Quoting: iniudanIt not that they have the highest concentration of rare-earth, is that they don't mind destroying their environment to do it cheaply.

Ah, well, as a Canadian I wouldn't know anything about that. <cough>tar sands</cough>

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: GuestTell me about one game that went worse because of Tencent.
A month ago they bought the Warframe company, are they putting some communist message in it with an update?
Tencent, and chinese companies, can buy a lot of enterprises because China is the best economy, growing like no one. If you don't like it you should change your own governments so you can compete with China, just like they did 50 years ago.
Market socialism is beating liberal capitalism, grow up and deal with it.

From my understanding of that, it comes from China having the highest concentration of rare metals in the world. The ones that are used in all of our electronics. So a mix of luck and technology is what is making their economy boom. Everyone else is just kind of screwed. It is the same sort of thing with oil and the middle east.

I don't think that's the case. For one thing, very few countries ever find that having a ton of raw materials makes their economy boom. It takes an amazing amount of planning and resolve as well as some luck and muscle. Take oil--out of all the countries with a bunch of oil, how many have actually managed to use it to help build a prosperous, broad-based economy? Well, there's Norway. Anyone else?
Most countries with serious resources, foreigners just come and steal them. If they insist that the resources belong to them, their governments get destabilized or they get sanctioned. Or, if they cut some kind of deal with dominant countries to let them keep the stuff, it ends up just distorting their economy so it depends on oil rent and is otherwise totally inefficient and barely there--the Saudi Arabia route. You mentioned the Middle East, but the only country in the Middle East you could even consider calling an economic powerhouse has no oil (Israel). Plus, resource economies are prone to booms and busts. So if China has managed to use the presence of those rare metals to actually build their economy, that in itself points to a kind of acumen found in very few countries.

But also, China's rise started before most of those rare metals became important, so I don't see how they could have been the cause. And I don't think it's reasonable overall to call China a resource-rich country.

Technology, sure--but how did they get the technology? The Chinese government decided it was important to get technology and they, first, insisted on technology transfers as a condition of doing business and, second, built tons and tons of educational institutions. Saying China is doing well because China has technology is kind of like saying China is doing well because China has infrastructure--those kinds of things don't drop from the sky, they built them. My country could too but we're too hypnotized by markets.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Arten

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: ArtenAll regulations have negative side efect!

This is no doubt true, but many regulations have positive primary effects that are much more important. I, personally, am quite fond of safe food and drink, for instance.

Food and drink regulation are evil just like all other regulation. They need to be abolished as all other regulation.

Oh that's insane. Here, have some melamine milk.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: DerpFoxWhat I never like with KDE and their app is how bloated they are. You can't install KDE without it coming with everything, and you can't install one kde soft on a another DE without them installing half of kde.

I really love a lot of kde softwares, but now I tend to use a less interesting alternative because I don't want all that bloat. For example, Okular is my favourite PDF reader, but it loads so much.

In a time when a full Linux install including all the major DEs is smaller than one sizable game, I find it hard to take bloat worries very seriously.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Kimyrielle

Quoting: Dribbleondo....aaaaand here come the conspiracy theorists...

Don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to be against market concentration. Having a clue about economics is enough.

I don't believe that was what Dribbleondo was referring to, given that their post was directly under one talking about the Chinese Communist Party.
I'm also generally not happy when big companies swallow little ones, especially if they do it a lot. I couldn't really care less if the company doing the swallowing happens to be Chinese, though.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Squaruman, huh? And his minions, the Skuruk-hai?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: scaineI seem to remember general outcry because Valve offered this "exclusive" [External Link] accessory for running TF2 on Linux, even just once, during a two week period. Windows fanboys (seriously, who are these people?) shouted very loudly in mostly outraged tones that this was unacceptable.

So . . . the Windows fanboys wanted to proudly display Tux, too? (scratches head)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: chelobaka

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI know it's ridiculous, but I find myself thinking "I'd be more interested if she wasn't a smoker."

It seems you are taking passive smoking threat too close to heart.

No, it's mainly just that I find smoking yucky. I remember kissing a heavy smoker once . . . it was awful.
I'm also not wild about the whole "product placement" thing, even if it's not cancer sticks.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: slapinWell, poor choice of words in the news here as "Open Firmware" is slightly different thing...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware [External Link]

It is related to device tree (DT) thing on ARM systems powered by Linux.

"Open" and "Firmware" are ordinary English words with meanings; I'm not sure I'm willing to accept the idea of the combination being locked up to only refer to that particular term of art. I think it would be very difficult to trademark the term "Open Firmware", for instance, even in our fairly ridiculous legal environment.
So like, if they have firmware and it's open, I think it's reasonable for them to call it open firmware.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I know it's ridiculous, but I find myself thinking "I'd be more interested if she wasn't a smoker."

View this comment - View article - View full comments