Well, tfa addresses this issue too, essentially saying that it doesn't entice someone to do something they wouldn't normally do, because they would normally do it.
If a browser prefetches a page, that's the same as clicking it, apart from the extra header. What happens when the user actually clicks the link? Does anything get sent to the server, or is the request completely satisfied by the results of the previous prefetch?
I have a less rosy view. If only out of a realistic assessment or common sense. You don't have soldiers don't wield a weapon, and you don't have soldiers who take beatings without retribution. I haven't read any reports saying the police/soldiers were passively receiving beatings, so you could rebut my view if you could point to any such reports. Well, why would I rebut that view - it's the same as mine. Why would you expect soldiers to take a beating without fighting back? That's my whole point. It could easily have flared up from the ranks, rather than a big evil order from the top.
BTW, I said "I believe it is possible to have neutral news.", when I mean the opposite. Tanks in Beijing was clearly a military decision from somebody high up. Agreed, but that is a show of force, not aggression as such. Arguably, it was a mistake, but, as I said, that is from the view point of a westerner and in hindsight.
I don't see any evidence of tanks being involved in any aggression as such. They're next to pointless in such a situation - they only trap their occupants. I guess they could be used to get through blockades and such.
A lowly officer could never get tanks running around in the capital city. That's almost the equivalent of having tanks parading in front of the White House. I'm not sure I see your point there. It *is* equivalent, I would say.
Have you seen the BBC video where it appears that the protesters burn a soldier alive? No. Any pointers?? I am referring to the DVD "50 Years of BBC Television news", which I bought, interestingly enough, in Beijing. I can't find the clip on youtube. IMO it does show a glipse of what could possibly be an alternative point of view.
I *strongly* suspect the police and/or army at large were *not* armed with any live guns (probably had those stick things to protect themselves) I don't think I can believe that soldiers don't carry guns in places with violent conflict. (This is not "World War IV" yet;-p) Well, that's a very American point of view, if you don't mind me saying (or did you put too many negatives in that sentence?).
Even in the UK they don't *automatically* have firearms (at least they didn't used to) when there's a riot. There are methods of dealing with big crowds of people without using firearms. They use shields and battons, and use tactics to move and disperse the crowds, and, of course, tear gas and plastic bullets. The latter are controversial in themselves, but I wonder if there would have been equal out-cry if those were used instead (in Tiananmen, I mean).
Having talked with some who were actually in Beijing at the time, I largely agree with your assessment.
My take on it is that the aggression was largely instigated by the protesters who were killing the soldiers - the soldiers had been instructed not to open fire/etc and so couldn't protect themselves. I've read report that the protesters took weapons from the army and used them against them. If there was a single decision to respond (on the part of the army), I'll bet it wasn't taken at the highest level, but at a much lower level and to stop the protesters killing the soldiers. It could even have been started by one person - it would only take one person to open fire to start it, on either side.
Have you seen the BBC video where it appears that the protesters burn a soldier alive?
Of course, moving tanks into the city/etc wasn't the smartest move, but that's my view as a 'westerner' and my understanding of Chinese culture is still quite limited. It's also easy to say in hind-sight.
I also suspect reports on deaths/fires/violence in Tibet are mostly due to the protesters and not due to the authorities. I *strongly* suspect the police and/or army at large were *not* armed with any live guns (probably had those stick things to protect themselves) - it would be simply idiotic to risk anything like that again.
But, yes, this is only my own personal assessment. BTW, they do have this on the TV news in China - in English and Chinese - though it likely has an opposite bias to that as reported elsewhere. I believe it is possible to have neutral news.
But because you couldn't import files from MS's solutions
This was, in fact, a failing of WordPerfect, because Microsoft made sure you could import them the other way around.
The question is, how long did it take the WordPerfect Corporation* and/or Novell to add this to WordPerfect? It occurs to me that this is *still* a problem since the file format needs to be reverse engineered. Am I wrong that this is the case, or is it that this wasn't the case back then?
I seems that WordPerfect's file format was more easily obtained, no?
> Still when sites like Youtube, CNN, Wired News, etc all drop of the net all at once they must realize something interesting is going on. Is that correct?
Well, in my experience, youtube was never "*on* the 'net". I don't know about the others since I've infrequently visited them - and if I don't care to visit them, you can be sure Chinese people won't be bothered.
For all of those sites, I don't suppose many Chinese people visit them anyway. People here tend not to trust foreign media which is, at worst, biased and, at best, culturally/historically ignorant. Such sites are typically not in Chinese either, so people would have to be able to read something other than Chinese.
I think you put too much importance on foreign web sites in China.
For the record, CNN works just fine, but defaults to some US specific news. Clicking international gives some stories on it. Wired.com is also online. Heck, even foxnews.com is available....if you call that news. Ah, but the specific stories I click on seem to get '104'd, so I image they're blocked. Cnn ones seem to work though.
> *If* the majority of the population of the island of Taiwan freely choose to become independent, why stop them?
I can see your point, but have you considered that they may actually *not* want to become independent. The way I heard it, and it sounds plausible, is that a lot of the population there actually do consider themselves Chinese and have strong links with families/etc on the mainland, and so *don't* want to become independent.
I would assume something similar in Tibet. Unfortunately, the radicals shout loudest and get most attention from media, so those are the people we tend to notice -and it's natural to assume they represent the majority (or at least a significant proportion), when there's really no way to tell without a referendum; and even then you have to wonder.
Also, their supercomputer may just be outdated, not necessarily because of bloated software. I don't know how well SGI's products and support survived their recent bankrupcy, but I'd imagine not too well (though they seem to have built the Xeon-based #3 from the Top 500 recently). AFAIK, SGI still supports IRIX computers, but it doesn't do new ones - hasn't for several years. They do Linix of course - looks like you can have SuSe or RedHat - and they also do some Microsoft thing too. I'm sure SGI could have serviced this customer, but they clearly didn't want to pay for support. You get what you pay for, and SGI still have very smart/clever people....
I have an online symbian(S60) application that has a 'download' button Ah, this isn't correct. It's a native S60 application that has a 'download' button that launches S60's web browser at a specific URL on my web site. It's not an 'online application'.
Well, I wouldn't take google's hit rates as much indication.
Some thoughts to counter taking conclusions from google hit rates :
1) it largely depends on default search engines, as well as which ones people choose to use. Google's stats are going to be biased towards the iPhone on several fronts - Google is most popular in the USA (no so popular in other places), is the default search engine for the iPhone, not so many S60 phones in the USA compared to the rest of the world and most Symbian (ie S60) phones don't have a default search engine at all (yet)
2) secondly, there are large parts of the world with massive cell phone markets where users don't use google hardly at all; China for example. Having said that, though those markets are large for cell phones, not so many use web browsers from them due to the expensive tarriffs (relative to salaries), but it is certainly a counter point. Having said *that*, I have an online symbian(S60) application that has a 'download' button and my web server logs show a surprising number of hits from China - the number is microscopic compared to places like Google, but it's an interesting data point showing China are online a lot. A lot of Asian countries are, and Russia too - not so long ago, it was my app's biggest country alongside Indonesia. I get next to no one (I count four) from the USA, I'm guessing mostly because of a lack of Symbian devices there (see my first point)
3) also, users of other phones have a choice in contract and so may well choose one that means they'll want to use the web less - while Apple iPhone users have been forced into unlimited data plans and so they will want to use it as much as possible.
No. I don't think Google's numbers are all that representative - perhaps for the USA, but not world-wide.
A phone less than a year old with more marketshare than all Windows Mobile devices combined, Care to back that up? In any case, why pick Windows Mobile? Try S60 or even Symbian, the latter powers 7% of *all* mobile phones sold world-wide.
To save you clicking, here are the interesting bits :
" Highlights - Full year 2007, at 31 December 2007
* 77.3 million Symbian smartphones shipped to consumers worldwide in 2007 - a 50% increase on 2006 (51.7m)
* 188 million cumulative Symbian smartphone shipments since the formation of Symbian to 31 December 2007
* 68 mobile phones based on Symbian OS commenced shipment in 2007 through 250 major network operators by 8 licensees including Fujitsu, LG, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson, a 4.6% increase on 2006 (65 models)
* Of these models, 49 (72%) were based on Symbian OS v9, 46 (68%) for use on W-CDMA/ HSDPA (3G) and 20 (29%) were GPS enabled
* Symbian OS v9.3 is the latest version on Symbian OS to ship in devices (November 2007). Symbian OS v9.3 is optimized for convergence with performance and feature enhancements
* 8,736 third-party Symbian applications are now commercially available, a 27% increase on 31 December 2006 (6,896 applications) Source: Symbian research, see Notes to Editors "
70% of the mobile browser market Care to back that up? I see some statistics say otherwise. To save you clicking :
" 1. PSP - 23.7% 2. Nokia N95 - 20.2% 3. iPAQ HX series - 20.1% 4. Palm TX - 3.6% 5. Apple iPhone - 3.4% "
Of course, the figures do not justify the headline (that 'N95 bests iPhone', though the headline is a question not a statement). In any case, I'd like to see where you get your figures from.
...and if you're specifically talking about smart phones (it's still debatable if the iPhone is even a smart phone, IMO), take a look at these:
Nokia 52.9% RIM 11.4% Apple 6.5% Motorola 6.5% Others 22.7%
A paragraph from that same page gives a (IMO) balanced commentary :
"Apple, perhaps not surprisingly, made a strong entrance to the worldwide market at the end of last year. To get to 6% so quickly (and with a single product) is an impressive achievement. RIM's OS continues to improve at a rate of knots (see my Smartphones Show Blackberry slots, for example) and it continues to be a surprise how fragmented the Windows Mobile world is, in terms of manufacturer success. Plus, even in their home territory of North America, Microsoft is now down to 3rd place in terms of their mobile platform (after RIM and Apple). If Microsoft don't pull a cat out of the bag very, very soon then their in big trouble"
I wasn't trying to justify or even ignore their actions, so much as just not ask about them. I was asking about the actual religion, not the behaviour.
Some have answered this satisfactorily, I think, in that there isn't that much of a difference. I mean, for someone who doesn't believe it, Christianity should probably also be considered fiction - I wouldn't say it's 'science'-fiction exactly, but a lot of it is certainly beyond indisputable proof.
If it were just a bunch of people who believe that core stuff (and I don't claim to know much about it), without all the anti-social behaviour, then I don't think anyone would have much of a problem with it, beyond ridicule, which we Christians get on a fairly regular basis too.
Of course, like you say, if there are parts of the belief that instill authority in human beings, and others must obey without question, then has to lead to bad things, if not sooner, then later.
We don't have a whole lot of that in the protestant church. If one of the leaders of a church started spouting stuff like that, he'd not have much of a church left. Having said that, if there were a big gap in intellect (or whatever it is that makes one person able to easily convince another), then that might be more of a problem...that thing at Waco rings a bell - I wonder what sort of religion is behind that.
I'm curious; why wouldn't you confuse it with a religion? That scientology eventually teaches the idea that some Xenu character planted frosty dead people and hydrogen bombs in the Worlds' volcanoes, and that they have these ghosts stuck to them doesn't particularly enrage most of the scientology critics I know; it's their abuses and covertly hostile nature that disturbs them, and me. Fact is, that part isn't all that much different from other equally silly stories religions teach. I guess this was what I was really trying to discuss, rather than the actions of the people who have the religion itself - I guess it might be that it's impossible to separate the two, but I don't know.
When you see someone doing something wrong, aren't you obliged on some level to inform them of what is right? Not at all. It's none of my business. That's right, I'm not an American.
Of course, I might want to anyway, but still, I can't since I can't speak Chinese.
If you want to offer free wireless privately, what's wrong with showing a little insight and intelligence, and renaming your SSID "Free Wireless Here"? That removes all doubt. Well, perhaps, and I do, but I don't see why *I* should have to do that since there's already a mechanism to do that - that's the purpose publishing of SSID and lack of username and password. To me, that makes it quite clear that it is open for use. I mean, you need a username and password to change the settings on the router, so, even if they are well known, it is clear that 'just anybody' is supposed to use it.
IMO, this problem is all due to the stupid router manufacturers not putting a username/password on their wifi networks when they're shipped. I don't care if the username/password are all the same (though they could use a LAN MAC address or something to make it unique), so long as there is a username/password, then I *know* I'm not supposed to use it and I have to take action to connect (it can't happen automatically).
You says it's not bashing, then go on to describe bashing.
It sounds like you have a definition of bashing that includes an element of unreasonableness, or unjustifiedness. (Sorry for the 'ness'es - I'm having trouble with my words at the moment)
I'm not entirely sure the bashing is new... Well, it's just an impression - I've no statistical evidence to back it up. Perhaps living in China has given me a perspective such that I notice that particular avenue of attack more than I did when I lived in the US.
But I can't think of anyone more deserving of bashing than Scientologists. Well, quite.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, tfa addresses this issue too, essentially saying that it doesn't entice someone to do something they wouldn't normally do, because they would normally do it.
i am in china and so out of the juristiction of the fbi, so i was able to rtfa without much fear of retribution.
So,fyi, the tfa says that the fbi link was advertising images of a 4 year old, and so it would seem that it falls squarely under the definition of cp.
ok, so now I am wondering how that shows up in the log files. I don't recall anything like that in my log files...
perhaps I don't understand something...
If a browser prefetches a page, that's the same as clicking it, apart from the extra header. What happens when the user actually clicks the link? Does anything get sent to the server, or is the request completely satisfied by the results of the previous prefetch?
Tanks in Beijing was clearly a military decision from somebody high up. Agreed, but that is a show of force, not aggression as such. Arguably, it was a mistake, but, as I said, that is from the view point of a westerner and in hindsight.
I don't see any evidence of tanks being involved in any aggression as such. They're next to pointless in such a situation - they only trap their occupants. I guess they could be used to get through blockades and such. A lowly officer could never get tanks running around in the capital city. That's almost the equivalent of having tanks parading in front of the White House. I'm not sure I see your point there. It *is* equivalent, I would say. Have you seen the BBC video where it appears that the protesters burn a soldier alive? No. Any pointers?? I am referring to the DVD "50 Years of BBC Television news", which I bought, interestingly enough, in Beijing. I can't find the clip on youtube. IMO it does show a glipse of what could possibly be an alternative point of view. I *strongly* suspect the police and/or army at large were *not* armed with any live guns (probably had those stick things to protect themselves) I don't think I can believe that soldiers don't carry guns in places with violent conflict. (This is not "World War IV" yet
Even in the UK they don't *automatically* have firearms (at least they didn't used to) when there's a riot. There are methods of dealing with big crowds of people without using firearms. They use shields and battons, and use tactics to move and disperse the crowds, and, of course, tear gas and plastic bullets. The latter are controversial in themselves, but I wonder if there would have been equal out-cry if those were used instead (in Tiananmen, I mean).
Having talked with some who were actually in Beijing at the time, I largely agree with your assessment.
My take on it is that the aggression was largely instigated by the protesters who were killing the soldiers - the soldiers had been instructed not to open fire/etc and so couldn't protect themselves. I've read report that the protesters took weapons from the army and used them against them. If there was a single decision to respond (on the part of the army), I'll bet it wasn't taken at the highest level, but at a much lower level and to stop the protesters killing the soldiers. It could even have been started by one person - it would only take one person to open fire to start it, on either side.
Have you seen the BBC video where it appears that the protesters burn a soldier alive?
Of course, moving tanks into the city/etc wasn't the smartest move, but that's my view as a 'westerner' and my understanding of Chinese culture is still quite limited. It's also easy to say in hind-sight.
I also suspect reports on deaths/fires/violence in Tibet are mostly due to the protesters and not due to the authorities. I *strongly* suspect the police and/or army at large were *not* armed with any live guns (probably had those stick things to protect themselves) - it would be simply idiotic to risk anything like that again.
But, yes, this is only my own personal assessment. BTW, they do have this on the TV news in China - in English and Chinese - though it likely has an opposite bias to that as reported elsewhere. I believe it is possible to have neutral news.
> Nations that use slave labor
anything to back that one up?
> However, when a country is censoring its own atrocities from its people it is a global problem.
What atrocities are you referring to?
This was, in fact, a failing of WordPerfect, because Microsoft made sure you could import them the other way around.
The question is, how long did it take the WordPerfect Corporation* and/or Novell to add this to WordPerfect? It occurs to me that this is *still* a problem since the file format needs to be reverse engineered. Am I wrong that this is the case, or is it that this wasn't the case back then?
I seems that WordPerfect's file format was more easily obtained, no?
> Still when sites like Youtube, CNN, Wired News, etc all drop of the net all at once they must realize something interesting is going on. Is that correct?
Well, in my experience, youtube was never "*on* the 'net". I don't know about the others since I've infrequently visited them - and if I don't care to visit them, you can be sure Chinese people won't be bothered.
For all of those sites, I don't suppose many Chinese people visit them anyway. People here tend not to trust foreign media which is, at worst, biased and, at best, culturally/historically ignorant. Such sites are typically not in Chinese either, so people would have to be able to read something other than Chinese.
I think you put too much importance on foreign web sites in China.
For the record, CNN works just fine, but defaults to some US specific news. Clicking international gives some stories on it.
Wired.com is also online.
Heck, even foxnews.com is available....if you call that news. Ah, but the specific stories I click on seem to get '104'd, so I image they're blocked. Cnn ones seem to work though.
> *If* the majority of the population of the island of Taiwan freely choose to become independent, why stop them?
I can see your point, but have you considered that they may actually *not* want to become independent. The way I heard it, and it sounds plausible, is that a lot of the population there actually do consider themselves Chinese and have strong links with families/etc on the mainland, and so *don't* want to become independent.
I would assume something similar in Tibet. Unfortunately, the radicals shout loudest and get most attention from media, so those are the people we tend to notice -and it's natural to assume they represent the majority (or at least a significant proportion), when there's really no way to tell without a referendum; and even then you have to wonder.
/. has been blocked on occasion, though I would be tempted to attribute that to a mistake or other rather than directly targeting /.
Well, I wouldn't take google's hit rates as much indication.
Some thoughts to counter taking conclusions from google hit rates :
1) it largely depends on default search engines, as well as which ones people choose to use. Google's stats are going to be biased towards the iPhone on several fronts - Google is most popular in the USA (no so popular in other places), is the default search engine for the iPhone, not so many S60 phones in the USA compared to the rest of the world and most Symbian (ie S60) phones don't have a default search engine at all (yet)
2) secondly, there are large parts of the world with massive cell phone markets where users don't use google hardly at all; China for example. Having said that, though those markets are large for cell phones, not so many use web browsers from them due to the expensive tarriffs (relative to salaries), but it is certainly a counter point. Having said *that*, I have an online symbian(S60) application that has a 'download' button and my web server logs show a surprising number of hits from China - the number is microscopic compared to places like Google, but it's an interesting data point showing China are online a lot. A lot of Asian countries are, and Russia too - not so long ago, it was my app's biggest country alongside Indonesia. I get next to no one (I count four) from the USA, I'm guessing mostly because of a lack of Symbian devices there (see my first point)
3) also, users of other phones have a choice in contract and so may well choose one that means they'll want to use the web less - while Apple iPhone users have been forced into unlimited data plans and so they will want to use it as much as possible.
No. I don't think Google's numbers are all that representative - perhaps for the USA, but not world-wide.
I can't think of a better site to use though.
To save you clicking, here are the interesting bits :
"
Highlights - Full year 2007, at 31 December 2007
* 77.3 million Symbian smartphones shipped to consumers worldwide in 2007 - a 50% increase on 2006 (51.7m)
* 188 million cumulative Symbian smartphone shipments since the formation of Symbian to 31 December 2007
* 68 mobile phones based on Symbian OS commenced shipment in 2007 through 250 major network operators by 8 licensees including Fujitsu, LG, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson, a 4.6% increase on 2006 (65 models)
* Of these models, 49 (72%) were based on Symbian OS v9, 46 (68%) for use on W-CDMA/ HSDPA (3G) and 20 (29%) were GPS enabled
* Symbian OS v9.3 is the latest version on Symbian OS to ship in devices (November 2007). Symbian OS v9.3 is optimized for convergence with performance and feature enhancements
* 8,736 third-party Symbian applications are now commercially available, a 27% increase on 31 December 2006 (6,896 applications) Source: Symbian research, see Notes to Editors
" 70% of the mobile browser market Care to back that up? I see some statistics say otherwise. To save you clicking :
"
1. PSP - 23.7%
2. Nokia N95 - 20.2%
3. iPAQ HX series - 20.1%
4. Palm TX - 3.6%
5. Apple iPhone - 3.4%
"
Of course, the figures do not justify the headline (that 'N95 bests iPhone', though the headline is a question not a statement). In any case, I'd like to see where you get your figures from.
Nokia 52.9%
RIM 11.4%
Apple 6.5%
Motorola 6.5%
Others 22.7%
A paragraph from that same page gives a (IMO) balanced commentary :
"Apple, perhaps not surprisingly, made a strong entrance to the worldwide market at the end of last year. To get to 6% so quickly (and with a single product) is an impressive achievement. RIM's OS continues to improve at a rate of knots (see my Smartphones Show Blackberry slots, for example) and it continues to be a surprise how fragmented the Windows Mobile world is, in terms of manufacturer success. Plus, even in their home territory of North America, Microsoft is now down to 3rd place in terms of their mobile platform (after RIM and Apple). If Microsoft don't pull a cat out of the bag very, very soon then their in big trouble"
> Google, thus far, only has hype :)
...and Apple have more of that than Google.
Eh. You give reasons why you *would* confuse it with a church. I asked the opposite.
Well, yes, sure.
:|
I wasn't trying to justify or even ignore their actions, so much as just not ask about them. I was asking about the actual religion, not the behaviour.
Some have answered this satisfactorily, I think, in that there isn't that much of a difference. I mean, for someone who doesn't believe it, Christianity should probably also be considered fiction - I wouldn't say it's 'science'-fiction exactly, but a lot of it is certainly beyond indisputable proof.
If it were just a bunch of people who believe that core stuff (and I don't claim to know much about it), without all the anti-social behaviour, then I don't think anyone would have much of a problem with it, beyond ridicule, which we Christians get on a fairly regular basis too.
Of course, like you say, if there are parts of the belief that instill authority in human beings, and others must obey without question, then has to lead to bad things, if not sooner, then later.
We don't have a whole lot of that in the protestant church. If one of the leaders of a church started spouting stuff like that, he'd not have much of a church left. Having said that, if there were a big gap in intellect (or whatever it is that makes one person able to easily convince another), then that might be more of a problem...that thing at Waco rings a bell - I wonder what sort of religion is behind that.
Anyway, I have other things to think about
That scientology eventually teaches the idea that some Xenu character planted frosty dead people and hydrogen bombs in the Worlds' volcanoes, and that they have these ghosts stuck to them doesn't particularly enrage most of the scientology critics I know; it's their abuses and covertly hostile nature that disturbs them, and me. Fact is, that part isn't all that much different from other equally silly stories religions teach. I guess this was what I was really trying to discuss, rather than the actions of the people who have the religion itself - I guess it might be that it's impossible to separate the two, but I don't know.
Of course, I might want to anyway, but still, I can't since I can't speak Chinese. If you want to offer free wireless privately, what's wrong with showing a little insight and intelligence, and renaming your SSID "Free Wireless Here"? That removes all doubt. Well, perhaps, and I do, but I don't see why *I* should have to do that since there's already a mechanism to do that - that's the purpose publishing of SSID and lack of username and password. To me, that makes it quite clear that it is open for use. I mean, you need a username and password to change the settings on the router, so, even if they are well known, it is clear that 'just anybody' is supposed to use it.
IMO, this problem is all due to the stupid router manufacturers not putting a username/password on their wifi networks when they're shipped. I don't care if the username/password are all the same (though they could use a LAN MAC address or something to make it unique), so long as there is a username/password, then I *know* I'm not supposed to use it and I have to take action to connect (it can't happen automatically).
This law has it all backwards, IMO.
You says it's not bashing, then go on to describe bashing.
It sounds like you have a definition of bashing that includes an element of unreasonableness, or unjustifiedness. (Sorry for the 'ness'es - I'm having trouble with my words at the moment)
No, I agree.
However, there are extremists in many religions - though the extremism in COS seems to be somewhat more in-built.
My question was more to do with the core beliefs, rather than the church (group of people-wise) itself.
I guess I should just read up on it myself, if I'm that interested (not sure I am, actually).