Why shouldn't it be? It's an unique way of doing something that people may find useful. If they do then the creator gets some profit from it. Isn't that the whole point of patents?
Is better reading comprehension supposed to help me magically work out your unsourced statistics and thereby find myself in agreement with your conclusion?
By the way, not counting the opinions of political criminals and radical dissidents, the PRC has the highest citizen satisfaction rating, and is therefore obviously the best place in the world to live.
Using solar to preheat the water instead of more coal to preheat it just admits that solar is a more effective tech for generating energy than coal is.
That's ludicrous. Does using lithium-ion battery packs instead of gas in cars admit that lithium-ion is a more effective tech for storing energy than gasoline is?
(It's not, in case if you're puzzled by the analogy.)
If only Japan could somehow magically create more open, unfarmable, and uninhabited land where the turbines could be placed without taking away already scarce farm land or slowly deafen anyone within a kilometer!
I'll admit that it was a momentarily amusing thought with no solid base, and that there are obviously a thousand other factors involved, but you're actually the one that's completely wrong.
If the US has the highest murder rate (which is the assumption you are basing this "proportion" on), then all countries with lower (or zero) execution rates (ie. the overwhelming majority (>90%) of countries in the world) would have lower murder rates.
Are you suggesting that they all have... higher murder rates instead? Does Slashdot not understand basic mathematical relationships anymore?
Inversely proportional means one stat goes up as the other goes down. The US has a higher homicide rate and a lower execution rate than the other four countries, therefore the relationship between homicide rate and execution rate is inversely proportional. This place used to have math nerds...
Is this relevant, or are you already applying bias against the Chinese?
Why are trying so hard to criticize Falun Gong ?
Why are you questioning my motive, instead of my argument? I'm presenting cold hard evidence to support my argument, but you're just going for a cheap ad hominem shot.
They don't have a god, so I don't see why it should be called cult.
Did you read my post at all? Note the quote by the founder presenting himself as "the best god", not to mention all the references to higher beings and how much above "ordinary people" the writer is in the official Falun Gong books. If that doesn't fit into your definition of a cult I'm not sure what you think a cult is.
I don't deny that China has been running a smear campaign on Falun Gong, but Falun Gong seems to be doing a much better job of a smear campaign against the government. Based on previous point, I would say it's fair to call them a cult.
But more importantly, do you think their members deserve death ?
Why do you think that? I didn't say they deserve death. Or is that your own biased view that anyone who questions Falun Gong must be trying to persecute the members by seeking their deaths? I see Falun Gong's indoctrination has worked well.
If you think so, you have a real problem, because you are completely endoctrined by the national propaganda.
Even though I didn't repeat one line of "national (I assume you mean Chinese?) propaganda". In fact, I have never even read any "national propaganda" on the issue before today. All my quotes are from researching primary sources, one being the official Falun Gong teachings, the other being a reporter who worked firsthand with Falun Gong. So without a single shred of evidence, how did you conclude that I'm indoctrinated by propaganda? Or am I simply that way because all Chinese (as you assume I must be) who are critical of Falun Gong must have been thoroughly brainwashed for the government and unable to process facts for themselves? Aren't these assumptions the truly scary brainwashing? Ironic, in a way.
Following your point of view, I'm pretty sure that Tibetans also deserve death.
Even the government doesn't advocate the death of Tibetans (notice that they do not advocate the death of Falun Gong practitioners either...), so I'm assuming this is another case of too much Western media coolaid.
Finally, I'd like to add another point: when a country has real (and unsolvable) problems piling up, they try to find scapegoats. In Germany in the 30s, they used the Jews as scapegoats.
Now, China is just attacking everybody that refuse their model, starting by the people in their own country, and slowly attacking people in their neighbourhood. Since China concentrates so much power (and money !) now, I hope they won't try to dominate the whole world, like the Germans in their time.
Wow, so Godwin was your last point? Well played. Since as you say China has so much power and money, what are their real, unsolvable problems?
The PRC government has historically encouraged Qigong and other traditional art forms. Hell, it's pretty much categorized as a medical science in China. Non-Falun Gong Qigong certainly isn't prosecuted, I used to see groups of old people practicing in formation every morning. In fact, in 1982 the government passed a policy to not promote, debate, or criticize Qigong (I can't find a detailed explanation of this policy in English, but here's the source in Chinese). If it's simply Qigong, why do people cling to it so resolutely? Would you set yourself on fire to protest the government banning yoga, or at least go around passing out pamphlets about how great yoga is on street corners and university campuses? It's obviously a little more hardcore than plain Qigong.
We've found that when a person is born, many, many him are born at the same time within a certain range of the space of this universe.
They found that? Really?
When a person is born, his whole life is already laid out there in a specific dimension. Meaning, where he is in his life, what he's supposed to do, and so onâ"it's all there. So who arranged his life? It's obviously done by higher beings.
The fact is, qigong treatments can't be like ordinary people's healing methods - it's not an ordinary person's skill. It's something higher. And are higher things allowed to disrupt the ordinary world on a large scale? A Buddha's capabilities are just awesome - with the wave of a Buddha's hand all of the human race's sicknesses could vanish. Then why don't any Buddhas do that, especially when there are so many of them? Why don't they have mercy and heal you? Because that's just how the ordinary world is
Right, and God conceals traces of His work to give us free will.
I divided my gong among the disciples who I brought along. Each of them got a share, and they were energy clusters composed of over 100 abilities. I sealed their hands, but still, some of them suffered bites to the hand that broke the skin, caused blisters, or made them bleed, and that even happened a lot. Those things are so fierce. You think youâ(TM)d dare to touch them with your ordinary personâ(TM)s hands?
Yes, my disciples are obviously superior to ordinary people, so you better not try where they failed. But if you join the ranks of my disciples then you'll be elevated from the ordinary. Classic.
When a person has a tumor somewhere, an infection somewhere, a bone spur somewhere, or whatever, in another dimension there's a being crouching at that place. In a deep dimension there's a being there. A typical qigong master can't see that, because the usual supernatural abilities can't see it, and they can only see that the person has black qi in his body. Wherever there's black qi there's illnessâ"they're right about that. But, black qi is not the root cause of the problem. Instead, it's a being in a deeper dimension, and it's that being that produces the field.
I don't even have to ridicule it, it ridicules itself. This ain't government propaganda, folks. Straight from the horse's mouth.
I'm not too sure I understand the circular argument - people are sentenced to death on some legal basis, not arbitrarily. After this basis has been demonstrated your rights are removed.
RE: the high party member's son with the kidney problem, I admit that the system can be corrupted and misused, but that happens everywhere. That doesn't mean the system itself is broken though, you have to deal with the fundamental problem of corruption.
The same group also has a highly vested interest not to give their organs to others. The idea is this could be accomplished if you avoid committing crimes that warrant execution, and if you do then you've forfeited your body for the good of others.
Chemicals used in this manner aren't stable forever, they break down after a while. Some only attack a single organ, such as the brain, and some kill by disrupting muscle function, which don't affect organs.
China doesn't give a damn about your opinion or your definition of wickedness.
The idea is law abiding citizens can do with their body as they wish, whereas death row criminals have, by committing heinous crimes, forfeited their life and by extension their body.
The 13th Amendment of the American Constitution seemingly allows penal labour as it states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime." Douglas A. Blackmon of the Wall Street Journal has argued that in the United States in the 19th century, after the abolition of slavery, government officials on behalf of business interests "enacted [laws] specifically to intimidate blacks, [and] tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested". This resulted in "neoslavery...[at] coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations" and "beatings and physical torture", as blacks were "hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests."[2]
Though the use of non-punitive prison labour is not generally controversial if the labour in question serves the public good, is done for sound penological reasons, and is not excessive, cruel, unusual, inhumane, degrading, or humiliating, a significant amount of controversy has arisen with regards to the use of prison labour if the prison in question is privatized, a phenomenon present in a few areas of the United States.[6] As of 2000, privatized prisons incarcerate approximately 3.1% of the prison population within the US, or 62,000 inmates, out of a total incarcerated population of 2 million,[6] and of these privatized prisons, the vast majority use prisoners as a labour force for purposes of avoiding costs, or producing salable goods and services, and thus enhancing the profit of the corporation running them.
I guess China gets all the flak because they must be doing it in an cruel, inhumane, and exploitative manner, since everyone knows they're all dirty subhuman Reds.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't sue people for violations of your patent if they don't actually commercialize it.
Well, you could, but you'll just get laughed out of court and end up paying for all the patent lawyers.
Why shouldn't it be? It's an unique way of doing something that people may find useful. If they do then the creator gets some profit from it. Isn't that the whole point of patents?
Wow. Winnipeg MB must be really damned cold.
I use dialup/stolen wireless, you insensitive clod!
Is better reading comprehension supposed to help me magically work out your unsourced statistics and thereby find myself in agreement with your conclusion?
By the way, not counting the opinions of political criminals and radical dissidents, the PRC has the highest citizen satisfaction rating, and is therefore obviously the best place in the world to live.
the US not only has the highest life expectancy in the world
...What?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
Not even close to the highest.
The official record speed is the average over two runs.
...some beta win7 drivers...
I mean, seriously? What'd you expect?
Can you click on two things at once with a mouse? How about four? Ten?
Try thinking outside the box sometimes.
Huh? You didn't have to memorize 1s 2p etc in high school chemistry?
Using solar to preheat the water instead of more coal to preheat it just admits that solar is a more effective tech for generating energy than coal is.
That's ludicrous. Does using lithium-ion battery packs instead of gas in cars admit that lithium-ion is a more effective tech for storing energy than gasoline is?
(It's not, in case if you're puzzled by the analogy.)
How is that a result of betrayed trust?
The only one you can blame for how your money does "in the market" is yourself.
I think the only conclusion we can draw from your anecdotes is that your workplace is full of idiots.
If only Japan could somehow magically create more open, unfarmable, and uninhabited land where the turbines could be placed without taking away already scarce farm land or slowly deafen anyone within a kilometer!
And also completely wrong!
I'll admit that it was a momentarily amusing thought with no solid base, and that there are obviously a thousand other factors involved, but you're actually the one that's completely wrong.
If the US has the highest murder rate (which is the assumption you are basing this "proportion" on), then all countries with lower (or zero) execution rates (ie. the overwhelming majority (>90%) of countries in the world) would have lower murder rates.
Are you suggesting that they all have... higher murder rates instead? Does Slashdot not understand basic mathematical relationships anymore?
Inversely proportional means one stat goes up as the other goes down. The US has a higher homicide rate and a lower execution rate than the other four countries, therefore the relationship between homicide rate and execution rate is inversely proportional. This place used to have math nerds...
Correlation also does not equal non-causation. Which is why it's interesting.
Do you people ever stop for a second and think about stuff or just burp out the first cliche that comes to mind?
Ok, it seems that you are chinese.
Is this relevant, or are you already applying bias against the Chinese?
Why are trying so hard to criticize Falun Gong ?
Why are you questioning my motive, instead of my argument? I'm presenting cold hard evidence to support my argument, but you're just going for a cheap ad hominem shot.
They don't have a god, so I don't see why it should be called cult.
Did you read my post at all? Note the quote by the founder presenting himself as "the best god", not to mention all the references to higher beings and how much above "ordinary people" the writer is in the official Falun Gong books. If that doesn't fit into your definition of a cult I'm not sure what you think a cult is.
The Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_gong [wikipedia.org]
clearly exposes China's techniques to demonize Falun Gong (calling it a cult).
I don't deny that China has been running a smear campaign on Falun Gong, but Falun Gong seems to be doing a much better job of a smear campaign against the government. Based on previous point, I would say it's fair to call them a cult.
But more importantly, do you think their members deserve death ?
Why do you think that? I didn't say they deserve death. Or is that your own biased view that anyone who questions Falun Gong must be trying to persecute the members by seeking their deaths? I see Falun Gong's indoctrination has worked well.
If you think so, you have a real problem, because you are completely endoctrined by the national propaganda.
Even though I didn't repeat one line of "national (I assume you mean Chinese?) propaganda". In fact, I have never even read any "national propaganda" on the issue before today. All my quotes are from researching primary sources, one being the official Falun Gong teachings, the other being a reporter who worked firsthand with Falun Gong. So without a single shred of evidence, how did you conclude that I'm indoctrinated by propaganda? Or am I simply that way because all Chinese (as you assume I must be) who are critical of Falun Gong must have been thoroughly brainwashed for the government and unable to process facts for themselves? Aren't these assumptions the truly scary brainwashing? Ironic, in a way.
Following your point of view, I'm pretty sure that Tibetans also deserve death.
Even the government doesn't advocate the death of Tibetans (notice that they do not advocate the death of Falun Gong practitioners either...), so I'm assuming this is another case of too much Western media coolaid.
Finally, I'd like to add another point:
when a country has real (and unsolvable) problems piling up, they try to find scapegoats.
In Germany in the 30s, they used the Jews as scapegoats.
Now, China is just attacking everybody that refuse their model, starting by the people in their own country, and slowly attacking people in their neighbourhood.
Since China concentrates so much power (and money !) now, I hope they won't try to dominate the whole world, like the Germans in their time.
Wow, so Godwin was your last point? Well played.
Since as you say China has so much power and money, what are their real, unsolvable problems?
Basically, it's a large sect, which teaches QiGong.
I don't think sect means what you think it means. The proper word for a religious organization is a cult. And it most definitely is a religious cult, since the founder basically claims to be a divine being and teaches his followers to militantly defend his "law"
The PRC government has historically encouraged Qigong and other traditional art forms. Hell, it's pretty much categorized as a medical science in China. Non-Falun Gong Qigong certainly isn't prosecuted, I used to see groups of old people practicing in formation every morning. In fact, in 1982 the government passed a policy to not promote, debate, or criticize Qigong (I can't find a detailed explanation of this policy in English, but here's the source in Chinese). If it's simply Qigong, why do people cling to it so resolutely? Would you set yourself on fire to protest the government banning yoga, or at least go around passing out pamphlets about how great yoga is on street corners and university campuses? It's obviously a little more hardcore than plain Qigong.
Have you read the actual teachings of Falun Gong? Before you put the face of the well-meaning mystic on Falun Gong, check out their publications. Here are a few choice snippets.
We've found that when a person is born, many, many him are born at the same time within a certain range of the space of this universe.
They found that? Really?
When a person is born, his whole life is already laid out there in a specific dimension. Meaning, where he is in his life, what he's supposed to do, and so onâ"it's all there. So who arranged his life? It's obviously done by higher beings.
The fact is, qigong treatments can't be like ordinary people's healing methods - it's not an ordinary person's skill. It's something higher. And are higher things allowed to disrupt the ordinary world on a large scale? A Buddha's capabilities are just awesome - with the wave of a Buddha's hand all of the human race's sicknesses could vanish. Then why don't any Buddhas do that, especially when there are so many of them? Why don't they have mercy and heal you? Because that's just how the ordinary world is
Right, and God conceals traces of His work to give us free will.
I divided my gong among the disciples who I brought along. Each of them got a share, and they were energy clusters composed of over 100 abilities. I sealed their hands, but still, some of them suffered bites to the hand that broke the skin, caused blisters, or made them bleed, and that even happened a lot. Those things are so fierce. You think youâ(TM)d dare to touch them with your ordinary personâ(TM)s hands?
Yes, my disciples are obviously superior to ordinary people, so you better not try where they failed. But if you join the ranks of my disciples then you'll be elevated from the ordinary. Classic.
When a person has a tumor somewhere, an infection somewhere, a bone spur somewhere, or whatever, in another dimension there's a being crouching at that place. In a deep dimension there's a being there. A typical qigong master can't see that, because the usual supernatural abilities can't see it, and they can only see that the person has black qi in his body. Wherever there's black qi there's illnessâ"they're right about that. But, black qi is not the root cause of the problem. Instead, it's a being in a deeper dimension, and it's that being that produces the field.
I don't even have to ridicule it, it ridicules itself. This ain't government propaganda, folks. Straight from the horse's mouth.
Execution rate inversely proportional to homicide rate? Interesting correlation...
I'm not too sure I understand the circular argument - people are sentenced to death on some legal basis, not arbitrarily. After this basis has been demonstrated your rights are removed.
RE: the high party member's son with the kidney problem, I admit that the system can be corrupted and misused, but that happens everywhere. That doesn't mean the system itself is broken though, you have to deal with the fundamental problem of corruption.
The same group also has a highly vested interest not to give their organs to others. The idea is this could be accomplished if you avoid committing crimes that warrant execution, and if you do then you've forfeited your body for the good of others.
Chemicals used in this manner aren't stable forever, they break down after a while. Some only attack a single organ, such as the brain, and some kill by disrupting muscle function, which don't affect organs.
China doesn't give a damn about your opinion or your definition of wickedness.
The idea is law abiding citizens can do with their body as they wish, whereas death row criminals have, by committing heinous crimes, forfeited their life and by extension their body.
You've read about it? And it happens in China? And nowhere else?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour
The 13th Amendment of the American Constitution seemingly allows penal labour as it states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime." Douglas A. Blackmon of the Wall Street Journal has argued that in the United States in the 19th century, after the abolition of slavery, government officials on behalf of business interests "enacted [laws] specifically to intimidate blacks, [and] tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested". This resulted in "neoslavery...[at] coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations" and "beatings and physical torture", as blacks were "hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests."[2]
Though the use of non-punitive prison labour is not generally controversial if the labour in question serves the public good, is done for sound penological reasons, and is not excessive, cruel, unusual, inhumane, degrading, or humiliating, a significant amount of controversy has arisen with regards to the use of prison labour if the prison in question is privatized, a phenomenon present in a few areas of the United States.[6] As of 2000, privatized prisons incarcerate approximately 3.1% of the prison population within the US, or 62,000 inmates, out of a total incarcerated population of 2 million,[6] and of these privatized prisons, the vast majority use prisoners as a labour force for purposes of avoiding costs, or producing salable goods and services, and thus enhancing the profit of the corporation running them.
I guess China gets all the flak because they must be doing it in an cruel, inhumane, and exploitative manner, since everyone knows they're all dirty subhuman Reds.
Execution rate inversely proportional to homicide rate? Interesting correlation...