If you are looking for an even bigger performance jump, upgrade to pci-e based ssd. Works very very well for databases and for certain types of workloads. Fusion-io, Intel, and dell sell enterprise versions, but many other vendors are rapidly getting into this segment as well.

I live in Austria and for the past decade there has been a steady stream of news indicating that several European governments have on going programing which are similar and/or complementary to those the Americans are running.

Moreover, as is the case with reports dealing with American programs, when they say "will soon implement", "working on", or "future programs" it's most often the case that such programs are already in place and now what is being worked on is mechanism to use the data they produce in the prosecution regular domestic crimes.

You're giving them too much credit by ascribing this kind of thing to incompetence. Politicians know what they're doing, or rather they know whom to trust to do what they want. And what they want is to get re-elected. It is impossible to ignore the constant state of re-election campaigning that goes on now. Fundraising and servicing lobbyists are the responsibilities we ought to lift. Not the actual work of government. I think Douglas McGregor described the administrative overhead that appears as an organization grows in size. In our case, the organization that's gaining in overhead cost is not government, but the country itself. Trying to dedicate fewer resources to a growing cost won't work.

I just now went there and it looks up to me.

I have a different take on this.
AS the 20th century dawned, we had some machines, and some theories. Or machine making was limited by our knowledge of science.
Then came stuff like understanding the physical world. Our world. The science beneath it.

For example, how do people get sick. How does a semiconductor work. This went on till the late 1970s or so, and after that came the engineering boom. The ideas from the last 50 years were put into practice, and we are witnessing the results today.

A combination of advertising, marketing and engineering meant, there is a lot of money to be made, so our efforts to go "fundamental" have weakened. In todays world of MBA and business, every decision is based on "How will it impact our financial quarter".

In the past this mentality was seen mostly in private corporations, but now this is being seen also in universities and research institutions. Often, instead of research, engineering is done because it can reap quicker rewards.

If you look at our sciences, eg metallurgy, chemistry etc., they are languishing because not enough talent is going into them now. It requires a lot less effort(no disrespect to programmers here) to create an android game which can real good rewards.

OTOH, in basic science you may have to slog for 15-20 years before any tangible results. As a result, we are creating a bigger and bigger castle on the same foundation. its going to hold, but one day its going to get to the breaking point.

Human civilization, has reached a point where short term reward reaping has become the primary focus right from the point we get into formal education. In most countries people choose their college major based on job opportunities. It used to happen earlier, but it happens a lot more.

One day our house of cards will grow too big to stand on its on. The higher we go, the faster we fall. Its time to build up the foundation again.

In the 80s, Deng Xiaoping finally got people to listen to the fact that science & technology isn't just a "western" idea - that it's decidedly Chinese - and that it was time that the Chinese were no longer dependent on western interests.

The red-tinted glasses...

What, apart from the maoist revision of Soviet Thought and its current national-corporatist followup (another foreign revision), is inherently Chinese? Even their nationalism and even ethnic supremacism harks back to the worst of western ideas.

Their system leaves little room for human characteristics other than hard work, the benefit of immediate family and whatever the State sloganeers at the time. There are some liberal jewels, but most only rebel - violently - for immediate self-benefit. (witness some 100,000 "mass incidents" annually)

Would the Chinese Communist Party's economic "miracle" have been possible without full access to western ideas, sciencific development and unlimited funding? And who invented the "selling the capitalists the rope" idea? The ultra-rich politburo members must really love that one.

China's policies stem from the 1800s (the period of late western imperialism when race theories and nationalism were all the rage). Effective, but brutal.

However I can't see them replicating the liberties that were integral part of that (social and scientific) development.

If you want to see the past repeated, but this time without certain crucial moderating factors, you just may get your wish.

Why should the US give a single shit about any other country? It's not like any of them are doing anything besides bitching and moaning about how the evil US has ruined the world. The hatred hurled at the US over the past decade has eroded any chance of the average American really caring about what foreigners think.

Yet there was a time in that distant past before the 1990s when most of the free world, and even many outside it, looked up to the USA as the defender of great values such as freedom.

After that exhilarating period when the Iron Curtain came down there was great hope and expectation, but something had changed... and only a few years later both the PRC and the post-USSR Russia realized they were free to act whatever way they wanted while the USA was busy waging various pointless religious oil wars against proxies. Those explosive shows were greatly enjoyed by audiences in China and Russia (to the great benefit of the regimes!) but no quite so much in democracies having the benefit of a free press.

There's even a certain leftover TLA in the title of this very thread. Do you reckon the peoples in free democracies (in fact everywhere) should just ignore that all-encompassing shit?

From where I look, already since both Clinton and GWB the USA has stood less for all the respectable and moral things and more for the arrogant total surveillance and business-before-rights realpolitik than any time in the history of world democracy. The way I feel about american democracy activists is increasingly similar to what I feel towards actual freedom fighters elsewhere, although the latter are still more likely to lose their life or be incarcerated and/or tortured in the process. So far America only tends to afford that treatment to non-americans.

I realize that American leaders will always continue to make grand speeches for domestic consumption (it's now part of the "culture") claiming to not just hold dear all the fine moral values but be the very torch-bearers of those values for the rest of the world, and for the foreseeable future enough people there will just lap it up. Well God bless you!

Elsewhere you are judged by your actions however. And that "elsewhere" is pretty big and some day it will suck to just have a massive and aging military, small ruling elite and lots of religious rightwing fervour but no real friends. Pax Americana is soon entering the post-free-for-all.

And nothing better to do that than to basically have the rest of the world boycott your fucking products and stop cooperating with you.

When Americans finally realize their own jobs are on the line, they'll make their own politicians do something.

As long as the rank and file American is oblivious to this ... well, then they're part of the fucking problem, and deserve to be caught up in it.

If the overwhelming response in the US is "who cares what happens in some foreign country", then it's too fucking bad, and it's time to bring it home to them.

Americans like to hide behind the fact that most of your populace is ignorant ill informed. It's time that became your problem, and not ours. If your populace is stupid and allows your politicians to do shit like this, then your populace should be the ones who pay the consequences.

I agree with that sentiment in general and while the United States of America continues down a very slippery slope they can still be talked out of it. Their crippled institutions still have a large, albeit disparate civil society interested in change of direction.

But since the issue here was initially about the Chinese "Communist" Party (aka self-declared government of China with more tentacles than most outsiders realize) banning a significant american export from that market, I can't but see the irony here.

It was the USA in 1970s (as proudly represented by Kissinger and Nixon) who rehabilitated the most murderous regime in history just to flip the USSR the finger, and Clinton completed the task 20 years later by granting that regime the Most Favored Nation status and trade priviledges. Most. Favored. Nation.

Next the US let the PRC become full-fledged member of the WTO and again without any concrete concessions. The US however gladly dropped their earlier post-WWII human rights objectives (like freedom for Tibetans whose country was invaded and annexed by China in 1950), being happy to continue with a less trade-disruptive and brief annual criticism facade.

This was the final call for certain types of wealthy europeans to join the "party" and join forces with the CCP's upcoming 5-year plans.

In the last twenty years the PRC has been busy massively building up all their military forces, acquiring nearly all available western manufacturing knowledge (fairly or not) and vacuuming foreign currency reserves with the help of globalization and the wealthiest class of westerners keen on maximizing their "ROI" without bothersome welfare taxes.

Now that the second twenty-year cycle is complete we suddenly find a People's Republic of China that is aggressively claiming maritime territories very far from its shores (but very near most of its Asia-Pacific neighbours!) and increasingly willing to attack anyone willing criticize it in any way.

See where this is going?

Czar Putin already did. He engineered a significant gas/trade-dependency for major European economies and that completed he knew he could repeat China's anachronistic land grab of neighbour's territories without any noticeable repercussions.

Point being that when trade was stopped to be harnessed towards achieving positive political and human rights development, the new unfiltered free trade was turned into a tool against those very objectives.

So here we are. With a political hierarchy in the western world having the business class dictating that economic sanctions are not acceptable. Interestingly it is very much simpler under CCP and Putin, both of which are accomplished in punitive boycotts. And now, "Yes they can!"

So it has predictably come to this for some people:

"Think local, act... wait, let's first see if my neighbourhood might benefit at others' expense before deciding."

Corruption is Rampant in India.
Often people with deep pockets bribe officials. That is why it was not part of the official request but told verbally

We could really use some standards-based open-source broadband modems and modem/routers to cover this unaccountable section of the land link, both in the free world and elsewhere.

Of course there's no panacea against the morbidly interested parties who see encryption and tunnelling as a red flag. Some wireless-centric projects are trying to skip the land line hurdles altogether.

I know many who can even code

A programmer is instructed to develop a software which generates a random sales tax registration number. This software will be used for random raids.
The officer in charge gives him a small slip with few numbers, and verbally instructs that these numbers should never be generated.
So how do you deal with corruption like this
1. Option 1 - Blow the whistle - No proof. They may come after your family
2. Option 2 - Comply
3. Option 3 - Make software so that first 3 months the numbers never come, but after 3 months the probability of the said number increases by 10X :) Evil ethical developer eh?

"Basically, if you communicated with someone that is 'reasonably believed' to be a terrorist, you've lost constitutional protection against searches without a warrant"

Fair game. Really. And I speak here as the pacifist humanitarian that I am.

But how do you make distinction between a terrorist and a freedom figher whose people are trying to survive genonide under your friendly ("preferred") trading partners? Tibet (unique in every way; language, culture, ethnicity, script etc.)? Ukraine (unique and close to Europe)? Or perhaps just a member of some rural middle-eastern belief system from the 6th century?

What value system are you basing this "terrorist" label upon? Believing in freedom? Self-determination? Or something else? Saying unpleasant things about the militaristic occupying nation? (you'd disappear in China)

It's the 21st century so please make up your mind and finally make more than a pretend stand on this issue: who are the terrorists (who you may actually trade with) and who are the actual victims of terrorism (often state-sponsored)?

The whole democratic majority of the world (as long as it exists) has a last chance to decide what they consider acceptable, at a state level. Are your real opponents mere misguided goat herders or something state-sponsored and fundamentally game-changing?