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Comment BYTE (Score 5, Interesting) 171

For an amazing read look up the BYTE magaxine review of the Lisa. The article takes you on an amazing trip where the writer is trying to describe for the first time so many things we dont even think about.

IIRC he describes the 'pointing device' (mouse) as "about the size of a pack of cigarettes that moves a point on the screen - The screen then uses small pictures of common tasks to represent your actual desk top.

Watching them describe 'the desktop metaphor' when they dont know what it is a crazy reminder of just how fast this all happened...

Comment Re:that's what the job killing lines get you stuff (Score 5, Interesting) 143

Relatively speaking?

Have you been outside the 5th ring road? Ive seen factories the likes id never seen in my life. Sprawls of smokestacks just chugging away. Not to mention the fact that DAMN NEAR EVERY RESTAURANT AND MANY HOMES STILL USE COAL.

During the Olympics in 08 they had all the factories shut down for a month prior and seeded the clouds for a week to wash the city and air. Worked wonderfully.

Cars are a problem - and a growing one to say the least - but dont be too quick to discount the manufacturing and a city of 16 million still using coal.

Comment As a boxer... (Score 5, Insightful) 240

From years of boxing this couldnt be more obvious.

Your hands will fracture, break, bend, and sometimes emulsify... Especially the forefinger middle knuckle and the top pinky knuckle = 'the boxer break.' Over and over.

But each time calcifying over and becoming stronger. After a while you literally have 'hands of stone.'

Now of course my dexterity isnt what it used to be. Typing and fumbling for computer screws reminds me of my favorite pastime often.

Comment Reasons for original takedown (Score 3, Insightful) 39

Dear god people if you dont know anything about the topic dont post....

China blocked the names of a number of their leaders of late (on Weibo [twitter] and Sina [google]) for a few reasons:
1. There may have been an attempted coup - that accounts for a few names
2. There for sure was the downfall of a major regional leader (Bo Xilai) under very ugly circumstances (right hand man tried to defect to US embassy to avoid being murdered,wife poisoned a spy, etc.)
3. There was a huge NYT article calling out Hu Jintao that was straight propaganda - so much so that they disseminated a chinese language pdf of the article to the general web
4. The old leader Jiang Zhemin has been near death and rumors have swirled.
5. Some other guys kid wrecked a car and killed some people

THESE ARE THE REASONS WHY THOSE NAMES WERE CENSORED. This doesnt portend to any changes. Watch the next few years as freeing China becomes a constant narrative....

I could give the reasons why they have unblocked them now but id rather get out to a party. Try to RTFA and then RSMFAs before posting nonsense.

Comment You really want to know who set this up? (Score 1) 326

You really want to know who set this up?

Find out who scheduled the vote for the same day as the release of the iPhone 5. I think the vote was probably on the docket for awhile. If so...

To whomever made sure these events coincided: Couldn't have been planned better. Well played.

"The answer to all your questions is: Money"

Comment Saudi Arabia (Score 5, Interesting) 398

Saudi Arabia is currently flooding the oil market to drive down prices in an attempt to destabilize the economies and governments of Syria and Iran and weaken their broker Russia.

More or less anything else that might be conjured up to explain this precipitous drop (aside from a worldwide recession that is driving down consumption and demand) is just nonsense. This is an odd byproduct of economic warfare. My only question is looking for the bottom so I can maximize returns after this economic war turns into a shooting one.

Comment You mean (Score 1, Interesting) 240

"What if China goes the DIY route and makes its own ISA or microarchitecture with silicon-level censorship and monitoring, or an always-open backdoor for the Chinese intelligence agencies?"

Then they will have yet again copied the West's products and then rebranded the designs for their own use. As they have been doing for some time now..... China knows for a fact that the US is using backdoors in technology for warfare (see: Iran) and to overthrow governments (see: Arab Spring) - and is not going to long term put itself at risk by using these American technologies that invite 'revolutions of the people' (see: coups).

Comment Re:Um, yeah (Score 3) 62

By the way:

Net censorship in china is not specifically nationwide. It is done by province. So in Beijing you can read "x" but not in Chongqing and versa vice.

And again most of the censors are just "kids" really. No Older than 30 most of the time. So a bit more tuned in - and prob better at their job than adults would be.

I always heard it was between 5 mao or 1 kuai per post deleted. As there was an attempted coup last week of imagine some kids are getting PAID this week....

Comment Um, yeah (Score 0) 62

If you lived there you'd know this. Everyone in china does.

  That is why they are less afraid to post subversive Ideas at times than Americans: their posts will just be deleted by someone making 1RMB a post (15c - an actual figure). As opposed to Americans who I find self censor much more as they know everything they ever type is being specifically cataloged by the NSA.

Comment Re:Exploit to exploit (Score 2) 158

That is what I have been wondering.

How many open source projects / commercial products are compromised by 3 letter agency insiders? Yeah we can 'look at the source' for some software but I have no pretenses on most anyone being able to find a backdoor left in by the best of the best that MIT / NSA etc have to offer. And with an unlimited budget to boot...

I know if I was in charge id just make sure to get my code into Flash installers, Webkit, MS Office, and a few of the most popular linux packages and call it a day. I mean, what computer worth looking at isnt going to have an office suite, a browser, or flash?

By the looks of Stuxtnet apparently routers are also a good thing to throw backdoors into as well....

Comment Re:Or maybe not... (Score 1) 151

Exactly. Blackberry's caving in to the Indian government last year (and Pakistani) to open access to their spy agencies was HUGE news and not debated at conspiracy whatsoever in mainstream press.

Now a year later lumping Nokia and Apple in to the group all of a sudden it is FUD denials and conspiracy..... Child please..... I can read independent news, have a memory longer than 15 minutes, and can combine facts to make logical assumptions.

News: stop insulting my intelligence
Slashdot readers: stop jumping to conclusions without at least some of the facts.

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