Oh, and just before you'll all flame me about my indifference, let me just say that I'm 100% against the GFW, because that means people cannot reach all information and they will be likely to form biased opinions. However, I don't think it's a good idea to put on a banner to say that "I'm against censorship so I'm not going to engage with the people in the country!" all the time. China is on a tipping point, may be we'll just give a little more time to Google and others...
Remember, Google has NOT redirected all PRC's traffic to google.cn yet! You can still reach google's normal service in the US through google.com at the moment, although I'm not too hopeful if Google wants to receive more revenue from its Chinese service.
Well, I don't have much to say about this "alternative" Google service, it is unlikely that I'm going to use it anyway even though I'm a Chinese because a) I'm not in China at the moment (or even I'm back at home, I'm luckily outside of the GFW), b) I don't think it is a good idea to use a service who have pre-emptively announced on the censorship.
For your curiousity about this "what's being banned?", here is a non-exhaustive list of banned items in instant messaging and wireless communication: http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20040902_1.htm
Well, this is the sort of inconsistency many people have to (and still have to) put up with until now...
The Constitution of the People's Republic of China has very explicitly granted many rights (without using the word "inalienable", which is THE CATCH!) to their citizens, most of them never fulfilled until the current regime... However, what MSN is doing is also illegal even under the current rules and regulations. He has not broken any taboo words (or even if he did, he did so discreetedly) as far as I can read other than supporting the strike of Beijing News, which has NOT be banned officially although it is not mentioned widely due to the widespread consequences(1).
That's why Li Ao has asked the audience in his second speech in his groundbreaking China tour to address the basics liberity by implementing of the Constitution. By achieveing that, the people will have the tools to fight against the injustice and illiberaity.
(P.S. 1. The Beijing News was a breeze in the Beijing news sence and has fought a considerable amount of the freedom of press under their own wit, the CCP has decided to ask another less-than-liberal press to control over from Jan 1, 2006. 2.I was an occational reader of his site and certainly lament of such loss...)
He wants his opinion openly known to the CHINESE public. It is not as if he's been banned from posting, d'uh. If he has been banned from posting he'd be in jail now. He's back online now, but regrettably gone back where he originally started in Blog City.
Do you think it is feasible for him to ask every reader to install freenet in order to read his posts? Blog City is blocked by the GFW because of him, and people are still fuming about such consequences.
He has to resort to ask his beloved readers to use proxies, feedburner or even email subscription in order to read his post!
(N.B. Blogger is also TOTALLY BLOCKED by the GFW, think about the far-reaching consequences... MSN is one of the few sites which is OPEN at the moment and enjoys wide readership. In fact, the top ten blogs in China (in terms of traffic) are all hosted in MSN, go figure...)
It was total blog removal by MSN itself. He was blogging about the Beijing News strike due to a takeover from a less-than-liberal paper ordered by the government. You may see the English summary by EastSouthWestNorth below.
They should give you some insight what might have happened. Also, search "Anti" in ESWN, you'll have suprise.
The most strikingly odd thing was that Michael Anti WASN'T writing anything prohibited by the national law and regulations (see a list of banned words in ESWN: http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20040902_1.htm). He knew his fine line and wrote accordingly. However, since he's still a conscious-minded media worker, he felt the pain for the Beijing News, so he spoke up. He asked for a boycott of the paper and support to walk out. As a result, he's banned by MSN.
Read ESWN if you want to know about what happened in China from other perspectives.
Well, I said what it is meant to be theoractically, but as many things in China, things are a bit more complicated as you mentioned.
I understand that many hukow register are really inaccurate as they didn't do the job properly. Remember that Chinese is a big country and for years we are quite slack on population control. There is a great influx of officially "identity-less" people (sanwu-renyuan) into cities from their countryside who seem to slip through the bureaucracy entirely. THose people tend to work to lowest level of jobs like cleaners or construction workers. They stay in squatter huts so that police couldn't catch them as they didn't want to deal with the bureaucracy at all, they just want better lives for themselves. The PRC government is trying very hard to clean their mess of hukou and re-establish a more flexible yet structured system, at least rhetorically and effort has been make in city registry.
In HK, being a legacy of a British colony, things are more structured. In fact, the use of ID Card Nos. in HK is somehow simillar to the use of ID Nos. in Sweden. Buisnesses like to keep track of our ID Card no as it is the best unique identification in HK. Every one from an fitness club to shop loyalty plans to doctor's registrar contains your ID no. Fortunately, our ID Card numbering system are not as blatantly obvious as the Swedish one, so no one can directly infer your date of birth (though a range is somehow possible after late 1970s I think) nor your sexuality (which is not indicated by the number at all) so some privacy can still be maintained. In fact, our ID Nos. gives very few clues, such as a vauge indicaton of your origin, a vauge indication of your date of birth, and absolutely no indication of sex, so it should be less oppressive than what Swedish system seems.
The UK government seems to have a wealth of IT initiatives but a lack of ability to deliver and handle them well. From the catastrophic migration to renew IT systme in NHS to the crashdown of DWP IT system of pensions I'm extremely afraid the catastrophy UK government would make if they collect tons of biometric data. At that point there will be more rather than less identity thefts if they manage to lose the data.
I'm not really against a national ID card system, because I live under it in Hong Kong. It does make you life easier with a good way to identify yourself. Though anonymity would be somehow lost as you would have to carry this all the time, this is not my major concern. My major concern would be the size of the national database with tons of biometrics and the security of that. I once postulate a unified identity card system with all the data stored in a centralised database when I was younger, but I later scrap that idea out of my mind because I know that would be a hotspot of misuse from government or proxy agency alike.
Another problem is obviously the cost, £90 for a card? That's ridiculously expensive. The card should have been obviously laden with tons of security features and biometrics to add up the cost, but an initial cost of £90 per person is one of the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Normally governments offer a sweet pill for people to swallow this hard act by offering cheap or free first issuing of intenal identity documents, I'll just say Blair et al just try to grab for money obviously.
Well, should I tell you that all East Asian countries (Greater China, Japan and Korea) got identity cards, though it seems that only Greater China (including PRC Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) require compulsory identification documents. Aliens or even migrate citizens who don't have a registry in that local area (hukou) in PRC especially are supposed to be registered with their residing local authority (remember Gong-An?) once they arrive and decide o reside for longer than 3 months, so don't tell me that you don't have it in China, you may just not be staying long enough.
Certainly funny, but you don't necessary need to include all opinions about your piece of work after consultation, so it would not be such a big logistical nightmare...
Well, a friend of mine chatted with me about this possiblity of another prequel of the Phantom of the Meance. She said that since the Return of the Jedi somehow seals up the ending, so a sequel of the original triology is not a big possibility, until someone could come up with a much better sequel. Whereas there're many mysteries unsolved even in this prequel, such as the relationship of the Master of Obi-Wan, or the origin of Chancellor Palpatine. There're many scope of which we can follow.
Some people claim that the continuation of Star Wars prequel from the original has already lost its appeal to many original fans of Star Wars as the script are bad and storyline is very repetitive. However, we can see that producers are more interseted in cashing in the fame of Star Wars than making a good story. Though I must say Star Wars appeals a lot of people, like my sister who's 10 has just bought books about Star Wars, so there's still a demand for such prequels or sequels...
The biggest problem would be numbering of the episodes as this current tirology starts with one. If a prequel is made, then either they have to reshuffle the numbering (which they did when they made the first prequel) or using negative numbers. Of course, they can make Episode 0 (Zero) if they want to make only one prequel of the Phantom of the Meance.
I couldn't find the details about this badge anywhere in the http://www.scout.org.hk/. Apperantly they have not uploaded the details of this new badge or they're not enthusiastic about it.
From the Standard [1], this badge is NOT a MERIT BADGE. It's a proficiency badge which you cannot put it on the scout shirt. Besides, what you only need to do is to attend a series of seminars/indoctrinations as you see fit, and vola, you got the badge. The local media did try not to twist the story too much. So it's not really a matter of brainwashing after all, and Slashdotters should not really go crazy about this subject. Besides, some1somewhere was right on his post #12424010 http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=14823 3&cid=12424010, this does not really matter anyway because no one would really care.
The HK SAR government seems to be quite enthusiastic about this and issued a press release [2].
And Hong Kong and Macau are the ONLY places of the PRC which have the Scout Movement. The Mainland retrots itself to the "Pioneers"... And the Scout in Taiwan is still called the Scouts of China...
I'm absolutely agreed with that. For my part I never watch hentai anime, but I still enjoy anime in general. Why? Animation is a medium to convey a story, a very good medium as well because it's kind of surrealistic and detached. When you watch an animation, what you see is an alternative world. A totally alternative world because they're drawn out instead of filmed. Sometimes, you can see some blunders, anachronisms in movies because it is impossible to remove them or they're just badly thought out, especially when the film is not contemporary. Obviously, CG and speical effects help a lot in making movie more detached to reality, but anime has a distinctive advantage of such alienness as it's totally controlable. That's what many people enjoy.
The reason why CTHD sounds like its geared towards Western audiences is simply because it is. Sony Pictures and Comlubia-Tristar spent a lot of time to harmonize the differences so that it would be saleable to the Western audiences. For example, the script is translated back and forth between Chinese and English three times, to make sure that not much stuff lost in the subtitles. Therefore, Chinese thought that the plot is too shallow compare with other heroic martial arts films. The imagery is again impressive, but people have mostly seen them before (especially the kung fu), so there's less a wow factor in it.
Chow Yun Fat's mandarin comparatively becomes a lesser factor becuase all Chinese movies are subtitled! Yep, even Chinese movies made in China are subtitled because of the differences of language exist in China.
The dawn of DVD helps the business of retaining voice dub and subtitles for a film a lot. We can choose different languages as long as its available on the disc, we can see sub in many languages. Technically speaking we can watch more than one sub if the technology permits, this would help those language learners. Indeed, one of the language policies in HK is to have some English TV series dubbed in ENGLISH so that people can learn more colloquial spoken English instead of classroom ones.
People are more inclined to be entertained in their mother/native language when given a chance because that's what they most comfortably in. I remember that even though anime in HK is always a big hit for KIDS, they are all subbed nevertheless because they would be uncomfortable to read off subtitles from the televisions. I understand that most dubs are quite dubious, there are some good voice actors. We should not just blatantly bark at the inferior quality of bad dub either. Sometimes, subs are not much better, as you can find in those English subs in cardboard kung fu films during the 90s.
I would actually consider that people who spend more than 25 hours on TV as a TV addict, I know that my mum would say it. Heck, life is more than your telly.
If spending 6 hours weekly on discussion boards is consider as an addiction, then hmmm... I'm a real "information junkie" then because I think I spend at least an hour on a single board when I'm on my "information high".
Regarding to work, tell that to Japanese and Chinese, they would be glad if they can finish their work in a 40-hour week! Somehow we're working more than we should and that's really depriving from other more healty pursuits in life.
ADD does exist obviously, but it is overdiagnosed in the US, I just couldn't believe how many people those GP and psychiatrist thought that those relatively disruptive children have them. I used to be a very disruptive children when I was young that is compared with Asian standards as most children are so conforming that any challenges to any authority (either petit or gross) are seen as naughty and disruptive. Yet, I saw only 3 people in my life who suggested me that I have ADHD, and my parents just ignored it. Now, if I'm really being diagnosed as ADHD and being prescribed with Ritalin, I think I would actually get worse, and I would need to spend time to wean out Ritalin in order to get rid of that dependency. Same case goes for autism actually, the numbers are so high that either there's a real epidemic or a blantant overdiagnosis.
Compare with other societies where such psychiatric disorders are less diagnosed and less acknowledged, America is truly a country of psychiatrists adn psychoanalysts. Don't you know that in most places, mild depression is seen to be a normal thing, and overtly cheerful is definitely being frown upon.
People who found themselves into the AA are really so addicted into alcohol (both physiologically and psychologically) that they think that going sober is the solution to their problem. No, I don't believe in being unable to process alcohol is the cause of alcoholism, it's rather a way to stop alcoholism (you just need to see how unpleasant getting drunk is when you're truly unable to process alcohol quickly, I just hate it so much that I couldn't bring myself to drink spirits!). Alcohol is addictive, but I won't rate it as "highly addictive stuff" cause there're some societies where moderate drinking is a norm and I won't see them as hurting themselves.
However, there's always an underlying cause for someone developing alcoholism or almost any addictions, and that's what we really need to tackle, blantant therapy on getting rid of such addiction won't help.
Haha, I think they're still on in Japan, as they obviously LIKE IT! In Japan, those game show are big hits because it deceipts the working of the society so clearly (albeit a bit more cruel when it's on the screen).
Seriously, Reality TV is fun for the first time you watch it, then you just simply shunt it as it's so bad. SO BAD that you would never watch TV again (Other than news and documentary that is)!
Without users, you lose your job as you're the adminstrator of the computing system in the office!
I understand the paranoia of adminstrators and how annoying those viruses, trojans, scams can be, but you know people simply don't care about security and resources on computer unless they are directly because they think that nothing could happen to them! Just accept as it is, always educate people about the potential dangers, and ask for a holiday to see it crashes if they didn't follow your ideas.:)
(OK, the last sentence is intended to be funny. That would be the best to lose your job!)
I uses the en-US version of Firefox as well and I think I would wait until the auto-update kicks in so that there would be less hassle to update the browser. Yesterday Morning I saw the update sign shown on the browser, so I clicked it to see if it could auto-update my browser. But it stopped three-quarters or four-fifths of the way through, and since then I could not download it further (not for another 10 hours...). So later, I decided to take the matter on my hands and uninstall Fx 1.0 for Fx 1.0.1 manually.
Grrr... After I reinstall Firefox 1.0.1, the update still reminded me that there's update available, I wonder what's that since I couldn't downlaod it....
Well, my oven works in celsius, I could tell you to cook cakes at 170 (fan oven, 180 for a normal one)...
Sorry, m50d but I think I made a mistake just now because I always thought oven runs at a lower temperature than things like 170C so I thought it was in Fahrenheit. However, I did a little research for oven temperature details, and I can solemnly tell you that most oven do run in Celcius. (grumble...:P)
Lets be honest, stockholders are almost always of the higher classes.
That's true to a certain extent, but you haven't been a place where everyone who had a little money buy a considerable amount of shares as their investment.:P So don't think that stockholders are always of a higher class.
I don't think human beings are inherently greedy for money. They do seek happiness, but that is quite seperate.
Okay, I was a little bit pro-capitalism in my previous post, but that's because I wasn't awake. I do leave a little tail at the end of the message to say what might happen in a highly capitalized society.
People seek happiness. Some people may think that earning lots of money is the only way to achieve happiness. Of course it's BS. However, statistics show that average wealth and happiness are positively correalted, so there is a link between them in modern society at least.
Ideally, we'd live in a society in which people realize this distinction.
Ideally. We hoped that we could change... Once you see that many sufferings on the Earth you might as well think about Buddahism, that will tell you a fine distinction between seeking happiness and other bloats.
I think so too, but they all got fibre cables into their home for such connection, so I think a few years later they could settle for 100MB/s. Put it that way, last August I saw flyers about broadband speed up to 45Mbps only... Four months later they celebrate the upgrade of service into 100Mbps. God knows how would they improve their rate by their never ceasing engineering work on their network.
They have an army with the diminishing help of Americans to keep themselves at check against their northern neighbour though, and their threats are more immenent than rather far-fetched cheap oil.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and just before you'll all flame me about my indifference, let me just say that I'm 100% against the GFW, because that means people cannot reach all information and they will be likely to form biased opinions. However, I don't think it's a good idea to put on a banner to say that "I'm against censorship so I'm not going to engage with the people in the country!" all the time. China is on a tipping point, may be we'll just give a little more time to Google and others...
Remember, Google has NOT redirected all PRC's traffic to google.cn yet! You can still reach google's normal service in the US through google.com at the moment, although I'm not too hopeful if Google wants to receive more revenue from its Chinese service.
Well, I don't have much to say about this "alternative" Google service, it is unlikely that I'm going to use it anyway even though I'm a Chinese because a) I'm not in China at the moment (or even I'm back at home, I'm luckily outside of the GFW), b) I don't think it is a good idea to use a service who have pre-emptively announced on the censorship.
For your curiousity about this "what's being banned?", here is a non-exhaustive list of banned items in instant messaging and wireless communication: http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20040902_1.htm
Here are some less howling opinions about Google entering China: http://www.zonaeuropa.com/200601brief.htm#096
Well, this is the sort of inconsistency many people have to (and still have to) put up with until now...
The Constitution of the People's Republic of China has very explicitly granted many rights (without using the word "inalienable", which is THE CATCH!) to their citizens, most of them never fulfilled until the current regime... However, what MSN is doing is also illegal even under the current rules and regulations. He has not broken any taboo words (or even if he did, he did so discreetedly) as far as I can read other than supporting the strike of Beijing News, which has NOT be banned officially although it is not mentioned widely due to the widespread consequences(1).
That's why Li Ao has asked the audience in his second speech in his groundbreaking China tour to address the basics liberity by implementing of the Constitution. By achieveing that, the people will have the tools to fight against the injustice and illiberaity.
(P.S. 1. The Beijing News was a breeze in the Beijing news sence and has fought a considerable amount of the freedom of press under their own wit, the CCP has decided to ask another less-than-liberal press to control over from Jan 1, 2006.
2.I was an occational reader of his site and certainly lament of such loss...)
He wants his opinion openly known to the CHINESE public. It is not as if he's been banned from posting, d'uh. If he has been banned from posting he'd be in jail now. He's back online now, but regrettably gone back where he originally started in Blog City.
Do you think it is feasible for him to ask every reader to install freenet in order to read his posts? Blog City is blocked by the GFW because of him, and people are still fuming about such consequences.
He has to resort to ask his beloved readers to use proxies, feedburner or even email subscription in order to read his post!
(N.B. Blogger is also TOTALLY BLOCKED by the GFW, think about the far-reaching consequences... MSN is one of the few sites which is OPEN at the moment and enjoys wide readership. In fact, the top ten blogs in China (in terms of traffic) are all hosted in MSN, go figure...)
It was total blog removal by MSN itself. He was blogging about the Beijing News strike due to a takeover from a less-than-liberal paper ordered by the government. You may see the English summary by EastSouthWestNorth below.
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/200512brief.htm#100
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/200601brief.htm#017
And also,
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20051230_2.htm
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20051231_4.htm
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060103_3.htm
They should give you some insight what might have happened. Also, search "Anti" in ESWN, you'll have suprise.
The most strikingly odd thing was that Michael Anti WASN'T writing anything prohibited by the national law and regulations (see a list of banned words in ESWN: http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20040902_1.htm). He knew his fine line and wrote accordingly. However, since he's still a conscious-minded media worker, he felt the pain for the Beijing News, so he spoke up. He asked for a boycott of the paper and support to walk out. As a result, he's banned by MSN.
Read ESWN if you want to know about what happened in China from other perspectives.
Well, I said what it is meant to be theoractically, but as many things in China, things are a bit more complicated as you mentioned.
I understand that many hukow register are really inaccurate as they didn't do the job properly. Remember that Chinese is a big country and for years we are quite slack on population control. There is a great influx of officially "identity-less" people (sanwu-renyuan) into cities from their countryside who seem to slip through the bureaucracy entirely. THose people tend to work to lowest level of jobs like cleaners or construction workers. They stay in squatter huts so that police couldn't catch them as they didn't want to deal with the bureaucracy at all, they just want better lives for themselves. The PRC government is trying very hard to clean their mess of hukou and re-establish a more flexible yet structured system, at least rhetorically and effort has been make in city registry.
In HK, being a legacy of a British colony, things are more structured. In fact, the use of ID Card Nos. in HK is somehow simillar to the use of ID Nos. in Sweden. Buisnesses like to keep track of our ID Card no as it is the best unique identification in HK. Every one from an fitness club to shop loyalty plans to doctor's registrar contains your ID no. Fortunately, our ID Card numbering system are not as blatantly obvious as the Swedish one, so no one can directly infer your date of birth (though a range is somehow possible after late 1970s I think) nor your sexuality (which is not indicated by the number at all) so some privacy can still be maintained. In fact, our ID Nos. gives very few clues, such as a vauge indicaton of your origin, a vauge indication of your date of birth, and absolutely no indication of sex, so it should be less oppressive than what Swedish system seems.
The UK government seems to have a wealth of IT initiatives but a lack of ability to deliver and handle them well. From the catastrophic migration to renew IT systme in NHS to the crashdown of DWP IT system of pensions I'm extremely afraid the catastrophy UK government would make if they collect tons of biometric data. At that point there will be more rather than less identity thefts if they manage to lose the data.
I'm not really against a national ID card system, because I live under it in Hong Kong. It does make you life easier with a good way to identify yourself. Though anonymity would be somehow lost as you would have to carry this all the time, this is not my major concern. My major concern would be the size of the national database with tons of biometrics and the security of that. I once postulate a unified identity card system with all the data stored in a centralised database when I was younger, but I later scrap that idea out of my mind because I know that would be a hotspot of misuse from government or proxy agency alike.
Another problem is obviously the cost, £90 for a card? That's ridiculously expensive. The card should have been obviously laden with tons of security features and biometrics to add up the cost, but an initial cost of £90 per person is one of the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Normally governments offer a sweet pill for people to swallow this hard act by offering cheap or free first issuing of intenal identity documents, I'll just say Blair et al just try to grab for money obviously.
Well, should I tell you that all East Asian countries (Greater China, Japan and Korea) got identity cards, though it seems that only Greater China (including PRC Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) require compulsory identification documents. Aliens or even migrate citizens who don't have a registry in that local area (hukou) in PRC especially are supposed to be registered with their residing local authority (remember Gong-An?) once they arrive and decide o reside for longer than 3 months, so don't tell me that you don't have it in China, you may just not be staying long enough.
Certainly funny, but you don't necessary need to include all opinions about your piece of work after consultation, so it would not be such a big logistical nightmare...
Well, a friend of mine chatted with me about this possiblity of another prequel of the Phantom of the Meance. She said that since the Return of the Jedi somehow seals up the ending, so a sequel of the original triology is not a big possibility, until someone could come up with a much better sequel. Whereas there're many mysteries unsolved even in this prequel, such as the relationship of the Master of Obi-Wan, or the origin of Chancellor Palpatine. There're many scope of which we can follow.
Some people claim that the continuation of Star Wars prequel from the original has already lost its appeal to many original fans of Star Wars as the script are bad and storyline is very repetitive. However, we can see that producers are more interseted in cashing in the fame of Star Wars than making a good story. Though I must say Star Wars appeals a lot of people, like my sister who's 10 has just bought books about Star Wars, so there's still a demand for such prequels or sequels...
The biggest problem would be numbering of the episodes as this current tirology starts with one. If a prequel is made, then either they have to reshuffle the numbering (which they did when they made the first prequel) or using negative numbers. Of course, they can make Episode 0 (Zero) if they want to make only one prequel of the Phantom of the Meance.
I couldn't find the details about this badge anywhere in the http://www.scout.org.hk/. Apperantly they have not uploaded the details of this new badge or they're not enthusiastic about it.
3 3&cid=12424010, this does not really matter anyway because no one would really care.
A k06.html
0 171.htm
From the Standard [1], this badge is NOT a MERIT BADGE. It's a proficiency badge which you cannot put it on the scout shirt. Besides, what you only need to do is to attend a series of seminars/indoctrinations as you see fit, and vola, you got the badge. The local media did try not to twist the story too much. So it's not really a matter of brainwashing after all, and Slashdotters should not really go crazy about this subject. Besides, some1somewhere was right on his post #12424010 http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1482
The HK SAR government seems to be quite enthusiastic about this and issued a press release [2].
References:
[1] http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Metro/GE04
[2] http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/200504/30/0429
And Hong Kong and Macau are the ONLY places of the PRC which have the Scout Movement. The Mainland retrots itself to the "Pioneers"... And the Scout in Taiwan is still called the Scouts of China...
I'm absolutely agreed with that. For my part I never watch hentai anime, but I still enjoy anime in general. Why? Animation is a medium to convey a story, a very good medium as well because it's kind of surrealistic and detached. When you watch an animation, what you see is an alternative world. A totally alternative world because they're drawn out instead of filmed. Sometimes, you can see some blunders, anachronisms in movies because it is impossible to remove them or they're just badly thought out, especially when the film is not contemporary. Obviously, CG and speical effects help a lot in making movie more detached to reality, but anime has a distinctive advantage of such alienness as it's totally controlable. That's what many people enjoy.
The reason why CTHD sounds like its geared towards Western audiences is simply because it is. Sony Pictures and Comlubia-Tristar spent a lot of time to harmonize the differences so that it would be saleable to the Western audiences. For example, the script is translated back and forth between Chinese and English three times, to make sure that not much stuff lost in the subtitles. Therefore, Chinese thought that the plot is too shallow compare with other heroic martial arts films. The imagery is again impressive, but people have mostly seen them before (especially the kung fu), so there's less a wow factor in it.
Chow Yun Fat's mandarin comparatively becomes a lesser factor becuase all Chinese movies are subtitled! Yep, even Chinese movies made in China are subtitled because of the differences of language exist in China.
The dawn of DVD helps the business of retaining voice dub and subtitles for a film a lot. We can choose different languages as long as its available on the disc, we can see sub in many languages. Technically speaking we can watch more than one sub if the technology permits, this would help those language learners. Indeed, one of the language policies in HK is to have some English TV series dubbed in ENGLISH so that people can learn more colloquial spoken English instead of classroom ones.
People are more inclined to be entertained in their mother/native language when given a chance because that's what they most comfortably in. I remember that even though anime in HK is always a big hit for KIDS, they are all subbed nevertheless because they would be uncomfortable to read off subtitles from the televisions. I understand that most dubs are quite dubious, there are some good voice actors. We should not just blatantly bark at the inferior quality of bad dub either. Sometimes, subs are not much better, as you can find in those English subs in cardboard kung fu films during the 90s.
I would actually consider that people who spend more than 25 hours on TV as a TV addict, I know that my mum would say it. Heck, life is more than your telly.
If spending 6 hours weekly on discussion boards is consider as an addiction, then hmmm... I'm a real "information junkie" then because I think I spend at least an hour on a single board when I'm on my "information high".
Regarding to work, tell that to Japanese and Chinese, they would be glad if they can finish their work in a 40-hour week! Somehow we're working more than we should and that's really depriving from other more healty pursuits in life.
ADD does exist obviously, but it is overdiagnosed in the US, I just couldn't believe how many people those GP and psychiatrist thought that those relatively disruptive children have them. I used to be a very disruptive children when I was young that is compared with Asian standards as most children are so conforming that any challenges to any authority (either petit or gross) are seen as naughty and disruptive. Yet, I saw only 3 people in my life who suggested me that I have ADHD, and my parents just ignored it. Now, if I'm really being diagnosed as ADHD and being prescribed with Ritalin, I think I would actually get worse, and I would need to spend time to wean out Ritalin in order to get rid of that dependency. Same case goes for autism actually, the numbers are so high that either there's a real epidemic or a blantant overdiagnosis.
Compare with other societies where such psychiatric disorders are less diagnosed and less acknowledged, America is truly a country of psychiatrists adn psychoanalysts. Don't you know that in most places, mild depression is seen to be a normal thing, and overtly cheerful is definitely being frown upon.
People who found themselves into the AA are really so addicted into alcohol (both physiologically and psychologically) that they think that going sober is the solution to their problem. No, I don't believe in being unable to process alcohol is the cause of alcoholism, it's rather a way to stop alcoholism (you just need to see how unpleasant getting drunk is when you're truly unable to process alcohol quickly, I just hate it so much that I couldn't bring myself to drink spirits!). Alcohol is addictive, but I won't rate it as "highly addictive stuff" cause there're some societies where moderate drinking is a norm and I won't see them as hurting themselves.
However, there's always an underlying cause for someone developing alcoholism or almost any addictions, and that's what we really need to tackle, blantant therapy on getting rid of such addiction won't help.
Haha, I think they're still on in Japan, as they obviously LIKE IT! In Japan, those game show are big hits because it deceipts the working of the society so clearly (albeit a bit more cruel when it's on the screen).
Seriously, Reality TV is fun for the first time you watch it, then you just simply shunt it as it's so bad. SO BAD that you would never watch TV again (Other than news and documentary that is)!
Without users, you lose your job as you're the adminstrator of the computing system in the office!
:)
I understand the paranoia of adminstrators and how annoying those viruses, trojans, scams can be, but you know people simply don't care about security and resources on computer unless they are directly because they think that nothing could happen to them! Just accept as it is, always educate people about the potential dangers, and ask for a holiday to see it crashes if they didn't follow your ideas.
(OK, the last sentence is intended to be funny. That would be the best to lose your job!)
I uses the en-US version of Firefox as well and I think I would wait until the auto-update kicks in so that there would be less hassle to update the browser. Yesterday Morning I saw the update sign shown on the browser, so I clicked it to see if it could auto-update my browser. But it stopped three-quarters or four-fifths of the way through, and since then I could not download it further (not for another 10 hours...). So later, I decided to take the matter on my hands and uninstall Fx 1.0 for Fx 1.0.1 manually.
Grrr... After I reinstall Firefox 1.0.1, the update still reminded me that there's update available, I wonder what's that since I couldn't downlaod it....
Well, my oven works in celsius, I could tell you to cook cakes at 170 (fan oven, 180 for a normal one)...
:P)
h tm
Sorry, m50d but I think I made a mistake just now because I always thought oven runs at a lower temperature than things like 170C so I thought it was in Fahrenheit. However, I did a little research for oven temperature details, and I can solemnly tell you that most oven do run in Celcius. (grumble...
http://www.hintsandthings.co.uk/kitchen/oventemp.
Lets be honest, stockholders are almost always of the higher classes.
:P So don't think that stockholders are always of a higher class.
That's true to a certain extent, but you haven't been a place where everyone who had a little money buy a considerable amount of shares as their investment.
I don't think human beings are inherently greedy for money. They do seek happiness, but that is quite seperate.
Okay, I was a little bit pro-capitalism in my previous post, but that's because I wasn't awake. I do leave a little tail at the end of the message to say what might happen in a highly capitalized society.
People seek happiness. Some people may think that earning lots of money is the only way to achieve happiness. Of course it's BS. However, statistics show that average wealth and happiness are positively correalted, so there is a link between them in modern society at least.
Ideally, we'd live in a society in which people realize this distinction.
Ideally. We hoped that we could change... Once you see that many sufferings on the Earth you might as well think about Buddahism, that will tell you a fine distinction between seeking happiness and other bloats.
I think so too, but they all got fibre cables into their home for such connection, so I think a few years later they could settle for 100MB/s. Put it that way, last August I saw flyers about broadband speed up to 45Mbps only... Four months later they celebrate the upgrade of service into 100Mbps. God knows how would they improve their rate by their never ceasing engineering work on their network.
They have an army with the diminishing help of Americans to keep themselves at check against their northern neighbour though, and their threats are more immenent than rather far-fetched cheap oil.