Actually I have little trouble translating from Chinese to English and vice-versa. I have given running commentaries on HK films to English speakers and running Chinese commentary on American films to my parents (who speak only Chinese). This is probably because I grew up with both languages from when I was a baby so I naturally "think" in both languages and can easily flip-flop between the two. The second thing is I've spent a lot of time since I was a small kid translating as my parents don't speak English. I guess the key is practise.
Religion can be very very addicting. For mystics and very religious people it is something approaching ecstasty. Take for example the famous "Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross which describes how he feels about his religious activities and the union with God. For those who don't know better this would seem like someone writing about their lover.
1. One dark night, fired with love's urgent longings - ah, the sheer grace! - I went out unseen, my house being now all stilled.
2. In darkness, and secure, by the secret ladder, disguised, - ah, the sheer grace! - in darkness and concealment, my house being now all stilled.
3. On that glad night, in secret, for no one saw me, nor did I look at anything, with no other light or guide than the one that burned in my heart.
4. This guided me more surely than the light of noon to where he was awaiting me - him I knew so well - there in a place where no one appeared.
5. O guiding night! O night more lovely than the dawn! O night that has united the Lover with his beloved, transforming the beloved in her Lover.
6. Upon my flowering breast which I kept wholly for him alone, there he lay sleeping, and I caressing him there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.
7. When the breeze blew from the turret, as I parted his hair, it wounded my neck with its gentle hand, suspending all my senses.
8. I abandoned and forgot myself, laying my face on my Beloved; all things ceased; I went out from myself, leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.
Oh, BTW, the paragraph in the middle starting "According to Computer Associates" is supposed to be a direct quote from the article. Must have made a HTML error.
The article also has claims from CA that the DRM damages the computer's ability to make rips of ANY CDs including non-copyrighted CDs.
According to Computer Associates, the Sony software makes itself a default media player on a computer after it is installed. The software then reports back the user's Internet address and identifies which CDs are played on that computer. Intentionally or not, the software also seems to damage a computer's ability to "rip" clean copies of MP3s from non-copy protected CDs, the security company said.
"It will effectively insert pseudo-random noise into a file so that it becomes less listenable," said Sam Curry, a Computer Associates vice president. "What's disturbing about this is the lack of notice, the lack of consent, and the lack of an easy removal tool."
And the original patch has been replaced by one one third of the size.
Mark Russinovich posted new info on the (smaller) patch on his blog showing it causes BSODs in Windows.
Modding as old as the human race
on
Modding and the Law
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I think modding and the related fanfiction (which can be considered as "add-ons" or even complete AUs to someone else's original creative work) derive from an even more basic impulse than to change the world. People like creating things, they like to tell stories, they like to make things. Most don't desire to be professional (at least initially) and maybe they don't have the talent. It is easier for you to tell stories/make new work based on what someone else has done as the universe/tools already exist. Also it helps you draw a larger audience as the audience is also familiar with the universe. I mean everyone when they were young after watching a particularly engrossing movie have made up stories in their heads how they were part of the Jedi or little plotlines about what happened after the end. Maybe you weren't entirely satisfied with some aspect of the movie/book/game and want to change it to suit yourself. All the internet does is allow something that previously would have been private gain an audience outside of your close friends and family. If you look at the rich cultural fabric of any society, you have stories that "grew" with each retelling as someone heard it in Village A, went back to Village B, embellish it a lot, and then someone in Village B went to Country C and changed it a bit to fit the local beliefs and maybe even mix it in with a preexisting story with a similar plotline. The idea of taking someone else's creative work or even a real story and using it for your own story that you tell someone else is one of the foundations of any country's creative fabric.
Also, when you think about it, isn't it healthier to have people, esp. young people sit around using their brains to create mods or write fanfiction (even if it turns out crap) than just sitting passively watching TV or playing games that someone else wrote? At least they are using their brains and doing something and trying to create something than just sitting there and passively taking what someone else is saying.
Well, as the Chinese would say, it's the Mandate of Heaven in action baby! Or to be more exact, "Heaven" withdrawing its permission to govern from the ruler/s, presumably because they're evil, corrupt and generally crap.
But I'm willing to bet that fundamentalist Christians in the US will just say that it's because the existence of sin in the US i.e. homosexuality, the teaching of evolution, etc. ignoring the fact that it doesn't really seem as if the liberal "sinner" states are the ones getting hit. In fact, even in New Orleans, it was the sinful gay pride French Quarter that survived best. God has bad aim it seems. Or maybe he just likes the French. Or maybe it's just because most of New Orleans was a sitting duck except for the French Quarter which was built on the highest bit of land in the area and it has nothing to do with God. But anyway, you'd better hope that US Christian fundamentalists *don't* start thinking about this too much as it would merely make them more fervent in their attempts to quash "sin" i.e. homosexuality, the teaching of evolution, abortion etc. In China, when talk started about the Mandate of Heaven it never led to secularism and introspection. It led to militant fanatic religious groups with a strong peasant base trying to take over the country. They always failed but the internal conflict inevitably weakened the government enough to cause its collapse.
This exchange of genetic material between viruses is known as the "antigenic shift" and is believed to be the cause of influenza pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish Flu:
"Antigenic shift is the process by which two different strains of influenza combine to form a new subtype having a mixture of the surface antigens of the two original strains. The term antigenic shift is specific to the influenza literature; in other viral systems, the same process is called reassortment or viral shift.
Antigenic shift is contrasted with antigenic drift, which is the natural mutation over time of known strains of influenza (or other things, in a more general sense) to evade the immune system. Antigenic drift occurs in all types of influenza including influenza A, B and C. Antigenic shift, however, occurs only in influenza A because it infects more than just humans. Affected species include other mammals and birds, giving influenza A the opportunity for a major reorganization of surface antigens. Influenza B and C only infect humans, minimizing the chance to mutate drastically.
Flu strains are named after their types of hemagglutinin and neuraminidase surface proteins, so they will be called, for example, H3N2 for type-3 hemagglutinin and type-2 neuraminidase. If two different strains of influenza infect the same cell simultaneously, their protein capsids and lipid envelopes are removed, exposing their RNA, which is then transcribed to DNA. The host cell then forms new viruses that combine antigens; for example, H3N2 and H5N1 can form H5N2 this way. Because the human immune system has difficulty recognizing the new influenza strain, it may be highly dangerous. Such combinations caused, for instance, the infamous Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 which killed 40 million people worldwide. Influenza virus which have undergone antigenic shift have also gone on to cause the Asian Flu pandemic of 1957, the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968, and the Swine Flu scare of 1976."
As an example of what can occur when an avian (or any animal really) strain of flu jumps to humans can be seen in the Great Flue Epidemic of 1918 aka. the Spanish Flu that killed more people than WWI. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Flu) it is believed that the flu originated in Fort Riley, Kansas (yes, it is somewhat ironic that this place is one of the strongholds in the US against evolutionary theory) when a strain of avian flu jumped to humans. Scientists who reconstructed the virus believe that it passed directly to humans from chickens at Fort Riley. The popular story is that a cook at Fort Riley had the normal human flu when he was preparing a chicken that had the avian flu. This is the nightmare scenario that people with respect to the current bird flue crisis. It is estimated the the Spanish "Bird flu" infected 20% of the population (in the US 28%) and killed 2.5-5% of the world's total population with some entire towns being wiped out.
I'm seeing so many comments about how the concern about internet addiction is some vast Chinese government conspiracy designed to put people off the internet so that they can't be exposed to new ideas. How about a simpler explanation? That parents are just concerned for their kids? You know you get fears about internet addiction in the West as well. Chinese parents generally take a very controlling attitude to their children's lives. I can definitely see them falling for a clinic scam as well. Chinese mothers esp. thrive on gossip. "My brother's neighbour is a doctor and he says that there's this new medicine..." or "You know, my friend at work's brother says that he read in a newspaper that X causes cancer." happens all the time. Gossip, rumour, "something someone read in a newspaper" are often acted upon by Chinese mothers. It's pretty common.
The Communist party is not to blame for everything in China you know. Sometimes it's just normal scam artists.
Actually, gambling addiction is a really big problem in Chinese communities. So much so that gambling addicts who destroy their careers and families feature a lot in HK TV shows, much more so than drug addicts or even alcoholics. Strangely enough, at the same time, gambling is idolised - often in the same TV shows with the gambling addicts. I guess Chinese just love gambling. Now that I think about it, my family (which is Chinese) taught us kids how to gamble before we even started school:) I guess it's a good way to learn your numbers and basic maths...I strongly suspect gambling is a much bigger problem than internet addiction in China.
The main problem I suspect is the internet cafes. If the computer is at home, the parents can control its use (by force if necessary). However, with internet cafes it is out of the parent's control. Now that I think about it, it has the potential to be worse than gambling as gambling at least is constrained by money.
The Karma had the potential to be a real iPod killer based on its function. Remember, it could play OGG and FLAC way before other players could.
How does the ability to play ogg and flac make something a potential iPod killer? How many people outside of slashdot even know what ogg and flac are?
The best thing is, the next "big thing" that comes along and the same people (plus some new investors who were kids the last time) will repeat the exact same mistakes that they did during the dot-com era. Never underestimate the power of human greed (not to mention herd instinct as everyone around you is screaming "Buy, buy, buy") to fool the mind into thinking "This time it will be different."
BTW while I have seen plenty of news articles about how stupid investors and companies were during the dot-com era, how about some insiteful self-criticism about the role the media (including the tech media) played in building up all the hype that helped produce the atmosphere that allowed these excesses to take place, esp. in light of how they profited from the era (eg. advertising)?
How many companies, as opposed to not-for-profit organisations have actually released software as BSD? For a company, *releasing* software as BSD makes no sense. Here, take my work. Oh, Mr Competitor, of course you can use my money and research to help you compete against me. No, you don't have to give me any improvements you make. With the GPL the company is assured of getting any improvements back. It's taking the gamble that while its money could be used to help its competitor if they use the code for anything it has to release *that* as GPL so that it can use it. Also if its competitor makes an improvement it will be able to use that improvement itself. For a company *releasing* software under an open-source license BSD has no real advantages and many disadvantages.
For a company that *consumes* open-source software - and by this - I don't mean using Linux on the desktop but say taking open-source software and using it in their own programs or repackaging it, BSD is obviously superior as they can take as much as they like for free, profit from it and not give anything back.
Personally I think if BSD was the predominant open-source license you won't be seeing nearly as many companies releasing their work as open-source. For for-profit companies, BSD gives all the benefits to the selfish companies and penalises the generous companies. GPL is more fair from a for-profit perspective.
Maybe I'm just stupid but how on earth does the system in the EU work? I mean, according to the way that things in the type of democracies that exist today don't laws have to be proposed and passed by aParliament (or whatever the equivalent is called) which is democratically elected by the citizens? How on earth can a law be passed without the consent of and in fact actively opposed by Parliament? Isn't that rather undemocratic?
Like most developed countries there is a declining birthrate. The situation is made worse by several things:
1. Japan really really doesn't like allowing immigration. 2. There is still very old-fashioned treatment of women. This means that they underutilise 50% of their population. However, women in Japan are becoming more and more disastified with becoming a housewife and *want* careers. However, in Japan if you are a career woman and you have a baby, you are practically forced to quit. As one of my female Japanese co-workers (I work in Japan and am female) said to me recently "Back in your home country you mean women can have children and keep working?" In Japan women are quite literally forced to choose between having children and having a career. Having both is not possible. And many women choose career which further depresses the childbirth rate.
On another matter, if people think female participation in technology and scientific related fields is low in the US or Australia it's got nothing on Japan. Often we are the only females in the entire room/building. In fact my co-worker said this was the first time she had another female co-worker ever...
A weird thing in Japan right now which I see in the news is that apparently Japan has been discriminating against young people in jobs to maintain job security for "Baby boomers" (which is the reverse of the Western world). So young people have not been offered full-time positions. However now the baby boomers will be retiring starting in 2007 and employers are panicking because they havn't built up the structure of younger workers with the experience and know-how to step into the soon-to-be vacant positions.
Adding a human touch is not necessarily a bad thing. But it was really badly written. It had the same feeling as an "add-on" romance in a B-grade action movie that they throw in with a some cliche lines and situations that any hack screenwriter could throw out in their sleep because it is "expected" except in Hitchhiker's it is the centrepiece of the movie and hence really screws up the pacing. I mean I liked the romance Arthur had with another girl in one of the later books. It had nice emotions and was still completely wacky and had the same humour as the rest of the book and hence "fitted" in. The Trillian/Arthur romance in the movie fitted very badly with the wacky humour and really screws up the pacing.
The major problem I had with the movie is that it adds angst and sentimentality to the plot. Note, this is very stereotypical *Hollywood* angst and sentimentality and you can practically predict the lines so it's not particularly good angst and sentimentality either. Note I am a girl and I devour trashy romance novels and love chick flicks. However, there are situations where putting this sort of stuff in just simply doesn't really work (esp. when it is so badly written). Basically you sit through the movie. Funny scene. Laugh. Angst, romance, talking (all badly done) get bored. Funny scene - laugh. Angst, romance, talking - bored. Oh let me predict what lines they are going to say next. Wow, I got it right. How amazing (sarcasm). Funny scene - laugh. Etc. etc. Though I suspect the funny scenes were funny because I already read the book as they do seem to cut a lot of stuff out...
The other problem is Ford Prefect, Mr. Sarcasm in the originals is practically a non-entity and not especially funny when he does exist.
To put it another way. I am a girl who used to obsessively read trashy romance novels. I went with a non-geek girl who could barely remember the original series to see Episode 2. Both of us cringed at the "romantic" dialogue. When it's worse than novels with titles like "Passion's Dawn", you know you're in trouble. Oh yeah, and Anakin sucks. Sometimes I watch shows just because the guy is cute, even if he's not such a good actor, but Star Wars Ep 2 - there are some things that no amount of good looks can overcome.
It seems to me that a major problem is accountability. If a major IT project fails, I don't see any of the people in charge in the government fired. I don't see the contractors put on the list of "people we are *never* hiring again". In fact I think in the UK at least the same contractor responsible for most of the major government IT failures is hired over and over again. Why on earth *should* these projects succeed when everyone knows that if they fail in the end they will not be personally held accountable and meanwhile they can get rich on slushfunds?
Well I'm a female and when I was a young girl I found dolls to be extremely boring. When someone gave me trucks I did what every other kid around me did - bang them into each other and pretend that they are fighting. Then again, I did grow up with two brothers and 90% of the neighbourhood kids were boys...I even tried to be a "proper" girl and bought myself a Barbie doll (with a pink dress) but it was hopeless. It was so boooring. I had much more fun playing with my brother's Lion Voltron action figures. I was still a typical girl though. I liked dressing up. I read girl magazines and trashy romance novels.
On the other hand my male cousin despite being pretty macho and a typical gamer dude, loves cooking, sewing, knitting and crocheting and has since he was very young (while I hated these things). He used to force my uncle and aunt to teach him these things and while he *hated* to read borrowed cooking and sewing books (of his own violation) from the library. Oh, and he's studying comp sci as well and no he's NOT gay.
Anyway, anedoctal evidence you say? Well, so is the Harvard guy's evidence as well.
How about we are all individuals? While there may be some difference between males and females, I suspect the overlap between male and female brains is much much larger.
Here's an interesting thing. I am a female physics PhD student. What I noticed in my university and from discussions with other PhD students and scientists, this is fairly common in other universities, is that the ratio of female to male students, in physics and maths at least is about 50/50 through undergraduate. And they do well in it. They get As and first-class honours. The most obvious exception to this is engineering. That's still very male dominated. But as you start going up to PhD level and then further you start losing girls. However the situation today is still much better than in the past. As you look at the older scientists in your department you will generally see that as the age goes up, the more likely that they are male.
This is Australia, so maybe things are different in the US. But what I understand talking with other scientists (including male ones) is that first of all the PhD itself is a slog. Secondly after you finish you go through a long period where you get 1-2 year postdocs here and there and you are likely to be constantly moving. It is much easier for a guy to tell his wife that they are moving and that she should quit her job and pack and for the guy to spend years working late at night and expecting his wife to hold the fort at home with the kids and housework than for a woman to do the same thing. Also then you want to have a baby and you have to take at least a year off, sometimes even more, and well you can see how things go. Oh, and also as my (male) supervisor once warned me, some of the older guys are just biased against women. They won't say it outright but it affects how they select people for jobs.
On an interesting note, not all religions seem to come to the conclusion of creationism. Chinese myth has no creator and a popular stance taken by Chinese philosophers (esp. Taoist ones, well Confucian ones don't really care either way since these sort of esotoric things aren't really their concern) over the millenia is that logically an ultimate creator cannot exist. This then leads to extended discussions about why the universe exists, why we exist, the meaning of life, etc. but a creator doesn't feature in these discussions. The guy who 2 000 years ago basically did the Taoist equivalent of editing and arranging the New Testament (and according to rumour, left out tons of chapters he didn't like and wrote some of the most important ones) was an especially strong advocate of this position. Well, this is more philosophical Taoism rather than religious Taoism, but none of the Gods worshipped by Chinese are ultimate "Creators". All have some sort of finite origin and they can also be severely injured or even killed. So Creationism, as advocated by groups in the US, is not even a pro-religion stance, it is a pro-Judeo-Christian religion stance. Creationism is totally against the religious beliefs of deeply religious Chinese (well, actually they don't really care, but I just wanted to make a point).
I'm curious as to why a similar magnitude earthquake, also in the ocean, occurring off the coast of Australia shortly before this earthquake didn't cause a tsunami as well?
Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but I'm curious as to what the differentiating factor is between these two earthquakes which means one creates a tsunami and the other doesn't.
Well I am Chinese though I was not raised in China. Most Chinese I know from the mainland support the reunification with Taiwan. According to Taiwanese, about half of Taiwanese support China and half don't. It's rather funny as there is one Taiwanese here who does support China and the other doesn't and they hate each other's guts. The other funniest moment in the Taiwan debate was in a Chinese forum where I saw someone from the mainland accuse the Taiwanese of being a "Han traitor" (I thought that no-one used that term anymore outside of period dramas. Then again I know mainland Chinese still read classical poems).
Westerners really don't understand the Chinese mentality. Chinese thinking is cyclical and long-term. As the famous line in Three Kingdoms goes, "Domains under heaven, after a long period of union, tends to divide; after a long period of division, tends to unite." Division and reunification are important elements of how Chinese believe the world works. Many Chinese don't see the current situation in terms of the present, they take the long-term view which for Chinese is that the Han Chinese on Taiwan will eventully be reunited with China because that's how it has always worked in the past. It is true that many times splinter kingdoms of Han Chinese have broken off and were reunited by military force. Anyway, the point is the Chinese on the mainland think that reunification is inevitable. It might not happen soon but it will happen. This puts a cramp on negotiations as you can imagine. The most important thing to remember is that Chinese often see present events as filtered through thousands of years of Chinese imperial history.
The second thing is that to Chinese division is seen as bad and unification is good. (I suspect this comes from the misery of multiple civil wars). Hence there are strong elements of "using force for their (the Taiwanese) own good". There is a strong belief amognst mainland Chinese that the reunification of Taiwan with China will actually *benefit* the Taiwanese because the horrible division will be healed and the Han Chinese can act together as one unit to take on the world stronger than ever, together. They will cite China's growing economic and military power as signs of how the Taiwanese will benefit with joining with China. There is a belief that most Taiwanese support reunification and it is interference of a few mischief makers and US interference that is stopping the masses in Taiwan from joing with China. They take me aside and tell me that patriots in Taiwan are stealing technology secrets and passing them to China as a sign of their loyalty. A similar but different attitude can be seen in regards to places like Tibet. It is believed that before the Chinese takeover, the people of Tibet where barbaric savages living horrible miserable little lives where they are starving and oppressed. Now the Chinese government is taking over, the wonders of Chinese civilisation is being brought to them and they are now becoming educated civilised people who are capable of living in the modern world and are much happier than they were before.
Now before you laugh at this, please compare the Chinese attitude to the US attitude to Iraq.
As for Tiannamen. Many Chinese believe that the government was right in doing what they did. The students were threatening to bring down the government and hence in the interests of stability the government had to act to ensure that the country remained intact. The students were no more than a filthy band of rebels who were trying to take power as has happened many times in Chinese history. It's sad that the Chinese government had to use force but really the students' brought it on themselves.
There is really very little support for Communism BTW. Most of the support is based on (1) Nationalism (2) Paranoia towards the west derived from Western colonialism in the 19th century (3) Traditional Chinese political values and Confucian principles and (4) Desire for a stable government for peace and prosperity. I sense very little desire for democracy and freedom. As I have been asked, "What will democracy do for us?"
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I have little trouble translating from Chinese to English and vice-versa. I have given running commentaries on HK films to English speakers and running Chinese commentary on American films to my parents (who speak only Chinese). This is probably because I grew up with both languages from when I was a baby so I naturally "think" in both languages and can easily flip-flop between the two. The second thing is I've spent a lot of time since I was a small kid translating as my parents don't speak English. I guess the key is practise.
Religion can be very very addicting. For mystics and very religious people it is something approaching ecstasty. Take for example the famous "Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross which describes how he feels about his religious activities and the union with God. For those who don't know better this would seem like someone writing about their lover.
1. One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! -
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.
2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! -
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.
3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
- him I knew so well -
there in a place where no one appeared.
5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.
6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.
7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.
8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.
I took the translation from http://www.karmel.at/ics/john/dn.html. However, this is a very famous work.
Oh, BTW, the paragraph in the middle starting "According to Computer Associates" is supposed to be a direct quote from the article. Must have made a HTML error.
On related news about the Sony DRM,
Antivirus companies are going to start detecting it as harmful software:
http://news.com.com/Antivirus+firms+target+Sony+co py+protection/2100-1029_3-5942265.html
The article also has claims from CA that the DRM damages the computer's ability to make rips of ANY CDs including non-copyrighted CDs.
According to Computer Associates, the Sony software makes itself a default media player on a computer after it is installed. The software then reports back the user's Internet address and identifies which CDs are played on that computer. Intentionally or not, the software also seems to damage a computer's ability to "rip" clean copies of MP3s from non-copy protected CDs, the security company said. "It will effectively insert pseudo-random noise into a file so that it becomes less listenable," said Sam Curry, a Computer Associates vice president. "What's disturbing about this is the lack of notice, the lack of consent, and the lack of an easy removal tool."
And the original patch has been replaced by one one third of the size. Mark Russinovich posted new info on the (smaller) patch on his blog showing it causes BSODs in Windows.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=173601122
I think modding and the related fanfiction (which can be considered as "add-ons" or even complete AUs to someone else's original creative work) derive from an even more basic impulse than to change the world. People like creating things, they like to tell stories, they like to make things. Most don't desire to be professional (at least initially) and maybe they don't have the talent. It is easier for you to tell stories/make new work based on what someone else has done as the universe/tools already exist. Also it helps you draw a larger audience as the audience is also familiar with the universe. I mean everyone when they were young after watching a particularly engrossing movie have made up stories in their heads how they were part of the Jedi or little plotlines about what happened after the end. Maybe you weren't entirely satisfied with some aspect of the movie/book/game and want to change it to suit yourself. All the internet does is allow something that previously would have been private gain an audience outside of your close friends and family. If you look at the rich cultural fabric of any society, you have stories that "grew" with each retelling as someone heard it in Village A, went back to Village B, embellish it a lot, and then someone in Village B went to Country C and changed it a bit to fit the local beliefs and maybe even mix it in with a preexisting story with a similar plotline. The idea of taking someone else's creative work or even a real story and using it for your own story that you tell someone else is one of the foundations of any country's creative fabric.
Also, when you think about it, isn't it healthier to have people, esp. young people sit around using their brains to create mods or write fanfiction (even if it turns out crap) than just sitting passively watching TV or playing games that someone else wrote? At least they are using their brains and doing something and trying to create something than just sitting there and passively taking what someone else is saying.
Well, as the Chinese would say, it's the Mandate of Heaven in action baby! Or to be more exact, "Heaven" withdrawing its permission to govern from the ruler/s, presumably because they're evil, corrupt and generally crap.
But I'm willing to bet that fundamentalist Christians in the US will just say that it's because the existence of sin in the US i.e. homosexuality, the teaching of evolution, etc. ignoring the fact that it doesn't really seem as if the liberal "sinner" states are the ones getting hit. In fact, even in New Orleans, it was the sinful gay pride French Quarter that survived best. God has bad aim it seems. Or maybe he just likes the French. Or maybe it's just because most of New Orleans was a sitting duck except for the French Quarter which was built on the highest bit of land in the area and it has nothing to do with God. But anyway, you'd better hope that US Christian fundamentalists *don't* start thinking about this too much as it would merely make them more fervent in their attempts to quash "sin" i.e. homosexuality, the teaching of evolution, abortion etc. In China, when talk started about the Mandate of Heaven it never led to secularism and introspection. It led to militant fanatic religious groups with a strong peasant base trying to take over the country. They always failed but the internal conflict inevitably weakened the government enough to cause its collapse.
This exchange of genetic material between viruses is known as the "antigenic shift" and is believed to be the cause of influenza pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish Flu:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_shift
"Antigenic shift is the process by which two different strains of influenza combine to form a new subtype having a mixture of the surface antigens of the two original strains. The term antigenic shift is specific to the influenza literature; in other viral systems, the same process is called reassortment or viral shift.
Antigenic shift is contrasted with antigenic drift, which is the natural mutation over time of known strains of influenza (or other things, in a more general sense) to evade the immune system. Antigenic drift occurs in all types of influenza including influenza A, B and C. Antigenic shift, however, occurs only in influenza A because it infects more than just humans. Affected species include other mammals and birds, giving influenza A the opportunity for a major reorganization of surface antigens. Influenza B and C only infect humans, minimizing the chance to mutate drastically.
Flu strains are named after their types of hemagglutinin and neuraminidase surface proteins, so they will be called, for example, H3N2 for type-3 hemagglutinin and type-2 neuraminidase. If two different strains of influenza infect the same cell simultaneously, their protein capsids and lipid envelopes are removed, exposing their RNA, which is then transcribed to DNA. The host cell then forms new viruses that combine antigens; for example, H3N2 and H5N1 can form H5N2 this way. Because the human immune system has difficulty recognizing the new influenza strain, it may be highly dangerous. Such combinations caused, for instance, the infamous Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 which killed 40 million people worldwide. Influenza virus which have undergone antigenic shift have also gone on to cause the Asian Flu pandemic of 1957, the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968, and the Swine Flu scare of 1976."
As an example of what can occur when an avian (or any animal really) strain of flu jumps to humans can be seen in the Great Flue Epidemic of 1918 aka. the Spanish Flu that killed more people than WWI. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Flu) it is believed that the flu originated in Fort Riley, Kansas (yes, it is somewhat ironic that this place is one of the strongholds in the US against evolutionary theory) when a strain of avian flu jumped to humans. Scientists who reconstructed the virus believe that it passed directly to humans from chickens at Fort Riley. The popular story is that a cook at Fort Riley had the normal human flu when he was preparing a chicken that had the avian flu. This is the nightmare scenario that people with respect to the current bird flue crisis. It is estimated the the Spanish "Bird flu" infected 20% of the population (in the US 28%) and killed 2.5-5% of the world's total population with some entire towns being wiped out.
I'm seeing so many comments about how the concern about internet addiction is some vast Chinese government conspiracy designed to put people off the internet so that they can't be exposed to new ideas. How about a simpler explanation? That parents are just concerned for their kids? You know you get fears about internet addiction in the West as well. Chinese parents generally take a very controlling attitude to their children's lives. I can definitely see them falling for a clinic scam as well. Chinese mothers esp. thrive on gossip. "My brother's neighbour is a doctor and he says that there's this new medicine..." or "You know, my friend at work's brother says that he read in a newspaper that X causes cancer." happens all the time. Gossip, rumour, "something someone read in a newspaper" are often acted upon by Chinese mothers. It's pretty common.
The Communist party is not to blame for everything in China you know. Sometimes it's just normal scam artists.
Actually, gambling addiction is a really big problem in Chinese communities. So much so that gambling addicts who destroy their careers and families feature a lot in HK TV shows, much more so than drug addicts or even alcoholics. Strangely enough, at the same time, gambling is idolised - often in the same TV shows with the gambling addicts. I guess Chinese just love gambling. Now that I think about it, my family (which is Chinese) taught us kids how to gamble before we even started school :) I guess it's a good way to learn your numbers and basic maths...I strongly suspect gambling is a much bigger problem than internet addiction in China.
The main problem I suspect is the internet cafes. If the computer is at home, the parents can control its use (by force if necessary). However, with internet cafes it is out of the parent's control. Now that I think about it, it has the potential to be worse than gambling as gambling at least is constrained by money.
The Karma had the potential to be a real iPod killer based on its function. Remember, it could play OGG and FLAC way before other players could. How does the ability to play ogg and flac make something a potential iPod killer? How many people outside of slashdot even know what ogg and flac are?
The best thing is, the next "big thing" that comes along and the same people (plus some new investors who were kids the last time) will repeat the exact same mistakes that they did during the dot-com era. Never underestimate the power of human greed (not to mention herd instinct as everyone around you is screaming "Buy, buy, buy") to fool the mind into thinking "This time it will be different."
BTW while I have seen plenty of news articles about how stupid investors and companies were during the dot-com era, how about some insiteful self-criticism about the role the media (including the tech media) played in building up all the hype that helped produce the atmosphere that allowed these excesses to take place, esp. in light of how they profited from the era (eg. advertising)?
How many companies, as opposed to not-for-profit organisations have actually released software as BSD? For a company, *releasing* software as BSD makes no sense. Here, take my work. Oh, Mr Competitor, of course you can use my money and research to help you compete against me. No, you don't have to give me any improvements you make. With the GPL the company is assured of getting any improvements back. It's taking the gamble that while its money could be used to help its competitor if they use the code for anything it has to release *that* as GPL so that it can use it. Also if its competitor makes an improvement it will be able to use that improvement itself. For a company *releasing* software under an open-source license BSD has no real advantages and many disadvantages.
For a company that *consumes* open-source software - and by this - I don't mean using Linux on the desktop but say taking open-source software and using it in their own programs or repackaging it, BSD is obviously superior as they can take as much as they like for free, profit from it and not give anything back.
Personally I think if BSD was the predominant open-source license you won't be seeing nearly as many companies releasing their work as open-source. For for-profit companies, BSD gives all the benefits to the selfish companies and penalises the generous companies. GPL is more fair from a for-profit perspective.
Maybe I'm just stupid but how on earth does the system in the EU work? I mean, according to the way that things in the type of democracies that exist today don't laws have to be proposed and passed by aParliament (or whatever the equivalent is called) which is democratically elected by the citizens? How on earth can a law be passed without the consent of and in fact actively opposed by Parliament? Isn't that rather undemocratic?
Like most developed countries there is a declining birthrate. The situation is made worse by several things:
1. Japan really really doesn't like allowing immigration.
2. There is still very old-fashioned treatment of women. This means that they underutilise 50% of their population. However, women in Japan are becoming more and more disastified with becoming a housewife and *want* careers. However, in Japan if you are a career woman and you have a baby, you are practically forced to quit. As one of my female Japanese co-workers (I work in Japan and am female) said to me recently "Back in your home country you mean women can have children and keep working?" In Japan women are quite literally forced to choose between having children and having a career. Having both is not possible. And many women choose career which further depresses the childbirth rate.
On another matter, if people think female participation in technology and scientific related fields is low in the US or Australia it's got nothing on Japan. Often we are the only females in the entire room/building. In fact my co-worker said this was the first time she had another female co-worker ever...
A weird thing in Japan right now which I see in the news is that apparently Japan has been discriminating against young people in jobs to maintain job security for "Baby boomers" (which is the reverse of the Western world). So young people have not been offered full-time positions. However now the baby boomers will be retiring starting in 2007 and employers are panicking because they havn't built up the structure of younger workers with the experience and know-how to step into the soon-to-be vacant positions.
Adding a human touch is not necessarily a bad thing. But it was really badly written. It had the same feeling as an "add-on" romance in a B-grade action movie that they throw in with a some cliche lines and situations that any hack screenwriter could throw out in their sleep because it is "expected" except in Hitchhiker's it is the centrepiece of the movie and hence really screws up the pacing. I mean I liked the romance Arthur had with another girl in one of the later books. It had nice emotions and was still completely wacky and had the same humour as the rest of the book and hence "fitted" in. The Trillian/Arthur romance in the movie fitted very badly with the wacky humour and really screws up the pacing.
The major problem I had with the movie is that it adds angst and sentimentality to the plot. Note, this is very stereotypical *Hollywood* angst and sentimentality and you can practically predict the lines so it's not particularly good angst and sentimentality either. Note I am a girl and I devour trashy romance novels and love chick flicks. However, there are situations where putting this sort of stuff in just simply doesn't really work (esp. when it is so badly written). Basically you sit through the movie. Funny scene. Laugh. Angst, romance, talking (all badly done) get bored. Funny scene - laugh. Angst, romance, talking - bored. Oh let me predict what lines they are going to say next. Wow, I got it right. How amazing (sarcasm). Funny scene - laugh. Etc. etc. Though I suspect the funny scenes were funny because I already read the book as they do seem to cut a lot of stuff out...
:)
The other problem is Ford Prefect, Mr. Sarcasm in the originals is practically a non-entity and not especially funny when he does exist.
I loved Zaphod though
To put it another way. I am a girl who used to obsessively read trashy romance novels. I went with a non-geek girl who could barely remember the original series to see Episode 2. Both of us cringed at the "romantic" dialogue. When it's worse than novels with titles like "Passion's Dawn", you know you're in trouble. Oh yeah, and Anakin sucks. Sometimes I watch shows just because the guy is cute, even if he's not such a good actor, but Star Wars Ep 2 - there are some things that no amount of good looks can overcome.
It seems to me that a major problem is accountability. If a major IT project fails, I don't see any of the people in charge in the government fired. I don't see the contractors put on the list of "people we are *never* hiring again". In fact I think in the UK at least the same contractor responsible for most of the major government IT failures is hired over and over again. Why on earth *should* these projects succeed when everyone knows that if they fail in the end they will not be personally held accountable and meanwhile they can get rich on slushfunds?
Well I'm a female and when I was a young girl I found dolls to be extremely boring. When someone gave me trucks I did what every other kid around me did - bang them into each other and pretend that they are fighting. Then again, I did grow up with two brothers and 90% of the neighbourhood kids were boys...I even tried to be a "proper" girl and bought myself a Barbie doll (with a pink dress) but it was hopeless. It was so boooring. I had much more fun playing with my brother's Lion Voltron action figures. I was still a typical girl though. I liked dressing up. I read girl magazines and trashy romance novels.
On the other hand my male cousin despite being pretty macho and a typical gamer dude, loves cooking, sewing, knitting and crocheting and has since he was very young (while I hated these things). He used to force my uncle and aunt to teach him these things and while he *hated* to read borrowed cooking and sewing books (of his own violation) from the library. Oh, and he's studying comp sci as well and no he's NOT gay.
Anyway, anedoctal evidence you say? Well, so is the Harvard guy's evidence as well.
How about we are all individuals? While there may be some difference between males and females, I suspect the overlap between male and female brains is much much larger.
Here's an interesting thing. I am a female physics PhD student. What I noticed in my university and from discussions with other PhD students and scientists, this is fairly common in other universities, is that the ratio of female to male students, in physics and maths at least is about 50/50 through undergraduate. And they do well in it. They get As and first-class honours. The most obvious exception to this is engineering. That's still very male dominated. But as you start going up to PhD level and then further you start losing girls. However the situation today is still much better than in the past. As you look at the older scientists in your department you will generally see that as the age goes up, the more likely that they are male.
This is Australia, so maybe things are different in the US. But what I understand talking with other scientists (including male ones) is that first of all the PhD itself is a slog. Secondly after you finish you go through a long period where you get 1-2 year postdocs here and there and you are likely to be constantly moving. It is much easier for a guy to tell his wife that they are moving and that she should quit her job and pack and for the guy to spend years working late at night and expecting his wife to hold the fort at home with the kids and housework than for a woman to do the same thing. Also then you want to have a baby and you have to take at least a year off, sometimes even more, and well you can see how things go. Oh, and also as my (male) supervisor once warned me, some of the older guys are just biased against women. They won't say it outright but it affects how they select people for jobs.
On an interesting note, not all religions seem to come to the conclusion of creationism. Chinese myth has no creator and a popular stance taken by Chinese philosophers (esp. Taoist ones, well Confucian ones don't really care either way since these sort of esotoric things aren't really their concern) over the millenia is that logically an ultimate creator cannot exist. This then leads to extended discussions about why the universe exists, why we exist, the meaning of life, etc. but a creator doesn't feature in these discussions. The guy who 2 000 years ago basically did the Taoist equivalent of editing and arranging the New Testament (and according to rumour, left out tons of chapters he didn't like and wrote some of the most important ones) was an especially strong advocate of this position. Well, this is more philosophical Taoism rather than religious Taoism, but none of the Gods worshipped by Chinese are ultimate "Creators". All have some sort of finite origin and they can also be severely injured or even killed. So Creationism, as advocated by groups in the US, is not even a pro-religion stance, it is a pro-Judeo-Christian religion stance. Creationism is totally against the religious beliefs of deeply religious Chinese (well, actually they don't really care, but I just wanted to make a point).
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-14156 27,00.html
I'm curious as to why a similar magnitude earthquake, also in the ocean, occurring off the coast of Australia shortly before this earthquake didn't cause a tsunami as well?
News about this earthquake here: http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11 778537%255E3462,00.html
Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but I'm curious as to what the differentiating factor is between these two earthquakes which means one creates a tsunami and the other doesn't.
Well I am Chinese though I was not raised in China. Most Chinese I know from the mainland support the reunification with Taiwan. According to Taiwanese, about half of Taiwanese support China and half don't. It's rather funny as there is one Taiwanese here who does support China and the other doesn't and they hate each other's guts. The other funniest moment in the Taiwan debate was in a Chinese forum where I saw someone from the mainland accuse the Taiwanese of being a "Han traitor" (I thought that no-one used that term anymore outside of period dramas. Then again I know mainland Chinese still read classical poems).
Westerners really don't understand the Chinese mentality. Chinese thinking is cyclical and long-term. As the famous line in Three Kingdoms goes,
"Domains under heaven, after a long period of union, tends to divide; after a long period of division, tends to unite." Division and reunification are important elements of how Chinese believe the world works. Many Chinese don't see the current situation in terms of the present, they take the long-term view which for Chinese is that the Han Chinese on Taiwan will eventully be reunited with China because that's how it has always worked in the past. It is true that many times splinter kingdoms of Han Chinese have broken off and were reunited by military force. Anyway, the point is the Chinese on the mainland think that reunification is inevitable. It might not happen soon but it will happen. This puts a cramp on negotiations as you can imagine. The most important thing to remember is that Chinese often see present events as filtered through thousands of years of Chinese imperial history.
The second thing is that to Chinese division is seen as bad and unification is good. (I suspect this comes from the misery of multiple civil wars). Hence there are strong elements of "using force for their (the Taiwanese) own good". There is a strong belief amognst mainland Chinese that the reunification of Taiwan with China will actually *benefit* the Taiwanese because the horrible division will be healed and the Han Chinese can act together as one unit to take on the world stronger than ever, together. They will cite China's growing economic and military power as signs of how the Taiwanese will benefit with joining with China. There is a belief that most Taiwanese support reunification and it is interference of a few mischief makers and US interference that is stopping the masses in Taiwan from joing with China. They take me aside and tell me that patriots in Taiwan are stealing technology secrets and passing them to China as a sign of their loyalty. A similar but different attitude can be seen in regards to places like Tibet. It is believed that before the Chinese takeover, the people of Tibet where barbaric savages living horrible miserable little lives where they are starving and oppressed. Now the Chinese government is taking over, the wonders of Chinese civilisation is being brought to them and they are now becoming educated civilised people who are capable of living in the modern world and are much happier than they were before.
Now before you laugh at this, please compare the Chinese attitude to the US attitude to Iraq.
As for Tiannamen. Many Chinese believe that the government was right in doing what they did. The students were threatening to bring down the government and hence in the interests of stability the government had to act to ensure that the country remained intact. The students were no more than a filthy band of rebels who were trying to take power as has happened many times in Chinese history. It's sad that the Chinese government had to use force but really the students' brought it on themselves.
There is really very little support for Communism BTW. Most of the support is based on (1) Nationalism (2) Paranoia towards the west derived from Western colonialism in the 19th century (3) Traditional Chinese political values and Confucian principles and (4) Desire for a stable government for peace and prosperity. I sense very little desire for democracy and freedom. As I have been asked, "What will democracy do for us?"