Absolutely. In urban areas the one child policy is enforced fairly stringently, but usually with economic consequences for defiance, not jail nor murder.
In rural farming areas, though, it is rarely enforced at all. The local officials understand the need for a family to have a large number of hands to help out on the farm, so generally they turn a blind eye to it. That being said, though, in the few rural areas where this IS enforced, the results are spectacularly brutal. Forced abortions, destruction of property, all kinds of nasty stuff. (won't get the abortion? Well, we've got this big bulldozer parked outside your house, want to reconsider?) Even cases of murder of the mother/child are not unheard of.
WiFi sucks as an area service, it really does. Here in Toronto they tried rolling out WiFi in the downtown core, I subscribed to it for a week just for kicks and see how cool it would be to be online everywhere, and was sorely disappointed. The limited range of even a boosted WiFi antenna means that they need to have a bajillion WAPs just to maintain some semblance of coverage, and in the end signal strength was piss poor overall.
Even at a slow walking pace, I can probably cross through the range of 6-7 routers during the course of a phone call. Does WiFi have the capability to deal with these problems? From what I experienced, no, hell no.
But really, most Chinese are pretty much politically apathetic.
So sad, and so true. My girlfriend spent most of her childhood in China, and just now am I starting to get her interested in politics and social issues again. There is so much fear that's been instilled to them since childhood regarding politics that most stay apathetic to it out of fear for reprisal, not actual apathy, and the educational system doesn't help either. I've actually heard claims that the Chinese get democratic elections (via electing their local CCP representative!)... which is just a plain lie.
The worst part is, many see political victims as not their problem. As in, when Li Average gets dragged off to the gulag for making a stray negative comment about the government, his neighbours do not respond in fear for themselves, nor do they think less of their government for such a transgression, but rather blame Li Average for being as careless and stupid as to let those words out of his mouth in the first place (despite the fact that everyone is thinking it). You have to give the CCP some credit here, they've successfully molded a society where getting jailed for free thought is now the thinker's own damned fault. There is absolutely no sympathy in the general population for the people who speak out against oppression, and it's hard to have hope for the political future of China because of this.
Keep in mind also that the level of repression differs from area to area. Generally speaking cities are extremely free-thought-repressed, and voluntarily so. These people are making too much money, and having too good of a life from the newfound Chinese prosperity, to risk it all to talk smack about the government. As you go out to the rural areas and to industrial cities, though, the gloves come off a bit. Nothing truly revolution in nature, still, but at least you've got people who are at least willing to bitch about policies and procedure.
That is perhaps the saddest part. Instead of merely a ruling elite oppressing everyone, China is rapidly evolving into a system where the rich will gladly support the government's atrocities to ensure that they stay wealthy. That is probably sadder than just a bunch of egomaniacal politicians ruling with an iron fist.
If you're posting this to Slashdot you clearly have the means to activate your game, stop looking for a problem where there is none. Complaints about the longevity of Steam games are valid (Valve won't live forever, after all), and so are concerns about not being able to sell them like you can physical discs, but seriously, complaining about activation in this day and age?
Waaaaah, my bank is EEEVIL, I have to have a TOUCH TONE PHONE to get access to customer support! What a travesty! How much effort do you have to exert to keep a computer OFF the internet nowadays anyway, especially if it's your primary gaming machine?
I don't have the link off-hand, but the iPhone Dev Team wiki contains plenty of information on how to write 3rd party iPhone apps. I have no doubt the official API will differ, but the skills you learn now will still be applicable. As far as I can tell from seeing a few Hello World test apps' source code, these apps will be written in Objective-C++.
Well I can agree that Apple was probably short-staffed during the development of iPhone, they could have at least announced their intention to release an SDK at a later point post-launch (oh, like, I dunno, the rest of the SDK-providing mobile companies... few devices come out with an SDK ready to go, it's usually provided in a more complete form later).
No, I don't think Apple ever intended to release the SDK - but I think they're starting to realize that to compete with other smartphones (and to quiet the deluge of bad press) they really need 3rd party developers on the bandwagon, and they're starting to create docs and polish up the API.
Sadly, I'm not sure if this will be available to us "laymen" developers. I suspect Apple will restrict this to ADC members only, with even less creative BS than they've fed us so far.
Actually, Steam has an offline mode, where you can play your *gasp* offline games. A connection is only required for updates, and to activate the game initially.
Actually IMHO college textbooks are the LEAST likely place for ebooks to take off. College students like myself, being poor as we are, like to sell their books after their courses are done. There have been eBook initiative tried in some schools, but the lack of resale ability really killed it.
I can get about 70% retail value for my books after I've used them, why would I pay something like 50% of the dead-tree price for something I can't sell later on?
Translucency is a valid UI trick for reducing screen clutter. For example, I have a 3D editor that I work on in my spare time, and I rely on translucent windows heavily. Why? Because the nature of the software demands a huge number of dialogs to be open at once, but at the same time I wish to retain at least a cursory overview of what I'm working on.
For example, I may have a full-screen function editor (curve editor in other packages) that I'm working in. I fiddle with a parameter on something and the curve will change. Instead of reducing the number of dialogs I have available, or reducing the viewport size to fit more dialogs, I can monitor the effect of what I'm doing on the curve in the background if my dialogs were translucent.
I agree it's overused in many cases - most notably the Vista window borders - there's absolutely no benefit to having them translucent. But don't write off the method entirely just because some people don't know how to use it.
Er, you basically did the equivalent of walking into a forum thread about a movie, saying "hey guys, I don't like this movie, so here's a random unsolicited list of alternative movies you can watch!". This would have been informative if it had been solicited by a poster, or if any of the songs listed had styles similar to the one originally discussed. Since this was completely out of the blue, an off-topic mod is appropriate.
Five years is not too much? I say it's not enough. Do you have any idea the kind of computing resources individuals and companies alike have had to dedicate to spam filtering? How much is that costing the worldwide economy annually, or just the USA since this is where the crime "occurred"? How much productivity is lost yearly due to people having to delete these pestering messages from their inboxes? How much is lost when we're forced to tighten our filters and legitimate mail gets lost?
These people have been a blight upon the internet since the day they started spamming, and the collective aggravation and productivity loss they've incurred should net them decades in the nearest penitentiary. This is especially true considering this is neither a crime of passion, nor desperation, and can only be accounted for by greed, which IMHO needs to be punished much more harshly than any other instigator of a crime.
Um... Hate to burst your bubble but LCD power consumption difference is negligible between any image displayed. It's your backlight that's killing you, not your LCD.
Hey now, don't lump these crackpot tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists in with the rest of us run of the mill liberals.
I do love how all these 9/11 conspiracy theorists all suddenly became phD level structural engineers, aeronautics engineers, and whatever the hell other kind of engineer exists. I'm an engineer and even I know when I"m trying to analyze something that's way above my expertise.
I recall reading a story of a Greek philosopher once (forgot which one it was). He walked through the city, talking with common folk about all subjects from politics to history, and arrived at the conclusion that everyone except himself is a fool - for he is the only one who realizes when what he's talking about is out of his league.
It's not just marketing. Here in Toronto the subway walls have been plastered with massive, blaring ads for Moto's RAZR 2. But none of my friends and colleagues want the phone. Omnipresent and expensive marketing can help a product sell, but it won't sell a product all by itself.
What DOES sell a phone? New shininess, and a slick UI that blows people away. Even just showing people my iPhone's keypad blows them away - the thing is intelligent enough to format your phone numbers into country code, area code, etc etc, as opposed to almost all other phones out there that simply display your number as a string of digits. Small elegances and conveniences go a long way into making your product more polished and wanted.
People are sick a tired of half-assed phone UIs, and while it works reasonably well that most people won't change, when presented with a cheaper alternative (which isn't the iPhone at the moment) they will jump ship in droves. I would hope for Nokia, Motorola, and Sony's sake that they've got better UIs in the labs right now.
The same Apple that has stuck with DD2-667 even on their high-end workstations, despite there being faster DDR2 clocks? Apple doesn't look like they're the type to cash in on the newest buzzword-tech, which is sometimes good, and sometimes bad (I do wish the Mac Pros would ship with something a tad faster than DDR2-667...)
Er, since you're wrong on that part, should I assume the rest of your post is bullshit too?
I worked for a short while in an automotive company, and saw many patents go out the door of the office, and perused quite a few of them. All of them were legitimate innovations on existing ideas (patents on top of patents?), and while some were quite trivial in impact, none were really "WELL NO DUH!" cases.
Note: I do not work for these guys, nor do I get any benefit from pimping like this, I'm just a very satisfied customer.
I'm not sure which ISP the parent post was referring to - there are a few of them. Actually, there are MANY 3rd party DSL providers in Canada, it's just that few of them are worth a damn (much like the big-boy telcos). I'm with TekSavvy and they have been awesome for the last 8 months or so I've been with them. Fast speeds, cheap prices, 24h phone support that always gets answered by the 4th ring (holy cow!), and just all-around great service.
Not only is the phone line answered promptly, the techs really know what they're doing, and there are never any of the checklists that I faced with Rogers and Bell, assuming you're a clueless idiot. Also, the one instance when they WERE flooded with calls, I was presented with an answering machine, so they can call me back when they're free so I can go about my own business. Score. Note that even then the call came back in less than 15 min.
This is free market competition, despite being a product of strict government regulation, and it makes our lives so much better.
Oh yeah, Bell's support sucks. Long wait times and they only operate during normal office hours. Wait, what about those of us that have JOBS? Do I need to take time off work just so I can sit in front of the phone for an hour while I wait for one of your incompetent techs?
And this is why the 2nd Amendment needs to be protected at all costs. And I'm not even American, how odd is that? It is also why it is every parent's responsibility to teach their children to respect and cherish their freedoms, and be thoroughly informed as to their origin (founding fathers, Constitution, etc) and why it's significant.
Yeah. I disagree with locking on principle (I paid for the phone, even if it's through subsidies, so why can't I do with it as I please and take it to any carrier?), but early termination fees are reasonable. The provider has subsidized the initial cost of your phone in exchange for your continued patronage. If you don't like it you can ALWAYS buy a phone at full price and avoid the contract.
Agreed. Seriously, an AMD 2900XT and a NVidia 8800GTX are not "mid range" cards. Even the 8800GTS is a upper-mid range card that's considerably above most "middies" like the 8600 series, or even the standard 8800 320MB series. It only reaffirms the assumption that UT3 is going to require a behemoth of a machine to look remotely good.
And I will continue playing TF2 on my old box with a X1600, and it will run smooth as butter and still look great.
Oh please. For every stupid "procedure improvement method" patent out there there are many others that are quite valid and truly innovative. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, so on and so forth. Innovation needs to be protected - I would know, I'm Chinese and I know many relatives and acquaintances who are directly involved with ripping off innovative products from other countries (and even amongst themselves).
While overly vague and general patents are a problem, legitimate inventions need to be protected. It is also the same reason why, should I ever decide to invent something, I will insist on having it made in a 1st-world, preferably Western nation, despite the increased costs of doing so. At least I can sleep easier knowing that, should someone rip me off I can sue without having to worry about where the judge's new BMW came from.
No, perhaps not. But this is about equivalent to someone assassinating a tyrannical king (someone who damages your quality of life, but with no civil/legal recourse to get him to stop). I might not have done it myself, but that won't stop me from cheering. As a general rule I don't grieve for the deaths of evil, petty, greedy men, or any combination of the above. If you have no concern for your fellow man, I will have no concern for you either, so I think this, in the end, is rather fitting.
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Absolutely. In urban areas the one child policy is enforced fairly stringently, but usually with economic consequences for defiance, not jail nor murder.
In rural farming areas, though, it is rarely enforced at all. The local officials understand the need for a family to have a large number of hands to help out on the farm, so generally they turn a blind eye to it. That being said, though, in the few rural areas where this IS enforced, the results are spectacularly brutal. Forced abortions, destruction of property, all kinds of nasty stuff. (won't get the abortion? Well, we've got this big bulldozer parked outside your house, want to reconsider?) Even cases of murder of the mother/child are not unheard of.
WiFi sucks as an area service, it really does. Here in Toronto they tried rolling out WiFi in the downtown core, I subscribed to it for a week just for kicks and see how cool it would be to be online everywhere, and was sorely disappointed. The limited range of even a boosted WiFi antenna means that they need to have a bajillion WAPs just to maintain some semblance of coverage, and in the end signal strength was piss poor overall.
Even at a slow walking pace, I can probably cross through the range of 6-7 routers during the course of a phone call. Does WiFi have the capability to deal with these problems? From what I experienced, no, hell no.
I have high hopes for WiMAX for this very reason.
So sad, and so true. My girlfriend spent most of her childhood in China, and just now am I starting to get her interested in politics and social issues again. There is so much fear that's been instilled to them since childhood regarding politics that most stay apathetic to it out of fear for reprisal, not actual apathy, and the educational system doesn't help either. I've actually heard claims that the Chinese get democratic elections (via electing their local CCP representative!)... which is just a plain lie.
The worst part is, many see political victims as not their problem. As in, when Li Average gets dragged off to the gulag for making a stray negative comment about the government, his neighbours do not respond in fear for themselves, nor do they think less of their government for such a transgression, but rather blame Li Average for being as careless and stupid as to let those words out of his mouth in the first place (despite the fact that everyone is thinking it). You have to give the CCP some credit here, they've successfully molded a society where getting jailed for free thought is now the thinker's own damned fault. There is absolutely no sympathy in the general population for the people who speak out against oppression, and it's hard to have hope for the political future of China because of this.
Keep in mind also that the level of repression differs from area to area. Generally speaking cities are extremely free-thought-repressed, and voluntarily so. These people are making too much money, and having too good of a life from the newfound Chinese prosperity, to risk it all to talk smack about the government. As you go out to the rural areas and to industrial cities, though, the gloves come off a bit. Nothing truly revolution in nature, still, but at least you've got people who are at least willing to bitch about policies and procedure.
That is perhaps the saddest part. Instead of merely a ruling elite oppressing everyone, China is rapidly evolving into a system where the rich will gladly support the government's atrocities to ensure that they stay wealthy. That is probably sadder than just a bunch of egomaniacal politicians ruling with an iron fist.
You don't need to activate PS3 games, mostly because piracy isn't nearly as large a problem as it on PC.
If you're posting this to Slashdot you clearly have the means to activate your game, stop looking for a problem where there is none. Complaints about the longevity of Steam games are valid (Valve won't live forever, after all), and so are concerns about not being able to sell them like you can physical discs, but seriously, complaining about activation in this day and age?
Waaaaah, my bank is EEEVIL, I have to have a TOUCH TONE PHONE to get access to customer support! What a travesty! How much effort do you have to exert to keep a computer OFF the internet nowadays anyway, especially if it's your primary gaming machine?
I don't have the link off-hand, but the iPhone Dev Team wiki contains plenty of information on how to write 3rd party iPhone apps. I have no doubt the official API will differ, but the skills you learn now will still be applicable. As far as I can tell from seeing a few Hello World test apps' source code, these apps will be written in Objective-C++.
Well I can agree that Apple was probably short-staffed during the development of iPhone, they could have at least announced their intention to release an SDK at a later point post-launch (oh, like, I dunno, the rest of the SDK-providing mobile companies... few devices come out with an SDK ready to go, it's usually provided in a more complete form later).
No, I don't think Apple ever intended to release the SDK - but I think they're starting to realize that to compete with other smartphones (and to quiet the deluge of bad press) they really need 3rd party developers on the bandwagon, and they're starting to create docs and polish up the API.
Sadly, I'm not sure if this will be available to us "laymen" developers. I suspect Apple will restrict this to ADC members only, with even less creative BS than they've fed us so far.
Actually, Steam has an offline mode, where you can play your *gasp* offline games. A connection is only required for updates, and to activate the game initially.
Actually IMHO college textbooks are the LEAST likely place for ebooks to take off. College students like myself, being poor as we are, like to sell their books after their courses are done. There have been eBook initiative tried in some schools, but the lack of resale ability really killed it. I can get about 70% retail value for my books after I've used them, why would I pay something like 50% of the dead-tree price for something I can't sell later on?
Translucency is a valid UI trick for reducing screen clutter. For example, I have a 3D editor that I work on in my spare time, and I rely on translucent windows heavily. Why? Because the nature of the software demands a huge number of dialogs to be open at once, but at the same time I wish to retain at least a cursory overview of what I'm working on.
For example, I may have a full-screen function editor (curve editor in other packages) that I'm working in. I fiddle with a parameter on something and the curve will change. Instead of reducing the number of dialogs I have available, or reducing the viewport size to fit more dialogs, I can monitor the effect of what I'm doing on the curve in the background if my dialogs were translucent.
I agree it's overused in many cases - most notably the Vista window borders - there's absolutely no benefit to having them translucent. But don't write off the method entirely just because some people don't know how to use it.
Er, you basically did the equivalent of walking into a forum thread about a movie, saying "hey guys, I don't like this movie, so here's a random unsolicited list of alternative movies you can watch!". This would have been informative if it had been solicited by a poster, or if any of the songs listed had styles similar to the one originally discussed. Since this was completely out of the blue, an off-topic mod is appropriate.
Lies! True Led Zep fans stare intently at the vinyl to play back the music in their head!
Five years is not too much? I say it's not enough. Do you have any idea the kind of computing resources individuals and companies alike have had to dedicate to spam filtering? How much is that costing the worldwide economy annually, or just the USA since this is where the crime "occurred"? How much productivity is lost yearly due to people having to delete these pestering messages from their inboxes? How much is lost when we're forced to tighten our filters and legitimate mail gets lost?
These people have been a blight upon the internet since the day they started spamming, and the collective aggravation and productivity loss they've incurred should net them decades in the nearest penitentiary. This is especially true considering this is neither a crime of passion, nor desperation, and can only be accounted for by greed, which IMHO needs to be punished much more harshly than any other instigator of a crime.
Um... Hate to burst your bubble but LCD power consumption difference is negligible between any image displayed. It's your backlight that's killing you, not your LCD.
Hey now, don't lump these crackpot tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists in with the rest of us run of the mill liberals.
I do love how all these 9/11 conspiracy theorists all suddenly became phD level structural engineers, aeronautics engineers, and whatever the hell other kind of engineer exists. I'm an engineer and even I know when I"m trying to analyze something that's way above my expertise.
I recall reading a story of a Greek philosopher once (forgot which one it was). He walked through the city, talking with common folk about all subjects from politics to history, and arrived at the conclusion that everyone except himself is a fool - for he is the only one who realizes when what he's talking about is out of his league.
I'd be more interested in seeing how Ubuntu's power consumption stacks up against Windows and MacOS...
It's not just marketing. Here in Toronto the subway walls have been plastered with massive, blaring ads for Moto's RAZR 2. But none of my friends and colleagues want the phone. Omnipresent and expensive marketing can help a product sell, but it won't sell a product all by itself.
What DOES sell a phone? New shininess, and a slick UI that blows people away. Even just showing people my iPhone's keypad blows them away - the thing is intelligent enough to format your phone numbers into country code, area code, etc etc, as opposed to almost all other phones out there that simply display your number as a string of digits. Small elegances and conveniences go a long way into making your product more polished and wanted.
People are sick a tired of half-assed phone UIs, and while it works reasonably well that most people won't change, when presented with a cheaper alternative (which isn't the iPhone at the moment) they will jump ship in droves. I would hope for Nokia, Motorola, and Sony's sake that they've got better UIs in the labs right now.
The same Apple that has stuck with DD2-667 even on their high-end workstations, despite there being faster DDR2 clocks? Apple doesn't look like they're the type to cash in on the newest buzzword-tech, which is sometimes good, and sometimes bad (I do wish the Mac Pros would ship with something a tad faster than DDR2-667...)
Er, since you're wrong on that part, should I assume the rest of your post is bullshit too?
I worked for a short while in an automotive company, and saw many patents go out the door of the office, and perused quite a few of them. All of them were legitimate innovations on existing ideas (patents on top of patents?), and while some were quite trivial in impact, none were really "WELL NO DUH!" cases.
Note: I do not work for these guys, nor do I get any benefit from pimping like this, I'm just a very satisfied customer.
I'm not sure which ISP the parent post was referring to - there are a few of them. Actually, there are MANY 3rd party DSL providers in Canada, it's just that few of them are worth a damn (much like the big-boy telcos). I'm with TekSavvy and they have been awesome for the last 8 months or so I've been with them. Fast speeds, cheap prices, 24h phone support that always gets answered by the 4th ring (holy cow!), and just all-around great service.
Not only is the phone line answered promptly, the techs really know what they're doing, and there are never any of the checklists that I faced with Rogers and Bell, assuming you're a clueless idiot. Also, the one instance when they WERE flooded with calls, I was presented with an answering machine, so they can call me back when they're free so I can go about my own business. Score. Note that even then the call came back in less than 15 min.
This is free market competition, despite being a product of strict government regulation, and it makes our lives so much better.
Oh yeah, Bell's support sucks. Long wait times and they only operate during normal office hours. Wait, what about those of us that have JOBS? Do I need to take time off work just so I can sit in front of the phone for an hour while I wait for one of your incompetent techs?
And this is why the 2nd Amendment needs to be protected at all costs. And I'm not even American, how odd is that? It is also why it is every parent's responsibility to teach their children to respect and cherish their freedoms, and be thoroughly informed as to their origin (founding fathers, Constitution, etc) and why it's significant.
Yeah. I disagree with locking on principle (I paid for the phone, even if it's through subsidies, so why can't I do with it as I please and take it to any carrier?), but early termination fees are reasonable. The provider has subsidized the initial cost of your phone in exchange for your continued patronage. If you don't like it you can ALWAYS buy a phone at full price and avoid the contract.
Agreed. Seriously, an AMD 2900XT and a NVidia 8800GTX are not "mid range" cards. Even the 8800GTS is a upper-mid range card that's considerably above most "middies" like the 8600 series, or even the standard 8800 320MB series. It only reaffirms the assumption that UT3 is going to require a behemoth of a machine to look remotely good.
And I will continue playing TF2 on my old box with a X1600, and it will run smooth as butter and still look great.
Oh please. For every stupid "procedure improvement method" patent out there there are many others that are quite valid and truly innovative. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, so on and so forth. Innovation needs to be protected - I would know, I'm Chinese and I know many relatives and acquaintances who are directly involved with ripping off innovative products from other countries (and even amongst themselves).
While overly vague and general patents are a problem, legitimate inventions need to be protected. It is also the same reason why, should I ever decide to invent something, I will insist on having it made in a 1st-world, preferably Western nation, despite the increased costs of doing so. At least I can sleep easier knowing that, should someone rip me off I can sue without having to worry about where the judge's new BMW came from.
No, perhaps not. But this is about equivalent to someone assassinating a tyrannical king (someone who damages your quality of life, but with no civil/legal recourse to get him to stop). I might not have done it myself, but that won't stop me from cheering. As a general rule I don't grieve for the deaths of evil, petty, greedy men, or any combination of the above. If you have no concern for your fellow man, I will have no concern for you either, so I think this, in the end, is rather fitting.