linuxkerneldev

> Such a country wouldn't get admission to the WTO

As opposed to what we do when we invade and bomb/drone other countries? As opposed to what we did when we engineer coups in resource rich countries? Come on. Let me guess, you're buying into the idea that generics hurt RnD. Let me assure you, having worked briefly in a pharma RnD lab, the bulk of big pharmas expenditures are on marketing and bribes, NOT RnD. Here's a recent headline: http://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/02/22/novartis-south-...

You'll find similar bribery cases with GSK, Pfizer, etc.

I would hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but Malaysia's politics are quite a spectacular bowl of spaghetti. You have Saudi "donations" of billions, a Prime Minister who stands accused of using the country's Speciall Forces team for blowing up a Mongolian woman involved with a billion dollar French defense company purchase of Scorpene submarines. The accused murderer now resides in Australia. You literally have the financier of the Wolf of Wall Street movie, parties with Paris Hilton, squandering of billions of Malaysia's taxpayer funds. You have bankers being murdered in broad daylight. You have attorney generals being fired and prosecutors being found dead inside barrels of cement. You have Deputy Prime Ministers being kicked out. You have ex-Prime Ministers raising a 5 alarm fire demanding that the Prime Minister be arrested. You have apartheid policies being increased in the country. You have sudden import of millions of foreign workers, who have been accused of being used as false vote banks. So.... when they write "keeping secrets forever", that almost seems like what was intended for this flight.

[1] http://www.sarawakreport.org/2016/01/court-case-opens-agains...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Shaariibuugiin_Altan...

[3] http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/7/28/malaysias-na...

[4] http://www.sarawakreport.org/2015/11/kevin-morais-drew-up-th...

[5] http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/kevin-mo...

[6] http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/mala...

[7] http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/malaysia-...

[8] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/27...

[9] http://www.asiasentinel.com/politics/banker-murder-connectio...

[10] http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/zahid-de...

[11] http://www.theantdaily.com/Main/Lindsay-Lohan-Paris-Hilton-a...

[12] http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/12/29/fbi-probes-wolf-of...

> I don't know about the specifics talked about here

The specifics matter a lot here. ESR was trying to get his patchset for his rather complex configuration/menu language into the kernel (to be used to configure kernel configs/options) which seemed to have to do more with ESR's need to be perceived as a "kernel hacker" rather than any concrete problem. Fortunately, Linus said no. ESR responded with some weird tirade which had nothing to do with the matters being discussed. Luckil

> what would happen if China and the US ever declared war on each other?

> they're essentially comtemplating treason solely due to their race.

Do you realize how racist you sound? You sound the same as the people who would put Japanese-Americans in internment camps but not German-Americans or Italian-Americans.

The article liberally drops anti-Chinese sentiment at every paragraph. Things like:

"Of Chinese heritage, Liew was born in Malaysia in August 1957."

That would be the equivalent of writing:

"Of Kenyan heritage, Obama was born in the USA".

Full disclosure, I've never asked LF to pay me for my contributions, nor have they offered. None of the people I know who are lk contributors who I've just asked have gotten anything from LF. They have been solicited to pay to attend LF organized conferences.

> don't see why the management have to be coders

I used to perceive LF to be the equivalent of centralized funding for linux kernel developers. I recognize now that is not correct. The reason I asked is because, if I perceived it that way, there's others who would have perceived it that way and donated to the cause for that reason or supported it for that reason (eg: paying for attending LF organized conferences). If say 10% of the foundation's budget goes towards management costs, and 90% goes to developers, then Yay!. If it is 90% management, 10% developers, then that's why I asked.

> The foundations pay plenty of the kernel developers.

Do you mean directly? How many do they pay?

How many of the "leadership" / "management", ie: the people raking the profits from this organization are coders? http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/leadership

I worry that the author of this article seems to leave out key facts about Dian Fossey and her "research". These facts are unpleasant. Without those facts, the general public, like myself ( before learning of these details), may significantly misunderstand why why the system (conservation/politics/charity) has continuously failed gorillas and the people living in the same habitat.

Firstly, there's the matter of Dian's falsified qualifications.

"Fossey had failed to gain a degree in veterinary medicine from the University of California at Davis and transferred to San Jose College where she gained a BA degree in physical therapy in 1954. "

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Dian_Fossey.aspx

She was selected and provided funding despite having obscured and falsified her qualifications. However, this was not unknown to her employer, Louis Leakey. Why he chose her is rather scandalous.

"This lack of scientific training did not concern Leakey, who believed women uniquely possessed the patience required for long-term field studies"

Why he believed this is perhaps better explained by his actions.

"Louis had extramarital affairs and fell ardently in love with his young proteges, chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall and gorilla-watcher Dian Fossey." http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-684-80192-6

Then there's the matter of Dian's horrific racism and actions.

"Fossey defended her policy of encouraging the apes to fear black Africans because nearly all poachers were black."

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-12-29/news/mn-25922_1_karis...

"she habitually referred to Rwandans as "wogs," never in all her time recruited a single black African as a researcher and even burned the crops of neighboring peasants whom she suspected let their cattle graze in the reserve" http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1015200880517583680

The sad thing is that this is not unique. For example, WWF's leadership has few if any representation from humans who cohabit the regions where species they seek to protect live. Instead, they send what seems to be mostly their college/family/country club friends to lead these actions. Is it any wonder why these conservation efforts fail so spectacularly when there's no emphasis on engagement with the local populace.

These are warning signs I look for. - politically linked / celebrity types

Eg: https://www.theranos.com/leadership David Boies Boies served as Special Trial Counsel for the United States Department of Justice in its antitrust suit against Microsoft

Henry A. Kissinger

Gary Roughead Gary Roughead is a retired United States Navy admiral who served as the 29th Chief of Naval Operations.

Seems more like a list of country club members who have dinner parties together.

Nice. Interesting design choice to not have ethernet on it.

> South America has always been geographically stunted compared to North America.

I believe you are very much mistaken unless your definition of "geographically stunted" and "has always" is different than what is generally accepted.

The facts show clearly that prior to 1492, Central and South America were where the larger, more organized, more sedentary, more productive civilizations were. That's why the Incas, Mayas, Olmecs, Aztecs, were all NOT in North America. So any theory of "geographical stunting" would need to explain what changed in the geography after 1492.

> Without the cooperation of the natives, Europeans could get nowhere.

I'm surprised that anyone would believe this "cooperation" of the natives. I have a simpler explanation. "Natives" did not cooperate willingly. Instead, through our vastly superior military technology, we imposed "cooperation" on the natives in Central and South America, while in the North, we imposed something completely different as already explained above. In the Central and South American region, we setup political and military structures to preserve ourselves at the top and keep the entirety of the other population at the bottom and also to prevent their escape. That was the defined purpose of the encomiendas. We wanted to do the same in the North but could not. North America escaped this fate precisely because the native population was far too sparse to enable viable encomiendas. So our corporations had to find alternate ways to gain profit, and that turned out to be, by enabling and giving rights to the settlers/colonialists. That difference is effectively the primary cause of what has given rise to the vastly different fates between the 2 regions.

> South America has a long tradition of interchangeable strongman governments, none of whom had any real interest in advancing the needs of citizens.

This statement is generally true. Areas that were setup as encomiendas ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encomienda ) right from the period of Pizzaro and Cortez have retained that exact flavour. Individual strong men rule because that's exactly what was setup. Any "citizen" (ie: indigenous person, slave, or otherwise disenfranchised individual) who tried to go against this system or even escape its clutches was punished severely. It is extremely hard to break that structure. If you wonder why that did not happen in North America, it was because the North was much more sparsely populated and so the colonizers had to setup systems that gave rights to everyone (except of course the sparse indigenous population that needed to be exterminated since it could not be "encomienda"-ed), just so that the companies that sponsored the colonization in North America (like the Virginia company) could turn a profit. It is noteworthy that the Virginia company for example, did actually plan to use the same encomienda approach but was startled to find that there weren't enough compliant indigenous people to enslave. They then switched to trying to strongarm the colonialist/settlers but this had disastrous results. It was only thereafter they gave rights, and privileges to "citizens". This all happened when they became desperate to get a return on their investment.

So yes, your statement is absolutely true. Long tradition indeed. Since 1492 in fact.

> you get the occasional Ted Kaczynski

Occasional? Ted was one of a kind. And apparently, you don't "get" someone like him. Allegedly, rather, you "make" that kind of person through government sponsored psychological torture experiments. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-...

That was the first question I was curious about. Secondly, which dish is their specialty...

I wonder if it can be rooted and reflashed with something completely different.

> why is it an issue if the signal processing is done in firmware? Isn't the idea of firmware that it's factory set and read-only?

There are multiple levels to this, and it varies with chipsets. Take for example, a very basic crappy chipset like the TI WL127x transceiver series. This chipset would be the lowest level. It is what implements the lowest level of radio signal processing above the hardware. That chipset has its own firmware. That's very small. Typically, less than 128kbytes. But it is rarely factory set or read-only. Rather, it is a binary blob that is loaded on to that chipset by a linux kernel wifi driver. The driver is typically not a binary but source code that is part of the linux kernel. That blob, driver, kernel, and rest of the system are then part of a "firmware image" that is flashed on to your router/phone/embedded device. It is reasonably common to want to modify and customize that firmware image. Hence forums like xda, cyanogen, etc. The binary blob is the only part that isn't very common to modify, but even then, given the high rate of implementation defects in that blob, one wishes source were available for that as well so that it could be better controlled.

> the Indian population structure is I think, about 2,000 years younger. China's population has more or less one base

Wouldn't your above statement that China's population is a single base invalidate the OT's statement that China was more open to immigration?

Reading that link and following up on ASI, it looks like this is a truly ancient population set, ie: 3rd oldest after the first or second wave of migration out of Africa and past the Middle East. So it is interesting that this population set merged with numerous other population sets to form all the variation we see in South and South East Asia.

> China was also very open to immigration and inclusive in what counted as "Chinese."

I'm pretty sure this claim is invalid. Say you took a measure of genetic diversity in various populations, I'm pretty sure you would find that Han Chinese are less heterozygotic than other neighbouring Asian populations. Take for example, their Southern neighbour, India, I predict you see far more genetic variation. I think this maps out to just looking at phenotype variation. I have travelled a bit through South East Asia and India, and just looking at visible attributes like skin color, eye color, hair color, and so on, one sees huge variation, also their languages are distinct (not even from a single linguistic family like Sino-Tibetian). In contrast, in China, where I have lived in, I found that the amount of variation was much smaller (just small differences between Northern Chinese and Southern Chinese) which I predict corresponds with much lower genetic diversity and thus the "openness to immigration" is quite suspect.

This author's first sentence is: "There is an apocryphal tale I've heard many times about how, in Ancient Rome (or, in some tellings, Greece), the engineers responsible for the construction of an arch were required to stand underneath it as the final wooden supports were taken out."

This story is derived from Law #229 of the Code of Hammurabi (of Babylon). Babylon was not part of Greece, but it was very briefly part of the Roman empire.

" 229 If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death. "

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp

> Now that people are waking up to this fact, we're going to chalk it up to plain old racism.

Racism was a significant component of the drug war from the beginning. The article doesn't seek to "chalk it up to plain old racism", rather the article seeks to shed light on some of the racial aspects of policy making.

http://www.drugpolicy.org/race-and-drug-war

> showcase the best of Indian creativity and ingenuity in product development.

I genuinely don't understand above. You want to showcase the "best creativity" by showing that you yourself describe as "the Hacker News of India". I think you may have a different understanding of what creativity is than what I have. Also, about this concept of "best of India" and such things, the line that Peter Thiel loves to use comes to mind. The something of somewhere is the nothing of nowhere.

> locked down.

It this context, I presume it would mean can't reflash firmware or modify aspects of the firmware. For example, on some devices you have full control so you can modify and replace everything from the bootloader to application level software. For example, maybe you would rather run debian on this device rather than android-fire.

In case anyone else is searching for whether or not one could reflash with open source firmware and run debian, here's what I found:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/fire-hd/general/how-to-upgra...

Short answer : It is non-trivial.

I found this article difficult and confusing to read. It says stuff like: "beauty standards that placed a high value on lighter skin and hairstyles that imitated white looks,"

then says: "began offering skin-lightening and hair-straightening products to compete with white companies that marketed these items to black consumers" "Walker rebuffed a reporter in response to an article that derisively referred to her as the “de-kink queen.” "

I couldn't figure out if the article was saying Walker was a black woman who supported natural hair for black women (which I imagine would be a good thing for black women, and good for the planet as well given the toxic chemicals in hair straighteners, and general waste of resources on hair) or if the article is saying she just built a hair company and provided whatever the masses wanted even if it was damaging to their own self-image and communities?

I was curious so I googled. The ban was lifted. The ban was put into place because people were broadcasting provocative and violent videos showing torture and cutting throats of cows (sacred to Hindus in neighbouring Indian states). Eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzSBk6n1olU

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation...

Sadly, Ahmed is being taught a lesson that all minorities in the US learn as part of growing up. Just like African American kids are taught to be terrified of the police and other authorities. If they behave the same as white kids or make similar assumptions about how the power structure interacts with them, then they're going to get murdered or punished in unfair ways.

Wasn't the Linux Foundation supposed to be just an umbrella org that provided employment to key Linux devs? So that they could be independent from corporate influence and work indepently/freely without corporate interference.