And, like it or not, the Chinese market dwarfs the American market. Remember, that holds true even today, without the full Chinese market being completely realized and integrated. Once the Chinese market really gets going, coupled with that of India and other Asian nations, traditional markets will look quite irrelevant.
Even with significant wealth, a 300 million body US market is still quite insignificant when compared to the 2 billion person Indian and Chinese markets.
EBay is quite lucky to be able to tap into such fantastic financial resources so early on. If they can maintain a foothold in those markets, they will become extremely prosperous.
.. oppression of unfavorable speech and blocking of websites.
With the recent US DoJ request for search terms from a number of the major search engines, Americans might find themselves in a very similar situation with regards to censorship. Except they'll be without the vibrant, rapidly-expanding economy that China current has. Growth is the key to a strong economy. A strong economy without significant growth is not a very healthy economy.
Indeed, countries like China and India will be where the 21st century will take place.
But in the big picture, it is just the typical East-West reversal. Remember, in centuries past China and India were the major world civilizations. The Europe of today is much like the China of the 1200s. And the China of tomorrow will be much like the Europe of today.
The East was on top for a while, and then various events lead to the West becoming more prosperous. But we see the tide turning one again, this time in favour of the East. In three or four centuries it will no doubt switch back towards the West's favour, and soon enough there'll be yet another switch.
You obviously hate Slashdot with a passion, as shown by this little rant and your previous absurdities about the editors supposedly being out to get you by taking away your mod points.
So I ask: why do you keep coming back here if you have such a burning hatred for everyone and everything here?
There was a lot of speculation in the early to mid 1990s that SGI would buy Apple. SGI was doing quite well at that time, considering they had just released their very successful Indy line. Considering that both provided workstations for the same type of applications (multimedia-related, desktop publishing, and so forth), the systems from Apple could have offered a solid low-end line to complement SGI's more powerful systems.
What could have happened is an infusion of IRIX with Mac OS. We could have seen Mac OS on the MIPS, for instance. Not only that, but it would be a situation very similar to what we have now with Mac OS X: an excellent GUI built upon a solid UNIX-based core. Except in the SGI case the UNIX core would be IRIX, rather than a BSD/Mach conglomerate.
There has always been much speculation as to what the computing landscape would look like today had the non-Intel vendors worked together to produce a superior chip.
Indeed, the combined talents of the Alpha crew from DEC, with the PA-RISC developers from HP, the SPARC group from Sun, those behind the MIPS at SGI and MIPS Technologies, and the PPC people from IBM, for instance, could have come up with a CPU that completely trumped what Intel was putting out at the time.
For serious workstations, the SPARC was basically the dominant chip at the time. Indeed, it was at the top of its game. Even now we still see it used for mission-critical and high-performance tasks. So it's really no wonder that Apple would have considered such a switch.
The system is quite simple when it comes to losing mod points: if you abuse the system (ie. incorrectly moderate posts), then your privileges will be automatically revoked. Indeed, there's especially not a conspiracy against you involving the editors.
It's much akin to protecting a living body from an infection; the infection is noticed, and swiftly eliminated. In this case the system is the discussion forums, and the infection is somebody who moderates incorrectly (much like yourself).
Indeed, I think your signature shows how flawed your interpretation of reality here is. If your signature were correct in any way, then I would not have Excellent karma, and I would not frequently receive mod points. But since that's not the case, you must be completely wrong. It's no wonder you lost your mod points; you likely didn't understand how to properly use them in the first place!
Don't confuse a political party's name with its ideology. They're often two very separate things.
After talking to a number of my relatives who live over in various parts of Canada, we tend to agree that the Conservative Party of Canada does not represent conservatives. It can best be viewed as the Canadian branch of the American Republicans. Hence it would best be referred to as a "Republican" party, rather an a "conservative" party. Why is that? Because they do not follow the ideals of conservatives, but rather a train of thought oft associated with the Republican Party in the US.
Indeed, I have to admit, I was born in the 1930s, so I was quite young when fascism became a serious matter. However, I do know many veterans who fought in World War II, and were well aware of the political landscape at that time.
One thing you'll notice when you talk to almost any of them is that they're scared today. They think back to what they fought against, and they see it present yet again. Except this time it is being done in their name, by their countries. The proof is all around. It's obvious to them, and even to somebody such as myself, who has vague memories of such times.
Of course, somebody born in the last 30 or 40 years might not be able to notice such things by themselves, as they grew up within the confined of the system and thus cannot see beyond it.
No. Republicans and Democrats stand for the status quo. Look who makes up the American government: it's mainly Democrats and Republicans! And like we've established, Democratism are a separate political ideology from liberalism, and Republicanism is a separate political ideology from conservatism.
Indeed, there are political groups who follow such ideals. They're the true conservatives in America. Yet they often are not represented in government because they hold those ideas.
In order to become seriously represented in the government they would have to basically follow Republicanism, rather than conservatism. Thus within the confines of the current system, they couldn't become part of the government as conservatives; they most likely have to become Republicans. And when they become Republicans, they are no longer conservatives.
It seems you didn't read the rest of my post. The Democratic party is best viewed as a "Republican-lite" party.
These days, actual conservatives tend to vote for independent or libertarian candidates. They don't vote for the Democrats, and they sure don't vote for the Republicans, because neither party truly represents the views and ideals of conservatism.
Remember, if somebody votes Republican they are not a conservative. They are a Republican. Likewise, if somebody votes Democrat, they are not a liberal. They are a Democrat. "Republican" and "Democrat" are two political ideologies, much like conservative or liberal. As such the Republicans do not represent conservatism, nor do the Democrats represent liberalism.
Again, such people can't be classified as "conservatives", as their views and actions do not fit the criteria necessary of being considered "conservative".
The kind of people you're thinking of are Republicans, and Democrats to a lesser extent. They are not conservatives in any way, as my earlier post showed quite clearly.
There's no need for them to resort to legislation prohibiting slander. It is perhaps the worst possible thing they could do, as it in itself is promoting censorship.
Indeed, the best things they can probably do here is to laugh at such efforts. Taunt the group organizing this. That's far more effective and beneficial than for them to also resort to censorship.
Remember, the US is supposedly a republic. In a republic, the government is not exactly a separate entity from the general public. Indeed, it is indirectly made up of each and every voting individual. So when a private groups resorts of fascism, and they support the republican-style government, then it is a case of fascism.
Don't delude yourself: people will always have a political agenda, and it will always be a part of whatever they're doing.
More importantly, it's irrelevant if a professor holds such views, and expresses them to his or her students. Any truly intelligent student (you know, this is at the university level!) should be able to recognize such bias, and take it into account while taking a particular course.
University often isn't about sitting there and accepting what the professors say as fact. It's about hearing ideas that may differ from yours, so as to make you think a little bit harder than you normally would. It takes real responsibility to partake in and make use of a university-level education.
And the worst possible thing to do is either believe or insist that professors not involve their personal, biased views. That's the whole point of getting an education! To be bombarded by views you wouldn't have even bothered to consider, even if you do happen to disagree with them in the end.
Please do not confuse Republicans and their followers with conservatives. Indeed, they are very different groups holding very different beliefs.
Conservatives stand for freedom, liberty, individual responsibility, honest prosperity, and peace.
Republicans (and many Democrats, too) stand for the supression of liberties and freedoms (often in the name of "security"), do not promote responsibility, and often resort to corruption and illegal means of obtaining wealth. These days, they obtain much of their wealth via wars, which contradicts directly with peace.
Today it is Republicans who are moving towards (if they're not already in) a state of fascism. It is conservatives around the US who are taking a stand against such anti-American nonsense.
I would like to see the professors stage a protest. But not just a walk-around-with-signs protest.
What I'd like to see them do is find a picture of this fellow's face, and get a fairly large poster of it printed up. They can put it on a stage, facing the audience. Then each and every professor can go up to the photo of this fellow, and urinate on it. Some can even throw their feces on it, if they see fit.
Indeed, it should be taken as an honour to be "exposed" by this fellow and his group. These are the kind of people that it's good to piss off. They're the sort who either have a vested (often financial) interest in the status quo, or are completely incapable of peacefully accepting the views of others (which in itself is completely anti-American).
If I were a university student, I would think of this sort of group as a blessing. They'd show which professors have the guts to provide their views without trying to self-censor. Those are the sorts of professors who are worth learning from.
It's a perfectly acceptable analogy. Like this situation shows, you can't easily force others to emit proper or specifications-compliant data, even if it isn't a difficult act to perform from a technical standpoint.
Indeed, all XML parsers could throw out invalid data. But those who accept invalid data may very well gain a larger share of the market. And that increased marketshare could very well mean increase profits, or even the financial viability of a product. Financial and economic factors will more often than not trump technical ones, namely specifications-compliant XML.
Like I said, you're thinking of a far too idealized world. You're fighting against economic factors which you just can't win against using standards.
Welcome to the world of engineering! Remember, this isn't Computer Science we're talking about, where most everything is peer-reviewed and works nicely. In the arena of real-world software design, compatibility with your competitor or even with your users is often a massive pain in the ass. But such difficulties are unavoidable, and part of engineering, be it civil, mechanical, or software.
You won't hear a civil engineer bitch about how annoying earthquakes are, and how much easier their life would be if they didn't have to take excessive wind gusts into account when designing structures. They just shut up and deal with the problems that they're faced with. Software engineers should do the same when it comes to the difficulties they face when creating a product.
Standards help keep everyone near the same page, but they never coordinate everyone's products or actions perfectly. The developers of software must make a tradeoff between standards compliance and market share. Any browser or RSS reader, for instance, which doesn't accept what the others accept will often become irrelevant in the eyes of the users.
Rejecting all invalid, yet interpretable, input is not a wise idea. If data has an extra-standard interpretation by some other implementation, then it is not "garbage". As such, other implementations worried about their marketshare have no choice but to add similar support. The "solution" of barfing out on such data will only decrease a products marketshare, making it irrelevant in the long run.
Is anyone able to provide some exact examples of the broken XML code from this application? I'd like to see for myself where the problems are, just to see if they are in fact as bad as is being described.
It would seem the problem is more with RSS readers in this particular case, more so than it is with Apple and Apple's implementation.
If a web server starts sending back unexpected garbage replies to a web browser, we would all expect the web browser to handle such replies without problem. The same should hold true for RSS readers. They have to be developed in a way to deal with bad data, and if they aren't then they are a low-quality software product.
Does anyone have a list of the readers which were affected by this? If so, we should immediately contribute fixes for the open source readers, while avoiding the rest in the future.
Sometimes standards are extremely difficult to follow. Now, the RSS standard isn't an overly large one. But there are some industrial standards that when printed run to five or six volumes, 900 pages each. It's very difficult for one person to have a solid grasp of all that material, especially when there are deadlines to meet.
Of course, interpretation of standards can cause problems, too. Often times what appears to be a broken application is just a matter of other applications it must interact with not following the standard, either.
In any case, it is quite obvious that Apple was not trying to create an anti-standards service there. When you're adding technology such as photocasting into an existing product, and such functionality it isn't necessary covered by the standard, you may have no choice but to create a standards-incompatible product.
This sounds far more like a case of them trying to rush the the product out. As often happens in such situtations, the quality of the product can suffer. This doesn't strike me as a malicious action in any way.
I wouldn't be surprised if these issues were fixed by an update in the near future. Of course, some may question if the software should have been released in the first place, but regardless, it has already been released. Considering Apple's goodwill towards the community, I'm quite confident that these problems will be resolved promptly.
Slashdot Mirror
And, like it or not, the Chinese market dwarfs the American market. Remember, that holds true even today, without the full Chinese market being completely realized and integrated. Once the Chinese market really gets going, coupled with that of India and other Asian nations, traditional markets will look quite irrelevant.
Even with significant wealth, a 300 million body US market is still quite insignificant when compared to the 2 billion person Indian and Chinese markets.
EBay is quite lucky to be able to tap into such fantastic financial resources so early on. If they can maintain a foothold in those markets, they will become extremely prosperous.
With the recent US DoJ request for search terms from a number of the major search engines, Americans might find themselves in a very similar situation with regards to censorship. Except they'll be without the vibrant, rapidly-expanding economy that China current has. Growth is the key to a strong economy. A strong economy without significant growth is not a very healthy economy.
Indeed, countries like China and India will be where the 21st century will take place.
But in the big picture, it is just the typical East-West reversal. Remember, in centuries past China and India were the major world civilizations. The Europe of today is much like the China of the 1200s. And the China of tomorrow will be much like the Europe of today.
The East was on top for a while, and then various events lead to the West becoming more prosperous. But we see the tide turning one again, this time in favour of the East. In three or four centuries it will no doubt switch back towards the West's favour, and soon enough there'll be yet another switch.
You obviously hate Slashdot with a passion, as shown by this little rant and your previous absurdities about the editors supposedly being out to get you by taking away your mod points.
So I ask: why do you keep coming back here if you have such a burning hatred for everyone and everything here?
There was a lot of speculation in the early to mid 1990s that SGI would buy Apple. SGI was doing quite well at that time, considering they had just released their very successful Indy line. Considering that both provided workstations for the same type of applications (multimedia-related, desktop publishing, and so forth), the systems from Apple could have offered a solid low-end line to complement SGI's more powerful systems.
What could have happened is an infusion of IRIX with Mac OS. We could have seen Mac OS on the MIPS, for instance. Not only that, but it would be a situation very similar to what we have now with Mac OS X: an excellent GUI built upon a solid UNIX-based core. Except in the SGI case the UNIX core would be IRIX, rather than a BSD/Mach conglomerate.
There has always been much speculation as to what the computing landscape would look like today had the non-Intel vendors worked together to produce a superior chip.
Indeed, the combined talents of the Alpha crew from DEC, with the PA-RISC developers from HP, the SPARC group from Sun, those behind the MIPS at SGI and MIPS Technologies, and the PPC people from IBM, for instance, could have come up with a CPU that completely trumped what Intel was putting out at the time.
For serious workstations, the SPARC was basically the dominant chip at the time. Indeed, it was at the top of its game. Even now we still see it used for mission-critical and high-performance tasks. So it's really no wonder that Apple would have considered such a switch.
The system is quite simple when it comes to losing mod points: if you abuse the system (ie. incorrectly moderate posts), then your privileges will be automatically revoked. Indeed, there's especially not a conspiracy against you involving the editors.
It's much akin to protecting a living body from an infection; the infection is noticed, and swiftly eliminated. In this case the system is the discussion forums, and the infection is somebody who moderates incorrectly (much like yourself).
Indeed, I think your signature shows how flawed your interpretation of reality here is. If your signature were correct in any way, then I would not have Excellent karma, and I would not frequently receive mod points. But since that's not the case, you must be completely wrong. It's no wonder you lost your mod points; you likely didn't understand how to properly use them in the first place!
Don't confuse a political party's name with its ideology. They're often two very separate things.
After talking to a number of my relatives who live over in various parts of Canada, we tend to agree that the Conservative Party of Canada does not represent conservatives. It can best be viewed as the Canadian branch of the American Republicans. Hence it would best be referred to as a "Republican" party, rather an a "conservative" party. Why is that? Because they do not follow the ideals of conservatives, but rather a train of thought oft associated with the Republican Party in the US.
Out of curiosity, in what year were you born?
Indeed, I have to admit, I was born in the 1930s, so I was quite young when fascism became a serious matter. However, I do know many veterans who fought in World War II, and were well aware of the political landscape at that time.
One thing you'll notice when you talk to almost any of them is that they're scared today. They think back to what they fought against, and they see it present yet again. Except this time it is being done in their name, by their countries. The proof is all around. It's obvious to them, and even to somebody such as myself, who has vague memories of such times.
Of course, somebody born in the last 30 or 40 years might not be able to notice such things by themselves, as they grew up within the confined of the system and thus cannot see beyond it.
No. Republicans and Democrats stand for the status quo. Look who makes up the American government: it's mainly Democrats and Republicans! And like we've established, Democratism are a separate political ideology from liberalism, and Republicanism is a separate political ideology from conservatism.
Indeed, there are political groups who follow such ideals. They're the true conservatives in America. Yet they often are not represented in government because they hold those ideas.
In order to become seriously represented in the government they would have to basically follow Republicanism, rather than conservatism. Thus within the confines of the current system, they couldn't become part of the government as conservatives; they most likely have to become Republicans. And when they become Republicans, they are no longer conservatives.
It seems you didn't read the rest of my post. The Democratic party is best viewed as a "Republican-lite" party.
These days, actual conservatives tend to vote for independent or libertarian candidates. They don't vote for the Democrats, and they sure don't vote for the Republicans, because neither party truly represents the views and ideals of conservatism.
Remember, if somebody votes Republican they are not a conservative. They are a Republican. Likewise, if somebody votes Democrat, they are not a liberal. They are a Democrat. "Republican" and "Democrat" are two political ideologies, much like conservative or liberal. As such the Republicans do not represent conservatism, nor do the Democrats represent liberalism.
Again, such people can't be classified as "conservatives", as their views and actions do not fit the criteria necessary of being considered "conservative".
The kind of people you're thinking of are Republicans, and Democrats to a lesser extent. They are not conservatives in any way, as my earlier post showed quite clearly.
There's no need for them to resort to legislation prohibiting slander. It is perhaps the worst possible thing they could do, as it in itself is promoting censorship.
Indeed, the best things they can probably do here is to laugh at such efforts. Taunt the group organizing this. That's far more effective and beneficial than for them to also resort to censorship.
Remember, the US is supposedly a republic. In a republic, the government is not exactly a separate entity from the general public. Indeed, it is indirectly made up of each and every voting individual. So when a private groups resorts of fascism, and they support the republican-style government, then it is a case of fascism.
Don't delude yourself: people will always have a political agenda, and it will always be a part of whatever they're doing.
More importantly, it's irrelevant if a professor holds such views, and expresses them to his or her students. Any truly intelligent student (you know, this is at the university level!) should be able to recognize such bias, and take it into account while taking a particular course.
University often isn't about sitting there and accepting what the professors say as fact. It's about hearing ideas that may differ from yours, so as to make you think a little bit harder than you normally would. It takes real responsibility to partake in and make use of a university-level education.
And the worst possible thing to do is either believe or insist that professors not involve their personal, biased views. That's the whole point of getting an education! To be bombarded by views you wouldn't have even bothered to consider, even if you do happen to disagree with them in the end.
Please do not confuse Republicans and their followers with conservatives. Indeed, they are very different groups holding very different beliefs.
Conservatives stand for freedom, liberty, individual responsibility, honest prosperity, and peace.
Republicans (and many Democrats, too) stand for the supression of liberties and freedoms (often in the name of "security"), do not promote responsibility, and often resort to corruption and illegal means of obtaining wealth. These days, they obtain much of their wealth via wars, which contradicts directly with peace.
Today it is Republicans who are moving towards (if they're not already in) a state of fascism. It is conservatives around the US who are taking a stand against such anti-American nonsense.
I would like to see the professors stage a protest. But not just a walk-around-with-signs protest.
What I'd like to see them do is find a picture of this fellow's face, and get a fairly large poster of it printed up. They can put it on a stage, facing the audience. Then each and every professor can go up to the photo of this fellow, and urinate on it. Some can even throw their feces on it, if they see fit.
That would be a protest for the ages.
Indeed, it should be taken as an honour to be "exposed" by this fellow and his group. These are the kind of people that it's good to piss off. They're the sort who either have a vested (often financial) interest in the status quo, or are completely incapable of peacefully accepting the views of others (which in itself is completely anti-American).
If I were a university student, I would think of this sort of group as a blessing. They'd show which professors have the guts to provide their views without trying to self-censor. Those are the sorts of professors who are worth learning from.
It's a perfectly acceptable analogy. Like this situation shows, you can't easily force others to emit proper or specifications-compliant data, even if it isn't a difficult act to perform from a technical standpoint.
Indeed, all XML parsers could throw out invalid data. But those who accept invalid data may very well gain a larger share of the market. And that increased marketshare could very well mean increase profits, or even the financial viability of a product. Financial and economic factors will more often than not trump technical ones, namely specifications-compliant XML.
Like I said, you're thinking of a far too idealized world. You're fighting against economic factors which you just can't win against using standards.
Welcome to the world of engineering! Remember, this isn't Computer Science we're talking about, where most everything is peer-reviewed and works nicely. In the arena of real-world software design, compatibility with your competitor or even with your users is often a massive pain in the ass. But such difficulties are unavoidable, and part of engineering, be it civil, mechanical, or software.
You won't hear a civil engineer bitch about how annoying earthquakes are, and how much easier their life would be if they didn't have to take excessive wind gusts into account when designing structures. They just shut up and deal with the problems that they're faced with. Software engineers should do the same when it comes to the difficulties they face when creating a product.
Standards help keep everyone near the same page, but they never coordinate everyone's products or actions perfectly. The developers of software must make a tradeoff between standards compliance and market share. Any browser or RSS reader, for instance, which doesn't accept what the others accept will often become irrelevant in the eyes of the users.
Rejecting all invalid, yet interpretable, input is not a wise idea. If data has an extra-standard interpretation by some other implementation, then it is not "garbage". As such, other implementations worried about their marketshare have no choice but to add similar support. The "solution" of barfing out on such data will only decrease a products marketshare, making it irrelevant in the long run.
Is anyone able to provide some exact examples of the broken XML code from this application? I'd like to see for myself where the problems are, just to see if they are in fact as bad as is being described.
It would seem the problem is more with RSS readers in this particular case, more so than it is with Apple and Apple's implementation.
If a web server starts sending back unexpected garbage replies to a web browser, we would all expect the web browser to handle such replies without problem. The same should hold true for RSS readers. They have to be developed in a way to deal with bad data, and if they aren't then they are a low-quality software product.
Does anyone have a list of the readers which were affected by this? If so, we should immediately contribute fixes for the open source readers, while avoiding the rest in the future.
Sometimes standards are extremely difficult to follow. Now, the RSS standard isn't an overly large one. But there are some industrial standards that when printed run to five or six volumes, 900 pages each. It's very difficult for one person to have a solid grasp of all that material, especially when there are deadlines to meet.
Of course, interpretation of standards can cause problems, too. Often times what appears to be a broken application is just a matter of other applications it must interact with not following the standard, either.
In any case, it is quite obvious that Apple was not trying to create an anti-standards service there. When you're adding technology such as photocasting into an existing product, and such functionality it isn't necessary covered by the standard, you may have no choice but to create a standards-incompatible product.
This sounds far more like a case of them trying to rush the the product out. As often happens in such situtations, the quality of the product can suffer. This doesn't strike me as a malicious action in any way.
I wouldn't be surprised if these issues were fixed by an update in the near future. Of course, some may question if the software should have been released in the first place, but regardless, it has already been released. Considering Apple's goodwill towards the community, I'm quite confident that these problems will be resolved promptly.