And if the lawyer actually states that he was offering money to incite others to commit murders, we all know he will be in hotter soup than merely reneging on a million dollar contract.
Contract fulfilled, unless lawyer really wishes to argue that he was illegally hiring folks for contract killing.
Unfortunately, the lawyer cannot use that excuse either.
He will make the situation worse for himself, since he will be guilty of incitement of crime. Offering to pay people to commit murder is also illegal the last time I checked. If he actually uses that excuse, he will then simply avoiding paying the one million, only to be arrested and sent to jail for conspiracy to murder. Especially if some nutcase actually did go and commit the murders, just to take him up on his dare. Which in America, seems a bit more likely than other places, in my opinion.
Any particular reason why you are so keen on finding excuses for the lawyer to weasel out of his promise?
There are a number of such public challenges made. Ansari X comes to mind. There are various individuals who invest significant effort, time and money based on the promise of the award. The person/organizations making the promise are not allowed to weasel out later and renege on their promise, causing severe damage to those who invested significant money completing the challenge, based on the promise. He didn't state it was a joke. He was not on a comedy show. He had not been asked to make a joke. Until the challenge had actually been completed, he had full rights to even publicly withdraw it. He did not do so. So he is legally obliged to pay.
The lawyer is being just a weasel, based on his obvious advantage of not requiring to hire a lawyer to defend himself. His legal expenses in defending himself will be significantly less than the other guy.
There is a reason why L-A-W-Y-E-R sounds like L-I-A-R.
Pardon me, but isn't traditional purpose of so-called zombies is supposed to obey the orders and act as a proxy of the person who raised them?
RIAA is just a bogeyman. A shadow puppet. It is the *media companies* that are suing you. It is *media companies* like Sony, Warner Bros. etc. which are harassing their own consumers. I am not aware of "RIAA" producing any songs.
Sony would not like the negative publicity of being caught suing a 84 year old grandmother. So it banded up with other companies to make a dummy face which people can hate, instead of sony itself or other such companies. Corporations hate the negative publicity. That is the only place where we can hurt them. And when you hate/attack the puppet instead of its master, you are being just the dumb person Sony and its ilk assumed you to be, and playing their game their way.
You want RIAA to die? Stop naming RIAA in these stories as the suing party. It is not that tough to find out which company in the cabal is alleging the piracy. Name *them* when you report the stories of blind homeless veteran being sued by them.
If someone sues you with malice, should you hate the lawyer they have hired, or the guy who is actually suing you and paying the lawyer to make your life hell?
Sony and its pals do these stunts because they know you will hate the "RIAA" instead of them, and they will get to keep their rosy image and be safe from any direct public-backlash. Change the rules, and attack the voodoo witchdoctor. And then see the zombies die.
Actually what would be more interesting is whether RIAA's wealth/income is evaluated at the same rate, and they pay tax to the United States Government accordingly(i.e. at the rate of 2 million dollars per 24 files).
What are the laws for this situation? If I had a diamond/gold bars potentially worth 2 million dollar, and I just gave it away to an employee for just a few dollars, will the USA govt. excuse the employee from paying income/gift tax for the full potential value of the item? Because this seems to be exactly the case with RIAA now. Each of their files are now potentially worth $80000, correct? And just because RIAA's founding companies gift it away to the public at a much lesser price, should be of no concern to the USA government in terms of tax.
If the IRS and government officials ignore this tax fraud, are they not guilty of cheating and defrauding the american public, since they are letting RIAA get away with billions of dollars in tax fraud, while expecting only the poorer american public to pay their taxes?
Why is RIAA being allowed to get away with two different evaluations of its income/wealth in terms of tax? Shouldn't this unpaid tax money be collected from them and used to create new jobs for American people? They are cheating the american public of valuable tax money, especially in this time of global recession. It is the duty of the government to ensure that corporations are taxed *at least* as much as a common man is.
Heritage is not important. Unlike you, I do not have any tendencies towards racism. So, if a person was born an American, acts American, was brought up in America, he is for all Indian purposes, an American. Merely "looking" Indian is then, not important. By being brought up in American culture, he has never even got the chance to embrace his "Indian heritage".
What exactly is this "heritage" anyways? His parents telling him that he is actually from a land far away, and he should not consider himself American? Or is it some "special encoding within his genetic structure" that makes him identified with a land he has never even probably seen? You are actually indirectly claiming that there is no such thing as an American, since obviously every American has a Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, African or British heritage. In context of a nation populated almost 100% by immigrants, do you imply that there is no such thing as an American heritage?
Think about it. Heritage ceases to exist for those who never embraced it. It is you who is actually confused with feelings of nationalism. For you an American can obviously never be just an American. As per your logic, he will always be a British, Indian, Japanese or German first, since even being born and brought up in America is not sufficient as per you, to qualify as an American.
And back to your question, I am claiming that yes he probably did read about Indo Sino war somewhere, but you were actually trying to rub in the "my dad beat the shit outta your dad" thing, so he claimed "Indian victory" just to piss you off. Our school textbooks teach that we LOST the Indo-Sino war, so that that cannot be anymore official. If any Indian wants to seriously claim otherwise, he is a schizophrenic.
And I agree that Nehru did ALL of those idiotic things. At that point, India and China were negotiating regards the Shimla accord and McMohan Line. China had claimed that there was no territorial dispute, a statement which was construed by Nehru to imply that China would be okay with India claiming land upto McMohan Line, and/or the Indian side of Himalayas(a land considered Indian territory since ancient times. Heck, even the name is in Sanskrit. Do look up Himalaya on internet). Nehru decided to test the waters, and chinese policy at the time was to not to go anywhere the Indians were, in the disputed land.
And then Nehru like a true idiot, decided to give refuge to Dalai Lama, which pissed off Mao, gutted the India-China alliance, and had China change its policy and to reclaim Tibet. Check out your vaunted wikipedia. Even that says the exact same thing. I agree fully that Nehru did all those idiotic things.
But in the end, even in "forward policy", Nehru had indeed given firm orders to Indian troops NOT to engage the Chinese forces directly. Indian air force was actually asked NOT to prepare for war, despite the intelligence reports of Chinese forces buildup. There *was* peace despite the Indians trying to stake the claim on McMohan Line. War was actually initiated instead, due to Nehru's giving refuge to Dalai Lama.
Indian forces may have staked claim on the land, but they did so without actually directly engaging Chinese forces. And there were negotiations going on for that, and China was assuring India that "it did not dispute Indian territorial claims". And yet, that was provocation for all-out war, without even a single warning? There was not even a war ultimatum given by China e.g. "get off my lawn or else...". In context of the Indian-Chinese alliance claims, a sudden attack on Indian forces *without any warnings* of course made China the aggressor.
And that is why Indians do not trust or believe anything the Chinese say. Especially since most Chinese have been brainwashed into just blindly stating whatever the government tells them to.
And there is the part, where we Indians have the upper hand over the Chinese. And this is also what this slashdot article is all about. Everything else is bick
You say you've never met any Indian who believes so. I'm guessing from context that you're talking about Indians born in India, not Indians born in America.
Okay. That is dumb.
I have a newsflash for you. There are Americans whose great-grandparents came from Russia... or Spain. Or Britain. That does NOT makes their kids Russians. Or Spanish. The kids are Americans by birth. They might be African-Americans or Asian Americans, but ultimately they are just Americans. They were born and brought up in America, studying American history and brought up as Americans. And Americans kids are not exactly experts on Indian history. Period.
And when I as a bona fide Indian, am informing you that our school textbooks state that we Indians lost the war against you Chinese(and this is supposed to be humiliating for me), you are still persisting in instead believing and quoting some clueless American-Indian kid "living next door", who has never even been to India and knows zilch about Indian history. If that is not being biased and drinking the propaganda cool-aid, I don't know what is.
And why would any parents lie to their kid? Especially one who are hardly "hardcore nationalist", if they took the American citizenship? Clearly you were not trying to be friends with the kid, by reminding him how "your great-grandpa whoopped the tar outta his great-grandpa". Too hard to imagine that the guy was just being pissed off at you for rubbing in your "Chinese military superiority", and decided to piss you off too?
And you are supposed to be one of the enlightened Chinese. Says a lot, in above light and that context.
To be fair, there's no proof that those were written by "hardcore Indian nationalists." They could've been written by trolls who are neither Indian nor Chinese. Which is more likely to you?
Wikipedia? Seriously? You are kidding, right? Now you are sore that Indians honour the soldiers who lost their life fighting the enemy? Keep in mind that it is undebatable that it was the Chinese who was the aggressor in this war. Indians were attempting to defend the territory from China. They were not even on the offensive side. And you are sore that India is honouring its soldiers that died in action? Is there any rulebook that says that the losing country should not honour the soldiers that showed bravery on battlefield and died, just because they lost the war? There are lots of Americans who got decorated during the Vietnam war, you know? Honouring some of the few brave soldiers is "hardcore nationalism" now?
And obviously China clearly won. Those specific Indian soldiers were honoured because they did kill many enemy soldiers attacking *their* defending points. Nobody is claiming that *every* Indian soldier killed 10 Chinese soldiers or any such thing. And as such, that doesn't negates your fact of Indian casualties being more than the Chinese. Correct? Are *you* trying to imply that Indians forces were NOT outnumbered, and that they surrendered without fighting? Where did the high Indian casualties come from then? Fighting despite being outnumbered is not brave? Clearly, with Chinese outnumbering everyone else on the planet, you of course cannot answer the last question, I guess.
Frankly, China with its out of control population *needs* more resources, food and more lands. India is a competitor. So ofcourse, with the necessary future Chinese miltaristic expansion, every country around China needs to painted as a Villain in some way or another. Future wars need some kind of "moral" justification.
Regardless of what some hardcore Indian nationalists say, India lost the 1962 Sino-Indian War. This is not a secret in China.
See, this is where your propaganda cool aid shows up. *Despite* claiming that the chinese have an unbiased view of the events and other countries, the bias still shows up in your views.
As an Indian, I can confirm that we are actually *taught* in school and colleges that India lost the Sino-Indian War. There is no delusion there. We lost. China won. As such, not even a school child in India thinks that we did not lose in any way. The Indian schoolbooks say that we won(or drew) every single war with Pakistan. They clearly say that India lost the war with China.
*Your* bias is clear however, when you stated your belief that some "hardcore Indian nationalist" do not believe India lost. I have yet to come across an Indian who believes so, specially when we get taught otherwise in schools.
From our version of history, Tibet was a territory conquered sometimes by Indian kings and sometimes by the Chinese(Since a unified India did not actually exist pre-mughal period). Britishers snatched it from the Chinese empire several centuries ago, and China simply sat quietly since it didn't think it was capable of taking on the British naval forces etc. at that point. Once the British decided to leave India, China evaluated the weaker Indian army and decided to stake its centuries old claim again. The Indian army which is still weaker than China and even then in its nascent stage, lost against the Chinese forces.
The Chinese Invasion came unexpected when negotiations were going on, and China was actually extending friendly overtures to India. This situation was the result of the idiocy of Nehru to attempt an alliance with China and at the same time antagonize China by giving refuge to the Dalai Lama(Which was obviously seen by China as interference in its internal affairs). Nevertheless, in background of the negotiations and Zhou Enlai claiming that there was no dispute between India and China, the unexpected attacks are seen by India as a stab in the back and betrayal of trust. So strong was the belief that India and China were allies, that Indian air force, which could have possibly succeeded in repelling the Chinese, was told to stand down.
The Indian perception of the Indo-sino war is that Nehru was an idiot to attempt an alliance with China, and that no matter how justified the Chinese claim over Tibet was, China/Zhou Enlai should have not pretended to "be friends to India", if China intended to invade over the territorial dispute.
And in that light, *of course* the Indians see Chinese as double-dealing backstabbers, but kindly stop claiming that any Indian claims that India won the Indo-Sino war. Indians do hate/mistrust the chinese in general, but they don't have any delusions about losing the Indo-Sino war.
You demonstrate an unsurpassed lack of understanding of macro-economics.
If the labor is expensive, than pray thee, how do you make american products compete in the international market? There is a reason why global markets are flooded with China-made products. They are cheaper than competing products of similar quality.
Businesses always need cheap labour, to reduce cost and therefore maximizing profit or at least competitiveness. If Americans were willing to reduce their pampered exhorbiant standard of living, and work for less, the american economy would stand a chance. Especially since America was the one going around forcing globalisation down the throat of these very same countries. Now that the mass global market is a reality, you literally have a tiger by its tail. Obviously any such suggestions of perhaps lowering the over-bloated standard of living, would be met with shocked cries of "You just want to make us ALL poor, you damned communist!".
Thing is, the American standard of living ensured that the prices for even basic things like food, that cost mere cents in other parts of the world would cost Americans more, since they would be subjected to much higher quality control. Every one wants a gas-guzzling car, instead of using mass-transport. And it is simply unthinkable for Americans to let go of these addictions, to the extent that they cannot even consider surviving on a lower salary(perhaps the system they have set up will not even allow them to), and thus cannot compete in the global market. Only one phrase comes to mind.
Or instead of hypocrisy, it is sheer xenophobia and mis-information at work.
Clueless much? Apparently Indian companies do hire non-Indians.
http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1832596.cms
Obviously, these folks did apply for a work permit and got one.
Thing is, that most US citizens are generally only all talk about actually going to India to work. Just empty talk.
It is a third world country. Period. Even if you were earning well by Indian standards(which most foreigners working in India do) you will still be dealing with mosquitoes, scorching Indian heat in summers, dirt, grime, infections, what not. India is all fun to visit as a tourist, but living there when you are a US citizen? Forget it. Think of queues 4-5 hours long, for almost everything.
Indians are used to this "way of life". You as a pampered, spoiled US citizen are not. You will start cribbing about the dirt from day one. Your body has never encountered the diseases and bacterias flourishing there. Indians have developed a natural immunity. You will either have really watch what you drink and eat, or fall sick constantly. And the country is mostly conservative. Your chances of a relationship with a membership of the opposite sex are remote, unless she is interested in hooking onto your US citizenship as a wife.
And all this, when your pay is in the upper brackett, allowing you to afford an air-conditioner at home at least, a car, good medical care, to compensate for some of the things you took for granted in USA. Such high-paying jobs are scarce. Being used to the US life, you are just not really in a position to survive on an actual average Indian salary.
So far, it has been unthinkable that any average american would want to work in India for long-term, unless he was being ordered to, by his employer, or unless he was unaware what he was getting into, or unless he was a glutton for punishment, or all of above.
If you are still game, get an Indian company to hire you first. If you are a good bargain for the value they will get, then business is business. There is no real bias against foreigners, especially if they deal with software export or US clients, in which case you might be even desirable for interfacing with their US clients. They will sponsor your Indian work permit. The procedure involved lots of red-tape but not impossible either. I personally know tons of Japanese folks working in India for example, for Indian companies that deal with Japanese companies.
But please tone down the misinformation and xenophobia. It is becoming too much an american stereotype.
My point, is that if we don't install any software, then what is the point of having a computer?
My point is that if you are not immortal, not the richest guy in the world, don't have eternal youth, then what is the point of your staying alive?
Go jump off a cliff please!
World and software products are not going to become perfect one-size-fits-all anytime soon. If you are not going to install anything till even free stuff like Google Earth works perfectly on your computer, you should indeed throw away your computer. You are probably too stupid/stubborn to use it anyways.
Au contraire, you are not paying a penny to them, and nobody is forcing you to install it.
Since it is a free product and not even forced on you the way internet explorer is, why not just go and use another similar product? How were you coping without Google Earth? how will you cope if Google stopped the service for non-paying customers?
It is not even malware. Any company like yahoo, microsoft or google that stores your emails, personal data and profile, has enough information about you, should they go abusive. And since they can get sued by lawsuit-happy Americans, I don't see them doing anything stupid either like installing malware on your computer.
Providing downloads of insecure badly coded/thought-of free products is not a crime, even if you *feel* that it should be. Nobody has sued Microsoft, for its Windows OS yet even when it is a commercial product, that you do pay for.
If some artist was handing away nice painted glass panes, and you installed one in your window and it turned out to be pretty thin and bad security-wise and maybe made a shaking noice every now and then with wind, you really cannot go and demand the artist to provide you with a better bullet-proof window pane. You didn't pay a thing for it. He will be well within his rights, to tell you to just throw away the glass pane, if you didn't like it.
And if you started picketing saying how the artist was a fascist for not providing you a better free product, and how he was trampling on your "rights", everyone will just chalk you up as a nutcase.
You could possibly politely suggest that you understood that it was a gift, but you would appreciate it if he used a better glass.
If you were paying for it, you could have asked them to re-compensate you or even sued them. If you are not paying a thing to them, you are not entitled to anything from them.
Innovation, as per perception, happens where ever the Management(owner is located) since it doesn't matters who conceived the idea, but rather who marketed it successfully. I don't see a problem with where the engineers are located, as long as American companies are still their paymasters, and thus the owner of their ideas.
And millions of people in the third world immigrate all the time to find better opportunities than available at home. Americans can either adapt and do the same, or choose to be stubborn and be a burden on your Government/country by expecting it to mollycoddle you and provide a job for you locally, despite the economic crisis.
The reason why an average American hates the idea of working elsewhere, is because the places where the jobs are, have a lower standard(and by extension, cost) of living. Which is understandable. That was why the world's best Engineers were trying to head for USA in the first place.
But let us face it, it can only be good for the rest of the world at least. America has the largest hoard of nukes in the world. It *could* have been using some of that nuclear material for generating power and selling it to the rest of the world and still have plenty left for its defense. Power is the primary requirement for industrialization and for exploiting resources. But so far, there was nothing in it for America, to actually help those countries. So far it has shared the technology and nuclear resources only with countries such as Japan, where it had military bases and thus a significant American population and an interest. The rest have been deprived based possibly on the policy that it is better to keep them poor, and thus the products sold from those countries, to be cheap. A starving man cannot bargain well. With a large number of Americans living in those countries too, this will change and it can only improve the lives of those poor millions.
Some of you might call it a pipe-dream, but I think Americans would a show more empathy to the problems of those third-world countries, if they had to actually, you know, live there. It might make the rest of the world, a bit better place to live in. Every dark cloud has a silver lining and all that.
And it would only probably improve their knowledge of geography. Please send Palin first.
Besides, who gives a crap if an asteroid plows into the earth and kills us all?
In similar vein, who gives a crap if you stopped eating/crapping/sleeping and eventually just died in next few days?
But you cannot stop eating/crapping/sleeping, can you? Apparently, You would like to continue living. All life is about survival, and doing everything possible to maximize the chances of survival of self/group.
Birds migrate, species adapt... it is the nature of life. It is the built-in imperative. Some people like you would put self before group, and would care more about your own short-term interests. Some would put group before self, and would rather bear some hardships now, in order to maximize the survival of their children.
With your kind of cynical logic, why do *anything* at all? Why build bridges, cities, schools? Why give a crap?
University degrees generally go far beyond mere syntactical and grammatical knowledge of a computer language or system. They generally try to instill in you, the capacity to learn. To design something new. A certification is a mere bare second-hand substitute for a degree. Someone with an actual degree will presumable have the capacity to learn new systems, instead of just memorizing the syntax and specifics of a particular language or system, learning to know the basic debugging or common routines.
Someone with a certification is merely learning to use an existing system or language. But someone with a university degree in computer science is in theory, capable of designing a new language or system. Linus Torvald didn't learn about designing an operating system by taking certification courses, after all. True that most of the brilliant folks often drop out of college, but that is because they feel that they have already learned what they can from the university system and are confident enough that they don't really need just the paper proof of the degree. But that just proves that the way you are taught in a university is actually important.
Degrees are important and are worth much more than mere certifications, when accompanied by practical experience. Certifications on the other hand, are acceptable substitutes if you need just a monkey coder or junior sysadmin who is familiar with at least the basics and is required to just maintain an existing system instead of designing a new one.
Of course, most of the certificates are useless on their own.
Jobs are all about actual experience.
and most of the certifications generally test your mere capacity to memorize the syntax and specifics. They indicate nothing of your capacity to analyze a problem. Nor do they indicate whether you actually know anything of the problems faced in real world while coding. A certification in programming would not necessarily mean you are a team player or whether you know how to use a versioning system or whether you are aware of undocumented gotchas that the tests never mention but an experienced programmer would know of.
And then there are some monkey coders, who do have experience... on paper. They sometimes get sucked into projects that allow for fairly limited and specialized specific experience. They might have been able to do the bare bones job for years in their previous organisation, but that doesn't means they are suited for your particular requirements. They might not know the system or language at all. A person with 5 years of experience maintaining a small local network at a small company, may not be suited for a job with an ISP where he may need to know all about web servers, dns servers, mail servers, routers, RAID systems etc. etc.
On the other hand, certifications *with* experience *prove* that you have a certain level of mastery with the specific programming language, while also having the on-the-job experience.
It is always possible to get a IT job without an actual degree in IT.
But there are jobs and then there are jobs. Keep in mind that first and foremost question in the mind of a hiring person is whether or not you can do the job, and whether your skills are good value for the money they will be paying you. And plus you can forget the big labels. You will have to start in a small company, gain a few years of experience under your belt, and then try to apply for a better position.
Or instead, you can just do a few certification courses while you are working. While most companies would prefer someone with a computer degree, they also are willing to take someone who has proven level of skills.
"If having nukes got you respect, USA would be a tad more popular, don't you think?"
Only if your definition of respect has something to do with popularity, mine doesn't.
There is a difference between respect for a role model or a good leader, and the terror of a bully. It is obvious what you are confusing your definition of "respect" with.
And fun part is, that the main lesson bullies tend to impart to others, is not to be weak and to have their own guns, because bullies tend to prey only on the weak. The countries with actual nuclear capability are safe from USA(China, North Korea, Russia, India etc.) and the countries that don't actually have nukes(e.g. Iraq) get invaded and destroyed for flimsiest of reasons.
You are not the only one with nukes. USA is the *only* country in the world known to willingly and happily use nukes on a civilian population and world ostracizing be damned. And yet they have dared not do so again, mostly due to the fact that *other* countries have nukes as well. Being a bully with big stick works *only* if others don't have a stick to hit back with, which scares the bully into not using his stick either.
The Cuban missile crisis was the prime example. For all its nuclear arsenal, USA was not willing to use a nuke again against USSR or Cuba, since doing so would have meant facing a nuclear counter-attack. This was different from using it against Japan, which did not have nuclear capability. Americans are willing to kill but are not willing to risk dying.
Terrorists on the other hand, don't give a crap about dying as the suicide bombers and 911 Hijackers have proved repeatedly. Terrorists leaders don't want to kill you. They want to terrorize the shit out of you. So far they have succeeded. There have been other countries like India, Israel or Britain which have faced terrorist attacks on almost a weekly basis. But USA is the only one to throw away their way of life and respond by becoming a totally Orwellian Nation. Terrorists have seldomly won anywhere in the world, save against USA.
And if a nuclear attack on american soil strikes even more terror into heart of USA... to take away even the few remaining freedoms the country has got left... why would the terrorist hesitate? If they are willing to die for their cause, why would they care about retaliation?
Plus Osama as per your own intelligence agencies, is hiding on the soil of one of your own allies. So how do you "retaliate"? by nuking Pakistan, one of your major allies?
If they didn't worry about your retaliation during 911... if they are laughing at your impotence now... what would make them stop in future?
The one thing that I think prevents even the most insane individuals from doling out nukes to attack the the US is the effect of reprisal, not just for those setting off the bomb but those who sold it as well.
Indeed...as the harsh reprisals against Osama have indeed proved. The terrorists simply wept and gave up as they saw how Osama was captured and made to pay for his crimes... darn!...
Oh wait... so *actually* what will happen is, that US will forget about the actual terrorists and go invade the next country with oil...unless they happen to have nukes as well...
Your definition of "respect" is messed up. All that happened was that Pakistan was emboldened to try an incursion and *still* got its ass handed to it, by India during the Kargil war.
... which led to Gen. Musharraf's overturning the democratically elected government when he feared facing consequences of his mis-adventure, and bringing Pakistan into the ranks of despiced Dictatorships, that lacks real elections but instead has assassinations of potential political opponents.
The alternate world you live in, must be an interesting one. If having nukes got you respect, USA would be a tad more popular, don't you think? Nukes by themselves, neither get you respect, nor keep you safe(as 911 demonstrated).
What is far more interesting about Google Personals, is the option of selecting "sexual orientation" being grayed out. Rest of the options work. Did anyone else notice?
A PR disaster waiting to happen there. If the option was not there at all, it would matter little. But why on earth did they add it and then disabled it? At least this is how it appears on the default page. Looks like someone put it there, but later was overruled by someone who was way too homophobic? What was the problem with people being able to choose sexual orientation as well, if they so wished?
Whatever be the case, you definitely have something there that may raise the eyebrows of Gay rights groups. Doesn't sends the right message, even if it was just an innocent mistake or even a bug. Looks like the smart people at Google are not that smart after all.
Pretty good points and btw I fully agree. Preaching to the chorus.
But... if you brainwash some kid into doing something that is still a sort of exploitation... is it okay then? I am not commenting on the pedophilia itself. Rape of kids is wrong. Everyone agrees there. And then there are those who argue that even if you get consent from a kid... it is still wrong...because what do the kids know? And then there are those who point out that hey.. the age of consent is different in different places... in a certain place even in USA, kids as young as 12-14 can have sex with other kids. It is just wrong if an adult is involved.
Different arguments. You can decide what side to take.
But it is still always amazingly silly to build umbrellas for the fishes.
I have blooody lived for 7 years in japan. Would you like pics of the crowd surrounding the girls selling their photo albums? I took some. Not of the girls. But the crowd surrounding them. I understand about advertisers. This is a recent trend. Instead of talking of your experiences 2 years go, why not walk down this week to akiba?
Bigoted? Again... I have lived in japan for 7 years. All in all, it is an awesome place to live. And it has less rape crimes than usa.... or anywhere else. All I am saying is that before Japan govt decides to emulate its US bosses, it has to first take care of the social mentality first. Else it is all hypocrisy.
Japanese are the way they are. It is a different culture. And values and systems change over the years or via cultural induction. But talking about protecting children when they are used as sex objects regularly in media and in daily life, is silly.
You cannot generalize, but you can definitely say that the "majority" is like this way or that way. It noway claims that there are no exceptions. I suppose that concept escapes your grasp.
Slashdot Mirror
Contract fulfilled, unless lawyer really wishes to argue that he was illegally hiring folks for contract killing.
He will make the situation worse for himself, since he will be guilty of incitement of crime. Offering to pay people to commit murder is also illegal the last time I checked. If he actually uses that excuse, he will then simply avoiding paying the one million, only to be arrested and sent to jail for conspiracy to murder. Especially if some nutcase actually did go and commit the murders, just to take him up on his dare. Which in America, seems a bit more likely than other places, in my opinion.
Any particular reason why you are so keen on finding excuses for the lawyer to weasel out of his promise?
There are a number of such public challenges made. Ansari X comes to mind. There are various individuals who invest significant effort, time and money based on the promise of the award. The person/organizations making the promise are not allowed to weasel out later and renege on their promise, causing severe damage to those who invested significant money completing the challenge, based on the promise. He didn't state it was a joke. He was not on a comedy show. He had not been asked to make a joke. Until the challenge had actually been completed, he had full rights to even publicly withdraw it. He did not do so. So he is legally obliged to pay.
The lawyer is being just a weasel, based on his obvious advantage of not requiring to hire a lawyer to defend himself. His legal expenses in defending himself will be significantly less than the other guy.
There is a reason why L-A-W-Y-E-R sounds like L-I-A-R.
Pardon me, but isn't traditional purpose of so-called zombies is supposed to obey the orders and act as a proxy of the person who raised them?
RIAA is just a bogeyman. A shadow puppet. It is the *media companies* that are suing you. It is *media companies* like Sony, Warner Bros. etc. which are harassing their own consumers. I am not aware of "RIAA" producing any songs.
Sony would not like the negative publicity of being caught suing a 84 year old grandmother. So it banded up with other companies to make a dummy face which people can hate, instead of sony itself or other such companies. Corporations hate the negative publicity. That is the only place where we can hurt them. And when you hate/attack the puppet instead of its master, you are being just the dumb person Sony and its ilk assumed you to be, and playing their game their way.
You want RIAA to die? Stop naming RIAA in these stories as the suing party. It is not that tough to find out which company in the cabal is alleging the piracy. Name *them* when you report the stories of blind homeless veteran being sued by them.
If someone sues you with malice, should you hate the lawyer they have hired, or the guy who is actually suing you and paying the lawyer to make your life hell?
Sony and its pals do these stunts because they know you will hate the "RIAA" instead of them, and they will get to keep their rosy image and be safe from any direct public-backlash. Change the rules, and attack the voodoo witchdoctor. And then see the zombies die.
What are the laws for this situation? If I had a diamond/gold bars potentially worth 2 million dollar, and I just gave it away to an employee for just a few dollars, will the USA govt. excuse the employee from paying income/gift tax for the full potential value of the item? Because this seems to be exactly the case with RIAA now. Each of their files are now potentially worth $80000, correct? And just because RIAA's founding companies gift it away to the public at a much lesser price, should be of no concern to the USA government in terms of tax.
If the IRS and government officials ignore this tax fraud, are they not guilty of cheating and defrauding the american public, since they are letting RIAA get away with billions of dollars in tax fraud, while expecting only the poorer american public to pay their taxes?
Why is RIAA being allowed to get away with two different evaluations of its income/wealth in terms of tax? Shouldn't this unpaid tax money be collected from them and used to create new jobs for American people? They are cheating the american public of valuable tax money, especially in this time of global recession. It is the duty of the government to ensure that corporations are taxed *at least* as much as a common man is.
Heritage is not important. Unlike you, I do not have any tendencies towards racism. So, if a person was born an American, acts American, was brought up in America, he is for all Indian purposes, an American. Merely "looking" Indian is then, not important. By being brought up in American culture, he has never even got the chance to embrace his "Indian heritage".
What exactly is this "heritage" anyways? His parents telling him that he is actually from a land far away, and he should not consider himself American? Or is it some "special encoding within his genetic structure" that makes him identified with a land he has never even probably seen? You are actually indirectly claiming that there is no such thing as an American, since obviously every American has a Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, African or British heritage. In context of a nation populated almost 100% by immigrants, do you imply that there is no such thing as an American heritage?
Think about it. Heritage ceases to exist for those who never embraced it. It is you who is actually confused with feelings of nationalism. For you an American can obviously never be just an American. As per your logic, he will always be a British, Indian, Japanese or German first, since even being born and brought up in America is not sufficient as per you, to qualify as an American.
And back to your question, I am claiming that yes he probably did read about Indo Sino war somewhere, but you were actually trying to rub in the "my dad beat the shit outta your dad" thing, so he claimed "Indian victory" just to piss you off. Our school textbooks teach that we LOST the Indo-Sino war, so that that cannot be anymore official. If any Indian wants to seriously claim otherwise, he is a schizophrenic.
And I agree that Nehru did ALL of those idiotic things. At that point, India and China were negotiating regards the Shimla accord and McMohan Line. China had claimed that there was no territorial dispute, a statement which was construed by Nehru to imply that China would be okay with India claiming land upto McMohan Line, and/or the Indian side of Himalayas(a land considered Indian territory since ancient times. Heck, even the name is in Sanskrit. Do look up Himalaya on internet). Nehru decided to test the waters, and chinese policy at the time was to not to go anywhere the Indians were, in the disputed land.
And then Nehru like a true idiot, decided to give refuge to Dalai Lama, which pissed off Mao, gutted the India-China alliance, and had China change its policy and to reclaim Tibet. Check out your vaunted wikipedia. Even that says the exact same thing. I agree fully that Nehru did all those idiotic things.
But in the end, even in "forward policy", Nehru had indeed given firm orders to Indian troops NOT to engage the Chinese forces directly. Indian air force was actually asked NOT to prepare for war, despite the intelligence reports of Chinese forces buildup. There *was* peace despite the Indians trying to stake the claim on McMohan Line. War was actually initiated instead, due to Nehru's giving refuge to Dalai Lama. Indian forces may have staked claim on the land, but they did so without actually directly engaging Chinese forces. And there were negotiations going on for that, and China was assuring India that "it did not dispute Indian territorial claims". And yet, that was provocation for all-out war, without even a single warning? There was not even a war ultimatum given by China e.g. "get off my lawn or else...". In context of the Indian-Chinese alliance claims, a sudden attack on Indian forces *without any warnings* of course made China the aggressor.
And that is why Indians do not trust or believe anything the Chinese say. Especially since most Chinese have been brainwashed into just blindly stating whatever the government tells them to.
And there is the part, where we Indians have the upper hand over the Chinese. And this is also what this slashdot article is all about. Everything else is bick
Okay. That is dumb.
I have a newsflash for you. There are Americans whose great-grandparents came from Russia... or Spain. Or Britain. That does NOT makes their kids Russians. Or Spanish. The kids are Americans by birth. They might be African-Americans or Asian Americans, but ultimately they are just Americans. They were born and brought up in America, studying American history and brought up as Americans. And Americans kids are not exactly experts on Indian history. Period.
And when I as a bona fide Indian, am informing you that our school textbooks state that we Indians lost the war against you Chinese(and this is supposed to be humiliating for me), you are still persisting in instead believing and quoting some clueless American-Indian kid "living next door", who has never even been to India and knows zilch about Indian history. If that is not being biased and drinking the propaganda cool-aid, I don't know what is.
And why would any parents lie to their kid? Especially one who are hardly "hardcore nationalist", if they took the American citizenship? Clearly you were not trying to be friends with the kid, by reminding him how "your great-grandpa whoopped the tar outta his great-grandpa". Too hard to imagine that the guy was just being pissed off at you for rubbing in your "Chinese military superiority", and decided to piss you off too? And you are supposed to be one of the enlightened Chinese. Says a lot, in above light and that context.
To be fair, there's no proof that those were written by "hardcore Indian nationalists." They could've been written by trolls who are neither Indian nor Chinese. Which is more likely to you?
Wikipedia? Seriously? You are kidding, right? Now you are sore that Indians honour the soldiers who lost their life fighting the enemy? Keep in mind that it is undebatable that it was the Chinese who was the aggressor in this war. Indians were attempting to defend the territory from China. They were not even on the offensive side. And you are sore that India is honouring its soldiers that died in action? Is there any rulebook that says that the losing country should not honour the soldiers that showed bravery on battlefield and died, just because they lost the war? There are lots of Americans who got decorated during the Vietnam war, you know? Honouring some of the few brave soldiers is "hardcore nationalism" now?
And obviously China clearly won. Those specific Indian soldiers were honoured because they did kill many enemy soldiers attacking *their* defending points. Nobody is claiming that *every* Indian soldier killed 10 Chinese soldiers or any such thing. And as such, that doesn't negates your fact of Indian casualties being more than the Chinese. Correct? Are *you* trying to imply that Indians forces were NOT outnumbered, and that they surrendered without fighting? Where did the high Indian casualties come from then? Fighting despite being outnumbered is not brave? Clearly, with Chinese outnumbering everyone else on the planet, you of course cannot answer the last question, I guess.
Frankly, China with its out of control population *needs* more resources, food and more lands. India is a competitor. So ofcourse, with the necessary future Chinese miltaristic expansion, every country around China needs to painted as a Villain in some way or another. Future wars need some kind of "moral" justification.
See, this is where your propaganda cool aid shows up. *Despite* claiming that the chinese have an unbiased view of the events and other countries, the bias still shows up in your views.
As an Indian, I can confirm that we are actually *taught* in school and colleges that India lost the Sino-Indian War. There is no delusion there. We lost. China won. As such, not even a school child in India thinks that we did not lose in any way. The Indian schoolbooks say that we won(or drew) every single war with Pakistan. They clearly say that India lost the war with China.
*Your* bias is clear however, when you stated your belief that some "hardcore Indian nationalist" do not believe India lost. I have yet to come across an Indian who believes so, specially when we get taught otherwise in schools.
From our version of history, Tibet was a territory conquered sometimes by Indian kings and sometimes by the Chinese(Since a unified India did not actually exist pre-mughal period). Britishers snatched it from the Chinese empire several centuries ago, and China simply sat quietly since it didn't think it was capable of taking on the British naval forces etc. at that point. Once the British decided to leave India, China evaluated the weaker Indian army and decided to stake its centuries old claim again. The Indian army which is still weaker than China and even then in its nascent stage, lost against the Chinese forces.
The Chinese Invasion came unexpected when negotiations were going on, and China was actually extending friendly overtures to India. This situation was the result of the idiocy of Nehru to attempt an alliance with China and at the same time antagonize China by giving refuge to the Dalai Lama(Which was obviously seen by China as interference in its internal affairs). Nevertheless, in background of the negotiations and Zhou Enlai claiming that there was no dispute between India and China, the unexpected attacks are seen by India as a stab in the back and betrayal of trust. So strong was the belief that India and China were allies, that Indian air force, which could have possibly succeeded in repelling the Chinese, was told to stand down.
The Indian perception of the Indo-sino war is that Nehru was an idiot to attempt an alliance with China, and that no matter how justified the Chinese claim over Tibet was, China/Zhou Enlai should have not pretended to "be friends to India", if China intended to invade over the territorial dispute.
And in that light, *of course* the Indians see Chinese as double-dealing backstabbers, but kindly stop claiming that any Indian claims that India won the Indo-Sino war. Indians do hate/mistrust the chinese in general, but they don't have any delusions about losing the Indo-Sino war.
Businesses always need cheap labour, to reduce cost and therefore maximizing profit or at least competitiveness. If Americans were willing to reduce their pampered exhorbiant standard of living, and work for less, the american economy would stand a chance. Especially since America was the one going around forcing globalisation down the throat of these very same countries. Now that the mass global market is a reality, you literally have a tiger by its tail. Obviously any such suggestions of perhaps lowering the over-bloated standard of living, would be met with shocked cries of "You just want to make us ALL poor, you damned communist!".
Thing is, the American standard of living ensured that the prices for even basic things like food, that cost mere cents in other parts of the world would cost Americans more, since they would be subjected to much higher quality control. Every one wants a gas-guzzling car, instead of using mass-transport. And it is simply unthinkable for Americans to let go of these addictions, to the extent that they cannot even consider surviving on a lower salary(perhaps the system they have set up will not even allow them to), and thus cannot compete in the global market. Only one phrase comes to mind.
Adapt or die.
Or instead of hypocrisy, it is sheer xenophobia and mis-information at work. Clueless much? Apparently Indian companies do hire non-Indians. http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1832596.cms Obviously, these folks did apply for a work permit and got one. Thing is, that most US citizens are generally only all talk about actually going to India to work. Just empty talk. It is a third world country. Period. Even if you were earning well by Indian standards(which most foreigners working in India do) you will still be dealing with mosquitoes, scorching Indian heat in summers, dirt, grime, infections, what not. India is all fun to visit as a tourist, but living there when you are a US citizen? Forget it. Think of queues 4-5 hours long, for almost everything. Indians are used to this "way of life". You as a pampered, spoiled US citizen are not. You will start cribbing about the dirt from day one. Your body has never encountered the diseases and bacterias flourishing there. Indians have developed a natural immunity. You will either have really watch what you drink and eat, or fall sick constantly. And the country is mostly conservative. Your chances of a relationship with a membership of the opposite sex are remote, unless she is interested in hooking onto your US citizenship as a wife. And all this, when your pay is in the upper brackett, allowing you to afford an air-conditioner at home at least, a car, good medical care, to compensate for some of the things you took for granted in USA. Such high-paying jobs are scarce. Being used to the US life, you are just not really in a position to survive on an actual average Indian salary. So far, it has been unthinkable that any average american would want to work in India for long-term, unless he was being ordered to, by his employer, or unless he was unaware what he was getting into, or unless he was a glutton for punishment, or all of above. If you are still game, get an Indian company to hire you first. If you are a good bargain for the value they will get, then business is business. There is no real bias against foreigners, especially if they deal with software export or US clients, in which case you might be even desirable for interfacing with their US clients. They will sponsor your Indian work permit. The procedure involved lots of red-tape but not impossible either. I personally know tons of Japanese folks working in India for example, for Indian companies that deal with Japanese companies. But please tone down the misinformation and xenophobia. It is becoming too much an american stereotype.
My point is that if you are not immortal, not the richest guy in the world, don't have eternal youth, then what is the point of your staying alive?
Go jump off a cliff please!
World and software products are not going to become perfect one-size-fits-all anytime soon. If you are not going to install anything till even free stuff like Google Earth works perfectly on your computer, you should indeed throw away your computer. You are probably too stupid/stubborn to use it anyways.
Since it is a free product and not even forced on you the way internet explorer is, why not just go and use another similar product? How were you coping without Google Earth? how will you cope if Google stopped the service for non-paying customers?
It is not even malware. Any company like yahoo, microsoft or google that stores your emails, personal data and profile, has enough information about you, should they go abusive. And since they can get sued by lawsuit-happy Americans, I don't see them doing anything stupid either like installing malware on your computer.
Providing downloads of insecure badly coded/thought-of free products is not a crime, even if you *feel* that it should be. Nobody has sued Microsoft, for its Windows OS yet even when it is a commercial product, that you do pay for.
If some artist was handing away nice painted glass panes, and you installed one in your window and it turned out to be pretty thin and bad security-wise and maybe made a shaking noice every now and then with wind, you really cannot go and demand the artist to provide you with a better bullet-proof window pane. You didn't pay a thing for it. He will be well within his rights, to tell you to just throw away the glass pane, if you didn't like it.
And if you started picketing saying how the artist was a fascist for not providing you a better free product, and how he was trampling on your "rights", everyone will just chalk you up as a nutcase.
You could possibly politely suggest that you understood that it was a gift, but you would appreciate it if he used a better glass.
If you were paying for it, you could have asked them to re-compensate you or even sued them. If you are not paying a thing to them, you are not entitled to anything from them.
And millions of people in the third world immigrate all the time to find better opportunities than available at home. Americans can either adapt and do the same, or choose to be stubborn and be a burden on your Government/country by expecting it to mollycoddle you and provide a job for you locally, despite the economic crisis.
The reason why an average American hates the idea of working elsewhere, is because the places where the jobs are, have a lower standard(and by extension, cost) of living. Which is understandable. That was why the world's best Engineers were trying to head for USA in the first place.
But let us face it, it can only be good for the rest of the world at least. America has the largest hoard of nukes in the world. It *could* have been using some of that nuclear material for generating power and selling it to the rest of the world and still have plenty left for its defense. Power is the primary requirement for industrialization and for exploiting resources. But so far, there was nothing in it for America, to actually help those countries. So far it has shared the technology and nuclear resources only with countries such as Japan, where it had military bases and thus a significant American population and an interest. The rest have been deprived based possibly on the policy that it is better to keep them poor, and thus the products sold from those countries, to be cheap. A starving man cannot bargain well. With a large number of Americans living in those countries too, this will change and it can only improve the lives of those poor millions.
Some of you might call it a pipe-dream, but I think Americans would a show more empathy to the problems of those third-world countries, if they had to actually, you know, live there. It might make the rest of the world, a bit better place to live in. Every dark cloud has a silver lining and all that.
And it would only probably improve their knowledge of geography. Please send Palin first.
I suspect many Iraqis prefer to have a Saddam than US Soldiers. I haven't taken a scientific poll, so I can't prove it.
In similar vein, who gives a crap if you stopped eating/crapping/sleeping and eventually just died in next few days?
But you cannot stop eating/crapping/sleeping, can you? Apparently, You would like to continue living. All life is about survival, and doing everything possible to maximize the chances of survival of self/group.
Birds migrate, species adapt... it is the nature of life. It is the built-in imperative. Some people like you would put self before group, and would care more about your own short-term interests. Some would put group before self, and would rather bear some hardships now, in order to maximize the survival of their children.
With your kind of cynical logic, why do *anything* at all? Why build bridges, cities, schools? Why give a crap?
University degrees generally go far beyond mere syntactical and grammatical knowledge of a computer language or system. They generally try to instill in you, the capacity to learn. To design something new. A certification is a mere bare second-hand substitute for a degree. Someone with an actual degree will presumable have the capacity to learn new systems, instead of just memorizing the syntax and specifics of a particular language or system, learning to know the basic debugging or common routines.
Someone with a certification is merely learning to use an existing system or language. But someone with a university degree in computer science is in theory, capable of designing a new language or system. Linus Torvald didn't learn about designing an operating system by taking certification courses, after all. True that most of the brilliant folks often drop out of college, but that is because they feel that they have already learned what they can from the university system and are confident enough that they don't really need just the paper proof of the degree. But that just proves that the way you are taught in a university is actually important.
Degrees are important and are worth much more than mere certifications, when accompanied by practical experience. Certifications on the other hand, are acceptable substitutes if you need just a monkey coder or junior sysadmin who is familiar with at least the basics and is required to just maintain an existing system instead of designing a new one.
Jobs are all about actual experience.
and most of the certifications generally test your mere capacity to memorize the syntax and specifics. They indicate nothing of your capacity to analyze a problem. Nor do they indicate whether you actually know anything of the problems faced in real world while coding. A certification in programming would not necessarily mean you are a team player or whether you know how to use a versioning system or whether you are aware of undocumented gotchas that the tests never mention but an experienced programmer would know of.
And then there are some monkey coders, who do have experience... on paper. They sometimes get sucked into projects that allow for fairly limited and specialized specific experience. They might have been able to do the bare bones job for years in their previous organisation, but that doesn't means they are suited for your particular requirements. They might not know the system or language at all. A person with 5 years of experience maintaining a small local network at a small company, may not be suited for a job with an ISP where he may need to know all about web servers, dns servers, mail servers, routers, RAID systems etc. etc.
On the other hand, certifications *with* experience *prove* that you have a certain level of mastery with the specific programming language, while also having the on-the-job experience.
But there are jobs and then there are jobs. Keep in mind that first and foremost question in the mind of a hiring person is whether or not you can do the job, and whether your skills are good value for the money they will be paying you. And plus you can forget the big labels. You will have to start in a small company, gain a few years of experience under your belt, and then try to apply for a better position.
Or instead, you can just do a few certification courses while you are working. While most companies would prefer someone with a computer degree, they also are willing to take someone who has proven level of skills.
Only if your definition of respect has something to do with popularity, mine doesn't.
There is a difference between respect for a role model or a good leader, and the terror of a bully. It is obvious what you are confusing your definition of "respect" with.
And fun part is, that the main lesson bullies tend to impart to others, is not to be weak and to have their own guns, because bullies tend to prey only on the weak. The countries with actual nuclear capability are safe from USA(China, North Korea, Russia, India etc.) and the countries that don't actually have nukes(e.g. Iraq) get invaded and destroyed for flimsiest of reasons.
You are not the only one with nukes. USA is the *only* country in the world known to willingly and happily use nukes on a civilian population and world ostracizing be damned. And yet they have dared not do so again, mostly due to the fact that *other* countries have nukes as well. Being a bully with big stick works *only* if others don't have a stick to hit back with, which scares the bully into not using his stick either.
The Cuban missile crisis was the prime example. For all its nuclear arsenal, USA was not willing to use a nuke again against USSR or Cuba, since doing so would have meant facing a nuclear counter-attack. This was different from using it against Japan, which did not have nuclear capability. Americans are willing to kill but are not willing to risk dying.
Terrorists on the other hand, don't give a crap about dying as the suicide bombers and 911 Hijackers have proved repeatedly. Terrorists leaders don't want to kill you. They want to terrorize the shit out of you. So far they have succeeded. There have been other countries like India, Israel or Britain which have faced terrorist attacks on almost a weekly basis. But USA is the only one to throw away their way of life and respond by becoming a totally Orwellian Nation. Terrorists have seldomly won anywhere in the world, save against USA.
And if a nuclear attack on american soil strikes even more terror into heart of USA... to take away even the few remaining freedoms the country has got left... why would the terrorist hesitate? If they are willing to die for their cause, why would they care about retaliation?
Plus Osama as per your own intelligence agencies, is hiding on the soil of one of your own allies. So how do you "retaliate"? by nuking Pakistan, one of your major allies?
If they didn't worry about your retaliation during 911... if they are laughing at your impotence now... what would make them stop in future?
Your idiocy is impressive.
Indeed...as the harsh reprisals against Osama have indeed proved. The terrorists simply wept and gave up as they saw how Osama was captured and made to pay for his crimes... darn!...
Oh wait... so *actually* what will happen is, that US will forget about the actual terrorists and go invade the next country with oil...unless they happen to have nukes as well...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargil_War#World_opinion
The alternate world you live in, must be an interesting one. If having nukes got you respect, USA would be a tad more popular, don't you think? Nukes by themselves, neither get you respect, nor keep you safe(as 911 demonstrated).
Hello Dirk! ;-)
What is far more interesting about Google Personals, is the option of selecting "sexual orientation" being grayed out. Rest of the options work. Did anyone else notice?
A PR disaster waiting to happen there. If the option was not there at all, it would matter little. But why on earth did they add it and then disabled it? At least this is how it appears on the default page. Looks like someone put it there, but later was overruled by someone who was way too homophobic? What was the problem with people being able to choose sexual orientation as well, if they so wished?
Whatever be the case, you definitely have something there that may raise the eyebrows of Gay rights groups. Doesn't sends the right message, even if it was just an innocent mistake or even a bug. Looks like the smart people at Google are not that smart after all.
Pretty good points and btw I fully agree. Preaching to the chorus.
But... if you brainwash some kid into doing something that is still a sort of exploitation... is it okay then? I am not commenting on the pedophilia itself. Rape of kids is wrong. Everyone agrees there. And then there are those who argue that even if you get consent from a kid... it is still wrong...because what do the kids know? And then there are those who point out that hey.. the age of consent is different in different places... in a certain place even in USA, kids as young as 12-14 can have sex with other kids. It is just wrong if an adult is involved.
Different arguments. You can decide what side to take.
But it is still always amazingly silly to build umbrellas for the fishes.
Assume much?
I have blooody lived for 7 years in japan. Would you like pics of the crowd surrounding the girls selling their photo albums? I took some. Not of the girls. But the crowd surrounding them. I understand about advertisers. This is a recent trend. Instead of talking of your experiences 2 years go, why not walk down this week to akiba?
Bigoted? Again... I have lived in japan for 7 years. All in all, it is an awesome place to live. And it has less rape crimes than usa.... or anywhere else. All I am saying is that before Japan govt decides to emulate its US bosses, it has to first take care of the social mentality first. Else it is all hypocrisy.
Japanese are the way they are. It is a different culture. And values and systems change over the years or via cultural induction. But talking about protecting children when they are used as sex objects regularly in media and in daily life, is silly.
You cannot generalize, but you can definitely say that the "majority" is like this way or that way. It noway claims that there are no exceptions. I suppose that concept escapes your grasp.