Likewise, you can criticize the policies and practices of the Chinese government. But that does not entail that you can start throwing around Chinglish as a cheap laugh against Chinese people.
The GPs use of broken English of many Chinese businessmen is not some kind of racist insult. If anything it's an insightful observation of the relationship between western businesses and China. The trading partnership between the US and China is unparalleled in scope though all of history, yet the cultural and social distance between most Chinese and Americans remains enormous. Each side can only rattle out enough broken language in the others tongue in order to close the (often shady) deal and beyond that ne'er the two sides shall meet.
Most foreign business in China could be conducted by a computer, or by mime using grunts and pointing; that's how little exchanging of ideas is going on. So much for the power of commerce.
To be honest, I even find myself doing this a lot. I's use I'm feeling luck except my spelling is awful most of the time. It doesn't help that I normally work across multiple machines with distinct bookmarks and no system to synch them.
As far as I can tell, i4i is not a patent troll -- that is, they developed the technology, and developed and marketed a product based in said technology.
*clap. clap. clap.*
Wow. Big round of applause for the hard working programmers at i4i. Weren't they so clever. Are they not ultra geniuses who deserve every penny of that $250 million for giving the world such a unique and otherwise unobtainable technology. Don't they deserve a lifelong monopoly of every even half related technology for the next 20 years. Don't they deserve complete and utter protection from the competing forces that are present in and lead to the improvement of all other economic sectors? It's only fair right? I mean, no none else would ever have been able to come up with anything remotely similar without having read the patents in question right?
And shame, shame on Microsoft for stealing all that hard earned work from these honest boys. You'd swear they wrote and implemented all their own code or something!
Let me guess, I suppose none of you find it strange or noteworthy (or obvious like a sore thumb) that public (government-run) schools generally do not teach the well-known fact that under the Federal Reserve system, dollars represent debt and not wealth. They don't teach that if all debt were paid off there would be no money in circulation. They don't make it clear that when money is created out of thin air and has interest attached to it the moment it is created, there is not enough money in circulation to pay off all debt.
Another Zeitgeist victim. Here's a tip; read a book on basic finance. Better yet, just read a book. Any book. The Great Crash. Animal Farm. I don't care. Stop getting your information from YouTube and the odd polemical internet site.
Every single one of the arguments applied to "fiat money" can be just as easily applied to supposed "hard currencies" like gold. Remember, when gold or platinum or what have you is mined out of the ground, from a currency standpoint, that's exactly equivalent to some new dollar bills being printed. Dollars, euros and yen are worth money because they are (relatively) rare. It has sweet FA to do with debt. The circulation money has nothing to do with debt levels. Debt is not "created" by printing bills or mining metals. Debt is created when people spend more than they earn; which is what western society has been doing economically for 20 or more years. We'd be in debt if we used fiat money, the bren-whatever gold muck-about, or else just traded in bottlecaps.
Strong individuals can do their own research, process their own information, and obtain their own understanding. Helpless sheep need someone to both provide and interpret information for them.
And brainless fools require someone to pre-digest their information into a pseudo-intellectual web-video so it can be masticated into their waiting mouths. Learn to chew.
Yep, this one sounds like it might be even as tame as your average climategate discussion.
If there's one thing geeks are good at, it's picking a postition and sticking to it no matter what. No matter what side is taken, the geek can provide solid -- or at least superficially solid -- evidence to support his take and can continue to argue it, indefinitely if so required, regardless of the course of the argument.
When it comes to topics with any level of subjectivity or doubt, geek arguments become farcical. Witness the conflicting positions on various technologies such as IPv6 or topics like net neutrality or even evolution. A thread around here on gender issues is like a console fanboy war, just with better grammar and spelling.
To return to the topic, my own personal opinion is that the amount of women in computer science has more to do with cultural reasons than biological ones. My undergraduate mathematics course has a gender ratio of about 50/50, and indeed has for several years. Given that computer science is mathematics, I'm then inclined to believe that there are others factors than biology at play.
If it was an option that was off by default then most people would never use it. And that isn't what the people who implemented it want.
They want censorship to be the default so that most people never turn it off. There is very little in the way of "good intentions" behind features like this. You're witnessing the views and mores of a few being forced upon thousands^H^H^Hhundreds of others using Zunes. So much for private industry looking out for freedom of speech.
The Internet Genie is being put back in the bottle. As it became a medium of the masses, governments finally turned their attentions towards what used to be a tolerated eccentricity of academics and computer geeks. When Aunt Tillie began watching YouTube videos, censorship of the new medium was never going to be far behind.
The vast majority of people in democratic countries wholeheartedly support censorship. You don't even have to pull the terrorism of paedophilia cards. Hell, just mentioning anorexia sites will be enough to get 50% of people to express views along the lines of "They should be shut down." Thrown in bomb making and "extreme" pornography you'll get another good 25%. Piracy will net you another 10% more. Now; break out the child molesters and you can say goodbye to an uncensored net by the end of the week.
We live in democracies. That means we are subject to the will of the majority. And if the majority say the net should be censored, then that's what is going to happen, and that is what is happening.
To my way of thinking, there are main two factors at work here
1) The nature of the discussion. The kind of people who frequent 4chan and digg not have... the patience needed to discuss the kind of stories or threads on Slashdot. Stories about plastic flash memory and drivers in the Kernel are simply not very attractive to the kind of person for whom posting "lol" and "NO U" is a way of life.
2) The moderation system. Like it or not, the moderation and karma system helps separate the wheat from the chaff in comment threads. There have been complaints about group think and even censorship, but by and large a casual reading of +4 and +5 posts gives readers quality feedback on the story and is often even more educational than RTFA. In the last 5 years, I've learned more about technology from +5 comments on Slashdot than from any other source. Vapid posts are kept to a minimum and while there are many of them, funny posts do I think keep the discussions lively and interesting.
Another big factor to my mind is the lack of anything resembling post-counts, avatars, images, or anything that would be regarded as cruft(I'm still using the 1.0 discussion system so YMMV). This site is all about text and its content, and that is the way it should be. You can read Slashdot on lynx and get essentially the same discussion(minus the soothing green light). The signal to noise ratio on pages is high, in terms of raw content and on the quality of that content. Slashdot proves that you don't need the latest in web N.0 technology trends to run a good site, and long may it continue to do so.
The problem is that others have taken it upon themselves to take responsibility for him. Or rather, not to take responsibility for him.
Bottom line, if an employer was willing to dismiss you based hearsay(which this effectively is), or even a verified incident in your past that resulted in no charges, then you are better off not working for that employer. Find yourself a job in a small to medium business without HR drones, where you can actually shake hands with the boss during the interview and even have an opportunity to bring up the incident if you feel it would concern them. Even at half the pay, it'll be twice the job. That's how you find employment.
If you're only sending by-the-numbers CVs to faceless companies, expect a by-the-numbers response.
Which means that all your videogames would become kiddie pools. And even though you're an adult, you'd have to put up with the content filters and rules that are designed to protect the children of these lazy parents.
It's not just video games, and it's not just for children. I recently spent several hours trying to find out how to disable the child protection restrictions on my parent PVR so they could watch their recording of "Downfall", which had been rated 15s. Their complete inability to figure out how to watch a restricted program is I think pretty typical of most users. In short, these restrictions are not just for children. They are for everybody. Like the Great firewall of China, if you can get 90+% of people to just give up on watching what you don't want them to watch, your measures have been a success.
I should note that the "Downfall" program (criticised as being sympathetic to the Nazi's), was the only program they had ever recorded which had implemented such a restriction. One of the Die Hard films sat on right there on the same screen, completely unrated. Downfall was being broadcast on a British television station, at around the time when far right elements like the BNP were on the rise in England, so I'm fairly suspicious of the whole affair.
Censorship is not just for kids. It's for everyone too busy or too unskilled to get around it.
We as a people should not need a government organization dictating what our children should or should not be exposed too.
But without such an organisation some parents will allow their children access to content that other people think they shouldn't be allowed to access. Since enough of these other people exist, they can vote for such organisations to be created so that their views can be imposed on people who would otherwise ignore them. All the rules have been followed, all the boxes ticked, no one has done anything "wrong", we've just ended up with organisations which actively oppose the decisions of parents regarding their children so that the majority are satisfied.
And this is called; a Democracy. Where the will of the people, not the individual, is absolute.
"think of the children!" irrational hysteria has been around for at least 220 million years, and is a foundational human impulse rooted deeper into our brains than our existence as simians, or even mammals, nevermind as homo sapiens
Then why has it only had such a detrimental effect on our society and its laws in the last 10 years?
all i'm saying is that "think of the children!" might be the butt of every slashdot joke, but it is also an irrational "hysteria" that you need to make peace with and accept, because it is simply never, ever going away.
Since this hysteria has only been around in its current form for a decade or so, I'm finding it difficult to accept that it is all that "natural" a reaction, on the part of individuals or society.
The truth is that the "think of the children" mentality is about as natural as racist and sexist thinking and about as damaging to society overall. It needs to be ridiculed, condemned and stamped out.
This is an example of the phenomenon I like to describe as "doing the wrong thing for the right reason".
There is no "right" behind their reasons. The people who support these laws are against basic principles of free society; protecting children etc, is only a thin veneer to hid their underlying contempt for others in society who do not live their lives according to their rigid dogmas.
Please someone answer me as honestly as they can: even if that guy happened to willingly watch child porn images, what damage does that do to society?
It offends peoples morals. And as a democratic society, we reserve the right to legislate our own morality to as great an extent as we please. Thus, any transgression, no matter how minor can be made into a capital offence by the simple will of the people.
Child pornography laws and penalties are history's greatest example of the raw, uncensored will of the people acting in a democracy. More so than any other development, the current trends regarding child pornography have convinced me that unrestricted democracy is every bit as bad as unrestricted dictatorship.
Slashdot Mirror
The GPs use of broken English of many Chinese businessmen is not some kind of racist insult. If anything it's an insightful observation of the relationship between western businesses and China. The trading partnership between the US and China is unparalleled in scope though all of history, yet the cultural and social distance between most Chinese and Americans remains enormous. Each side can only rattle out enough broken language in the others tongue in order to close the (often shady) deal and beyond that ne'er the two sides shall meet.
Most foreign business in China could be conducted by a computer, or by mime using grunts and pointing; that's how little exchanging of ideas is going on. So much for the power of commerce.
Remember Pyrenean Ibex run at 10 m/s and they do not know fear.
The most recent addition was quickly nominated for deletion.
To be honest, I even find myself doing this a lot. I's use I'm feeling luck except my spelling is awful most of the time. It doesn't help that I normally work across multiple machines with distinct bookmarks and no system to synch them.
But, now that I have seen it, how can I ever take my eyes away from something so beautiful....?
*clap. clap. clap.*
Wow. Big round of applause for the hard working programmers at i4i. Weren't they so clever. Are they not ultra geniuses who deserve every penny of that $250 million for giving the world such a unique and otherwise unobtainable technology. Don't they deserve a lifelong monopoly of every even half related technology for the next 20 years. Don't they deserve complete and utter protection from the competing forces that are present in and lead to the improvement of all other economic sectors? It's only fair right? I mean, no none else would ever have been able to come up with anything remotely similar without having read the patents in question right?
And shame, shame on Microsoft for stealing all that hard earned work from these honest boys. You'd swear they wrote and implemented all their own code or something!
Another Zeitgeist victim. Here's a tip; read a book on basic finance. Better yet, just read a book. Any book. The Great Crash. Animal Farm. I don't care. Stop getting your information from YouTube and the odd polemical internet site.
Every single one of the arguments applied to "fiat money" can be just as easily applied to supposed "hard currencies" like gold. Remember, when gold or platinum or what have you is mined out of the ground, from a currency standpoint, that's exactly equivalent to some new dollar bills being printed. Dollars, euros and yen are worth money because they are (relatively) rare. It has sweet FA to do with debt. The circulation money has nothing to do with debt levels. Debt is not "created" by printing bills or mining metals. Debt is created when people spend more than they earn; which is what western society has been doing economically for 20 or more years. We'd be in debt if we used fiat money, the bren-whatever gold muck-about, or else just traded in bottlecaps.
And brainless fools require someone to pre-digest their information into a pseudo-intellectual web-video so it can be masticated into their waiting mouths. Learn to chew.
Silly rabbit. A charity is just a corporation with tax exempt status.
If there's one thing geeks are good at, it's picking a postition and sticking to it no matter what. No matter what side is taken, the geek can provide solid -- or at least superficially solid -- evidence to support his take and can continue to argue it, indefinitely if so required, regardless of the course of the argument.
When it comes to topics with any level of subjectivity or doubt, geek arguments become farcical. Witness the conflicting positions on various technologies such as IPv6 or topics like net neutrality or even evolution. A thread around here on gender issues is like a console fanboy war, just with better grammar and spelling.
To return to the topic, my own personal opinion is that the amount of women in computer science has more to do with cultural reasons than biological ones. My undergraduate mathematics course has a gender ratio of about 50/50, and indeed has for several years. Given that computer science is mathematics, I'm then inclined to believe that there are others factors than biology at play.
If it was an option that was off by default then most people would never use it. And that isn't what the people who implemented it want.
They want censorship to be the default so that most people never turn it off. There is very little in the way of "good intentions" behind features like this. You're witnessing the views and mores of a few being forced upon thousands^H^H^Hhundreds of others using Zunes. So much for private industry looking out for freedom of speech.
The Internet Genie is being put back in the bottle. As it became a medium of the masses, governments finally turned their attentions towards what used to be a tolerated eccentricity of academics and computer geeks. When Aunt Tillie began watching YouTube videos, censorship of the new medium was never going to be far behind.
The vast majority of people in democratic countries wholeheartedly support censorship. You don't even have to pull the terrorism of paedophilia cards. Hell, just mentioning anorexia sites will be enough to get 50% of people to express views along the lines of "They should be shut down." Thrown in bomb making and "extreme" pornography you'll get another good 25%. Piracy will net you another 10% more. Now; break out the child molesters and you can say goodbye to an uncensored net by the end of the week.
We live in democracies. That means we are subject to the will of the majority. And if the majority say the net should be censored, then that's what is going to happen, and that is what is happening.
And the price is right. For some at least.
To my way of thinking, there are main two factors at work here
1) The nature of the discussion. The kind of people who frequent 4chan and digg not have... the patience needed to discuss the kind of stories or threads on Slashdot. Stories about plastic flash memory and drivers in the Kernel are simply not very attractive to the kind of person for whom posting "lol" and "NO U" is a way of life.
2) The moderation system. Like it or not, the moderation and karma system helps separate the wheat from the chaff in comment threads. There have been complaints about group think and even censorship, but by and large a casual reading of +4 and +5 posts gives readers quality feedback on the story and is often even more educational than RTFA. In the last 5 years, I've learned more about technology from +5 comments on Slashdot than from any other source. Vapid posts are kept to a minimum and while there are many of them, funny posts do I think keep the discussions lively and interesting.
Another big factor to my mind is the lack of anything resembling post-counts, avatars, images, or anything that would be regarded as cruft(I'm still using the 1.0 discussion system so YMMV). This site is all about text and its content, and that is the way it should be. You can read Slashdot on lynx and get essentially the same discussion(minus the soothing green light). The signal to noise ratio on pages is high, in terms of raw content and on the quality of that content. Slashdot proves that you don't need the latest in web N.0 technology trends to run a good site, and long may it continue to do so.
Ten years ago, people though China would never be able to censor the net. They were wrong. What makes you so certain this time around?
And where China goes, the West follows. If China succeeds in shutting down bittorrent, your swarms won't be far behind.
The problem is that others have taken it upon themselves to take responsibility for him. Or rather, not to take responsibility for him.
Bottom line, if an employer was willing to dismiss you based hearsay(which this effectively is), or even a verified incident in your past that resulted in no charges, then you are better off not working for that employer. Find yourself a job in a small to medium business without HR drones, where you can actually shake hands with the boss during the interview and even have an opportunity to bring up the incident if you feel it would concern them. Even at half the pay, it'll be twice the job. That's how you find employment.
If you're only sending by-the-numbers CVs to faceless companies, expect a by-the-numbers response.
It's not just video games, and it's not just for children. I recently spent several hours trying to find out how to disable the child protection restrictions on my parent PVR so they could watch their recording of "Downfall", which had been rated 15s. Their complete inability to figure out how to watch a restricted program is I think pretty typical of most users. In short, these restrictions are not just for children. They are for everybody. Like the Great firewall of China, if you can get 90+% of people to just give up on watching what you don't want them to watch, your measures have been a success.
I should note that the "Downfall" program (criticised as being sympathetic to the Nazi's), was the only program they had ever recorded which had implemented such a restriction. One of the Die Hard films sat on right there on the same screen, completely unrated. Downfall was being broadcast on a British television station, at around the time when far right elements like the BNP were on the rise in England, so I'm fairly suspicious of the whole affair.
Censorship is not just for kids. It's for everyone too busy or too unskilled to get around it.
But without such an organisation some parents will allow their children access to content that other people think they shouldn't be allowed to access. Since enough of these other people exist, they can vote for such organisations to be created so that their views can be imposed on people who would otherwise ignore them. All the rules have been followed, all the boxes ticked, no one has done anything "wrong", we've just ended up with organisations which actively oppose the decisions of parents regarding their children so that the majority are satisfied.
And this is called; a Democracy. Where the will of the people, not the individual, is absolute.
The same thing we do every night Pinky; try to take over the World!
But it is a potentially explosive device
Then why has it only had such a detrimental effect on our society and its laws in the last 10 years?
Since this hysteria has only been around in its current form for a decade or so, I'm finding it difficult to accept that it is all that "natural" a reaction, on the part of individuals or society.
The truth is that the "think of the children" mentality is about as natural as racist and sexist thinking and about as damaging to society overall. It needs to be ridiculed, condemned and stamped out.
There is no "right" behind their reasons. The people who support these laws are against basic principles of free society; protecting children etc, is only a thin veneer to hid their underlying contempt for others in society who do not live their lives according to their rigid dogmas.
Unfortunately, most people agree with them.
The people with the shrillest voices, of course.
True. But you can sweep it aside if you have the will of people behind you.
It offends peoples morals. And as a democratic society, we reserve the right to legislate our own morality to as great an extent as we please. Thus, any transgression, no matter how minor can be made into a capital offence by the simple will of the people.
Child pornography laws and penalties are history's greatest example of the raw, uncensored will of the people acting in a democracy. More so than any other development, the current trends regarding child pornography have convinced me that unrestricted democracy is every bit as bad as unrestricted dictatorship.