual programs.
Unfortunately, the TRON ISA continued the mistake of using complex addressing modes (ala 68000). Instead of simply admitting that he had made a mistake, Dr. Sakamura clings stubbornly to the idea that the TRON ISA is just as good as the ISA of ARM, etc.
The American government is almost as stubborn as Ken Sakamura. The government viewed the proposed TRON ISA as a threat to the dominance of American microprocessors. This view is understandable since, at that time (mid 1980s), Japanese companies threatened American dominance in a number of American technologies. (One example is DRAM.) The Japanese government had, also, just launched their 5th generation computer project. American officials feared that Japan would soon supplant the USA as the #1 computer manufacturer. So, even though the TRON ISA was clearly inferior to most modern processor ISAs developed by American engineers, the American government went hogwild and demanded that the Japanese government stop developing a personal computer based on the TRON ISA.
In the end, this American stubbornness actually helped the Japanese government by stopping it from wasting millions of dollars on a project (to build a TRON personal computer) that would have failed. By the way, the 5th generation project was also a massive failure.
Americans should stop worrying about the superiority of American technology and morals. The 21st century never became PAX Asia despite all the doom and gloom predictions in the late 20th century. The 21st century is PAX Americana. The hordes of Asian immigrants flooding into the USA in order to get the hell out of Asia should have been a big hint.
Please consult "The Mathematical Association of America (MAA)". It is the definitive source of recommendations for good textbooks on every topic in mathematics. According to the MAA, two textbooks about discrete mathematics are most highly recommended.
They are the following.
Maurer, Stephen B. and Ralston, Anthony. Discrete Algorithmic
Mathematics Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1991.
Ross, Kenneth A. and Wright, Charles R.B. Discrete Mathematics,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1985, 1988, 1999. Third Edition.
In particular, the second textbook has plenty of examples. Answers to many of the odd-numbered problems are also included in the back of the book.
The book by Ross and Wright is essentially the best book on discrete mathematics if you are pursuing a course of self study. The best book also costs plenty of money but is worth it. You will find it to be a useful reference long after you have graduated with your degree in computer science. Discrete mathematics is, after all, the foundation of modern computer science.
Slashdot Mirror
What is the truth?
Please read "Fire-Breathing Dragon Burns Americans and Tibetans". In 2000 May, the Department of Justice identified Taiwan as an intelligence threat. Please read "Reno calls Taiwan an intelligence threat". Rules at the executive branch of the government prohibit the Justice Department and the FBI from commenting on why Taiwan has been added to the list of nations that pose a threat to American security. However, we at SlashDot can easily understand "why" when we see the facts: for example, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that the majority of spies who steal American military technology to give to Beijing actually were born and raised in Taiwan.
- NextVision N6
by Viewsonic
-
Sony SXGA LCD monitor
-
Sony stereo system
-
video/audio cables
The NextVision N6 will convert any HDTV or SDTV signal into an RGB video signal and an audio signal that can be connected to a nice LCD monitor and a high-quality stereo, respectively. Furthermore, the NextVision N6 has a built-in SDTV tuner, so you can immediately start watching standard NTSC television programs.While you enjoy your time shopping for this equipment, please remember that when you buy products made in a particular country, you indirectly support the value system of that country. So, please avoid products that are made in China (which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong). At Amnesty International and Tibet Online, you can find plenty of reasons to avoid products "Made in China" (which includes "Made in Taiwan" and "Made in Hong Kong").
If you wish to understand why Maher Hawash did what he did despite having a comfortable life in the United States of America, I suggest that you read "Immigrants: Traitors Among Us".
Group 3 is the group that produces most of the Taiwanese spies who steal American technology to give to Beijing. Both spies mentioned in "Two Men Arrested for Planning to Smuggle High-Tech Encryption Devices to China" are born and raised in Taiwan but emigrated to the USA. Katrina Leung is also from Group 3; she was recently arrested for giving national security secrets to Beijing. Please read "FBI Changing Counterintelligence Tactics". Group 3 is also the group that produces people like Maher Hawash.
Many of us in the SlashDot community attended college and obtained a technical degree. More than 50% of our classmates w
AMD will not use the 80x86 division of NSM to create a 80x86 embedded processor. 80x86 chips fare poorly in the embedded market, which is dominated by ARM.
Many of the Wall Street analysts hyping up the SCO stock to their clients have no idea about the ease with which the disputed code can be re-written by capable graduate students of computer science. The analysts are fools, and so are their clients.
Let us keep this secret to ourselves, the Slashdotters. We will make a bundle of money. Some of us need downpayments on a new house.
However IBM's recent entry, the PPC970, has radically altered the desktop landscape. The new Apple computers powered with the PPC970 are genuine workstations sold as desktops. The ARS Technica article indicates that the SPEC2000 performance for the PPC970 is 937 and 1051 for integer applications and floating-point applications, respectively. The Athlon64 is a weaker version of the server chip, the Opteron. The PPC970 has about the same performance as the Opteron. (reference: SPEC performance list)Hence, the PPC970 is sure to beat Athlon64 across a broad range of applications.
What is particularly interesting about the PPC970 is that it was designed and built largely without H-1B employees. Both IBM and HP have a policy of not hiring anyone who does not have American citizenship or permanent residence unless that applicant has a Ph.D. Clearly, American companies do not need H-1B employees to produce awesome products.
An important unstated question is "How do private persons who support the basic legality of Linux contribute to the 'Open Source Now' Fund?" The vociferousness of the support (for Linux and the open-source movement) indicated by writers in Slashdot articles suggests that tens of thousands of private persons would be happy to contribute $100 in the legal battle against SCO.
Linux brings no value to Sun and actually destroys Sun's profits. Why? For years, Sun has hidden its performance-poor servers behind its Solaris operating system. Sun focused its marketing message on "the whole system" and said that performance is only one part of the system value. Most of that system value outside of simple performance came from Solaris.
Now, with Linux, the Sun salesperson can no longer argue that the operating system has some intrinsic value over the operation system of, say, an IBM machine. The IBM machine and the Sun machine are running the same operating system, Linux. Then, the comparison of the two machines comes down to performance. In other words, the customers will be forced to look at the quality of the basic hardware. In this area, Sun falls woefully short. Look at the results for the ""SPEC benchmark" or the "TPC-C benchmark".
The facts are very shocking. Indian culture has a fundamental problem that cannot be solved by technology like the proposed low-bandwidth Internet connection, nuclear missiles, illegally obtained multiprocessor technology, etc. Apologists point to the level of poverty in Indian. However, look at Vietnam. It is even more impoverished than Indian, and most of the Vietnamese are farmers. Guess what? Vietnam has a normal ratio of women to men. The Vietnamese do not have low-bandwidth Internet connections, nuclear missiles, or illegally obtained multiprocessor technology, etc. Yet, the Vietnamese do not practice infanticide or abortions targettng female fetuses.
The observations about Indian culture also apply to Chinese culture. In fact, view statistics about female-to-male ratios at " Populations.com ". Compare the ratios for the United States of America, China, India, Japan, Vietnam, and South Korea. There is an endemic problem in India, China, and South Korea. Technology will not solve this problem. Why? The problem is one of morality.
Backward, possibly even barbaric, societies are characterized by skewed priorities in spending. The Indians spend hundreds of millions of dollars on atomic-weapons research. Witness the recent attempts at building missiles with the capability of delivering a nuclear warhead. Meanwhile, the population engages in massive female infanticide or abortions targetting female fetuses.
Identical comments apply to China. Millions of dollars are spent on atomic-weapons research and on sending astronauts into outer space. Meanwhile, the population engages in massive female infanticide or abortions targetting female fetuses. Instead of spending millions of dollars on weapons research, why do the Chinese refuse to spend those wasted dollars on education programs that improve their backward culture?
The evidence for this anti-female atrocity is overwhelming. Please read "Mystery of the missing women" by the "Toronto Star". The normal male-to-female birth ratio is 1.05. Japan, Canada, the United States of America (USA), and even Vietnam have this ratio. By contrast, India, China, and South Korea have a ratio of 1.15. Further, the ratio of women to men is, normally, 106. Japan, Canada, the USA, and even Vietnam have this ratio. By contrast, India, China, and South Korea have a ratio of about 95.
It really is a big joke to read about how Indians or Chinese are bringing high technology into remote parts of India or China. They have their priorities completely backwards. First, introduce modern culture and modern notions of morality; then, worry about whether the Indian or Chinese boy can surf the web. By the way, having a modern notion of morality is unrelated to the degree of wealth in a nation. Look at impoverished Vietnam. It has a normal ratio of women to men. Look at wealthy South Korea. It has an abnormal ratio.
The female shortage in China and India is extremely severe. It is so severe that even the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), in 1999, did a front-page story on the problem in China. According to the WSJ, Chinese men kidnap Vietnamese women and force them to be brides. When they try to escape, the Chinese men cut their Achilles tendon.
What's the population of the globe? 6 billion?
Multiply the polluting effects of 1 person by a factor of 6 billion. 6 billion people would eat all the fish in the oceans, clog the atmosphere with CO2 (worsening a greenhouse effect) from billions of automobiles, etc. Get the picture?
This policy of emphasizing Chinese nationalism exists throughout China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan. To this day, the Chinese in Taiwan insist, via the Taiwanese constitution, that both Taiwan and Tibet are parts of China. Most of the Chinese spies who steal American military technology to give to Beijing were born and raised in Taiwan.
The perniciousness of Chinese nationalism permeates even science and technology. So, the Chinese have created a new encoding/decoding format for audio and visual data. Again, this has nothing to do with avoiding royalty payments to Western companies. Most Chinese and their businesses simply do not pay royalties for intellectual property. They simply pirate (i. e. steal) what they want. That is why China (which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong) is the piracy capital of the world. About 92% of all software (i. e. computer programs, movies, music, etc.) in China is pirated.
- Chinese version of capitalism
- Chinese version of human rights
- Chinese version of coding/decoding
The Chinese now insist on the last item in the above list even though most Chinese and their businesses have not, do not now, and will not ever pay royalies on intellectual property. China (which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong) is the piracy capital of the world. Even though DVD's and CD's may have movies or music encoded in a royalty-required encoding format, the Chinese simply do not pay the royalties. They freely pirate the whole DVD or CD.As for speaking Taiwanese or Mandarin, the tragedy in Taiwan began with the 228 massacre and lasted for 40 years of white terror. If any Taiwanese spoke Taiwanese in the halls of the school or on the schoolyard, the Chinese would beat him and slap him. The Chinese bystanders would not care.
In the United States of America, a child has been free to speak Spanish in the halls of the school or on the schoolyard.
So, why did the Chinese develop a new compression standard? The reason is fascism, which is nationalism based on race. Consider the following.
The only effective way for the West to combat Chinese fascism is to acknowledge it and to fight it. Currently, the United States of America (USA) has a policy of giving China an immigration quota of 60,000, which is divided evenly among Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China. We should immediately slash that quota down to 20,000, which is the allotment given to all other countries (like Canada, Japan, etc.) We should consider reducing that quota even further -- down to 10,000.
Still, since the Chinese claim that fascism is so wonderful, then there is no reason for them to flee from China to the USA. Therein, we can justify reducing the immigration quota to zero.
As well, the Taiwanese have invested more than $50 billion into more than 50,000 businesses in mainland China. "Made in Taiwan" does mean "Made in China". Some of those businesses involve stealing American military technology and giving it to Beijing.
The Taiwanese have already told us that they are Chinese.
Consider the following.
In other words, we Americans should blame ourselves. Why? American companies, especially those in Silicon Valley, employ hordes of Chinese from Taiwan. When they are given lucrative opportunities in mainland China, they will seize those opportunities. Some of those opportunities involve giving sensitive American technology to Beijing. We did this to ourselves; we made it easy for the Taiwanese to give American technology to Beijing.
This hemorrhaging of technology will continue until we in the United States of America (USA) wake up. We should treat Taiwan as a province of China. When we slap punitive sanctions against China, we should also apply those sanctions against Taiwan. If we do not want to give sensitive technology to China, then we should not give sensitive technology to Taiwan. Period.
Several companies in Silicon Valley prohibit Chinese nationals from working on technologies deemed sensitive by the American government. Yet, those very same companies readily employ Taiwanese nationals to work on the same sensitive technologies. Folks, let's wake up before the fire-breathing dragon burns us Americans along with the Tibetans.
At Target, you will probably find 3 or 4 brands of rechargeable batteries. Since all the brands are about the same in performance, you should select the brand based on country of origin. Remember. When you buy a product, you indirectly support the value system in the country of origin. In other words, avoid "Made in China". You can find enough reasons for avoiding "Made in China" at Amnesty International or Tibet Online . "Made in China" also includes "Made in Taiwan" or "Made in Hong Kong".
"Made in USA", "Made in Japan", or similar Western-country label is usually a safe bet in terms of (1) the quality of the product and (2) the value system in the country of origin. As an example, consider the Energize Rechargeable Batteries.
The killer application for desktops is e-mail, and it requires Internet connectivity.
We are talking "mainstream market", not the market for geeks and nerds. The mainstream market is mainly consumers who like the canned, confined, look-and-feel of an AOL client. It does not allow the typical geek to do much, if any, hacking. However, the AOL client is great for the clueless consumer who wants to check e-mail, get today's weather report, find a nice restaurant, etc. You know. Things for people who actually have a life.
The United States of America (USA) must and should beat China in every technological area. Why? Because our values are superior.
Please read "Kill and Cull". The Chinese routinely harvest (i. e. cut out with a knife) organs from prisoners while they are still alive. Some prisoners are skinned alive in order to sell their skins to the highest bidder in a black market for organs. Almost as chilling, Amnesty International reports that the Chinese routinely rape, torture, and kill Tibetan nuns.
The USA and China are not equivalent societies. Why kind of society is China? It is a brutal dictatorship. What kind of society is the USA? It is a bastion of human rights and democratic values. We should be very concerned when China beats the USA in any technological area because when China beats the USA, China enhances its ability to export its values across the world. We should not be concerned if Canada or other society with comparable regard for human rights has a supercomputer that outpowers an American supercomputer. However, China is different.
Apologists for China are very slick. (Some of the apologists are employees of the "China's People Daily".) They employ a strategy of personifying a nation. Please read "Re:I think that Communist China will overtake US". By personifying a nation, the apologists trick you into using typical person-to-person social etiquette to support the brutal dictatorship called "China". So, for example, we often say, "Sally should just mind her own business if she does not want other people poking their noses into her business." The apologists hijack this social etiquette and apply it in personifying a nation. The apologists say, "The USA should 'just mind its own business' if it does not want other nations poking their noses into American business." Slick. Very slick.
Allow me to conclude by emphasizing that the majority of apologists for China are ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reports that the majority of spies stealing computer and other critical technology for mainland China actually were born and raised in Taiwan. Please read "Two Men Arrested for Planning to Smuggle High-Tech Encryption Devices to China".
Most (but not all) Chinese immigrants in the USA insist that American society is equivalent to Chinese society. Their attitude is shockingly different from the Russians who immigrated to the USA during the Soviet era. The Russian immigrants viewed the USA as being superior to the Soviet Union and hoped that the USA would force the Soviet Union to reform. The Russian immigrants would be alarmed when a Soviet supercomputer outpowered the best American supercomputer.
By contrast, the Chinese immigrants feel that a Chinese supercomputer challenging the best American supercomputer is a wonderful thing.
The black market for organs already exists. Please read "Kill and cull: China rejects doctor's testimony". This article gives a chilling description of how Chinese "doctors" harvest organs from prisoners while they are still alive. These organs then go to wealthy customers in a growing black market.
Once the government agency catches and dissects a whale for this supposed research, it sells the whale meat to select restaraunts. The meat is expensive and garners a hefty profit.
Here is another example of why human overpopulation is a problem. We simply cannot allow a free-for-all to hunt whales for food. Whales are far less numerous than many varieties of fish and would soon be extinct if people ate enough whale meat to satiate their appetites. Actually, many varieties of fish are on the verge of extinction due to over-trawling.
The outlook for mankind is rather gloomy. Once the Chinese population achieves the same purchasing power as the Western population, many varieties of sea life will simply be eated out of extinction. Unlike the Japanese, the Chinese are far more insistent on their "right" to have what they simply "want". The whales and other marine life are simply no match for 1 billion mouths -- 1 billion selfish mouths.
The SCO lawsuit is much ado about nothing at all. The only entity that might be hurt by the SCO lawsuit is IBM.
As for the alleged code that was stolen from SCO UNIX, let's assume that it is stolen. It won't terminate Linux and won't force anyone to enter into SCO's licensing scheme. Just about any self-respecting Ph.D. student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University could easily write a clean-room verion that duplicates the functionality of the stolen code. Then, we replace the stolen code wtih the clean-room version.
We could entice the Ph.D. student to do our bidding by promising that he'll be set up with a blonde girlfriend if he finishes the code quickly.
Unfortunately, Mr. Sakamura was not aware of key developments in microprocessor development in the USA. Just at the moment that he had announced the new TRON instruction set architecture (ISA), microprocessor development in the USA was undergoing a revolution. Numerous studies in academia were published on how compilers and programmers actually used instructions. The computer-engineering community reached a consensus that complex addressing modes should not be implemented in the hardware. This conclusion was backed by the quantitive statistical measurements of actual programs.
Unfortunately, the TRON ISA continued the mistake of using complex addressing modes (ala 68000). Instead of simply admitting that he had made a mistake, Dr. Sakamura clings stubbornly to the idea that the TRON ISA is just as good as the ISA of ARM, etc.
The American government is almost as stubborn as Ken Sakamura. The government viewed the proposed TRON ISA as a threat to the dominance of American microprocessors. This view is understandable since, at that time (mid 1980s), Japanese companies threatened American dominance in a number of American technologies. (One example is DRAM.) The Japanese government had, also, just launched their 5th generation computer project. American officials feared that Japan would soon supplant the USA as the #1 computer manufacturer. So, even though the TRON ISA was clearly inferior to most modern processor ISAs developed by American engineers, the American government went hogwild and demanded that the Japanese government stop developing a personal computer based on the TRON ISA.
In the end, this American stubbornness actually helped the Japanese government by stopping it from wasting millions of dollars on a project (to build a TRON personal computer) that would have failed. By the way, the 5th generation project was also a massive failure.
Americans should stop worrying about the superiority of American technology and morals. The 21st century never became PAX Asia despite all the doom and gloom predictions in the late 20th century. The 21st century is PAX Americana. The hordes of Asian immigrants flooding into the USA in order to get the hell out of Asia should have been a big hint.
They are the following.
Maurer, Stephen B. and Ralston, Anthony. Discrete Algorithmic Mathematics Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1991.
Ross, Kenneth A. and Wright, Charles R.B. Discrete Mathematics, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1985, 1988, 1999. Third Edition.
In particular, the second textbook has plenty of examples. Answers to many of the odd-numbered problems are also included in the back of the book.
The book by Ross and Wright is essentially the best book on discrete mathematics if you are pursuing a course of self study. The best book also costs plenty of money but is worth it. You will find it to be a useful reference long after you have graduated with your degree in computer science. Discrete mathematics is, after all, the foundation of modern computer science.