I'm not sure if everyone should go though the experiment per se, but certainly societies would benefit if everyone was taught about it, and human behaviour and moral in general.

Germany in the 1930s and 1940s after the Nazional Sozialists had grabbed control of the government (and the media) is a very good case study of what happens when sections of population are labelled "enemies", "unfit" and eventually even sub-human. There the perpetrators had been brainwashed with a sense of injustice and anger over post-WWI suffering and the domestic "unfits" (based on propaganda definitions) were made scapegoats.

Yet repression and murder in even larger scale took place after the Nazi "experiment" - in the gulags and laogai under Stalin's and Mao's communist party dictatorships.

Arguably the Chinese were the most brutal in the treatment of their enemies (something to do with the traditional art of torture and the domestic imperial history there?). Under the territories invaded by Mao's red army the foreign enemies (like Tibetans, Mongolians and Uighurs) were easy to identify as they didn't share any of the sinized Han-people's charasteristics - they were also commonly treated as sub-humans for that very reason (Tibetans as devout buddhists were targeted for particularly brutal punishment), but after the initial phase of Chinese military expansion and consolidation something unique happened: Mao's "Cultural Revolution".

While the title sounds deceptively docile, the reality was anything but. Here, in mid-60s, Mao decided that "old thinking" had to go. All of it. A horde of young, maoism-indoctrinated youth were given the authority / order to challenge anything that could somehow be perceived to contradict the infamous Mao's red book. For about a decade _everyone_ was an enemy unless he or she could prove the Red Guards - often by committing acts of brutality against "other enemies" - his or her blind loyalty to the "cause" of New China. One of the saddest representations of this was the widespread turning of children against their own parents who had until then loved and cared for them! The loyalty towards one's family had to be destroyed as it threatened the absolute power of the Party.

After the Tiananmen massacre in 1989 that Party held an emergency meeting in Beijing and after coming to the conclusion that communism as a political doctrine or economic model simply wasn't effective any longer, they decided - internally - to switch de facto doctrines to Confucianism (as nationalistic philosophy) and... national socialism (adapted to globalist markets), with capitalist/corporatist carrots for the Party's inner core (the leading families of "PRC" are now fabulously wealthy!). Old communist propaganda is still being played out as a justification for the Party's "legitimacy" though, and such propaganda is still key part of everyday control in poorer inland parts of China and especially in the occupied territories annexed through military force. Foreigners are still depicted as criminals who haven't paid for their sins over the "humiliation of China", although various "domestic movements" there (not forgetting the bloody war by communists themselves against the Republic of China) account for the vast majority of human cost and every other once wholly western-ruled nation (incl. the multi-cultural India) has gotten over their past "humiliation". What does needing artificial external enemies say about China's ruling dictatorship itself?

Blind obedience, often in order to benefit oneself or to save one's own life, and the accompanying willingness to inflict suffering on others... it tends to go together with ignorance (then redefining) of morality (right vs wrong, perceived or imaginary injustice), absolute propaganda to shape the population's value models and numbing violence and abuse.

I believe we have enough examples of abuse of authority by now. What we need is to actually make learning about them, and morality and philosophy in general, a truly intergral part of education so that most people would recognize the warning signs early enough to stop such abuses from taking place in the first place. I don't recommend we should go about re-enacting cases of injustice and abuse, but a more thorough engagement and debate than mere voluntary reading of a boring chapter in a study book is probably required. In the presence of totalitarian propaganda it will be hard, but elsewhere ignorance should be no excuse.

Basically skype seems to have a *whole* lot of traction/brand recognition. MS wants to control that to prop up their struggling mobile phone play (read: screw over iOS/Android/etc users). Torpedoing Linux support will probably be just side-effect.

The "side effects" of Microsoft's wheeling and dealing seem strongly aligned with their absolute main objectives.

Remember Microsoft's recent financing (and IP/patent grab) of Attachmate's takeover of Novell (their new anti-competition modus operandi appears to be using the money and third parties to do the kneecapping)? Shortly after the completion Attachmate fired Novell's Mono team which was working on libraries that allowed .NET developers to rather easily port their apps to... iOS/Android/etc...

See what just happened there? I'm no fan of Mono always chasing the potentially IP pithole riddled MS.NET but in that instance Mono provided a way for otherwise MS-dependent developers to easily enter non-MS mobile platforms while Microsoft's own mobile platforms remain immature and severely lacking in marketshare.

Was it in Attachmate's strategic interests to kill that potentially popular porting platform? Or was killing it only in Microsoft's interests?

With both the Windows and Office platforms' strengths as the dominant technology strangle points and providers of MS-only network effects on the wane, MS suddenly find themselves in a desperate scramble for something to keep their unloved mobile platforms alive. Buying Skype and killing ex-MS porting via Mono are clearly part of their mobile strategy.

Cryptography is banned in China and territories under their control without a permit by the "communist" party regime. They will have keys for the crypto they allow their subjects to use.

Big and compliant foreign firms may apply for an exception but obviously that doesn't mean their operations haven't been breached from within.

Wouldn't it also be interesting if the neo-McCartyists who're screaming for Wikileaks personnel to be hunted down and thrown in the "offshore" Guantanamo camp or even assassinated were found to be hiding their loot in secret offshore accounts?

I only counted a few peripheral mentions of Nokia phones in the ~200 messages so far. Zero references to Nokia's then-revolutionary Internet (and media) Tablets that the company hesitantly slipped out between 2005-2008 and promptly abandoned.

Ouch.

Paraphrasing Brando on Nokia exec's behalf: "I don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it."

The N800 internet tablet came out four years ago, and while it wasn't absolute cutting edge even then, it was affordable to manufacture, potentially symbiotic to Nokia's phone division (as a tethered companion device) and a wonderful starting point for further development.

Except that Nokia's wise managers decided to can the project. Its sister model N810, with its slide-out keyboard and crappy GPS, did manage to escape Nokia a year later, but even a slightest charade of support was already wrapped in.

Along with the pioneering tablet mindshare and respect Nokia lost most of the community of developers and early adopters. Nokia had it and chose to throw it all away. (Google Trends)

So Nokia's now got Qt and there's this Intel joint-op Meego too, seemingly aimed at x86-based "mobile devices" of some sort. Yet Nokia has no actual cutting edge phones (the last being the bulky non-multi-touch N900 of late 2009, supported only by the unsupported Maemo OS), let alone media and/or internet-oriented non-phone tablets.

Meego may be more-or-less a proper Linux environment designed for touch, but having Nokia and Intel as sugar daddies does sound a tad ominous as neither of those wants 3rd-party ARM-based devices to become successful.

Be it "openMeego" or anything, I'd love to see affordable media/internet tablets running a secure, multi-user-capable OS (i.e Linux). Make it easily shareable between family members, friends, classmates or workmates, either using local accounts (incl. "guest") or the cloud. Support the devices with software/security updates. People will buy it.

The start of the credit crisis was either 10 or 30 years ago? Not when the US and soon afterwards European industrialists chose to grant the People's republic MFN and free ticket to WTO while relocating their factories there? Wasn't that the beginning of the end of the West? Soon after the fall of the Warsaw Pact?

"Solar water heating or solar hot water is water heated by the use of solar energy. Solar water heating systems are generally composed of solar thermal collectors, a water storage tank or another point of usage, interconnecting pipes and a fluid system to move the heat from the collector to the tank. This thermodynamic approach is distinct from semiconductor photovoltaic (PV) cells that generate electricity from light; solar water heating deals with the direct heating of liquids by the sun where no electricity is directly generated."

Basic glass-covered box + copper pipes (flattened inside the black-painted floor of the box) + water collection barrel combo has long been an important alternative technology feature in the developing world.

So soon one could tack one of these new-fangled Stanford solar/heat panels at the bottom of the box and besides photon conversion also harness the high temperatures for increased electricity generation.

I truly hope that this tech doesn't become a patent pissing contest but it is made available and even manufactured around the world without licensing impediments. Maybe the world's governments could step in, enumerate the inventors appropriately and make sure these crucial technology alternatives to fossil fuels become widely available and in massive quantities.

While the US and Soviet-Russia agreed not to develop ASBMs (remember MAD?), the Chinese "communist" regime has been at for over a decade and recently they've been confident enough in their long-range supersonic "carrier-killer" that it's been showcased in the regime's jingoistic TV programming as destroying an Aegis-equipped enemy.

Wired has a feature on this game-changing Chinese ASBM titled China Testing Ballistic Missile 'Carrier-Killer'. There's a link to a delightful youtube cartoon featuring these new Chinese ASBMs wiping out unsuspecting big-noses' aircraft carrier...

To those claiming that the CCP regime doesn't harbour imperialistic ambitions, just ask Tibetans, Uighurs, Mongols, the Zhuang, the countless already-assimilated peoples and pretty much all neighbours of this current "greater China" who've made acquintance with advancing PLA troops...

If by China you're referring to the ruling Communist Party dictatorship, then sure they are.

Incidentally "GoDaddy also withdrew from China" around the same time, mainly due to the new (now more and better) draconian registration rules for individuals wishing to operate their own domains.

My hat's off for both of them for not collaborating with that regime's repressive policies.

Wow. That looks almost exactly like my friend's set, down to the hippy strap!

I used to have very similar setup until one trip in Chinese (this one didn't happen in Tibet) countryside when the lenses were destroyed (smashed but not stolen) by the Chinese "Public Security" (aka police). Luckily the body(ies) w/ good normal lens and short zoom were kept elsewhere at the time...

So this system is for Hasselblad and way out of my range, but I kinda hope that one day they'd start making affordable digital backends for the popular Olympus, Minolta, Nikon etc. analogue SLRs as there's a lot of fine glass out there and developing colour film (B&W is always manageable) is becoming very hard indeed (depending on location).

With inexpensive sensors and 40 megapixel range some of the ancient but well-built gear would get a new lease of practical life. One day, one day...

Regarding corruption, I just recently came across a study comparing corruption in countries like China, Russia and India. It was noted that in India corruption patterns resemble a pyramid: lighter at the top but heavier at lower levels; in China where the (only nominally) Communist Party controls all aspects of power, corruption was heaviest at the more powerful levels of the machinery (also taking into account the rampant cronyism prevalent at the very top through family connections) while the less powerful lower levels weren't as corrupt (upside down pyramid).

In Russia corruption was prevalent at all levels.

Of course the less tangible moral corruption (e.g. of criminal policies of the state/government/Party) wasn't being taken into account...

What this means for foreign investors is that in India companies (dealing largely with higher levels of the government) are less likely to be exposed to the large scale corruption at business levels present in China, while Indian consumers are also more likely to purchase foreign or indian-made foreign goods than the nationalistic Chinese (thanks to systematic "anti-colonial" propaganda). While India has moved towards less protectionism (import duties) since the 1990s, there also remain tax incentives for manufacturing goods domestically in India, something that can add up considering the size of the market.

I already mentioned this a few days ago (China's exploitation of colonized lands) in the thread about China's new plans to extract a century's worth of energy out of Tibet, but some people didn't think Tibetans (or Uighurs or Mongols) themselves and their status as disenfrancised and repressed people had anything to do with China's colonial resource grab policies...

Well, here again the fine article in Inhabitat goes for the single-minded technocrat approach, not unlike the glory-hungry regime in Beijing, but wouldn't it still be at least remotely relevant to also mention the other non-trade, non-technological aspects of Chinese Communist Party's rail expansion plans?

Namely that a scholar at a Chinese thinktank has stated that "we foresee that in the coming decades, hundreds of millions of people will migrate to the western regions, where land is empty and resources are untapped".

Why is it only a horrific never-forget issue when the 1930s German dictatorship planned for a little Lebensraum expansion?

Isn't it wonderful how the Han nationalists get to mod down (supress) free speech also outside China while the "Communist Party" strictly prevents anything but Party propaganda inside China's firewalled borders?

Forgetting your flippant one-liners dismissing China's repression in occupied Tibet, wouldn't it be high time for the Han nationalists to at least get their "historical" ownership claim over Tibet fixed to one of China's own feudal periods.

"Tibet has always been a part of China since the Qing dynasty.

I'd laugh if the matter wasn't deadly serious. Some Han fanatics (and the paranoid regime which has bet its "legitimacy" on its succesful militaristic Lebensraum expansionism) indeed sometimes claim that the totally non-Chinese Tibet has "always been part of China (since the Qing dynasty)". Always?

Sometimes both groups of extremists claim that China's colonial ownership of Tibet began during the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) when the neighbouring non-Chinese Mongols invaded China and established a Mongol dynasty there. The Chinese tend to forget that the other parts of the Mongol empire (spanning from China and India to Middle East and Europe) were invaded and ruled separately in very different ways reflecting regional customs. Does the whole historical Mongol empire belong to China just because China was also invaded by them?

Then there's the "since the Qing dynasty" (1644-1912) crowd... The Qing again being China's foreign invaders, this time the Manchus (a now extinct people from Manchuria neighbouring Korea).

But when the last imperial dynasty (of Qing) was finally overthrown in 1912, didn't both the Republic and the communists act on the belief that their rule over Chinese people had been illegitimate? Yet those god-emperors' vague claims of feudal vassal ownership over neighbouring nations is somehow holiest of holy?

And considering that some of China's feudal god-emperors have also claimed ownership of Korea, Vietnam and Mongolia, and in those now sovereign countries temporarily even exerted de facto rule (unlike in Tibet until Mao's invasion in 1950), shouldn't the junta in Beijing and the Chinese ultra-nationalists also be claiming those neighbours as "China's eternal possessions"?

Of course none of these archaic claims based on some feudal Chinese despots' colonial dreams and claims over the whole wide world should have no room in the modern world where even China's communist dictatorship has (nominally) signed United Nations' treaties on the rights of indigenous peoples, peoples' right to self-determination, language, culture, religion etc.

Still the Chinese regime's propaganda machine quite successfully indoctrinates even their young to parrot these feudal (let alone non-Chinese) god-emperors as if it was justification for invading, repressing, destroying and exploiting peaceful neighbouring people and their indigenous civilization which until Mao's genocidal invasion was about as "chinese" as India.