18 Months In Prison For Making iPad 2 Cases 285
decora writes "Loretta Chao of the The Wall Street Journal reports on three people in China who were sentenced to between 12 and 18 months in prison for a plot to make iPad 2 protective cases before the tablet's official release. The plan allegedly involved R&D man Lin Kecheng of Hon Hai Precision Industry Company (FoxConn) selling image data to Hou Pengna, who then passed it to Xiao Chengsong, a manager at MacTop. The charges? One 'violated the privacy policy of the company,' two got information through 'illegal means' causing 'huge losses,' and they all 'infringed trade secrets.' The decision was handed down by the Shenzen Baoan People's Court on June 16."
Bribe Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
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Palocci?
É você?(It's you?)
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That's what happens when you cross business interests in a fascist state.
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They're something else now. I don't think there's a word for it, unless it's "Borg."
I'm a lot more afraid of what they are now than I was when they were Communists. What they're doing now just might work.
Re:Bribe Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
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No one has ever successfully implemented a capitalist society either. It's a nice idea, but it turns into plutocracy rapidly.
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No one has ever successfully implemented a communist society with more than about 50 members. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't scale, except possibly in a post-scarcity society.
There is not a black and white definition of communism either in practice or theory. It can be argued (and is argued by libertarians) that any taxation is just the first step on the road from pure free markets to communism. It just depends how far along that road societies travel.
Just because you don't ever end up with absolute equality doesn't mean that you can't aim towards it, and improve society by doing so. The Mondragon Cooperative in Spain limits manager's wages to (IIRC) three or four times tha
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The distance between communist and fascist is very narrow, both are variants on progressive ideology.
And the difference between fascist and conservative is narrower still, so by your logic all conservatives are practically communists.
Re:Bribe Fine (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean, communism was EVER about "protecting workers rights"? Uhm sorry but this myth has been dispelled in November 1917.
If you, unlike me, were lucky enough to not live in a communist country and didn't have half of the family murdered for, say, having a title "senior worker"[1], please read Animal Farm or 1984, these are pretty accurate descriptions.
[1]. An uncle of my grandfather, an uneducated factory worker, was promoted to "senior worker" which was for people with no formal training but with work experience who proven they have a clue how to do their job. That was enough to be labelled "an agent of the bourgeoisie" and be taken away by the DHS^H^H^H UB never to be seen again.
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You mean, communism was EVER about "protecting workers rights"? Uhm sorry but this myth has been dispelled in November 1917.
You should probably take a look at what communism is, as in, the proper definition of communism, not the attempts at practical implementations of derivatives (leninism, stalinism, maoism et al).
If you, unlike me, were lucky enough to not live in a communist country and didn't have half of the family murdered for, say, having a title "senior worker"[1], please read Animal Farm or 1984, these are pretty accurate descriptions.
That doesn't really sound like communism to me. Besides, Animal Farm was not a critique of the ideology, it was a critique of the aforementioned implementations and their totalitarianism, Orwell himself was a socialist.
a little understanding? (Score:2)
that man just told you his family members got killed, not the best time to nitpick.
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It's not nitpicking, he was using his claimed personal experience with a corrupt and flawed regime that in turn claimed to be based on an ideology to back up his claim that the ideology at hand represents those things which the regime represented even though it is common knowledge that the ideology does not represent these things.
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Name one instance where the said ideology has ever been managed to be implemented, without the totalitarianism/fascism.
Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, talks like a duck = has to be a duck.
People are essentially people. You cannot get them to voluntarily give up what they perceive as "theirs", without resorting to force/totalitarianism eventually, which in turn eventually, degrades to an authoritarian/fascist state. It has never worked even once in history.
Re:a little understanding? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every single form of government can (and at some point does) lead to totalitarianism. Ideologies are perfect. Humans are not. So no matter what form of government is implemented it eventually corrodes under the human tide of greed and corruption.
Communism fails in practice (on a large scale) because it goes against human nature. Humans are not nice, altruistic beings. It takes an iron fist to make humans in general conform to any system like communism. This leads to communism having a very short lifespan before the system corrupts.
At the same time, democracy is not a magic shield against this either. A rather stark example is Nazi Germany, which went from a democracy to authoritarian dictatorship in just a handful of years.
All it takes is apathy and/or fear to slide a government into authoritarianism. Concentrate wealth and power at the top and you have a perfect setup for stripping away freedom and rights. Get enough talking heads and charismatic people on your side, and you'll even have the people you're screwing over help you attain your goals.
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And this "ideology" was proven again and again to lead to corrupt and flawed regimes.
Because it is just another tool to fool masses and get to the top. It was never supposed to be more than propaganda piece that plays on human greed and envy.
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And this "ideology" was proven again and again to lead to corrupt and flawed regimes.
Because it is just another tool to fool masses and get to the top. It was never supposed to be more than propaganda piece that plays on human greed and envy.
You seem to be describing modern day capitalism, and clearly have no idea about communism either in theory or practice.
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My imaginary, never-been-implemented ideology is better than your imaginary, never-been-implemented ideology.
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Not sure what you meant by "clearly have no idea about communism either in theory or practice", but I would guess you are hanging onto "greed and envy".
When you convert country to communist one, you desperatelly depend on average guy hating guts of more succesfull people and wanting to destroy them out of spite. By, say, confiscating factories. Or houses. Or piece of land. And you pay on greed of rest of people whom you convince that they are going to be piece of action from it - either by helping themselve
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The problem I have is that people attack capitalism on the basis of the way it turns out in the real world, but defend communism based on its "ideal". You can either compare the ideal of capitalism to the ideal of communism, or you can compare the way they each work out when people attempt to implement them.
Capitalism only turns out half decently in the real world when it is heavily mixed with communist/socialist ideas. More or less pure capitalism of the early US/Victorian Britain variety is appalling and oppressive.to 90% of a country's citizens. Fortunately, in the past not everyone acted entirely out of self interest, and so they were prepared to tone down or abolish things like slavery, oppression of women, exploitation of child labour, terrible health and safety risks to workers, gross inequaliy of opp
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I mentioned this particular example, but it is but one of many. Systemic oppression of workers under communism is less talked of in the West, so let's take a look at the other side of "worker-peasant" for something that is better publicised. Murdering by starvation one fourth of peasants in the state of Ukraine is such a stellar example of a benevolent party fighting for the good of common people against those evil capitalists...
For non-soviet examples, look at the Cultural Revolution, the rule of Red Khm
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Starving on the peasants in Ukraine had a very logical reason behind it. USSR needed to get off its knees after being completely pillaged by its long civil war. Stalin managed to make one of the poorest countries in the world into one of the strongest in just a few years by essentially robbing the countryside. The years Ukrainian peasants were starting, USSR was selling millions of tons of grains abroad, and building an industrial sector in the country with the money.
It had nothing to do with communism, and
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Sad as that case may be, realistically you can't drop a debate every time somebody trots out something like that. We'd never get anywhere.
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Errrm, claims of eating babies don't quite qualify as "nitpicking", if I may so nitpick.
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You mean, communism was EVER about "protecting workers rights"? Uhm sorry but this myth has been dispelled in November 1917.
You should probably take a look at what communism is, as in, the proper definition of communism, not the attempts at practical implementations of derivatives (leninism, stalinism, maoism et al).
There were around 100 or so implementations of communism. If every single of them was "not the TRUE communism", perhaps there's something wrong with the ideology?
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I'm not saying "classical" communism is workable in real life (certain anarchist twists of it have shown themselves to function on a smaller scale but to my knowledge not on a national or international scale), I'm saying that just because someone calls something communism doesn't make it communism no matter how many of your friends and relatives were killed by them. By the same logic all germans are racially pure übermensch and Pinochet's regime was "liberal", because that's how they described themselv
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it just became an oligarchy with a politic and military elite ruling the people (under the guise of "the dictatorship of the proletariat").
That phrase does not mean what you think it means.
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You mean, communism was EVER about "protecting workers rights"? Uhm sorry but this myth has been dispelled in November 1917. You should probably take a look at what communism is, as in, the proper definition of communism, not the attempts at practical implementations of derivatives (leninism, stalinism, maoism et al).
There were around 100 or so implementations of communism. If every single of them was "not the TRUE communism", perhaps there's something wrong with the ideology?
The main problem, from the French Revolutionaries of the Eighteenth Century onwards, has been the implacable hostility ofthe outside world towards regimes which espouse communist ideals. This inevitably leads to a deteriorating spiral into paranoia (because everyone is out to get you). If, to choose a popular example here, the US had just left Cuba the fuck alone and allowed it to trade normally with the rest of the world, it would have turned out a different place.
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The problem with your statement, however, is that Communism doesn't live in a vacuum. All communism becomes some form of totalitarianism. Unless you can point to the "book answer" version of Communism thriving in the wild...
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That's right, there aren't any in reality.
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I never claimed there was. Thanks for projecting, however.
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I wonder if the prison has a "glorious people's correctional work for the purpose of moral education"[1] program? He might end up making the real thing.
[1] Not slave labour at all. No no no. Entirely different thing.
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That is absolutely the case. The "wheels of justice" in China only turn that quickly if you've run afoul of a well connected (government cadre) earner. Given the size of Foxconn and the amount of money involved, it's got to be someone (or a number of people) VERY high up in the CCP food chain....hence the harsh and fast sentence.
Anyone making this out as some attempt at enforcing IP laws is kidding themselves.
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Here in the US, the only turn that quickly if your skin happens to be an unfortunate shade.
Right here in Illinois in fact, if you happen to be that unfortunate shade and are caught with non-Pharma-approved drugs, you are 500 percent more likely to do jail time then your more pale counterpart.
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Here in the US, the only turn that quickly if your skin happens to be an unfortunate shade.
Noones going to say "coorelation, not causation"? Or point out that more people with skin of "an unfortunate shade" get free money and handouts from the government than their "pale counterpart"? Or that a good number of the most powerful men in the government, in all branches, have skin of an "unfortunate shade" (given their percentage of population vs representation)? Or that inner city cops actually tend to BE that "unfortunate shade"?
Yea, the man is totally getting african americans down. Oh wait, th
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The guy committed an actual crime. In fact, I'm sure he'd be punished in the states had he done a similar thing here. Or were you saying that he could have gotten away if he'd paid a fine?
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Or were you saying that he could have gotten away if he'd paid a fine?
No, he's saying that, had these guys paid the appropriate bribes to the appropriate people, they would have been fine. Remember, a lot of what China produces for domestic consumption has been acquired through "illegal means".
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18 months in prison for corporate espionage. In the US, the penalty [wikipedia.org] can run up to $500,000 and 15 years imprisonment for individuals, $10,000,000 for corporations. Why do you think this has something to do with China being bad? Or with commerce being corrupt? The idea behind these penalties was, believe it or not, to reduce corrupt business deals.
Good (Score:2, Insightful)
It's good to see China taking IP seriously for a change.
Not quite. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not China taking IP seriously as a matter of principle.
This is China taking the needs of Foxconn seriously, and in this case, Foxconn's need is to demonstrate to its clients that it can be trusted with their sensitive commercial materials, such as the specifications of as-yet-unreleased products.
Re:Not quite. (Score:5, Interesting)
From the summary, I don't see anything particularly wrong with this decision. One company gained an unfair advantage over its competition by engaging in illegal industrial espionage. If the problem is selective prosecution, then surely the solution is to complain about others who are not prosecuted for espionage, rather than to complain about those who are prosecuted?
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Hey Mr. AC, it just so happens that Corporate Allegiance is the fastest growing religion in America.
You know what happens to people who threaten religious freedoms, don't you?
Wait... (Score:2)
How is this bad for Apple? Isn't having cases available a good thing?
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"We only leaked the OS Source Code so that people could make better apps" while trying to justify how there's precedent existing for the making of cases.
Apple did not comment, so we don't know who brought the charges, it would seem that Foxconn found out that employees were leaking confidential information, for which they surely signed non-disclosure agreements, for the purpose of lining a friends pockets with money, by being the first company on the market with covers available.
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They don't get to charge exorbitant license fees on unlicensed products, of course. Such a tragedy!
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Industrial espionage (Score:5, Interesting)
When I lived in the United States, one of our contractors was arrested and sent to prison for industrial espionage (I think the charges were probably mail fraud and the like). He was trying to sell our source code to a competitor, the competitor called the feds, and the feds set up a sting operation while the competitor "played along" as if it were going to pay him for our source code.
They arrested two of our people (both contractors), one was quickly let off though because it turned out he had been duped by his "friend" into lending him a mailbox for a supposedly innocent purpose (the mailbox was to be where the payment would be delivered). I don't remember what was handed down to the guilty person in the end other than it involved some jail time.
What's with the trolling, slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)
These guys engaged in industrial espionage, pure and simple.
Why make it out like they are victims?
They didn't get time in prison for making iPad 2 cases, but instead for stealing the secrets necessary to make them before the iPad 2 even came out.
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These guys engaged in industrial espionage, pure and simple.
Yes, and they should have been punished but years in prison? You realize these weren't military components for a nuclear missile right?
Re:What's with the trolling, slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, I mean we only give sentences that short to corporate executives...wait a second.
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One 'violated the privacy policy of the company,' two got information through 'illegal means' causing 'huge losses,' and they all 'infringed trade secrets.'
Violating company "privacy policy" is not industrial espionage, nor should it be a criminal matter. Getting the information through illegal means is. Causing "huge loesse" through competition... Hmm did they actually sell any? before the product launched (i.e. the could have designed it anyw
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quotes are to specifically cite the law (Score:2)
the wall street journal used quotes, i used quotes. they are quoting the chinese court ruling.
thats what you do when you are quoting someone else. you use quote marks.
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You are trying to argue semantics and failing dismally. A corporation is not a living entity and therefore robbery of the corporation is a civil crime. Does that explain it in simple enough terms for you now?
This really isn't that difficult of a concept, and your arrogance is misplaced. Corporations are OWNED by citizens, either privately or by shareholders in a public company. They are the victims of this crime. Value was robbed from the corporation, and thus from the owners of the corporation. No one is
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Do you know what trade secrets are and how misappropriating them is looked at by law?
Here in the States, it's a federal crime, regardless of who the victim is. It's probably similar in China, and when we're talking about a victim like Foxconn, the government is going to make an example out of these people.
Whether or not you feel doing things to a corporation should not be anything but a civil matter, there are catches and they're not necessarily out of line.
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So what you are saying is (and please bear with me):
If I steal a book from a neighbour, it's a criminal offense, but if I steal a book from a bookshop owned by a corporation, it is not a criminal but a civil offense?
or:
If I break the windows of a residential house owned by a person, it's a crime; but smashing the windows of a Starbucks is just a civil offense because they're owned by a non-living entity?
So I can go into any shop that is owned by a corporation (e.g., Walmart) and steal what ever I want and t
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They committed a "crime" against a huge, faceless corporation, they did not rob, rape, murder or affect any individual human being in any way whatsoever.
Therefore, that makes this a civil matter, not something that should IN ANY WAY involve law enforcement officials or carry any custodial sentences.
So if I steal a billion dollars from XYZ Corporations's bank account, there's no crime involved? Cool, then I can just fly off somewhere abroad with my ill gotten gains as you can't be extradited to defend civil actions as far as I'm aware.
Only One Guy Got 18 There Were Also Monetary Fines (Score:5, Informative)
"Almost two months ago three individuals were charged with selling the designs of Apple's latest tablet to Maita Electronics for 200,000 yuan (about $30,857.60 USD). They have now been sentenced in Shenzhen City: 'Xiao Chengsong, the legal agent of Maita Electronics, to 18 months in prison and fined him 150,000 yuan ($23,000) for buying the design from two Foxconn workers ... Foxconn employee Lin Kecheng, was sentenced to 14 months and fined 100,000 yuan, while another worker identified as Hou Pengna was given a two-year sentence suspended for one year and fined 30,000 yuan. All three were convicted of the crime of violating commercial secrets.'"
And only one was sentenced to 18 months ... unless the associated press [google.com] article I quoted was wrong.
Well, one is wrong, either AFP or WSJ (Score:2)
AFP is not the associated press, its Agence France Presse.
and the two articles (WSJ vs AFP) are completely different, so one of them is wrong.
You would get a similar results in the US (Score:3)
I am not surprised and if this happened in the US, there could be similar punishments. Industrial espionage is a criminal offense in the US as well, although I am not sure what the punishment terms are.
Re:You would get a similar results in the US (Score:4, Informative)
Would you like your oppression with pickles or with mayonnaise? It's probably a similar corrupt corporatocracy situation in many parts of the world, with actions which should be dealt with in civil court criminalized. In the US, The Economic Espionage Act of 1996 brought us (among other insults) US Code Title 18, Part 1, Section 1832, which criminalizes such acts, stating that anyone who steals, or receives or possesses or uses without authorization, a trade secret, or merely ATTEMPTS same, shall be fined, or imprisoned up to 10 years, or both. The fine is limited to $5 million for an organization, but is WITHOUT ANY STATED LIMIT for an individual.
Section 1831 deals with basically the same offenses "to benefit a foreign power," which means that section 1832, giving the lie to the name of the bill, has nothing to do with true espionage.
This wonderful legislation, like the DMCA, was brought to you by a cooperation between tweedledee Democrats and tweedledum Republicans in Congress and the White House.
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How is punishment for theft of trade secrets oppression? How is theft of a trade secret any different from theft of manufactured goods? Money went into creating those trade secrets. Trade secrets have a monetary value and are bought and sold every day. Should car theft be handled in civil court? Theft is still theft be it information or goods. Why should attempts be exempt from the law? Even if an attempt failed the intent to commit the act was still there. No one should get off the hook because they are a
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Industrial espionage is a criminal offense in the US as well, although I am not sure what the punishment terms are.
Fines or up to 10 years in prison or both, if the stolen trade secrets stay in the US. 18 USC 1832 [cornell.edu]. If it benefits a foreign entity then it's up to a $500,000 fine or up to 15 years in prison or both. 18 USC 1831 [cornell.edu].
BAD REPORTING (Score:3)
I wish they would stop with these yellow journalism stupid heading that are just wrong.
No they didn't go to prison because they made a case for the iPad, They went to prison for stealing IP secrets.
Here is a better headline "3 Chinese sentence 18 months for stealing iPad specs before released"
Guy in solitary in the USA for updating a webpage. (Score:2)
Of course, that webpage happened to be Wikileaks.
What's with the inflammatory headline? And why is China's "justice system" considered to be any more broken than the USA's?
Didn't we used to hear that Kevin Mitnik wasn't even allowed to use the phone while in prison because officials were worried he could whistle into the mouthpiece and launch nuclear missiles?
If anything, the Chinese handed down a reasonable sentence for industrial espionage, because that's what this case is. In fact, it's a more reasonable
yes and no (Score:2)
I agree in taking a stand against rampant piracy such as in china where they know everything off....but i do not think this is what they meant, i think they were hoping to actually get the big companies, and not some lone users/small time chimps
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The US has been a consumerist society for decades and decades. People have been saying it will ruin us all for just as long.
One thing you learn from reading old science fiction is that "modern" problems are anything but modern.
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The US has been a consumerist society for decades and decades. People have been saying it will ruin us all for just as long.
Well, it did ruin you.
Hopefully, you see/realize that.
Re:nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
It has ruined you. If you're posting on /. as an educated geek with a good job and a comfortable life then you are one of the few winners of the system. Most of the West is miserable with no voice loud enough to be heard.
The media in every regime give the impression that almost everyone is content with that regime, from the US through the USSR all the way to DPRK. Spend time providing help to or even stopping to have a conversation with the homeless, the chronically sick, the nonviolent prisoner. Then move on to the non-smart - it sounds mean, but half the population are intellectually below average and likely have extremely limited opportunity for it. You'll find that people are struggling and miserable. Not yet at the stage of mass consciousness and disloyalty, but that's yet to come.
I'd summarise our problem in three words: reliance on corporation. We suck at supporting ourselves for our own sake, whether that means individually or at a community / region / national level. Since the '50s local community has deteriorated, and since the '80s we've lost a sense of national community. We're now stuck in this utterly false mindset that the only way to get anything done is to throw money at some magnificent private company to do badly what we've lost the power to do ourselves. Need to talk to someone? Your voice and a knock on the door is no longer good enough. Nor a letter. Nor building your own radio set. Nor even an open access Internet. No, that all requires too much thinking. Now you're tempted to get a shiny ready-made throwaway toy built at a cost which could only be achieved by choosing abused labour in an oppressive country.
In short, we're lazy and we suck. We so far following the progress of every other civilisation [google.com] (read the original, check out how well he'd predicted the next half-decade through analysis of other civilisations, and identify where the West is now) into destruction.
Re:nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
We're now stuck in this utterly false mindset that the only way to get anything done is to throw money at some magnificent private company to do badly what we've lost the power to do ourselves. Need to talk to someone? Your voice and a knock on the door is no longer good enough. Nor a letter. Nor building your own radio set. Nor even an open access Internet. No, that all requires too much thinking. Now you're tempted to get a shiny ready-made throwaway toy built at a cost which could only be achieved by choosing abused labour in an oppressive country.
Oh please. Even letters were always dependent on some organization to deliver them. Ditto for the "open Internet". And the majority of people never built their own radio set.
People didn't change, technology did.
And that abused labour has seen their wages raise in the double digits per year. If it wasn't for their manufacturing, they'd still live in an oppressive country, but living in even worse conditions.
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Oh please. Even letters were always dependent on some organization to deliver them.
What sort of organisation is needed for you with your horse to provide a service taking a letter from A to B?
Ditto for the "open Internet".
The Internet was an end stage, but it was still much better when it was about distributed autonomous peers rather than a few private backbone providers and Facebooks.
And the majority of people never built their own radio set.
But many people could and many people did. And if you couldn't yourself, there'd be someone local to fix yours.
People didn't change, technology did.
The patented automatic ass-wiper was built and, even though it never really worked as well as the human hand, people forgot ho
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The Internet was an end stage, but it was still much better when it was about distributed autonomous peers rather than a few private backbone providers and Facebooks.
No it wasn't. Today's internet is better than it's progenitors in the 1960s and 70s. It's better then the internet of the 1980s - heck it didn't even have the web back then. It's better than the 1990s and it's HTML 1.0 and animated GIFs. It''s better than the 2000s as we get ever more sophisticated web apps and usability by devices other than PCs...
All the time, we've got more speed, more bandwidth, more information providers and services and more users, making it better and better.
And in 10 years time it'l
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It's better than the 1990s and it's HTML 1.0 and animated GIFs. It''s better than the 2000s as we get ever more sophisticated web apps and usability by devices other than PCs...
I recall first browsing the web while mobile around 1998, sitting in a McDonalds in London with a Psion Series 5. It was perfectly usable on a handheld device in the late '90s before the bloat of nascent Web 2.0 and reliance on Javascript made sites too heavy and complex. We're only now creeping back to where we once were in terms of usability on less powerful devices.
Also, cloudy web apps are a horrible idea, both technologically and in terms of all the freedom arguments RMS has already made about them. Bu
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You are drawing arbitrary lines and saying everything before them was good, and everything after was bad.
Did you make your own paper and writing implements to write that letter? If so, did you use only tools and raw materials that you yourself made or collected?
That early internet sure sounds great. I guess people built their own computers (using components and tools that they themselves made), and connected them using wires made from the copper each end user mined for himself, right?
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You're missing the point entirely. It's OK to use other people's services, but that's entirely different from relying on multinationals.
(1) In one case you're choosing to give someone else the task but you could still do it yourself, even if you don't do such a good job of it. In the event that the other guy becomes unavailable and/or your stuff develops a fault you could still fix it;
(2) Relying on businesses in the local community isn't the same as relying on a large corporation, particularly when it come
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Forgive me if my use of certain language is inaccurate; It's been a while since I studied stats.
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Every once in a while new versions are created with new normative samples because the test changes but new generations of people tend to have higher IQs than the previous on
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caramuru, if you're offended by the bare and harsh fact that half the people are simply not that bright (and that you can't base a society, say, on assuming that those people simply need to try harder), at least write a decent defence. In particular:
(i) I don't know about your country, but in mine "average" isn't synonymous with "mean". To know which measure of central tendency is being selected, you observe the context. In my case, by the fact that I've used a definition based on 50% being below, I must be
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but half the population are intellectually below average
No. It's more like 20% of the population has 80% of the brain power. Contrary to what IQ stats say, intelligence is not a normal distribution.
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They can't; they live in China.
The Right to Sew (Score:2)
Following up on The Right to Read [slashdot.org], posted in relation to a story yesterday, maybe we also need someone to write a parable about the right to sew.
OK, so somebody "stole" the length/width/heigth (sic) of the iPad.
But the right to sew is imperiled by the fashion copyright bill [techdirt.com].
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Do you ACs get paid to post crap like this? This's The People's Republic of China we're talking about, not just any other "their country."
This is not the People's Republic of China we are talking about, this is the CEO of a not very large company bribing Foxconn employees, and a Foxconn employee working in Research & Development allowing himself to be bribed to give confidential information to outsiders. You'd go to court and probably to jail in any western country for the same crime.
So some Chinee bigshot can tell Steve that his secrets are safe.
Most idiotic thing I've seen posted here. Do you think Apple has no right to ask suppliers to not give details of future products away? And do you think supp
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For the dimensions of an iPod?!? Why the fsck would that be $SECRET?!?
Because a lot of the competition in the tablet market at the moment revolves around thickness. Your product being 1mm thinner than the competition is seen as a real differentiator. Knowing how thick Apple's next iPad (not iPod, read the title, even if you don't RTFA) can give you a commercial advantage, because you can then create a marginally thinner one, and you can start the development aiming for this before Apple's version is released. Also, if you know the dimensions then you can make a pretty goo
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For the dimensions of an iPod?!? Why the fsck would that be $SECRET?!?
So you're saying that it should be up to the employee who agrees not to disclose a trade secret whether or not it really is a secret, and if in the judgement of the employee it is not, they should be immune from prosecution when they share that trade secret?
Yeah, no problems there...
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A small number of Chinese entrepreneurs are being crushed for the economic crime of noticing, seizing upon, and capitalising on an opportunity. Nobody was harmed in the process, but they're being crushed anyway, either for stepping out of line or for not paying the correct bribe.
So who gives a toss then?. If it's just about making money why weren't they clever enough to pay the fucking bribes?
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Eighteen months for stealing thousands of dollars worth of information so someone can make tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit is not overkill in my book at all. Apple is probably selling the specs for the case to manufacturers of covers. This one decided to steal the information rather than buy it.
What would you have suggested as a sentence?
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Would you feel the same if it was your wife and child that would go hungry and homeless because of their greed? They did this to gain an unfair business advantage and make lots of money. That money comes from market share they stole from other competitors that have employees. Those employees have families that depend on there wages. If their company losses money they lose work and real innocent people suffer! Cheating industry damages the economy and hurts individuals.
How many minutes to Wapner? (Score:2)
They're not going to dub the trial into English and show it on daytime TV, are they?