papersmith

One theory as to why China never underwent industrial revolution in the 1700s was the high efficiency of manual labour, which got them stuck in a local maximum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_level_equilibrium_trap

Some time later:

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2004/07/24/ho_jobs_1.jpg

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0911/gallery.ste...

$3000 Eames lounge chair, hand-made carpet, etc.

Shhh...it works from google cache:

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=http:/...

3000 years is about how long China existed as a state that passed from one dynasty to another in recorded history. 7000 years is how old the civilization is according to archeological digs, though for a long time they thought it's 5000 years, so 5000 kinda got stuck as a catchphrase.

But yeah, pulling the age card as a comeback is pretty lame sometimes.

I think it depends on the accent. Many speakers of non-Beijing dialects carry a regional accent that are usually flatter on the consonants.

For example, if he learned Mandarin in Taiwan he could've picked up a southern accent.

I always wondered how well speakers of other tonal languages manage Mandarin, such as Swedish speakers.

"China" or "Middle Kingdom" as it's called in China, was historically a fairly vague concept. It was popularized in the 20th century by Sun Yat-sen to refer to the 56 ethnic groups the republic inherited from the Qing empire (Han, Manchurian, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uighur being the major ones).

The 5000-year history refers to the lineage of Han culture in particular. For example, in Japan where most if its Sinic influence was before the republic, Chinese medicine is called Han medicine (Kampo 漢方), Chinese writing is called Han script (Kanji 漢字).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_nationalism

I believe when people describe to China as young, they are either referring to the 1911 republic, the 1949 republic, or the 1978 reform.

This actually sounds like China before the privatization of the service industry in the 90s, and I suspect it's similar in other communist countries.

Back then store clerks were paid government wages with benefits, and most of time they would ignore customers even after you called them out. As a kid, I once went alone to buy an imported Gundam action figure with my savings and they made snide comments about my family being ostentatious.

Now-a-days in private establishments they go to ridiculous lengths to provide good services, it's almost surreal. Once in a restaurant my cousin found a tiny caterpillar on a vegetable dish (hey, no pesticide!) and the manager came out to apologize and offered the meal for three free of charge.

Seems fine with flash 10.1 beta 2, Safari on Mac.

Just installed flash 10.1 beta 2 on Mac, it does feel more responsive than 10.0.

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

Assuming Comcast has a bandwidth cap, by spoofing real MAC addresses he's basically stealing other users' bandwidth.

But then again, people steal wifi all the time.

A good portion of the top CCP leadership were promoted based on loyalty rather than meritocracy, so they are generally not the brightest of the bunch.

That being said, I can understand how this would make sense for an audience in China. China was ruined by one revolution after another for the last hundred years, each time under an idealist with a new promise of salvation, people have inevitably become cynical to the idea of violent changes.

I don't think my neck can withstand that cruising position for very long. I always thought if it wasn't for Clark Kent's super strength, he would have developed neck problems.

Maybe hang glider pilots could provide more insight.

"IIRC, it's illegal to be Muslim in China and all new Tibetan Buddhist monks are required to become Party members."

Dude, the Muslim part is plain false. I lived in Xi'an, a city with a large population of Hui Muslims.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_people

I don't know where you heard about the Tibetan Buddhist required to join the communist party, but it just doesn't sound right. Joining the party is considered a privilege in China, you get all kinds of benefits, but mainly the ability to vote. I kinda doubt they would give this kind of political privilege to Tibetan monks.

That's actually my point. "the Chinese are fiercely nationalistic" being too big of a blanket statement, since you are including the baby-boomers who protested all over the country in 1989, and older generations who spent their adulthood under Mao.

Depends on how you define nationalistic. The hundreds of thousands of students who protested at the Tiananmen Square could also be considered nationalistic in some sense of the words.

Cameroon only had independence for 50 years, which is as much experience as they have in running two nation-states (later became one). When people look at the developing world, they see what is going on but rarely its history. Prosperity happens gradually through an osmosis of many factors, and you have to start somewhere. The level of social stability Cameroon is able to achieve within only 50 years is fairly impressive for a western African country, or any country for that matter.

Pros and cons of IP aside, the fact of the matter is that American companies have the money and talent to do high quality R&D. Most Chinese companies simply don't have the capital to do R&D to the standard of a developed country, and most talents go work for western companies that have the money.

If IP laws were enforced in China, Chinese companies would be further kept at the bottom of the food chain, making cheap products in sweatshops at very low margins. The IP policies in China is meant as way to jumpstart domestic companies by letting them compete in higher-margin value-added goods when they don't have the ability to do their own research. The policy-makers know that they suck at most things, especially as a venture capitalist, so they go with the least-interfering approach.

Of course, eventually they'll have to enforce IP to sustain their own R&D, once their industries mature.

While I agree that the criticism is well-deserved, industrial espionage is really nothing new.

Google's move certainly deserves the spotlight, but I find the sudden shift of attention to industrial espionage a bit knee-jerking and sensationalist.

Heck, shouldn't you be more worried about military espionage, which has been happening for ages in every country?

Interesting that you brought it up, I actaully thought about this for quite a while before I wrote the original comment. I agree the forms and targets of oppression between ROC then and PRC today are quite similar in urban areas. However, the main difference being that for most of the time Chiang Kaishek ruled China under martial law, and due to the amount of opposition Chiang faced back then, and the civil wars happening in the rurals, I would say the level of violence was much more severe.

In the end though, China probably would have been better off if ROC stayed, but the fact of the matter is different. Note that by China I am referring to the mainland. Taiwan is hands down better off today.

I've been thinking, with the bi-factional government coming in 2012, legislative reforms, and all the changes happening while the communist party insisting on its supremacy, perhaps the party will one day be reduced to a figurehead only, along the lines of a constitutional monarchy (constitutional politburo?).

China may be oppressive compared to developed countries, but if you look at where it came from, at its current state it's probably the least oppressive government it's ever had.

Historically revolts were fought by peasants over high taxes that left them starving. Now-a-days the issue is the lack of private land ownership, and the government is already implementing land reform for this specific reason. Corruption is still rampant, but people are generally kept well-fed. People will only shed blood if their livelihood is on the line, usually abstract reasons such as freedom of speech alone is not enough, these things usually only change gradually from within.

I just borrowed "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" by Tufte.

I don't know how practical the advice still is today, but traditionally those doing candid photography preferred equipments that are as less conspicuous as possible, that's why Leica has been so popular among photojournalists.

Henry Cartier Bresson, they guy who pioneered photojournalism, used to wrap black tape around his Leica to make it less distracting to his subjects.

LCD viewfinders have had some major disadvantages for demanding photographers including:

* low resolution

* low responsiveness

* poor colour and lighting

* drains battery

I've tried some high-end LCD viewfinder cameras a few years back, but none felt as snappy as a DSLR. I haven't tried out any of these EVIL cameras, but I would guess that there have been improvements in these areas in recent years.

I don't think the OP ever implied that the leaders know the best. It was meant to be read from the viewpoint that there aren't good or bad politicians, there are only politicians making good or bad decisions.

In fact from what I've read, the current generation of Chinese leaders aren't particularly smart as people have given them credit for. Though they do seem to know that they don't know enough to be visionaries, so they take the stance of non-interference.

I can see the appeal of this kind of mentality has on HN, as I sense a lot of users here hold libertarian views.

Last time I used Rapidshare the free account had a restriction of something like 1 file per day. I wonder if it's still the case.

I'm not sure what you meant by unavailable to tourists.

Nobody forces you to stay with a tour or anything, it's not like North Korea. Of course, if you stick to a guided-tour, you probably won't see too much. If you leave the city, you can find plenty of backpackers.

The friendliness probably has more to do with the culture being more laid-back then political freedom.

Only they were different leaders.

Traditionally PRC had two factions. The Maoists and the rivals, let's call them the pragmatists. The Maoists were bent on communist doctrines and making great leaps. The pragmatists were more into what already works. The heads of the pragmatists were Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Shaoqi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_xiaoping

The famine as you mentioned was attributed in part to Mao's radical policies, and because so Mao stepped down while Liu Shaoqi took his chair for a few years. While Liu was in power he played with capitalist policies similar to those in place today (this was the early 60s), Mao got paranoid and ousted him and Deng, and cultural revolution was launched in part to undo their popularity. Liu died in house arrest.

After Mao died in the late 70s, Deng took over and finally switched to market economy. The current line of leaders descended from his faction of pragmatists. Maoism is pretty much dead in China, a new split in the party is between the populists and the princelings, much more similiar to the dichotomy of liberals and conservatives in the west.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_of_Chinese_leadersh...

For a more comprehensive interview on Charlie Rose,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AA5aIdOqlw#t=22m3s