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Steko
"A journalist subsequently interviewed Mr. Xie via telephone and he owned up everything"

I wonder if he owned up to the impropriety of using your official position to reimburse your mistress for things she bought for herself.

colkassad
I wonder how serious the corruption charge must be in China before facing execution.
potatolicious
Proportional to public outrage.
Steko
Also inversely proportional to the strength of your connections to higher ups.
bilbo0s
Actually, @potato has it right.

If the public gets mad at you, you AND your mistress are goners in China.

It's crazy how things work over there. Trial is only used as a method of providing justification for the execution.

fmavituna
They should have claimed that Lulsecz hacked both accounts and made this fake conversation for the lulz :)
westiseast
yeah, blame it on the western imperialists!
imrehg
Well, that's a serious usability fail, looking from the technical point of view.
civilian
Is it really? I feel like it just takes a basic amount of curiosity to ask yourself: "Huh, is this really how it works?" I'm optimistic about the general population asking those kinds of questions, but I might just be a(n elitist) technophile. :-/

Something my dad told me: Never be one misstep away from a big mistake.

hboon
I remember Shaquille O'Neal sending @replies on Twitter, thinking it was private when he started out.
PakG1
Bill Gates was apparently humbled when he went into a room to watch usability tests and saw a lady trying to use a mouse. She reached the end of the mouse pad, so she kept moving the mouse onto the rest of the desk surface, and then down the desk leg. It was humbling. Don't know if it's a true story, but can imagine it happening.

Never make assumptions about your users ability to think the way you do about your interface. That's unfortunately (and often unintentionally) arrogant and a recipe for disaster.

geon
Even if he did ask himself if it was actually private, he apparently didn't attempt to ensure he was right. That should be obvious to anyone. Who doesn't look over the shoulder before talking about a sensitive subject, even if you are alone in a public place?

I have an obsession about checking the door handle when using public bathrooms, which is why I hate the accessibility adapted door handles very common here in Sweden:

http://picasaweb.google.com/beth.hochman/GoteborgUniversityS...

westiseast
what's so surprising was that even after thousands of people started to follow them, they still didn't notice that it was a public conversation they were having...