RE: Chinese Fly Red Flag With Ban On Microsoft

["Phillip Hallam-Baker" <hallam@ai.mit.edu>]

Why on earth do Fight Censorship readers bother to read the ToryGraph. Not
only is it a tedious read, it is also prone to be very out of date.

There is a reason that the Telegraph readership has been declining at an
alarming rate...


The Chinese IT ministry came out with a categorical denial of the story.
They are a key Microsoft account and are planning to deploy Win2000 very
extensively. It was extensively reported by CNN about four days ago...

The reason ain't too hard to see. Unix ain't going to be providing the
type of support for Chinese character sets any time soon. Win2000 is
Unicode based. Microsoft is probably giving the IT ministry an
exceptionally good price to get them on their side in copyright battles.


As for China resenting the West, they do have good reasons. At the end of
the 19th century the Western powers, including the US decided to divide up
China in the grand imperial fashion. Britain fought several wars in
retaliation for Chinese attempts to suppress the Opium trade.

Today a bunch of Republican Jackasses are openly demanding that the
President 'declare cold war on China'. Their ideology appears to require
an enemy, the USSR having collapsed they are looking to pick a fight with
China. Hardly surprising then that there might be some reciprocal feeling.


		Phill

smime.p7s