Comment I bet he didn't get refunded (Score 0) 248
It's nice and all that Mikko Hypponen withdrew his support for the RSA conference, but I bet he didn't get refunded. That sucks big.
It's a game played by the Indian government. Nokia's handset division is to be sold to Microsoft, which has a ton of cash on hand. It's a game worth playing, as Nokia has no way of packing their bag and getting out tomorrow, so does Microsoft. Microsoft wants that handset division as part of its strategy, and the liability can be worked out by Nokia/Microsoft to transfer to Microsoft, which will then work out a deal with the government, which will promise to sweeten via some kind of tax break on the condition that Microsoft invest more in the country. At the end, they will make a join release, saying that each one has made a score, it is good for the consumer, for the shareholders, for the country, for Jesus, for Buhda, for Ganesha, for Annapurna, for Hanuman, and whatever deity you've got. Everyone would be happy, and it would be the end of the story.
It's the same kind of game governments play all over the world.
Per capita wise, we probably should start with the USA. If the Americans eat less meat, drive less and consume less resources, I'm sure that's going to have a very positive impact on their health too, not just the environment of this planet.
Unfortunately, the american lifestyle is a model that most Chinese dream of right now. So this trend is a terrible one. But what do you expect people in other countries to do, when the Americans export their movies in which people are living in big houses, with gigantic backyard, and there are more cars than persons in a family, have a fun life with a lot of meat (fill in your favorite resources)? When people in other countries have the means, they will want the same thing. And they emulate. This is totally normal. That means, in China, people also want a big house, at least a car, or preferably, one car per person, and all the comfort in life that the Americans have been enjoying for so long.
I gave up driving 10 years ago, my wife and I each have a bike. We ride or take the public transit, set a quota on our own diet, watch closely our AC and heater to just have a minimum of comfort. We watch our carbon footprint carefully. But when we try to convince other people to at least try to do something, people think we are idiots. The planet belongs to everyone, if the Americans/Europeans can enjoy the resources, why can't we?
It would interesting if there was some kind of quota system on all countries in the world, based on the population size. And it would be even more interesting if we can control it at the individual level. You want to enjoy more resources? Pay for it. That money will go to those who have left over. So the rich people can have all the shit they want, as long as they pay for it.
Don't hold your breath, this is not going to happen. There is little profit margin in selling components like this, why would the phone manufacturers get into low-margin business and abandon their high-profit business? Selling replaceable components means that users are going to hold on to their longer, and replace it less. Where's the profit in that the manufacturers? Their job is to dump a new phone model on the market every 3 months, rinse and repeat.
I'm baffled to read comments from those who don't know Chinese, or don't even bother to learn Chinese. The mandarin, is just another dialect in China, which happens to be promoted by the emperor/government as the one unified tongue so as to facilitate communication. Even with tens of different regional dialects, they are all based on the same character set. People had been able to communicate with each other for thousands of years.
The worst thing is to see people suggest that the Chinese should "latinize" their language. Please, do not make stupid suggestions like on subject you have no idea.
And for people who said that Chinese is difficult, that's because you haven't really put efforts into it. Look, how many hours have you put into learning Chinese on a daily basis, as compared to the hours that Chinese people (and other people all over the world) had put into learning English? And you even complain that these folks can't speak English correctly, whereas the Chinese people would have congratulated you even all you can say is "nihao" and "xiexie". For non-English-speaking people, English is really a bastard language. Why is "shit" not "sheet" or "shait"? Words such as "anticonstitutionally", where am I supposed to put the tone on? And the grammatical rules and exceptions. And shit like that.
And the French language. Try to learn just the conjugation of the verbs. Try to master the grammar. And how do I figure out the gender of a noun? Is there a rule for that? I spent years learning French, I know it pretty well, but I can't even say I really master the grammar. And before we went on a trip to Italy, everyone said Italian is really easy. Even with my French background, I still struggled quite a bit to learn that other latin-based language.
And before going to Germany, I also tried to learn German. Oh, ouch, err... learning German is like being a masochist.
How about if people in other parts of the world tell the Amerians/Brits to "simplify" English, or tell the French to simplify French, or tell the Germans to simplify German? Or to simplify your _insert_your_favorite_mother_tongue_here_ ? You know what, it's been a struggling experience for them too.
I master quite well Chinese (Mandarin plus other 3 dialects)/English/French, know a bit of Italian and Spanish, Khmer and Vietnamese, but still struggle a lot whenever I try to learn a new language. Languages evolve over hundreds/thousands of years, it's hard to learn, even harder to master. You need to really put effort into it. Besides, learning a new language or get to know a new culture, is supposed to be an intellectual endeavor of your own journey. People don't give a shit about what you think of their language or culture. You are supposed to approach them. They have no duty to "make it easy" (whatever that means) for you.
I know a thing or two about these guys. Here is my story of rats attack.
Around 2005, I got a message on my cell phone at night, from a monitoring server, that one of the app servers is down. I tried to login remotely without success, ping didn't go through. I dragged myself up and went to the server room. A colleague who received the same message got there at the same time. From the terminal, we saw that the server was running just fine. We checked the network cable, it was cut, and looked like it's bitten by something. Other cables were also bitten to lesser degree. Some little animal was grinding its teeth, we guessed. We replaced the cable, and went back to sleep.
The next day, I passed by a co-worker's desk, saw he had a web cam. I borrowed it, and set it up in the server room, near the machine whose cable was bitten, and wrote a cron to snap images during the night.
We received another message the second night, another server went down. We went to the server room again, sure enough, another bitten network cable. Not only the network cable, the head of my Philips cell phone charger was completely bitten off. I was working in the server room the day before, and had my cell phone charged there, and forgot to bring the charger back to my desk. I was pissed. We check the photos snapped by the web cam... ah, here it was, a small rat, the size of the fist of a small boy. I told myself I'd take care of that pest.
The third day, we checked around, and found a small hole in the elevated floor in a corner. We guessed it must come out from there. We surrounded with whatever we could find in the office, put an old IBM machine that had been replaced and was laying around, connected the web cam to that machine and set up to snap photos again. My colleague went to the grocery store to buy a mouse trap, and put it there. We hoped that the mouse trap would catch it right there.
The third night went without any incident. In the morning, we went to check again. Oh, it was awful. The rat was lying there, its hairs all messy, and we still could smell something. The power cord of the machine was half bitten. We put the photos together into a slide show, and saw that as it was biting into the cable, there was sparks coming out, and the rat was obviously electrocuted on the spot. We showed that to the colleagues in the office and had a good laugh, some of them thought it was really gross, and that we were cruel, and that we had really mistreated animals.
Only a great mind like dmr can create a compiler able to compile the following:
for(;P("\n"),R--;P("|"))for(e=C;e--;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("|"+(*u/4) %2);
RIP, dmr
That's racist stereotyping. The early wave of Chinese immigrants are poor, and they went to other countries mostly as cheap labor, e.g. railway construction workers in North America. Added the racist social environment at the time towards the Chinese, providing these kinds of services (small restaurants, dry cleaning, etc) was probably the only few options for them. That's not by choice. That's not in their gene either. Their descendant moved up the social ladder quickly too, and are now among the elites.
The new wave of Chinese immigrants (starting at the end of the 1990s) are wealthy people, which millions and millions worth of asset. They emigrate to other countries (mostly Australia, Canada, US, some western European countries) to have comfortable life, and have full protection of their assets. They buy up lands, assets, huge houses, etc. They can live there until the end of their life without working a single day again.
And sorry to break it to you, at the rate the western economy is degrading, you might be the one who would deliver cheap take-out and do dry-cleaning. And the Chinese don't like to give out tips. And they don't speak English, and don't bother to learn.
So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of money? -- Ayn Rand
