yes, it was more sensationalist and selective reading. It was more a bad simultaneous translation, as many Russians are noting. Plus it was not about Dell per se, it was "the IT sector" in general. see http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/36591
It is the fact that/.-ers aren't all that geeky and aren't all just reading this in their moms' basements. Many of us are resourceful, cosmopolitan, and inquisitive of other societies and cultures and lifestyles that doesn't all have to do with tech.
is some FUD by the pundits as i see it. It was a *rumoured* change in regulations, the fact that they might start instituting a capital gains tax, which was quickly dismissed in the morning. The best commentary so far is from Tom Easton from The Economist, on NPR's Morning Edition. The Chinese gov't is the biggest shareholder, and to suggest that happened overnight was ludicrous. Easton mentioned that foreign ownership of the chinese market is about 10 billion dollars, a drop in the bucket (160 billion was lost in the chinese markets yesterday) Fundamentals didn't change overnight, and the Chinese economy didn't suddenly stop growing, it was more the fact that the image of China as a mystical market is now flawed. More importantly, investors - retail and institutional - need to understand how disconnected the stock market is from the economy in China. It is a speculative market, and for the developed markets to blame and react to China shows clearly how ignorant or jittery the western markets really are.
According to the NYT it is the Bush white house that is refusing to call it a state visit, but a working visit.
"The Bush administration, wary of empty summitry, decided to call it a "working visit." Bush and Hu will have lunch at the White House, but no state dinner. Beijing still insists it is a state visit, an honor all of Hu's predecessors received on their first trips to the White House."
what about INTC who used to give mid-quarter updates but that didn't really help "stabilize" the stock, if anything it drops bombs on the street like that 500 mil shortfall.
GOOG should keep doing its thing, because I think no news is good news. Kudlow on CNBC questioned whether it is time to let the financial management be run by "adults". While I don't think they should give forecasts it does need some form of discipline, esp for a 100 bil (cap) company which will only have increasing sway on the market, when it gets indexed for example.
Methinks those in greenhouses should cast no stones:
from op-ed published on the WSJ
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/nj04_smith/op edgofa.html
Do No (Online) Evil
By Congressman Chris Smith
March 2, 2006
American people are deeply troubled to see U.S. technology and know-how used by repressive regimes in China and elsewhere in the world to cruelly exploit and abuse the citizens of those countries. While the Internet has opened up commercial opportunities and provided people all over the world with access to vast amounts of information, in China it has also become a malicious tool -- a cyber-sledgehammer of repression in the hands of the government.
When Internet use started to become widespread in China, brave citizens took advantage of this new method of communication to spread information by email about human-rights abuses issues and government corruption. The Chinese government responded with an immediate crack down. To date, an estimated 49 cyber-dissidents and 32 journalists have been imprisoned merely for using the Internet to spread information critical of the Chinese government.
I was recently on a news program talking about Google and China and was asked, "Should businesses be tasked with promoting democracy around the globe?" My response is that we are asking the wrong question. We ought to be asking whether businesses should help repressive dictatorships by partnering with, and providing tools to, a corrupt and cruel secret police, and by cooperating with laws that violate basic human rights.
In the case of China, there's clear evidence that U.S. technology companies are collaborating with a brutally oppressive regime in decapitating the voice of its dissidents. In 2005, Yahoo's cooperation with Chinese secret police led to the imprisonment of cyber-dissident Shi Tao. This was not the first time something like this had happened. Yahoo also handed over information to Chinese authorities on another of its users, Li Zhi -- who was later sentenced to eight years in prison for "inciting subversion." His only "crime" was to use online discussion groups and articles to criticize official corruption.
By using a combination of technology and an estimated force of 30,000 cyber-police to monitor, filter, and block critical content the Chinese government prevents its people from having access to uncensored information on political and human-rights topics. They only see what Big Brother allows them to see. Women and men are going to the gulag and being tortured as a direct result of information handed over to Chinese officials. These are not victimless crimes. We must stand with the oppressed, not the oppressors.
On Feb. 15, as chairman of the committee in the U.S. House of Representatives that oversees global human rights and international operations, I led a hearing to examine this problem. The hearing, which lasted more than seven hours, raised more questions than it answered. I was surprised when Yahoo's witness wouldn't reveal how often or under what circumstances the company provides private information about its customers to the secret police and whether any effort is made to ascertain what actions are taken by police based on this information. Yahoo didn't even seem to be curious whether any of the many journalists and other cyber-activists incarcerated in the laogai (Chinese prison camps) are there on account of information the company provided to the dictatorship.
Similarly, Cisco's witness failed to provide any real insight as to how Cisco's incredible technology is being used by Chinese police thugs to find, capture, convict, jail and torture both religious believers and human-rights advocates. My committee then heard from Harry Wu, a 19 year survivor of the laogai, who told us that Cisco was training the secret police in how to use its technology to identify dissidents -- so making it even harder for those who criticize the Chinese government to evade capture.
I find it interesting that they made no mention of the biggest reason for the popularity of MiniDiscs in Japan and how that relates to the popularity of iPods. You can go to a popular chain that rents CD's for your home enjoyment, and you would record it on MD for a high-quality replica. I don't own an MP3 player, but I have owned 3 MD players and a deck. Some of the CD's in Japan now have copy protection and in fact have built-in players such that you can't easily rip them. CD's are also very pricey compared to the US. or I should say Japanese CD's are priced higher than an American artist's.
On the issue of nationalism, one cannot neglect the xenophilia that may also be in play. The main apple store is in Ginza along side with the highest end fashion boutiques, so one can surmise that ipod ownership may be related to foreign chic.
I am neither a MSFT nor GOOG fanboy but I would hesitate to judge their efforts too quickly. Indeed while there may be self-serving goals of these corporations the very fact that google.org's page and operations have been relatively muted since GOOG's IPO is testament to the fact that it has not been in the headlines.
The Gates foundation has given a significant amount of money to The Global Fund, for instance, and while their stance on prevention and/or treatment of HIV/AIDS is the grand scheme of this may not be always mainstream, they have quantifiably done more than many governments. The hiring of Brilliant hopefully means that there will be another voice for poverty alleviation, and maybe introduce a new paradigm in the workings of foundations and international development.
I would think that the work of Cisco in the Networking Academy Program, to name another corporate initiatives seem more suspect if you ask me.
You meant Panasonic right? I have the semi-rugged Toughbook and had a water incident, not a whole lot, but enough to short my keyboard. The support is amazing though with a 72 hr turnaround and they didn't charge me for it either.
As for the table, I am no engineer but I think it would not be easy making a surface water-proof AND touch-sensitive.
FYI I just saw this last night on the local NBC station where they visited and interviewed the persons in charge at HP labs. It was quite fascinating when they were playing a jigsaw puzzle on the table using the touchscreen, looking and dragging a map a la Google Maps, and playing a video of a dolphin at a park. The Tablet was not as impressive, and they made no mention of DRM, just that it can store around 200 books on the device.
I am actually updating an old computer that hasn't been online for about 10 months when it has been in storage as we speak. It is a old PII 400 laptop running Windows 2000 SP4. (had to try 10 different passwords before I can log on..)
Since this is pretty much a work computer for web and general Office stuff it has not been to any "funny" sites or anything.
I am behind a Netgear router/"firewall" First thing I did was Windows UPdate. Gave me about 21 updates (about 25 mbs worth) and after reboot. I reinstalled Firefox (it was running 1.0), and I am pretty much good to go. The computer is too slow to be bothered with anti-virus programs and really, if you don't do anything stupid online. ("Lindsay Lohan nip slip CLICK HERE!!!") you are fine.
It is obvious that political will in dealing with Amtrak is a huge issue, as as someone who's travelled across the US by train (Boston > SF), and rode extensively in Japan (Sendai > Nagasaki) and Europe (mostly in Switzerland, Germany, and France) one must'nt forget that many of those countries were devasted by war, and a lot of that infrastructure is new. Aside from the sheer amount of people you want to get as many people back to work as possible, it is probably more economical to lay rail than roads. In this country we had a baby boom and industrial pickup and a nascent consumer culture. Add to that big oil and auto interests having disproportionate influence on government and that is the reason why rail sucks and will continue to suck.
Countries are always technically late because of the budget year differences. The UN Secretariat budget is chronically late, but don't confuse that with the rest of the agencies such as the ITU or WHO. Also, if you don't pay your dues for 2 years you lose your voting rights, which is partly why the US paid up in spite of douchebags like Jesse Helms whose rhetoric much of America buys into.
The veto issue is not as simple as it sounds, because most resolutions don't even get to that stage, just like bills don't all get to the floor of the House or Senate to be filibustered in the first place.
I think what is missing here in the discussion is the fact that there is hardly any commute for most US folks. If i were in NYC or SF or DC i can see myself recording shows that I miss or couldn't catch from TV on my tuner card, running a script to encode it, and take it on the go in the morning. If you target a 20+ demographic they will find uses for a decently built machine that is in essence a wifi capable portable media device. In due time someone (probably some/.-er) intelligent enough will probably be able to hack it to run some form of *nix on it. currently the wifi is implemented by NetBSD c/f here
Looking at the trailers on the demo disc it is crisp and bright, faster than a PC LCD screen I'd say. My first impression would be that it looks better than a "standard" divx or xvid, but once again I don't have the tools to have any comparision. The machine has the Number 2 for Region, but that should apply only to the movies which they will release in the distant future.
I waited about 45 minutes in Shinjuku and left at around 8:30, since I know it would be sheer madness to go to Akihabara. But the PSP is a mean machine. I will blog some findings later, hopefully some things that others haven't already mentioned. I played the Demo Disc in full (all the video and music clips and the game demos) twice, played Lumines for about 2 hours, half of the time using the speaker, half of the time with headphones, at 50% volume. The machine is now telling me that i have 52% left (2:17)...we shall see. Lumines is probably not that processor intensive compared to say, Ridge Racer. I don't have a USB cable to check MP3's either. The headphones aren't anything to write home about either.
I waited about 45 minutes in Shinjuku and left at around 8:30, since I know it would be sheer madness to go to Akihabara. But the PSP is a mean machine. I will blog some findings later, hopefully some things that others haven't already mentioned.
Slashdot Mirror
yes, it was more sensationalist and selective reading. It was more a bad simultaneous translation, as many Russians are noting. Plus it was not about Dell per se, it was "the IT sector" in general. see http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/36591
It is the fact that /.-ers aren't all that geeky and aren't all just reading this in their moms' basements. Many of us are resourceful, cosmopolitan, and inquisitive of other societies and cultures and lifestyles that doesn't all have to do with tech.
is some FUD by the pundits as i see it. It was a *rumoured* change in regulations, the fact that they might start instituting a capital gains tax, which was quickly dismissed in the morning. The best commentary so far is from Tom Easton from The Economist, on NPR's Morning Edition. The Chinese gov't is the biggest shareholder, and to suggest that happened overnight was ludicrous. Easton mentioned that foreign ownership of the chinese market is about 10 billion dollars, a drop in the bucket (160 billion was lost in the chinese markets yesterday) Fundamentals didn't change overnight, and the Chinese economy didn't suddenly stop growing, it was more the fact that the image of China as a mystical market is now flawed. More importantly, investors - retail and institutional - need to understand how disconnected the stock market is from the economy in China. It is a speculative market, and for the developed markets to blame and react to China shows clearly how ignorant or jittery the western markets really are.
According to the NYT it is the Bush white house that is refusing to call it a state visit, but a working visit.
"The Bush administration, wary of empty summitry, decided to call it a "working visit." Bush and Hu will have lunch at the White House, but no state dinner. Beijing still insists it is a state visit, an honor all of Hu's predecessors received on their first trips to the White House."
what about INTC who used to give mid-quarter updates but that didn't really help "stabilize" the stock, if anything it drops bombs on the street like that 500 mil shortfall.
GOOG should keep doing its thing, because I think no news is good news. Kudlow on CNBC questioned whether it is time to let the financial management be run by "adults". While I don't think they should give forecasts it does need some form of discipline, esp for a 100 bil (cap) company which will only have increasing sway on the market, when it gets indexed for example.
Methinks those in greenhouses should cast no stones:
from op-ed published on the WSJ
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/nj04_smith/op edgofa.html
Do No (Online) Evil By Congressman Chris Smith March 2, 2006
American people are deeply troubled to see U.S. technology and know-how used by repressive regimes in China and elsewhere in the world to cruelly exploit and abuse the citizens of those countries. While the Internet has opened up commercial opportunities and provided people all over the world with access to vast amounts of information, in China it has also become a malicious tool -- a cyber-sledgehammer of repression in the hands of the government.
When Internet use started to become widespread in China, brave citizens took advantage of this new method of communication to spread information by email about human-rights abuses issues and government corruption. The Chinese government responded with an immediate crack down. To date, an estimated 49 cyber-dissidents and 32 journalists have been imprisoned merely for using the Internet to spread information critical of the Chinese government.
I was recently on a news program talking about Google and China and was asked, "Should businesses be tasked with promoting democracy around the globe?" My response is that we are asking the wrong question. We ought to be asking whether businesses should help repressive dictatorships by partnering with, and providing tools to, a corrupt and cruel secret police, and by cooperating with laws that violate basic human rights.
In the case of China, there's clear evidence that U.S. technology companies are collaborating with a brutally oppressive regime in decapitating the voice of its dissidents. In 2005, Yahoo's cooperation with Chinese secret police led to the imprisonment of cyber-dissident Shi Tao. This was not the first time something like this had happened. Yahoo also handed over information to Chinese authorities on another of its users, Li Zhi -- who was later sentenced to eight years in prison for "inciting subversion." His only "crime" was to use online discussion groups and articles to criticize official corruption.
By using a combination of technology and an estimated force of 30,000 cyber-police to monitor, filter, and block critical content the Chinese government prevents its people from having access to uncensored information on political and human-rights topics. They only see what Big Brother allows them to see. Women and men are going to the gulag and being tortured as a direct result of information handed over to Chinese officials. These are not victimless crimes. We must stand with the oppressed, not the oppressors.
On Feb. 15, as chairman of the committee in the U.S. House of Representatives that oversees global human rights and international operations, I led a hearing to examine this problem. The hearing, which lasted more than seven hours, raised more questions than it answered. I was surprised when Yahoo's witness wouldn't reveal how often or under what circumstances the company provides private information about its customers to the secret police and whether any effort is made to ascertain what actions are taken by police based on this information. Yahoo didn't even seem to be curious whether any of the many journalists and other cyber-activists incarcerated in the laogai (Chinese prison camps) are there on account of information the company provided to the dictatorship.
Similarly, Cisco's witness failed to provide any real insight as to how Cisco's incredible technology is being used by Chinese police thugs to find, capture, convict, jail and torture both religious believers and human-rights advocates. My committee then heard from Harry Wu, a 19 year survivor of the laogai, who told us that Cisco was training the secret police in how to use its technology to identify dissidents -- so making it even harder for those who criticize the Chinese government to evade capture.
I find it interesting that they made no mention of the biggest reason for the popularity of MiniDiscs in Japan and how that relates to the popularity of iPods. You can go to a popular chain that rents CD's for your home enjoyment, and you would record it on MD for a high-quality replica. I don't own an MP3 player, but I have owned 3 MD players and a deck. Some of the CD's in Japan now have copy protection and in fact have built-in players such that you can't easily rip them. CD's are also very pricey compared to the US. or I should say Japanese CD's are priced higher than an American artist's.
On the issue of nationalism, one cannot neglect the xenophilia that may also be in play. The main apple store is in Ginza along side with the highest end fashion boutiques, so one can surmise that ipod ownership may be related to foreign chic.
I am neither a MSFT nor GOOG fanboy but I would hesitate to judge their efforts too quickly. Indeed while there may be self-serving goals of these corporations the very fact that google.org's page and operations have been relatively muted since GOOG's IPO is testament to the fact that it has not been in the headlines.
The Gates foundation has given a significant amount of money to The Global Fund, for instance, and while their stance on prevention and/or treatment of HIV/AIDS is the grand scheme of this may not be always mainstream, they have quantifiably done more than many governments. The hiring of Brilliant hopefully means that there will be another voice for poverty alleviation, and maybe introduce a new paradigm in the workings of foundations and international development.
I would think that the work of Cisco in the Networking Academy Program, to name another corporate initiatives seem more suspect if you ask me.
You meant Panasonic right? I have the semi-rugged Toughbook and had a water incident, not a whole lot, but enough to short my keyboard. The support is amazing though with a 72 hr turnaround and they didn't charge me for it either. As for the table, I am no engineer but I think it would not be easy making a surface water-proof AND touch-sensitive.
FYI I just saw this last night on the local NBC station where they visited and interviewed the persons in charge at HP labs. It was quite fascinating when they were playing a jigsaw puzzle on the table using the touchscreen, looking and dragging a map a la Google Maps, and playing a video of a dolphin at a park. The Tablet was not as impressive, and they made no mention of DRM, just that it can store around 200 books on the device.
I am actually updating an old computer that hasn't been online for about 10 months when it has been in storage as we speak. It is a old PII 400 laptop running Windows 2000 SP4. (had to try 10 different passwords before I can log on..) Since this is pretty much a work computer for web and general Office stuff it has not been to any "funny" sites or anything. I am behind a Netgear router/"firewall" First thing I did was Windows UPdate. Gave me about 21 updates (about 25 mbs worth) and after reboot. I reinstalled Firefox (it was running 1.0), and I am pretty much good to go. The computer is too slow to be bothered with anti-virus programs and really, if you don't do anything stupid online. ("Lindsay Lohan nip slip CLICK HERE!!!") you are fine.
It is obvious that political will in dealing with Amtrak is a huge issue, as as someone who's travelled across the US by train (Boston > SF), and rode extensively in Japan (Sendai > Nagasaki) and Europe (mostly in Switzerland, Germany, and France) one must'nt forget that many of those countries were devasted by war, and a lot of that infrastructure is new. Aside from the sheer amount of people you want to get as many people back to work as possible, it is probably more economical to lay rail than roads. In this country we had a baby boom and industrial pickup and a nascent consumer culture. Add to that big oil and auto interests having disproportionate influence on government and that is the reason why rail sucks and will continue to suck.
Countries are always technically late because of the budget year differences. The UN Secretariat budget is chronically late, but don't confuse that with the rest of the agencies such as the ITU or WHO. Also, if you don't pay your dues for 2 years you lose your voting rights, which is partly why the US paid up in spite of douchebags like Jesse Helms whose rhetoric much of America buys into. The veto issue is not as simple as it sounds, because most resolutions don't even get to that stage, just like bills don't all get to the floor of the House or Senate to be filibustered in the first place.
I think what is missing here in the discussion is the fact that there is hardly any commute for most US folks. If i were in NYC or SF or DC i can see myself recording shows that I miss or couldn't catch from TV on my tuner card, running a script to encode it, and take it on the go in the morning. If you target a 20+ demographic they will find uses for a decently built machine that is in essence a wifi capable portable media device. In due time someone (probably some /.-er) intelligent enough will probably be able to hack it to run some form of *nix on it. currently the wifi is implemented by NetBSD c/f here
Looking at the trailers on the demo disc it is crisp and bright, faster than a PC LCD screen I'd say. My first impression would be that it looks better than a "standard" divx or xvid, but once again I don't have the tools to have any comparision. The machine has the Number 2 for Region, but that should apply only to the movies which they will release in the distant future.
I waited about 45 minutes in Shinjuku and left at around 8:30, since I know it would be sheer madness to go to Akihabara. But the PSP is a mean machine. I will blog some findings later, hopefully some things that others haven't already mentioned. I played the Demo Disc in full (all the video and music clips and the game demos) twice, played Lumines for about 2 hours, half of the time using the speaker, half of the time with headphones, at 50% volume. The machine is now telling me that i have 52% left (2:17)...we shall see. Lumines is probably not that processor intensive compared to say, Ridge Racer. I don't have a USB cable to check MP3's either. The headphones aren't anything to write home about either.
I waited about 45 minutes in Shinjuku and left at around 8:30, since I know it would be sheer madness to go to Akihabara. But the PSP is a mean machine. I will blog some findings later, hopefully some things that others haven't already mentioned.