papersmith

>If you've ever seen the film Away We Go, well, one of the families in that film were the spitting image.

Just curious, which family in the film are you referring to? I only have a vague recall of them.

"Can someone talk Steve Jobs into building a consumer robot?"

Chances are he will talk you into buying an espresso machine instead. :)

It's actually 詹姆斯·邦德. 007 is just easier to say.

I think for that you'll have to use the ltree index, rather than regular string index, else it'll sort like this:

1/2/3

11/2/3

2/2/3

I wonder if there're ltrees for other DBs.

Personally I just sort everything in memory like reddit, since I need to traverse all branches to calculate weighed scores, which is a balance of vote counts and age. I think reddit/HN do something similar? I wonder how Disqus handles this.

I'm not really sure how to do that in SQL.

Most, if not all pay-as-you-go plans have an expiration date.

"One could argue that was more craftsmanship than innovation, but there's a strong connection between making things well and making better things, and China isn't famous for quality goods either."

That's because they weren't taught in our textbooks.

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

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

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

Though from certain POV these devices exist despite government policies, as the phenomenon has certain anti-authority connotations:

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

I'm trying to wrap my head around how the whole thing works. On one hand, mundane stuffs are monitored, on the other hand, you have stuffs like these freely discussed:

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&h...

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&h...

According to wikipedia, this is on the 12th most popular site in China.

I think the censors operate on very crude keyword filters. As long as you avoid the few obvious keywords, it's not that easy to get caught. The domestic web sites get around the censor by agreeing to open backdoors for the filters, yet at the same time turn a blind eye to the real disruptive stuffs that got around it.

Another thing is that scrolling is kinda sluggish in Chrome on my 2007 Mac Mini. Google docs PDF reader seems to scroll much more smoothly. It's still a big improvement over the flash version.

Apple actually has a giant physical store in Beijing.

http://www.apple.com.cn/retail/sanlitun/

I know it because of this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8vqSJAOC7I

They're also building a big one in Shanghai.

http://gizmodo.com/5279167/apples-massive-shanghai-store-mix...

Interestingly enough they don't sell anything online. Maybe it has to do with Chinese buy everything in cash.

"A couple years ago you’d have stories about kids in Manchester textile factories putting up with pure hell. It’s simply the nature of the beast."

"A couple of years ago" in this case would be a figure of speech. ;)

Or by a 25 year-old on myspace today.

I wouldn't say they have no marketing. The Signal vs Noise blog, Ruby on Rails, and their books are very effective marketing tools. That being said, the quality of their products does seem to play a large role as well.

Well, evolution doesn't always mean improvement.

I think the personal computer will split into two branches, with power users keeping today's form factors, while average users who just want to surf the web or check their email will go for the appliances.

A bit off topic, but [Warring States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warring_states) happens to be the golden age of Chinese philosophy, akin to Europe's Age of Enlightenment. The intellectual output grew out of necessities of competition.

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

I was reading a popular Chinese forum (tianya.cn) thread on contaminated food, and I was surprised at how anti-government the tone was. (think reddit, but more extreme) There were jokes taking direct jabs at the party and state, and I was amazed that they didn't get taken down.

I think Chinese tend to avoid talking shit about their country in front of foreigners to "save face". It seems to be part of the culture.

I wonder if you can achieve similar effect by projecting a video shot with fisheye lens onto a concave screen.

Not saying his points are without merit or anything, but Gordon Chang is a well-known neocon writer. He regularly contributes to the Glenn Beck show.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_G._Chang

Many of his earlier apocalypse predictions didn't seem to take hold. Many journalists consider him a bit of a nutter.

Just saying.

That makes sense. Though I wonder if the problem of freelance match-making is similar to the problem of online dating.

I am actually thinking of making a web app for this, perhaps along with non-freelance profile/job postings, if anyone's interested. :)

[TeX](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX) was released in 1978, though I'm not sure as to the time line of the other developments.

"These are two different systems, and if they want to fight each other, let them, but why should we be involved?"

Sorry to digress. This is a genuine question out of curiousity and I am not trying taking any sides.

I am not an expert on the history of the world, but is there any example of a first-world country that got from a rural agririan economy to its developed status without either 1) relying on exporting its abundant natural resources, or 2) exploiting its people under some form or authoritarian system during its early stage of industrialization?

Scandanavia, Canada, and Australia were resource-based. Europe, America, and Japan had their dark days. The Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) were all authoritarian until the late 20th century. Israel started off with an educated population. Did I miss anyone?

I am a bit pessimistic that there existents a good example of development for the poor countries to follow at all, and I really hope someone can prove me wrong. Of course, I am not saying a vague umbrella precedence justifies any particular wrongdoing, that's a big topic on its own. I just want to get a birds-eye view of where things came from and where they are going.

My impression is that the "nationalists" (as in blind patriotism, the word has a different meaning in Chinese) are a vocal minority among the priviledged urban youths who grew up during the economic boom. The older generations who lived through Mao's days, the less priviedged middle-class kids, and the rural population tend to have very mixed opinions.

Also, Chinese opinions tend to be very mixed to begin with, which can give off the wrong impression to someone from a society that is used to partisanism.

This artwork portrays "opinions" among German and Chinese very well:

http://www.imgx.org/pfiles/2783/1.jpg

My favorite Chinese word of the day. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZRYd78vMT0

"My understanding is that China's upper leadership is largely intelligent and engineering-oriented."

It's a bit complicated. Over the recent years, there is an increasing divide between two rival factions. One consists of the populists who rose through meritocracy, the others being the princelings, the unofficial aristocratic lineage of the communist upper-management.

The populists are the ones with engineering degrees. The princelings mostly have degrees in law, business, and the humanities.

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2009/0816_china_li.aspx

Awesome, thanks!

FTA:

Nonetheless, China says that other countries approached it for help and that is how the idea got started. “It was not China that pushed the idea to start with,” said Wang. “It was the other countries that came to us, especially India. These countries cannot fully implement the construction of a high-speed rail network and they hoped to draw on our experience and technology.”

I'd be really cool if they support wildcard subdomains, as my current project relies on it.

In my experience flash under Linux was much worse than OS X. One of the main reasons I switched to OS X was to make flex development less painful.