If there is a reason to, that is. For most people, it really doesn't matter.

As a Chinese from HK also, I can only say there is no evidence to show if it was first used as a racist term or not. And since Chinese does not really have a serious racist against foreign people, I don't think it's a racists term. UNLESS it's a term created around 1900AD, when the western countries "rent" all those lands in China. Note that there were occationally Arabic and white people working in high position of Chinese government several hundred to a thousand years ago, or even further before, and lots of foreign merchants living in the captial of China thousand years ago. We have had always welcome foreigners. So racists is really an non-issue in China unless you're talking about family matters.

Anyway. Gui () means ghost literally. But in Chinese language, it's very commonly used for its derived meanings. For example, when we describe someone's face colour is very white (even if the person is Chinese), we may describe their colour as "ghostly/white as ghost". Another common and interesting use of it is one that you often use only on people you're friendly with, and if they have some (negative) characteristics. Say, a person often forget stuff, you may call him "jian mang gui" (), with jian=easy, mang=forget, gui=... gui.

My take anyway, the most reasonable interpretation of "gui lo" is that white people are... white like ghosts, which is just a Chinese adjective. Chinese often describe things with comparison.

Another possible meaning could be to separate "human" (Chinese/East Asian) with other people. For this meaning, I need to stress that Chinese is a very subjective language. The ways that terms are used are often very subjective and has a "comparison". For example, Cantonese, when they say "Chinese", they are thinking about Cantonese, not about Mandarine. While a Beijing Chinese will likely think of their local dialect of Mandarine when talking about "Chinese". Now, when you talk about "human" (which is the same word as "people""person" in Chinese), we think of Chinese, or people who look similar. So, who are the others? If not human, then it's ghost. Chinese often use comparisons like that for fun, and over time, it forms terms that are commonly used in unoffical situations. So this is the second possibility that I can explain.

Again, unless it's a term formed when the westerners "rent" Chinese land, and place armies within our land (1900AD, that's not too long ago), I do not think it has its root of racist. Most likely a description or comparison of colour. AND, if the term is formed around 1900, then you can't reject the term even if it's racists because there is all reason for this racist term to form, that is, if it's the formation time.

Last note is that this term is not itself used as a racist term, but simply a casual term that points to white people, in Cantonese.

It's not easy to "learn the difference" between them neither sometimes. Real Chinese often have many forms of writing each word. For westerners, they may simply split Chinese into Traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Kanji, etc. But for Chinese, in everyday uses, we don't neccessary always write the "offical words", and are sometimes even indecisive with the "offical word" of certain words.

For example, Hong Kong uses traditional Chinese. But some of its "offical pick" is the same as Taiwan's offical pick, and some are the same as Japan's offical pick, and some are of their own pick. So if you go to a real Chinese place, you may see words that you haven't see before even if you know all common written forms in HK, TW, mainland, and Japan etc. Korea also have their Chinese table. Singapore and malaysia also have their simplified form that's not all the same with mainland. As Chinese, we usually just can recognize them all and write what we're used to personally. But back to the topic, it's not always easy to say which word is "kanji" because Chinese has multiple forms, though those multiple forms are usually simpler enough for everybody to identify.

You missed one very important thing. Both Japan and Korea wrote in Classic Chinese since more than a thousand years ago. In the processes, they imported a large number of Chinese terms and phases into their language, and are used frequently. They often pronounce those terms in the Chinese dialect/offical-classic-pronounciation at the time which they learn it. When merging into their language, they sometimes dropped or change some sounds like any other Chinese dialects.

During the last dynasty of China, (200 years ago or so), Japan got into heavy contact to the then modern western countries, and translated a lot of western new terms into *Chinese*. Not only they uses them, those Japanese-Chinese terms were later imported back into China and Korea later and is in everyday Chinese and Japanese use of languages.

Also, Japan also kept a lot of Chinese used in Tang dynasty of China. Those terms were not changed while Chinese changes over the years. Some of those terms also got re-imported into modern spoken Chinese through animation and comics.

Not to say Korean and Japanese are Chinese. But if you say they are unrelated, that is simply totally wrong. They are not only related, they are heavily related.

I agree. As a programmer, I spend more time thinking than typing. You usually can't think as fast as you type. Most likely, you'll do both together, thinking, typing, reading/check APIs etc., all together. Typing faster, you'll really end up sitting there thinking without typing at the same time, that's all.

In such case, you can group each few cashiers into one line, and have multiiple lines across. Then it can still have a bit of "even out" effect. While pushing the cart over is fast enough.

JS benchmarks is surely good. Though I always hoped that firefox can put more force on UI's responsiveness and flash responsiveness. When a facebook flash game runs on chrome with acceptable speed, and IE with OK speed, and firefox is almost not even loading the game right (too slow), there is a problem.

I haven't look into details about what bugs they fixed. But for me, firefox's betas are generally pretty stable after Beta3 (for any releases).

Same for this one. I've been trying this since beta 1, and switched it as my main browser by beta 3. It got more stable after that, and I remember I didn't see much real difference since beta 5 when I do browsing everydday. So pretty obviously, those are bugs that are not "serious" for a normal user to the point that they can really notice clearly.

Just go to ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases This kind of slashdot posts are often faster than their website update. But ftp servers are definitely updated when you see these kinda news on slashdot.

I do that (use OOo), but that's definitely not the majority. Most people I know don't use OpenOffice even if they don't pay for MSOffice. They'd just use a pirvated version of it. For us who're more technical, they all looks the same for word processing. But for people in school who're not technical, they just worry about this and that, and does not like OOo's look etc. etc. etc.

Let alone sometimes, those business courses etc. need to you use some MSOffice plugins, which can't be run on OOo. Simply put, OOo is an option to us, but not the majority.

Seriously, students today SHOULD know how to use a computer. You don't need to have a course to teach them. It's such basic skill. As of High School level, as you're already doing calculus etc., you're totally able to do basic programming. If you just can't, then it's not a road for you in university. High school subjects serves a purpose of introducing students into some real contents of each subjects. If it's overly basic, then you're just giving a force image of what the subject is.

Because many woman will suddenly remember they're female on subjects that "gender discrimination" benefits them. Only otherwise, they'd hold up the flag of "gender equality".

I always say, if you want me to treat you like a man, don't expect me to treat you like a girl. If you expect me to treat you like a girl, don't expect me to treat you like a man.

I haven't try all of those, but half of those you mensioned. But I can tell you that for many Chinese food, if you don't wash cleanly or correctly, then it does taste/smell very bad. If it does smell that bad, then I'd say you should rethink about the restaurant lol. I'm from southeast China. And many as you might know, Cantonese eat basically everything. We've encountered countless times that food doesn't taste as it should because it's not well cleaned/clearing-smell. It's too much work for restaurant and they don't always take the time do that well.

That Confusious thing is not even controlled by mainland China government. It's just something bought up by a small small organization formed by a few scholars. The scale is not even big enough to be paid attention to. It's really just advertised by foreign medias together with the nobel prize news.

Well, top respecting bottom and bottom respecting top is not impossible. The situation of the west is different. China has a huge system of local, provincial, and national wide exam since almost 2000 years ago. And basically all government officals have to go throuh national examination in the capital, and only the top can get in. As a result, the government is filled with scholars who do care about the people (or not). Now, China is much larger than European countries. And emperor is the head of country, but not head of government. Power of top government officals are huge compare to the west because given the country size, they can have a good base to rebel against the royal family if the government get little respect. And since most officials arises from national examinations, together with the traditoin, anything that is seriously against "the good" will likely get strong opposition from many officals, from top officals to local officals. Let alone famous "colleges/schools" who do comment on all kind of policies. This turns into a complex power game. On one side, they have to follow tradition/law at least on the surface and keep everything in harmony. On the other side, each groups with very different ideas have their own power "alliences" (we call them "party" in Chinese). That result in a situation very similar to what you see in today's parliments, parties picking on each other's fault, promoting their own ideas, etc. And in normal time, the final decision is most often made when most top officals reaches consensus. Or if one party gain majority offical support, which can add strong pressure on the emperor even if he oppose to a suggestion.

Here, the top is not neccessary respecting the bottom, but respecting the tradition, worring about their own "look" in history in the future, and affected by power of top officals/parties. But at least, because of confusious based system, they can't go too far in normal times. Chinese care a lot about how they appear in history, and want a name in history, giving pride to their family.

The bottom does not neccessary respect the top, but because all local government head are officals appointed by province or central governments, they also do not want their "bad decisions" to be known by upper officals, who want harmony in their area of control to make sure nothing block them from rising to upper level of governments. As a result, the power of the bottom is also quite powerful in normal times.

There are of course some problem with the system that was caused by reality situation of different times. But the bottom line is, there is usually a equilibium. Not neccessary by "respect", but by tradition, strong view of good or bad ruling in confusious, and government officals who arrises from national examinations.

That is why the idea of "elite government" is quite popular in Chinese cultural area. Even in democratic countries like Japan and Korea, this kind of cultural value is still embedded within voter's decision. One example is Singapore, which is always critizied by the west. Is totally not critizied by even democratic east asian countries. Why? Because it works, and it worked well before. Way better than democratic governments today in the good times. There is no absolute good between "elite" or "democracy". What you need is to identify the short falls o what you have right now and correct them with new ideas or pulling in ideas of other types of government to create your own combination that works.