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Who Knew That Fishermen Don't Know Old Undersea Copper Cables From Important Undersea Fiber Optic Cables?
from the shocking dept
We've talked about the high price of copper is leading to crime around the world as people are looking to steal anything copper and sell it. Due to this, the Vietnamese government thought it would make sense to allow local fisherman to grab old Vietnam War-era undersea cable lines and resell it for profit. What they didn't count on was that (would you believe it?) these local Vietnamese fishermen don't know the difference between old unused war-era undersea copper... and new, important internet- and television- connecting fiber-optic lines. Yes, it seems those fisherman are digging up whatever cables they can find and shockingly, aren't bothering to make sure that it's the copper lines they're taking, rather than the vastly more important fiber ones. 27 miles of fiber optics have gone missing, and it's going to cost many millions to replace. While the allowance to fish up copper lines has now been rescinded, did anyone actually believe that local fishermen would either know the difference or care enough to make sure they were only digging up the proper cable lines?
Reader Comments
(Flattened / Threaded)
Full Metal Thievery
Yup, playgrounds in Japan have had metal slides go missing, public bathrooms have had faucets and doors disappear.
In China, a new bullet train service was launched last month with much fanfare -- but a month later, the cars were trashed. Metal thieves stole the emergency ax, seat rivets, toilet paper holders, thermostat knobs, anything made of metal that could be pried loose.
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Re: Full Metal Thievery
Do you have a link to backup your claims dopus?
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Re: Re: Full Metal Thievery
Techdirt often auto-censors my posts when I post links to Asian news articles.
Chinese bullet trains trashed
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20070518-00000013-rcdc-cn
Japanese playground equipment stolen throughout Japan
http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0302/TKY200703020338.html
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Re: Re: Re: Full Metal Thievery
I knew under all that trolling there was a logical person.
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Re: Re: Full Metal Thievery
it's the huge link in the middle of the article, you know "the underlined text"
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c0ck head
hah you got pwnt.
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I keep a daily tally of violent Asian news in the "Day of Asian Violence" thread here.
http://www.mixedasians.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=10
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Re:
Because Americans really care about foreign countries...? Actually, the only time we truly do care is when we want to vacation there.
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Re: Re:
Well let's see, about 12% of us are foreign born. An indefinite number of second generation Americans spend lots of time in their "home" country, owe their alliegance to foreign countries, and spend most of their lives there. Other Americans who hate themselves move to other countries long-term. It seems we have good reasons to care.
The government doesn't keep statistics on these, but I figure 10-25% of all American citizens on Earth live outside of the US.
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Re: Re: Re:
Lol, so just how many Yanks don't live on Earth? Anyone hazard a guess?
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Theres always two on the space station isn't there?
They send yanks up before the monkeys, to make sure it's safe of course.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Does the administrations own little world count as earth or not?
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
I think one or two on the space station.
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Re: Re: Re:
90% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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AZ
Here in AZ we had a fine gentleman try to steal some copper power lines that were actively carrying current.
Yeah he almost died.
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"10-25% of all American citizens on Earth"
Interesting category.
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Re:
People in the International Space Station or moon don't count.
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Re:
It's following the same trend as Europe, where the subcontinent is becoming Muslim-dominated. Europeans don't care about their own religion or traditions anymore, so Mecca is increasingly becoming the spiritual and political capital of Europe. Europe's future will see a Muslim ruling class and white savages who run around on their nude beaches and smoke pot all the time.
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Re: Re:
Being euro-trash, I wasn't aware this was happening in my backyard, Mohamed be praised for the heads up, it's quite remarkable that somebody on a different continent sees what's going on in my backyard while I am so totally oblivious...it must be a Mecca miracle
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Re: Re:
Have you even been to Europe?
Please stop making things up. Its quite annoying.
As much as I enjoy the types of debates that Techdirt creates, can't they ban/edit serial trolls such as Dorpus to stop us being sidetracked in the comments?
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Re: Re: Re:
Have you even been to Europe?
Yes, I was in Germany last year. It looked exactly like San Francisco, with the vast hordes of Vietnamese and Muslim schoolkids who outnumbered white kids, the sidewalks had the same species of smelly Eucalyptus trees, all the white women made a show of going out with black men, the highways had the same Nike billboards with close-up shots of black men, the concrete-block houses were painted the same pink, yellow, and purple colors, the public transportation system was crawling with the same dirty 13-year-olds on bicycles/skateboards.
Just like San Francisco, the majority of store clerks, restaurant workers didn't speak English and scowled when they had to. The town I was in (Heidelberg) was overly proud of their ugly castle that had been rebuilt many times with discordant architectural styles -- exactly like the fake stone mansions we see dotting California hillsides.
p.s. I did go to the Roman/Celtic bath at Baden Baden, and (illegally) had sex with my girlfriend in one of the side pools.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: I was in Munich
I love germany I was there for a week and it is not even close to anything we have in the United States. These people actualy know how to DRIVE a car with a manual transmition. They actualy ride their bikes and when I say ride I mean get out of the way because minium there doing 30mph and I was almost hit 3 times when I was walking in the park. And those people keep the place clean yea some parts are dirty but have you actualy seen their air port they don't have people walking around to pick up other peoples trash. And at lest 3/4 of the country knows english and if not that then french. That was the most fun I have ever had in my life.
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Reply to Just Me
Well, I would say
.000000000030292821 of the world's population does NOT live on the planet.
How did I get that number?
World Population = 6,602,224,175 (and counting)
American Citizens on the Space station = 2
2 / 6,602,224,175 = 3.0292821*10^-10
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wait a second...
>> Europe's future will see a Muslim ruling class and white savages who run around on their nude beaches and smoke pot all the time.
Dorpus, how soon will this happen? If the savages get pot and nude beaches, I'm moving to Europe.
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Re: wait a second...
It will happen in approximately 2 minuntes.
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Posts
Gee and I thought the posts on this blog would have something to do with the subject.
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Nude Beaches
I have been to Europe - I have NO DESIRE to visit a nude beach full of Europeans (no offense of course).
Wait.... how much pot?
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Translation of Dorpus' link
from the google translation engine:
crimeny, talk about tortured english. I'm not sure which is worse off, the Chinese bullet train, or that article after being munged by the translation engine...(reply to this comment) (link to this comment)
Most men in Iceland drop out of school to be fishermen and the women have advanced educations, most of them excell in Math.
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Re:
Yup, the same phenomenon happens elsewhere in rich countries. Depending on local economic conditions, blue-collar jobs may be more available and pay better than white-collar jobs. East Asian countries today have a vast oversupply of college graduates who can't get jobs. Many of them have resorted to lying about being "high school graduates" to get a job.
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metal thievery
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